Courtesy photo Above, Chet's Bar is shown circa 1940. The bar was located at 1430 Sheridan Road but is no longer there.

Courtesy photo
Stropich’s Bar in the lower part of building is still in business today.

ESCANABA — The old October moon casts a spotlight on Little Bay de Noc.

It illuminates Escanaba’s eastern establishments on the north end of town.

Time wavers in the moonlight. The past, present and the future flicker and filter away like dry leaves in the cool wind.

Laughter and music spills out into Hartnett Avenue (known today as Sheridan Road). Loud voices with a mixture of English, Croatian, Russian and French mingle in the evening air.

In the shadow of a massive wooden ore dock the taverns near Port Escanaba are a wild place back in their hey days.

Delta County was growing and thriving with every thirsty lumberjack, railroad worker, mill worker, farmer and fisherman that wandered into town. Coming into old Escanaba from Wells didn’t look too much different than walking into “Dodge City” in a Gunsmoke episode, but in the 1930s and 1940s.

The saloons, spittoons, a barber shop, butcher and general stores with their wide store front windows were all right there.

Many decades ago I’m sure my grandfather was in the midst of it all, playing his concertina and drinking beer celebrating the harvest moon with many other hard-working I. Stephenson workers, dock workers or sailors.

From the gala days of the 1920s to the prohibition days of speakeasies and the raid when confiscated booze ran down Sheridan road like a river, there is much a merry history here.

I come from a third generation family of Sheridan Road residence. The Northtown bars were known as the working man’s bars and over the years I’ve heard many stories about them.

Back in the olden days, when I was a child things were different, safer, more small town. I recall one of my favorite places to play was on the white pillar porch next to Chet Johnson’s bar. I’d dance round the little wooden platform and swing around the white columns. To a little kid like me, it was like the beautiful porch on the Grand Hotel at Mackinaw Island.

The bar’s owner had a real sense of humor, and he’d get my brother and his friends to pick up bottle caps littering is yard and sidewalk by promising them some candy.

It wasn’t uncommon for one of my brothers to be sent up to Skradski’s Bar, dressed in their school uniform before seven o’clock in the morning to get cigarettes for Mom. Back then everyone smoked and everybody looked out for everybody else’s kids.

Back in my days of delivering the Escanaba Daily Press, I was happy to deliver to Skradski’s Bar. I got a free candy bar every Saturday morning.

In October, we can let the years roll back and let good ghosts dance. So many names, Spars Bar, Stropich’s Bar, Corner Bar, Waterspanks, Joran’s, and Wardy’s, so many eras.

Have a sip of wine and reminisce with loved ones in the October moonlight.