Scope and ContentWhile researching the Bolton brothers for the 1998 museum exhibit "Heroes, Rogues and Just Plain Folks" museum co-chair [James Schmiechen] made some inquiries about the prohibition era happenings at his house, Belle Rive, 128 Van Dalson, Saugatuck on the west shore of the Kalamazoo River at Saugatuck. He had long heard that it had some gangster ties and attempted to check some of the rumors with a former owner, Winnie McDonnell. This is her reply. "Your note arrived and I got a kick out of the facts you know about Red Bolton. His sister, Marie, kept the family cottage for a long time and as you probably know she wrote a column for the commercial Record. She was so well known in town and they were all from the west side of Chicago, and my Aunt Mary Dillon Sromek went with both Red and Frank Foul. The Fouls had a cottage on [Lake Street], what would be across from the pie factory now. The Fouls had an Oldsmobile Agency in Oak Park and Frank was in business with Red Bolton. My grandmother had her food transported across Lake Michigan in the steamers and the chickens, hams and bacon were packed in dry ice from Wilson and Co. When the boat stopped coming (there was an interurban train that would take people from Saugatuck to Holland. I traveled on it a few times), anyway my grandmother ordered her food from Wilson Co. and Libbey Co, and they were sent by freight to Fennville and my Uncle John would drive over the river road to Fennville and she'd stop at farms along the way and pick up her vegetables, melons and cherries and peaches. She made pies in the big coal stove, she never made cakes, she did make biscuits for strawberry shortcake. Her meals were simple home cooked fare. She charged $2.00 a day for the meals and she told me it cost her $1.00 -- can you imagine $2.00 a day for 3 meals? We had potato salad for lunch and always a hot dinner with chocolate pudding or JELL-O. On Sunday morning she'd make eggs and bacon. She did have the sheets done at a laundry in Holland and they delivered them each week. She really worked hard. I stayed summers from the time I was 4 or 5 until I was 16 and I helped with the table and dishes. My mother came for the month of July and my Aunt Mary came for the month of August and they helped my grandmother with the resorters. She rented out the apartment on the back second floor. They had a very simple kitchen and two bedrooms and the living room was the room everyone had to use to go into the two bathrooms. They were the only bathrooms for all the resorters to use. I guess her prices were so reasonable people didn't mind and everyone that came were all friends of the family. She didn't take strangers in at all. Everyone still can't get over the fact we never had a fire - with the bedrooms all having cretonne [fabric] walls. My grandmother bought the material on Maxwell Street for a very cheap price and she tacked the material up on the walls to cover the two by fours. It was a miracle when you think of it. Of course the rooms were so small no one spent any time in them, only to sleep. How my grandmother hated a rainy day. There wasn't much for anyone to do if it rained and all the porches were outdoors. We'd all have to cram in the one screened in porch and try to play cards, etc. My Uncle John had a boat -- a launch they called it -- and he took the resorters down to the basin to swim every day. Yes, the river was clean enough at one time to swim in and the lake usually was too cold for the girls and the ride down the river was fun. He could take 10 or 12. I always sat out on the prow and was in charge of the docking and at night I used to make extra money by rowing the girls over to town to go to the Pavilion to dance and Jay [Myers] the ferryman, closed the ferry down at 11:00 p.m. and some times the girls would be stuck over town and they'd have to call for me to get the row boat and go and get them." --- In answer to more questions, including one involving the supposed visit of the mayor of Chicago to the house, Mrs. Winnie McDonnell sent a second letter. "I did have an Aunt Mary Dillon (John's sister) who married a man by the name of Sromek. He was a small time gambler, a Black Jack dealer in bars on the west side of Chicago. Well, Sromek is a Bohemian name and they decided to Americanize it to Cermak and that's where the rumor started that the Mayor of Chicago was the Dillons' guest. But his family name was Sromek, some time in his history they changed it to Cermak--Anton Cermak--but no relative either. My Uncle Jim was what we called in those days a small time bootlegger. He and his "friends" would buy Scotch in Canada and come back across the water then drive to Saugatuck and take the Scotch to Chicago either by car or they'd put it on the lake steamers, the City of Benton Harbor or the City of South Haven. The stuff would arrive at the docks of Chicago and my uncle would pick it up and deliver it to the bars on the west side. My grandmother bought the resorts for her son to keep him out of trouble and because he had friends, Red Bolton and Frank Foul, whose families had cottages over in town and they all could work all summer and keep out of trouble. We did have a lot of west side (then prominent) people come to my grandmother's resort -- Joe Smart, a Loop jeweler; Bernard Cruise, secretary-treasurer of the Plumbers' Union; John O'Keefe, president of the O'Keefe Coal Company and Fred B. Snite, president of the local loan company. My grandmother had quite a reputation as a cook and her meals were exceptional for cooking on that old coal stove. I'm sorry I can't say that the Mayor of Chicago was one of the customers."