Fall 2003 Newsletter

 

Chairman Letter

Greetings,

Fall has started late in the Midwest.   The summer green stayed with us a bit longer then usual; however the bite of the first frost is here as this letter is written.  I made a quick trip to the home land of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to see color, but there was only a view tree branches of reds and gold.  But traveling to my old home I got to see the sand hill cranes gathered in a hay field, then strings of Canada Geese working their way to the farm fields for the night.  As I traveled back to Ohio on US 41 I made the turn past Baraga State Park, I had to stop the car as mallards, coots, Canada geese, mallards a swan and then two bald eagles caught my eye.  I had never seen eagles so close to where I grew up.   What a sight there they were fishing in low trees. 

As we neared the Seney Wildlife Refuge, I asked Jan if we could take a drive along the seven and one half mile route into the marsh.   Our first mile into the wildlife area was uneventful, but then came the trumper swans.  For the next mile it was more trumper’s.  Was we rounded a bend; there was a nice bunch of Gadwalls.  The next bend on the dike we saw horned grebes and more mallards.  Then the bend a bunch of woodies.  The best looking fall drake was swimming in full dress.  We made the marsh in one and half hours and were very satisfied with the detour on the trip home.  Plan to stop at Seney if you are in the UP, as it is the one the best stop a waterfowl enthusiast can see.

Fall was the not same this year, many of us missed the North American Decoy Show this year.  It is hard to forget something that you have attended for years upon years.  This show that started in the Pointe Moulie was always thing to do in the fall.  Yes, I went to the Point and yes I helped at the show.  I only wish there more were more carvers to show their support of this old traditional decoy show and waterfowl weekend. I got to see Jim Foote there judging birds on Sunday.  That was a treat to see an old master doing his thing.  I hope this show does not go away as it is here many of us saw our first carving events in the mid west. 

We have included a new rules brochure.   This year we will host the Ohio Junior Duck Stamp Competition.  Our plans are to do the judge down to the best 20 pictures by the week end and then finish judging on Sunday the very best with those young artists and parents in attendance. 

The Bird in Nest contest will feature any bird this year.  This contest will be sponsored by Betty Odine.  Tom Whitlock will again sponsor the Gunning Shore Bird Contest. We appreciate and thank them for their support.  Our flat art contest rules have changed from purchase award to cash award.   We will however use the painting for our pin and shirts designs.  So let’s get those boards and paints out do a diver for 2005. 

We are pleased that Keith Mueller will be presenting this year’s seminar.  I had chance to see Keith do a great job a few years back at Westlake and you do not want to miss attending his seminars.    

Again we have the pleasure of having Ted Harmon putting on his great vintage bird auction.  Decoy Magazine will again sponsor the Vintage Decoy Contest.  Wildfowl Carving will sponsor the Decorative Peoples Choice Award and feature the show in the 2004 Competition issue.  We privileged and honored to part of these two great magazines.

Return your room reservation card so Scott can make sure you are back in your right room.   Get your birds ready to return to the learning place Westlake, Ohio.  March is just around the corner.

Happy Collecting and Carving,

Bob Lund, Chairman Executive Board

 

 

Up coming Shows and Meeting Dates

Core Sound Decoy Festival – December 7, 2003.

Northeast Michigan Sportsman’s Show – December 5, 6 and 7, 2003

East Carolina Wildlife Arts Festival – January 30 – February 1, 2004

Pacific Southwest Wildlife Arts Festival   (The California Open) – February 14 and 15, 2004.

ODCCA Board Meetings--starting at 10AM

The Bakery, Norwalk, OH – December 14, 2004

Holiday Inn, Westlake, OH – February 22, 2004

 

 

CEDAR POINT IN THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS

BY

 W. A. KATCHMAN

 

There is little mention of Cedar Point, on Maumee Bay, in the written page of history.  It has rested quietly by the margin of the Lake on one side and the Bay on the other, as the centuries rung their changes about it.  War and strife have bubbled and seethed near by, -- greed and unrest have been rampant but serenely and tranquilly it has held itself aloof, in its trailing robes of marshland, in its wild and primitive beauty.

The seasons’ miracles unfold there as they did in the dim past.  Surrounded by a world of restless change, --it is change-less and prayer of its lovers is that it may stay so.

Bountifully during the years it has provided for its children, especially its dearly beloved, --the children of the air.  Each the banquet has been spread anew of boundless profusion and faithfully and unerringly, twice each year , through the pathless air have they returned to its great warm sheltering bosom, --even from the end of the world, --and that is love.

