My Memories

As I was raised on Bob-Lo and have continued to make it my permanent home for the better part of 50 years, I would like to share some of the memories that I have as a child growing up here.

When I was born, my parents and 3 other siblings lived in a house down on the beach by  McGeorge’s, William’s, and VanDerbeck’s.  Some of you  know where that is. (near the Tavern).  The house is no longer there.  When I was one year old, my folks bought the house in the Pines that Lee’s now own.  Most people know it as “the old Post Office house”, next to the Historical Society.  I lived there until I was married at 19.

Goofy Gahn's Gulf Gas Station 
We had a Gulf Gas Station at our house, and it was nicknamed this way-back-when.
Most people will probably remember it.  You can see the Historical Society in the background on the right.

The things I remember the most was all the kids I used to play with that also lived here full time.  Those being the Plaunt kids, the Feeley kids, the Gibbons.  Sometimes our parents didn’t get along, (you know.....the old politic stuff), but it never seemed to bother us kids, we played together none the less.  

I especially always remember waiting for summer to get here so that I would get to see my summer friends.  It always worked out so that one would come up for a couple of weeks, then they’d go home and another would come up, and so on.  It seemed all summer long there was one friend or another here.  We all used to congregate down at the Pines dock.  If ever a parent or a friend wanted to find someone, all they had to do was go to the dock, and we’d be there. Back then, all the kids of the island, being permanent residents or summer, we were all one big crowd.  When we gathered at the dock to swim, or just “hang out”, someone was always skiing.  I’ll never forget the man that always brought his boat down to the dock ready to pull anyone that was willing to go.  We had to provide the skis and life vests, but he supplied the boat, motor and gas.  I’m sure some of you remember him............Kenny Howard.

DUST!!  It hasn’t changed a bit, except for the fact that there is much more traffic here now then there was back then, and the cars today are sealed much better in that they don’t fill with dust inside.  I can remember my girlfriends and I getting ready for an evening out with the boys.  We’d spend hours doing our hair up in brush rollers trying to look just right.  The boys would pick us up in and old island bomb, and by the time we got to where we were going, maybe even just to the dock, our hair would be coated with a thick layer of dust making us look 40 years older than we really were.  We didn’t need hair spray!!  It always infuriated us, but we always hoped that this one time we didn’t go through all the work for nothing.  Our hope was always to no avail.

For dust control, they used to spread old used motor oil on the roads.  They would have it filled in this big drum on a trailer, with an apparatus of sort that would dribble it on the road.  As a kid, I always walked around bare feet, and I can remember walking down to the dock and back a couple times a day just after a fresh spread of oil.  Needless to say, you can imagine what the bottom of my feet looked like.  I certainly didn’t care, but my mother didn’t take too kindly to it.  The remnants of this oil can still be seen on the road in a couple of spots yet!!  It used to harden and pack just as if it was blacktop.

The winters were always great!  We always got a lot of snow, and the ice bridge was generally never an iffy thing.  In fact, there were times that my mother would let me walk to town to spend the weekend with a friend in Cheboygan.  Most of the time we crossed the ice in what we called the “Snowbug”.  It was an air sled that my dad built.  I do have an old picture of it if anyone wants to see what it looked like.  Mom and Dad would pack us all in the back and cover us with a tarp to keep the wind off of us, but little did they know, we still froze to death anyway.  On the days that it was thawing a bit, it was a little hard to get it moving, and I remember Dad standing at the steering wheel and bouncing up and down, giving it all the throttle it had, to get the skis to come loose from the snow.  Once we got snowmobiles, I was allowed to travel the ice after dark by myself.

 The SnowBug
Pictured are: In the the Bug is my dad, Bert Gahn, and standing on the ground are my grandparents, Gene & Maggie Babcock.

I remember the day that I first learned to ride a “big girl” 2 wheel bicycle.  All of you know where the Pines Hotel used to be.....well just south of there is a house that’s right next to the sidewalk going down to the Pines Dock.  When I was about 7 years old, there was a tennis court where that house now sits, and I learned to ride this bike on that tennis court.  Needless to say, by the time I learned, I had bleeding elbows, and bleeding knees.

All during my adolescent years, my family and grandparents did a lot of picnicking.  We would either go down at the end of the Weiner Rd, (some people call it Bible Rd.) or down at Snake Island.  The Weiner Rd. was just a nice sandy beach for us kids, and Snake Island was a great place for my grandfather to fish.........his passion!!

Vehicles, (if you can call them that), were a sight to see back then.  Most of them were held together with wire or binder twine. I don’t think 100 mph tape was here yet. Most of them didn’t have headlights, mufflers, and some didn’t even have doors........but they always got us where we wanted to go.  I remember when I was 12 years old, my dad decided it was time to start teaching me how to drive.  We didn’t have a sheriff then, so what the heck.  One of my cousins was driving their Model A at 12, so now it was my turn.  He put me in the drivers seat of this old blue Chevrolet truck, with a standard transmission, and 3 on the floor!!  Oh brother, what was I going to do with that???  He explained the process to me, (several times), and I gave it a try.  After several attempts of trying to make it move, we galloped up the driveway.   I was never so scared in my life, worrying that I would run into the house.  All of us kids were driving before our time.

 Model-A Snow
Was taken right in front of the Palmer/Marconi house where the windmill is. It's my mom, Audrey Gahn,
sitting on the car holding my little sister. The rest of us are on the bank, and that's me in the blue snowsuit.

I also remember that when my dad worked for the Mackinac County Road Commission, on the days that he would start up the big old grader, I would stand out in front of our house to wait for him to go by.  I would flag him down and ask if I could ride with him.  Naturally he would let me get in and I would spend the day riding.  I remember doing a lot of “head bobbing” as it was a slow tedious ride, but I loved it.

We got electricity back in the 60’s, and prior to that we always used a generator for some things and gas for everything else.  I remember the day they finally turned on the power.  We were all at school, and always came home for lunch.  We ran home as fast as we could trying to be the first one there to flip on a switch to see if the lights worked. My older brother beat us all and he was the lucky one that got to be first at flipping on a light switch without hearing the generator automatically start.  Once we got power, we all got CB radios to communicate with each other here on the island, and also in Cheboygan.  We didn’t have telephones yet.  When we first got power, it would go out a lot.  I remember one winter when the power went out there was no way to communicate with the people in Cheboygan, so my dad and my uncle that lived in town at Pries Landing, set up this signal just so that we could let them know everyone over here was ok.  My dad would go out onto the front porch at night at a certain time and point a seal beam light towards Pries Landing.  He would flash it 3 times if everything was alright, and my uncle would flash back letting us know he got the message.  I remember him having to do this for 3 nights in a row one time.  I don’t know what the flashes would have been if he wanted my uncle to know there was trouble, and I’m sure glad he never had to give that message.

In the spring time after everything had thawed, the main road by the Community Building would flood.  The Community Building hadn’t been built yet and the water was almost up as high as the floor at the church.  It would completely flood the house just across the road.  Well, some of the kids in the neighborhood would go down to the  big creek and catch some suckers, then take them back up to that flooded spot and release them.  Usually there was always a row boat there and we’d row around in it.  I would imagine when the water finally receded, the smell must have been horrible because of the suckers that were put in there.

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