This day started great. I woke up, went for a brisk walk, then ate a small breakfast of pastrami and cheese on rye toast. Then, I made it in time to pick up my rejuvenated hearing aids. I arrived home by 10:45 all proud of myself for having such a great start. I had a fresh cup of coffee and attacked the pile of papers on my desk. Then, the trouble began. I called the literary agent about my manuscript. I felt like all life had been sucked out of me.
He read a single editorial comment from the story and it frightened the daylights out of me. My worst fear has been recognized. Even with years of practice, I still have a proclivity to tell a story rather than to “show” it. What this could mean to me is a complete rewrite. This scares me because I put my heart and soul into the first draft and would consider the second draft as work rather than pleasure. It means hours at the computer sitting and thinking about how to “show” the story. I haven’t yet committed to having this company publish the work, and now I have this weird insecure feeling that life will be much better if I just trash the piece and go on living my normal do nothing life. Or, maybe, I’ll take a nap and come back refreshed to attack the problem ahead. It all boils down to whether or not I believe the story is as good as I think it is. It is good, but like all authors working on their first serious work, I am scared that it isn’t.
I am finally beginning to recognize what showing a story is all about when I read a fictional novel. I can see the story unfolding in my mind, but I can still not write in a showy fashion. This is the most challenging project I have ever undertaken; it is time for the nap.
I am tired, and wanting to eat the ass out of a dead skunk, but I made it to the base of the Mackinaw bridge which is Mackinaw City. I sit with the laptop on my lap hoping to make some sense out of all the ideas that rolled through my mind while driving. Should I speak to all the TRUMP/Vance signs I saw? Yes, why not? These weren’t little yards signs like I stick into my lawn, they were semi-trailer sized signs. This surprises me because Michigan is a blue state. As I drove further north there began to be some equally large Harris-Walz signs. That’s more like the Michigan I know. The whole time my mind kept telling me that the country is going to go crazy like they did with Obama. They will vote for Kamala without knowing what she stands for, and later regret it after she has snuck a bunch of laws and policies into place that will kill the United States that we know.
I’d rather change the subject and talk about how much this part of the country has changed since I was last here.
Number one, I met an immigrant working at our hotel who was a nice black man. The thing I found strange is that over the years I have traveled and stayed in hotels, I have never once seen a male housekeeper. They have always been women.
Number two, the tiny coastal towns that create the uniqueness of the upper lower peninsula have grown substantially. A sign would appear along the roadside announcing the city limits of the town. Yet, I drove another ten minutes before reaching the part that I remember.
Number three, I used a credit card on a parking meter in one of these quaint littles towns which has grown into a city. Except for the fact that the meter screen was not very visible in daylight, it was sexy. We crossed the street and I looked back at my car to see the meter blinking a green light while the meter in the unoccupied spot in front of mine was blinking red. No doubt these lights were meant as an alert to the police who patrolled the streets looking for expired meters to write a ticket.
Number four, US 31 is still a two lane highway. I was literally scared to death to be driving against traffic at the posted speeds. This same road has miles of two lane, two lanes with an occasional extra passing lane, four lanes, and four lanes with limited access. The scariest part is driving on two lanes head on toward a semi hugging the line. It must be my age because it never bothered me before.
Number five, Mackinaw city is not much larger than it was forty years ago. It plays a single function, that is to give temporary shelter to tourists like me who come to visit Mackinaw Island. The total permanent population is around seven hundred, but between July and August the number is in the thousands. The young man who checked me in lives in Florida when he is not checking people in at the desk of the American Boutique Inn in Mackinaw City.
Number six, the Mackinaw Bridge still impresses me after all these years. I was about eight or ten years old when it was built, and it has saved a ton of money for travelers crossing from lower Michigan to Upper Michigan. I once rode over it on my bicycle while on the Shoreline Bike Tour. We actually had a safety meeting before crossing. The expansion joints between sections of the bridge can swallow a bike tire and cause the rider to take a header into the steel grate driving surface. The ride organizers actually placed sheets of plywood over the joints to make them safer. The ride across still gives me the heebie jeebies when I think about being four hundred feet above the water at its peak.
Number seven, it is a few days into Fall, and the trees are just beginning to turn color. We have had cloudy days with occasional showers. The temperature is dropping into the fifties at night, which by itself is not too cold. When you add a brisk wind coming from the lake the wind chill makes it miserable.
