The Anecdotal Life Part. 83
It was traveling time again. I and a neighbor had to remove two seats from the car to get in the pet carrier she was lending me. Lucky for me she was a structural engineer as the seat removal and the construction of the pet carrier required one. However, I have those two car seats in my living room as of one week after my vacation and my book club is on it's way for tea and crumpets.
I spent my days "Up North" staring at impossibly blue skies and water. Pristine, sparkling water, sky and earth. Everything thing seemed to be exploding in striking color and light. I just walked and gazed and sniffed the air like some spring rabbit. Friends and family came and went like a run of old favored songs on the radio. We ate pies. Every kind of fruit pie I could afford from the Great Pie Factory in Traverse City went down our throats at breakfast, lunch and dinner. We'd gulp down the last crumbs of an apple dumpling concoction and ask," what's tomorrow's pie?" I , myself, unbeknowst to my outer family, make a mean apple pie, but some baker in that pie factory knows what to do with apples and crust let me tell you. Then we'd reminisce about Gram's pies. Then we had Friday night/ game night on the porch and played cards and laughed and laughed to our heart's content... and it really was to our heart's content. I love that line. Anybody that tells me that is a cliche is gonna get it.
We took two rides on my nephew, Choo Choo's boat and then the last two days of our vacation took a turn. Upon disembarking from the boat my sister fell on her back on the edge of the dock and landed in the water where she had to remain for nearly an hour being supported by Choo and my other nephew Ricky until a superb EMT crew arrived to haul her out on a board, next on a gurney that didn't want to roll in the sand into the ambulance and off to Paul Oliver Hospital in Frankfort perched over the Lake Michigan sand bluffs, harbor and coast. And yes, she will be there a while recovering from a shattered vertebra and busily getting her blood clots thinned, but...however.... and this is the somewhat reassuring part. She couldn't be in a better facility with re-known for care with kindness and laughter. She got just the room she wanted where she can look out on the entire coast. Even Choo , who has the home office to die for over Crystal Lake and can even see parts of Lake Michgan, is in awe each time he visits. She is next door to a friend of hers and she is already walking the halls, all so familiar to her since she is a volunteer in the gift shop there. She is wearing a big shell/like brace and probably is able to stand and sit straighter than she has in been able to for some time. She won't have to cook a thing or make her bed or do her regular endless chores. ( Do you hear some little bit of envy here?) So we will see.
And then I went home. My travels always include mental snapshots of the things and people I encounter. In Dearborn, Michigan, two old artist friends from graduate art school and I had the most amiable and endearing brunch together. Brian told me about one old geezer who inhabits the restaurant that went shuffling up to the town cops and sheriff seated at one table. He said " hi , are you going to be here having breakfast?" They assured him they would. The old geezer replied as he slid toward the door, " Good , then I can speed." They all choked on their breakfast laughing.
I grew up in Dearborn from the age of six weeks through my college years. I have said in a previous blog that Vance Packard called it "a chrome plated Mill town." , but now they have acquired some very well manufactured ambiance which it never had in the first place. Still it's cute. My old, on the wrong side of the tracks , neighborhood is cute. That's mind bending.
Then I went the wrong way in my inimitable fashion and toured briefly through Inkster just outside of Detroit. Inkster doesn't do ambiance. Bleak block after block of cement, broken glass, horrible roads with holes to die in, not for. Just nothingness like a world after a nuclear event. An ignored land. But... they had gas for three dollars a gallon..but... who'd stop?
Then there's always tidy ,ol, straight Ohio. Their toll road doesn't do ambiance either. Still, I met a couple fresh and I do mean fresh, out of Omaha who were driving an old Hudson (he wore a Hudson cap )and were headed back to Dearborn for the gathering of old cars. They were extremely proud of the fact that they had just driven 751 miles the day before and soon , after Dearborn, would be heading for New Hampshire. He did all the talking; she sat next to him, the cutest, round faced, blue eyed , dark haired darling wife you can imagine, wearing twinkly round glasses, never getting one word in, but upstaging him the whole way with nodded agreements, doubtful expressions as to the validity of his remarks, capitulating little shrugs of her shoulders and smiles of sheer contentment. He had given up farming and had donated some of his land for a memorial park. I couldn't remember what for. Maybe it was for old Hudsons. I don't think this is really this end of this blog. But again, we will see.
