Season 14, Episode 3

- Hello everyone, I'm Matthew Ozanich, and welcome to another installment of Destination Michigan.

We're coming to you today from the picturesque lakeside town of Frankfort.

Now we're gonna be bouncing around town here to check out what's the store for visitors, but our "Destination Michigan" adventure today does not stop here.

So buckle in because we have a lot headed your way.

We'll roam the streets of Frankfort to find out what makes this town in the Lake Michigan shoreline a spot that you will definitely wanna add to your next Michigan road trip.

Then we're gonna shoot down to Lansing to marvel at the exhibits found in the Michigan History Museum.

Lace those sneakers and limber up as we shoot some hoops to celebrate the rich history of the Gus Macker basketball tournaments.

And finally, we'll turn up the temps as we visit Master Bladesmith, Kevin Cashen, and we'll spend a day with Josh A. Weston at the Bavarian Blacksmith Experience in Frankenmuth.

All these stories are coming your way on this episode of Destination Michigan.

(joyful music) On the shores of Lake Michigan, the cozy little beach town of Frankfort draws in thousands of visitors every year.

With its stunning views of the coastline, and a great downtown, there is no shortage of food, fun and frolicking.

Stefanie Mills takes us now on a tour of what she calls her happy place.

(upbeat music) - I hear a lot of visitors say that something happens to them when they come through the gateway.

It's like a magical thing that happens and I believe it.

- [Stefanie] The moment you crest that last hill is when seeing becomes believing.

The gateway stretched across the road where the sky meets the water.

A mesmerizing view passed down to generations of families and visitors.

- It's amazing the traditions that exist in this little town of Frankfort and Storm Cloud has become one of those traditions.

- There's so many people that come here and do exactly the same thing, and if you mess that up or change it, you're gonna be in trouble.

- We do have people that, just like you, that have to stop in, get their goodies, have a sandwich for the road.

- [Stefanie] Known as the southern gateway to the Sleeping Bear Dunes, Frankfort becomes a major tourist destination once summer hits.

(upbeat music) - The most unique part is so walkable to everything that we have, pretty much, the restaurants, the shops, pretty much everything is within five blocks, so you can't go far.

Plus we have the trail, the marinas, the lake, the beach, all of it.

It's so close and you can just walk anywhere.

- [Stefanie] Now Frankfort isn't a large town, about 1200 people live here year round.

Main Street is lined with great shops and restaurants, options for the whole family.

New businesses like Storm Cloud Brewing Company is one that's helping attract visitors in the cooler months too.

- I would agree that Frankfort is becoming more of a year round destination and that's exactly what we need.

The summer is crazy busy and fun.

There's no better place to be in the world than in Northwest Lower Michigan on Lake Michigan in the summertime.

And then in September and the weather then and the leaf color, it's beautiful.

We're open every day, all year long and try to provide activity that brings people here.

Whether it's curling in the winter or a beer festival in the middle of February.

- [Stefanie] The beach is second to none here, spread across the beautiful sandy shoreline.

You can take a walk out to the lighthouse to watch the boats come into the Betsie River.

And get this, the views and privacy also proved to be a lucrative escape for mobster, Al Capone who sometimes stayed here.

- Oh, I did take a tour of it.

It's pretty cool.

Apparently the girlfriends used to stay there.

Maybe the pregnant girlfriends, we're not really sure.

They had a tunnel that they, during prohibition where they would transport alcohol.

- [Stefanie] A visit to Frankfort for the Mills family isn't complete without a stop at Port City Smokehouse.

You'll find all sorts of smoked fish delicacies here along with their dips and snacks.

Owner Mike Elwell turned this old car shop into a business 17 years ago.

They smoke about 25,000 pounds of fish here every summer.

- Well, you know, first of all, we understand that our goal is to make great food, but more importantly, our business is providing the Up North experience.

And all of our folks that are great folks that work for us, that's our focus.

We know that people have that week off for vacation or whatever, and when they come into town, they want that experience of up north.

- [Stefanie] Like many northern Michigan communities, Frankfort continues to grow, but there's something so quaint and familiar every time you travel down it's streets and carry on those timeless traditions with those you love.

