Dipping into the past

So you're waiting for Lake Superior to warm to sixty degrees before subjecting your comfortable body to the blood-thickening, headache-giving, pristine waters for a summer "dip" (most swimming pools hold temperatures between seventy-five to eighty-two degrees). Dip is the proper word for most people's ventures into the greatest of the Great Lakes because they seldom last very long.
When you read this story, it will be the height of summer in the Upper Peninsula with all thoughts of the long winter put away for the next couple of months. What would you think about a dip into Lake Superior on the fifteenth of January? It happened, and the dip was taken by the Poor Man's Paul Bunyan, Carl Bergh, of Skandia.
In the 1930s, Bergh was known throughout the Upper Peninsula's heavy construction industry as the "Poor Man's Paul Bunyan" due to his tremendous feats of endurance and strength while working at a variety of jobs. Equipment operator, truck driver, sawyer (cross cut saw), ax man, pick and shovel laborer…he was not a big man, by today's standards, a little over six feet tall and about 200 pounds. But he was all muscle, extremely coordinated and determined—determined to out-work, out-hustle and out-everything men around him.
The late Walt Lindberg, of A. Lindberg and Sons in Ishpeming said, "Carl could and would do the work of ten men, but they didn't make equipment strong enough to hold together while he operated it at full throttle." My father, L.W. "Ike" Brumm, told me, "I never saw him slow down, it was always full steam ahead. He frequently told other guys that I wanted to see them just to get them out of his way because they were holding him back. He did his work and theirs, too."
In the fall of 1938, my father was the low bidder on the job to build the new Munising Dock. His bid of $72,000 was slightly lower than the others, many of whom were some of the largest heavy contractors in the Midwest, if not the country, because he had planned to build the new dock off the ice and falsework on the old dock. All the other contractors planned on using barges, which were more expensive and could not be used during the winter (That $72,000 bid would be equal to $850,000 today).
Consequently, the work could not start until the ice got thick enough to hold some of the smaller equipment necessary to erect falsework on the old dilapidated dock. Everything was organized and ready to go in late fall. The weather got cold enough in December, so work could start about the fifteenth. The crews went out on the ice and erected a falsework (deck) on the old dock and then built a ramp of earth in the lake from the shore to the falsework. The superintendent for the Brumm Company was Merrill W. Froney. His combination assistant, "gopher" and utility man was Carl Bergh. Bergh was capable of doing any job on the project in case one of the crew didn't show up or got sick. In addition, he wasn't shy about telling the crew what to do.
On the fifteenth on January, with the temperature about ten degrees below zero, the crew started to walk the pile driver/crane out on the ramp and to the falsework. By this time the ice was about six inches thick. When the pile driver/crane got to the transition point where the earth ramp met the wooden falsework, something broke on one of the supporting piling of the old dock and the whole machine went over sideways, through the ice and into Lake Superior.
The crane operator, Joe Blondeau of Marquette and Munising, jumped clear and didn't even get wet feet. However, the crane with the pile driving leads attached, lay on its side in six to eight feet of water.
Superintendent Froney, a highly experienced construction man and Michigan Tech graduate engineer, sent one of the crew up to the Beach Inn, a very nice hotel that used to be located almost on the beach at the dock entrance, to call my dad who was in Marquette at the time. He then set about trying to figure how to get the equipment turned upright and out of the lake. Froney set up an ingenious system of ropes, pulleys and cables and hooked them to one of the big four-wheel-drive Oshkosh trucks. These Oshkosh trucks normally were used to pull steel sheeting to the pile drive (no end loaders in those days). In spite of the weather, water and ice, this worked extremely well. In a few hours, the pile driver/crane was upright in the lake, but the tracks and everything below the bottom of the motor was under the icy water. The crew put a couple of planks from the earthen ramp to the operator's cab and Blondeau climbed back in.
