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2ND GRADE TOUR: Fifty Pupils Enjoy "All Over Bay City" Tour

May 18, 2014       Leave a Comment
By: Dave Rogers

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Ray Van Driessche talks sugar beets, equipment and tanks at Michigan Sugar Co. on South Euclid.
 
Tommy Anderson works a card trick for 5th grade teacher Michelle Scott after the tour. Mrs. Scott taught his daughter, Chelsea at Woodside 20 years ago.

We never thought it could be done.

In one morning driving by about 50 sites in Bay City with a bus load of second graders from Linsday School, that is.

Four and a half hours and a seriously compromised sacroiliac later, we finished. School buses, we concluded, were OK for kids but reminded me of the ride of an Army deuce and a half ton truck.

Having attended that school 64 years ago when it opened it was a labor of love for me. Linsday was a middle school then, a twin to Macgregor opened the same year, 1950.

The bus trip with kids brought back the memories of school days and also of the amazing history of Bay City.

It was called the "All Around Bay City" Tour, put together by a teacher who suffered a broken leg and couldn't go on the tour. So I was asked by persuasive school secretary Molly Connors to enlist and I volunteered, just what the Army guys always said not to do.

Magician Tommy Anderson, who is great at entertaining kids, especially 7 and 8 year olds like those on the bus, came along to help.

And making two stops for special speakers, one at the Michigan Sugar Company and the other at the Bay City Public Safety Department. Another stop was at the Waterfall Park fountain between St. Laurent Brothers and the Dockside Restaurant for a rainy riverside visit and Wenonah Park for a bathroom break.

We talked a little about how Defoe Shipbuilding started right there in the park in 1905 and told how Chippewa Indians camped in the park for the Eastern Michigan Water Carnival, 1929-1931. That amazed them. Me too!

The fact that the tower at City Hall and the 9th floor of the County Building are the tallest sites in the county, both about 150 feet high, drew some ooohs and gasps.


The bus trip with kids brought back the memories of school days and also of the amazing history of Bay City.
Photo by Dave Rogers
© MyBayCity.com


What do you tell young kids to keep them interested in sites like T.L. Handy Middle School, Sage Library, City Hall, the Bay County Historical Museum, the Bay County Building, Pere Marquette Depot, Central High, etc., etc.?

Historical tidbits like, Handy was donated by the Handy brothers (T.L., C.W., F.S. and G.W.) who owned a farm on that site and were in the lumber and railroad businesses.

The four Handy brothers were officers of the Port Huron Southern Railway in 1900. They had a box factory in Salzburg where a ghost (no kidding!) really appeared in 1925. Cars would line up at night to see the ghost, according to a news story at the time.

Most of the kids had played on the Imagination Station, but the rain stopped even pleas to stop and run on the playground equipment that day. Same with the Bay City State Park (aka Recreation Area), where kids that age used to swim in the lagoon way back when it was weed free.

My wife Dolores and I both recall dropping to the bottom of the lagoon and then pushing up to rise to the surface like a porpoise. Ah, those were the days. We both remember old Bill Richter, the park superintendent. Dolores had her picture in the newspaper with him when she came here as a toddler from Detroit. I interviewed him for The Bay City Times when he retired.

Even young kids are interested in history and such facts that the Sage Library once was home to students from the old Western High School across the street, where the Allen Medical Building is now located.

Western athletic teams were, of course, the Cowboys, and Eastern High squads had the moniker Indians. Eastern was located on the site of the old YMCA, now a charter school. It was built in 1882 and became a junior high in 1922 when Central High opened.

I have copies of the yearbooks from the old Eastern and the old Western; one was the Occident and the other the Orient. Those were the days when nothing was alphabetized, you just had to look at random for your picture in the book, and you gave your "prophecy" and made the "class will." Here's a blast from the past, Class of '21: "We, Bernice Foster and Helen Cummings, leave to Eastern High School the tears we have shed at the thought of parting from thee. Farewell! Forget us not."

City Hall is 150 feet high and when it was under construction in 1896 a workman fell from the roof and was killed. He was 11-year-old Robbie Waldo; several weeks later the City Commission passed a law banning child labor. The Linsday kids found that hard to believe, that a kid would be at work on a roof.

We didn't want to give the kids too much of Bay City's violent past, but as the teachers said: "they've all seen that kind of stuff on TV."

Officer Todd Umphrey came aboard, took the microphone and told the kids the jail is full, 240 unfortunate souls, and it was not a place they wanted to be. So obey the law, kids.

There were no planes flying at historic James Clements Airport, but the kids could see the 1930 vintage hangar that always fascinates visitors. And the iconic administration building graced by a full length painting of James Renville Clements, Harvard student who went to France to fly in World War I and died in the 1918 flu epidemic.

Mid-tour the teacher broke out a graham cracker snack that kept little mouths busy for a while until they could get back to school for lunch in the classroom, an outdoor picnic being scrapped because of the weather.

I have to admit that spending a full morning with 50 kids is interesting, and I learned some things on the "all around Bay City Tour."

Drive around and see what you remember about old Bay City.

###

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Dave Rogers

Dave Rogers is a former editorial writer for the Bay City Times and a widely read,
respected journalist/writer in and around Bay City.
(Contact Dave Via Email at carraroe@aol.com)

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