- There's only one stop light in the whole county and so if you want to experience Northern Michigan preserve, this is the place to do it.

- People bring the best of themselves into the store.

We try to match that with the best of ourselves.

And then it creates, just a bit of magic.

- [Joanne] It is paradise, as people do call it a paradise.

They absolutely love it.

- Now, if you've been following us here on "Destination Michigan," you know very well that the state has museums in nearly every town and city covering a variety of topics.

But in the city of Lansing, in the shadow of the capital, there's a museum that's taking on the daunting task of covering the entire history of Michigan from 14,000 BC up until today.

We now head to the Michigan History Center in Lansing.

(upbeat music) - It tells the history of Michigan, kind of in a walking timeline.

So you start, it's right at the end of the ice age and it goes all the way through the, almost the end of the 20th century.

- [Matthew] With four floors of exhibits at the Michigan History Museum, there is a lot to take in.

The museum is located inside the Michigan History Center, which also holds the state's archives.

Each year, approximately 45,000 students from across the state come through its doors.

And what they find inside is truly an eye-opening experience.

- When you go up to the elevator and the doors open on the second floor, you're seeing what you're seeing behind me.

These kind of amazing built environments with super tall trees and a large map.

So we designed the museum to, kind of, tell the history of Michigan's peoples, their stories, the big events in the State's history, but you can walk through them in a very experiential way.

- [Matthew] Walking through the exhibits means you're walking through time.

Upon entering the museum you're introduced to the stories of Michigan's first people.

- In 2016 we redesigned how we talk about Michigan's first peoples and indigenous tribes by working with several of Michigan's 12 federally recognized tribes to tell their story in their words, in their ways.

So we ended up creating a gigantic wall mural that shows the lifeways pre-European contact of the very vibrant Anishnabeg civilizations that were in this state.

And it has enabled us to tell a much more accurate, much more complete story of this time period.

- [Matthew] As you pass the vibrant mural of Michigan's first people, you come upon one of the most immersive yet intimidating exhibits you'll find at the museum.

- Probably our most popular exhibits, for kids and adults alike, is we have, kind of, a recreated copper mine where you, kind of, come around a corner and you're looking into a dark mine.

And it's either people, they're terrified by it or they absolutely love it.

So you can kind of go in and if you walk to the back, you see a rope going up and if you look up, it's like you're looking up a mine shaft, like, you know, a hundred feet.

- [Matthew] Make it through the mine shaft and your next steps bring you into Michigan's modern times, relatively speaking.

- When you get off the elevator on the third floor, that starts 20th century Michigan.

So you walk a little bit through the assembly line on one side to talk about the automation and the mechanization and industrialization of Michigan.

On the other side, we talk about what was going on in farming and in the rural parts of the state.

When you walk through that and suddenly you're in a street in Detroit in the 1920s.

And you can look ahead and see a window from J.L Hudson's store in downtown Detroit.

There's a great, kind of, recreated movie palace where you can go in and watch some segments of some old fashioned movies from the 1920s.

There's even a car dealership in there with an actual car in the middle of it.

It's just a lot of fun.

You really feel like you're walking down a street.

- [Matthew] From copper mining to the auto industry, you learn about some of the biggest moments in Michigan history.

But honestly, some of my favorite spots in the museum are these recreations of homes that Michiganders have lived in through the generations.

- The first one is on our second floor mezzanine level, next to our one room schoolhouse.

Kind of gives you an idea of what a typical family home in Michigan would've looked like about middle of the 19th century.

So you can go and see all of the dining rooms, and all of the knickknacks and all of the things.

We have another one that talks about the mid 1950s, which is a crowd favorite because all the appliances in the kitchen are bright pink, as they were.

(laughs) But the nice thing about is you can, kind of, see the change in how people lived and what were the stuff they have in their homes over time.

- [Matthew] Now Tobi tells us that one of the coolest pieces of history in the museum is actually so small that many visitors walk right by it.

- Upstairs on our third floor, right after the 1950s, you kind of go into a recreated auto show, but next to it there's a case that looks like a missile and inside there's a tiny little Michigan flag that looks a little frayed and then a little dot, maybe about an inch round, that's got two tiny rocks in it.

