4 posts tagged “up north”

The Up North Tour continued the weekend before last, with our annual camping trip to the Leelanau Peninsula. As has been custom for the last six years, Tom and I meet up at the tip of the pinky for some rustic camping and a few days of decompressing in what has slowly become one of my favorite places to be.

Seemingly, every year, I come back with the same set of photos, so I've limited them this year. The highlight of the weekend? It certainly wasn't being jammed on one campsite with six other people, three of them children, I will tell you that. No, it was the annual dog parade in Northport, a city more than 100 years old and holding just under 700 people in this picture-perfect northern Michigan community. Every year, around mid-August, they host a themed dog parade that runs through downtown. The theme for 2008 was an Indiana Jones takeoff, something about "Indiana Bones and the Raiders of the Lost Bark." It was cute and whimsical, and a nice distraction for the afternoon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And while years past have yielded some consistent imagery of wineries, wooded views and assorted shots of peninsula life, the sky above Lake Michigan, to me, never gets old.

 

And no, I'm not talking about kicking it at the roller rink with Tip Harris and/or the guys from Outkast. This is a gravely different ATL, and is located in central, northern Michigan in Montmorency County, where nobody is sitting on dubs and there is precious little in the way of city lights.

 

 

Atlanta, Michigan is about 30 miles west of Alpena, a community consisting of densely wooded areas, inland lakes and roughly a few thousand people. I spent every weekend -- and some full summers -- on Rush Lake, in the woods, up on a hill, from the time I was 5 until I was about 15, save, thankfully, for the winter season and part of the early spring. My parents had a cottage up there, which was roughly a 2 1/2-hour drive from our home in mid-Michigan. It is serene and peaceful, and this weekend offered quite a bit in the way of nostalgia as Kerry and I (and the dog) spent the weekend with friends at their lakefront place there. Mike and Cheryl, as was no surprise, were gracious hosts and the place itself inspired tranquility and relaxation.

 

 

 

 

Of course, a cool cottage has to have an array of interesting items with which it is decorated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A friend of one of their children was along for the weekend and caught his first fish ever. You always remember your "first"s and the first fish is definitely right up there.

 

We had a nice fire Saturday night ...

 

... and if you had to make a guess, who would you say is a little eager to get down to some s'more making?

 

 

Lamont had the best time, running around the grounds ...

 

... stumping for our favorite local candidate ...

 

... making friends ...

 

... and seemingly not being too bothered with the very long car ride.

 

 

Here he is before sticking his head out of the window ...

 

... and windblown cuteness after ...

 

A certain someone also enjoyed checking out the lake, although he is yet to actually swim.

 

 

We went "into town" to check out the local bluegrass festival in a park that runs along the Thunder Bay, a river I've canoed a couple of times as a kid, once with a good childhood (and now adulthood, after a recent reconnection) pal, Keith.

 

The music was a little folksy for my taste ...

 

 

 

 

... but enjoyable nonetheless.

Not a lot to do in Atlanta, as I experienced as an adult, but knew all along from when I was younger. I do have increasingly fonder memories of my time there, as I get older. But when I was a kid, I absolutely hated it. I was not into nature. I didn't like to hike, hunt or fish, although I did take up the latter by the time I was about 10 through age 12. I never liked to hunt, though. My dad and brothers were all into that, but that was never my thing. Still isn't. I did, however, love to shoot the guns. There was a sand dune that butted up to some Dumpsters at the nearby dump and, every Sunday, we would take the rifles and my dad's .22 handgun (my personal favorite) and shoot at tin cans lined up along a tattered piece of driftwood. My dad would fire clay pigeons for my brother to blast, honing what would be his bird-shooting skills. I would go through boxes of shells, lighting shit up left and right. I developed an impeccable aim, but, really, what the hell good was it if I wasn't into hunting shit? 

We would depart hometown, every Friday, right when my parents got home from work, my mother a nurse/clerk of sorts at the local blood bank, my father a pipefitter/plumber. We would pack the four of us in the cab of his pickup and embark north, me sometimes sleeping, sometimes yapping, but always, always forced to listen to the musical stylings of Carly Simon or Helen Reddy or Earl Klugh. My dad did, and still does, have the worst taste in music.

