Catching Frogs, and Other Mackinac Island Summer Memories
A Look at History
BY FRANK STRAUS

I was saddened to read Tom Tellefson's obituary in a recent issue of the Town Crier. The fact that he is gone, reminded me of a conversation that I had with him in August 2001, in which he shared his memories with a new generation of summer people.

Tom's father, Commander E.M. Tellefson, is a legendary figure on Mackinac Island, and the members of his family were all unique individuals. E.M. was an early enthusiast for radio. He pursued a connection for many years with the Radio Corporation of America, early providers of Marconi-style Morse-code radio communications to ships at sea and boats on the Great Lakes. Longtime Islanders may remember the big wireless mast rising above the Island behind Fort Holmes, close to or on the site of where the water reservoir was built in 1983.

The Tellefson family lived in Florida in the winter and on Mackinac Island in the summer and would drive back and forth twice a year, with their gear packed into a Willys-Knight car and travel trailer combination E.M. had designed and built himself. Tom liked to say that his dad was the first American to invent the travel trailer, and this may well have been true; perhaps the idea was unpatentable, though, because a wide variety of travel trailers began to appear on America's highways in the late 1920s. Those interested may want to go to the Henry Ford Museum near Detroit, where some early trailers are on display.

Commander Tellefson (left) sits on his bike beside John Bloswick of Edison Sault Electric (center), and Walter Pfeiffelmann, Island plumber in the 1940s. (Photograph courtesy of Tom Pfeiffelmann)

At any rate, let us imagine the Tellefsons and their unique car-and-trailer combination, heading up the Lower Peninsula toward Mackinac Island. Now in 1928, the state built a dock just north of British Landing. A descendant of this dock, the State Dock, is still in use to this day, although today's dock is completely changed from what it was then. For several years, the state ran steam ferryboats over from the mainland to the north end of Mackinac Island, competing with the private Arnold Line that ran over the water to the Island's main harbor, as it still does. Mr. Tellefson would drive his car and his trailer onto the state ferryboat and, when he got to the Island, he and his family would drive off the boat and onto Lakeshore Road. As long as he was on the north side of the Island, E.M. had no use for the state park rule or the city ordinance restricting private motor vehicles.

The public grazing field and Hanks Pond below Fort Mackinac in the 1920s, with the Little Stone Church and young Norway Maples lining Cadotte Avenue in the distance. The field was a cedar-covered wetland when Fort Mackinac was built. The pasture is now the Jewel golf course and the pond is a landscaped water hazard with fountains. The barn at left remains. (Photograph courtesy of Tom Pfeiffelmann)

Off the Tellefsons would go, pulling the trailer and bumping along the road (the Lakeshore Road was gravel then) to their summer cottage on the north side of the Island, first Silver Birches and then Pointe aux Pins. It was time for another summer of fun on Mackinac Island in the 1930s and 40s.

One of Tom's best-remembered memories was that of catching frogs on Mission Point. It would be no use trying to look for the pond he and his friends gathered around, it is long gone, buried underneath what is now Mission Point Resort, but Tom's memories remained vivid for decades after the wetland had disappeared. This pond was apparently rich in mayflies, or worms, or whatever frogs like to eat. Imagine a pond lined along its banks with green wetland plants and flowers, and with a bottom of sparkling white marl, somewhat similar to the ponds that glint happily at the visitor on Mackinac Island's northeast edge to this day. But this vanished pond was even nicer for frogs. It would be to this Mission Point pond that Tom and his friends would go.

Bullfrog legs can be fried and eaten by those who have adventurous stomachs, and they taste like the white meat of chicken. As Tom told the story, catching them is pretty hard; the amphibians tend to jump into the water whenever any big mammal, such as a human being, gets close to them.

There is a well-known secret to going after frogs, though. One waits until a hot summer night, when the bullfrogs are croaking loudly, "Uruuug, uruug." Then you sneak up on one of them with a flashlight. He used the oldfashioned kind they used to call a "torch." Torch in hand, you get close to the frog, and then if you're good at froghunting, you get close enough to shine a light straight into their eyes. If the animal is blinded by the flashlight, it freezes and doesn't jump. Then you hold the beam of light steady, get closer to it, and gig it.

Two of the wetlands that used to shine and sparkle on Mackinac Island's southern side have disappeared. Patrick Sinclair, when he was "selling" Quebec Governor Frederick Haldimand on the idea of moving the British fort from dilapidated Michilimackinac to white-crowned Mackinac Island, drew a small map (a copy is included in Brian Dunnigan's new book out this summer, "A Picturesque Situation") that showed another swampy area, thickly overgrown with humidity-loving white cedar trees, just southwest of the site where Sinclair would build his new fort. The cedars went fast, with the larger trees no doubt hewn and peeled into logs for Fort Mackinac's first palisade. The wetland is gone, too; it has been landscaped into a tiny lake, Hanks Pond. It now serves as a water hazard for the Jewel Nine segment of the Grand Hotel golf course.

None of Tom's memories involved plugging in an electronic game, nor setting out to slaughter imaginary concatenations of gigapixels. They were stories of a childhood spent in the outdoors here on Mackinac Island.