Coming Event!
Collecting Insulators!

        To  be honest with you; (which has always been very hard for me,) we had a guest speaker visit our club with a program about antique glass insulators. It was a long-long-time back. I only can tell you it was most interesting!

        We have club newsletters, archived on our web-page, going back to 2005 and I cannot find that issue. I scrolled through the early ones, but not all of them. Maybe it wasn’t as far back as I thought? I do remember it was when we were meeting in the Vandusen Room at the downtown Kalamazoo library.

           Frankly, I had fun scrolling through the back issues and reminiscing!
I even found a long lost story I wanted to share several times but was unable to locate it anywhere! I found it! I will try to include it reprinted in this newsletter. 

            I’m not really sure how long ago that Insulator presentation was, other to say that I rode my bike that evening, and the training wheels were still new.

           Frankly, I was still pretty green knowing antique bottles in general. I still have lots to learn.  With those early insulators, being another type of antique glass, I was very surprised how little even our more advanced club members knew about them at the time.

         With antique bottle collectors being  so persnickety about every tiny, and very trivial detail . . . we were in for a jaw-dropping surprise!
Come on! We have all seen bottle collectors hold a bottle at arm’s length, up to a light to carefully inspect it. . . right?

         The most valuable insulator our guest speaker displayed, looked like it was still attached to a telegraph wire when it was  dragged by stage coach from Detroit to Chicago. . . it was rough!  Let me tell you, If it is rare . . . they ain’t fussy!

          Vince tells me that our guest speaker, Mike Bruner is ready for his presentation on Collecting Insulators at our September 12th, 2023 meeting. Also, the Otsego Museum has been giving notice of the meeting, announcing it to the general public.
Plainwell library notified the public about the antique bottle talk that I was presenting . . .  and we had a full house!

          Vince also sent a e-mail to the West Michigan Antique Bottle Club, thanking them for the 2023 group picnic at the Otsego Brookside Park, on August 19th.
         Did you make it to the combined bottle club picnic? It was hosted by West Michigan Antique Bottle Club and It was a great time!

         Elmer Ogg asked me for a nose-count of our members who were  planning to attend. I was very surprised to see that for the most part all members had but one nose.

 I was surprised several member's names whom I had expected to see. . .  didn’t respond.
None the less, I had received word back from 20 who planned to make it.

         None the less, we had a good turn-out! We all enjoyed great food and fellowship! I am so glad I was able to take part!

         Gordy Hubenet gave a talk on the Otsego Mineral Springs water bottles, which as always, was great! I love listening to Gordy!
    Hey, you talk about convenient! The West Michigan Bottle Club hosted this event, invited our group, and even held the event in our own back yard!
And! They provided the burgers, wieners, buns and condiments! What more could you ask for?  No, they didn’t chew it for us.
         In all fairness, I know that our buddy Vincent Grossi was very much involved with making this happen! Thanks for all you do Vincent!
    Being on a Saturday, and in August, I left a note on my shop door with my cell number. This was just in case someone drove a long distance to see me. I guess you could say I was “On Call.” 
    One Saturday, I had just turned on my open sign, when a fellow parked out front and came in. I greeted him and we started chatting. Then another car pulled up. Soon we were having a three way conversation. Something was said, when one guy picked up on something. He asked the second guy, “Say, where do you live?”
    So, as it turned out, the two guys lived within a few miles from each other! Where? In Orleans ON. Canada! From Orleans to Detroit it is about a 5 hour drive! And it is another couple hours to my store from Detroit!
    That is why I come to work even with Covid! (I did)
    Our sincere thanks to the West Michigan Antique Bottle Club for a wonderful time and great food! It was the best! 

Since the last newsletter     
  Yes, we did have a final meeting before our summer break,  and it was a good one!

        Vincent arranged for Professor, John Wilterding, from the Olivet College to come and speak to our group about marble collecting.  I thought, a time or two, about marble collecting.
        One day I was in a little shop in Shipshewana, a neat little store  where I was buying my wooden model-building supplies. There, they had giant bins full of every kind of marble you could ever dream of! And they sold them buy the scoopful . . . cheap!

    That ended it for me! How could I ever know a good marble from a fake? To make matters worse, I knew a bottle digger in the area who started making marbles! He became really good at building copies of the rare stuff!


    Well, we learned a lot from John Wilterding! I didn’t know that there would be much to say about marble collecting! At least  in not much more than 30 in minutes . . . was I ever wrong!
     John walked us through slide, after colorful slide, of beautiful marbles explaining each and ever thing for the beginning collector to look for!
    Turns out, like antique bottle collectors, marble collectors  have there favorite type (eg- inks, medicine, flasks). Many marble collectors will focus on a favorite type. With John he is interested in whatever is in his favorite color and style.

    I went in to the meeting, not planning on doing any note taking. Surely I will remember everything. . . right?
     I can tell you, I couldn’t have kept up! It was a very interesting and eye opening presentation! Thank You John! I look at bags of old marbles with renewed interest!

    SOME JOTTINGS

       Some things that I need to apologize for;

1.        I passed a sign up sheet around at that last meeting during the marble presentation, but it seems to have vanished! I am sure it will show up at some point.  We not only had a full house, we signed up some new members!

2.        We had a meeting in June at Bimbo’s Pizza and, I did take some bottle pictures but my camera’s data card failed me after 1 million photos. And, the camera is old by modern standards so replacements are hard to come-by.               I found new-old-stock replacements on e-Bay so I am back in the game!

3.   I received a phone call from a lady, the wife of club member, David Avery. She introduced herself and shared that Dave had passed away. She without question was grief stricken. She asked that I discontinue sending the club newsletter . . . seeing mail addressed to her husband was hard for her.
    I told her that we, as a club, were sorry to hear about Dave’s passing. I e-mailed her asking for a picture of Dave,  but I didn’t hear back. Looking online, there is mention of his passing . . . but very few details. She mentioned on the phone that when she can collect herself, she will contact us for help with his bottle collection.
    No, I cannot picture Dave, and I think he and his wife only came to one meeting.
David L. Avery
May 7, 1955 — May 13, 2023
Battle Creek

4.        I am going to be fighting a few monsters in the coming weeks. I have been having some complications related to diabetes.
      The good thing is I started buckling down on my diet (a little late) Like closing the barn door too late. I bought my A1C down to 6.0 and lowered my weight down to 169, and went down three pant sizes.

    But, I am having a never ending battle with U.T.I. which is the result of early stage-III kidney disease.
    Getting my sugar level under control will help in many ways.

    I told my doctor that I thought one of my 6 meds were causing me to almost fold-into-a- heap in direct sunlight!
    He wondered how long I had been practicing medicine?
I can see now that my sun allergy was due to elevated sugar level!
     This is no exaggeration, I could ride my lawn mower out of the shade, and into the direct sun, and I couldn’t even hold my head up!
 
5.    My winter truck is the only vehicle I ever purchased new, a 2002 Toyota Tacoma double cab. They were recalled about 10 years back to check for frame issues.
     Toyota was having trouble keeping up with production demand at that time, so they sub-contracted to a company in China to produce frames. Well, as you might expect, many of them failed! Toyota replaced hundreds of them! And even as far as ten years out!

    The test was simple, they ran my truck up on a hoist and a worker went around tapping the frame listening to the sound. If his hammer sounded like steel- striking- steel all the way  down each side, the frame passed. If he heard a sound like metal striking wood the metal frame was rusting from inside out.
    Mine passed, but many didn’t.

     Can you imagine changing out a truck frame! A friend of mine got a new frame!
He asked them what that would cost if he had to pay out-of-pocket. They said a minium of $10,000.

    So mine passed! I am thinking “I dodged that bullet.” I honestly felt that I didn’t have to worry about that anymore!
    Last spring I had it in for an oil change and the mechanic came to me and said, “Al, come look at your frame.”
    Man it is bad! You can put you hand through some areas!
    I ordered, from a company called Safety Cap, a complete overlay weld-on frame kit for nearly $2,000.00.
     Next, I went into our home breaker-box and put a 220-Volt 50 amp outlet so I can run my arc welder at home.

    I have to remove fuel tank, suspension mounts and cross members. Once the job is finished the frame will be twice as strong as the original.
6.        Oh yes, one more thing. On July 9th we left for vacation with our motor home. Because the road which I normally take north, towards Plainwell, was under construction, I decided to get on U.S. 131, right at West Main in Kalamazoo.
     Traffic was heavy and the big 460 V-8 is cold blooded. I didn’t want it to stall so I decided to manually shift the automatic, keeping the RPM’s up.
     Once I entered the expressway, I shifted from first into second, then brought my speed up to 65 and set the cruise. We went about 2 miles and I lost power . . . dead!!  That was when I saw it was still in second!
     I recognized the way the engine stopped, as being high heat-related vapor-lock. I pulled off to the side and tried to cool the system down. We emptied the fresh water tank trying to cool things down.

    Soon a young guy, I would say 17 or 18, walked up behind me and said, “Can I help? I am a mechanic and I work for a junk yard.”  I turned to thank him for his offer, but there wasn’t much to do. Then my granddaughter yelled “FIRE!”
 
