On the second page: Asparagus is ripe in the Land of the Sleeping Bear

By Norm Wheeler
Sun editor
Or one could write “Lilacs,” or “Apple Blossoms,” or “Prom Gowns,” or “Temporary Barricades,” or even, as Swift Lathers wrote, “Boiled Dandelions.” Growing up in Oceana County in the 50s, I read The Smallest Newspaper in the World, The Mears Newz, published weekly by Mr. Swift Lathers, of Mears, MI, near Silver Lake and its sand dunes. You can see by the cover that 1950 was the thirty-sixth year of publication. The headline always broadcasted something new each week as being “ripe in the land of Mears,” followed by a long ramble of advertisements, local news blurbs and ad hoc observations by the colorful and eccentric Swift Lathers: “Last Saturday evening as I was returning from the broken plate glass windows of Dune Forest Village I went down the sand dunes at Silver Lake and met a G.I. agricultural night school pupil who had been drinking. He was coming up and I asked him if he was looking for some of his folks. He said if he thought it was any of my blank business he would tell me but that he didn’t consider it was.”

“Swifty” printed The Mears Newz for many years on his own printing press in his house, now the home of the Oceana County Historical Society. (Later on he walked into Shelby to print it at the offices of The Oceana Herald, where my great uncle, Rex R. Royal, was the editor, having inherited the local weekly from his father and my great-grandfather, Harry M. Royal.) Mr. Lathers was short, with a red Irish complexion and a shock of white hair, and he wore bright clothes in vivid colors: blue pants, an apple red shirt and a green tie. He didn’t drive a car, so he had to walk from Mears to Shelby, Hart, Pentwater or Crystal Valley delivering papers and stopping at the farms along the way to collect gossip and snippets of “news.” You could see him coming. I can still hear my mother say, “Here comes Swifty!” Anne-Marie Oomen, the poet from Empire who grew up in Crystal Valley, reports that her mother didn’t like it when Swift Lathers came walking by, because whatever he got out of you in casual conversation often ended up printed in next week’s Newz. After a chat with the Oomens one August he wrote ‘A ragamuffin band of Oomen children were out in their field eating beans right off the stalks last week.’ Oh, was Ruth Oomen embarrassed!
In later years as he walked along the roads of Oceana County, Swift would take rides, and my father Robert Wheeler often picked him up. He would ask questions and beam and slip me a quarter, and then he would rail against bureaucrats and the soil conservation district, both of which he saw as detrimental to the fruit farmers. There were as many cherry and apple trees within a five mile radius of Mears as anywhere in the world, (“including Grand Traverse County”, my Uncle Rex claimed), and Swift Lathers was as fierce an advocate of farmers and their way of life as anyone since.
Swift Lathers and his wife owned a large chunk of the Silver Lake Sand Dunes. Those dunes don’t cover as large an area as the Sleeping Bear Dunes, but they are balder and just “sandier.” The Lather’s cottage at the foot of the easternmost dune was gradually being covered by sand when I was a kid. Next to it was our “Dune Climb”, a place where kids exhausted themselves trying to climb to the top and then totally sanding themselves when they rolled down sideways. You could dig down into the sand in June and still find snow. When his kids were young Swift and his wife had carried all the lumber and materials they needed up onto the dunes to build a miniature village complete with a saloon and livery stable and mercantile. He called it Dune Forest Village, and it was more fun for kids than anything Disney ever made. But sand and vandals dismantled the village by the mid-50s, and Swift’s son started Bill’s Dune Rides. With fat, bald tires and bench seats welded on the back in rows, the Dune Cruisers took you up onto the sand to view Lake Michigan and the silver-blue water of Silver Lake. You could take the Scenic Ride (for old people only, we kids thought), or the Thrill Ride. It was the same adventure provided in these parts by the Warneses up on the Sleeping Bear. At the western end of the Silver Lake Sand Dunes one can still find Mac Woods Dune Rides whose advertising billboards have been staples along US 31 in western Michigan for over 40 years.
And the Oceana County of Swift Lathers is now the Asparagus Capital of the World. The National Asparagus Festival the first week of June has divided its celebrations between Shelby and Hart since the 60s with parades, cooking contests, the Mrs. Asparagus Queen and throngs of people as enthusiastic as we see around here at cherry-time.
So Empire’s Asparagus Festival this weekend took me back to my childhood, and it’s wonderful to see another town along Lake Michigan celebrate those succulent and masculine green spears. Seeking a way to write a column in each of this summer’s issues of the Glen Arbor Sun, I thought of Swift Lathers and the Smallest Newspaper in the World. I can’t match his wit or his charm, but I’ll try to convert his headlines into new ones about what’s “ripe in the land of the Sleeping Bear.” Help me by telling me YOUR stories. Write, call, email! This may not be the smallest newspaper in the world, but it can be the most fun!
Norm Wheeler’s columns will appear on page 2 of the Glen Arbor Sun all summer long. Write to us at gasun@mikeshouse.us