The couple liked the Leelanau
Peninsula and Suttons Bay area, but couldn’t find the older, authentic cabin Ken
had in mind. Then a friend mentioned a place nearby, southeast
of Manistee, tucked within an upland forest of oak, maple and birch
off the unspoiled edge of an 80-acre lake. The minute Ken saw it,
he said, “I knew this was it. ”
Built in 1934, the cabin was
solid log, with three bedrooms, a sleeping loft, a functional
kitchen, two screened
porches and a basement. It had been in the seller’s family
for five decades, but updates they had made stayed true to ’30s-era
character: There were no sliding glass doors or chopped-in sky
lights, Ken said, and the rattling back screen door still had
to be hooked to stay closed.
Preserving the family cabin’s integrity had
meant much to the seller, comparable to how Ken would have approached
it. And in the spring of 1993, he swooped his arms around it.“By
Memorial Day,” Ken said, “we had closed the deal. ”
Furnishings including two old upholstered rockers,
a little hickory desk, rustic wood bed frames and a black mount
rotary phone remained. Other items like weathered duck decoys,
a hand-crafted chess set and books also stayed behind.
Ken loved it all — and
has been adding his own collections to it ever since.
“Mary likes having friends come up to prepare
meals together and the kinds of discussions we get into by the
fire when we’re all here for a weekend,” said Ken. “We
also relax here with our boys.
“But while Mary likes that social aspect
and escape, I really enjoy it and come up here the most, to fish
and to bird hunt. It ’s really my place.” It also
ignited something entirely new.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
Growing up, Ken’s family had shared a cottage with another
family on Lake Bellaire, two miles east of Torch Lake in Northern
Michigan. There he came across his first wooden boat.
“The guy who owned our cottage before us
had a Chris-Craft,” Ken said. “I remember how cool
that old woodie boat was compared to the aluminum
and fiberglass boats we were riding around in. I always wanted
to get a Chris-Craft
just like that when I got a cabin of my own.”
As an adult, his appreciation for such craftsmanship
expanded as he went to antique wooden boat shows and became acquainted
with restoration. Finally, after years of waiting and then finding
the perfect cabin, there was only one problem.
“It was on a no-motor lake,” Ken said. “So
I picked up an old wooden canoe. At the time, I figured they
were pretty much all the same.”
First what he discovered was “the substance” of
being in one: the weight, the glimmer of the varnished wood,
how it sounds. He likes going out alone, especially at dawn.
(“I head out with a thermos of coffee, a fishing pole and
a cigar to watch the sun come up. The steam is rising off the
water’s surface, the birds start to call , the deer come
out of the woods to drink, and I just become an integral part
of it all — of what this day is about to be.”)
Then Ken discovered he didn’t care if he
didn’t catch a fish. “It just takes your attention
away from everything else around you.”
When the seasons began to change,
Ken decided to store his canoe up on the cabin’s great room wall. “It
looked so good,” he noted, “I said, ‘Well,
Mary, let’s just leave it there. But now I ’ll need
one to paddle.’”
Sight unseen, Ken bought his
second canoe — a
traditional 15-foot, Old Town Guide — from a wooden canoe
aficionado. “I arrived to pick it up, then saw his collection.
I hadn’t realized how many variations and styles of canoes
there were.
“I drove away with mine, feeling happy,” he
said. “But I also found myself thinking, ‘No wonder
he’s selling it. It ’s so ordinary.’”
That, added Ken — who estimates he’s
owned 100 different canoes over the past 15 years, though never
more than 20 at a time — was the beginning of the end.
“Why do you start to collect something?” he
asked. “A lot of times, it’s just being attracted
to this thing for whatever reason — aesthetics, craftsmanship,
childhood memories. Or maybe it’s by chance: I wouldn’t
have looked for a canoe if I hadn’t bought this cabin.
Or you see something and just buy it because you like it. You
want another one.
“And then your attraction leads to finding
out as much as you can about it. You read books, go to shows,
join a club, subscribe to magazines, start surfing online. You
discover different manufacturers and notice variations; you become
drawn to a certain style or era. You start to think, ‘Wow,
if I could ever find one like that!’ “It gets exciting.”
THAT SPECIAL SOMETHING
In the early 20th century — at the height of canoeing’s
popularity — young couples loved to drift along the Charles
River near Boston. While the gallant gent paddled from the back
thwart, his girl could sit on a cushion, facing him against a backrest.
In response, nearly a dozen boat builders began fashioning a current
of these “courting” canoes.
The highest-end, most expensive models, these had
curved ends and lavish details and long decks and looked great
in vintage catalogs. Ken was smitten: He wanted one.
Convinced in the early stages
of collector’s
anxiety that he’d never be able to find an original, he
contacted a canoe builder he’d found through a magazine
published by the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association. (He has since
become its president.)
“This guy in New Hampshire had the mold and
the equipment those Charles River canoes were made from originally,” Ken
said. “I was able to specify what I wanted my canoe to
be — the wood, the color scheme. I had him make a back
rest so Mary could lean back, and a custom paddle for me.”
He named the canoe after his wife: the Mary Betz.
“It was part of my thinly veiled attempt
to get Mary on board,” Ken said, noting the project’s
cost was about $3,000 — and that he later found out original
Charles River canoes could be found more easily than he’d
thought. “But she knew exactly what I was doing, and just
supported me. Maybe for that reason most of all, this canoe will
always be a favorite.”
Hunting for a particular style
of canoe definitely has its allure, Ken said, and he’s created a menu of strategies
for seeking that special something out. “One of the earlier
canoes I bought was from a guy who was really big into Audubon,” Ken
noted. “He’d always taken his canoe out on the river
to do his birding, and I figured there were probably other people
like him who didn’t use their canoes anymore, either.
“So I’d put ads in the Whitefish Point
Bird Observatory newsletter. I’d advertise in little niche
things, like Michigan Out-Of-Doors Magazine, put out through
Michigan United Conservation Clubs.”
While Ken enjoys tackling basic
restoration jobs himself — “though my skills don’t equal my
standards” — he also finds and sells canoes through
restoration specialists. “Gil Cramer has a shop just over
the Ohio border, and he did my first dozen or so restorations.
“He was actually a retired high school science
teacher who just restored canoes because he loved to do it,” Ken
added. “That’s why I liked taking mine to him.”
He also remembers another guy
who always showed up at the antique shows, driving a van that
had the words I BUY
CANOES painted on it. “Rustic stuff was kind of trendy
then,” Ken said, “and this man would cut old canoes
in half to make bookshelves. He found a lot of canoes, but I
didn’t want to paint that on my vehicle.”
More than anywhere else, though,
Ken likes finding, selling and just enjoying his canoes through
area clubs including
the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association and Antique Classic Boat
Society’s West Michigan Wonderland Chapter. These ardent
fans of wooden boats and canoes network and gather for shows
and outings, making the most of their collections by sharing
them.
“This September, our West Michigan Wonderland
Chapter hosts the national annual meeting of the Antique Classic
Boat Society in Bay Harbor, and members throughout the country
will be coming up here to explore Northern Michigan’s Chain
of Lakes and other places,” Ken said. “We did this
10 years ago for the first time. It’s a huge deal: A lot
of volunteer work, a lot of people, a lot of fun.”
He smiled. “And a whole lot of wooden
canoes.”
To learn more about wooden boats and
canoes, visit www.acbs.org, www.wcha.org and www.bayharbor2010.org.
Lisa M. Jensen is editor of Michigan BLUE.
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