Travel Reference
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go. Paying attention to the suggestions of readers, I wore out several maps, and in the
end I decided to turn around and go back up north and take the ferry across the lake
from Milwaukee to Muskegon, Michigan. Thus, Racine redux.
Perhaps here is the place to explain to the many who insisted that the best way
around Lake Michigan was to the north, through northern Wisconsin and the upper
peninsula of Michigan, that that was the route I had followed on my previous trip. There
were several highlights I recall: a backyard barbecue on Lake Gogebic, the UP's largest
inland lake, with the family of a fellow cyclist I met on the road; bowling in Bruce Cross-
ing, Michigan, a town evidently named for my precise enterprise of the moment; and go-
ing through a photo album with the owners of the Mt. Shasta restaurant in Michigamme,
where scenes from
Anatomy of a Murder
were filmed.
Why a restaurant on the flats of upper Michigan was named for one of California's
highest peaks I don't know. But blowups of the film's stars—Jimmy Stewart, Ben Gazza-
ra, George C. Scott, Eve Arden, and Lee Remick, whom my father loved (“Super Shiksa,”
he called her), and Duke Ellington, who composed the sensational score—adorned the
walls. Here's what I wrote at the time:
My waitress was clearly too young to have been around in 1959 when the film was
made, but I was disappointed that she had not even seen it. Diane Billings, who owns
the place with her husband, Don, helped me wait out a rainstorm by producing from
behind the cash register a sheaf of photographs taken on the set. Mostly they were of
townspeople going gaga in the presence of so many celebrities.
The men in town liked to have their pictures taken with Ms. Remick, Ms. Billings
said, pointing to a wooden column holding up one corner of the ceiling. The men would
ask her to pose with her leg draped around the column, as she did, drunkenly, during one
scene in the film. Ms. Billings, who did not own the Mount Shasta then, said the res-
taurant had been turned into a hotel during the filming, and all the stars stayed there.
All of this delighted me; I had not expected to trip over this piece of Americana. And
I was not ready for the addendum.
“All except the Duke,” Ms. Billings said sadly. “Back then he couldn't stay here.”
That, of course, is Americana, too.
So I've gone out of my way on this trip not to repeat myself. I don't like the idea of back-
tracking, or of being in the same place I've pedaled through before. I don't like being
in Racine again, especially in the rain. But I do like the idea of the ferry. I've lived on
the shore of Lake Michigan, but I've never been out on it. And I like the idea of riding
