Glen and Bill….Can I send out your letters…they are terrific.?
EPISODE 419 TWO AMUSING LETTERS RE: LAUREL AND HARDY EPISODE 418 FROM GLEN GREY AND BILL PROCIW
REMEMBER THE EPISODE ABOUOT THE LITTLE SKEOCH MOTOR CAR COMPANY? THIS CAR LOOKS SIMILAR.
alan skeoch
august 30, 2021
I hesitated to write the episode about Laurel snd Hardy. “Who would care?”
“Many readers may never have heard of them.” “Hardly big issues of our times.”
“Boring…interior decorating””Slapstick humour is dated”
Well I was dead wrong. Yesterday I received two fascinating letters from Glen Grey, stalwart member
of our High Park Curling Team and Bill Prociw who was a fellow teacher for decades at Parkdale Collegiate.
The stories they tell are far better than what I wrote:
BILL PROCIW
Thanks Marjorie, for giving the BOYS a home. I’m still a fan of their earlier movies. The last one, Atoll K or Utopia is a stinker.
My earliest memory of going to the movies was when I was pre-kindergarten age. My mother took me to an evening movie at the Pix theatre on
Ossington and Dundas, a short walk from our house on Crawford Street. The movie was Swiss Miss, a Laurel and Hardy flick. What I remember was
one of the late scenes in which the two had to transport a piano across a rope bridge over a deep canyon in the Alps. There was a confrontation
with a gorilla on the other side of the piano and of course the rope bridge was bound to break over the canyon.
It scared the bejesus out of me but I can’t remember if anything else came out of me. I’m sure I thought about this scene many times before falling
asleep in my bed- but not recently, though.
Thanks for the memory,
Bill
GLEN GREY
Alan, Several years ago we were in the Lake District of England and stumbled upon something that was so amazing, so unexpected and gave me great joy, no matter how the other three felt.I found a one pound note. No, no, no, we came upon a museum solely dedicated to no other than Laurel and Hardy. What in heavens name was it doing there? There was every conceivable memorabilia of the duo including a theatre that would play for us, since no one else was there, any of their movies. The middle aged man was keeping the museum going that his dad had started and had filled it with scads of Laurel and Hardy stuff. Posters, puppets, chewing gum wrappers, glasses, anything and everything that had their name in it. We sat and watched one movie short before moving on to our booked b&b. There was precious little to buy which was a shame. I was hoping for s big replica poster but no all I got was an 8 1/2X11 black and white picture that sums them up to a tee. I have it hanging in my living room where it is slightly hidden by a shelving unit but I can always see it from where I normally sit . They had dug a tunnel to escape from prison and in their usual manner had misjudged and wound up in the wardens office. The expressions on their faces, priceless ….. you couldn’t help but laugh at how stupid they were. It didn’t matter that they came up through floor boards and a carpet that might have clued in normal people.
One movie short that tickled my fancy as a kid that I always remember when their names come up, was one where they had adjoining stores. One got mad at the other for something silly and marched into the others store while the other watched and ruined something. The other then marched back into the others store and ruined even more again while being watched. This went on for some till both stores were a total wreak without so much as either raising a hand in protest. Tit for tat was retribution enough no matter how much damage was sustained by either one. A quizzical look by the one being put upon without raising a finger I found so amusing as a kid. Thanks for the memories ( Laurel and Hardy not Bob Hope).gg
EPISODE 419 A VISIT WITH LAUREL AND HARDY at the Skeoch farm house August 29,2021
alan skeoch
august 29 , 2021
NOTE: BY pure good fortune and being at the right place at
the right time, Marjorie received Laurel and Hardy the other day.
They now have a new home. Who are Laurel and Hardy?
see postscript.
REMEMBER LAUREL AND HARDY? THEY NOW LIVE AT OUR FARM.
“Olie, what are we doing way up here?”
“Looking for s safe place; Stan…like you said.”
‘What did I say””
“You said this is s madhouse and we had to find a safe place.”
“You think this is safe, Stan…what if we fall?”
“Don’t think about that…just look around…this is our best place…out of harm’s way.”
“What is there to harm us?”
“Oliver….just take a look behind your back.”
“Do you mean the big bird.”
“That bird has a stiletto beak designed to kill little things like us.”
“And look beside us.”
“That’s a porcupine crawling over…quills like needles.”
