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Happy Opening Day of Hunting Season 2020! To celebrate, here’s a fun Old Mission history story sent along by Matt Courtade, my high school friend who has deep ties to the Old Mission Peninsula.
For starters, he’s related to the Warren family, and his daughter Erin is married to Nate McManus. Erin and Nate run Oliver & Company Property Solutions and Little Fox Farm. Matt also worked on our shaker crew back in the day, and I went out with his good friend Chip Underwood in high school. Lots of connections.
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This morning, Matt posted a newspaper clipping on Facebook that he found in his archives. The clipping from the Traverse City Record-Eagle, dated Nov. 22, 1955, features a photo of four Old Mission Peninsula hunters who brought home three black bear from their hunting trip in the Upper Peninsula.
The photo caption reads:
This hunting party was “skunked” insofar as getting a deer was concerned, but they did manage to bring home three black bear. Hunting in the Upper Peninsula, the men bagged their trophies on the last day of their scheduled trip. Left to right in the photo are Keith Warren, Bernard Kroupa, George Kelly and Ray Carroll, all residents of the peninsula. Largest of the bears weighed about 200 pounds.
At first, I had an inkling that the truck in the photo might be the Warren’s blue flatbed that now sits in front of Bonobo Winery on Center Road. I’ve written about that truck here and here. On a closer look, though, I see that it’s not the same truck, although it does look like our 1956 Chevy Flatbed that’s still tucked away in a Johnson Farms barn.
I’m guessing it’s not that truck because 1) there are no Johnsons in the photo, and 2) the photo was taken in 1955. But now I’m curious as to whose truck it was! I’m guessing most every farmer out here had a truck like that back in the day.
Tell us in the comments below if you know, or if you have any other intel about this particular photo.
Thanks, Matt, for the great Old Mission hunting story!
SUPPORT YOUR INDEPENDENT LOCAL NEWSPAPER: I started Old Mission Gazette in 2015 because I felt a calling to provide the Old Mission Peninsula community with local news. After decades of writing for newspapers and magazines like the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Family Circle and Ladies' Home Journal, I really just wanted to write about my own community where I grew up on a cherry farm and raised my own family. So I started my own newspaper.
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[…] officially “Bear Day” here on Old Mission Gazette. I’d no sooner posted this history story about four Old Mission Peninsula residents who bagged three black bear in the Upper Peninsula in […]
I used to drive loads of cherries down to Gleason & Company in my dad’s truck; it had a “creeper” gear below 1st.
Hi Jane, Great article. I thought that the man on the right was my Uncle Ray Carroll married to my Aunt Billie Holmes Carroll. And I WAS RIGHT!!!!!!! Now that I have read it, I do remember the family telling about that. I would have been 14 then. Exciting. Gonna try to send to Aunt Becky’s son Andy who spent a great deal of time with Aunt Bill and Uncle “Bud” as I called him!!!!!!!! And now a bear at Brad Wheat’s!!!!!!!!
George Kelly is my Dad! We have this clipping in one of the albums at my parents’ home, where my mom, Louise Kelly still lives. Keith, Bernie and Ray were good friends with my Dad. We lost him in 2009. Thanks for including this in the Gazette!