Re: I would not have gone through St Louis -- Spearfish Lake Tales

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Subject: Re: I would not have gone through St Louis

Author:
Wes

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Date Posted: 11:55:52 03/18/13 Mon
In reply to: Dmitri 's message, "Re: I would not have gone through St Louis" on 09:33:44 03/18/13 Mon

Just as a note, there's a little bit of the Escanaba and Lake Superior in my mental development of the C&SL.

Dmitri is right -- Spearfish Lake does float around, and intentionally. I don't want people thinking it's real -- just that it could be real.

Just to make life interesting, when I first dreamed up Snowplow Extra (before I actually wrote anything about it) it was located in Maine.

-- Wes

>Some (most?) of Wes's geography is pretty mobile,
>meaning fictional to nonexistant. When I first started
>reading Wes's books (Dawnwalker was my first) I put
>Spearfish Lake down US-141 south of Iron Mountain, MI,
>approximately where Pembine or Amberg (both in WI) are
>located, north of Green Bay. That geography turns
>Green Bay into Camden and Milwaukee into Decatur.
>There are problems with that (for one it ain't in
>Michigan), but it's the best scenario for the
>"seaport" that the rock trains in other stories have
>Josh and other trainheads dropping Beepit and Keyhole
>rock off at to be loaded onto barges.
>
>I've exchanged with Wes (read: "pestered" him) about
>the location of Spearfish Lake, because as a reader I
>gotta know where I am (can I get there from here?).
>He's been writing these stories for years and told me
>he's actually moved it all over the the state of
>Michigan from the northern Lower Peninsula into the
>Upper Peninsula. In fact at first, he was very unclear
>and said it could have been almost anywhere Yooper is
>spoken, as far west as North Dakota. He finally now,
>after about 25 books, has characters saying it is
>really in Michigan.
>
>I think he now places it farther west, over closer to
>Ironwood, which is the western tip of the U.P.
>Personally, I'm now placing it near the town of Bruce
>Crossing MI, which is on Route 28 a little closer to
>Ironwood than Ishpeming or Marquette. That goofs up
>the seaport facility to the south, but it's fictional
>anyway. It could connect by river to the Mississippi
>instead of Lake Michigan. Ontanogan, MI, on Lake
>Superior, is only about 30 miles to the north of Bruce
>Crossing, so there's story problems with this
>location, too, one reason an exact location is still
>unstated.
>
>My nickel's worth. Well maybe 4 cents, anyway.
>There's been inflation since the 2-cent opinions were
>first generated.
>
>Dmitri
>
>>If I was driving from Green Bay (approximately Camden)
>>to Pas Christian, I would have gone down through
>>Chicago and I55 to I57 to Memphis.
>>
>>If I was driving from Iron Mountain (approximate
>>Spearfish Lake) (especially with a slow truck), I
>>would have driven over to Wausau and taken I39 south
>>till it turns back in to US51 around Bloomington, IL
>>and then taken 51 to I57 and avoided both Chicago and
>>St Louis. You would be on the same route that Jim took
>>after Memphis.

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[> [> [> Subject: Origins of Snowplow Extra

Author:
Wes
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Date Posted: 13:01:59 03/18/13 Mon

The above post got me to thinking about how Snowplow Extra came about.

Perhaps thirty years ago I wrote a memo about the original idea for the story. Parts of what was in that memo made it into the story, and parts didn't. I haven't seen the memo in a long time, perhaps twenty years, but I remember some of it.

In the original version (which never got written), Bud, John and some firemen make a single run from Spearfish Lake to Warsaw, and I don't remember if they were even named at the time. They had a smaller and less capable snowplow, and only a single engine. Since they knew they were going to face some deep cuts, they put a construction crane railcar (a Burro) between the plow and the engine so the crane could dig though snow too deep for the plow with a clamshell. In Warsaw, the fire is getting close to a fertilizer plant and propane tank as they finally make it into town, and it's quite clear there's no stopping it -- all they can do is run! Bud hangs on to the last instant allowing people to climb onto the trail, wherever they can find a place to hold on, then backs out of town, just getting far enough from town before the ammonium nitrate and propane explosion flattens the town.

Obviously, a fair amount of that scenario made it into Snowplow Extra. But it's also clear that the original story was strongly influenced by the very real story of Jim Root and the Hinckley Fire in 1894 -- and a couple pieces of that made it into the story too. That's a thriller that really happened.

-- Wes