A month ago, on or about April 1, we had a wonderfully great snowstorm and blizzard. That one was followed by another, almost as great, on April 11 and 12. Why was it great? It was so because later in the day, after businesses, schools and museums were closed, the snow stopped falling, the wind stopped blowing and the sun came out.
What a glorious sight to watch the snow begin to melt and the winter wonderland of early spring begin to disappear. It was only April, but it brought out the vacation feeling in me. But it also brought out the serious questions of the year: where do you go when gasoline is almost $4 a gallon, the Euro costs about a $1.60 and we can no longer trust the airlines to follow announced schedules?
The basic problem is, for me, that I am mostly tired of the first part of the twenty-first century. So far it has been a lousy century, with not many signs that it might be better in my lifetime.
Unnecessary wars probably provide the biggest contaminant, and these have helped to breed even more trouble—food cost inflation, a credit crunch caused mostly by the greed of big money, always, as usual, wanting even more, while blaming the problem on those poor people who would like to live the kind of life they see on television.
Oil prices spoil the joy of having a car. There are many more problems, so many I can’t list them all here. In a little over seventeen years, I will be 102 years old. So things have to get better pretty fast, don’t you think?
The worst thing that has happened to us is the initial “election” by the Supreme Court of George W. Bush. Of the fifteen presidents whose terms I have lived through, the current president is without doubt the absolute worst. As one of my favorite citizen speakers at Marquette City Commission meetings says in his preface: “These are my opinions,” and mine might be as valuable as what you just paid for them.
So, what to do for a real get-away vacation, one that will refresh the spirit and get one out of this lousy century, even for a time?
There is a place to visit where the dollar still has value and where a passport and visa are not needed. Furthermore, no air travel is necessary, so you don’t have to be shoehorned into a seat meant originally for a five-year-old child. No overbearing Homeland Security TSA person will be ordering you around and checking you out with his “wand.” Remember when a wand meant mystery and magic, when a wand was the instrument of angels? Now it is run up and down your back and up between your legs, just to see what you might be hiding there.
The magic place is the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, a part of Michigan, but with the feel of another country. Some people go to the Grand because of the activities available there; this season there will be such special events and offerings as Mother’s Day Weekend, the Grand Hotel Lilac Festival, the Arts weekend and the Wine Appreciation weekend, the Murder Mystery weekend, and the “Somewhere in Time” weekend, celebrating the wonderfully popular but sort of strange movie by the same name.
I have been visiting the Grand since 1973. The picture that accompanies this column was taken by me in July of 1977. I run it here because the picture could have been taken last year or you can take one just like it this summer. But some things do change at the Grand. For instance, all rooms have air conditioning now and are nonsmoking. The management also has installed a small TV in each room. Dump the TV, I say. What doesn’t change is the world which it has created. I go to the Grand for this world.
The Grand first opened in 1887 and room rates were $3 to $5. I missed that first year. By 1919, rates had gone up to $6 per day. The hotel was built originally by the steamship and railway companies who brought people to what was then thought to be a wilderness area.
From 1923, when the company first hired Stewart Woodfill as desk clerk, until 1933, when he became the owner, the company has remained in the control and management of the same family, although now the family bears the name of Musser. It must have taken courage and foresight to buy an old hotel on an island just as the Great Depression got underway.
For many years, the registration desk was on the main floor and management offices were behind it. All the activity surrounding check-in and checkout impinged on the social use of the grand lobby, and the desk was moved to the lower floor. At that time there were many more small, owner-operated shops along the lower walkway . . .

—Don Curto