By David Clapp, a Great Lakes Energy Cooperative member
My grandfather, Francis Merton Clapp, was born in 1897 in Genesee County, Michigan. He served in the United States Navy in World War I, owned a furniture store, was a gardener, wine maker, and a genius woodworker. He made his own woodworking machines, and built a log cabin on the shore of Higgins Lake when it was still mostly pine forests and empty shorelines.
What most people, other than those closest to him, probably didn’t know about him was that he loved to recite poetry. And he did it from memory.
Thinking back to when my sister and I were kids, the poems we remember (and loved) best are those of Robert Service, the Scotch-Canadian poet who spun tales of the Gold Rush days of western North America in the middle 1800s. They are beautiful stories, but I think we loved them because they involved danger, wild animals, death, and gold.
It was usually around the holidays, after a big Thanksgiving or Christmas meal. The adults savored after-dinner drinks, while the kids angled for one more of Grandma’s chocolate chip cookies. The last rays of daylight streamed through the big plate glass window overlooking Grandpa’s garden and workshop. A grandfather clock that he had made stood in the corner—most times the swinging pendulum made a loud “tick-tock,” but as we settled in, it seemed to grow quiet, as if it knew something more important was about to happen.
At the urging of some of the older relatives, Grandpa Fran would stand up, take a sip of something to wet his lips, clear his throat, and the words would begin to pour forth…
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold…*
As kids, we didn’t realize how significant this was, or how special. We just knew that it was different…and it certainly held our attention. We were magically transported from a living room in Grand Blanc, Michigan, to a land of ice and snow and dog sleds and bad guys. And how could Grandpa remember it all? These weren’t haikus, or short sonnets…they were epics! As he continued, we were rapt…forgetting about cookies, games, our cousins, or ever going home.
Fran died in 1985. I was a young adult, in college at the time, but still didn’t truly appreciate the unique man that he was. Over the ensuing 40 years, I’ve come to that realization. And, to this day, I still remember clearly the magic spell
of the Yukon.
*The Cremation of Sam McGee—from “The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses,” Robert Service, 1907
About the author: David was the director of MDNR Fisheries Research Station in Charlevoix for 23 years. He is a semi-retired fisheries biologist, and enjoys hiking, backpacking, woodworking, reading, and fishing.
