Coin Slot Magazine - #054 - 1979 - August [International Arcade Museum]
Going, going, gone-the
Bicycle, a slot machine
of yesteryear, gave
chocolate bars and
hours offun to the
children of Manistee.
All photographs Boh Paetscrumd—The Mamstee County Historical Museum
The Chocolate Bicycle
by Richard (VI. Bueschel
Driving north along U.S.
31,
periodically skirting the east
Before you is Lake Michigan, and
and all that went with it in terms of
what was then the largest shipping
saloons, billiard parlors,
ern shore of Lake Michigan, can be
port on the Michigan side. At your
gangs, and roughhousing made
a little nerve wracking.
Freeway
right, is the Manistee River, the
Manistee a legend. It was a tough
stretches all the way from Detroit
steep-edged watery roadway that
town.
press
or Chicago half-way up the rugged
floated out the lumber that built the
It was in this broth of labor and
yet beautiful duneland corridor of
cities of Chicago and Milwaukee,
boisterous behavior that Jacob
Western Michigan. But then the
and at your right is a row of brightly
Hanselman—known around town
fast concrete ribbons characteristic
of our automotive society abruptly
painted and elegantly trimmed
as a "hustler," as he was into just
iron-front stores, and walk-ups that
about everything from commercial
stop. North of Hart, in Oceana
invite attention. These aren't re
enterprises
County, U.S. 31 doggedly resists
stored buildings. In antique terms,
estate—opened up the City Drug
progress. It's two-lane. But that's
part of the aura of the area. Its past
these are originals in near mint
Store on January 1, 1892. The shop
condition. It didn't take a rebuild
was dazzling. It was located on a
is evident around you.
About an hour north of Hart is
to
logging
to
real
ing or adaptive use program to re
step-down floor behind the deli
create the city's Victorian atmos
cately carved marble column hold
ing up the corner entrance of the
Manistee, exactly half-way be
phere. What you see is what they
tween the big cities so far behind
had. The buildings have always
Ramsdell Building at River and
you, and Mackinac Island's his
been that way since they were built
Maple. Leaded glass shades, the
toric gateway to the inner Great
Lakes so far to the north. After a
in the eighteen-seventies and
eighties; all it took to make them a
slumber of three generations, Man
part of the present was a strong
istee is today a city alive, vibrant
application of elbow grease and the
.com
m
:
u
m
Turning west on Manistee's
use
m present
d fro d historical.
-
e
e
The
of the
River Street, the main drag
of
what
d
loa arca city of Manistee population
n
was once the busiest
lumbering . and
is about 7,700. But
w
Do in America,
ww you back in the 1890s it was over
salt mining town
w
/
/
:
would be equally
Logging, sawmills, the
http at home if your 22,000.
mode was a hay burning horse-
most productive salt mines in
and utterly charming. Its past com
necessary painting and scraping.
pletely envelopes you.
Old Manistee lives. The reason is
and-buggy and the year was 1898.
America, shipping, manufacturing,
Richard Bueschel is the creative di
rector of Ladd/Wells/Presba Advertis
ing, Inc., in Chicago, specializing in
business and industrial accounts. His
family spends their summers at their
home at Stony Lake near Shelby in
Western Michigan, where Dick is writ
ing his history of slot machines to be
published by Vestal Press. It was while
doing research for his book Lemons,
Cherries and Bell-Fruit Gum that Dick
ran across this story in Manistee, put
ting it down on paper for Michigan His-
Reproduced with permission from MICHIGAN HISTORY, May/June 1979 issue.
© The International Arcade Museum
Michigan History
http://www.arcade-museum.com/