Ship Captain's Daughter by Ann Michler Lewis-Book Review-Five Stars

 

BOOK REVIEW – FIVE STARS

Ship Captain's Daughter by Ann Michler Lewis 

This is the story of the author’s father Willis Carl Michler who sailed the Great Lakes for forty-seven years and was a captain of thirteen different ships.

The captain’s daughter wrote that he was “Drawn to the water and the big ships as a young man, he followed a dream of becoming a Great Lakes ship captain, and he and my mother and I lived it out together, in all its rich and varied and demanding dimensions.”

I grew up at the head of the Great Lakes in Superior, Wisconsin. Great Lakes freighters were a common sight. As a youth I was fascinated by the bum boats that supplied the supplied the ships crew with their daily needs while the ships were docked loading and unloading cargo. When I was still in high school I would take my parents speed boat out in the Duluth/Superior harbor and tie up to the bum boat where I could buy beer.

The captain’s daughter also enjoyed her experience of visiting the bum boats.

Here is a look at those Bum boats from the authors own experience.

"When I felt my first foot on the deck, I started to breathe again. He took my hand, and we made our way to the little door. Four steps down and, phew! The smell of sweet tobacco made me gag. I plugged my nose and hesitated, but the cheery calendar girls smiling and winking all around were very welcoming, not to mention the ladies on the covers of magazines on the book rack. Half of our ship’s crew was in there, talking and laughing, drinking beer and smoking and telling jokes. No other girls in there, that’s for sure! Dad quickly steered me around to the back, which was so crowded that I disappeared in between the cases of watches, bins of underwear and socks, boxes of birthday cards, bottles of perfume, razors, aftershave, and columns of cartons of Camels and Lucky Strikes. All sizes of transistor radios covered the walls from floor to ceiling. I noticed a whole section of cough medicines and a display of Brylcreem with a big cardboard picture of a man with curly dark brown hair and a blond woman with her hand behind his ear. What I liked best of all, though, were the boxes of candy and gum lined up in double rows in front of the cash register right next to the cigarette lighters. Behind the register stood Mr. Kaner, who was gruff, gravelly voiced, and kind of scary to a young customer like myself. He seemed to know everyone by name and was passing on the news from the last ship, where he had just seen a sailor who had previously been on our ship. When he saw me, his bushy eyebrows shot up in surprise. I took a step backward, but he came around the counter, bent down, and made a big fuss over me, telling me that I was beautiful and that I had been brave to come down. Afterward, he took me over to the freezer and let me pick out a free ice cream bar. Dad bought a Dreamsicle for himself, and we said good-bye to Mr. Kaner and went out on deck to eat our treats.”

This book is an excellent look at the life of a Great Lakes ship captain’s family in the years when America was loved and envied. A great book!

More excerpts from Ship Captain's Daughter by Ann Michler Lewis

Father’s sailing career spanned the height of Great Lakes iron ore shipping, the lows of the Great Depression, World War II (during which time the sailors served the country as members of the Merchant Marine), the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, the advent of radar, and the development of the taconite trade. He sailed before the invention of computers, GPS, cell phones, email, and Skype—and before sailors could apply for summer vacations. When I was growing up, we relied on letters.

Today the ships that traverse the Great Lakes can be tracked on the internet. Many are twice the size of the freighters my dad first sailed, though at this writing, my father’s last command, the SS Herbert C.

Most people in Duluth welcomed spring. For our family, it was the beginning of the end, not only of winter, but also of our land time together. When the days grew longer and the ice on Lake Superior began to break up, Dad’s shipping orders were soon to come. Every day they didn’t was a relief.

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Dad's Story in the Doings of Dudley Doolittle

 

The time is right to put this story up. This month is my dad's birthday.  John A. Grimsud was born June 29, 1908. I miss him.

This is a story about Peoples Drug Store in the Roaring Twenties told to me by my dad when I was a child.

Dad was sixteen years old in 1924 while America was riding the speculative economical rollercoaster fueled by post WWI industrial expansion.

Prohibition had the country swilling clandestine bootleg booze in gangster controlled speakeasies

Hyperactive 138 pound Dad was self-motivated at an early age. He had three newspaper delivery routes at the same time employing a helper. He mopped floors and did janitor work mornings before school at Peoples Drug and repaired bicycles in his spare time.

Early one morning as dad was slipping his key into the door at Peoples Drug Store to begin his janitor job, a big long car screeched up to the curb, stopped and three machine-gun wielding men scrambled out.

Dad was pushed inside and forcefully ordered to open the safe at gunpoint. He nervously told the menacing gangsters his only duty was to mop the floors and carry out the trash 

These Al Capone type gangsters were in a big hurry and luckily only locked Dad in the basement coal room instead of blasting him to bits.

In the pitch-blackness of the coal room dad’s thoughts quickly turned to the idea of escape. He felt his way around in the blackness and found the coal shoot leading up to the small street-side door.

This would be his escape route. 

Dad then stealthily crept his way up the coal shoot and carefully pried open its little door. As he cautiously peered out he was terrified to be looking down the barrel of a machine gun. Dad thought that his heart would explode as he gingerly lowered the little door with a trembling hand.

The gangsters grabbed what they could quickly picking up items, breaking into the narcotics drawer, and then sped away with little more than a sack full of Parker fountain pens and lots of drugs.

Dad said that the incident didn’t bother him for about a week and then suddenly flashbacks would startle him out of a sound sleep with sweaty terrifying anxiety.

Dad went on to get his pharmacist license and eventually became the owner of the Peoples Drug Store by the early 1940’s buying it from O. B. Olson, the original owner.

Postscripts:

Those gangsters were apprehended a few weeks later and one of the things that helped convict them were all of those expensive Parker fountain pens.

Five cents: Nowadays five cents doesn’t seem like a lot of money but when I was a kid ten years old back in 1950 it would buy you a newspaper, five U. S. postcards, three second class postage stamps, soft drink, candy bar, ice cream cone, refillable cup of coffee or a bowl of rice at the Chinese restaurant. 

Peoples Drug Store had an ornate soda fountain/lunch counter featuring hamburgers that were greased to kill. My favorite soda fountain beverage at the lunch counter was the 5¢ Coca Cola that came in several flavors all made from extracts known as phosphates, the charged water was added. Cherry flavor with a dash of chocolate was sensational. 

I started working at Peoples Drug Store when I was fourteen cleaning shelves, washing bottles, washing windows, shoveling/sweeping the sidewalk, and burning garbage. 

At sixteen years old I started waiting on customers, stocking shelves, and doing the inventory. When I got my drivers license I did deliveries and got to know a lot of people in the five years I worked there.

The store had three full time pharmacists, Bob Cleary, Bud Dice, and my dad.At the time there were fourteen drug stores in Superior, and none were chain operated. 

There you have some of my Peoples Drug  recollections.

The 1950s: The 1950s opened with witch hunting McCarthyism and Eisenhower's team headed by Richard Nixon and Earl Butts that set out to undo all of Franklin Roosevelt's social justice programs. 

Community oriented mom and pop businesses along with family farming, labor unions, and Indigenous rights vanished. Murdered by capitalism.

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