PETOSKEY, Mich — If Ernest Hemingway returned to modern day Petoskey, he’d probably say, “Yes - just as I left it.” Then he’d shoot a bear, wrestle you to the ground and pour himself a dram of rum.
We’ll never know, of course, but odds are good that Hemingway would approve. This summer getaway, tucked in Lake Michigan’s Little Traverse Bay, between Traverse City and the Upper Peninsula, remains frozen in Midwestern lake time.
Even Hemingway’s favorite bar is still there, as anyone and everyone in Petoskey will tell you (along with the fact that he summered here for the first quarter of his life or so). In his day, that bar was called The Annex. Now it’s called City Park Grill, and it hasn’t inched far beyond Hemingway’s time: long wood bar, dark green walls and a tin ceiling painted white. Hemingway’s favorite bar seat - second from the end, according to my waiter - is right where he left it. The menu hasn’t evolved much either: steak and whitefish rule the day.
But that’s Petoskey’s point, and its pride. The small-town lakefront charm here hasn’t given way to edgy art fairs, farm-to-table dining and an army of iPad-wielding tourists. It’s about having the same experience your grandparents once did.
Petoskey, which grew rapidly in the late 1800s as a summer getaway, knows its strengths. Chain restaurants have been kept to a blessed minimum in the downtown. Commerce and houses are largely on the bluffs above the lake shore, leaving the water to breathe with parks and greenery. American flags flap, families picnic on impossibly green grass and, in the golden late afternoon, young people with Frisbees and guitars emerge on the wide, grassy plaza dedicated to war veterans.
The year-round population is slightly fewer than 6,000 but swells well past that on summer weekends, with visitors strolling the clean streets and browsing the tidy storefronts: jewelry (high-end and low), art (ditto), ice cream, fudge, beach clothes, women’s boutique-type clothes and tchotchkes. Oh, so many tchotchkes.
They’re the tchotchkes that will always remind you of your time in Petoskey: wooden placards that say, “Home of the free because of my grandpa,” refrigerator magnets reading “Crazy cat lady” and mugs offering sentiments such as “Life is good ... enjoy the little things” or “Be happy.”
In one of those tchotchke shops I watched a woman deliberate between the light green “Life is good” mug and the cream-colored “Be happy” model before settling on “Be happy,” and telling her husband, “I’ll be mad at myself ifI don’t get this one.”
In Petoskey, there should never be a more daunting dilemma. It’s an exaggeration to say that these are the same shops your grandparents patronized - wait, no, that isn’t an exaggeration.
“There’s not a lot of changeover,” said Tigger Calhoun, 37, whose Northern Sole shoe store sits on Lake Street, in the heart of Petoskey’s shopping district. “This year had some of the most I’d seen in a while because a few folks retired. But mostly you don’t see change.”
That goes for the shopping (Grandpa Shorter’s gift shop has been family-owned since 1946), the sleeping (Stafford’s Perry Hotel dates to 1899) and even the ice cream eating (Kilwins, a chain more than 75 stores strong, mostly in resort-type communities like Charleston, S.C., and Rehoboth Beach, Del., met the world in Petoskey in 1947).
“People here have been taught by their parents to go to Kilwins and get an ice cream for years and years because that’s what you do here in the summer,” Calhoun said.
On a warm summer day, that meant there was only one thing to do: go to Kilwins, which is also in that downtown shopping district. Amid its low ceilings and blue floral wallpaper, it’s not difficult to imagine 65 years of children eyeing the overflowing sweetness: fudge, chocolates, ice cream and caramel corn among the offerings.
Out front there were no kids, though; just Bob and Dee Kay, retirees visiting from Walled Lake, Mich., who have been 25-year regulars in Petoskey and with Kilwins’ butter pecan ice cream topped with hot fudge.
“You can’t come to Petoskey and not get this ice cream,” Bob said.
Asked why they keep coming back to Petoskey, the Kays immediately invoked the words “quiet,” “quaint” and “small-town atmosphere.” And there you have Petoskey: a living endorsement for predictability and charm.
If that sounds like a gripe, it’s not. Petoskey is what an idyllic Midwestern getaway should be: a dressed-down, unhurried version of fancy. It’s not tanned men in white shorts, leather shoes and argyle shirts (nothing against you handsome fellows). It’s guys in shades and backward Detroit Tigers caps savoring our snippet of summer. It’s little muss and even littler fuss, content to be its spare, honest self.
For more information, call (800) 845-2828 or check out petoskeyarea.com.
Travel, Pages 54 on 09/23/2012