The Great Waters
I grew up on the Great Lakes. The lakes were always a backdrop for work, play and history. During his teenage years, my father worked as a steward on passenger ships between Detroit and Buffalo. My hometown of Huron, Ohio is the southern most port on the Great Lakes. In the 1970s, ocean going freighters would come from the Soviet Union or Taiwan to load grain from the town's landmark Pillsbury grain silos. In next door Sandusky, the coal docks picked up rail cars and tipped trainloads of Appalachian coal into ship holds. In the summer, we would boat over to the islands of western lake Erie and take our vacation the northern shore of Lake Michigan. In junior high, I was fascinated by the fact that Oliver Hazard Perry had won a major naval battle a few miles off shore during the War of 1812. I wrote an English paper in middle school on ship wrecks on Lake Erie. In November of that year was the sinking of the Edmund F...