Ionia-Eaton-Barry County MI Archives Biographies.....NYE, Alton L. 
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Author: THE SEBEWA RECOLLECTOR; Bulletin of THE SEBEWA CENTER ASSOCIATION, December  1970.  Volume 6, Number 3; with permission of editor Grayden D. Slowins

(These reminiscenses were recorded on tape by Robert Reed in 1968 and first 
published in THE BONANZA BUGLE, bulletin of the Lake Odessa Area Historical 
Society in their issue of July 1, 1970.  Mr. Nye was feted at an open house at 
the Lake Odessa Methodist Church by the Historical Society on July 1, 1970.)

REMINISCENSES OF ALTON L. NYE - When our people came in here to the Lake Odessa 
area I was just one year old.  My mother taught at the Brown School in Woodland 
Township and was teaching there when she got acquainted with my dad.  There 
were three boys in his family who used to cradle grain.  They lived right east 
of Niles at a place called Morrow Castle.  I was never down there except once.  
They cradled and kept cradling to earn a little money and they finally worked 
clear up here to my Granddad Brown's.  He owned the farm at the corner of 
Broadway and Brown Roads.  It was a nice eighty acres and all cleared.  My 
parents got married and bought a 40 acre lot right beside of a little creek 
there.  A year or two ago their old lilac bush was still growing there.

My grandfather was a Scotchman.  He came into this county as a surveyor.  My 
mother had a brother named John Brown.  He had a black mustache and was dark 
complexioned.  He was a wonderful guy.  I'd go down there and have more fun 
than I could have with any kid and he was a man then fifty or sixty years old.  
You should have seen this country when my folks moved over here in Odessa when 
I was a year old.  I was the youngest one of the family.  They used to take me 
out and set me down beside a brush heap while they cleared that land.  I 
remember that field right across from the Nye schoolhouse.  It was nearly 
cleared but they had quite a lot of logging to do and stumps to pull.  I 
remember sitting in that Nye school when I first started, and watching the 
Indians go by.  They used to come down to the west end of Jordan Lake.  That 
was a long time before there was any town here and we used to go to Woodland to 
do our little trading.  If we wanted anything special we had to go clear to 
Ionia or Saranac.

Old Doc Crane ran a store on the corner at Bonanza and Horace Miner (he had a 
crooked nose) had a hotel there then beside Crane's store.  George Brisband had 
a blacksmith shop there.  The Moseys had a cider mill there and then there was 
a stave mill.  When the railroad came through, all of Bonanza moved right up to 
it.  It was quite a job to move the hotel.

There was a log house right on the corner at the Odessa Grange Hall (corner of 
Joran Lake Road and Bonanza Road) and the family there was named Russell.  Ours 
was a log house and Aldriches had a log house also.  Across the road there was 
Wade and he had a little frame house.

I can remember when they used to send me to town with a little pail of eggs and 
I'd go down this road where the iceman used to live---that was the old frame 
house where this town was built and I think his name was Chapman.  They used to 
have a nice frame house and a nice looking barn and they had it all painted 
up.  That was impressive to stop and look at that as I went by.  They had a 
white board fence around it.  I'd waddle along up to Bonanza with the three 
dozen eggs I could cary in that pail and do a little trading and then I'd go 
back around the other way on the other road.  I was always tired when I got 
home and lots of times I'd lie down in the corner of the fence and take a nap.  
Sometimes I would stop at my grandmother's place.  She would cut off a big 
slice of homemade bread and put cream and sugar on it.  I was always hungry 
when I got there.  If only I just had a picture of those log houses and rail 
fences.  The roads in those days---they thought people were crazy for putting 
in a road four rods wide.  The rail fences were so close there was barely room 
for teams to pass.

I remember when they built this railroad.  That was something to write home 
about.  When they surveyed the railroad, they were supposed to put it up on the 
Johnson place and go north there somewhere near Bonanza.  They couldn't get the 
right of way through there.  They fought them and they had quite a time.  The 
first thing you knew they came right down between the two lakes where everybody 
had figured they couldn't build a railroad.  That was all swamp down there.  My 
two step-brothers got jobs as waterboys on the railroad construction.  Floyd 
was about my age and Will was two years older.  Will hired out to a gang down 
by Sunfield.  When they were coming through they would have different gangs of 
forty or fifty men and then have a waterboy for each group.  Floyd also got a 
job as a waterboy and that left me home alone.

