Mike Andrews (left) and Mike Kennedy.
Mike Andrews’ family goes back several generations on Barron Lake, starting with his grandfather, who came to the area to work as an engineer for Michigan Central Railroad.
Andrews’ grandparents split their Barron Lake Road property giving part of it to Mike’s parents in the 1970s. Shortly after, Mike’s dad built a home. And when Mike says his dad built his home, he means he built it with his own hands.
“Wickes Lumber had a yard on 11th Street, and they had a display house called the ‘Lake House.’ When my mom and dad went to look at it they said, ‘This is what we’re going to build.’ My dad dug that foundation with a shovel and a little wheel horse garden tractor, and he used a small trailer he built to haul the dirt away from the building,” he said.
Except for help from his friend, Charlie Grahl, who helped him set the blocks and pour the foundation, Mike’s dad basically built the home all on his own. “My dad was one of those people that nothing would be done correctly if he didn’t do it himself. When they delivered the the lumber for the walls and the floors, and the trusses for the roof, he said the trusses weren’t right,” Andrews said. His dad told them he wanted room up on the second floor but was told the house couldn’t support a room upstairs. “My dad disagreed and said he would take care of it himself. They told him he couldn’t tear those apart. And he said he could. So, he ripped those trusses apart and he rebuilt them, and put a bedroom up on the second floor of that house. It’s still there to this day.”
He recalls many wonderful memories from his time spent on the lake and in his grandparents’ swimming pool. “We swam in the lake—a lot—but for some reason and I’ve never understood why—they built a swimming pool within eyeshot of the lake. At that point in time, no one did that,” he said.
When they weren’t in the water, Andrews and his friends were paying ball on a field along Barron Lake Road near Huff. “There was a row of walnut trees that were the perfect down markers for our football games. And that’s also where we played baseball in the summer. We could play there whenever we wanted to,” he said. In return, it was up to the young men to mow the grass. “That’s a big field—it’s still empty today—and you can imagine how long it took with a 20-inch push mower. That was a lot of work.”
One of the friends he played with was Mike Kennedy—a friend he made by chance. “I was out one day walking along Huff Avenue and found a baseball mitt. I picked it up and saw it had a name and phone number on it, so I called to let them know I found it. We figure it had fallen out of the basket on his bike while he was on his paper route. Mike came down to get it and we became friends.”
Andrews also recollected a huge winter storm when he was about 12 years old. “We are in a lake effect zone, and we end up getting this massive storm. I’m going to say it snowed almost continuously for about three days. We didn’t go to school for almost two weeks,” he said. One of the neighbors had a four-wheel drive pickup truck with a snowplow that cleared part of Barron Lake Road. “He plowed his way down to Mulberry Street to pick up Belva (Carnes) to take her to the grocery store so they could open. And I remember the huge drift over by Kugler’s Beach. It had to have been about 20 feet,” he said.
Andrews said he was recently looking through old yearbooks he has stored in his basement, noting his grandparents went to Niles High School; his dad went to Niles High School and he and his sister went to Niles High School. “I still have all those yearbooks. I was going through my grandparents’ yearbook from 1931. It just blows me away to look at it.”
As told by Mike Andrews. Written by Jodi Marneris. Barron Lake Association
October 202