Friday night entry to the cottage was filled with the smell of up north cabin mustiness. We would unpack, have dinner, watch TV and chill. I would sometimes hole up in the room I shared with Frank and pore through a stash of baseball cards I kept up there, or listen to my older sister's 8-tracks she left behind, which included everything from the Beatles to Frampton. Saturday, I would usually dread. Saturday was wood cutting day and I hated that shit more than anything. My dad would get up, sharpen the chainsaw and haul ass out into the woods, taking down dead trees, dragging them back the truck, sectioning them off into logs that would fit into our wood-burning stove at home, load the truck and do it again a couple more times that day -- one load for the cabin, one for the house back home. It was sweaty, back-breaking work and I fucking hated it. I bitched long enough that my dad stopped taking me, instead making Frank go with him. I would stay back at the cottage and read, while my mother cleaned. She got sick of me loafing around while she worked, so she would kick me out, and out into the woods I would go.

I could navigate footpaths and unmarked trails that then, seemed 7 miles long, but now, in reality, probably were only several hundred yards. I would dink around, chase toads, try to find snakes, sit by the river or creek near the lake and sometimes write in my little journal. I would openly trespass onto the back properties of cottages where nobody ever stayed. I could walk along the creek, stop and sit when I wanted, sometimes lie in the cool grass and examine the trees skyward, letting my imagination unfurl. I was content being by myself in these woods. I didn't want to work cutting wood. Fuck that. I would, however, have to come back to the cottage in the afternoon and at least help unload the truck of its wood. Later we would have dinner. Now, that was the shit. My dad and brother were expert fisherman and we had a freezer full of lake-caught trout. My mom would flour-batter those filets and whip them up in a black cast iron pan. Some Saturdays, we would wake up to my dad making crepes (yes, a plumber who can make crepes; not to mention, a skilled tradesman who could quote pages of Kipling from memory) and breaking off huge pieces of toast from the cut-it-yourself bread we picked up at the Amish farm on the way up. He did this oftnetimes after he'd been up since before dawn catching fish. He would gut and clean the fish right there on the deck and we would gloriously consume them that night for dinner, along with some diced and fried potatoes and close that out with a piece of homemade pie, sometimes pecan, but more often than not, apple. I would give anything for a plate of that right now.

Saturday nights we would sit on the sun porch, watching the sun go down while playing Yahtzee or Uno. On some nights, at dusk, we would drive through two-tracks in the woods, looking for deer and other game, my folks in the cab of the truck, me and Frank in the back, standing up and hanging on to the pipes of the truck rack, Safari-style. And later, back at the cottage, neighbors would come down with their glasses of highballs (my parents didn't drink) and play cards with my folks until late at night, while Frank and I would stay up past midnight to catch that week's concert on the Blue Jean Network. I seem to remember Foghat the most. I don't know why.

Sunday would be a repeat of Saturday -- unless it was nice, and my mother would take me to a postage stamp-sized beach, where I would practice handstands in the lake or hold my breath underwater for as long as I could, scaring the hell out of my mom -- before leaving to come back downstate in the late afternoon, my father bitching his way through traffic or initiating some sort of family sing-a-long, depending on his mood or the state of transit at that moment. I was never a big fan of the weekend experience when I was growing up. My parents told me I would appreciate it when I was older. And they were right about that. I appreciate it to the point of heartache, it was an experience so richly sublime.

So, while we were up there this weekend, we drove by the old place, which my father sold years ago ...

 

.. and the road that would lead me to so many adventures as a child.

 

My older sisters live in Atlanta, so we took that as an opporunity for an unlikely and kind of unexpected reconnection. I called them and told them I was in town and we met up briefly as Kerry and I were headed out Sunday. I have seen my sisters maybe a half-dozen times over, I don't know, maybe the last 8 or 9 years. We had a good talk and I look forward to a more open line of communication with them in the future. 

