Michigan Is Exotic Too

I spent this past week in glorious northern Michigan. Michigan is just as fascinating as Thailand or England (he told himself), so I thought it was a good fit for a "travel" entry.

My favorite art historian's car was broken, so we rented a car, a brand-new Chevy Malibu that was smarter than some people I have known. It turned the lights on automatically as soon as it started getting dark; it raised the volume on the radio when I sped up, so it continued to sound just as loud. When I asked what kind of car it was, it said, "I'm scanning your interrogatives quite satisfactorily. I am the voice of Knight Industry 2000's Micro processor, K.I.T.T. for easy reference, KITT if you prefer."

The ride north was uneventful. The car could go really, really fast, and it didn't feel like it, so I had to set the cruise control to keep from accidentally speeding. It's much better to speed on purpose. I got to Mesick, Michigan, where my parents spend all summer camping, at around 9:00. My parents were both there, and we sat around the fire chatting. The fire is always my responsibility. I'm very protective of it. I will yell at you if you pile too many logs on, or waste kindling, or—shudder—use lighter fluid to start it. I like to sit for hours, staring into it, poking it with one of the designated fire sticks. It's the most peaceful I've felt in quite a while.

I must clarify what I mean by "camping." I wasn't roughing it; we didn't sleep on the ground or anything. My parents have a trailer with a queen-size bed for them, a pull-out couch, a recliner, and a television and VCR. They have a stove inside, a double burner outside, and a gas grill for the serious cooking. There's running water, a small toilet in the camper, and electricity available on all sides. There are several places to take nice, hot showers. Many of the campers lining the paved roads have satellite dishes sprouting from their roofs.

Monday morning I went with my stepdad, Bob, into Mesick for breakfast, where I met one of the species that can be found in the area: the redneck racist. Upon hearing that I lived in Chicago, this old cracker regaled us with stories of the year he lived in Chicago as a young teenager—stories of "coloreds" and other quaint epithets, stories of the horrors of getting on the wrong bus and going into "their neighborhoods." I don't even want to type some of the things he said. I sat there mutely. What do you do in a situation like that? I could have argued with him, or called him a racist, but it would have pissed him off, embarrassed by stepdad, who thinks of this guy as a friend, and basically I was afraid to make a scene.

Mom and Bob left me alone on Monday, and it was a great day. I took a nap. I sat out on the dock looking at the lake, which was created in 1926 when the Hodenpyle Dam was built, blocking off the Manistee River and flooding farmland and forest. You can still see stumps sticking up out of the water in some places, and there are houses and barns underneath the deepest parts of the lake, sort of like Northfork, only without James Woods. After a while I went into Cadillac, the closest population center. Cadillac is one of those northern Michigan towns balanced uncertainly between failed industry and tourism. I wandered around downtown, went to a used book store and bought a pile of mystery novels, and went to see Wedding Crashers (2.5 goats) at the local theater. Later, I went back to the campsite and built a fire, then sat next to it, with tiki torches on either side of me, and read The Moving Target by Ross Macdonald, who is one of the best of the hard-boiled school of writers.

Tuesday I got up late, ate breakfast, took a nap, then left for Kalamazoo, where I was to pick up Rebecca at the train station. The ride down was really, really long. We went back to Muskegon to stay at my parents' house, and we left reasonably early the next day for Ludington and Manistee. We stopped for lunch and a visit at my aunt Marsha and uncle Chris's restaurant in Ludington. Aunt Marsha has always been my favorite relative, and she's the only person on my dad's side of the family that I ever see, not that I see her that often. Apparently the high gas prices are really hurting the tourist industry up there, and something like 56% of respondents on a survey said they were cutting down on eating out to compensate for the higher prices, which is two strikes against the owners of a restaurant in a tourist town.

Then it was on to Manistee, where I grew up. We did a quick driving tour, I got to play the "that wasn't there when I lived here" game, and we went into my old house on Hughes Street. It's the house where four generations of my family lived, until my birth father "forgot" to pay several years of property taxes, and my mom had to sell it. Now it's a rental awaiting tenants, and while it's all fixed up inside (remember the library at the front of the house? It's now a staircase to the upstairs), it was sad to see it sitting empty.

We made it back to the campground by early evening, and my older sister and her new boyfriend were there. Her new boyfriend was basically a younger, louder version of the guy described in the fourth paragraph. They stayed long into my fireside time, and the new boyfriend really pissed everyone off with a story of how he defrauded some Mexican migrant workers. But finally they left, and Rebecca and mom and Bob and I sat around the fire and chatted.

The next morning, Bob took us on a tour of the lake on our pontoon boat. We were so tired out by the exertion of sitting in the fresh air that we took a nap when we got back. We dawdled around the campsite, then went into Cadillac to eat lunch and look around. That evening my mother took us on a tour of Crystal Mountain, the resort where she works three days a week. Then it was back for more fireside time. We got up late the next morning, had breakfast, and drove home. It was a good week, with few problems, and it was nice to get away.