Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
It is really quite entrancing. For a start, places like Edison's workshop and the boarding-
house where his employees lodged have been scrupulously preserved. You can really see
how these people worked and lived. And there is a certain undeniable convenience in hav-
ing the houses all brought together. Who in a million years would go to Columbiana, Ohio,
toseetheHarveyFirestonebirthplace,ortoDaytontoseewheretheWrightbrotherslived?
Not me, brother. Above all, bringing these places together makes you realize just how in-
credibly inventive America has been in its time, what a genius it has had forpractical com-
mercial innovation, often leading to unspeakable wealth, and how many of the comforts
and pleasures of modern life have their roots in the small towns of the American Middle
West. It made me feel proud.
I drove north and west across Michigan, lost in a warm afterglow of pleasure from the mu-
seum. I was past Lansing and Grand Rapids and entering the Manistee National Forest,
-loo miles away, almost before I knew it. Michigan is shaped like an oven mitt and is often
about as exciting. The Manistee forest was dense and dull-endless groves of uniform pine
trees-and the highway through it was straight and flat. Occasionally I would see a cabin or
littlelakeinthewoods,bothjustglimpsablethroughthetrees,butmostlytherewasnothing
of note. Towns were rare and mostly squalid-scattered dwellings and ugly prefab buildings
where they made and sold ugly prefab cabins, so that people could buy their own little bit
of ugliness and take it out into the woods.
After Baldwin, the road became wider and emptier and the commercialism grew sparser.
At Manistee, the highway ran down to Lake Michigan, and then followed the shoreline off
andonformiles,goingthroughrathermorepleasantlittle communities ofmostlyboarded-
upsummerhomes-Pierport,Arcadia,Elberta(“APeachofAPlace”),Frankfort.AtEmpire
I stopped to look at the lake. The weather was surprisingly cold. A blustery wind blew in
from Wisconsin, seventy miles away across the steely gray water, raising whitecaps and
wavelets. Itried togoforastroll, butIwasoutforonlyaboutfiveminutes beforethewind
blew me back to the car.
I went on to Traverse City, where the weather was milder, perhaps because it was more
sheltered.TraverseCitylookedtobeawonderfuloldtownthatseemednottohavechanged
since about 1948. It still had a Woolworth's, a J. C. Penney, an oldfashioned movie theater
called the State and a timeless cafe, the Sydney, with black booths and a long soda foun-
tain. You just don't see places like that anymore. I had coffee and felt very pleased to be
there. Afterwards I drove north on a road running up one side of Grand Traverse Bay and
downtheother,sothatyoucouldalwaysseewhereyouweregoingorwhereyouhadbeen,
sometimes veering inland past farms and cherry orchards for a couple of miles and then
sweepingbackdowntothewater'sedge.Astheafternoonprogressed,thewindsettledand
