Welcome to Macinaw Island Moments, hosted by lifelong islander Jason Saint and through conversations and interviews with Poe Island locals and residents, Jason will bring you the real stories and characters that define life on the island. Whether you're a seasoned visitor, new to mccaina Island, braving an islander yourself, you'll be sure to learn firsthand about the island with Jason on macin Island Moments.
And Welcome to another edition of the Mackinaw Island Moments podcast, the only podcast that originates on macin Island by a born and raised islander. Folks. Here it is the middle of July. We're rating the thick of yacht races. We're on the second race, the Chicago to Mackinaw, the Chicago Yacht Club celebrating their one hundred and fiftieth anniversary this year. This is their one hundred and sixteenth, one hundred and seventeenth race. I'm probably wrong about that, but the club
itself is one hundred and fifty. There's gonna be some fireworks I think tomorrow or Tuesday, I'm not sure. And because of that, we have a special yacht Race edition and instead of having a classic islander on board today we have Kim and Kathy now are now summer visitors, but they came that way by being summer workers, and they first came to mc and Island nineteen eighty three. And let me tell you things were a little different then. To get a job on mcin Island. There wasn't the Internet.
You didn't have Facebook, job boards or any of that. So Kim and Cathy take it away. Take us through how you first came to macaw. How did you hear about this place? And folks, you're going to tell one of is has a southern draw a little bit, so it's not like you're from the Upper Peninsula or northern Michigan. But tell us how did you hear about mc and Island? How did you end up here?
Well? I was in college and was summer before my senior year. My sister had worked here the summer before and we were in Mississippi and she one of her college roommates was from Michigan. So summer of eighty two she came up and worked at Little Bob's. So the next summer my heart was broken. My boyfriend dumped me and I said, I'm going north, And so Laura said, go to Mackinaw, my sister, and you'll get a job. I didn't have a job at two hundred dollars in
my pocket. Took the Amtrak from Winona, Mississippi, spent the night in Flint, Michigan. Had two high school friends with me from Mississippi. Took the Greyhound, went all the way up, arrived on the island on May fifteenth, took the old Arnold ferry over and got a job. The next day, went into Little Bob's and.
Got a job.
And so that's and of course when you get a job, you get housing.
Sure, where was Little Bob's housing? Then?
Was it?
Right upstairs?
Was Palermo's house up behind Laschance the oldesto? Sure across from Pine Cottage?
So up on Bogan Lane? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, wow? And that was Kathy. And so I want to hear Kim. How did Kim end up there?
All right? So it was after my junior year, no sophomore year of college. I went to Miami University. And my dad had taken a job when I lived in Cincinnati and we had moved to Albany, Georgia, Albanny, Georgia, as they say. And the first summer after my freshman year, I spent in Cincinnati, and I didn't have a car. I was dependent on people, and I am not a dependent person. So after that, I was like, I have to go somewhere where I don't need a car, I can get a job and you know, just live on
my own. And my current sister in law had worked up here at the Grand Hotel, so I was like, Macinnall is the place. And I talked a story sister mine into coming up and she bailed on me at the last minute. And I was like, I don't have any options. This is my option. So I remember my boyfriend put me on a Greyhound bus in Cincinnati, Ohio,
dropped off in Macinawll City. I had this big old maroon suitcase and I draw, you know, no wheels at that time, you know, drugg to the ferry came across, and I did already have I knew enough that I had called around and got a job at Little Bob's. Okay, so, and I had rachelshit in college, so you know I had experience. Yeah. So I showed up probably two or three weeks after Cathy, okay, beginning of the season and it was cold Sole.
So Little Bobs for those who are new to Macinar are new to the podcast, that was a restaurant right across the street from where they police station is now and the Yankee Rebels kind of remodeled that whole building and they they've kind of taken over. But Little Bob's was a was a family business and it was pretty renowned at the time. So back to those days, is there still people that you know you remember from working there that were on the island or I know you know one name I'd like to hear.