Surprise! The motor started right up even though it had been laying on its side for the past three or four hours. He then went to put the machine in "travel" gear, but it wouldn't engage and the crane would not budge. After much inspection and checking, Blondeau and Bergh decided the exposed travel gear, which was under the bottom of the main body of the crane and between the tracks, had got jammed or damaged in some way from the accident. At any rate, the machine would not move and there was no way to connect any cables to it without causing more damage. What to do?
By this time my dad had arrived on the scene and was trying desperately to help find a solution to the very serious dilemma. They finally decided the only way the crane was going to get out of the lake was to disconnect or repair the damaged travel mechanisms under the crane and under at least five feet of Lake Superior.
How in the world could this be done? The water temperature was deadly. The air temperature was zero, the closest "hard hat" divers were in Sault Ste. Marie (and were prohibitively expensive even if they were available during the winter), wet suits and oxygen masks were unheard of at that time. On top of everything else, it would be dark in a couple of hours and the temperature would get even colder.
Things were at a desperate standstill when Bergh, who had been listening to the discussions, suddenly announced: "The only thing wrong down there is the ice has jammed the connecting rods to the gears." He went on to offer his services. "If you'll gimme a day's pay and a fifth of whiskey, I'll go down under there and get the ice loose so the thing will shift into travel."
Everyone looked at him like he was crazy but soon realized who was talking. If anybody could do it, Bergh could; my dad, whose mind was spinning a hundred miles an hour, thought for a minute and said, "You've got a deal!" He gave one of the crew members the price of a fifth and told him to run uptown and bring back the best one available. The rest of the workers started back to the scene of the disaster.
When they arrived, it was so cold that ice had frozen over the hole the crane had made. Bergh looked the situation over again, some blankets were hustled down from the Beach Inn and the fifth of whiskey (Four Roses) came back in the tight grip of the crew member. My dad and everyone else were so involved in the situation they were oblivious to the cold. They were all thinking the same thing: How the hell is he going to go into that ice water, swim or crawl to the damage, get the job done and get out without serious physical damage or getting killed?"
Superintendent Froney had some of the crew break a hole in the rapidly forming ice. Bergh then took everything off except his winter underwear and woolen socks and said, "Keep that fifth handy," and disappeared through the hole in the ice into Lake Superior and under the crane. After what seemed like an eternity, his blond head broke the surface followed by his big grin. "Just what I thought, ice was jammed into the linkage. Gimme that small crowbar."
With the crow bar in hand, he disappeared again. After another eternity, he surfaced with the same grin on his face and said, "Start her up and run her out."
Bergh was wrapped immediately in heavy blankets; he took his fifth, went up to the Beach Inn where my dad had a room, and got out of the soaked winter underwear and socks. He soon drank a good share of the fifth, went to bed, got up in the morning and didn't even have a small case of the sniffles. It's no wonder he was called the Poor Man's Paul Bunyan.
The pile driver/crane, running on its own power, used the pile hammer to break the ice and get back close to shore. Here it encountered a large pile of drift ice, which prevented it from going farther on its own. The crew hooked up a cable to the Oshkosh trucks and pulled it the rest of the way to dry land. It was just getting dark.
The dock was finished ahead of schedule, early in the summer of 1939, within budget and without any other accidents. It is the pride of Munising to this day. However, Bergh was not so fortunate. In January 1944, he and his wife, Ellen, were returning to their car after attending a dance at Ollie's Barn on Grove Street in Marquette. It was 2:30 a.m. when the couple was hit by a car driven on the wrong side of the road by a drunk driver who had three others in the front seat, all of them trying to see through a very small hole in the heavily frosted windshield. Bergh was killed almost outright and his wife was injured seriously. The driver spent a year in jail.
Bergh's wife recovered after a very long convalescence; but has since passed away. The couple had two children, Carl, who lives in Negaunee after retiring as a state policeman and Marie (Bergh) Neault, who lives in Marquette.
Bergh is sadly missed and never was replaced. His position as the Poor Man's Paul Bunyan is secure forever.
Now, maybe that "dip" into Lake Superior will seem a little warmer.
—"Oakie" Brumm

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