To its human lovers, it has been beautiful, loyal and kind and what more may a lover ask?

As it rested quietly during the years, within sight of its shores the warp and woof of destiny was woven, -- back and forth.  The River and Lake were a mighty highway.  Brave true hearts and sordid vicious ones went by in restless procession.  Those fearless “knight errants” of trade, the “courours de bois”, traders, priest, explorers, solders of fortune, --and mis-fortune made up the pageant of the years. 

A few, a very few, have left some record and it is, perhaps pardonable, to snatch from a faded yellow page a name or two from the dim light of old days to glare of new.  Probably the very first and some unknown voyageur, bearing a strange and wonderful elixir, distilled by the gods, to the simple children of the forest, for he has generally a lap ahead of the Gospel.  The gods who distilled this magic liquor are, they say, dead now, --but they said that of the great God Pan.  The gospel, however, has the record for, at least among the first, was Dollier DeCasson, a Sulpitian priest, whose stately canoe went by in 1669 on his way to the site of Detroit.   Whether he stopped at the beckoning cedars (for the cedars were veritable) for lunch or only say the dim coast line, we may not know.

In 1679, two brace gentlemen adventurers passed or stopped here, --let us know they stopped, --on a most momentous occasion.  The first and only voyage of the first vessel on Lake Erie.  The vessel was the Griffin of 40 tons and the gentlemen were: Rene’ Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Sale and Henry de Tonty, --brave hearts both, without fear and without reproach.   When they arrived at Detroit, the bulwarks were hung with game, ducks, turkeys and geese.  She went to Green bay, Wis. And was lost on her return trip on Lake Huron.  With her perished some dreams of the great LaSalle that might have come true. 

As the great game went on, of which a continent was the stake, more and still more were the pilgrims of this road of destiny.   In 1680 the Count de Frontenac, Governor General of Canada, sent an expedition that went by Cedar Point and up the Maumee River where they built Fort Miami, where Fort Wayne, Indiana, now stands.

There came priest, with a burning and fiery zeal, who bore the cross literally through fire, --who met mutilation, torture and death with quiet smile of a perfect faith.  However misdirected and futile their efforts, all others in a similar direction seem puny. 

They left behind them a vast mass of written material, describing minutely each journey.  It is called the “Jesuit Relation” and makes sixty printed volumes.  Parkman drew largely on the original for his wonderful history and does full justice to their splendid heroism and self-effacement.  

That they were at Cedar Point goes without saying.   Across the Bay are remnants of French pear trees and the originals were old tress when the first settlers came in 1770.  Engraved crucifixes have been found in Indian burial grounds.  One of them, found near where the Yacht Club house stands, bore the initials R. C. Montreal, --who was R. C.?

The most picturesque figure of these old days was the voyageur and they were many and varied.  Gay and debonair, joyous and carefree, vicious and desperate.  They sailed under a roving commission, leaving such trifles as the law and morality behind at Montreal.  In the veins of many of them danced the best blood of France, from which country they were oftentimes banished for cause.  In their dress of buckskin with a gaily colored kerchief about the brow and the inevitable red sash, the with teeth gleaming in the black beards; they were simply irresistible to one sex.  Add to this that carried with them veritable magic in the guise of the amber colored liquid distilled from the heart of the vineyards of France, which brought unbounded joy, wild gaiety, imbecility, blood lust, forgetfulness or madness as the human instrument varied.  There dark and sinister deeds hid in the wilderness, --the silences were long and profound, but there was song, and gaiety, red blood and boundless life and the moccasined foot of the voyageur trod unknowingly the path of empire.   Let us be thankful that Cedar Point is now, except as Nature moulded it, as they found it.

That it opened its arms to another true lover, the Indian, there is ample testimony.  There were good hunting and good camping on the Point after the long weary work at the paddle.  The marsh was a nourishing mother to him and for untold years his canoes grated on the sands of Cedar Point and his camp fires gleamed from its hospitable shores over the Lake or Bay.  At Elm Point nearby “he took his burden from a pillow and laid down to pleasant dreams” –there is a large burial mound there.  May his ashes rest in peace.  He had little rest or peace after the white man came and he gave the white man very little.

He has a problem, --and it was solved, as this same white man solved many, --by simply rubbing it off the slate. 