    The young mechanic’s car was on fire! Madison handed him my brand new fire extinguisher and she followed him back to the burning car with a gallon of water!
    The car was a $100 beater that  he had just cobbled-up an exhaust system for. It was fastened up hard against the trunk floor, and the trunk was full of paper rubbish!

    When he left, he said, “Mister, if I hadn’t stopped to help you, my car would have burned up!”
    Well, I wasn’t feeling like a hero.

    I am pretty sure I spun a bearing in my engine.
 We live day-by-day waiting for vacation. I had just told my wife the day before we left, “We have never be better prepared!”

    I had just finished the final painting on the outside, installed new front brakes and rotors, greased up my new balanced drive-line and carrier bearings. I completely rebuilt the RV furnace with a new burner and ignition system, new seals and a freshly cleaned fan assembly.
    The only failure was a loose nut behind the steering wheel! ME!

    My dear sweet 92 year- young mother just happened to have a 2018 Tiffin motor home she wasn’t using for a couple weeks . . . she has always been my hero!

    A, re-manufactured 1983 Ford 460 RV engine is just about $5,000. And nobody wants to install it. I am going to pull the original engine and rebuild it myself. Rebuilding an engine like this is familiar to me, I built several for our race cars, and I enjoy it. It is taking it out and putting it back . . . that is the hard part.

---

North Star Gold
Story from Sept 2005 Newsletter.

            One of the things I used to love about my vacation time in the western U.P. was taking the time to relax and read a good book.
     Deb's parents had a screen house attached to their garage, which is about 20 feet from the beautiful Hemlock River. Their section of the river is shallow and rocky, so the water makes a relaxing, bubbling sound. I didn't believe in noise therapy until I experienced this place.
    The screen house is shaded by giant pines and willow trees. It is not unusual to have a mother deer and her fawn to wander by-- it is so peaceful!

       I wanted to increase the number of prospecting how-to-books to my in-store selection, when I noticed a title that looked promising-- Black Sand and Gold. When I opened the book, I saw that it wasn't at all what I had hoped. It appeared to be a family story about the Klondike Gold Rush and not at all instructional.

     After having it in stock for a year or two, a customer purchased the book and I was thinking 'good- riddance.'
Later that year, this same customer came into my shop carrying that book, and she told me that it was one of the best books she had ever read! She learned from the cover about another book by the same author, called Trail to North Star Gold. She wanted to know if I could I get it for her.
    Trail To North Star Gold is a historical record of those hectic days when thousands of Americans, and others, rushed north to seek their fortune. Ed Lung was one of these men.
    When we think of the Great Depression, we think of the 1930's, but there was, what was called the Great Depression of the late 1880's and the following 'Panic of the Nineties' which left great numbers of people destitute.

    Lumber mills, shipyards, smelters, stores and factories were closed, and people walked the streets hunting jobs that were nowhere to be found.
    Ed Lung lost his job and was forced to leave his young wife and baby with her parents, then he headed for the gold fields of the Klondike. Ed was in the first wave of prospectors to head into the gold fields, but he wasn't exactly the luckiest. He did however keep an amazing daily diary!
    There were rich claims all around his claim, which he named, 'Old Brutus.' He made other claims, but he always seemed to pick the wrong piece of ground. His daily clean- ups would yield anywhere from 25¢ cents to $2.00 a pan so he was able to save enough money to send for his wife and son after about 2 years.

    That doesn't sound too bad when you consider this was 1899. But you also need to consider that some of the claims around him were producing from $600.00 to $1,000 per pan!

    There were several men with claims like his, who would give up frustrated, then sell their claims for enough money to get them another claim-- or get them home. Then, sometimes in weeks or months, the new owner would find a million dollar pay streak on that same claim.

    The first part of the book is about Ed's wife and young son's journey to Dawson Alaska, and it is simply unbelievable to read the struggles they had to go through! Sometimes they were on steam ships in dangerous rivers or fogged in, sometimes they would be walking for weeks -- travel wasn't easy. Ed's wife was named Velma and she mentioned the names of different steam ships that she saw as they traveled north.

    One of the ships mentioned was the ill-fated, S.S. Islander. I saw a picture of the Islander and she looked like many of the Lake Michigan passenger ships of her day -- about 275 to 300 feet long. In that picture, it looked like there may have been at least 200 crowding her deck.

    The Islander was down-bound, away from the gold fields, loaded with wealthy prospectors known as Klondike Kings!
    Also a gold shipment of $3,400,000 (three million!) was on board. In those days, with little law enforcement and rampant crime, several witnesses had to sign that they saw the gold aboard the ship. In this case, there were 17 who swore it was there.