And what they are is, the very first mission to the moon, every state sent a flag on the mission up to the moon, and the astronauts collected moon rocks and every state, when they came back, got their flag back and some moon rocks.

I said, you could miss it if you're not paying attention, but you could see some real moon rocks and a flag from Michigan that was flown on the moon in our exhibits.

- And for our next story, we head to a parking lot on the CMU campus for the Mount Pleasant Gus Macker three-on-three basketball tournament.

Now, if you're like me and grew up in Michigan, chances are that you are very familiar with this three day b-ball tournament.

But did you also know that it started in a driveway in Lowell 50 years ago?

And did you also know that Gus Macker was an actual person?

(inspirational music) (athletes chattering) It's a simple concept, three-on-three basketball.

Three players versus three players playing half court.

First team to 15 wins and you have to win by two.

- I think historically, we're gonna look back and go, he's the guy that created the three-on-three opportunity.

And whether you do it formally at a Gus Macker or in your neighborhood backyard and you got six guys and you go, "Hey, let's play three-on-three."

Prior to 1974, there was no such name.

- [Matthew] So who is Gus Macker and why did he create three-on-three?

- It was March Madness.

We were a little tired of playing each other as kids in the driveway over and over again.

So we decided, hey, let's play for money during spring break.

So we all threw a dollar in a hat, when I say "we all," kids from the neighborhood, guys that went to school with me, all threw a dollar in a hat and we said the winning team would get the money.

Everybody had a weird nickname.

My mom worked at Amway, which is only a few miles away, and she was typing up and making copies on the machine to handle to all the kids in school.

And she just took my nickname, which was Gus Macker and put it on the top of it 'cause we didn't have a title for it and it kind of stuck.

- [Matthew] That first tournament was in 1974 in the McNeal driveway in the small town of Lowell.

Word spread quickly throughout West Michigan about this basketball tournament where anyone could play.

And it seemed as though everyone wanted to play.

- Our biggest push was we got to the middle eighties and it was a West Michigan thing.

But Sports Illustrated put an article out in 1985 and it was a feature story, 11, 12 pages, and it went nuts.

I mean, it just blew us up nationally.

- [Matthew] That article changed everything.

The basketball tournament started by a high school junior and his friends had gained national attention.

It outgrew the driveway, neighborhood, and even the city of Lowell.

Scott left his teaching job and took his Gus Macker three-on-three basketball tournament on the road.

In the 1990s, it was common to have weekend events that drew thousands of teams with even more spectators.

It took over cities.

- It's a basketball tournament, but really it's a community festival.

And I think that's where Gus has been successful for 49 years, 'cause he's bought into the rural, small communities.

You don't see these in downtown San Diego.

You see 'em in Iron Mountain, you see 'em in Mount Pleasant and you see 'em in Ludington.

Because you come into a community, bring a vibrancy to that community for a weekend and then you leave, clean it up, make it better than you left before.

And every city makes a charitable donation back to the city that hosted.

Here at CMU, Gus makes a $10,000 donation back to CMU.

- [Matthew] The Do or Die Shot, Gus Busters, Threads by Gus, Dream Court, the Toilet Bowl, these are aspects of the tournament that have made Gus Macker uniquely awesome.

- The trophies in general are way overboard.

The baskets are a little bit overboard.

The basketballs are a little nicer.

Our idea was make a Cadillac event.

You still may play another three-on-three's, but you live to play in the Macker once a year in your area.

- I always tell Gus he's done two really, really cool things in 49 years, only two.

And of course we giggle and laugh.

Gus created a toilet bowl for the teams that lost twice, played the other teams that lost twice, playing for this last trophy.

So one, it gives you a third competition opportunity, and two, you're walking away with something tangible that you remember.

The second is Dream Court.

- [Announcer] And the last player for the Peaches, Justin Jalen.

- That he has created a stadium-like atmosphere, a temporary surface, banners, flags, a public address system, an MVP that gets interviewed at the end of the game.

Every youth that plays, and we have two thirds of our teams are under 17 years of age.

Everybody wants to play in Dream Court.

- [Matthew] From kids 7 years old to those 50 plus, this event is designed for everyone.

