Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 36

8-n Tuesday, .1 imp 27, '72 DrTROIT FREE PRESS 55 fL 4frcc )rc The Back Page -vAi mmmmmwrnm. mm J-W'W. iffifc. in- tf'Tf Tl" Speaking of Weather Through Chattering Teeth Belle Isle Gives City Kids Taste of Great Outdoors MICHIGAN, MY MICHIGAN ON A MORNING which made a mockery of Summer rain slanting against the windshield, mercury reading in the low 50s, skies scudded by dark and nasty clouds taking a day's vacation and heading North. What was it the fellow said: "You don't have to be crazy, but it Something like that.

Along the way, to discussing Michigan's weather with the Dear Wife, who was inclined to be protective. We were suffering a temporary aberration, she said, because of Hurricane Agnes, which was side-slapping us, like a mother reaching out and cuffing an errant child. Summer would return as soon as Agnes gathered her skirts and hurried out to sea. WELL, MAYBE. But that would still leave some things unexplained, I insisted.

Like what? she wanted to know. Geography, I said. Pellston, for example. Have you ever thought about. Pellston? Not too often, she admitted.

Why should Because with a population of only 4fi9 it is still one of the most famous or infamous towns in the United States, I replied. How many times during i He held his paddle a few inches off the water. When the canoe began to slide away from shore, he turned and stared back gravely to his buddies gathered on the bank. But when the canoe wheeled toward (he center of the Blue Heron Lagoon on the north tip of Belle Isle, 13-year-old Nathaniel Lyttle bit his lip and dug down hard one time with the paddle. He rocked back a little on his seat when the canoe surged ahead through sun-spattered water under the force of his stroke and a slow, half-secret smile floated to his lips.

Nathaniel was one of more than 100 Detroit boys who pitched tents and paddled canoes in the first day of the eight-week Scouting Skills Day Camp at Belle Isle Monday. The Detroit Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America is sponsoring the program to acquaint city hoys with the wonders of leaky canvas and ants in the-peanut-butter and all the other joys of Scouting. The program is designed both for Scouts and non-Scouts. Both kinds have to sign up ahead of time if they want to attend the day camp. Interested parents should call the Boy Scouts at 897-1965.

Free Press Photos by Thomas Copi the year will Pellston be the coldest place in the entire world, except perhaps for the Arctic Circle? Goodness-to-Betsy, Pellston helps keep Sonny Eliot in business. I have heard him mention Pellston, she said, but I thought he was just telling another one of i funnies. He was serious, then? Of course he was serious, I replied. When Pellston hits the f' I weather news it is for real. Some strange and puzzling things happen in Pellston when you least expect them, which brings us back to geography.

Well, she sighed, I guess you areMetermined to talk about geography, so go ahead AND THAT WAS WHY the following pithy lecture on geography was delivered as the windshield wipers went zippity-zam, zippity-zam, zippity-zam Michigan, 1 told her, was sort of squashed into the Midwest by the politicians, who wanted to line things up neat and tidy at the time, but actually this is a northern state, subject to the perversities of extreme northern weather. As historian Bruce Catton recently pointed out, the only barriers between us and the North Pole in the dead of winter are a few radar domes. Further, if you will check average temperatures for the nation you will find that Detroit rates below Boise, IdaM I find that hard to believe, she interrupted, fiddling with the radio I have just looked it up in the World Almanac. In January, Boise has a maximum average high of .16, a maximum average low of 22. In Detroit, Hie figures are 33 and 21.

In July, Boise is warmer on the average than Detroit, but also a bit cooler. Back to the geography lesson This was once beaver pelt and bearskin Indian country, I continued. Cold-weather Indians Sauks, Chippewas and the like willing to put up with the terrible winters because of the hunting and fishing which followed. The while man ran them off, except for the reservations, but their language dominates our official stale names. WE ARE NOW in Saginaw County, I reminded her, and at least, two Indian words were combined to produce that place name, A little further on, if this wind doesn't blow us into Lake Huron, we will pass through portions of Arenac and Iosco Pure Indian, again.

