Mike's Morsels of Wisdom

Lakes...They're Great!

With HFT I get to travel around the Great Lakes quite a bit. Whether we're trucking through Chicago or making the trek along Ohio's north shore we have gotten to know these massive fresh water seas that reside in the unassuming gut of North America. Everytime we get around these "lakes" and especially when we're actually on them, an passion of mine rises to the surface like a bouy held under for too long. The passion I speak of is wrapped in mystery and mourning, grandeur and failure, function and form. It is...the Great Lakes Shipping Industry. It's History: Past and Present. I am utterly crippled with fascination for ships that navigate these inland waterways. They haul grains, oils, miscellaneous cargos, lumbers, ores and even people (did you know they have Great Lakes Cruises?). I sit in wonderment as I read my book entitled "Stormy Disasters" and learn about the storms that brought these great vessels to their moist knees. I listen in quiet reflection to the nautical melody and haunting lyrics of "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot. And now, with my recently purchased Great Lakes Shipwreck Map I can chart and ponder the geography of which ol' Gordy himslef sums up perfectly,
"Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the rooms of her ice-water mansion.
Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams;
The islands and bays are for sportsmen.
And farther below Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her,
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the Gales of November remembered."