Copyright: August 10, 2008.
I spent my days "Up North" staring at impossibly blue skies and water. Pristine, sparkling water, sky and earth. Everything thing seemed to be exploding in striking color and light. I just walked and gazed and sniffed the air like some spring rabbit. Friends and family came and went like a run of old favored songs on the radio. We ate pies. Every kind of fruit pie I could afford from the Great Pie Factory in Traverse City went down our throats at breakfast, lunch and dinner. We'd gulp down the last crumbs of an apple dumpling concoction and ask," what's tomorrow's pie?" I , myself, unbeknowst to my outer family, make a mean apple pie, but some baker in that pie factory knows what to do with apples and crust let me tell you. Then we'd reminisce about Gram's pies. Then we had Friday night/ game night on the porch and played cards and laughed and laughed to our heart's content... and it really was to our heart's content. I love that line. Anybody that tells me that is a cliche is gonna get it.
We took two rides on my nephew, Choo Choo's boat and then the last two days of our vacation took a turn. Upon disembarking from the boat my sister fell on her back on the edge of the dock and landed in the water where she had to remain for nearly an hour being supported by Choo and my other nephew Ricky until a superb EMT crew arrived to haul her out on a board, next on a gurney that didn't want to roll in the sand into the ambulance and off to Paul Oliver Hospital in Frankfort perched over the Lake Michigan sand bluffs, harbor and coast. And yes, she will be there a while recovering from a shattered vertebra and busily getting her blood clots thinned, but...however.... and this is the somewhat reassuring part. She couldn't be in a better facility with re-known for care with kindness and laughter. She got just the room she wanted where she can look out on the entire coast. Even Choo , who has the home office to die for over Crystal Lake and can even see parts of Lake Michgan, is in awe each time he visits. She is next door to a friend of hers and she is already walking the halls, all so familiar to her since she is a volunteer in the gift shop there. She is wearing a big shell/like brace and probably is able to stand and sit straighter than she has in been able to for some time. She won't have to cook a thing or make her bed or do her regular endless chores. ( Do you hear some little bit of envy here?) So we will see.
And then I went home. My travels always include mental snapshots of the things and people I encounter. In Dearborn, Michigan, two old artist friends from graduate art school and I had the most amiable and endearing brunch together. Brian told me about one old geezer who inhabits the restaurant that went shuffling up to the town cops and sheriff seated at one table. He said " hi , are you going to be here having breakfast?" They assured him they would. The old geezer replied as he slid toward the door, " Good , then I can speed." They all choked on their breakfast laughing.
I grew up in Dearborn from the age of six weeks through my college years. I have said in a previous blog that Vance Packard called it "a chrome plated Mill town." , but now they have acquired some very well manufactured ambiance which it never had in the first place. Still it's cute. My old, on the wrong side of the tracks , neighborhood is cute. That's mind bending.
Then I went the wrong way in my inimitable fashion and toured briefly through Inkster just outside of Detroit. Inkster doesn't do ambiance. Bleak block after block of cement, broken glass, horrible roads with holes to die in, not for. Just nothingness like a world after a nuclear event. An ignored land. But... they had gas for three dollars a gallon..but... who'd stop?
Then there's always tidy ,ol, straight Ohio. Their toll road doesn't do ambiance either. Still, I met a couple fresh and I do mean fresh, out of Omaha who were driving an old Hudson (he wore a Hudson cap )and were headed back to Dearborn for the gathering of old cars. They were extremely proud of the fact that they had just driven 751 miles the day before and soon , after Dearborn, would be heading for New Hampshire. He did all the talking; she sat next to him, the cutest, round faced, blue eyed , dark haired darling wife you can imagine, wearing twinkly round glasses, never getting one word in, but upstaging him the whole way with nodded agreements, doubtful expressions as to the validity of his remarks, capitulating little shrugs of her shoulders and smiles of sheer contentment. He had given up farming and had donated some of his land for a memorial park. I couldn't remember what for. Maybe it was for old Hudsons. I don't think this is really this end of this blog. But again, we will see.
Copyright: August 10, 2008.
posted by The Anecdotal Life at 5:34 AM
0 comments