“Stan the porcupine can climb….”
“Yes, but he is too fat to get by the ceiling lights.
“Ollie…see that tiger down there?
“Makes me shake”
“He would finish us off in one gulp.”
“Couldn’t we jump down on that horse and get the hell out of here?”
“Don’t be so stupid Oliver…that is a merry go round horse…it just runs in circles.”
“The fox is no help…it looks as sacred as we do.”
“Oliver…there is a penguin down there…big one.”
“No help, Stan.”
“Why?”
“Penguins can only waddle…never get away with him…or is it her.”
“That big rooster Stan…he could help.”
“Roosters have only one thing on their minds, Ollie?
“What’s that , Stan?”
“Their hens…as many as they can get.”
“Stan, our only hope is Marjorie…she may want to dust us.”
“And give us our freedom?”
“True… but she will just put us back ump here…where we are safe.”
“Marjorie…must we stay up on that besm?”
“Afraid so…safest place in the house for you boys.”
“But we are famous”
“Fame fades withe the summer sun….very few people
even remember how funny you boys were in the 1920’s
and 1930’s.”
“Wrong, Marjorie…everyone remembers us.”
“Bet $5 I am right and you are wrong.”
“Well, Ollie, back up on the beam …”
“Reckon you are right.”
WHO WERE LAUREL AND HARDY?
Laurel and Hardy were a comedy duo act during the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema, consisting of Englishman Stan Laurel (1890–1965) and American Oliver Hardy (1892–1957). From the late 1920s to the mid-1940s, they were internationally famous for their slapstick comedy, with Laurel playing the clumsy, childlike friend to Hardy’s pompous bully.[1][2] Their signature theme song, known as “The Cuckoo Song”, “Ku-Ku”, or “The Dance of the Cuckoos” (by Hollywood composer T. Marvin Hatley) was heard over their films’ opening credits, and became as emblematic of them as their bowler hats.
Prior to emerging as a team, both had well-established film careers. Laurel had acted in over 50 films, and worked as a writer and director, while Hardy was in more than 250 productions. Both had also appeared in The Lucky Dog (1921), but were not teamed at the time. They first appeared together in a short film in 1926, when they signed separate contracts with the Hal Roach film studio.[3] They officially became a team in 1927 when they appeared in the silent short Putting Pants on Philip. They remained with Roach until 1940, and then appeared in eight B movie comedies for 20th Century Foxand Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1941 to 1945.[4] After finishing their film commitments at the end of 1944, they concentrated on performing stage shows, and embarked on a music hall tour of England, Ireland and Scotland.[4] They made their last film in 1950, a French-Italian co-production called Atoll K.
They appeared as a team in 107 films, starring in 32 short silent films, 40 short sound films, and 23 full-length feature films. They also made 12 guest or cameo appearances, including in the Galaxy of Stars promotional film of 1936.[5] On December 1, 1954, they made their sole American television appearance, when they were surprised and interviewed by Ralph Edwards on his live NBC-TV program This Is Your Life. Since the 1930s, their works have been released in numerous theatrical reissues, television revivals, 8-mm and 16-mm home movies, feature-film compilations, and home videos. In 2005, they were voted the seventh-greatest comedy act of all time by a UK poll of professional comedians.[6] The official Laurel and Hardy appreciation society is The Sons of the Desert, after a fictitious fraternal society in the film of the same name.
EPISODE 419 TED FREEMAN AND THE SHOTGUN CREAM CAN IN 1955
alan skeoch
august 2021
CREM CANS ARE THE TALL THIN CANS…’SHOTGUN’ CANS…
I never really knew just how tough it was to operate the Freeman farm until I was
much older…like let’s say 82. I did know that Uncle Frank snd Aunt Lucinda worked
very hard seven days a week. We were city boys who came to the Freeman farms
as regular as clockwork and we were always…always…always…welcomed with
open arms and jolly laughter from Aunt Lucinda.
Last week…august 2021…I asked my cousin Ted Freeman, their son…their pride and joy. I asked Ted this question. question.
“Ted, do you remember how much your mom and dad got paid selling
cream in those shotgun cream cans?”
“When?”
“Let’s say 1955.”
“First, Alan, you used the plural. You said cream cans. Mom and dad only managed
to sell one cream can per week and often that can was not full.”
“What do you remember ?”
