I’ll first describe the setting. Mackinac Island (French spelling) is near to the bridge that connects the two peninsulas of Michigan. To get to the island one must take the ferry from Mackinaw City (English spelling) on the Lower Peninsula or St. Ignace from the Upper Peninsula. Mackinac Island has a fort that controlled the straits (the connection between lakes Michigan and Huron. The island was designated the second national park (after Yellowstone) but was later demoted to a state park. Though much of the island is protected park land, there is a little downtown area, lots of cottages, a second home for the state governor, and several hotels to serve a thriving tourist industry. An important aspect fuels that tourism: cars (motorized vehicles in general) are banned from the island. All transportation is done by foot, bicycle, or horse-drawn carriages and wagons.
Here is a picture of that bridge, taken from a spot a bit west of the hotel. The total length of the bridge is about five miles.
Grand Hotel was the site of our event. That also deserves a description. This is a huge hotel (almost 400 rooms) that sits on the hill above the town. It originally opened in 1887 so that railroad and steamship companies would have an upscale place to take (second generation) rich passengers. I took a tour with the hotel’s historian who also described what it takes to run such a place. Their season is May 1 to November 1. During the winter they even shut off the heat. During the summer they have 800-1200 guests a day. That means they serve 3,000 to 5,000 meals a day to guests and staff. Much of the food for the day leaves Eastern Market in Detroit at 2:00 am. The truck may be put on a barge to get to the island, but it can’t drive off that barge – all that food is transferred to horse-drawn wagons to get it up the hill. The tour concluded with a glimpse of the huge kitchen.
I said the season begins May 1 and the calendar still says April as I write this. Yes, we were there before the official start of the season. That means I got my room for about 40% of the expensive high season rate. We were their first guests of the season, so some things were not quite ready – the main entrance was being repaired, so the red carpet was still rolled up nearby, awnings for the porch were still in the main parlor, parts of the facade was being painted, so our view was interrupted by a couple cranes. Their famous geraniums (all bath products are geranium-scented) had not yet been planted in their boxes across the front (during breakfast we watched the dirt-filled boxed being installed in their frames). The swimming pool still had snow in it. The main dining room didn’t open for dinner until our second evening, so we needed to go down the hill to one of three open restaurants. But if you didn’t call the taxi office by 5:00 there was no way to get a horse-drawn taxi to take you down the hill. A lot of horses were still in their winter homes off-island. Many of the shops were still closed, though a few of the fudge shops were open.
Yes, Grand Hotel was the setting of the 1979 movie Somewhere in Time starring Christopher Reeve and Jayne Seymour. Reeve’s character is fascinated by Grand Hotel and does a bit of time traveling back to 1912, where he falls in love with Seymour’s character. He is transported back to the modern era when he finds a modern penny in his pocket. I thought about that as I looked around the hotel and my room – computers at check-in, electronic thermostats, hair dryers, single piece tub inserts, modern phones, giant modern photos in the halls, and (gasp!) wall mounted televisions. Grand Hotel in 1979 (when TVs were banned) might be close enough to 1912 for the time travel trick to work, but Grand Hotel in 2018 is not.
The event organizers had arranged with one of the two ferry companies to sort out which luggage goes to our rooms and which is bells and equipment to go to our event site. Things mostly went smoothly. Even the ferry company had just started its season the day before I went. The ferry company offered a new offsite parking lot this year. Instead of paying $25 a day at the pier one could pay $5 a day about a half-mile away and use their shuttle service. Since it was new their ticket office hadn’t yet figured out how to describe how to get there, didn’t yet have maps, and didn’t yet have signs. One agent gave directions and I couldn’t find it. I went back and got directions from another agent. The second set, while better than the first, was also inaccurate.
The hotel offers a continental breakfast, full of sugar and carbs, and not suitable for my diet. I mentioned this at check-in and was told I could talk to a server. So for three mornings I had a generous plate of ham and cheese for my breakfast.
The event is what we call a bell festival. All or part of 28 bell choirs, about 270 people with bells, equipment, and tables, filled the hotel’s theater. Our invited conductor rehearsed five pieces with us Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, getting all of us to play together and do so musically. In the afternoon we performed our concert to whatever crowd (maybe 150) who could squeeze in along one side. Our director is good at this kind of event and the concert came off quite well. That many bells together is a glorious sound. Also part of the concert was a husband-wife team who played a couple pieces for just eight bells, holding two bells in each hand. They had done an hour-long concert Friday night.
Friday evening was our first dinner. Grand Hotel has a dress code for the evening, though it wasn’t yet enforced. I had taken my sport jacket, so wore it with a tie. The dining room is elegant and the waitstaff is in full dress. I was impressed when a steady parade of waiters came out the kitchen door so each table could be served each course at about the same time.
On the way home I had lunch with Barb, a second-cousin, and her husband. Her grandfather and my grandfather were brothers. It has been a long time since I’ve seen her at a family reunion and since our parents are gone such reunions are much less likely. I shared a chart from my genealogy database showing our joint ancestry. She shared photos of family reunions, one from the 1990s and one from the 1950s. For photos of the later reunion I helped identify my side of the family, she identified hers. For the earlier photos we had to rely on names written on the back. I was surprised Barb had photos where the names were in my mother’s handwriting. I’m sure that was from a time when my mother sat down with her mother-in-law and a stack of photos and asked for the name that went with each face.
The most impressive photo Barb shared was from 1918. It showed both grandfathers with a third brother in their military uniforms posing for a professional photographer. We’re pretty sure the photo was taken after the war because the third brother joined the Army about four weeks before the Armistice and was honorably discharged four weeks after that. I’ll share that one with family after Barb is able to scan it.
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