When Pine was King

Book excerpt: Lewis Reimann was the son of German immigrants who ran a boarding-house for miners and loggers in the Iron River district of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. When Lewis C. Reimann brought out his volume of reminiscences of early life in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in 1951, Between The Iron and the Pine, consisting of the author’s recollections with anecdotes and historical commentary about the region, he thought of it mostly as a labor of love in connection with a centennial at Iron River, his birthplace. Reimann conveyed a sense of the occupational lifestyles and multiple ethnicities of Iron River’s inhabitants and dealt in some detail with its folklore, material culture, foodways, and memorable local characters. Between The Iron and the Pine enjoyed such a wide success that it was as surprising as it was gratifying to its author—and it was only natural that he should write a sequel. This book, When Pine Was King, first published in 1952, with its locale in the semi-wilderness land across the Straits of Mackinac, treats of the early days of the Upper Peninsula when men were men and every lumberjack could lick his weight in wildness...or thought he could. Another gripping read from Lewis Charles Reimann.