Oh, well, well, Trush Bunker, we know she was. She was the salad girl. And then her mom, Elaine Lane. Yeah, she worked back in the kitchen.
Elaine was great because we were just getting started and a little nervous about getting fired because you never quite knew if you were doing the right thing, and so Elaine was always back in the kitchen. I think she really did salad prep too, for they had a huge salad bar, and so she was very comforting. And the cooks, Darwin and Dwayne and Kevin, the h Wee Boys owners of the place. Darwin and Dwayne really took the took us under their wing too. They really liked us a lot,
Kevin not so much. But so we had a great experience. There lots of funny stories. And I think I told you that it was tough at first because there wasn't much much business. On May fifteenth, it was freezing and here I had come all the way uprom Mississippi. But we got We worked for a couple of weeks. In my first paycheck, I was so excited to get it, and it was made out in the amount of zero
because it was really a check with Zerra. I still have it because we had to take out for uniform costs and rent and my first paycheck.
So how many years did you end up how many summers did you end up doing on the island.
We just worked here one and then we came back in eighty seven to set with Kim's husband and Betsy, her sister in Lawhood worked up at the Grand in eighty and to celebrate the Grand's eighty seventh and what was hundredth hundred. What was interesting though, is we went to we were on the island and we were sort of grown up, more up then, but we were looking for where the islander parties were, because we really missed
that that kind of fun of the island. Well, and then I got married on the island in nineteen eighty nine, and so that was and then Kim can tell us.
The rest of the sum Yeah. Well, I was also going to say we only worked here one summer, because I think one of the things we're worried about is it would lose its magic if we came back and had a different experience than we did, because it was such a magical summer that we were afraid. So we actually worked in Hiltonhead the next summer. Oh, which that was kind of tough because again we didn't have transportation, and that is a place where there are cars, right, we had bikes.
But that first summer was truly magical and it was just especially I felt like I'd come to another world and I realized that there was so much more than the South, and I thought it was a pivotal summer. I'm not going back, you know, I'm not going back South and it Now I'm a college professor in Ohio and I have students, some of whom have worked here, and some of them will come home to working a summer at Macanall, come back to school and they'll be
I can't do this, I can't. And I always say, you gotta buckle down and get back in the real world or else. Don't let Macinaw ruin it. Don't ruin your wonderful summer, because then you come back and you can't get it together. I said, come back, get it together, and then you can you can have Macannon in your life the rest of your life, you know.
Great.
Yeah, And as Kathy mentioned, she got married here in nineteen eighty nine, and then I had my second child in April ninety four and Kathy was graduating from grad school at Ohio State, and I just got this crazy idea. I don't know, maybe you know, I was just had a baby. Man, it was out of my mind. But I was like, let's go up to Macannall and celebrate like.
My baby baby.
Yeah. I don't know, yeah, yeah, but just us, just yeah. And of course if we came up, we're like, we have to come up during yacht race. So that's what we plan. I still have the little Macinaw map that had all the hotels and phone numbers on it, and you know, and we got a room at Leschance for one hundred dollars, I think, yeah, and that so that nineteen ninety four was the start of this current thirty two year.
Run, right, And I remember that, of course because I was working right out in front of the shots at the barbecue with Brian. Yes, let's go back to nineteen eighty three. Give us a a I wouldn't say a day in the life, but how about a night in the life of a summer employee. I mean, things have changed, but they're also still the same. But what was it? What stands out?
Well, it all depends on what shift you were working, and so if you had the breakfast shift, and of course you were up and out of there, but you might be off at two or you know, noon, or if you've had to work the split shift, that was really disappointing because then you had to work and then take a break and then go back. But it was the night's you know, a little bob shut down about ten, I'd say, right, so you had that's when the night life got started, and so you basically wanted went to
the We had beach parties. We weren't of age, so we couldn't get I actually had turned twenty one that summer, but we could. We weren't going in the bars.
