To Hell in a Buick

 

Howard and Jennie (Dad and Mom) purchased a cottage on Hiland Lake at Hell, Michigan, northeast of Jackson, in the mid‑1950s. Once the lake was reached, the entrance route to the cottage consisted of a well‑kept, two-lane dirt road, steep in many places and bordered on the lake side by precipitous drops. Although some people lived at the lake year round, we seldom went to the cottage in the winter. One time we did go our pink and white two-tone Buick fishtailed on an icy hill and nearly plunged over the edge.

          Hiland was a man‑made lake kept in check by the Portage River dam. When the water was clear you could see tree stumps below the surface. These caused no end of problems both with snagging fishhooks and fouling boat propellers. In spite of these minor maladies, the lake was a paradise to the city-tired family. It even had a wooded island, wild and nearly unsullied by human-generated trash, to which you could boat and have a picnic.

          Hiland Lake had a nickname which was more often used than its formal one: “Hell’s Hole.” To this day, however, I don’t believe that name was meant for the lake as much as it was meant for a wooded, conic depression across the road from our cottage. The depression had the circumference of approximately one city block, and its sides dropped steeply to a green, dark, bubbling swamp below. The sides were strewn with various debris and garbage as though it were a natural (or unnatural) disposal. There were tales of people having disappeared within its boundaries. Two instances helped cure me of any desire to venture into the “hole.” The first was seeing a sort of large, dinosaurian turtle, complete with pointed dorsal humps and covered with moss and other clinging matter, literally scamper out of the “hole” and across the road toward the cottage. Its shell never touched ground as it quickly disappeared into a thick bush, though I couldn’t find it once the nerve came to look. The other incident was when a neighbor boy that I had never met came by one day and asked if I’d go with him into the “hole” to look for his missing dog—last seen going in. I hesitantly agreed, but our search turned up nothing, and to my knowledge the dog never returned.

          The cottage itself was somewhat small and was one story. The kitchen and living areas were combined, plus there were two bedrooms—one on either side of the bathroom—and an enclosed lakeside porch. A large, fuel-oil-burning stove heated the place, and a hand pump at the kitchen sink required priming before surrendering fresh water. A sofa bed in the living area could be used for guest sleeping.

 

            Dad built a dock on the lake and placed logs in the lake perpendicular to the dock and each other, forming a square. Within this square we kept the weeds cleaned out using a special rake Dad also made. (Occasionally we’d pull in a ripe skunk cabbage, and its retched odor would send us running.) This was the swimming place. Of course, one could also swim outside the square but the water was deeper and the lakebed mucky. He also built a pump house down by the lake, installed a water pumping system, and ran plumbing up to the cottage’s bathroom and kitchen sink so we could use lake water for flushing the toilet, washing dishes, or doing other tasks feasible with gray water.

 

            One day Dad saved his tiny granddaughter Connie Garrett’s life. Most everybody was up at the cottage having refreshments when Dad happened to look out the back window and down towards the dock, just catching sight of Connie dropping off the end. He threw down his coffee cup and ran fast as he could down the embankment to the end of the dock, diving in and retrieving her.

          The very best swimming was at the dam, itself. The roaring, foaming dam was situated at our entrance to the lake road, about a mile from the cottage. Nearby to the dam was a souvenir and bait store that sold an assortment of items, nearly all having “Hell’s Hole” emblazoned on them. My friend and Leroy Street neighbor Carl had trouble using any type of profane language due to his upbringing. So when he returned home after visiting me at the lake, he told his folks he went swimming at the “darn in Heck.”

          Dad also did some landscaping around the cottage, which included leveling off some uneven spots using an iron leveling bucket he had borrowed, dragged behind the Buick. My sister Mary especially enjoyed this task, since she got to drive the car while Dad steered and steadied the bucket. Dad also let Mary drive short distances down the road, though it would be a few years before she was old enough to get a license. This always made her day!

          Mom kept us all happy by deliciously preparing the caught fish and keeping us always in cinnamon rolls and cinnamon cartwheels (pie crust dough rolled out flat, slathered with butter, generously sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, and then rolled up, sliced into half-inch-thick wheel-shaped segments and baked for a few minutes until the sugar, cinnamon and butter percolated out and the wheels turned slightly brown). She would bring a pork roast and cook it at the cottage, filling the place with more luscious and homey smells to help mask the musty breath the cottage exhaled. In most ways it wasn’t really a vacation from work for Mom. In fact, it was more work because she didn’t have all the conveniences she had in town, like fresh running water. But I know she enjoyed the change of scenery.

          Although we curtailed the number of visits in the winter, we did occasionally brave the dangers and discomforts and make the trip. When Hell froze over, besides ice fishing (which seemed to be Dad’s passion), we kids would don our ice skates and be off around the lake and to the island like the fictional Hans Brinker. Dad would chop several holes in the ice with an axe and then set up an ice fishing pole at each location, carefully skimming off the crusts of newly freezing water as they formed. The fresh oxygen attracted the fish initially, but once they arrived they were snared when they tried to snack. The hind legs of my first dog, Poky, became paralyzed due to complications after he slipped into such a hole, where Dad was fishing at a nearby lake. We had to have Poky put to sleep.

          One day, when my sister Mary and her best friend Linda were skating near the island, they hit a patch of honeycombed ice and Mary fell through. Dad happened to see it and ran across the ice, no mean distance, to help her. He later recounted that as he ran, wearing heavy rubber boots and bulky winter over-clothes, it was like he wasn’t moving at all. It was a very traumatic experience for all parties.

          The cottage was eventually sold so Dad could purchase his “bachelor pad” on Cardinal Crest Road, which in turn was sold in 1960 so we could buy the farm on Wooster Road northeast of Jackson. But even with the expanse of 100 acres, Dad missed not having a lake. To resolve this he bought a crane, and in the early 1970s dug out the swamp west of the farmyard, creating his own spring-fed lake and stocking it with fish. Later he built a dock for his boats. The crane was kept several years for use in re‑dredging the mini lake but was sold in 1983.

 

            And whatever happened to Hiland Lake? Had Dad been ice fishing there on the morning of Friday, March 26, 1982, he’d have been more than a little surprised. At about 10:30 a.m. that day the 125‑year‑old keeper, the Portage River dam, burst, sending an instant flood into the nearby trailer park and forcing the evacuation of 25 families. The dam, scheduled to be replaced that year at a cost of $750,000, had been declared “dangerous” as early as 1947 and had been leaking for years. The lake’s water level dropped rapidly, and by the next day all that remained was frozen water life, old stumps, and chunks of frozen surface water. Like the proverbial phoenix, Hiland has since risen again.

 

The following is an excerpt from this writer’s 1984 Michigan vacation journal, telling of a return to Hell:

During my stay Dad and Marilee took me “to see the lake and cottage according to their 1984 interpretation.... I was prepared to see the lake bed all dried up. Happily a new dam had been built, the water re‑confined, and Hiland Lake looked a full‑blown reflection of its former self. The cottage, however, was unrecognizable. Someone had added a second story, and the over‑all size was much increased. Also, the ‘Hell‑ish’ swamp I expounded upon in earlier writings had by now lost most of its menace. One tree‑lined side of the swamp hole had been cleared and leveled down, and a two-story cottage was built, allowing sun and a clear view of another leg of the lake where dark, foreboding trees once barred the way. This, plus other encroachments on the once‑evil‑looking place by garages and other cuttings and leveling, had reduced the awful swamp to merely a swamp. The road leading to the cottage was barely recognizable, also, since the area was by now built up, whereas before there were great undeveloped stretches.”

 

© 1984 Charles W. Paige

 

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