Scope and Content"To Push a Mountain in the Sea" by Nina Peasley Lake Kalamazoo was loved by artists, sailors and resorters, as well, of course, by the villagers who called it more familiarly, "the river." It actually was a part of it, formed delightfully by a sudden whim to enlarge its scope - after the bayou wilderness above it, and just before it confined itself to meandering between the wooded dunes on down past the light house, to finally lose its identity in the crystal green waters of Lake Michigan. To see the little lake on a summer morning from the bridge above the small resort village of Saugatuck was to be reminded for all the world of a picturesque Swiss scene. The terrace, roofs, church spires and school house tower led down to the neat white hotels, the fishing dock and several marinas that fringed its shore. Across the lake rose Mount Baldhead that "monarch of the dunes." Yet returning service men from the Pacific, looking on the craggy theatrical illusion of Mount Baldhead against a star-studded night, have more than once remarked, "Kinda reminds me of Old Diamond Head." It was neither of those, though, but more like the travel brochures claim, the "Cape Cod of the Middle West." Even more than its physical appearance, the characteristics of its residents bore witness to their New England ancestors, who had come by oxen and ships in the 1830s. But as that century waned, the lumber supply and shipping dream was slowly buried under the shifting sands. Even the ship builders moved on up the river to "the flats" of Saugatuck to enter into a new mushrooming industry, the summer resort. It was one of these expert ship's carpenters whose fantastic genius conceived the plan for the Big Pavilion, to house the "biggest ballroom west of New York." It was a great red barn with high curving roof, topped with even taller cupolas and spires at each of the four corners, and the whole outlined with thousand:, of electric light bulbs. Small wonder that the Big Pavilion would become the landmark of the area. The slope to the river afforded a second level for a restaurant and bar, "The Dock," in front of which was a wide board walk and dockage for boats. After a Chicago to Mackinac race, even the forest of masts from the sleek yachts tied up seven abreast, could not top those spires above the pavilion. Many a name band today remembers the ballroom, the lofty curved rafters studded with necklaces of lights. Around the promenade were hung chandeliers of various sizes of colored globes, like those designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for Chicago's old Midway Gardens. Everywhere flags waved to add to the carnival spirit which focused on the orchestra shell lit up like a theater marquee. Whole families visited as they watched the young ladies in bouffant party dresses dip and sway with the young men in white flannels or silk pongee suits. Middle-aged women sold yards of dance tickets and collected them at the gates to the dancing area, giving the whole, somehow, the blessing of a Ladies' Aid. Or so it was until after that Armistice Night in August of 1945 when everyone snake-danced, laughing and crying around the floor. No tickets were collected that night. The next season styles and freedoms had somehow changed. When the young men returned the "over 21" group preferred the light-heartedness and the combo of "The Dock" to the "Cokes" and stately beat of the ballroom above. Changing owners tried to bring back ballroom dancing, but in time were forced to substitute bingo, bridge, square dancing, an "Arts Ball," jazz festivals, everything from antique shows to wrestling. The ballroom was like a Victorian belle who, though she had lost her popularity, kept trying to keep up appearances. The village changed little. There were a few more indoor bathrooms, some fresh paint, and more sophisticated antique shops, but in spite of the mechanized anonymity which was reducing the city folks to conformity and a pasteboard existence, the village continued at a three dimensional level. The roving red eye of the radar on top of Mount Baldhead now searched the skies for a potential enemy, but at Christmas the tower was occupied by an illuminated star which looked down on the snow-covered pines across the glistening ice of the river and the great sleeping hulk of the pavilion, finding its message echoed again and again m the brightly decorated village. Thus the villages lived in faith with themselves and each other, confident that their homes, their way of life. would survive the rest of this century. Until the fall of 1959 when suddenly the Mount Baldhead Hotel in the heart of the village had a flash fire that left only one end standing, a naked cross section of beds and dressers inside three papered walls, like a bombed-out ruin. The fire was conquered quickly, the wind was off shore and the Old Rail Inn across the street served dinner as usual. But tension mounted as those in the village began to regard the great empty dry shell of the Pavilion, realizing that a fire there held the threat of destroying much of the village. Then, on May 6, 1960, the fire siren blew long and loud. Had it been Saturday, it would have been just the traditional blowing of the whistle at noon, so that all might set their