And anyone can play and the atmosphere is definitely family friendly.

From its inception, they figure over 2 million players have competed in a Gus Macker.

In addition, the tournaments have raised over $15 million for local charities.

It is safe to say the Gus Macker three-on-three basketball tournament has come a long way from that driveway in Lowell.

Our next stop on the tour takes us from the rim-rocking action on the court to the fire of the forge where Master Bladesmith Kevin Cashen is turning red hot raw materials into beautiful blades.

We're off to the village of Hubbardston where Kevin's childhood dream of swordsmithing has become a reality at a level few achieve.

- [Chris] Located roughly 40 miles north of our state capital is the village of Hubbardston and its population of 350 folks or so.

Around the corner from the post office and down the street from the anglers casting lines, you'll find Master Bladesmith Kevin Cashen at his forge, turning his appreciation of swords into historical works of art.

This is the way Kevin Cashen creates swords.

- The reason I even got into all this is I've always been fascinated by swords.

And so I've traveled around the world a bit and studied swords in original collections and museums, and then I try to recreate them as accurately as I can, learn as much as I can about them.

You join the American Bladesmith Society as an apprentice smith and you must be an apprentice smith for three years.

There's ways to accelerate that program if you take classes 'cause the American Bladesmith Society has schools that they send instructors to.

If you take one of those courses, you can reduce it down to two years.

Two to three years apprentice smith, and then you're allowed to test for journeyman bladesmith.

And then you must practice as a journeyman bladesmith for two years until you can test for master smith.

I became a master bladesmith in 1995.

As a child, a young boy, for some reason I was fascinated by swords and armor, particularly in the medieval period.

I remember I was a geeky young boy at that age, I was actually reading "Le Morte D'Arthur" (laughs) and the Arthurian legends.

And swords just really sparked my imagination.

And so I decided, well, I'd like to make some swords and I gave it a try and found out that I was biting off way more than I could chew.

And so I started just general bladesmithing, knife making.

By the time I was 18, I had actually started producing forged knives and started selling them.

And probably 20, 25 years later, then I thought I was finally ready to revisit swords and I got back into it.

- [Chris] Now the quest for knowledge comes in many forms for Kevin.

He loves the smell of books and he considers the vaults at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, one of his favorite places on the planet.

But the path to master swordsmith involved trial and error.

- I'm actually entirely self-taught.

When I started teaching for the American Bladesmith Society, I brought something fresh and new to the table in that all the techniques that I developed are self-taught.

And as you start connecting and associating with other bladesmiths around the world, you pick up techniques from them, and we all share.

That's the idea behind the society and things like this.

We're constantly sharing information and it's worked wonderfully.

If you look at master bladesmiths work today, it is unbelievable.

We've went from just sort of recreating the craft and doing some really nice pieces to doing spectacular pieces today.

Bladesmithing is producing some of the best blades I've, that the world's probably ever seen today because of the sharing of information.

Trying to recreate things from the past teaches you the techniques because as you're working, you realize there's only so many ways that this object can be created.

There's only so many ways to do it with the limitation of the materials.

And so you start to get an idea of the way things were done a thousand years ago.

You really have to study swords to recreate a sword.

You can't just look at pictures, you gotta handle and study swords.

- [Chris] A lack of raw materials doesn't dull the edge of Kevin's devotion to his craft.

In fact, it's just another conundrum he's been able to conquer.

- I've even made my own steel from, went to the upper peninsula in Michigan, dug the ore out of the ground, brought it back and I smelted it the way it would've been done in the late Roman Empire or the early Dark Ages.

And just to better understand the techniques.

In Michigan, currently there are two master bladesmiths.

I was the first in Michigan, and there's another fella, a good friend of mine, that got it a few years later.

Worldwide, currently I think we're hovering around 135 master bladesmiths worldwide.

- [Chris] Kevin is the first to say that perfection is not attainable, but that's still the goal for each creation.

- Do you need to make that piece as well as what you're making if it's only ever going to be in a display case?

Well, my name is on that piece, and 200 years from now, maybe a thousand years from now, somebody might be studying it, somebody might use it.

I want them to say, this guy, he was doing really good work.