 

In all, I'd say it was a pretty good weekend up north. And it's only going to get better as I prepare for my annual pilgrimage with my boy Glom to Lake Michigan for three days of a near utopian experience, and then, after that, a weekend at Torch Lake with Matt and the rest of the Committee To Maintain Debauchery.

 

It is going to be a busy and decidedly decadent August, as far as spending quality time with choice peoples in the lush and scenic settings of Northern Michigan. Four weekends straight are booked, and each one will put us somewhere different up north. We got in game shape for it by spending the weekend, not up north, but with Heather and Pete at Pete's aunt's place on Lake Huron. We love it there, typically eating delicious, having drinks and relaxation way removed from our element. Always a great time. Saturday was nice and relaxing, as demonstrated by Pete's dad, a career Detroit newspaperman ...

... and the good doctor.

Kerry and I drove into Harbor Beach, but didn't find much except for this empty guard tower/station and some garage in the shadows of a nice industrial district.

Driving along any blue highway in Michigan, you are likely to see a car for sale on the side of the road -- more than likely owned by a farmer of German or German-American heritage -- that as you are passing it, you take about 30 seconds to visualize you not only owning it and driving it, but feeling rather confident about the whole thing. I love old, classic rides; sick, shiny lowriders; and most cars in between, especially if its long and built in the '70s. One vision I have of my future has me in a car like that. And so it is wonderful to hear when my wife sees a funky old ride and remarks that she could see that too, sometime down the road. "I like the ones with the big fins," she has told me. Fins it shall be. So imagine our chuckles when we saw this bad boy in the grass.

It rained the rest of the day and night, so we chowed, hung out and took off in the morning. Next weekend will be a fascination of nostalgia and weirdness as I return to central, northern Michigan, where I spent more than half of my childhood with my brother and parents in a cottage on a lake.

Here’s a spooky tale for everyone on Halloween. And what makes it scary and creepy was that it really happened, as in, it is based on actual events.

My friend Tom (here I often call him Glom) I’ve known since we were about 5. My friend Trace, I met when I was a junior in high school. For years, along with Jase, we were all pals for quite a few years. My parents loved all of my friends, but my late mother had quite an admiration for Trace, as well as our friend Jamie. These chicks were all tits, makeup and clothes and I think my mother felt their presence kind of “classed up” the rest of my dirtball circle of friends.

My parents had a cottage in central northern Michigan, a beautiful little place on a lake in the middle of the woods, up on a hill. I hated going there as a kid, but loved it as an adult. The latter was mainly because my folks would let me and my friends up there for uninterrupted weekends of what 19-year-olds do. Had they known we were tripping our minds out, smoking down and getting blown out on booze and beer, they might’ve thought otherwise. Some weekends were downright toxic, others kind of mild and mellow, more like a serene getaway.

The place was fabulous. It had a huge stone fireplace, nice deck, cable TV, but no phone, which, I felt, made it even more attractive. Nobody could reach us and we kind of liked it that way. My parents bought the place when I was about 14, after owning the joint next door since about 1976. The new place was in disrepair we spent long weekends up there renovating it: new deck, new plumbing, new ceiling, the whole deal. We washed dishes in the bathtub while my dad and brother blew out the kitchen. That kind of shit.

My mother would pass away in January of 1990. She retired about eight months before that and spent about six of them up on the lake. About a year or so later, Tom, Trace and I decided to head up there for a weekend of relaxing. All we ever did up there was eat, drink, loaf, smoke, watch TV, and otherwise goof off. It was perfect. So we went this weekend, got there about 9 p.m. on a Friday night and, upon entering, claimed our rooms.

Since Trace was the lone female in the group, she took one of two single bedrooms on the main floor. Tom and I took the two single beds in the loft, directly above her room. The other main floor room was my parents’ master bedroom and with my mother’s funeral a year behind us, I wasn’t sleeping in there. We crashed early the first night, got up Saturday and lounged all day long. Saturday night we would do what we did best, tossed a bunch of beer, turned joints into roaches and basically fucked off, watching TV and wolfing down as much food as possible.