When old Wager of Ionia found out they had changed their survey, he came over 
and bought the Chapman farm.  When I came down through there, they had taken 
the fence down and had graded Main Street and it looked just like a railroad 
grade.  There used to be a creek there where Spencer's store is (vacant store 
next to Bert's barber shop).  There was a gate up here in the woods about where 
the Congregational Church is.  That was the end of Main Street.  From there it 
was all woods.

When I finished eighth grade out there at the Nye School and came down here, I 
was just scared to death of that old Freeman, our teacher.  He combed his hair 
back and he walked straight and when he went down the street us fellows would 
really get off the sidewalk.  When I came into the school, he gave me an 
examination and put me into what they called 8 B class.  In this school in Lake 
Odessa they had only eleven grades so when I finished the school here I had not 
had chemistry and biology---two of the main courses I needed for pharmacy.  
They did not have much Latin up here either.  We did not have to take much 
Latin for pharmacy though we did a little.  Now they have dropped Latin in the 
drug business.

We had a band here we thought was pretty good.  We had Mr. Wilcox for a teacher 
and he was pretty good.  We had two practices a week and we were going right to 
town with that band stuff.  We used to run around and play for these political 
meetings and we had a lot of fun.  There were four Gilsons in the band---John, 
Will, Claude and Leon.  John played the drum and Will played the tuba.  There 
was Frank Fink that played the baritone and Leon Gilson played the cornet and 
so did Chalmer.  Pretty soon, in come this Scheidt family from down in 
Pennsylvania---the whole bunch of them and they were darned good musicians.  
They were better than we were and we were pretty jealous of them.  We had been 
playing for these meetings around and having a wonderful time.  Then when we'd 
get up to play on the corner where Elfstrom's store is we'd form on that corner 
and then the Scheidt fellows would come out down there where the Pickens morgue 
is now and they would start up their band and they would play a piece and we'd 
play a piece.  They had us beat.  I liked their music.

I took commercial training in Ferris Institute in 1898.  I then came home here 
and in going back and forth to school and going by Old Doc Russ's Drug Store, I 
just liked the smell of that Drug Store.  There was a smell there that kind of 
appealed to me.  I finally got interested and I wanted to study pharmacy.  My 
people fought that.  They said that everybody in pharmacy got to drinking.  
They used to have the barrel in the back end of the store in those days.  I 
finally finished my course up there at Big Rapids in Commercial.  My brother 
had gone up north on the Pine River then and he had a sawmill and he was ten 
years older than I.

He said "What are you going to do when you get out of school?"  I didn't know.  
Ferris College would furnish you a job when you got out of school if you wanted 
it.  My brother said "Why don't you come up and stay a year with me in the 
mill?  I believe you would like the lumber business."  I went up there and I 
had a lot of fun.  But I still had that pharmacy in my mind.

So I came home here in the fall of the year and I was going down the street and 
met Herb Hart.  He said "What are you going to do now?  Why don't you come down 
and work with me?"  In those times we had to have four years in a drug store to 
take the state examination for pharmacy along with two years in college and 
twelve grades in school.  I went to work for Herb Hart and I got my four years 
in the drug store.  In the meantime I was telling old George Weed across the 
street about it.  He said "Why don't you take up undertaking?  I'll come over 
and get you when we have a funeral."  He'd sneak across and get me and I had it 
fixed up with Herb Hart to take the time off.  Old George liked to smoke 
cigars.  He'd sit not far away and he'd have me taking up the artery and veins 
and Gosh!  I got so I could embalm a body just as good as he could and he let 
me take care of a funeral out here in Sebewa.  I was doing pretty good.

About this time there was a place opened up in Caledonia.  I went over there 
and started up in an undertaking business.  There was an old man over there who 
was eighty some years old---he even made his own caskets.  I had three funerals 
in four weeks.  That was pretty good for a beginner.  This old man came in and 
he wanted to get me out of that town.  I had not really moved in there yet but 
I had twelve caskets there and I had a store with just a little furniture to 
start out with.  The old man came in there after I had my three funerals and he 
was kind of anxious to get rid of me.  He offered me good money to get out of 
there.  That was kind of a surprise.  I had to have a hearse, harness, and a 
team that was going to cost me about $2500.  The hardware man there was a good 
friend of mine and he said "Let me furnish you the money and we'll go fifty 
fifty."  So I called up Dad.

