I wrote recently about Grand Marais, Mich., and how among the things to see and do in the area was something called the Pickle Barrel Museum. I wondered what it was about, perhaps the evolution of pickle barrels?

Steve Stansbury filled in some of the gaps on the Pickle Barrel Museum and more about the area. He’s a friend of Jan Carol, who he said was a disc jockey for KANE from 1979 to 1984. I think now you’d say she was an on-air personality.

Anyway she grew up in Lafayette, but Steve said she has family in Grand Marais, Mich., including a sister and brother-in-law who own a newspaper in the area.

Advertisement

Steve sent along some info about the museum, which shows a structure that looks like a giant pickle barrel. It was originally built as a summer cottage for William Donahey, the author/illustrator of the “Teenie Weenie” comic strip, about 2-inch-tall people who lived under a rosebush.

The house was built by the Pioneer Cooperage Co. and was an actual pickle barrel, though on a grand scale, standing 16-feet tall.

Donahey created a number of advertisements for Monarch Foods Co., one of which featured a pickle keg that was used as a house for some of the Teenie Weenies.

Monarch built the pickle barrel house as a surprise for the Donaheys. I bet Mrs. Donahey was really surprised with a cottage that looked like a big barrel.

It later was used as an ice cream stand and later still was taken over by the Grand Marais Historical Society.

n

A Sweet Talk reader e-mailed a comment to which I can certainly relate.

She said, “I just had a call from a charity asking me to donate some of my clothes to the starving people throughout the world.”

She continued, “I told them to go to hell! Anybody who fits into my clothes isn’t starving!”

 

It’s amazing how so many years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, stories related to the shooting continue to be in the news.

Just the other day I saw an Associated Press report that told how some for years have suggested that someone had faked a well-known photo of assassin Lee Harvey Oswald holding a rifle in one hand and Marxist newspapers in the other.

Over the years, many said inconsistent lighting and shadows suggested the photo had been doctored, presumably by those involved with the cover-up.

But a Dartmouth College professor who is the director of a Computational Science institute said the photo is not doctored.

He uses digital forensics tools to analyze images for law enforcement. He knew the questions about the photo, but held off checking it until recently when he found appropriate software to help study the picture. Based on the information provided by the software and the experience of this expert, the photo was not fake.

He said even he was skeptical of the picture before his recent study.

Of course some will suggest he’s the latest to be part of the cover-up that’s prevented the truth from being revealed since the 1963 shooting.

WILL CHAPMAN is publisher of The Daily Iberian.