By Pat Hickey

August 5, 2026

I authored the following article for Irish American News in September of 2020.  Since that time Cabo’s Ice Cream shop in Washington, Michigan City has turned to truck food service and can longer avail myself of their magnificent peach smoothies.  However, Indiana and Michigan produce magnificent peaches that knock the Georgia varieties into the cheap sears.  They are lush, luscious, and sinfully indulged for the better parts of July and August by this gourmandizing sinner and summer sailor.

From June until late August, I work as a tour guide for Harbor Country Adventures aboard the Emita II and regale the round-haircuts and other tour loving mariners with stories of the sands and seas, including a daily retelling of the disappearance of the Hoosier Slide that once dominated Michigan City’s shoreline, until its sands were mined out of existence and transported to Muncie, Indiana and the Ball Mason Jar Company.

The Hoosier Slide was an enormous sand dune, where people came to picnic, hike and enjoy the lake.  Lake Boats came from Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin carrying visitors to the Hoosier Slide. Alas, the rich and silky sands of our shoreline, made splendid glass for jarring fruits and vegetables. The Northern Indiana Public Service Corporation (NISCO) and its generating plant and cooling tower stand in place of the Hoosier Slide.

Peaches continue to grow at Garwood and Williams orchards here in LaPorte County, and Sevick’s Farmstand is only steps away from my front door. I hope you enjoy this recycled essay.  

Eat the Peach, Pitch the Stone, but Save the Ball Mason Jar – Hoosier Evolution

• Peaches were first cultivated in ancient China.
• The peach is a member of the rose family.
• There are two main varieties of peaches: clingstone (the flesh sticks to the stone) and freestone (the stone is easily separated from the flesh).

Would you like to throw a stone at me? Here, take all that’s left of my peach. Blood-red, deep: Heaven knows how it came to pass. Somebody’s pound of flesh rendered up. Wrinkled with secrets and hard with the intention to keep them. Why, from silvery peach-bloom, from that shallow-silvery wineglass on a short stem This rolling, dropping, heavy globule? I was thinking, of course, of the peach before I ate it. Peach – DH Lawrence

I live in peach country, northwest Indiana and southwest Michigan, and revel in the Lucious fruit all summer long. The Peach is the Ava Gardner of fruit, and it would damage a love-sick heart like Frank Sinatra’s with its tantalizing flesh, alluring syrup, and beguiling aroma. I can get huge, juicy, and fragrant Michigan peaches from the weekly Farmer’s Market located at 8th Street & Washington every Saturday. These are tree ripened beauties for $.99 a pound, or $15 a bushel. The way I go through peaches between July and September at the bushel would make sense, but I was never a thrifty gent.

The peach appeals to the wastrel, the prodigal and the easily allured. I would tear my Covid-19

Mask off, in front of Dr. Fauci and a squad of underfed, snarling Karens wearing I had Twenty Abortions T-Shirts, if offered a lush sunrise colored Michigan, or Indiana peach and gnaw on it to the stone and wipe my chins with the PPI intended to arrest Covid droplets.

I get allured. I devour peaches from July, until the supply runs dry and go fresh peach abstinent until next summer. I will eat canned and jarred peaches, which is like kissing a homely cousin, and dream of the return of Amish Peach Pies, Cabo’s Peach Smoothies, Peaches and Cream for breakfast and Fresh Peach Chutneys. I am a lousy baker, but a fair cook and peaches make a terrific addition to pork and chicken dishes. My peach pies are unworthy of the fruit itself. A cobbler? Maybe. A Pie, or cake? Not a chance in hell. Peaches make great sauces and jellies and living in this Hoosier Heaven I am surrounded by Mason Jars.

I have put up peaches. They never seem to live long enough to get par-boiled, peeled and sliced for the Bell Mason Jar. The Ball Mason Jar was born in Buffalo, New York, but moved to Muncie, Indiana, in 1889. The glass blown to make the iconic green tinted glass jars come from the sands of now vanished Hoosier Slide right here in Michigan City, Indiana.

The Hoosier Slide was over 200 feet at its peak and dominated the lakeshore, until the sands sent by the rail-car load to Ball in Muncie erased the dune from the shorescape 100 years ago. Ubi Sunt? Well, many of those jars, bottles, ashtrays and glassy gewgaws returned to the Lake and now are returning to the shore as indigenous jewelry which is sold by Michigan City Dune Billies in the many high-end Yuppie Shoppes for Fine People of Illinois (FIPS) on Franklin Street and near Lighthouse Mall.

Lake Michigan Beach Glass is formed by the undulating waves and time from glass bottles tossed into the Lake by idiots for generations. These are beautiful local artifacts that smart locals sell to the Fine People of Illinois for up to $65 per collection. God beat all of us to recycling.

When an idiot tossed his Old Dutch Root Beer Bottle, a Drewerys, a Green River, or an empty Ball Mason Jar into the foamy liquid of Lake Michigan, God began setting Nature to its task. “LO, make some Beach Glass for generations upon generation, while a I Smote this Yamhad’s ass!” And it came to pass!

So, a few decades ago some Yam head walking along the Lighthouse wall polished off a pint of peaches and tosses his Ball Mason jar into the mighty waves of Lake Michigan and then force and matter come together to make beautiful beach glass.

The great-grand daughters of the said Yam head take the South Shore Line from their hipster homestead in Streeterville on the Mag Mile, to play at the Blue Chip Casino and win a hundo-a piece on the slots. They take their boodle to Franklin Street and buy beach glass that originated when the grand-Yam head was too lazy to take his Ball Mason Jar home or find a proper receptacle.

The girls spend the last $20 on a bushel of Peaches at the market, then, they heft the fruit aboard the South Shore Lines for the long trek back to Streeterville. Peaches, glass, beach glass. Science, kids! Everyone loves science. I love peaches and Mason jars.

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Born November 8, 1952 in Englewood Hospital, Chicago Illinois, Pat Hickey attended Chicago Catholic grammar and high schools, received a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Loyola University in 1974, began teaching English and coaching sports at Bishop McNamara High School in Kankakee, IL in 1975, married Mary Cleary in 1983, received a Master of Arts in English Literature from Loyola in 1987, taught at La Lumiere School in Indiana from 1988-1994, took a position as Director of Development with Bishop Noll

 Institute in Hammond, IN and then Leo High School in Chicago in 1996.  His wife Mary died in 1998 and Hickey returned with his three children to Chicago’s south side. From 1998 until 2019, it became obvious that Illinois and Chicago turned like Stilton cheese on a humid countertop. In that time, he wrote a couple of books and many columns for Irish American News. When the kids became independent and vital adults, he moved to Michigan City, Indiana, Hickey substitute teaches K-12 for Westville, Indiana schools and works as a tour guide/deckhand on the Emita II tour boat. He walks to the Michigan City Lighthouse every chance he gets.