The Mail-Journal, Volume 26, Number 29, Milford, Kosciusko County, 2 September 1987 — Page 10

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THE MAIL-JOURNAL — Wed., September 2,1987

Summer

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REVEAL LABOR DAY PLANS — A number of Milford youngsters revealed their ideas for a great Labor Day excursion. From left are Heather Smith, Kristena Smith, Joni de Lafuente, Jeremy Smith and Robbie Smith. The consensus of the group was that any day could be a holiday as long as they were out of school. (Photo by Carla Gaff) Unofficially —

Labor Day draws summer to end

(By CARLA GAFF Staff Writer In a couple of days the nation will once again be celebrating Labor Day - the one-day holiday coveted by young and old alike as it’s often the last fling of summer. A number of Milford students were happy to give their opinion of where they thought people should go and what they should do during the Labor Day break. Heather Smith, daughter of Robby and Kathy Smith, stated

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that if she could she’d “probably like to go to Disneyland for the day.” Her little sister Kristena also confirmed that Florida would be a great place to go over Labor Day, if there were enough time and money. r However, their cousin Robbie Smith though he’d like to go another direction and commented, “I’d like to go to Colorado, J guess.” But his little brother, Jeremy, agreed with his girl cousins and also wanted to go to Florida and

especially Disneyland. Robbie and Jeremy are the sons of Robert and Sharon Smith of Milford. Joni de Lafuente was a bit more realistic with Tier answer, as she could easily visit her choice of vacation spots during a 1 one-day holiday. She reported, “I’d probably like to go to Cedar Point.” She is the daughter of David and Joni de Lafuente of Milford. It matters very little to children what Labor Day is really all about as Jeremy commented that he liked the day simply because he wouldn’t be going to school. Actually though, Labor Day is a legal holiday celebrated on the first Monday in September in the United States, Puerto Rico, the Canal Zone, and the Virgin Islands. It’s a day that is celebrated in honor of the working class and was initiated in 1882 by the Knights of Labor. A parade was held on that first day and a resolution by the Knights that they would hold a parade each year on that day and to designate the day as Labor Day. Shortly after, subsequent labor groups also started pushing for a special day and to agitate for state legislatures to declare a legal holiday. In March 1887, the first law to the effect was passed in Colorado, followed by New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey. In 1894 the U.S. Congress made the day a legal holiday. In the beginning the day was one of parades and meetings at which addresses were made by prominent labor leaders and political figures, and is still celebrated in this manner in some places.

'Brighton Beach Memoirs' closes Enchanted Hills summer season

| By BILL SPURGEON | “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” the autobiographical Neil Simon play set in the late 19305, has closed out an artistically-successful season at Enchanted Hills Playhouse east of Lake Wawasee. The show should leave the patrons who saw it in its oneweek run thinking nice thoughts about the playhouse and its personnel. And it should leave those who did not see it wishing that they had; it was a dandy, showing no symptoms at all of end-of-the-summer letdown. Simon has said that he enjoys writing in an historical context, and the seven actors and actresses in “Brighton Beach Memoirs" at EHP obviously enjoyed performing in the same context. The show is about the fictitious Jerome family, residents of Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach neighborhood some 50 years ago. There are seven people crowded into the Jerome house, and the producers at Enchanted Hills crowded a lot of house onto the tiny barn stage, effectively showing two bedrooms, a hall, stairs, a living room and a dining area, plus a bit of the front stoop. As teenaged Eugene Jerome. Walter Winston ONeil was perfectly delightful as he coped with an older brother, two up tight parents, two female cousins and a widowed aunt. Knickered and irreverent, he played the ultimate teenager-going-on-30, feeling the pressures that a kid feels, sensitive to the family’s many tensions, wanting mainly to grow up and write. Jason Singer was well-cast as Jack, the father bothered by financially-recessive times, plus the delicate balance maintained by wife Kate and her sister Blanche, plus the problems that having his sons’ two female teenage cousins in the home can bring about. Nancy Slusser was a credible Blanche, a 30-ish widow, attractive, with all the hangups of a teenager over dating, a doting mother to her two daughters, insecure in her relationships with her organized, achieving sister an the latter’s husband and kids. And Michele Van Note was the patent Kate, irascible and loving, not understanding her guilt, pressured and pressuring, reacting often in sort of a "Why me. Lord” posture. Gary Lamb was good as the worldly-before-his-time Stanley, Eugene’s older brother, and he and Amy Griffin and Anneliza Wolf, the female cousins, were far better than just adequate in their portrayals. A play that is penetrating and poignant, “Brighton Beach Memoirs” can produce laughs galore and an occasional tear.

