Article published May 29, 2009
Set aside troubles and pick up a good book to read
ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Well, the auto companies are in trouble, Michigan is heading for a new budget crisis, and let's not even talk about the state's highest-in-the-nation unemployment rate.
You just can't think about that stuff all the time. Summer is approaching, and you ought to take at least one good book along to the beach or on your fishing boat. Fortunately the University of Michigan Press has just published two spellbinding books about two fascinating events in Michigan history.
The Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing ($18.95, paperback) is a must read for anyone who likes true crime stories - or who thinks senseless mass killings are a modern phenomenon. Andrew Kehoe had been all but forgotten, but he is one of the most mysterious and chilling killers in U.S. history.
Kehoe was a 55-year-old farmer who lived near Bath, a town about 10 miles from Lansing. He worked in his fields in a suit and tie, something as bizarre then as it would be now. He had a prickly personality and few friends, but he was very handy and an expert electrician. When he volunteered to do maintenance work at the gleaming new Bath Consolidated School, the trustees were pleased. What they didn't know is that he was methodically packing the school with explosives. On May 18, 1927, Kehoe calmly woke up and murdered his wife. He then burned down his own farm, carefully tying up his horses to make sure they'd burn to death.
Then, the school blew up. Kehoe drove up to the school in a truck he'd packed with explosives, called the superintendent over - and blew both men and several onlookers into eternity.
He left behind 45 corpses, three times the number at Columbine, and a hand-lettered sign that said simply "Criminals are made, not born." Author Arnie Bernstein did his best to answer the question, why did he do it? His conclusion: Nobody knows.The Toledo War: The First Michigan-Ohio Rivalry (Paper, $24.95) is, for the history fan, an even better read. Most people know vaguely that Ohio and Michigan fought a "war" of sorts over Toledo, back in 1835. But author Don Faber shows, much of what many of us thought we knew about it was dead wrong. Michigan, in fact, had a clear right to the "Toledo Strip," based on the Northwest Ordinance. But presidential and power politics got in the way.
"Never have I known of a case of which all the right was so clearly on one side, and all the power so overwhelmingly on the other," said President John Quincy Adams.
Ohio was already a powerful state and Michigan a mere territory, and President Andrew Jackson wanted to deliver Ohio to the Democrats in the next election. So Michigan lost. It did, however, achieve statehood. The war's other myth, that Michigan got the Upper Peninsula as a consolation prize, is half true.
Michigan already had the eastern half; the western half was thrown in. Writing this book was clearly a labor of love for Mr. Faber, a retired editor of the Ann Arbor News.
While the topic is serious, he is a fine writer, and his descriptions of the "fighting" is fairly hilarious. True, a Toledoan named Two Stickney stabbed a Monroe County deputy sheriff in the side before fleeing back to Ohio. (The man lived.) But otherwise, the action was straight out of the three stooges.
Incidentally, if you are wondering why Two Stickney was named Two, it is because his father named his older brother One. If you want to know what their sister was named, you'll have to buy the book. Oh, all right. She was named Indiana, naturally.
But The Toledo War is worth a read anyway.
•
Just Wondering: Everyone in Michigan keeps wondering why President Obama hasn't appointed Gov. Jennifer Granholm to a major job. The question should be, why should he?
She has scarcely shown a record of major accomplishment. Nor does she have the sort of distinguished legal record as a prosecutor and attorney general that would qualify for a major judicial appointment. Plus, she was a Hillary Clinton supporter who was a party to the disastrous attempt to rig Michigan's primary last year.
The President has now appointed an entire cabinet, including three choices for Commerce Secretary, and Michigan's governor has been left waiting. Best guess is that if she gets a Washington job, her title will have "deputy" or "under" attached to it.
Jack Lessenberry, a member of the journalism faculty at Wayne State University in Detroit and The Blade's ombudsman, writes on issues and people in Michigan.
Contact him at: omblade@aol.com
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