It was about midnight when we decided to go to bed. We were definitely in a different state of mind, but nobody was positively wasted. There was no stumbling or slurring. We were just beat and buzzed and looked forward to slumber. We met at the bottom of the steps. Trace said good-night and me and Tom went upstairs. I could hear her door close. Tom got into his bed and I sat on the edge of mine, smoking a cigarette before bed and kicking off my socks. We made quiet small-talk for a second before we could hear Trace’s voice coming from her room downstairs. It was faint. It wasn’t like a “Hey, shut the hell up!” or “Can someone turn out the hallway light, please?” Nothing like that. She said something else and I called to her, “What?” And then she said nothing else. Tom and I looked at each other and kind of shrugged. Whatevs.

We then fell asleep.

I got up first and went downstairs to start making some form of breakfast. Tom came down about 10 minutes later and then Trace opened her bedroom door, joining us in the kitchen. She had a smirk on her face.

“OK,” she said, “which one of you was it?”

Tom and I kind of looked at each other, like, “what in the fuck are you talking about?”
Her question made no sense, so I kept doing what I was doing. She pressed.

“Which one of you was it,” she asked, still kind of smiling.

“Which one was WHAT?” I asked. We had no idea what in the world she was talking about. She kept on with the vague questioning before I put the pan down and said “Trace, what? What are you talking about?”

“Which one of you came into my room last night?”

We laughed. “You wish,” Tom said. The three of us were friends and had, at one time, fooled around with our good friend. But we remained friends with no hard feelings and our boy-ish desires, at least for Trace, were well behind us. It was a respect thing at that stage of our friendship.

“Seriously,” she said, “which one of you was it? One of you came in my room, now who was it.”

The smirking had stopped and it was short of terse, like, “enough already with the games.”

The stairs to the loft were narrow and short, and made of wood. To negotiate them, you had to walk sideways, at an angle. And they creeked noticeably. All of the floors creeked. Had Tom gotten up in the middle of the night to go downstairs, so much to even piss, it would wake me up. And last night, it didn’t.

“After I went to bed last night, one of you came in my room,” she said.

Tom and I looked at each other.
“Tom?” I asked.
“No, man,” he said. And I believed him. I totally would have heard him and vice versa.

“We said good-night at the stairs,” Trace said. “And I went into my room, changed clothes, turned off the light and got into bed. About five minutes later one of you came into my room.”

“Trace,” Tom said. “We did not come in to your room, we swear.”
Meanwhile, I’m recounting the moment we went to bed, how I saw Tom up there when I went to sleep, how he was there when I woke up, and did not venture from the loft between that time.

We all had the same “oh fuck” look on our faces.

“One of you guys came in to my room last night after I turned off the light and sat at the foot of the bed. I called out to you, I said “Tom? John?”

I turned to Tom, “That must’ve been the talking we heard from her before we crashed. Trace, didn’t you hear me? I was upstairs and called out “What? As in, what do you want? I thought you wanted us to stop talking.”

“Wait a minute,” she said. “You both heard me from my bedroom and you were both upstairs at the same time?”

“Yeah,” we said in unison. “We were both looking at each other like, what the fuck does she want now.”

“That’s really creepy, you guys,” she said, almost freaked out. “If you guys are fucking around you better tell me now! This isn’t funny!”

“Trace,” I said, and she cut me off.
“Someone came in that room, in the dark, and sat at the end of that bed and stared at me for about three or four minutes. They didn’t say a word, but it could feel like someone was staring at me. I wasn’t scared because it didn’t feel scary, that’s why I thought it was one of you tw-“

And she stopped, putting her hand over her mouth.

I looked at Tom and he at me, and then us at Trace.

Holy shit.

I believe in spirits and energy and a small amount of the supernatural, superphysical or whatever you want to call it.

“You know Trace, ma always liked you quite a bit,” I said.

She slapped me on the arm and we all kind of changed the subject. I would make it up the cabin about a dozen more times before my dad sold it and I never felt anything strange. But I know where I was at that moment and I know where Tom was. And according to Trace’s timing, at the moment she spoke, there sure felt like someone sitting on the end of the bed. And it wasn’t me. And it wasn’t him.

Happy Halloween.