Impossible Germany: Frankenmuth, MI

If you ever wanted to know what America would be like if the Germans won the war, go to Frankenmuth, Michigan.

A tourist destination near the thumb of the mitten, Frankenmuth was settled in the 1840s, long before Hitler was a twinkle in anyone’s eye. Timeline aside, it’s a strange look into a strange could-have-been but thank-god-it’s-not future. Frankenmuth mirrors the German-designated section of Epcot — beer halls, cheese and sausage shops, perfectly maintained buildings in the Bavarian architectural style with astutely trimmed window boxes of multicolored pansies. Every shop attendant is dressed in “traditional” German garb — lederhosen for men and dirndls for women with the obligatory Heidi braids. Upon entering a store, you are greeted with “guten tag” and after swiping a free sample or four of fudge, sent away with “auf wiedersehen!” Not a single piece of garbage flutters to the street before it is swept up by an employee who is neither seen nor heard. Most disturbing is the absence of minorities. Everyone, from the employees to the patrons, is a minutely varying shade of ivory.

There are a few expensive restaurants along the main street, toting themselves as “inns” and each serving what they claim to be a “World Famous” chicken dish. We ordered all our finances would allow — sides of spetzel and beets, curious to see what the illustrious chicken dish was but unwilling to pay $28 a person for it. At the next table over, a couple suited up to consume one of these famous feasts, which upon arrival looked no different than fried chicken from a cardboard bucket. This did not seem to bother the couple, who waited just until the waiter breathed to shovel food into their mouths.

The centerpiece of this whitewashed abyss is Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland, boasting itself as the world’s largest Christmas store.

The parking lot overflows in mid-July with sparkling mini-vans and SUVs. Women with wooly up-dos and bermuda shorts pushed heavy shopping carts, filling them with white boxes containing ceramic, light-up scenes from Norman Rockwell paintings and It’s a Wonderful Life, none for less than $70, nearly twice their K-Mart price. Unenthused husbands in Lions’ and Packers’ sweatshirts nodded in sync with each flowing query.

“Do you like this?”

“Do we already have this one?”

“Isn’t this darling?!”

Music dreaded for ten months of the year is enjoyed at the highest volume. Rows of glimmering ornaments for every occasion imaginable are lined up over more square footage than a professional golf course, organized into categories like “newly engaged,” “food,”  and “fishing.” There’s an employee who’s purpose is solely to customize ornaments, painting messages like “Derrick and Brittany, June 2014” on a frail periwinkle bulb. Everything makes noise, or worse, sings a song.

Bronner's also had no problem letting their patrons know that their electrical bill is $900 a day.

Being in Frankenmuth is like being stuck in one of those tiny, porcelain villages, this Made in China town where everything exists for display purposes only — a lived-in cuckoo clock. Even the people seemed like they were purchased and set there, dressed in costumes they didn’t have the option of removing, swallowing a conveyor belt of beer and cheese and sausage medallions on an endless loop. Dolls in someone else's playhouse.

North Country Blues: The Upper Peninsula of Michigan

The Midwest gets a lot of hate for a number of reasons. Perhaps the biggest, at least to me, is the sameness of it all. I won’t deny the existence of Midwestern hospitality, and while there is some natural beauty in the Midwest, most of it has been bulldozed to make way for suburban developments. It is a very bland, homogenous landscape of vinyl-sided prefabs, covering the full spectrum from beige to taupe, with a CVS across from a Walgreen’s across from a gas station across from a used car dealership. (Seriously, Indiana, what the Hell is up with that?)

Breaking away from that sameness is Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The people who know about it all agree that it is a wonderful place…but then, there is everybody else. On the one hand, there is the fact that an unsettling percentage of the American population would fail even the most basic of geography quizzes. But on the other hand, there are maps, graphics, and illustrations that just plain leave the Upper Peninsula off.

The Upper Peninsula should be right next to the Northeastern corner of Wisconsin.

Their loss is ours, too, because the Upper Peninsula should not just be its own state – which I actually am in favor of – it might as well be its own country.

Michigan itself is an interesting state, unfortunately known mostly for their run-down urban centers like Detroit, Flint, and Saginaw, places that even the proudest of Michiganders (yes, that is the actual term) speak about in the hushed tones typically reserved for discussing a recently incarcerated relative: “Yeah, it’s a shame, really…” Of course, there is far more to Michigan than just urban decay, fun and scary as all that is for hipster photography students and locals, respectively.

At some point in the not-so-distant past, an advertising slogan came about for Michigan’s tourism industry: “Say yes to Michigan!” The counter-slogan for the Upper Peninsula, which has achieved far more immortality than the original advertising campaign it mocked, is “Say ya to da UP, eh!” Describing the difference between the residents of the Upper Peninsula, who call themselves Yoopers (hey, it rolls off the tongue better than Michiganders), and pretty much everyone else in the United States can be easily summed up with that slogan.