Really, so I could get into bars if you were eighteen, you could get you just couldn't. The black X yeah, yeah, a pilot.
House with was it Harry at the Pilot house or there was.
Something Harry owned it, yeah yeah yeah, and then of course the horse and buggy driving across the street yeahs yeah.
So yeah, it was really just all the other workers that you but you kind of just hunt. We hung pretty much with Little Bob's people.
Yeah. I mean, but there was no phone, so you couldn't say he meet me at so and so. As you kind of spread the word and people would come in. Those who weren't working would stop by the restaurant and say we're going to be here or back at the house, you know, if we all lived together at the house. So that was how it was very spontaneous, and the thing that we loved about it was you never knew what was going to happen. Yeah, you run into people and you never.
Knew, so you were able to organize your fun with out a Facebook invitation yes, or a marketplace yes. And folks want to let you know we're sitting out in the backyard of the Cannonball Oasis. So you might hear an airplane going over an occasional seago, a little bit of wind hitting the microphone. So I hope you excuse us, but we are outdoors. It's too nice a day not to be sitting outside. So let's go back. Now, you're
you just started one of your first reunions together. I'm sure you know back in those days it was penpal stuff. There wasn't an email until about nineteen ninety or so. You know that being a college professor, you thought we had we were privy to that sort of stuff. We had an email. Okay, So I remember you folks. You'd sit up on the porch at Laschans and and that turned into a yearly event and Brian and I would see every year. And then let's talk about chit chat.
I see lots of T shirts, hats, stickers, we have the merch, yes, the boat that never happened or has happened. Let's talk about chit chat. Yes.
Well, And like Kim said in ninety four, she I graduated and she had her second baby. She goes, let's go, let's go to the island. So we decided to go and we were hanging out and having so much fun, but so much of the and people would say, what boat are you waiting for? And we got tired of that, so we said, we're not waiting for a boat. We're on a boat. And we made it up and created a virtual boat and it was all women crew and so and then Kim that the pivotal thing was that
Kim bought a monogram machine. Yes, and when you buy a monogram machine, you can be anybody you want to be and so and so.
Yeah, so I'm like, all right, then, well, Kathy's a professor of communication. So we're, you know, thinking of a boat name. Got to have a boat names, you know, in boat colors and all that, you know, and we're like, it has to do something with talking, and that's when we came up with chit Chat. Yeah, and our colors are hot, pink and black and yeah. The monogram machine did change everything. It did.
So what we would do is we would gather and make up our story about where we were in the race and how we did and what boat we were, and we had to always pick something that kind of flew under the wire, but so that people because there's you know, there's a couple of three hundred boats maybe in the race, and you had you couldn't stand out too much because then they would realize that this was just a ruse. And then eventually we would the people we really wanted to let them in on the secret.
We let him know. But that was in nineteen ninety four or five, I think maybe six, maybe the boat was born and we were sitting on the docks in the marina and all of a sudden we just said, chit chat because it's all bs, so it's just chit chat. So we made it up. And then we've met so many friends through the years with that, you know, kind of a silly little thing, a made up boat, and people get to really get big kick out of it.
So one year, Dick Jennings with a Chicago yacht club, was racing two boats, and we had known him for several years and he thought our story was hysterical and he said, you girls need to race one year to make your story better. And so he's I'm racing two boats next year. One boat's just going to be for a lums, bringing back a bunch of old guys who've
all you know, they don't need to prove anything. I've got an Andrew's seventy two boat and we're gonna put you on there if you want to come, So get yourself to Detroit on this day and I'll pick you up in a white van. And I remember looking at him and thinking, are we gonna do this? And she said, yeah, we're gonna do it. So we're reading Sailing for Dummies on the airplane.
And I don't know if you would to tell some yeah, and then we then they're like, we had to go to Canada, like Dick always kept his boat in Canada. And we're like, holy crap, oh god. Then we had a bottle of cheap vodka in our bag and the poor kid that was transporting transporting the van got stopped at the at the border and they're like, what is this in your you know this alcohol? I mean, you know, Oh my god. It was it was just it was such an experience. It was such a gift from Dick.
