The Other Side of the Lake
By Donald Holmes Lewis
Published May 29, 2009 in the Cheboygan Daily Tribune
On Memorial Day, I decided to drive all the way around Mullett Lake. It was a brilliant late spring morning and the wind was a steady thirty miles an hour from the east. White caps rolled over my dock like ocean waves. I had never truly investigated the lands on the opposite side of the blue water though I’d thought of doing it for years. Always too busy. I spend too much time in the car already. Now that we were residents of Cheboygan County, not knowing much about the area across the way was bothering me the way a crying baby does when you’re concentrating on writing. This day I had nothing planned; all the yard chores were done and only if I made up a new repair job out of thin air would I have another reason to deny my natural curiosity about the other shore. There were no story deadlines looming.
I started north from our cottage in my old Jeep Cherokee along the Straits Highway and turned right on Route 33. Crossing over the Cheboygan River, I checked out the quiet flowing waters hoping to see the pontoon and speedboat flotillas of summer, but cold clear weather had kept the boats mostly on their hoists for the holiday weekend. It made me sad for all the proprietors who count on river traffic to make a living.
Since I’d been to the Hack-ma-Tack restaurant many times, I skipped the first turnoff and continued to the Other Road. I followed the straight line gravel south along the northern most bay of Mullett and turned southeast along McDonald Road. Beautiful cottages. Watercraft everywhere eager to set sail. Green yards and pines and birch. It reminded me a lot of our shoreline on the other side of the lake.
Then the scenery changed and so did my plans for the day.
Forced by dead end streets and “no outlet” signs back towards the highway, I climbed the half mile long eastern slope towards the top of the hill. Beautiful farms with fresh grasses in their fields stretched out on either side of the road. This was high ground. I parked over a culvert and reached for my binoculars. Leaning out the window, I trained the lenses on my shoreline across the way. The view was spectacular. I could see Dodge Point clearly. I could make out the colors of the cars and pickups racing along the western side.
After turning south again on 33, I ran into two stranded Harley riders at the intersection leading to Aloha Beach. The sun was rolling across the sky to early afternoon, the wind still howled, and I saw from a distance their exasperation with one of the motorcycles. I touched the brakes on the Jeep and pulled over.
It was a couple in their early forties. Good looking, handsome even. Sandy beginning-to-grey long hair. Black boots, leather leggings and jackets. Scarves tight to their necks as protection from the frosty air. Helmets on the back racks. They were both staring at the carburetor of the woman’s bike.
“Can I help you guys?” I said opening my door and walking the shoulder.
“I don’t know how,” said the man. We introduced ourselves and he told me they were from Ann Arbor and on their way to Mackinaw City. He said he’d called the number on his Harley-Davidson Roadside Service Plan card but couldn’t get anyone on the line. “They’ll call me back in a minute or so. You ride?”
“Oh no, sorry,” I said. “I like four wheels under me.”
“You mean you’ve never been on a Harley?
“That’s right.”
He took his helmet from the back of his bike, removed his leather jacket, and handed them to me, explaining that Sheila would be happy to initiate me, that he’d stay and watch the dead machine and wait for the call. He said it was a great ride back south to 68, a straight shot.
As I settled into my seat behind Sheila, he pointed to the mature apple trees in the front yard of the farm beside us.
“Look at those trees. This area must have produced a lot of fruit sixty or seventy years ago. My family was in the business down south for three generations. Until my dad passed away.”
He smiled. Sheila kicked down on the starter and the next thing I knew we were flying down the highway, my arms tightly around her waist. Driving the shoreline would have to wait for another day.
The Hotel Topinabee
Published May 16, 2009 Cheboygan Daily Tribune
By Donald H. Lewis
Sometimes the urge for a great sandwich hits me like a kick from a mule and I have to respond, so I stopped at The Breakers restaurant in Topinabee for an olive burger not long ago.
Maybe it was the hint of summer along Mullett Lake as I drove south on the Straits Highway. There were docks going out with urgency. A few fishermen drifted out on the still blue water. Pickup trucks with empty boat trailers were parked near the public access.
Whatever it was, it made me hungry.
Sitting at the bar waiting to gorge myself, I asked my fellow patrons about what Topinabee was like back when steam and then diesel engines pulled passengers cars along the shore, stopping at the station in town.
Introducing herself with a smile, longtime resident Dolores Palmer offered images from the early 1950s: the old hotel with its elegant bar, the golf course above it to the west, and old Fords lining both sides of Old 27. People used to pour into Topinabee in the warmer months when the train made its scheduled early evening stop; salesmen, sturgeon and perch aficionados, and summer folk eager for a bit of relaxed lake life.
Delores referred me to the old train station turned library, and I thanked her as I wiped the mayonnaise from the corners of my mouth. I’ve always had an obsession for the ghosts of earlier days in the places I travel. Now that I’m making a permanent home on the west shore of Mullett Lake, my quirky need to see into the past required some serious attention.
At the library, Patty and Elizabeth welcomed me to the not-so-distant era of Topinabee as Michigan Central Railroad’s premier resort stop along Mullett Lake. Old photographs of the village in four gigantic black binders were placed before me on a long table.
I began with the written histories. The name Topinabee comes from an old Native American, Chief Topinabee, who lived in Grayling. Henry H. Pike was a good friend of the chief and he was about to open Pike’s Summer Tavern and Casino in 1882 in the location known as Portage, and he needed a good name (“Big Bear’s Heart” in Odawa).
I was fascinated right away by the pictures and stories about the old artesian wells of Topinabee. The bottled water from the Sanitas Springs along the track by the hotel was world famous, and the MCRR picked up loads of it every time they stopped. The articles said the wells had been buried many years ago under blacktop and stone, and local residents disagreed about where they were.
It was photos of old Hotel Top-in-a-bee erected after Pike’s place burnt down, however, that garnered most of my curiosity. I was nearly overwhelmed by the images of people in straw hats and bloomers picnicking, playing golf at the long lost Topinabee Golf and Country Club, and welcoming the motor launches Romeo and Juliet to the great pier jutting into the lake.
I eventually said my goodbyes to the library staff and started walking along what used to be the track line a hundred yards north to the site of the hotel, now an empty lot between two beautiful summer cottages. As I stood gazing out onto the water, a cold spring breeze picked up off the lake. I thought about the people in the photographs, a girl running down the pier from a newly arrived launch, the waitress staff proudly standing on the outside stairway, a handsome chef eagerly awaiting his guests in an empty dining room filled with white linens and chandeliers.
They all seemed happy to be getting the summer season started again, and wanted me to lead the way.