timepieces to get in step for another week. But this wasn't Saturday, this was Friday, and it wouldn't be noon for another ten minutes. Black smoke was curling up from the Pavilion as the whole community shared one solemn thought, the direction of the wind. It had been gentle, but slanting in the path of the hotel across the narrow street. The trash man said it had been so, ten minutes before the alarm. Wally, the yachtsman, verified it, and none were more sensitive to weather than sailors. It was not surprising then, that same planned for evacuation in the village. Mrs. Ball took her suitcase from the top shelf to the fire. It contained family photographs. Though it was May the barber rushed home to put his wife's fur coat and a few things in the car before leaving it on the hill by the highway. Directly across from the ballroom entrance, Emily Lamb of the Hollyhock Restaurant wasn't thinking of herself as usual, when a half dozen boys offered to carry what they could to safety. The heat had "cracked a window, melted the plastic tops of the sugar jars, and a pink candle leaned until it was bent double when Emily decided to have her son's record collection carried to cooler quarters. Fire departments from 13 communities hastened to assist as telephones and radio spread the news. Fire brands flew up in the air landing across the wide lake, setting fire to the dry woods and a two story house on the first hill beside Mount Baldhead. It seemed like only moments later that the school bus, filled with boys, wet brooms and blankets, arrived and the hills were filled with ant-like figures, beating out the sudden fires that appeared everywhere. One of the cupolas from the Pavilion, dragging a fiery tail of tarred roof, slipped from its high perch and landed in the lake. It went down the river like a flaming Viking ship going to its ultimate destruction. Men in boats pushed it with boat hooks on down the channel lest it set fire to the docks, cottages and, woods. At last it spent itself near the oaks and weeping willows which James Fenimore Cooper had used as an Indian site in his book Oak Openings. The professional fire department from Holland made a record run to shoot a Niagara of water over the hotels nearby. It was their chief who said that never had anyone seen such courage as those local volunteers who continued to fight the fire with blistered faces and hands. The Saugatuck Woman's Club was meeting that afternoon in the brick building just behind the library. A former resident was scheduled for a book review and the Woman's Club president was serving coffee and special chicken sandwiches from a recipe from Marshall Field's to the speaker and the board. The Civil Defense leader reported that the area had been alerted by radio far a tornado, but the breeze continued gentle and turned riverward as the walls, in one last burst of flame, collapsed. And then the rains came. Saugatuck was safe! Coffee and sandwiches were brought by neighbors to the firemen. The druggist's supply of Unquentine was distributed to the firemen. It was, as a minister said, as if "the whole town had become a fire department." Typical of such independent action is a paragraph from The Commercial Record's report: "The cruiser Liza Jane was tied up in back of the Hotel Saugatuck, when Julie Dorn tried to get back to the hotel for a better look, the skipper barred the way brandishing a wicked boat hook. He stopped her, but not until after she had delivered a stiff reprimand." The Woman's Club president and her guests went back to their chicken sandwiches, only to have a telephone reminder that Roberts says you must open and close a meeting, and, besides, members and guests were arriving. Again, lunch was abandoned for the book review. The book was Billie Burke's "A Feather on My Nose." At its conclusion a former Woman's Club president, Gracie Wilson, whose husband and two sons were still fighting the fire, rose and said, "This has been a wonderful review, yet all the time I couldn't help but think of Nero fiddling while Rome burned. We ought to have been thanking God our village is still here." This, too, was the theme of the next week's Commercial Record, "Thank God, it's happened. It's over." I thought of Saugatuck then as like Moses at the Red Sea. Both were stories of fear, of faith, and deliverance from evil. Time, too, for me to appraise the sentimental accumulations that have grown in a life that has paralleled that of the Pavilion. I must reduce them, somehow, to a suitcase of all that was really important in a world of uncertainties. Debating between the worth of such intangibles I found a couple of tiny loosened pages from a "Y" pocket Bible left over from World War I. Rescuing them from a wastebasket where I had tossed them, I read, "For verily I say unto you, that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, `Be thou removed and be cast into the sea, and shall not doubt it in his heart, but shall believe, those things he saith shall came to pass, he shall have whatsoever he saith." And as Wally told how the breeze had moved slightly counterclockwise, but just enough to carry the embers out over the river, until after the wall collapsed, he remarked with his special smile, "Someone must have surely been watching."