On of the most memorable and imposing of the many expeditions of the past to pass or stop at Cedar Point was that of Celeron de Bienville.   There were about 250 men, French regulars, Canadian militia, Indians, a priest and 23 canoes.  It was in October, --for days they had traveled on the noble River, lined in the regal magnificence of the Autumn colors.  It was jeweled with islands and rich with the nodding plumes of the wild rice.  How welcome must have been the sheltering crescent of the Point to them, weary and toil worn.  Vast flocks of ducks arose as they turned for the shore, as if to welcome them.  Soon, camp fires gleamed among the trees and soon began the throb of the Indian drums and the wild, weird melody of the Indian songs.  Then the clear tenor of a French voyageur, singing the refrain to an old canoe song:

                                             “Fritaine, friton, friton poelon

                                              Ha! Ha! Ha! Frite a’l’huile

                                              Frite au beurre a’l’ognon”

Celeron de Bievville, gentlemen of France, --with his full and sonorous title, --Chevalier de l’Order Royal at Militaire de St. Louis, was a distinguished guest at Cedar point 171 years ago and it is pleasant to thin of him on that October evening when the gentle night closed in and the hunters moon shimmered on the vast fields of waving rice, enjoying a broiled teal with native mushrooms, washed down with his own genial Burgundy, --“Even as you and I”—a votre sante., Chevalier and bon voyage, into the night that awaits us all.

In the spring of 1757 a party of Caughnewaga and Ottawa Indians in a a large chestnut canoe landed at Cedar Point, after a long and stormy trip from Sandusky Bay.  These details could not be supplied were it not that among them was a young white man named James Smith, who as captured just before  Braddock’s defeat in 1775 and adopted by the Indians.  He left a narrative of his captivity and put Cedar Point on the page of History for the first time.  As he has it, “We put in at the mouth of the Miami of Lake Erie at Cedar Point.”  They left here in a few days for Detroit with their furs and remained in the Wyandot and Ottawa villages, opposite Fort Detroit, until November when “a number of families prepared for their winter hunt and agreed to cross the Lake together.  We encamped at the mouth of the river (Detroit), the first night, and a council was held; whether we should cross by the three islands (East Sister, Middle Sister, and West Sister) or coast around the lake.   These islands lie in a line across the Lake and are just in sight of each other.   We concluded to coast it around the Lake and in two days we came to the mouth of Miami of the Lake.  Here we held a council and concluded we would take a driving hunt in concert and in partnership.  The River in this place is about a mile broad and it and the Lake form a kind of neck, which terminates in a point.  All the hunters (which were fifty-three) went up the River and we scattered ourselves from the River to the Lake.   When first we began to move were not in sight of the each other but as we all raised the yell, we could move regularly by the noise.  At the length we came in sight of each other and appeared to be marching in good order.  Before we came to the River and along the Lake to prevent the deer from making their escape by water.  As we advanced near the Point the guns began to crack slowly and after some time the firing was like a little engagement. 

The squaws and boys were busy tomahawking the deer in the water and we shooting them on land.  We killed in about thirty deer, although a great many made their escape by water.

We had not grating feasting and rejoicing as we had plenty of hominy, venison and wild fowl.  The geese at this time appeared to be preparing to move southward.

Here our company separated.  The chief part of them went up the Miami River that empties into Lake Erie at Cedar Point whilst we proceeded on our journey.”  And so James Smith fades into the past. 

On the tenth of February, 1763, French dominion ceased forever at Cedar Point and new faces were on the highway, the startling red of the British uniform was not uncommon.

During the early summer of 1794 many Indian war parties stopped at the Point, gaily decked and confident in full war paint.  Colonel McKee, Superintendent of Indians, under his majesty also went by in state, --but in the late summer they came trailing back weary and war worn, --they had met Tony Wayne at Fallen Timbers.

The evening of January 23rd, 1813, there arrived at Cedar Point a group of fear-stricken fugitives.  The men with tense set faces, pulling sleds;--the women, some with babies,--red-eyed with weeping, pinched with cold, almost dropping with fatigue but still glancing back to the North West at the dull red blur in the sky, with awful dread, the children whimpering with the cold,--the group was Joseph Mominee, and the families Beaugrand, escaping from the massacre of the Raisin, over the ice, and back there the friends of hell were still at work.  The sheltering arms opened,--there was a lee from the bitter wind, fire, food, sanctuary, and warmed back to life, they too go into the night to safety.

When the blue-winged teal had come back in September of 1813, to be exact of the tenth of that delectable month—there was a strange and beautiful sight from the point.  The sun shone on the sails of a fleet of war vessels and it flew the pound banner of St. George.  It never came back.   They were looking for Perry and they found him,--and they were his.

A faint echo came to the Point of the sound of guns on the lazy September noon, sometimes distinct enough to start the ducks out of pond holes and as the last echo died away, Cedar Point came under the Stars and Stripes, surely and permanently.  A few days dafter ghastly reminders were tossed up on the beach,--white drawn faces, which the rushes mercifully hid and the sands gave kindly sepulcher; for them the feverish journey was over and the highway knew them no more.

