‘I’ve done a lot of things in my life’
From pet rooster to meeting Lynyrd Skynrd, Cross Creek bait shop owner facilitates fun
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one in a daily monthlong series about the people who live in Washington, Greene and Fayette counties, in recognition of America’s 250th anniversary.
Mike Milvet might know Cross County Park Lake better than any living person.
“I hunted and fished all my life. I’ve walked almost every foot of the park,” said Milvet, who grew up at the main entrance to the park before it was a park. “I know where there’s wild grapevines, little waterfalls. Mostly what I did all my life was either fish, play our games – tag, kick the can – or work.”
It’s little wonder, then, that the adventurous 1978 Avella High School graduate would devote his life to other people’s fun.
This summer marks the 41st year of Cross Creek’s Original Bait and Tackle Shop, a decidedly charming ramshackle building from which Milvet and his wife, Terry, sell live bait and other fishing supplies, rent and sell boats, repair motors, and provide all the snacks and drinks one needs for a day on the water.
“We’re open seven days a week. The park opens at 6, we open at 6. We cater to people having fun, going out on a boat,” Milvet said.
Before he was a career businessman, Milvet retired from the sheet metal construction union, and he’s always been a third-generation farmer.
“I’ve worked since I was 6 years old. My dad let me go out and pick stones and roll haybales.
“We used to have 45 head of beef cattle on the farm” across the street from his shop, Milvet said.
The land on which his shop has stood for decades was an inheritance predating the country’s founding. In the 1700s, a family by the name of Holmes came into possession of hundreds of acres. Over the centuries, the land was partitioned off. Somewhere along the way, large swaths of that land were bestowed upon Milvet’s ancestors.
“The Milvets got this farm, probably, I don’t even know, the ’30s, the ’40s? My grandparents owned it. They turned it over to my father. Then my father turned it over to me and my brother,” Milvet said. “We’ve been here ever since.”
With such storied history, it’s surprising the red-bricked business that has, Milvet said, done business with the Pittsburgh Pirates and Steelers, almost wasn’t.
“I went to live in Wyoming for two years, in 1980 and ’81,” said Milvet, who worked for a large sheeting contractor based in Washington, Pa. “I was 19 years old, I was just a kid.”
And the west was bigger and grander than his young imagination could conceive.
“The Badlands, it’s like you can see pictures of it, but you gotta go see the Badlands. It’s unreal. I love Wyoming. I could live out there in a heartbeat. I could have stayed out there, but my dad had the farm.”
If he’d stayed out west, a place Milvet has since returned many times, he may never have married Terry, a fellow Avella alum and mother to their two children, Jade and Michael. He wouldn’t be a doting grandfather to a sweet, 7-year-old boy. He very well may never have met his favorite band.
“We saw Lynyrd Skynyrd 10 times,” Milvet said, before launching into his favorite of the 10 shows, a night that lives in infamy, in his mind.
The setting: Star Lake Pavilion. Front row.
“We stayed there after the concert was over. These stage hands come over and they say, hey, you want to go meet the band?”
An easy yes. Milvet and his wife were escorted backstage, where the band graciously welcomed them. When Ronnie Van Zant extended his hand for a handshake, Milvet said, “I said, ‘I want a hug.’ So we give each other a big bear hug.”
That night, Milvet said, he and bassist Leon Wilkeson exchanged shirts – Wilkeson left the venue sporting Milvet’s Three Stooges tee, and Milvet took a signed tie-dyed shirt home.
He doesn’t know where the T-shirt is, but that’s OK; Milvet’s got the memory, one of oh, so many he is eager to share with his signature gusto with those who drop into his bait shop.
When the county began working on a new park, to include a fishing lake, in the ’60s and ’70s, Milvet’s brother-in-law’s father saw the opportunity for enterprise.
“[He] said, Mike, you know they’re putting that lake down there. You ought to think about putting a bait and tackle shop in,” Milvet said.
So he did. On two acres partitioned off his family’s expansive property, Milvet quickly built a storefront.
“At first this was just a block building. We got the block up, and the roof – it’s a flat roof, because we just got up as quick as we could – and then we put the tackle shop in. We had an early spring that year,” Milvet said.
They opened the doors May 11, 1985, and have spent every summer since helping people from near and far enjoy a day on the lake.
Along with facilitating fun, Milvet’s had lots of it. He’s been spelunking, has stood in awe at the base of petrified trees in Yellowstone National Park, taken photos of Devil’s Tower. He’s shared much of the country with his kids during family vacations, surprised the family with a wedding anniversary dinner disguised as a funeral. He has loved and lost a rooster named Kodah.
“I’ve done a lot of things in my life,” said Milvet, sipping cold water inside his shop.
And though he has traveled far and experienced incredible wonders, his life has unfolded, quite happily, right here in SWPA, on land passed down from one generation to the next.