Wolverine in October

After returning home from World War II my father worked for the Michigan State Extension Service as a County Ag Agent way up in Cheboygan County Michigan.
Think Hank Kimball from the old sitcom "Green Acres" without the goofy hat or the slack-jawed look of confusion.

He and my mom rented a place in Cheboygan from Robert Lewis, a man several years my dads senior and the Postmaster at Mullet Lake.
Bob and his wife became great friends with my parents and whenever business took my dad downstate, they would keep mom company and help her keep a handle on her two young children, my brother Denny and my sister Deanna. (12 and 10 years older than me. Kind of my parents' first family...)
The Lewis' quickly became extended family and although his wife died before I was born, for my siblings and me he was 'Uncle Bob' until the day he died.

Uncle Bob was an avid outdoorsman and an accomplished hunter, fisherman and trapper as well as a crack shot with all manner of firearms.
(I remember being in Wolverine with my son Aaron when he was about 6 and Uncle Bob, already well into his eighties, would have Aaron toss charcoal briquettes into the air and he'd pick 'em off one-handed with my old .22 bolt action rifle. Later in the evening, my dad made 'burgoo' camp stew and he and Uncle Bob told stories about fly fishing in the Sturgeon River, deer-camps long past and the time they shot a black bear and her two year old cub up off of Perry Rd down one of the old logging trails.)

Bobs wife's family owned property on Shire Rd. in Wolverine; about 50 acres of field and forest which included a ramshackle old tar paper house affectionately known as "Loose Lodge".
The property was situated on prime hunting land populated with white-tail deer, black bear, northern elk and game birds of every description including wild turkeys, ring-neck pheasant, grouse and partridges in pine trees. When she passed away it came to him.

{If you'd like to know where these places are, hold up your map of Michigan - that's your left hand, palm forward - and look at the fingernail of the finger you use to tell drivers on I94 near Detroit exactly what you think of them. At the very tippy-tip of that nail is where you'll find Mackinac City and the mighty Mackinac Bridge - a miracle of technology and the third longest suspension bridge in the world, (http://www.mightymac.org/bridge.htm) - which connects Michigan's Upper and Lower Peninsulas.
Just a smidge towards your cuticle and south on I75 is Mullet Lake, the village of Topinabee is
at the south end of the lake, then the town of Indian River, and then the village of Wolverine about 12 more miles down on Old US 27.
From The Bridge to Wolverine doesn't cover the whole fingernail, About thirty minutes down the interstate. (http://www.fishweb.com/maps/cheboygan/index.html)}

By 1960 my dad was teaching at MSU and we were living in East Lansing.
(Map up? Okay, center of the state about parallel with the thumb joint between Grand Rapids and Detroit along I96. About 220 miles south of Wolverine in the days before the finished interstate).( http://www.mapsofworld.com/usa/states/michigan/michigan-map.html)

My dad had scraped up some dough and Uncle Bob sold him 36 acres of the land on Shire Rd.
My father and his brother George, with occasional help from other family and friends, slapped up a two bedroom hunting cabin on a slab, trimmed with parts scavenged from junkyards and put together with labor fueled by Budweiser and cheap scotch and managed by the heavy hand of Edmond, my dad.
"I'm the foreman on this job, goddammit! Don't talk to me now, I'm cogitatin' on how to cut this lumber....let's see now...that door jamb's gonna be 76 1/2 inches less two marks.....Oh shit. That's too short. I'ma have to cut it again! SMOKE BREAK!!"
(Meanwhile, being like eight years old, I became a world class tree climber and just tried to stay out of the way).
The interior was finished in unfinished dry-wall and concrete floor...
("Oh, don't you worry. We'll get that finished! Projects, goddammit! Keep these kids busy 'round here!")
...and the 'guest bedroom' was furnished with 2x4 studs nailed together to frame two double beds, stacked dorm-room style.
We burned wood for heat, initially. Eventually we got an oil burning furnace and within 25 or so years we graduated to clean burning propane, but we never did get rid of that greasy oil smell in there.
The little cottage was dubbed "Slipshod Manor" and it was our 'summer estate' and weekend retreat for better than thirty years.

My mom's father, Joseph Felix Lamondra, came and lived with us around'64 or '65 and made the drive north with us on several occasions before he passed away.
He wasn't wild about it.
"Asshole of America. That's what this goddamned place is Mary Leone. Twenty damned miles one way to get to mass and it doesn't matter where you set up the radio, you can't get a damned Tigers game up here for love nor money!"

One summer dad found an old wooden speed boat some guy built in his basement. It came with a 45 horse Johnson outboard engine. I wouldn't say it leaked, but that boat definitely seeped.
Now a boat, seepy or not, is a good thing to have Up North in the summertime.
We were like 12 miles from the Inland Waterway, and up there, that meant a little bit of heaven. You could fish in several different lakes and rivers without leaving the boat, get gas and groceries (and beer in later years) at various marinas along the way and meet girls at a variety of public beaches, none of whom were likely to meet each other any time soon.
And if you happened to have a pair of water skis and the ability to stand still while moving fast? Yikes! At 17, the world is your freshwater clam!

I've reached the age now where that's how I see it.
I remember one of my "most embarrassing moments" with nostalgia instead of pain.
(It's the one where I had Pete Spata and Pat Peterson and maybe Mike Kavanagh up from Lansing and I was showing 'em how good I could ski.
We had put the boat in at the public landing at little Silver Lake and they were standing by the boat ramp watching me go 'round.
My plan was to drop the rope on the slalom-ski close to shore, give 'em a little splash as I cut hard to stop and trot up the shore real cool like.
I had a hard time getting my dad, who was driving the boat and was loathe to get too close to shore, to get me in where I could pull this thing off.
Finally, he got me in real close.
Actually, a little too close. I dropped the rope, but couldn't quite maneuver my turn. My ski stuck in the sand and I kept going right up that gravel drive on my stomach. I picked gravel out 0f my chest for 7 years....)

I like to remember the bucolic walk to the lake with my sister Dawn. In reality it was two miles on gravel and dirt in 90 degree heat with deer flies bitin' and blisters growing between your toes from your flip-flops.

I see it now in my minds' eye as a pleasant drive north instead of a miserable four plus hour trek in a 1962 Ford Falcon Futura with red vinyl seats and 4/70 air conditioning, (4 window's down and 70 mile per hour).
I always got stuck in the seat behind my dad.
He was a smoker.
And a spitter.
One or the other was always going out his window and coming right back in mine.

Still and all, there's no place like it on the face of the earth.

I used to feel like I was on vacation the minute I hit that hill past the rest stop north of Clare.
It's about the halfway mark to Indian River from East Lansing.
It's the cusp of "up north".

Just this past Monday afternoon I felt it.
I couldn't resist it.
It's a three hour drive in relative comfort now, and I felt like I was on vacation the second I got in the car.
I went north.
Up to Wolverine and that Indian River.
I walked for a minute down that funky old dirt and gravel road, looking for deer tracks where I knew they'd always be.
I threw stones at that little Sturgeon River and remembered catching trout there long ago. I remembered catching way more trout than I ever really caught.
I looked at the place where my mom and my sister loosed my fathers ashes out by an old fish pond in the midst of tall white pines that we planted as seedlings back in 1968.
And when I left on Tuesday, the sky made blue a living thing. And though the bright reds were already gone, still the earth was arrayed in impossible color.
Unpaintable.

Here's the truth right here.

I'm a lucky duck all in all.

Happiest damn man in America.
Maybe I'll write another bad poem and go to bed now.

dA