    The captain went to the galley to get a bite to eat and a cup of coffee. As he finished his second cup of coffee, he heard the pilot frantically blasting the steam whistle to get echo-soundings. The Islander had just rounded a bend in the channel and had quickly sailed into a thick fog.
    Soon, the echos bounced back with quick promptness. Before the ship could be slowed, the Islander struck a fresh new iceberg that had broken free the night before from giant Taku Glacier.

    Quickly the Islander started filling with water, while the captain tried some last minute measures to save her. The iceberg twisted the ship like a toy, causing most closed doors and windows to jam tightly shut. Crewmen used fire axes to batter down doors and free screaming passengers.

    In a panic, the passengers, mostly men, were pushing crew members away from the winches and trying to lower the life boats themselves, causing many to break free and some tangled.

    A survivor described how one man dumped out his suitcase and went to each gaming table, sweeping stacks of $20.00 gold pieces into it, then, with it clutched in his arms, he jumped overboard. Of course he went down like a missile and was never seen again.

The Islander came to rest on the bottom, which was 300 feet down and was considered gone forever.

    What happened to the ship next, was not until in 1928, when Carl and Albert Wiley built a custom diving bell that could be lowered to 750 feet. A large metal claw was rigged up near thick glass portholes that could be operated with cables and pulleys. The claw worked to some degree and bit by bit they chewed into the ship. They recovered some relics, including a gold watch and cash register that contained several hundred dollars, but not enough to even pay their expenses.

    In 1934, a man named Frank Curtis, owner of a Seattle house-moving company, bought two barges and a diving bell. They managed to pass a cable under the ship and ran it back up to the other side of the barge. Then, at low tide, they winched up all the slack. When the tide came in, the cable tightened and lifted the Islander a few feet out of her muddy grave. This allowed more cables and winches to be added. A powerful steam winch on shore was used to slowly pull the Islander into shallower water. At each stop, they winched up the slack, then again let the tide do all the lifting.
    Soon both barges were put to use and they raised the ship right up between the two. Eventually the islander was run up on Admiralty Island Beach.

    The inhabitants of the villages, downwind of the ship, complained to the authorities about the horrid stench of the wreck. Workers had to make special masks to even get near the foul smelling vessel.

    They recovered cases of champagne that were just as bubbly and tart as the day they were bottled. Whale oil lamps were still full and lit right up. The body of one victim was found below deck and beside him was a broken shovel that he had used in a futile attempt to pry open a jammed door.

    They found a 17-pound poke of gold. (17 pounds of 24K Gold, today= 7 million six hundred thousand dollars)
  In the captain's quarters they found a safe with $40,000 in gold. Where was the $3,000,000?
    When the hot steam boilers hit the icy waters, they exploded, blowing a massive hole in the bottom of the ship. Chances are the gold spilled out and arrived at the bottom long before the ship did!

    To this day, treasure hunters are trying to get permits to bring up all of the remaining wreckage and cargo, but we know how that goes. The road block, as always is, the government's question, "Who does it belong to?"

    The latest information I had, was taken from a court transcript dated 1999, and maybe by now the gold shipment has been salvaged. I know that the Canadian government claimed ownership.

Twelve-hundred troy ounces of Alaskan Gold Rush gold recovered in 2012 from the 1901 shipwreck of the SS Islander is being offered for $4 million exclusively through private treaty by Fred N. Holabird from Holabird Western Americana Collections LLC. 

The gold is unrefined placer gold contained in five original leather pokes, all sealed, and the contents of a sixth leather poke that broke open during the recovery process, according to Holabird.
Holabird is acting as the exclusive agent for the salvors.

A 2015 assay of a sample of the gold recovered in 2012, by American Assay Labs in Sparks, Nev., indicated the fineness of the gold at .800 fine, according to Holabird.

The official accounting of $275,000 in gold lost on the Islander in 1901 would reflect about 13,301 troy ounces, today valued at about $15 million, Holabird said.   (2015)

Some 10 or 12 treasure boxes containing gold must have been on the Islander. The estimate is derived from the amount each treasure box could hold, about 85 pounds of gold, according to Holabird.

The gold recovered in 2012 was the content of only one box, and it was initially turned over to MK Salvage Venture LLC in Seattle, in accordance with its court-approved financing agreement with Ocean Mar Inc. for funding salvage operations.

    I wrote this story and put it into our August 2005 metal detector club newsletter. A few days after I posted it on the Internet, a man contacted me about the story. He lives in West Virginia, but his family is from the Seattle area and that is where he was salmon fishing when he contacted me.
    He is researching the Islander wreck, and he wanted to know my resources. His name is Ed Wiley and he is a descendant of the 1928 salvage crew Carl and Albert Wiley. I thought that was neat.