Lansing, Michigan

           After several exhausting hours of driving, I arrived at Cottonwood Campground in Lansing, Michigan with only an hour of daylight to spare. I hurriedly paid for my site, which was in between the camp store and the lake, and began to set up my tent. Michigan had experienced record high temperatures for the past three days, and the bugs were viciously unrelenting so close to the water. I slapped at the fiercely biting mosquitos, cursed, and yanked up my hood, struggling to cook a few skinny pieces of chicken before the sky went completely dark. I ate my simple meal by the ghostly light of a flashlight resting in the grass next to me. After a little while, the bugs began to die down, and I decided to get some rest. I tried desperately to get comfortable, but in the sweltering heat, it was utterly futile. An hour of sweaty tossing and turning later, I blearily stumbled toward the vending machine outside the camp store. With two less than crisp dollar bills in my hand, I was hopeful that the vending machine would not be too finicky. I fed in each bill multiple times, but no matter how I smoothed each bill flat or propelled it into the stubborn slot, the machine refused my petty tender. Irritated, I trudged back to my car, snatched several quarters out of my center console, and marched back to the machine, confidant that now it would see defeat. I fed in 5 coins, all of which slid into the cash box with a satisfying clatter. I selected a bottle of water, but to my utter dismay, it was sold out. I hit the return button, but nothing happened. I pushed the button feverishly several more times, and watched, enraged, as the little screen switched back to its original message. Now thirsty, tired, and annoyed beyond description, I slunk back to my tent, where I spent the hours until morning lying awake in parched, sweaty discontentment.

            At about 4 in the morning, the temperature finally eased up, and I drifted in to that twilight state between consciousness and sleep. Not half an hour later it seemed, a loud clanging noise began from somewhere off in the distance. The campsite was in a wooded area relatively close to a few commercial shipping sites, and apparently several semis had to fill up their tanks just before dawn. The pumps knocked repeatedly, feeling as though they were right upon my aching head, before a glorious moment of silence would bring a precious few seconds of relief. Two minutes later, it would start all over again.

            Completely fed up and drained beyond frustration, I arose and began to blearily pack up my tent. I plugged in my phone at the electrical socket, which along with a water spigot was the only meager comforts I was provided with, and allowed it to charge while I slowly and painstakingly collected my belongings. I found a place on Yelp to eat breakfast not too far away, and with a considerable amount of relief, I left Cottonwood Campground behind.

            The Golden Harvest sounded interesting, with rave reviews online. When I arrived, I was surprised to see that it was just a little place on the corner in an otherwise residential neighborhood. There were several tables outside, and from the view of the street, I could see that the inside was packed. As I approached, I began to hear the familiar sounds of electronic music blasting from the entrance, and a smile crept onto my face for the first time in 12 hours. I walked in or more accurately, waded through the densely packed tables, and took a seat at the counter. The music, the diverse crowd of people, and the vintage memorabilia that decorated the walls overwhelmed my worn senses. The kitchen was right in front of the counter, with a young man training a new girl as a cook. When the server squeezed past them and asked if I would like some coffee. Before he even finished his sentence, I replied, “Yes!” with a more desperate tone than I initially intended. He chuckled and immediately turned to retrieve a mug and the steaming pot. After taking a magnificent first sip, I ordered an omelet with bacon, avocado, and cheddar cheese, with some home fries, and watched eagerly as the pair prepared my meal right in front of me. It was unbelievably good, the best breakfast that I had eaten so far on the trip. As I left the restaurant, I realized that I was miraculously in a good mood, recovered from the unpleasantness of the night before. It is amazing how a fluffy can change the day!

            I journeyed toward the Capitol to begin my day’s research. It was 9/11 and I expected things to be a little more somber than they had been at other Capitols. Indeed, when I arrived, I discovered that a luncheon was being held for the first responders and their families, followed by a ceremony of some sort. Classes of third graders from a local elementary school filled up the tours for that day, so I walked around on my own, occasionally stopping to listen to a guide if my path crossed that of the group’s.  The thing that struck me about the Michigan State House was the intricacy of the painted designs on the walls and ceilings. Each hallway and room was decorated in a slightly different way, and none were left bare. The House and Senate chamber, much to my delight, were no plainer than the rest of the building. Each room was very similar in style, with stenciled paintwork out lining the architecture, and an enormous skylight with each of the seals of the 50 states emblazoned on a pane of frosted glass. The rooms each had large galleries, which were open to the public. They were very pleasant rooms to be in; the sunlight shining through the skylight and the decoration along with aura of history made me feel peaceful.

            The fourth floor provided visitors the opportunity to get a higher perspective of the rotunda, but the balconies up in the dome were closed off to the public, most likely for safety reasons. Having struggled with a fear of heights since a young age, I got a bit of a thrill peering down at the ant-sized people below. My phobia is no longer overwhelming, but I still feel a bit uneasy when I am so far up. Standing at the railing, it felt satisfying to once again look my fear in the face, and let it pass without pulling away.