God rest his soul. He Yeah. The pie Piper had the Chicago to mac Race or for twenty five years. Yeah the record, Yeah, oh sure.
Pipe Piper was a famous and that's what the referring to folks. Was I think it was a seventy Maxie or seventy.
That boat was and then his real pipe piper was a Santa Cruz seventy.
Yeah, Okay, can I say what the shirts are that I wanted to make up after that race?
I don't know.
It's it's a PG show.
Yeah, it's a PG show. I would.
I would, Well, that's that's true, throw it up there and if the editor doesn't like it.
So we were actually the fifth boat in so the so the alumni crew boat beat Dick's boat in. So he was like, I don't know, the eighteenth boat in his his his racing boat. So I wanted to make a shirt for him that said we licked Dick.
Yeah. I'm not sure that I'll make it through the editor or not, but well, we like your style. Yeah, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that wind Hawk just crossed the finish line probably in the last ten minutes from Chicago. You know, that's a one oh four catch, or maybe it's one o two. It's over one hundred foot long. That that boat has a fireplace
on it. It's an amazing well, of course it's amazing ship, and they're the next nearest boat is about fifty miles out, and then the pack starts about seventy miles from that. So it's going to be a late finish, well into this evening and then all day tomorrow. And where where's the chit chat right now? In this race?
How far over?
Let's oh no, oh, well you should try being the pickle boat sometimes, yes, that's fun. The pickle boat can be fun. So you know you've run the whole gamut. You started off summer employees and then you became routine visitors. Now you've I don't want to use the word fabricated, but you've invented. You've invented this identity as the chit chat. Your perspective of perspective of MCINA over the last forty years, well forty two now, I guess, good, bad and different. Where are we at in your eyes?
I would say when we first started, it was an affordable it was an affordable like good girls get away, you know, to take a group, and unfortunately it just has become almost price prohibitive. You know, it's it's a just how much it's changed as far as what's being bought by other bigger companies and what we call bouged up. I mean, you know, it's just bougie. And with bougie is price increases. So it's kind of it's sad to us because families can't come.
Now.
I mean, I think families probably have to make decisions, you know, can we pay for the parking, the tickets, the bike rental. It's a lot. I mean, it's and it's sad. I just you know, I think, I mean this, the most majority of this place is a state park and people should have access, and I just feel like that has become prohibitive, which is all.
It's a battle right now. That's that's for sure, And more on that at a later date. But do you still when you when you get near the bridge and you look over, do you still get butterflies and you see the al?
Yeah?
See we do.
And the magic of the place, I think is in its eccentricities and so even and I think that's what makes me really sad as it's becoming more and more bougie, or you know, it looks more and more Disney World in some places, but there's still pockets that retain its character. And so that's what's so fun to us, and it's
as much of the people. We both get the town crier than the newspaper and read it religiously and call each other and say, oh my gosh, so and so died or so and so's retiring, and do you remember this? And our husbands make fun of us because every time the town crier comes, we just are absorbed in what's
We're slightly obsessed. And we have a tradition of when we cross into the state line into Michigan, we take pictures and go woo woo, and then when we go when we see the bridge, and we just have all our little traditions. But a very special part of this has been Jane Winston. So in nineteen ninety six, I think we were at the Mustang Lounge and we met a couple Jane and John Winston, who were there and they were wondering what this group of women were doing.
And we told them, and John said, tomorrow night, come over for drinks on our porch, and we said, you.
Better, you better not. We're there.
And we've maintained a great friendship. And Jane is now, you know, eighty five years old, and we stay with her off and we're staying with her this time, and so she's a special She wrote the article that was in the Macanol Living and she's a special Cottie Joner here who's become a very very dear friend of ours.
She's a great writer. She did some writing for mcin Island News and Views back then.