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and its capability was fully realized under Jeffrey Koep’s fine-tuned direction. The costumes and set were authentic; I was a kid in the 1930 s and I felt right at home. The show is more introspective than some of the earlier Simon, and not entertaining in any sort of boisterous, Art Carney-ish way. But it is definitely entertaining, and if you missed it, you missed one of the high points of the Summer of 1987 at Enchanted Hills. 31st annual Hesston Steam and Power Show The LaPorte County Historical Steam Society will hold its 31st annual Hesston Steam and Power Show at the museum grounds on LaPorte County Road 1000 N, starting at 10 a m. CDT Friday, Sept 4, and continuing through Monday, Sept. 7. Friday will be a special day for senior citizens as admission price and train ride price will be reduced. Daily events will feature steam plowing and threshing of grain. A 92-ton locomotive steam crane lifts logs into place for sawing at the mill, and a 350-hp AllisChalmers Corliss engine, with its impressive flywheel, generates steam to power an electric light piant. An Advance Rumely threshing machine, built in 1928 in LaPorte, was acquired by the steam society and will be operating for the first time during the show. For the real steam buff, the serial number is 35240. A daily parade will highlight equipment used throughout the show. The India locomotive, built in 1889, will be running after being recently restored due to the May 1985 train shed fire. A newly acquired CSK locomotive will be running. It has never run before in its entire history since it left the factor in 1940. Hesston again offers three gauges of live steam train rides through different areas of the 155-acre museum grounds. Each train's steam whistle carries with it a nostalgic sound that reminds persons of the pioneering spirit and growth of the country in which railroads played an important part. There will be an admission charge for adults (children under 12 free) to the steam show. Plenty of free parking will be available in the 40-acre parking lot. Housing starts drop Housing construction fell for the fourth consecutive month in June, posting the longest string of declines in six years, as builders continued cutting back following a jump in mortgage rates this spring, the Commerce Department said.

_Ja . _ L • ML- ■ WAWASEE NORTH SHORE — The Wawasee lakefront of Pickwick Park has a variety of watercraft moored at sturdy piers. This becomes a bustling place of swimming, sunning, boating and fishing on sunny summer afternoons as park families and their friends gather to enjoy the summer season at Pickwick Park, which has served as a pleasure spot on the lake since the 1880 s. (Photo by Glen Long)

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PICKWICK PARK — A FAMILY PLACE — The little white dog, Muffet, has other interests as Christina Pain, 6, left, and her sister, Aliza, 3, smile for the camera. The girls’ parents are Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Pain of Marion and they are visiting their grandparents, Joan and Jerry W. Torrance Jr. at Pickwick Park. (Photo by Glen Long)

