In this special episode that both celebrates the one year anniversay of the North Country History with Rob Burg podcast and celbrates the Christmas Holiday season, I share 19th Century writer John W. Fitzmaurice recounting of the celebration of Christmas in a Northern Michigan Logging Camp in 1883. Read from his book "The Shanty Boy.": Or, Life in a Lumber Camp, which recounts his experiences of traveling through the Northwoods and visiting logging camps in the 1880s while working as a hospital agent and drummer. He published his book, using a bit of dramatic liscense, in 1889 and is a good depiction of what the life in the camps was like for the shanty boys.

Source Material

Fitzmaurice, John W. "The Shanty Boy: Or Life in a Lumber Camp." Cheboygan, Michigan: The Democrat Steam Print Co. 1889.

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In this bonus episode of the North Country History with Rob Burg podcast, I am presenting the story of my late uncle, Dudley Foster and his experiences as a sailor in the U.S. Navy at the Invasion of Normandy, June 6, 1944.

Dud and his wife Ang, my dad's older sister, retired to their own North Country retreat on the banks of the AuSable River just outside of Grayling, Michigan in the mid-1970s and lived out the remainder of their lives along the river. Dud kept a diary of sorts of his experiences during the Normandy Invasion, and it has been passed down to my cousin Caroline Foster, Dud's granddaughter, who was kind enough to share it with me.

Although this was the only time that Dud was in combat, his World War II service neither began nor ended with the Invasion of Normandy on the shores of France. Before he could be drafted, Dud enlisted in the United States Navy Reserve and until he was called to active service, he and Ang were employed at Henry Ford's Willow Run Bomber Plant, producing the B-24 Heavy Bomber, the first mass produced airplane. When Dud was sent on active duty, Ang and their young son Mike (Micky) returned to their hometown of Chelsea, Michigan (mine as well). I believe this was sometime in 1943 and Dud was assigned to an LST (Landing Ship Tank) and sent to Great Britain to prepare for the opening of a second front in Western Europe to defeat Hitler's Nazi Germany.

After the Invasion, Dud eventually returned to the United States and was transferred to the Pacific Theater where he would begin training for his next assignment, the Invasion of Japan. He was training as a crewman on a Rocket Barge that was a floating artillery battery that was to support the landings on the Japanese home islands. It was while he was in training that the Atomic Bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan that ended World War II.

In this episode, I read the passages of his diary about D-Day, which gives all of us the perspective of a young sailor in the fight of his life.

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In 2014-2015 long before I became a podcaster I briefly had a blog called "A Taste of the North Country." In it I explored the food found in the North, both historic and contemporary. At the time I was only working as a freelance historical presenter and writer, so I was doing as much economizing with food as possible, including foraging wild food (mostly wild berries), and doing my own canning. I was looking at this with the eye of the historical perspective. It also got me to think about some of the food that was historically eaten, such as in the logging camps.

We have all seen the "Lumberjack Breakfast" on menus at diners and greasy spoons throughout the North Country. And even elsewhere where no lumberjack ever roamed. It is a breakfast meal with eveything on your plate. Did you ever think of where the name came from. In this blog post, I talked about the origin of this meal going back to the logging camps. For this bonus episode of the podcast I am sharing that blog post with you.

Can you still find "A Taste of the North Country?" Why yes you can! Although I stopped writing it when my work situation improved in 2015, first working as the winter caretaker at the Wellington Farm U.S.A. historic agricultural museum, where I took care of the livestock for the winter, then I was hired as the museum director for the Lovells Township Historical Society; if you google the title, you will find it. However, as I tried to just bring it up while typing this, it won't connect on my laptop, though I have it on my phone.

Here is the link if you want to try:

atasteofthenorthcountry.wordpress.com

Vinegar Pie Recipe

This is the recipe we used at the Hartwick Pines Logging Museum.

One Pie Shell

1/4 Cup of Butter

1/2 Cup of White Sugar

2 Eggs

1/2 Cup of Brown Sugar

3 Tbsp of Vinegar*

1/4 Cup of Flour

1 Cup of Water**

Dash of Nutmeg to taste (or can use cinnamon, cloves, or other spice of your choice)

In a large bowl, blen white sugar, brown sugar, flour, and nutmeg with fingers until no lumps remain. Stir in vinegar, eggs, butter, and water until well mixed. Pour into pie shell and bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes.

Notes

*Try a variety of vinegars. Distilled white vinegar may give the pie a taste similar to pecan pie filling (minus the pecans); Apple cider vinegar may give the pie an apple taste. Both of these would be historic adaptations.

**The recipe calls for 1 cup of water, but at Hartwick Pines we found that when cooking on coals on a fire, that this makes the pie a little soupy. We have adjusted it to 1/2 cup of water and it is much better.

Episode Sources

Ellis, Charles. Among the Michigan Pines. The Current. Chicago: 1885, Vo. III

Fitzmaurice, John W. The SHanty Boy or Life in a Lumber Camp. Cheboygan, MI: Steam Democrat Press, 1889.

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