| 15 August 2006 View of the Bay I am in the guesthouse over the garage at the compound. It is early, and there is a long road ahead. But not now. I imagine the news is on the radio somewhere, in between the country music stations, and the frantic ads from the merchants to get tourist dollars before the season ends. There might be news about the plot to blow up the big bridge across the Straits of Macinaw, but I can wait to find out. I will be traveling the other direction, after all. I like the guesthouse. It is a nice arrangement, having a spare apartment on the property, and it gives everyone the illusion of privacy. The winds came up off the bay sometime after three, blowing the covers back on the bed and filling the room with the smell of fresh water. I got up to close the place down on the windward side, and wondered what to do with my life. The next one, that is. I didn't have any answers, except that the wind smelled good, and the sound of the breakers on rocks of the beach was soothing. Bayside is a blue-collar town, or at least it was before the land-rush of the late 1990s. That is when they tore up the tracks that paralleled the water and built the McMansions and planted the trees that rob the lower half of the view of the water from the bluff. Bayside still is a place where they actually made things, and that makes it different from the little resorts that cling to the side of lake Michigan. It had small factories, and a little agriculture. There was just barely a critical mass of people who could work with their hands, and access to the broad glittering water. That is how it is survived the timber rush, and then the flood of tourists who used to come up on the boats from Chicago and downstate Indiana and Ohio to survive the swelter of the summer before air conditioning. Ernie Hemmingway liked it up here. He wrote about the family cabin on Walloon Lake just to the south, and squired himself around town in his Ambulance Service uniform after he was wounded in the Great War. He used to hang around Bayside High School to wait for one of his sweeties. They would lock him up today, Nobel Prize and all, but those were different times. The hotels were vast palaces made of wood, and lit with gas. That is why they aren't here anymore, Not the Arlington, or the Imperial, or any of a dozen of the big places that could seat hundreds in their dining rooms. They all burned to the foundations, and those were covered with weeds in the Depression. Then the little city was a sort of third world place with a first class view. There were little parts places that provided piecework to the auto industry, and specialty goods. The people still came in the summer, but not in anything like the numbers they did. That is why having a meal ticket is a big deal here. Maybe the only deal that separates the locals from the Fudgies, which is what they call the summer people. The Fudge stands do a strong business between Memorial Day and the end of the summer, which is coming so near that you could touch it. I don't know anyone who eats the stuff. It is so rich that it makes you sick, and it is with a grim fascination that I will stop in Charlevoix to watch the kids push the great mounds of molten sugar around on the marble tables to make the loaves of congealed confection . Being able to stay here, year round, in some sort of comfort takes some thinking. Nearly everyone has to go away to make enough money to survive, and by the time you have achieved the small pile, it is nearly too late to enjoy it. I know the cold is coming, and not long after Labor Day. The summer people will go, and he little cabins will be shut up for the winter. Bayside will shed more than half her transient population, and the shopkeepers will count their receipts, hoping it is enough to cover things through the holidays and turn a profit. They work hard for their money up here, and nothing is a sure thing except the coming of the snow. I think I could figure out a gig that would provide enough of a meal ticket to live here. When the wind is right, and the sun is shining, is sure is attractive. Bayside is a nice place, provided you have a view of the bay. Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |