And now, a brief historical interlude....

So, I've been reading "Salt of th Earth", the history of Midland, Michigan, my home town. A few fascinating things I learned:

This whole area was originally founded on lumbering. Just a few miles up the road from my dad's place is the ghost town of Averill, which in logging days was a "rollway" (where the logs were rolled down to the river for transport), the largest in the world according to the book. Logging took place in the winter. They spread water on the logging roads to form ice, so that teams of horses could pull sled loads of logs to the river... In some of the pictures these loads must be 10 feet high or more! All winter they rolled logs down the rollway. By spring in some years the pile of logs on the river was up even with the top of the rollway, 30 feet above. Then when the ice went out and the water rose, some brave ( or foolhardy) souls had to go down there and release a few key logs to let the avalanche loose. There are pictures of the entire river covered with logs for as far as you can see. At one time there was a logjam that extended up the Tittabawassee from Saginaw to Midland, some 30 miles.

The pictures of the countryside after it had all been logged are pretty heartbreaking. And Midland was about running on fumes when Herbert H. Dow appeared in 1890. His first big ideas were to extract bromine, chlorine, and magnesim from the brine underlying much of the county, and at one time there were many brine wells around here. About a half mile from my dads house, one of them supplied the post-date "parking" spot for many happy teenagers of my generation.

Say what you will about Dow Chemical Company...I'm sure Styrofoam, Saran wrap, napalm, and agent orange all seemed like a good idea at the time. At any rate, Midland is a pretty nice town, and would not be here without it. Dow's legacy includes Dow Gardens, the Grace Dow memorial library, the Dow Diamond (baseball), and major financial contributions to nearly every other aspect of the community. There are also close to 200 buildings designed by Alden Dow (Grace and Herbert's son), many inspired by the style of Frank Lloyd Wright, with whom he studied. These include the library, the Midland Center for the Arts, the Midland Community Center, the hospital, at least 4 churches, many local homes, and his own home and studio which still offers tours.

 

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