Normally our backyard has quite a lot of squirrel activity.

Since our recent big snowfall there are no tracks in the yard, leaving it in pristine condition.

But the other day I did notice a track from the tree at the far end of our backyard fence row.

It was a single path from the tree over to a clump of bushes.

As I rode my exercise bike I saw out the window a big, fat, overfed fox squirrel coming down the tree and using his squirrel path to the bushes.

He comes down the trees from beyond my neighbor John Meiser’s house two doors down by staying in the trees at the back fence line, then down my tree to his path to the bushes.

From the bushes, he hops up on to a neighbor’s fence and disappears.

I’ve never been able to see where he starts from and where he goes.

I’m wondering does he have a girlfriend he goes to see or has he found a place to get a free meal?

We used to wtch the squirrels when there was eight to 10 inches of snow as they dug down into it for a buried walnut.

They would almost get out of sight, then pop up and look around for enemies.
I guess this big snowfall must be too deep for this activities.

But now it is fascinating to see this squirrel do this procedure every day using his only little path.

I haven’t seen a red squirrel since last fall. Do they hibernate?

I found this in an old Dowagiac Daily News column called “Do You Remember?” – 1989, I believe.

Harold Keesler of Dowagiac, a hog and corn farmer, courted his bride, Bonnie Jones, in a cornfield and Saturday he married her aboard a $20,000 combine as 150 guests watched from bales of straw.

Keesler said the idea for the unusual ceremony started as a joke because their courtship had consisted largely of Bonnie bringing lunch to him in the cornfield and he proposed to her there.

I remember Harold when they had the bar out at Lake LaGrange and bought liquor from me at the state store.

Also, I remember it was Harold and his brother, Jerry, who brought their big tractor in and broke open our liquor store’s parking lot after the big snowstorm of ’67.

Oct. 25, 1949: Gov. Williams today issued a full pardon for Mrs. Maude Cushing Starick, 67, who has served more than 26 years in prison for the 1921 poisoning murder of her first husband, Claude Cushing of Dowagiac.

March 1912: The Dowagiac girls basketball team was to go to Elkhart to play the girls team of that city. On the Dowagiac team were Marcia Conkling, Wilma Stevens, Ethyl Rice, Mary Crowley, Harriet Van Antwerp and Liz Searle.

April 1886: The Indian medicine men are again camped within the city limits.

A train of seven cars filled with immigrants passed west through the city.

By actual count there were 220 teams hitched upon the business streets in this city last Saturday afternoon at 5 o’clock.

Hay is scarce in Dowagiac but quality was held at $20 per ton.

Eleanor Colby was a name in the Class of 1888 at Dowagiac High School.

“Cardinal Charlie” Gill writes a nostalgic weekly column about growing up in the Grand Old City.
E-mail him at cardinalcharlie@hotmail.com.