Pure Michigan Thanksgiving

The biggest travel weekend of the year is upon us as 1.3 million travelers hit the roads.  Auto travel is definitely a Michigan tradition from the first concrete paved stretch of road in the U.S., Woodward Avenue M-1 in 1909, to the spider’s web of well-traveled highways reaching every nook and cranny of Michigan today.

Wednesday November 23, 2011:     I and my fellow Michiganders are on the road. 

              Over Bear River and through the Emmet, Antrim, Otsego woods…

To Rochester Hillbillies house I go.

My car knows the way,

AND NO DEER WILL I SLAY,

And the road is not drifted with snow. J

At midnight I enter the embrace of Dutch-ancestry relatives with sharp horns and witty but not-too-sharp tongues.   The countdown to Turkey Day dinner has started.  The Moe is threading a large needle to truss the 26- pound turkey once it is stuffed in the morning.  The brother-family who sprung out of Harbor before me, have already deposited their dinner offerings of trifle and other delicacies in the fridge.

My contribution, sauce from Whitefish Point cranberries picked by a friend who wisely harvested cranberries BEFORE the ten-inch snowfall blanketed Paradise last week, is snug and cool in the trunk for the night.  Thanksgiving has become a springboard for Christmas so my other dish, spinach dip, makes for a nice green and red holiday offering.

Thursday morning:      The big day arrives.

The advantages of sleeping on a soft couch in the living room on T-Day are many.  From this nest I witness the day unfold.

I wake in early morning darkness to the sound of little sis scurrying down to her kitchen to truss the turkey and stuff it into the oven.  Luckily, as I achieve enough consciousness to think about offering to help, she flicks the lights off and heads back up to bed.  Shucks.  I’d better get some rest so I can offer to help with the dishes.

Strange stirrings from the dog crates rouse me and I drag myself up and out to give the host dogs some relief.  Standing on the lawn in my zebra outfit hoping the neighbors are not looking I spy another 21^st century Thanksgiving tradition: The carcass of a large lawn turkey deflated on the grass.  It’s a colorful sight but which is odder, Zebra woman or asphyxiated turkey carcass??? 

Give the dogs their early morning snack then back to couch for more shuteye.  I really should make coffee like a good guest.  Shucks again!  Before I can lift a hand, the Alpha Male host concocts a lovely brew and serves me a cup in my living room nest.  And a second cup!  I’m in heaven.  And conversation about Thanksgivings past and the new tradition of people who are not truly homeless but camp out starting on Wednesday to get door buster deals on Black Friday!! Crazy.  But we all have our traditions that we love.

This couch perch view of Thanksgiving unfolding is great.  One negative, the turkey is wafting luscious scents throughout the house and I’m hungry.  Can I stand this lovely scent for seven more hours??

The traditions to come: 

* Chestnut soup from Antrim Ridge Farm nuts harvested in October by the migrant siblings at Farm Party Weekend.

The Moe tends the Turkey

* Roasted beet salad with feta and those awesome candied sweet potatoes prepared by the vegetarian siblings in their nearby warren. 
* The hillbillies from Farmingtown are bringing the apple walnut salad that we have come to treasure.
* Pumpkin pie and pecan pie ala Moe are resting on the table already.
* Large quantities of potatoes and rutabaga are peeled and ready to simmer on the stove.
* Turkey

I’m reeeeaally getting hungry

O.K., it’s not just about food it’s also about more.  The parade is forming on Woodward, television celebrities-for-a day are perched above Detroit to incite home viewers.  The ultimate traditional anthem of the day, Alice’s Restaurant, is coming around again on the radio.  The newspaper is full of touching stories of love and family and an inch or three of advertising for our holiday shopping planning pleasure.  I’m anticipating a series of Thanksgiving parade walks around the hilly neighborhood with gangs of family.

Then, when all the people and food are here, we’ll pause to give thanks for all that we have.  We’ll pause to remember all those who have passed on but passed traditions down to us.  We’ll pause to be thankful for the love and nurturing that empowers us to create beautiful new traditions.

It must be the powerful smell of turkey that is making me sentimental. 

Gotta go.    Santa just arrived in Detroit and I have to hear his words of wisdom.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Fall Falls Into…

Gray emptiness envelopes the northland.  As the leaves are beaten off the trees by days of late October rains and winds, the tourists disappear. 

Main Street,  Harbor Springs.  The first Sunday in November though, is a late-season gift of the gods.  Sunny,  golden, mild and desolate.  Volunteers pull up wooden framed planters around the trees growing through the sidewalk.  A few oddball groups of real human stragglers wander about. Most shop windows feature closed signs with a few valiant exceptions.

The waterfront docks are fenced over.    No admittance.   Huge blue, plastic-wrapped boats stud the landscape.   The atmosphere is peaceful, placid.   

Could it just be weeks ago that we wandered here from beach to beach chasing elusive purple fish and wallowing in warm water?  Was it only weeks ago that  we jockeyed for  a  waterside table at Dudley’s and tracked  minnows and gulls even while devouring tasty luncheon treats. 

Male tourist hogs September limelight
in front of indulgent female relatives.

September, then October, slipped away into a beautiful but quieter November Sunday.

The walkways, where Tomas hammed it up in the center of each shot and always in front of Maris, are empty.  

The air should ring with the sounds of kids laughing and calling. 

If this were a movie I'd make the air echo with the remembered childsong but today, in reality,
it is silent.

November: Real and surreal.

Winter:  Even now gathering forces to obliterate the straggling golden days.  Whooossssshhhhh!!!

MACKINAC ATTACK

A McCheeseburger and a shot of carbonated caffeine resting on the vehicle’s picnic platform, I steer down a secret byway known mostly to the local saints of Ignace.  The point of driving on LaBarbe is that eventually a vista of the Mighty Mac appears in the windshield that's like having side-stage tickets at a Rolling Stones Concert.  Not that I’ve ever had any tickets to a Stones concert.

As the twin pinnacles of the beautiful structure rise gracefully out of the Straits, I instinctively reach for the camera.  I must capture this on film or its digital equivalent. 


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Randon tourist child under bridge. 
Not Pte. LaBarbe view--that's secret.!!

“Darn”

No camera.

I feel a compulsion to stop—I’m cruising for a good spot in between the tall weeds at roadside.   My hands grasp at empty space and my heart is bereft that I can’t capture this view. 

“Get a grip”  The voice of reason intones.

This view will still be here later today, tomorrow, and probably even next week.  At home, in cyber and paper collections, I have zillions of shots of the Mackinac Bridge.  I don’t need another.

“Steer away from the bridge.”  The voice of reason chants.

Before tearing myself away from the scene, I take a deep breath and revel in my special view of the silvery bridge rising out of the mist.

Photos of the bridge’s 54-year lifespan plus oddities of the five-year construction phase would fill a gallery stretching the whole length of I-75.  Better photographers than I have been sucked into this compulsion.  Maybe there’s a support group.

Or maybe I’ll come back by with my camera this afternoon to get just one more shot of the iron mistress of Michigan.

--Sireen