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Huron Street and the
Island Workers Dinner

Mackinac Island, Michigan
Day 40 - July 12, 2002

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Horse and Carriage
Along the Bluffs
Huron Street
I am walking down Huron Street. It is the main strip for downtown Mackinac Island. Where once French voyagers, Ottawa and Ojibwa Indians, American fur traders and soldiers wheeled and dealed, now fudge-seeking tourists crowd the streets. On weekend evenings, teenage islanders cruise the strip on their Schwinns and Huffys. You can hear the squeak of bicycles and tandems going past. Gulls cry above. Wild flowers and cottage gardens refresh the breeze. You can hear the clip, clop, clip, and clop of horse hooves upon the street.

 
Downtown Mackinac Island

There is the occasional clump of hay and dung which hangs in the air until it is swept away. Tourists squirrel all over the streets as they try to see everything at once. The streets are congested with horse drawn carriages, cyclists, and shoppers from every nook and cranny of the world, from Amish farmers, to robed Hindus, to a clan of Japanese tourists.


Saint Anne's Catholic Church
Mackinac Island
The Island Workers Dinner
Every Friday night St. Anne's makes dinner for the workers of the island. People from 150 countries come here during the summer to do tourism work on Mackinac. St. Anne's prepares a weekly feast to show the island's appreciation for the workers and to create an alternative to Friday night barhopping. After dinner people relax in the recreation room, play foosball, air hockey, and watch television.

Two hours before dinner is served, Tim Leaper, a NYC Culinary Institute chef, directs us in preparing dinner for two hundred. Br. Jim flips burgers. Others bake cakes or chop veggies. Val and I wash the vegetables. As we chop, bake, and flip, Br. Jim says, "You know, Matt, Tim has done several times what you are doing now." That is, Tim has cycled the United States a few times. Tim tells me about some of the hiking trails that riddle the island. They are for hikers, but he bikes them. They have names like Crack-in-the-Island Trail, Tranquil Bluffs, Manitou, and Lost Bear. To me they are the secret names of sacred paths that I fear I will not have time to wander.

As Tim speed-dices carrots, the knife tapping upon the cutting board like drumbeats, he tells me the story of how one time his bike was stolen in the middle of a tour. He was in God-only-knows-where, Louisiana, when he had just come out of a country grocery. His bike was gone. Stolen. He had just spent a lot of time the previous day repairing his wheel, so he had gotten to know the tire tread well. He gathered up a bunch of neighborhood children and together they searched for his missing bike. Since it had recently rained he hoped to find the wheel tracks.

Later that day a man accosted him with shotgun for trespassing. The man, not believing his story about the stolen bike, marched him back into town to the sheriff's office. After verifying Tim's search with the police, the man's son joins the children's search party. They eventually found the wheel tracks. They led to an abandoned barn where the bike was left leaning against the wall. All Tim could do was reward his help with cans of pop before he returned to the road.

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