There are so many stories to tell. They say a picture is worth a thousand word.

The two that I have chosen for today are good examples of this. At one point I had decide to talk about Ice Fishing. In the first picture mom is getting ready to enter the ice fishing shanty that was used on Lake LeAnn during the winter to provide shelter for mom and dads favorite hobby - fishing. Dad would load this little house onto a converted boat trailer and take it up to the lake for the winter. At some point in time he would drive the car towing the trailer out onto the ice unload it and then retrieve it in the same manner in late winter. The trick to this being "timing". You had to make sure that the ice was think enough to withstand the weight of the car and brave enough to pull this daring feat off. Below Pat tells about a friend of hers that compliments this hobby.

To let you know what a small world it is, Megan’s high school physics teacher, who is now dating one of our friends, grew up in Jackson Mi and fondly remembers spending lots of time on Lake LeAnn. He is probably Bill’s age as he said that he left Michigan in 1967 to go to school in Florida. But he talks about how he and a buddy used to scuba dive in Lake LeAnn to get folks “stuff’ out of their fishing shanties that sunk. They used to water ski a lot on the lake also.

One question that I have for those of you out there in family land is "why or for what purpose did the address Coppus & Blake, 123 W. North St., Fostoria, Ohio 44830 appear on the front of the ice shanty?" To add to the mystery even more, when I looked this address up on the internet, it was the address of the "Fostoria Historical Museum".

In the second picture we find Tim admiring the windmill that dad had built. As you can see it is a little Amish man cutting wood as the blades of the windmill turned. In the early summer of 1966 mom would have been 50 and a half, Tim would have been 10 and a halfand Pat in the background, would have been almost 13.

But the story that I wanted to tell today was how dad was the craftsman and artisan that I am not sure any of us really appreciated. Whether creating a windmill, building an ice shanty or organizing the construction of a cottage dad had the ability to visualize a project and bring it to fruition.

At home he had a few rudimentary woodworking tools:

- a table saw that was for the most part homemade. He must have bought the inner workings and build the table around them.

- a lathe that like the table saw - homemade. I vaguely remember things that he must have made, but the one thing that I fondly remember is the bowling set. He used the lathe to make bowling pins. How many people do you know that can say "I learned to bowl using the bowling pins that my dad made himself for his children?"

- there were other tools that seems ancient and for the most part unusable in the fine art of craftsmanship, but somehow they come to life in his hands to enrich the hobby that he must have loved..

Dad also used the shop at the Metamora school to create things that all of us kids kind of accepted as things around the house, but I fear never really appreciated as the works of art that they were.

He never boasted or drew attention to himself as being the person who created these things, nor tried to get any of use to follow in his footsteps, he merely did his own thing and enjoyed doing it.