A picturesque charter on the Point in early days was Ol’ Joe Chevalier.  His cabin stood very near the site of the Club House.   He had numerous and presumably comely daughters, his wife was a squaw with alcoholic inclinations.   He bought fur and sold whiskey, was a good hunter and hence must have possessed amiable qualities.  The light from his cabin as it shone over the Bay was lure to recreant and a bait to the unwary, and he who succumbed to its charms must have his alibi ready for domestic use.

There was mirth, merriment and song, beauty and chivalry, and joy certainly was unrefined.  They were not all French, the growing town was near and Joe’s was a drawing card.  The rafters must have rung to the old songs of “Rosin the Beau” and “Buffalo Gals” as well as “En Rouland ma Boule!”

Pierre Navarre and his brothers, Antoine La Cource, and many others were willing guests and old Antonine would tell you with tender regret:   “Dat was de good h’ol time.”

As the years roll on and the blur in the western sky grows larger, the highway becomes more and more crowed and noisy with restless pant of Commerce.  The great ships come and go, but, so far, they left Cedar Point to its beautiful isolation.

Musing alone before the old fireplace in the Club House, whose lusty youth has passed, one may not feel alone, kindly phantoms are in the quiet room, ghosts of the old lovers of the place, many and varied.  One and all troop back as children to mother’s knee.  It is their Golden Milestone and all roads end there.  They are bound together by a mutual comradeship of love for their beautiful mistress.  In life they may have roamed and toiled and wept but there is “respite and nepenthe”.  These old lovers knew her in all her manifold phases of loveliness, in her first robe of tender green, the red-wing came and the heart stirring the clarion call of the geese and swan drifted down from the sky and ducks came in joyous myriads.  They knew her in the teeming life of summer,--in the “glory of lilies” and the dreamy beds of lotus, when the wild rice tossed its fairy plumes to the breezes as far as the eye could see,--and the soft summer night stole on, and fire flies danced in dazzling millions.

They knew in the rich fruition of the fall, gorgeous in color, merging gradually into the warm browns, wrapped in gossamer mists, when winged lovers came again, a second advent, the fury of storms, the quiet beauty of her reconciliation.  Perhaps they loved her best at this time.

They knew her when the hush of winter came, when in her white drapery she rested, waiting for the coming Spring.  True lovers all, they loved her in every mood, whether blithe and jocund in the sunlight, or tearful and pouting in the rain, always brimming with eternal youth. 

Some these kindly presences around the fire we may call by name:  Miles Carrington, Peter Bordan, Oliver H. Payne, Robert Cummings, Joseph Secore,--Dear old uncle Joe.  How memory kindles and glows with “the tender grace of a day that is dead, of the talk that flowed here, stirring tales of the woods, of the trail, of the campfire, until the beckoning finger came and was gently laid upon their lips. 

When the message comes to those of her living lovers who gather there now, and they step softly into the shadow, may they not return and join this goodly company and do homage to Our Dear Lady?

 

 

MAUMEE BAY CARVERS SHOW WINNERS

The decoy contests started in Lake Erie with the rig contest and singles were judged by Cliff Kasle, Mark Costilow and Richard Kmetz.   The Best of Show winner was Gary Joe Bryan Nashport, OH, 2nd Best of  Show John Nemazi, Bloomfield Hills, MI  and Third Best of Show Randy Huss, Oregon, OH.   The Lake Erie Singles contest was won Mark Brooks, Columbus, OH, 2nd Best of  Show and third Best was Jason Clune, Port Clinton, OH.

The Shorebird contest was judged by Richard Kmetz, Gary Joe Bryan and Laurie Cleaver   The best of show winners was Carolyn Wodrich, Elmore, OH , 2nd Best of Show Brad Falkinburg, Rocky River, OH and the Third Best of Show Dennis Roberts, Mt Perry, OH.

The Hunting Decoy Novice Contest was judged by Richard Kmetz, Jim Wilson and Jason Clune.  The Best of Show and 2nd Best of Show winner was Nial Wheeler, Waterford, OH and the third Best of Show winner was Mel Kwiatkowski, Maumee, OH.

The Hunting Decoy Open contest was judged by Richard Kmetz, Jason Clune and Jim Frankowski. The Best of Show winner was Jim Manning, Oregon, OH,  2nd Best of Show and 3rd Best of Show as Gary Joe Bryan, Nashport, OH.