As a result of my restless night, my energy was fading fast, and I wanted to get to the State Museum while I was still able to retain information. I walked the four blocks to the building slowly, my legs sore and throbbing from my lack of sleep. Upon arriving at the museum, I paid the small entrance fee, and traveled to the second floor to begin perusing the exhibits. One of the same groups of children and their chaperones from the Capitol were just starting a tour in the museum, so I waited patiently for the group to move on before beginning my journey through history and time.

I began at the settlement of native peoples in the region, and made it all the way to the representation of a copper mine during the industrial age. Turning from a plaque I had been reading on the opposite wall, I jumped about a foot in the air and let out a startled gasp when I saw a gentleman in a miner’s uniform standing right behind me. He apologized earnestly for surprising me, and I assured him that it was no trouble at all, still trying to regain composure with my heart beating as though I was being chased by a grizzly bear. It was then that I noticed his nametag, identifying him as a docent, and he asked me if I would be interested in hearing a little about the history of mining in Michigan, as he came from five generations of miners. I responded that I certainly would, and he launched into a detailed story about the labor of the copper mines. He told me that all of the equipment he was wearing was authentic, from his headlamp to his jacket, passed down to him from his family members. He described to me the toil that these workers had to endure for such meager pay, and that some of them would be climbing the ladder out of the mine at the end of the day, pass out from exhaustion, and fall to their death. Not only we they overworked and underpaid, but the mining companies also owned their houses. This came about because when the mines formed, there were no nearby towns in Michigan’s upper peninsula, so the mining companies provided housing, school, medical care, and other necessary supplies to the mining families. Unfortunately, this meant that corporations reached deeply into the lives of the miners and their families, and soon the workers were completely controlled by their employers. For instance, should the man of the household die in a mining accident, which was all too common in the days of no safety regulations, his widow had thirty days to vacate the premises with the rest of their family, or to find another miner to marry.

The miners soon became fed up, and a mass strike rippled across the state a decade after the turn of the 20th century. It was the first official strike of the region, and the stand off between the miners and the corporations that lasted 9 months would be known thereafter as the Copper Country Strike of 1913-1914. The Western Federation of Miners (WFM) was the organization that called for the strike, and with limited funds and the corporations unwilling to budge, many mining families were sent into poverty. Some left the region all together, seeking employment in the rapidly growing economies of Detroit and Chicago. As the winter of 1913 approached, the strike began to weaken.

In December of 1913, the Women’s Auxiliary of the WFM organized a Christmas party for the miner’s families. Citizens of the town and the union contributed funds and gifts for the children, and the function was held on the second floor of the Italian Hall in Calumet. A steep staircase was the only clear way of getting to the second floor. At the height of the party, with 400 people packed into the building, an unidentified man ran into the room and shouted, “Fire!” A panicked stampede ensued, and 73 people were trampled to death in the stairwell, 59 of them children. The worst part of the whole ordeal was that there was no fire in the building at all.

There was never a definitive answer as to who would do such a thing, but when members of the Supreme Court came to the region to retrieve testimony, as many as eight witnesses swore they saw a Citizens’ Alliance button on the man’s jacket. The Citizen’s Alliance was an organization that openly opposed a strike, and to this day there is speculation that it was a tactic staged by the Alliance to disrupt the party. The incident is known today as the ‘Italian Hall Disaster.’ Some believe that Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was influenced by the incident just 6 years later in 1919 during the United States Supreme Court Case Schenck v. The United States, when he famously proclaimed, “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.” Although Holmes was probably not referring to the incident directly, he had definitely heard about it, as it was reported extensively in newspapers across the country after it occurred.

After spending a good deal of time informing me about the history of the mining industry in Michigan, the tour guide left me to explore the rest of the museum. Drained, I left in the late afternoon to the hot sun and the soundtrack of rush hour downtown. I went to a Mexican restaurant by the name of Pablo’s Panaderia a little ways outside of downtown. There I enjoyed an amazing burrito, and left feeling a better than I did when I entered. Unwilling to return to the dreaded campsite, I found a relatively inexpensive hotel in Grand Rapids, where I stayed for the night before driving to Chicago for the weekend.

Overall, my experience in Michigan was a conglomeration of different impressions. Although I had an unpleasant experience camping, many of my discomforts were due to a lack of planning on my part and plain bad luck. I thoroughly enjoyed my breakfast at the Golden Harvest, and felt welcomed by the accepting, tolerant, quirky vibe that generally accompanies college towns. It was amazing how stepping into that restaurant turned around my entire attitude for the day. The museum was interesting, but was made even more enjoyable and worthwhile by the kind and enthusiastic tour guide that spent close to an hour telling me about all of the details of the copper mines. Overall, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the Great Lakes State, but I knew without a doubt that I would like to return.