TROPICAL DETROIT

More than eight decades ago, when she was a few months shy of 17, my mother went on a date with her high-school beau to a hotel in Detroit that contained a tropical paradise — or, at least, a tropical paradise as it was seen by the American Midwest in 1941, on the eve of Pearl Harbor. I love the photo of her, resplendent in her white hat. I love his tie and long pointed collar. But most of all, I love the folder in which the photo came - a Modernist, panoramic rendition of "The Tropics," smack in the middle of the Hotel Wolverine, where the elaborate bar contained a waterfall, straw kiosks were everywhere and bands played on two separate levels. It must have been amazing.