He said "Nawup, never take a partner.  If you need help, I'll help you but 
don't take a partner".  But I could sell out and have enough money to put 
myself through pharmacy.  I already had my four years experience in the drug 
store.  I sold out to the old man and took my money and came home here, packed 
my grip and went to Big Rapids and started the pharmacy course.  I got through 
school in 1902 and worked for Doc Russ for a little while and started my store 
in 1904.  I got $5 a week when I started working in Hart's drug store.

When McCartneys came to this town, they came here from Ohio, there was Bill and 
Hale and they started a grocery store in there just north of Braden's Drug 
Store and they had quite a store.  I remember coming to town one day and they 
had a bunch of bananas out there and I had never seen any before.  I thought 
that would be swell.  I saved enough money out of the grocery money to buy one 
of those bananas.  I had to get what the old folks had on their list.  We were 
not supposed to do anything other than the errands we were sent for.  We were 
not to go to the barber shops and sit like the other boys and men used to---we 
were to do our trading and get home.  So I went out here to a corner of the 
fence and I ate that banana and I was disappointed.  It did not amount to much.

We used to have a sports ring above that McCartney store.  The Indians used to 
come here and sell medicine up there.  We had a ring upstairs in the back of 
the stage.  After that we had a rope ring above Andy Rheam's saloon.  We had 
boxing there.  And Boy!  We used to knock one another good over there.  We had 
fourteen ounce gloves.

Norm Richards and I had it hot and heavy.  Finally he hit me on the arm and 
I've often wondered why some of those boxers don't try that trick.  He hit me 
on the muscle of my arm and I'll be darned if I could get that arm up any more 
and then he put it all over me.

We had a hound and we'd go down here to Dan Shepard's where he used to run the 
pavillion down here.  He had two hounds.  We'd get our hound and his two hounds 
and go rabbit hunting.  Doc McLaughlin and preacher Steadman used to like to 
hunt rabbits.  We had a club here then and we used to choose up sides and go 
out here and hunt to get rabbits and anything we could get and come in and we'd 
have a game supper.  We had a live town in those days.  We had a gun club and 
we had .22 rifles with scope sights on and we used to shoot for turkey and 
duck.  We had a lot of fun with that.  Riblett and Becker used to go down back 
of the stores in the alley for target practice and sometimes we shot clay 
pigeons on the school athletic field.

After they got the railroad they used to run excursions in here.  The Bosworth 
pavilion was one of the main attractions.  We used to have a lot of fun down 
there at the pavilion.  They had roller skating and dancing.  They had a 
steamboat on the lake.  Sometimes it would conk out or run aground and they 
would have to get all the little boats out to get it going again.  I think we 
paid 25 cents to go around the lake with that thing.  They used to have a band 
on it.  We had a dance club here.  One time somebody squawked on us and claimed 
to the sheriff we were getting drunk and having too much fun.  When Monte 
Hildinger saw those policemen there, he put on a show by staggering and falling 
down on the floor.  He was a clown and put on a good act.

They used to have a bowery where the A & P Store is on that double lot.  They 
put the frame up there and they would go out in the spring and cut brush and 
make a brush roof.  Then on Wednesday nights and Saturday nights they would 
have an orchestra come in on a stage.  They had some nice dances up there.  
That is where I learned to dance.  From the bowery we went down to the 
McCartney Opera House.  We used to have some darned good dances there, too.

My brother, Frank, was ten years older than I.  He came to this town after he 
had that bad luck with his cutter business burning up in Freeport.  He came 
over here and started that cutter gear business and he was doing well with it.  
It was a sled runner gear to put on buggy boxes in place of the buggy wheels 
you know.  He would run around through the state and sell them and he would 
come back and make more.  He had my basement to start with and he outgrew that 
and he went up around Pliny Russell's (Machine Products Building area) and got 
a double front store and started making them up there.  A big agricultural 
concern in Lansing came here and they said they would take all he could make 
and he would not need to have the expense of running around to sell.  He kept 
sending them to Lansing and he was doing swell with it.  All at once they 
commences to get kind of hard up and be back on their payments a carload or two 
but he ketp on trusting them because he thought they were all OK.  Finally he 
got in for about $2500 and they went broke and he did too.  That was about 1904.



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