REPORTER CARL CROSHATCH

REPORTING FROM A SMALL TOWN

As I peer into the approaching darkness outside my newspaper building, I see what I estimate to be at least two hundred people gathered there shouting, cursing and calling for my demise. What follows are reports I’ve gleaned directly from my newspaper, The Zipperfinch Lake Buffoon , which led to this local uprising when people discovered my plans to widely distribute these articles. My report starts innocently enough with a brief history of Zipperfinch Lake itself which is located in the central Upper Peninsula of Michigan, about thirty miles south and west of the city of Marquette.

Historical origins of the town are murky but it is generally accepted that the first European to view the lake was the famous explorer Father Jacques Marquette. In the fall of 1669, he was taking a cold canoe ride down the Zipperfinch River with his Chippewa guide Tagee, wondering why he’d left his cozy monastery in France. Tagee, on the other hand, was wishing that Father Marquette would go back to his cozy monastery in France. He was also wishing that the good father would pick up a paddle and do some of the work. It was almost the end of Jacques Marquette following the incident at Zipperfinch Falls but he managed to calm Tagee down after the guide had dried out so it’s hardly worth mentioning here.

The first inhabited building in Zipperfinch Lake was a cabin built by a nineteen year old French-Canadian trapper Alexis St. Martin in 1823. The trapper used the cabin as a base of operations and also as a hideout from Dr. William Beaumont, an army surgeon at Fort Mackinac who’d treated St. Martin for a nasty musket wound. It seems that Alexis and another trapper got into a dispute over a set of beaver traps and St. Martin lost the argument. It took a year for his wounds to heal but a hole in his stomach never closed. The hole was covered by a flap of skin and Dr. Beaumont found that he could push the flap of skin open and view the activities of St. Martin’s stomach. People may wonder why he found this so interesting but you have to remember there wasn’t much in the way of entertainment back in those days.

Beaumont began conducting experiments on Alexis. He forced St. Martin to eat various kinds of foods and observed the process of digestion in Alexis’s stomach. He also dangled a variety of edible foodstuffs on a string into St. Martin’s stomach and later pulled them out to see to what extent the food had been digested. The good doctor found that vegetables were less digestible than other foods. The proof of this discovery can be seen in modern times by observing the foul moods of today’s vegetarians. Dr. Beaumont also discovered that alcohol was a major cause of gastritis. He conducted the alcohol experiments quite frequently because they were the only reason St. Martin kept returning.

Alexis St. Martin didn’t find the experiments nearly as interesting as the doctor did. He frequently ran screaming from Fort Mackinac and disappeared. It was during these frequent absences that he hid in his tiny cabin on Zipperfinch Lake. It is understandable why he didn’t want to participate. Since operating room lights were unknown at the time, some physicians assume that Beaumont used lanterns and candles to peer into St. Martin’s stomach. This theory is further substantiated by St. Martin being known in trapping circles as “the one with no hair on his chest.”

This brings us to the modern day inhabitants of Zipperfinch Lake. The following reports are taken directly from articles in my newspaper and will document the foibles of some of these inhabitants. In writing these reports, I’ve followed the newsman’s code of today which is try to tell the truth or get as close to it as possible. Outright lies are also permissible if consumers of the news can be made to believe them to be true.

While the people of the town may be a little quirky, they are generally good folks, many of whom try their best not to excel at anything. I prefer to think of them as practical. For example, the post office will only accept first class mail or higher. They used to handle the usual circulars, advertisements and catalogs but they decided they had too few employees to be bothered with sorting them. Before they instituted the policy, Lefty Clayborne, the local mail carrier, would dispose of them anyway before he started his route. He never told anyone what he did with the junk mail but I've been warned, by more than a few people, to never drink any water from the old well behind the post office.

They don’t fly a flag on the flagpole in front of the post office. That's because they don't have one. It seems that every time they put one up, Butch Bloodshot and his cousin Skeeter, the local juvenile delinquents, would steal it. Gladys Clump, the postmistress, finally gave up on the flag but I understand that Butch has quite a collection of American flags up in the attic of his parents' garage right next to his road sign collection.

These are just a couple of examples. What follows is the real story or as close to it as I can get.

ZIPPERFINCH LAKE POST OFFICE