- Blacksmithing is a skill that was once a part of our everyday life.

But in modern times it can be intimidating and quite costly to learn the science of shaping steel.

But if you wanna see if you have what it takes to be a master bladesmith, a perfect place to start would be the Bavarian Blacksmith Experience in Frankenmuth.

(dramatic music) Things are heating up inside the walls of the Bavarian Blacksmith Experience in Frankenmuth.

- There's so much that you're are gonna learn in the forge about yourself.

First off, do you have any sort of endurance and mental grit or grit at all?

It takes something to get through.

Now you don't have to be super strong to do this.

You just have to be willing to go all the way.

If you stick at it and you go through it and you do this, you will gain self-confidence.

You will gain a self-respect.

- [Matthew] Now, for you smithing fans out there, you may already recognize Josh from his numerous appearances on shows like "Forged in Fire."

He's enjoyed sharing his passion with folks across the world.

And he found himself settling down in the town of Frankenmuth with a drive to share his passion and make it more accessible than ever before.

- Everywhere I went, people wanted to ask, "How do I get started?

How do I get into this?

What do you have to do?"

And so I eventually just started handing people hammers and said, well, "Let's just work together now."

And over that time of doing that, I developed finding the right steel and weaving in the very basic beginner forging operations any smith has to use to make their pieces.

- [Matthew] The shop was buzzing with excitement as students from the Clio area work hand-in-hand with skilled smiths hammering, twisting, and quenching steel to make their own one-of-a-kind creations.

The students here learn a bit about history, a bit about science and a lot about themselves.

- We've tailored our experiences.

Generally we start at six years old and then as long as you're not dead, we say you can do it.

You know, I've even had a couple blind people come in and forge with us.

So as long as you can listen and follow directions, we're gonna work with you.

What we love about having the kids in, and the reason you're seeing so many in here today is the Cleo School District actually works with us and we've created a joint program where students from that district can come and they can forge and they can learn about this dying trade.

And it is a really fulfilling thing for us to have that relationship and be able to do that because that's why this exists.

I want this craft to exist.

I don't want it to die.

I don't want it to fade away.

And over the last a hundred years, it has really tapered off a lot in general knowledge.

The reason the students are really loving this is because it's different.

It's hands-on.

There's a danger element to it.

You know, there's a little risk with the fire.

There's something beyond the words of explaining it, the magic that happens when you're in the forge.

And these kids are getting to experience that.

- [Matthew] Now, there was no way Josh was letting me leave the shop before he could get a hammer in my hands.

I focused my attention on that red hot rail spike as Josh walked me through the process.

- So when we make the rail spike knife today, first off is we're just going to hit it a lot and we're gonna really just flatten it out.

- [Matthew] Good to go?

- [Josh] Yep.

Go for it.

Gonna go harder.

(hammering thudding) Little harder.

And that will give us something to start building from, to start changing, to morph into shape.

Go a little bit faster.

I don't quite want to dance to that.

There we go.

No, that's perfect.

You're right on.

It's cold?

- Yep.

- Yep, yep.

So you can see what you've done.

- Got a little ways to go.

- Look it from the side.

You can see how much you've spread the top part of that.

From there, what we're going to do is we'll define the tip on it.

We like to pull the heel out of the blade of that.

That acts as a little bit of a guard, and it allows you to get a full cutting edge from what is kind of the butt of the blade all the way up to the tip.

So we're gonna work on trying to make a cool, nice tapers and get something that is forged to look like a knife.

We will then twist the handle around, which is a lot of fun.

It's like some brute strength, superman type stuff.

I just, I always love that part.

And then we'll quench it to get it hardened and then we'll take it to the grind shed and grind it, sharpen it, and make it nice and finished for you.

We want people who leave here to feel confident, to feel accomplished, and to feel like they have something that they can do.

They have a new skill and they have a value beyond what maybe social media makes them feel or the other things in their lives.

It's too easy to just feel depressed and bad about stuff now.

And we like to provide that goodness in people's lives.

- And just like that, our "Destination Michigan" adventure comes to an end.

From everyone here, thank you all so much for watching.

We'll catch you next time.

(joyful music)