TED FREEMAN
“I remember that the cream money payment for last week’s shipment came in a brown envelope that was delivered by ‘Norm Robertson’ who worked for the Acton Creamery. He delivered an empty can to us and picked up the can filled during the previous 7 days. It was always cash; – 7 to $9.00 depending on the amount that was shipped. In 1955 a full can went for about $10.00. The ‘cream money’ was used to purchase groceries. Meat, eggs and vegetables were grown on the farm. Some preserved for winter use.”
ALAN SKEOCH
Take a moment to think about that. Seven to nine dollars a week in 1955.
Grocery money…getting by money. What groceries? Coffee? Doubtful.
Chocolates? Very doubtful. Soft drinks like ginger sale? A luxury.
Freshie…definiitely. What the hell is Freshie? It was a sugary powder that
could be mixed with water to make a couple of quarts of a nice drink when
stuking sheaves of grain or pitching hay. Cheap.
My cousin Ted and I shared a lot of small adventures when we were kids.
Hunting, fishing, pitching hay, swimming in leech infested ponds…usual things.
But we never shared the fact that
much of his family income came from one single shotgun cream can sold
to Norm Robertson at the Acton Creamery. Often the can was not even full.
YOUR JOB
Just for fun keep a list of your discretionary spending this week. What do
you buy? What could you do without if you depended on $10 per week.
(No doubt there was other farm income but not much…picking cucumbers
for Matthews Wells Pickle Factory in Guelph for Rose Brand pickles)
I guess you need to know what $10 earned in 1955 is worth today.
Hard to believe but inflation over the past 75 years has made that
ten dollars worth $100. So there you have it…can you live on $100
week for all your expenses? Keep a record. I bet you spend big time.
alan
In the early 1950’s the Toronto Daily Star was sold for 3 cents a copy…18 cents a week
for home delivery. The paperboys…Eric and I got half a cent a paper…3 cents
a week per customer. With that I was able to buy a Humber Sports racing
bike with Sturmey Archer 3 speed gears. Must ask Eric what he did with
his profits from our paper route. I never thought for a moment about
the costs of food on our table or the cost of bus fare from Toronto to
the farm near Acton on Sundays Mom did all that. I do not know how she managed
but she did. Everyone did. I do not remember Ted Freeman ever getting
new bicycle.
NOTE
$1 in 1955 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $10.04 today, an increase of $9.04 over 66 years.
The dollar had an average inflation rate of 3.56% per year between 1955 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 904.46%.
EPISODE 416 THE GINKGO TREE…LONE SURVIVOR FROM THE CARBONIFEROUS ERA
alan skeoch
august 24, 2021
THE ANCIENT GINKGO TREE
We have a Ginkgo tree growing beside our house. So what? So we have a living fossil dating back
deep into the geologic history of our earth. Ginkgo trees seem to have thrived in the Carboniferous era
2999 to 350 million years ago. Those 51 million years were wet and warm most of the time so great
tropical jungles covered the land mass. Huge swamps we’re full of life. And then the world changed
and that life mass became extinct except for the Gingko tree By luck and good care by Chinese Buddhist
monks the Gingko was saved from extinction. The ancient trees of this kind are
Only to be found in the huge layers of coal that
dot the earth today. None survived in the wild. Were it not for the Buddhist monks
none would have survived. A remarkable story.
Today the Ginkgo is the national tree of China. Ginkgo’s are part of most North American cities.
They are tough. They are also very unusual. They reproduce in a manner similar to humans.
Sperm from male Ginkgo tree float on the air .. riding on pollen …in their search for female
Ginkgo trees to fertilize. Sex.
This manner of reproduction is proof of their ancient origin. Ginkgo trees were alive on earth
before the age of flowers. Flowering plants were so successful that they pushed earlier
plant forms towards extinction….except for the Ginkgo.
Our Gingko tree is a male ginkgo. Most of the ginkgo trees found on city streets (like along
Lakeshore Road in Mimico, West Toronto) are male ginkgo trees. Few people want female ginkgo trees
anywhere near their property. Why? Because they stink. I mean really stink. One source
says they over their seeds with a fleshy material that smells like human vomitl Others are
less polite and say the ginkgo berries smell like dog shit. Female trees are kept in special
nuseries as a result. Why so stinky? Another survival skill. Certain creatures life rotten
or rotting food. They set the berries and then excrete the nuts. Spread the Ginkgo trees
that way.
