| Little Vacation Journeys on the Old Reliable D.&M. |
| If one wants to get away from the fret and care of business and enjoy, for a time, peaceful and quite surroundings, a little vacation on the old reliable Detroit, Grand Haven & Milwaukee railroad will fully supply such want. Making the trip from St. Johns to Detroit, for instance, will furnish a reasonable amount of change and relaxation. Leaving St. Johns at 8:05 a.m., a comfortable hour for departure, you pass through fertile farms for seven miles until Shepardsville is reached, where the first halt is made and a little chat held with the station agent about crops, weather prospects, was in Europe, etc. Two or three miles further east you reach the limits of Ovid where the speed ordinance slows your train to right miles an hour, enabling the engineer to come to a gentle stop at the station. Ovid is a pretty, prosperous town, well worth looking at. Getting under way again we pass through some of the finest farms in Michigan, and about five miles east reach Burton. Burton is not a large place, but there are a lot of good people around there and sometimes one of them takes the train. Five miles more and we pull up for the M.C. crossing at Owosso Junction. The trains- men will not let you off at Owosso Junction if they can avoid it, for it might enable you to catch a train on the Michigan Central or the Ann Arbor that you would otherwise miss by getting off at the station a mile farther east. Owosso also has a slow up ordinance, and as the corporation limits are generous, it gives one plenty of time to read signs on the casket and furniture factories and observe what is going on in our neighboring city. From Owosso we make a run of three miles without stop, unless per chance we are side tracked to permit a freight to pass, arriving at Corunna and McCurdy's court house, this being a county seat town. A little halt and we go soon arriving at Vernon, the center of the sheep feeding industry, with big red sheep barns on every hill side. Another effort and we reach Durand, three or four miles further on. Here we hesitate, first in the yard, than later at the station. A delightful half hour or maybe three quarters is spent here, where trains are arriving from St. Johns, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Frankfort, Port Huron, Detroit, Saginaw, etc. While waiting you observe long lines of stock cars loaded with the cutist little pigs with curly tails and train loads of ham, bacon and lard, reminding one of Lord Byron's little poem about the Aisles of Grease. There is lots of going on here and you have plenty of time to see it. Here one of those impossible individuals who are sometimes allowed to travel alone, was heard to remark that if one was traveling very far on the Grand Trunk he would die of old age before reaching his destination. Regretfully we finally leave Durand and make friendly calls at Gaines, at Linden [this not the Linden where the sun is low and all bloodless lay the untrodden snow that was a Linden in Dutchland], the getting off place for Argentine, where Clinton county people go fishing; Fenton and Holly, where the 57 varieties are displayed on a series of bright yellow buildings, lending color and splendor to the scene. We also cross the Pere Marquette here, calling at four or five more towns before reaching Pontiac. Tamarack swamps, streams, beautiful lakes surrounded by green fields suggest the close relation of the loaves and fishes, brown fields, the bronze leaves on the oak forests, gravel pits and ice houses make memorable scene. |
| We halt at Waterford, ar Clarkston, at Davisburg,at Drayton Plains and Andersonville, who would want to go running along through such a country at reckless speed, frightening hens away from the right of way so they would not lay an egg for a week, thus inviting damage suit by the farmers. We arrive at Pontiac. Here we took a good rest, the passengers wondering whether the agent had gone up to the asylum to engage another train crew to take us in under the Adamson eight hour law or whether we were waiting for a chance to be switched on the P.&O., or the air line, or both, to avoid holding up the freights. When we did leave Pontiac, we ran along beside the paved way between that city and the City of the Straits. This was a down grade trip, winding around the hills creating the sensation experienced on a roller coaster. We see automobiles pushing along at reckless abandon at a speed of twenty miles per hour, but they do not tempt us from the pleasant security of our vacation journey. Birmingham, Royal Oak and twenty miles of town lots staked out, intervene before reaching Milwaukee Junction and a half hour later Detroit. It is almost 1o'clock United States time. If our train is on time, almost 2o'clock and supper time by Detroit time but we have had a ripping good time, every minute a delight. Returning from Detroit you leave at 3o'clock and are supposed to arrive at St. Johns at 8 p.m. Quite frequently of late the train reaches here at 9 p.m., but who would let the mere matter of a train schedule interfere with the joys of a vacation trip? How disappointing it is to stroll down to the depot a few minutes late for the evening train west and be brusquely informed that the train leaves at 8 p.m. How much nicer it is to have the smiling agent say "Kind sir, no passenger train has gone west this evening; we are expecting a train, if not today's train, maybe yesterdays train will come soon. Make yourself comfortable. This winter we have a latch on all the doors, and we can keep them shut to exclude the cold." But going into Detroit in the evening, you can leave St. Johns at 4:08, change on the train from Chicago at Durand and get into the city at 7:30, standard time. Dear old delightful D.&M. We sing thy praises. Nowhere else can you get so much ride for your money----every freight train dodged, safe, peaceful, secure. For vacation trips you have them beat a mile. P.S.---If you belong to that disagreeable class of beings who are always in a hurry and think that the chief purpose of taking the train is to get somewhere, instead of taking the 12:03 from St. Johns for Detroit, you can stay at home for dinner, leave at 1:10 on the electric, stay 22 minutes in Lansing and take the Pere Marquette for Detroit, reaching there five minutes sooner than the 12:03 which left St. Johns an hour and eight minutes earlier. This story was in The Clinton Republican dated December 7, 1916. There was no clue as to who the writer was. I added the post card view of the St. Johns depot that was there at this date. This depot was constructed in 1868 & 69. It was destroyed by a tornado in 1920. |
| The writer above wrote of their "first halt" at Shepardsville 7 miles east of St. Johns. The photograph on the left is a view of Shepardsville station in 1907. Wm Shepard, a prominent resident of the village, donated five acres of land for depot purposes back in 1866 when the village became a flag stop on the Detroit & Milwaukee Railway. The section crew with their dinner pails on board are ready for a days work along the line. From left to right is: station agent Bill Drum, Ramon Deitrich, Albert Longcor, section fore- man Alex Olson and Bill Decker. |
| Northeast view of the Junction Hotel at Owosso Junction. Photograph from Mark Worrall post card collection. |
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