men, their protective clothing bulging them into concavities, 

 noted the young lady's convexities and paused to admire. Ignor- 

 ing them, she took off with a Sonja Henie flourish, neatly weav- 

 ing between the drifted ridges of snow on Tawas Bay. 



The two girls were week-end refugees from Detroit. Their 

 "sports shop" was one of fifty gaily colored fish shanties provided 

 free by the enterprising merchants of Tawas City and East 

 Tawas, Michigan. Several hundred fishermen were busy on the 

 premises, half of them in shanties, half of them braving the 

 breezes on the open ice. 



They weren't all having luck. A few men were spudding holes 

 alongside the girls' shantyj brash claim jumpers beside the big 

 strike. 



Scenes like this are part of the life of Perchville, a community 

 that scorns slow and sound civic growth by springing into life, 

 full grown and open for business, early in January. Perchville's 

 architecture is strange, its decor gaudy. Its mural art would put 

 Diego Rivera to shame. Gigantic red roses, playful trout, stately 

 deer, a menacing dinosaur, leap from the house walls as the 

 visitor walks down Main Street. 



The shanties are heated either with bottled gas or oil. Benches 

 are the only furniture, and here the occupants sit, roasting their 

 shirt sleeves, crouching forward to look down through a rectan- 

 gular hole in the ice. Their fishing equipment is a tiny rod, a 

 long leader, and either a hook or a spoon. 



The bait varies. For perch, a small shiner on a bare hook is 

 the most popular lure. Corn borers and grubs are also popular 

 baits with the experienced amateurs. Commercial fishermen 

 who roam the outer expanse of the bay looking for the "school" 

 use a Russian spoon and the eye of a perch. 



Occasionally walleyes, lake trout, and northern pike cruise 

 below the hole in the ice. To catch these longer fish, the angler 

 lowers an artificial minnow and jiggles it up and down. In his 

 other hand he holds a spear attached to his wrist with a thong, 

 and when the fish noses the bait he jabs it. 



Perchville has a mayor in Hank Greenwood, a charter-boat 

 skipper in summer, who occupies the varnished-log city hall 



103 



