Feature
Small town, rich history: Traunik at a crossroads
by Leslie Allen
Photos Courtesy of A.J. and Jeff Fischer
Traunik is a dot on a map, a blip on the radar, a blink in the
road. Traunik, north of Trenary and south of Chatham, is an historic
location named after a community in Slovenia, the home of many
of its settlers.
It’s an old logging village that sprouted and flourished
in the early twentieth century like so many others in and around
the woods of the Upper Peninsula, its population eventually whittled
away by mid-century changes in economics and culture. It sits
at a dusty and peaceful corner, holding fast to the crossroads
of H-01 and H-44, a small collection of houses, an old general
store gone organic, a meeting hall gone global and a schoolhouse
with a still-clanging bell.
Frank Bartol was born and raised in Traunik, and he knows its
history, having lived it and written about it.
“We no longer have a sense of community,” he said, sitting
at his kitchen table, talking over cups of tea and fresh-baked
cinnamon rolls. Bartol, a retired English teacher, wrote and published
Still Sits the Schoolhouse by the Road, a memoir of sorts about
the Traunik schoolhouse, now a Head Start center. The school,
down the road and around the corner
from Bartol’s house, is a modest building with a black, hipped
roof topped with a bell and cupola. Bartol attended the two-room
school from 1935 to 1942, and he recalls how the bell used to
ring four times a day; now, it rings only once in a while. He
tells the story of how he saved the bell a few years back when
the school’s roof needed fixing and the contractor suggested
removing the belfry to simplify the job. Bartol wouldn’t
hear of it. So today the bell still clangs, and that’s music
to his ears.
Next to the schoolhouse is the Traunik Hall, a squat, single-story
building painted white with dark green trim. A wooden deck spans
its front and double-hung windows march down each side. After
passing through a small entryway, one comes into a large, airy,
wood-paneled room—a dance hall with a raised stage at the
far end. The wood floor is worn and shiny, shined, Bartol said,
by decades of corn meal and dancing feet. An old pot-bellied stove
squats in a corner. Unadorned, single strand light bulbs dangle
from the ceiling. Short lace curtains on the windows filter sunlight,
and between the windows are photo displays, each with a theme
such as “Logging,” “Entertainment,” “Children”
and “Getting Together.” Each display tells a story of
Traunik, of loggers and farmers, of generations of hard-working
Bartols, Debelaks, Mikuliches, Knauses, Lusticks, Ostaneks and
others. The hall is steeped in antiquity, sweet and musty.
But on the Fourth of July, the hall rocks.
“The community exists in our history,” Bartol said.
“Because we got together to preserve the Traunik Hall and
create the Traunik Slovenian Club, that sense of community exists
once or twice a year because people come fr om
wherever they live to celebrate the Fourth of July.”
The Fourth of July dance annually attracts as many as 200 revelers
from around the world. They gather to eat sausage, potica and
strudel, to reminisce, and to polish the hall’s old floor
with polkas. In 2000, the mayor of Loski Potok (Slovenia), came
to the celebration, and Bartol said the crowd that year rose to
nearly 400.
From the start, the hall, built in 1922 as Lodge 387 of the Slovenian
National Benefit Society, has been a place for weddings, anniversaries,
reunions and Fourth of July festivities. The society dwindled
after World War II, and a local family bought the hall, renting
it out for special occasions. Then, in 1993, Bartol got the idea
to buy the hall and create the club. He compiled a mailing list
of 150 or so Slovenians with Traunik roots and sent a letter outlining
his plan and asking for financial support. Within a month, he
said, enough money came in not only to buy the hall, but to establish
a maintenance fund. The hall was rededicated at a ceremony on
July 4, 1993, with Bartol’s ninety-eight-year-old father
unveiling a boulder on which a plaque had been affixed. The dedication
was written by Bartol:
“To this place they came, beginning in 1912, and when enough
had come to form a community, they named it Traunik, which means
“meadow” in Slovenia, the country they left behind in
search of a better life.
“They brought with them a willingness to work and a desire
to succeed, and out of the forest they shaped fields, homes and
a good life for their families.
“This memorial is dedicated to them by their children and
grandchildren, now scattered about the world but tied by invisible
bonds to this spot, where once the night air was filled with Slovenian
melodies, and an ethnic community pulsed with life.”
Just down the road at Lily’s,  an
organic food market that has taken up residence in Traunik’s
old general store, there is new life pulsing, and on Sundays the
air is filled with the music of fiddles, mandolins, guitars and
even a stand-up bass as local musicians gather for a jam session.
