The character(s) of Burdickville
By Norm Wheeler
Sun editor
Burdickville, the hamlet on the southeast edge of Big Glen Lake, is full of history and characters. And if this area is the most beautiful in America, Burdickville may be the local enclave with the most charm.
Stop by Laker Shakes and talk to Elly O’Neill. You’ll find that her history here goes back a ways, just as it seems to with most Burdickville-ians. (Or is it Burdickvillians? The spelling is important!) Laker Shakes is just across the corner from the old Woodcock Dining Room that Mary Ann and John O’Neill bought and turned into La Becasse in 1979. (Mary Ann studied cooking in Paris at La Verne.) Both houses remain iconic local businesses. Elly and her sister Mary were visiting the family cottage in June of 2008 when Guillaume Hazael-Massieux (who purchased La Becasse with wife Brooke in 2006 from John and Peachy Rentenbach) told them they should buy Laker Shakes from Rich Hargreaves. So here are the O’Neill girls, back in the center of Burdickville again.
“People speed through Burdickville without stopping to see what it has to offer,” says Elly. “We love being back here, and we’re here to contribute to the community and to highlight the local food movement.” Inside the little front-of-the-house Laker Shakes shop you can find Gabe’s hotdogs from Maple City, Moomer’s Ice Cream, Leelanau County wines, Michigan beers, Great Lakes potato chips, sandwiches from Trish’s Dishes, cherries from Flaska’s Farm, So Good Coffee, Food for Thought preserves, granola from The Redheads, pastries from Adriana’s Cakery, and native son Tom Van Zoeren’s books about local history.
Elly, who lives in New York City in the offseason, relates that Laker Shakes has been a local hangout since 1985. Before that it was Dorothy Lanham’s Glen Lake Workshop (“the rock shop” to locals), and Lanham’s Service Station was right on the corner. “Burdickville is such a great get-away where people from so many places create memories and learn about local stuff because none of us are cookie-cutter stores.”
On the other corner of downtown Burdickville, Brooke and Guillaume continue the tradition of fine French food at the highest level of culinary excellence. They arrived in 2006 with daughter Margot when she was 3. (Another daughter, Lizzie, was born in 2008.) They came from Grand Rapids where Guillaume was a chef but wanted a change. “We really weren’t ready to buy a restaurant, but we visited John and Peachy in 2005, fell in love with the dining room, and then things just kept happening and we moved here,” says Brooke. The house next door was in rough shape, but Guillaume applied his skills to renovate the place for a family of four.
For Brooke, living in Burdickville is all about neighbors looking out for neighbors. “Right away Molly Flerlage from across the street loved Margot, took her under her wing, and invited her to birthday parties with the older girls. Those two were always together, and it was such a nice welcome and a huge help as we tried to keep a restaurant going.” Soon the Binsfeld girls, Molly and Nancy, were walking a couple of hundred yards from their house at the foot of Bow Road to babysit and to work at La Becasse. “These older girls really nurtured our Margot and Lizzie. There’s a great female energy in Burdickville. There has always been a restaurant on this corner,” Brooke adds, “and there’s a strong sense of community even though there’s not a traditional ‘downtown’. All of the shared history adds a fun, lighthearted focus to the fact that it’s a town in its own very small rural way.”
Tom and Sue Flerlage have lived across the street from La Becasse since 1982. Tom’s parents Richard and Freda built a cottage down by the lake in 1953, and then got the old Atkinson house that dates back to the 1880s. “It was an old farmhouse built of full dimensional lumber milled at the old Burdickville Sawmill next door,” Tom explains.
“That’s where John Crosby lives, and he’s over 101 years old,” Sue chimes in. “And Freda is over 99. And El Fauman lived to be 100. We must have really good water!” So remarkable longevity also lives in Burdickville.
Tom and Sue started to remodel the old farmhouse in 1982. While tearing down the plaster and lath they found whisky jugs in the walls. The huge pines by the lake were “throwaway trees” John Crosby brought when he worked in a CCC camp during World War II. “On this property was once the county poor house,” Sue adds. Tom has a couple of wonderful history books written during the 1950s by Nan Helm, who lived on the hill above Laker Shakes in a cabin before Gary Cozette and Joe Lada built their house there. Village Days and Village Days of Burdickville and Footprints Where Once They Walked are charming self-published recollections, and a few copies may still be available at the Cottage Bookshop in Glen Arbor.
Many of Burdickville’s current residents or neighbors grew up spending summers in Burdickville in the ’50s and ’60s (like the Millers, the Dekornes, the Faulmans, the O’Neills, the Binsfelds, Tom Van Zoeren), and as adults they just couldn’t stay away.
“I wouldn’t trade this spot on the lake for anything,” says Tom Flerlage. “My folks said whenever it was time to go home at the end of the summer that they’d always find me sitting down at the edge of the lake crying. This neighborhood is fiercely loved and protected by its inhabitants.”
“There’s a desire to keep the businesses that are here, and then keep things the way they are. We want to be able to turn this neighborhood over to our daughter Molly and her generation in the same condition we found it. I have a great sense of privilege and stewardship living here that goes beyond just owning land. Nobody takes for granted the beauty of this place. We all share a sense of protecting nature and sharing the woods with the community.”
Love of Burdickville has inspired Ton Van Zoeren, who lives just up Bow Road, to write several books of local history. One is Dottie Lanham of Burdickville: Images, Recollections, and Observations. From the book: “Dottie Lanham was born on Christmas Day, 1924—a fourth generation citizen of Burdickville, she grew up in Burdickville, married a man from Burdickville (Fred), and has lived the rest of her life in and around Burdickville. In 1997 she was named Leelanau County Woman of the Year. She continues the work to care for and preserve the Old Settler’s Picnic Ground and annual picnic on the first Sunday of August.” This book is a delightful collection of photographs and oral history about the original families and businesses. (Get your own copy at Laker Shakes or at Tom’s house on Bow Road.)
Van Zoeren is a retired National Park ranger, environmental watchdog/gadfly, and author. He and Alice sell his history books and organic produce along Bow Road. A permanent resident since 1985 who spent all of his summers here as a kid, Tom distinguishes the two-fold nature of the town: fancy cottages along the lake, and countryside living back in the woods. Tom’s great-grandparents had nine kids who all built cottages on the lake, and many stuck around. His mother was a Dekorne.
“I’m here because of the lake,” he admits. “This is still a lakeside town that started out a sawmill town. Changes have come. Bow Road is now paved, and the Burdickville Community Reformed Church, once a homey little chapel when we were kids, has become one of the biggest churches around. But a core group of locals kept the Old Settler’s Picnic going for over 100 years. There’s food, a polka band, and contests for the oldest and youngest attendees. It’s a fun old-fashioned gathering. This year the Old Settler’s Picnic is on Aug. 3.
The next issue of the Glen Arbor Sun will continue to profile Burdickville’s character(s) including Larry Faulman, Mike Binsfeld, Pat and Max Miller, and the history of Funistrada.) By the way: Max Miller, a standout on the Glen Lake School basketball and football teams in the mid 1990s, just got engaged to Heather LaBerge and is moving back to Michigan from California.
