Standing, L - R:  Bernice, John, Rudy, Kenneth, Leonard

Sitting:  Delina, Ole (Father), Sister Karen (Madeline), Louise (Mother)

Like many of the young men from Port Oneida, John spent a few years working on the freighters that passed by on Lake Michigan.  Many got their jobs with the help of Frank Blacklock, a ship’s captain from Basch Road.  When passing by the home of one of the sailors, the captain would blow the horn in the pattern of their telephone party line ring.  “You were only a mile from home, but it was a thousand miles from anywhere.”