A.J. Fischer, co-owner of Lily’s with husband Jeff, often
joins in.
“Sunday afternoons…we have a lot of fun,” A.J.
said. “Right now there’s an Irish fiddler who comes
from Trenary. Dan Flescher loves to come. We just never know.”
Lily’s opened in April 2008, and for the first anniversary
celebration, a special jam session was held. To accommodate the
crowd, chairs were brought over from the Traunik Hall.
The Fischers bought the flat-roofed, two-story frame building
on the corner of H-01 and H-44 in 2007. They had sold a screen
printing business and home in Florida, were staying at their home
in Chatham, and looking on the Internet for an old general store
to buy, renovate and turn into an organic market. They had no
set location in mind, but were oriented toward heading south in
the winter. Then one day they took a drive and passed through
Traunik, a place close to home, but a place, A.J. said, “We
never came to. It’s so out of the way.” And lo and behold,
there was an old general store for sale. The Fischers bought it
the next day.
The Mikulich family ran Traunik’s general store from 1926
until 1987, and it was the unfailing commercial and social hub
of the community. It was where people shopped, picked up mail,
greeted neighbors, and talked over issues of the day. Folks gathered
around the woodstove; children bought penny candy. Flour was measured,
sides of beef cut and, as Bartol once wrote, “There was almost
literally nothing that one could not either buy or order from
there.” The Mikuliches and their nine children lived on the
second floor of the building, above the store, and when Louis
Sr. died in 1961, Louis Jr. took over. In 1987 he sold the building
to the Morgans, who undertook renovations and reopened as an early-twentieth
century country store and museum. Eventually that enterprise closed,
and the building was idled.
The Fischers knew none of this history when they began renovations
in November 2007, but they quickly learned. They were welcomed
by the small community and soon began hearing its stories. In
addition, many old pho tos
and artifacts had been left behind by the Mikuliches and Morgans.
Some of these items now adorn the Fischer’s store, inspiring
others to bring in their old photos of Traunik and the area, of
family and friends. Jeff scans these photos into his computer
and adds them to a scrapbook he shares with customers.
From the outside, Lily’s looks remarkably like pictures of
the old Mikulich store. Inside, the Fischers have restored the
tin ceiling, preserved the wood floor and added a coffee bar,
mixing the old and the new with a deft hand. Lily’s bottom
line adheres strictly to organic goods and fair trade practices—A.J.
is passionate on the subject—but quirky postcards, paper
lanterns, fine wines and good beer, U.S.-made snowshoes, and many
other gizmos, gadgets and you-never-know-whats, round out what
one discovers at the store. The building’s second floor has
been remade into a chemical- and television-free vacation rental,
again with a strong flavor for the past mixed with a sensibility
for the future, like good diner coffee that just happens to be
shade-grown.
“I had a guy in here, his wife was shopping, he was sitting
here, looking at the tin ceiling, drinking his coffee, and he
goes, ‘I totally get this.’” Jeff smiles, and as
I sip my jasmine green tea, I get it too.
“You can slow down and reconnect a little bit with what you’re
doing,” Jeff said.
Much like during the Mikulich era, Lily’s offers the community
a gathering spot, drawing customers from Chatham, Trenary, Escanaba,
Sundell, Marquette and elsewhere. Their guest book lists folks
from far and wide, people passing through, people visiting the
area, those who maybe saw the Michigan Attraction signs out on
the highway or came across Lily’s Web site or just somehow
heard of this oasis a bit off the beaten path. In addition, Lily’s
offers a buying club, which helps customers get what they want
at good prices.
“We had a very lively summer,” Jeff said of their first
season in business.
They were somewhat surprised, A.J. said, that they stayed as busy
as they did this winter.
“We’re all jazzed for summer now,” A.J. said.
As music from a CD plays in the background, talk turns to the
Fischers idea for a full moon concert series, perhaps in the granary
out back, where Louis Mikulich used to measure feed and fuel,
nuts and bolts. The building’s in good shape; Jeff and a
friend shored up the floor last year, and this year, he said,
“We could knock this wall down, and put a stage in that other
area, and this could all be a seating area, put twenty, thirty
people in here easy, maybe even forty. In the summer time you
open this up,” the old loading dock door slides open with
a whir, “and it’s nice and cool in here.”
“Everybody loves music,” he said. I look around for
Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, but all I find is a speck of dust
and some scattered seeds, ready to sprout.
For details on Lily’s, visit www.lilys goods.com or call
446-3392. More information on the history of Traunik can be found
at www.traunik.com
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