The UP boasts a strong Scandinavian heritage, largely due to the low numbers of people who initially settled there. In many ways, the UP shares a lot in common with Aroostook County in Maine: low population density, locals who are just as Old World as their ancestors who arrived six generations ago, plenty of room for nature, and a local humor that is far less parochial than one might think. Roadside souvenir shops boast Genuine Yooper Goods, including this Yooper bug-killer:

My personal favorite was what looked like a mileage chart, indicating the distance from various UP locations to other major American cities. Instead of miles, though, the sign listed the number of “road pops” needed to get there. I asked a shopkeeper what a road pop was, and with a proud chuckle he informed me that road pop is beer. The distance from St. Ignace to Chicago? Six road pops. Drunk driving – not funny. Road pops as a unit of measurement – hilarious.

The Mackinac Bridge, connecting the UP to the Mitten.

Of course, in the same way that Michigan isn’t all Detroit, the UP isn’t all Scandinavian hillbillies. Marquette was a lovely college town, and Ishpeming is not just home to a rich history of copper mining and the International Skiing Hall of Fame, it was also one of the final contenders for Michigan’s state capital. (Now there’s an interesting “what-if” for you, if that’s your thing…) My friend and fellow Monkees scholar Colin told me we absolutely had to visit Houghton and Hancock, twin towns separated by a river, on the premise that “it is just like walking around inside a Gordon Lightfoot song.” It definitely was, and we also had an incredible Finnish breakfast in Houghton.

Hancock, as seen from Houghton.

And speaking of Gordon Lightfoot, the Shipwreck Museum in Paradise features a short film on the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald that reduced everyone – everyone – to tears. Not just quiet weeping, either, we are talking full-on funereal sobs. Beyond the tragic element of the souls lost in the treacherous waters of Lake Superior, the Shipwreck Museum offered a lot about the lives of lighthouse keepers, which was apparently a prestigious job in its time. The museum also has startlingly realistic dummies, so if you visit, be sure to look out for that.

The Shipwreck Museum

Whenever either of us write about a place we genuinely liked – or even loved – both Alexa and I always wonder if our enthusiasm was contagious enough, especially since writing such pieces typically devolves into us saying, “This place is awesome, so just GO already and see it for yourself!”

Downtown Ishpeming

It may not be the easiest place in the country to reach, but for adventure seekers, who want to see what a colorful downtown looked like before the invasion of the big-box retailers, who want to be one with nature (did I mention we began camping out in the UP? Highly recommended, but bathe yourself in bug spray – the deep woods stuff.), who love being on the water, who cherish soaking in the local culture, well…this place is awesome, so just GO already and see it for yourself!

Superman: Metropolis, IL

We passed through plenty of towns with some claim to fame, hometown of this or that famous or infamous individual or setting of a certain movie or television show that collected a cult following, but none as proud as Metropolis, Illinois. And rightfully so. It’s common for every tenth town to boast it birthed some one-hit-wonder, troubled Disney star, or indie darling, but only Metropolis has rights over Superman.

While the town recognizes that Superman did not actually spring from the banks of the Ohio, he is their bona fide hometown hero. The town itself is a blip, a few municipal buildings, a pizzeria guilty of frozen, pre-made crusts, a fifty-year-old hardware store surviving because the town is too small for a Lowes, certainly nothing like the fictional city of glass and concrete Superman perpetually saves from certain destruction. But, through a simple duplication in name, Superman became the icon of the real Metropolis, and standing in the center of their downtown is a glossy, two-story statue of the comic book icon, fists to his hips, his fiberglass cape blowing in the wind.

Every year, Metropolis hosts a celebration honoring Superman, drawing comic book nerds and cute kids in costumes to the southern Illinois village of only a couple thousand residents. In the past, when Hollywood producers decided to film a new movie about the Man of Steel every few years, the town of Metropolis gathered at the local cineplex to cheer on their hero. The theatre has since closed.

Across from town hall is a museum dedicated to Superman and his nearly seven decades of saving the world. It’s more of an insane fan’s collection rather than carefully maintained and curated articles, neatly displayed for viewing. Only a few items have homes in cases or garment bags, and things have begun to wither and yellow under a layer of dust. There’s costumes, props, and stills from every television reboot, and shelves full of plastic cups from every time a fast-food restaurant promoted a Superman movie. A Superman documentary plays on a loop, covering the creation of Superman up through the largely mediocre 2006 release Superman Returns. Thousands of action figures stare down from their shelves, gifting the museum the feeling of a journey into a nerdy ex-boyfriend’s basement, all the stuff he would never want you to know he owned.

Outside of the museum, tourists poked their heads through cardboard cutouts of Clark Kent and Lois Lane. Dwarfed under the enormous fiberglass statue, they snapped this year’s Christmas card. “Have a SUPER Christmas!” The bought souvenirs and t-shirts from the museums only worker, the in-the-flesh version of The Simpson’s Comic Book Guy.

Superman does save Metropolis, Illinois — he saves it from existing as yet another depressed town, overwrought by strip malls and chain restaurants, existing just as the next town over, the only difference being it’s name. It has pride, far more than hundreds of places we’ve passed through, and pride is worth everything.