ROADS, MODES AND A WAY OF LIFE
by Dave Ponke

Helping out your neighbor and just simply being a friendly contact was a way of life "back in the day."

Over the years, there have been many ways the communication methods between neighbors have changed to some degree.

When homes were built at the turn of the century, they were many acres apart. The obvious and most simple way of delivering a message to a neighbor was by walking next door. Riding horseback, prior to the invention of the automobile, was another means.

Today, we have the high-tech world of computers and electronics. Cell phones, Ipods, pagers and computer laptops with instant-message e-mails have, quite frankly, uprooted the personal contact that used to exist between humans.

Today, it is a much faster world, one that has blossomed into the development of distant relationships, less personal communication and all but dissolved the "getting-to-know-you" aspect of today's society.

In some cases, however, keeping in touch and maintaining that bond has kept steady.

In many rural areas, for instance, you can still stop off at a roadside produce stand, set up by the homeowner. There, you can often expect to discover fresh homegrown vegetables, flowers and plants, and free conversation.

Many of these roadside stands still exist today throughout St. Clair County, much as they have over the past century. By taking a drive along many of the secondary "back" roads in all areas, you can see these stands that sport signs boasting the owners' offering, such as corn, apples, tomatoes, various flowers and corn stalks, jelly, jams, canned products such as sauces and pickles and bales of straw. These are the proud end results of a family's hard work and toiling, their year-round laborious striving to perhaps pay the bills or to fulfill a dream.

You can often take a glance across these areas of the county. For example, along some of the roads that branch off of Highway M-29 and many of the east-west roads from 26 to 32 Mile Road, you can see the interlocking properties. These wide-ranging fields of corn, all of which are picked and gone now since the growing season is over, are exhibits of the farmer's long, hard hours in the fields, where he or she earnestly plants and picks under the summer sun.

Now that the autumn season has arrived, the leaves on the trees have all but been blown off by the brisk, chilly Michigan breezes and the tractors and plows are back in the barn until spring arrives.
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The ancient farmhouses that dot the roads along rural south St. Clair County Township are proof the ways of life that once existed have all but disappeared into the sunset, like a setting sun on the horizon.

The dependence on crop growing and tilling a field for financial support has dwindled. But these proud and tall but, often leaning and sadly decaying barns are majestic beauties that once were the supporting beams that held up a family's lifestyle many years ago.

The bridges that connected parcels of land and allowed for easier foot travel are mostly gone today. Chunks of land along backroads in Ira and Casco Townships that are interlaced with branches of a creek show where proud bridges once held up shorelines. But these are all but gone today, victims of years of decay and Mother Nature's elements.

It is these same creeks, such as the Swan Creek that slices through southern Ira Township west of Palms Road, that hundreds of years ago provided sustenance to early Indian settlers. These earliest pioneers counted on the water for fishing for survival and drinking and bathing.

Upon closer examination, there are some homes that are still erect today that are excellent examples of the way "it used to be."

Along St. Clair River Drive in Algonac there are a few homes and businesses that still stand , some close to or over 100 years old.