Sometimes a male tree will fool everyone and switch to become a female. Or develop
a female branch on the male tree. This is thought to be a survival skill.
If you can stand the smell (vomit or dog shit) and clean the fleshy material off the nut
then Ginkgo berries are edible. Some people, mostly Chinese I think, value the nuts.
Ginkgo trees are valued by medical experts for a variety of ailments.
The trees can live s long time. One Ginkgo in central China is reputed to be 1,000 years old.
Our ginkgo is about 10 years old. It has a long life ahead of it unless it decides to change sex.
These Ginkgo berries smell so bad that they have to be cleaned up as soon as
they fall…smell like vomit or dog dung, take your pick. Why? Smell designed to
attract creatures who find smell attractive. This evolved in time more ancient than
flowering trees.
OPEN PIT COAL MINE IN RUSSIA — FINDS FOSSILS OF GINKGO TREE
The fossils… 300 million year old remains of a once tropical jungle were noticed
on the top layer of this open pit coal deposit below.. The last jungle of the Carboniferous Era, at least
that is what the fossils seem to suggest. These discoveries are so recent that they
have not been fully documented.
THE GINKGO WAS THERE AMONG THE GIANT FERNS,
How could slower growing trees like the Ginkgo compete with rapid growing
giant ferns (60 feet high and higher)? Apparently the Ginkgo trees “bolted”
…in other words the trunk grew fast and straight …. no branches until it
got higher than the ferns. Hence the ginkgo trees had their leafy
tops higher than the ferns. Illustrations can be seen in theoretical drawings
of these ancient tropical jungles.
Our gingko tree in the side yard has grown in that manner…i.e. bolted…but
this effect may have been much more recent. Modern ginkgo are less speedy
Another similar discovery has been made recently in central Mongolia. And Still another was noticed on the ceiling of an exhausted coal mine in Russia. Open pit mine in Tevshiin Govi in central Mongolia where the mummified fossil plants were found. Credit: Fabiany Herrera & Patrick Herendeen
“A discovery of well-preserved fossil plants by paleontologists from the United States, China, Japan,
Russia and Mongolia has allowed researchers to identify a distant relative of the living plant Ginkgo biloba.”
MEDICINAL VALUE OF THE GINKGO
I leave that for you to research. Lots of info available.
o be clear, what Howard Tanner was now contemplating was nothing less than the intentional introduction of a non-native Pacific species to the largest freshwater system in the world. And when he worked up the nerve to start speaking publicly about his idea, people were quick to raise concerns. First and foremost, no fisheries biologist had ever attempted to manage water even close to this size. In Tanner’s case, his master’s degree program had put him in charge of a 27-acre lake; his doctoral program, six lakes—the largest of which was six acres. Lake Michigan alone was 23 million acres. “It was like somebody who had gotten good at raising geraniums in flower pots was now being given a cattle ranch,” Tanner says.
There were also logistical questions. Some argued salmon would die in freshwater or simply head into the St. Lawrence River and out to the open ocean. Others pointed to the many failed attempts to introduce salmon to the Great Lakes dating back to the late 1800s. The plan also faced one giant, undeniable obstacle: coho salmon, the fish that Tanner had identified as the species of choice, simply couldn’t be had. At the time, every single coho egg harvested from the hatcheries of Oregon and Washington were spoken for—part of a grand attempt to re-establish salmon in the heavily dammed Columbia River.
Then came the phone call.
Howard Tanner was sitting in his living room, having his usual pre-dinner cocktail. On the line was one of his old Western colleagues. He was calling to let Tanner know there was an anticipated surplus of coho eggs on the West Coast.
“It was just like the chair fell from under me,” Tanner remembers. “That night, I didn’t sleep much. I just sat there most of the night, thinking, What if … What if?”
The following morning, he was in his office watching the clock tick. With a three-hour difference between Michigan and the coast, he had to wait until midday to confirm the rumors that coho were available. The hearsay turned out to be true. Still, to get some of the eggs, he and his contacts in Oregon would have to navigate a gauntlet of bureaucracy. On top of that, they were working with an immovable biological deadline: If the surplus coho eggs were going to be viable for hatching and release back in Michigan, the whole plan would have to get every bureaucratic stamp in no more than six weeks. But, in a scenario Tanner can characterize only with words like “miracle,” the approvals came. Within a few weeks, one million coho salmon eggs were on a plane, bound for the Great Lakes. Tanner’s spectacular experiment was now underway.