Do you remember you probably do that she had a book that you put out like it was an anthology of Michigan writer.
All right, right, yes, yes, I do remember that, yeah, And.
I actually have two poems in there really yeah. So the first one it was about my mom when my little sister got married, called the mother Ship that got published. And then there's also a poem about the chit Chat, yeah, which I have if you would like.
To hear it. I think we'd love to hear it now as good as time as in it.
All right, all right, oh okay, I might have to get you have eyes on you. Thank you? Right here we go. So this was written for the chit Chat. Every year, as you mentioned, we come up here and it's always a different group of women. There's kind of a core group of both my sister in laws come, but then it's always like you know, eight to ten women that come up. So it's always interesting, you know,
just how it all comes together. And as Kathy mentioned, every year is just different, which we always look forward to. This was written in nineteen ninety nine The Maiden's Voyage by Captain Kim Beach. Each year we set Zale on a maiden voyage of sort to the island of Mackinaw, the most magical port. Our boat was finally christened. As we sat on the docks, the chit Chat was launched over by Katonic and Rocks. It's an all female crew that completes the ship's log our seamanship equal to the
saltiest dog sailors at sea. We chart the course of our lives. The manifest a blend of friends, mothers and wives with a mission of fun the living seas we do rome, but each year in July, the Chitchat sails home. On the deck of the boat. We share laughter and tears. We tell stories of life and reveal our deep fears. The voyage is deemed therapy by all the crew members. Our spirit's renewed by the spark of friends embers. The
Chitchat is more than a boat that's not here. It's a celebration of life and those people we hold dear. The bridge is in sight. Now will race to the shores. The chitchat sails in as the bold cannon roars as she glides to the docks and comes to rest in her slip. We are thankful for our journey aboard this friendship.
That's very nice, what a great story. Just the fact that you've been friends since nineteen eighty three, and you know, this island has cultivated so many lifelong memories, not only memories, but friendships. Just I don't know if you saw it on Facebook. Just yesterday, a kid working in the shop, he just started working at the Cannonball on Friday, started chatting up a girl that worked there, and they realized they went to kindergarten together, and then they remembered each other.
But they've been working together six or seven hours before one of them realized they knew each other eighteen years ago. And I think there's so many stories of lifelong friendships were kindled off one year, or some folks many years that worked here.
I think it was just a couple of months that changed both of our lives.
Yeah, obviously, no regrets, No, oh no, Sometimes I wish we'd come back that second year instead of Hilton Head. But I'm kind of with Kim. It wouldn't have been the same perhaps, And you know, yeah.
When you have a home run, it's kind of tough.
And who would know that we'd be sitting here in a podcast session with this kid who was the sidekick for the barbecue.
Well, it's better to be a sidekick than a side chick. I always say so, Kim. Cathy, thanks so much for pedaling all way out here just to chat. It's a great story. I think the chit Chat. I followed your boat a few times. I've had to look and say, is this thing for real? This year? Finally? Is it for real? Maybe? You know you've talked about the island getting too bougie, so maybe you have to downgrade. You could you could sell the chit Chat and buy the
Little Bob or something. Oh, you know, change it go from a go from a seventy two to maybe a j boat or something that might be worth it. But thank you, any any parting words of wisdom to maybe first year summer kids. It's it's it's middle of July, almost the end of July. They're probably looking at their bucket lists. Do you have any advice for them?
Wow? Yeah, just do it all. Don't say don't say no to anything. I mean, you know, if somebody wants to go kayak, if somebody wants to you know, I don't know. There's so many things to do on this island. I would just say trying and try and do them all.
And I say watch out because the bug will get you and you've fallen in love with the island and this will be an ongoing thing. So beware of the magic of Mackinac.
That's pretty good advice. I would say, beware of the magic of Macinaw. That should be on a T shirt perhaps, folks. Once again, this is the Macina Island Moment's podcast, brought to you from mackin Island by a born and raised Islander. I'm Jason saint Anson. Everybody, good day.