Shucks, about half of the counties in the state, took their names from tribal words or expressions. Cold-weather Indians, the lot of 'em, which ought to remind us that we are northern the year around, and it could snow somewhere within our boundaries on the Fourth of July Oh, come on, she said, stop exaggerating. We have seen the last of ice and snow until November Bui the next morning, playing in the Lakewood Shores Country Club pro-am with Jimmy Applegate, Scot.ty Catto and Jerry West, it seemed to me that rain drops had congealed wher they fell on the first green, and no one disputed this vision, probably because they were too darned cold. names faces Zoo Turns Lion Loose on Vandals mm nun. After a series of acts of vandalism, the Des Moines Children's Zoo has decided to put a new watchdog at its gates.

The watchdog will be a lioness. "Friday night's theft of a valuable hawk is the last straw," said zoo director Robert Elgin. "Just the past few months we have had animals turned loose, stolen, sprayed with chemicals and just about everything else. Earlier this spring someone deliberately cut off the air supply for our cougar, and we had one heck of a time rounding up our deer after they were turned loose." Won't the lioness inflict a lot of unnecessary mayhem on intruders? Not unless she's provoked, according to Elgin. "She'll just sit on the vandal until help arrives," he said.

Tennis, QUESTION I am a housewife and have free time every week which is wasted. Will ynu tell me how I can utilize this time to serve God? S.L. ANSWER Thpre is no end to the things you might do. There are sick people who need encouragement and strength. There is a great shortage of Sunday school teachers.

The hospitals are in great need of nurses aides and there are elderly people who are lonely and would welcome the warmth of a Christian friend. The Bible says: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might." inyone? Something's Fishy service should be used for politics. Nixon's rbother left by a back exit and never appeared on the stage. Marital Kecalls Politics makes and breaks strange bedfellows, as Martha Mitchell's public threat to leave her husband reminded the Capitol. If the Mitchell marriage flops and Martha insists it will if former Attorney General John Mitchell doesn't get out of politics soon it'll only be the latest in a long line of recent marital disasters.

In the past year, Sen. Robert Dole, Sen. John V. Tunney, D-Cal Rep. Paul N.

McClnskey, and Sen. William Proxmire, have parted from their wives. So has Carter Burden, a Democratic and socially prominent New York councilman. Sen. Eugene McCarthy, like Tunney, a Roman Catholic, left his wife in August, 1969.

Does the rash of break-ups mean the pace and pressures of politics are increasing? Nope, says marriage counselor Dr. Wardell Pomeroy. "It's just that politicians now can get divorced without the penalties that used to be attached," he explained. "The political penalties, that is." Where's Bobby? World chess champion Boris Spassky of Russia said he hoped his American challenger, Bobby Fischer, would show up in Reykjavik, Iceland, in time for their first match Sunday even though Fischer failed to show up as scheduled Monday. "I don't know why he didn't arrive," Spassky said.

"Only commander-in-chief Fischer knows," he added with a broad smile. Meanwhile, Fischer raised a new problem through a friend, Fred Cramer, who told newsmen the young perfectionist won't play under the hot, bright TV lights. Said Cramer: "Fischer won't play under anything hut Flourescent lighting it is very important to him." Five million goldfish floated downstream from Mercerburg, in the flood generated by tropical storm Agnes, and neither fin nor tail of them hai been seen since, Owner Richard F. Rice said the Conococheaque Creek overflowed into his wholesale fishery and swept out his entire stock of fishy friends. Rice will a long time drowning his sorrows.

Estimated value of the fish: $100,000, Sen. F.dward Kennpdy ar. rived in New York with Mrs Ethel Kennedy I i -along side (she's still recov-" ering from a broken leg suffered while skiing) to an- nounce a pro-celebrity tennis tournament Aug. 25 for the benefit of the Robert F. Ken-nedy Foundation, in memory of Mrs.

Kennedy's slain husband. The senator, in making the big announcement, called It a "tourris tenement." Amid the laughter that followed, he quipped: "If this is the way my day is going to go, I'd better hurry back to the capital and rescue Martha Mitchell." Apology to Nixon New York Bishop D. Ward Nichols of the African Methodist Episcopal Council has wired an apology to Presisdcnt Nixon for the way the president's brother was treated recently at the church's conference in Dallas. "The incident was unfortunate, untimely and atrocious," Nichols said. President Nixon had been invited to speak at the conference, but sent his brother Edward Nixon as his personal representative.

A group of 4(1 protesters disrupted Edward's appearance, saying they did not believe the worship UPI "YOUR ARMS ARE GETTING SHORTER." i.