Everything happened so fast that Tanner didn’t yet have money for things like fish food. And he didn’t know exactly where he was going to raise the fish once they hatched. Michigan’s hatchery system, which had been largely devoted to restoring lake trout, was 40 years out of date and in no shape to undertake a program of this size. He went to the legislature and asked for a million dollars—half of which he finally won by promising the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee that 150,000 of the salmon (and the promised economic boom) would land in the senator’s district. Tanner and his team then embarked on a tour of the state’s hatchery system, looking for just the right place to raise the fish. Eventually, the hatchery on the modest Platte River in Benzie County was chosen as the spot where the salmon would start their lives—and, theoretically, return to spawn—if everything went according to plan.
Tanner remembers the moment when the fish were finally ready to be released as one of the great moments of his career. It was April 2, 1966, and the now year-and-a-half-old coho were ready to enter the Platte River near Honor, Michigan. He had a special wooden speaker’s platform built for the event. Public officials offered words touting the benefits of the salmon program. The press took photos. Then, Arnell Engstrom, the Traverse City house representative whose vote had been critical in funding the salmon program, picked up a golden bucket and dumped the first batch into the Lake Michigan watershed. Tanner got his turn later in the afternoon on Bear Creek, a tributary of the Manistee, at a site just below Tippy Dam. Swimming with the current, the four-inch “smolts” would find their way to the open water in less than two days.
If everything went according to plan, the young coho would spend a year and a half in the open water before returning to the Platte River in the fall of 1967. And early indications suggested the fish would indeed find their way home. In the fall of 1966, the “Jack” salmon—a small class of precocious fish that spawn a year ahead of schedule—started showing up in Platte Bay, many in a form that astonished Tanner’s Western colleagues and foreshadowed a potentially colossal spawning run the following year. “On the coast, the Jack will maybe weigh a pound and a half or two pounds,” Tanner says. “Some of our fish were coming back at seven pounds. The guys from Oregon just shook their heads and said, ‘You’d better get ready. You’d better get ready.’ ”
Even today, what happened next still stands as the biggest “big fish” story in Great Lakes history. In late August 1967, tens of thousands of returning salmon suddenly announced their presence—this time without a formal speech. coho rushed into Platte Bay, and the fishermen followed—largely learning of the spectacle by word of mouth. Tanner has aerial photos from that fall showing tiny Platte Bay jammed with 3,000-plus boats, many of them canoes and little aluminum dinghies not suitable for open water. The boats formed a near-solid mass; some fishermen joked you could almost walk from boat to boat and never get wet. And in between, the fish were so thick, they were porpoising out of the water.
Tiny coastal towns like Honor, Empire and Frankfort suddenly found themselves overrun with tens of thousands of fishermen and wannabe fishermen. The tiny boat launches grew tails of cars and trailers that ran miles long. One man, Tanner remembers, even started a taxi service to ferry people back and forth. Another guy was selling hot dogs. Lures sold out, so people started renting lures. In September, Sports Illustrated even showed up to cover the event they dubbed a “boom on Lake Michigan.”
People who had never caught any fish of any size like these were catching five, and their tiny little boats were just full of salmon. Nobody had to embellish the stories. It was madness.
The impacts of the salmon were huge and immediate. The value of riparian property in the surrounding area doubled almost instantly. Hotels and businesses sprouted up in Michigan’s new salmon country. Tiny Honor, Michigan, population 300, even christened itself the state’s new “Coho Capital.” The joyful hysteria was only briefly interrupted by tragedy on September 23, when the crush of mostly inexperienced anglers ignored small-craft warnings and found themselves overrun by a violent Lake Michigan storm. One hundred fifty boats were swamped; seven people drowned. But it hardly blunted the public’s appetite for salmon. Now, every coastal town’s bait shop and city hall were lobbying for the fish to be planted in the local stream. And the state delivered, stocking millions more coho across the rest of the Great Lakes in the following years, and furiously expanding the antiquated hatchery system to give the people what they wanted.