Pickwick Park —a brief look

I By GLEN LONG Staff Writer Pickwick Park is a quiet neighborhood which lies on the east end of Kale Island on the north side of Lake Wawasee. The value of the beautiful homes along the lake shore is immeasurably enhanced by their secluded location away from noisy traffic. There are more than 50 acres of woods and wetlands, which were wisely preserved by the original settlers of the park. In earlier years this was a popular place to hunt Indian arrowheads. Eli Lilly related in his book, “Early Wawasee Days,” that one of the earlier residents on the site which became known as Pickwick, Park was William Dillon, who for several years after 1874 lived like a hermit in a small cabin. After he died, his daughter, Mrs. Stewart, took in summer boarders until about 1892 or 1893. At that time, cottages began to be built at Pickwick Park. Sylvia Freese Duncan, whose parents, Karl and Marjorie Freese, move to Pickwick Park from Nappanee for the summer months, has kindly made her chronicle of Pickwick Park available for much of the information printed here about Pickwick Park. Pickwick Park Association, whose current president is Needham Hurst, includes 17 property owners. Karl Freese said that although many caretakers haye been hired at Pickwick Park over the years, the present caretaker, Jesse Hann, has been working there conscientiously for the past 37 years to keep each member’s lawn well-groomed and each home protected as if it were his own. Virginia Coppes Bloomfield, whose grandparents, Mr. and

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Mrs. Frank Coppes, were early residents of the park, has related how Pickwick Park received its name. The land was purchased from the B&O Railroad by George Lamb, who then divided it into lots. The njan who made the sale for the railroad was an Englishman who often brought his wife with him to Nappanee on business trips. He suggested the name, Pickwick Park, after the famous “Pickwick Papers,” written by Charles Dickens and published in 1836. The old cabin used by Dillon is probably the one remembered by Jerry W. Torrance, Sr., father of summer Pickwick resident, Jerry W. Torrance, Jr., as he wrote in the early 19605, “Late in the summer of 1882, when I was a few months old, my parents and three other couples and their children camped for two weeks at Pickwick Park. At that time a log cabin and a deep well pump were located near where the McKee (Lanham) cottage now stands. A family by the name of Swank lived in the cottage. Later, they moved to the west end of Wawasee and their sons became fishing guides. A sturdy pier extended about 125 feet into the lake for the use of public boats. Before the days of the sea wall, fish frys and beach parties were held on the shore. There were marshmallow roasts for the children. After the seawalls were built the spring ice breakups carried the sand out into the lake. The B&O Railroad often ran day excursion trains from Chicago to Lake Wawasee. Most of the picnickers got off at Pickwick Park and at Jones’ Landing. When those who had come to spend the day had used up all their liquid refreshment, they went across Eppert’s Bay, east of Pickwick, to Eppert’s saloon (on Wjllow Grove) where they could get anything they wanted. The B&O ran what they called

milk trains and carried passengers between Nappanee and Pickwick Park. This train really carried milk as well as passengers.” The next structure built in the park has an interesting history. It was built in 1893 and called “The Milford Clubhouse.” Its builders were a group of Milford businessmen which included Preston Miles, Ed Higbee, Charles Horton, Dr. Bechtel and George Kleder, who was the grandfather of Jerry Torrance, Jr. The clubhouse was built on land now occupied by the Freese and Weesner (Canady-Matuska) homes. The main clubhouse was where the Freese home now stands and a large bathhouse was located about where the Weesner cottage is. At that time people arrived by buggy, traveling a road through Syracuse, then across what is now Maxwelton Golf Course, through a couple of farms and in the back way through the woods to the lakefront. It took about an hour to an hour and a half to make the trip from Milford. Families of club members would stay at the clubhouse all summer and the men would drive back and forth to Milford. The clubhouse was eventually cut in two. One part was moved west and remodelled into the present Weesner cottage. The other part was remodelled into the Freese cottage. The Weesner home was purchased by Dr. Bruce Hopen of Ft. Wayne in 1985 and the Karl Freese family still owns the Freese cottage. The chronicle of Sylvia Duncan closes with this hope for the future, “In a little over 100 years, the Wawasee Lake area has gone from an Indian stomping ground to an elite community of beautiful homes. As in the past, families from all over the region make their summer migrations to enjoy the recreational advantages of our sparkling waters. Changes in American lifestyles will continue to evolve and Pickwick Park, which has experienced them all, can, with the proper guidance, maintain the same high quality of life for all of its future residents.”

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