Doubling down on its great salmon experiment, the state added an even bigger trophy to the mix of Great Lakes fish the following year. The Chinook salmon was a Pacific species two to three times bigger than the coho, was cheaper to produce, and had a diet that consisted almost exclusively of the hated alewife. Within a few years of the new super-salmon hitting the open water, reeling in a 30-pounder became common. Fishermen loved it. Sunbathers loved the fact that alewives weren’t rotting on their beaches. And the fisheries department kept the big fish coming, flooding the Great Lakes with millions of coho and Chinook every year—the state’s economy, in turn, flooding with the windfalls of a world-class fishery that seemed to have been created overnight.
“It almost gave us the impression that the system was unlimited,” says Randy Claramunt, a fisheries research biologist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. “The more salmon we put in, the more salmon we got out. Literally, we went from zero stocking to almost eight million a year in the 1980s, and we still had record-high harvest levels.”
By the mid-1980s, there was no arguing that Tanner’s original vision had indeed evolved into something worthy of the word “spectacular.” Just two decades after his coho fingerlings were released into the Platte River, the salmon had brought under control one of the area’s worst invaders, alewives. The sport-fishing industry, previously non-existent, was now valued in the billions of dollars. And people came from all over the country to fish the Great Lakes.
But the record catches and the new trickle-down salmon economy in which everyone seemed a winner weren’t telling the whole story. Though no one knew it at the time, the Lake Michigan fishery, the crown jewel of the lakes, was beginning to strain. The system did indeed have limits. And without warning, the once-mighty Chinook, the adopted king of Michigan waters, all but vanished almost as quickly as it appeared.
In a plot twist worthy of the theater, it was the demise of the fish everybody hated that brought down the fish everybody loved. The alewife—the invasive saltwater species that was best known for dying and rotting en masse on Michigan beaches—had given the Chinook salmon what seemed like an endless food supply. In fact, when the salmon program was first conceived, it was never done so as an alewife control program; the small invaders were so prolific that the idea that their populations could be significantly impacted by a predator seemed like wishful thinking.
In less than two decades, however, the Chinook began to chip away at the alewife’s dominance. In fact, by the early 1980s, alewife biomass in the Great Lakes stood at less than 20 percent of historic highs—largely because of salmon predation. With less to eat, the salmon being reeled in from the lakes started to get smaller and thinner. Then, in the mid-1980s, the already-stressed Chinook was overcome by an outbreak of a mysterious kidney disease, one that would later be linked to the high-density hatcheries unknowingly pushing out diseased fish to keep up with the public’s demand for salmon. Though the less-fished and more-adaptable coho toughed it out, the mighty Chinook soon disappeared from Lake Michigan.
More than a decade later, the story repeated itself in Lake Huron in an even more devastating fashion. Better rates of natural reproduction and heavy stocking led to a scenario in which the Chinook ate themselves out of an ecosystem. To make matters worse, new invasive species like the zebra and quagga mussels—both of which filtered plankton out of the lake—undermined the alewives’ own food supply. Faced with pressure from both the bottom and top of the food chain, the alewife population collapsed in the early 2000s, the Chinook population following close behind. Stories of big fish harvested from Lake Huron were quickly replaced by those of gas stations, hotels and restaurants going belly-up. There were even stories about charter boat fishermen moving west to try to start over on the Lake Michigan side, where salmon populations had started to rebound.
The salmon bust revealed new truths that had gradually become latent fundamentals of the salmon program. For one, if the state was going to maintain salmon as a top predator in the Great Lakes, it needed a more nuanced policy than raising as many fish as it could and dumping them into the water. It was also obvious now that the salmon economy had grown too big to fail: The experiment that Howard Tanner had started almost on a hunch had now evolved into a $7 billion economy and a vital tool for restoring balance to the largest freshwater system in the world. More importantly, though, the salmon program had inadvertently ushered in an era whereby the Great Lakes would now be a highly managed entity, and from which there was no turning back.
released as one of the great moments of his career. It was April 2, 1966, and the now year-and-a-half-old coho were ready to enter the Platte River near Honor, Michigan. He had a special wooden speaker’s platform built for the event. Public officials offered words touting the benefits of the salmon program. The press took photos. Then, Arnell Engstrom, the Traverse City house representative whose vote had been critical in funding the salmon program, picked up a golden bucket and dumped the first batch into the Lake Michigan watershed. Tanner got his turn later in the afternoon on Bear Creek, a tributary of the Manistee, at a site just below Tippy Dam. Swimming with the current, the four-inch “smolts” would find their way to the open water in less than two days.