Number eight, the season for tourists is two weeks from being over. Businesses will board up and close. Many will return to their winter businesses in Florida. Others will return home where ever that may be.
Number nine, Mackinaw Island does not allow automobiles or trucks. All travel on the island is on foot, bicycle, or a horse drawn carriage. The horses are ferried onto the island in Spring and ferried to their home farms in the Upper Peninsula in the Fall. The largest hotel is the Grand Hotel, an all wooden structure well over a hundred years old. The Grand employs contract workers from Haiti, or the Dominican Republic. Within the next two weeks they will all be headed home until the next season.
Number ten, the last stop on this venture will be Pictured Rocks National Seashore. If it rains, the stop is canceled until a sunny day. In order to see the full beauty of the colors in the rocks requires bright sunlight.
One reason for taking this driving trip is to test my endurance for even longer trips. At this point, I am inclined to bite the bullet and take a plane on longer trips.
One thing that comes from living in a socialist country is a different attitude about paying for things. If all your needs are satisfied by Uncle, then why settle for anything? All things must come free. I live with Lovely, who spent most of her life in a socialist country. She escaped to go to America for a better life. She has a better life now, and she enjoys it as long as she is healthy. She has reached the age of fourscore when the body shows signs of wear and tear. A visit to the doctor is acceptable unless it comes with a bill for payment of the services. Her attitude is one of live a healthy life and you won’t need a doctor. Because of her background she is into organically grown foods, clean, pure water, and no pills.
Recently, she was diagnosed with wet macular degeneration. All she wanted was a new pair of glasses to read again. Instead, her foreign (any of the four languages she learned in her childhood) language-speaking doctor told her to see a specialist. English is not one of them. She doesn’t think in English, she thinks in any of the languages she knows. I’ve witnessed her speaking to three different people all speaking a different language and she not only understood all of them but could respond to them in thier own tongue simultaneously, but english is not included.
She went to this new doctor, who can not speak her language, but there happens to be a nurse at the practice that does, that makes her happy. At the same time COVID hit the world. Our Governor spread the word that Illinois Medicaid would accept undocumented people without question to get healthcare. She applied and was accepted. For the past two years she has received treatments for her eyes without any mention of money. She was happy. I was wondering when the ceiling would fall on our heads. It happened this spring when the state voided all Medicaid to people who were covered under the COVID policy. She had to reapply. She did, and this time she was denied and put into a special class called redetermination and the state would pay for all expenses she incurred over $590/month. She was not happy anymore. I bit the bullet and applied for Obama Care. Thankfully they accepted us into the private insurance marketplace which they wouldn’t do three years ago. The premiums are over $700/month and the co-pay limit is $9000/yr. They have been paying for about half of her eye treatments which are about $5000 each time, and she averages two treatments per month. She is not a happy camper anymore. Welcome to America Lovely!
At this time, I’m worried about the nest egg being ravaged, and with inflation running rampant, it feels like someone pulled an oversized plug out of the retirement fund. What I don’t understand is whether socialist healthcare provides state-of-the-art drugs such as the one they now use for wet macular degeneration or whether they send you home and tell you to drink chamomile tea.
It doesn’t matter what socialist medicine does or doesn’t do because Lovely will never return to her roots. She loves it here; it’s just not the part about paying the bill for healthcare.
This afternoon, I had an appointment with my Lions Club. We were walking in the yearly Labor Day Parade, a highlight of the 52nd annual Fall Festival in Frankfort, Illinois. I live a mile and a half from the start point, and most years, I ride my bicycle through the crowded streets to get there. That wasn’t possible this year because I finally sold my beloved recumbent bike to clear the way to my car in the garage and also because the only time I ever rode the thing anymore was to get to the parade. My original plan was to walk, but I didn’t feel up to the walking 1.5 miles to walk another 1.5 miles in the parade and a final 1.5 miles home. I sissied out and took the car. When I finally reached the starting point I was directed to Grand Prairie School parking lot, another mile further away. I figured I could do that, if I hitched a ride back.
I inched my way through the traffic jam to get to the school. Upon reaching the stoplight to cross US 45, it was barricaded off, and a nice young blond-haired policeman about sixteen years old directed me away from that effort. That was the end of my parade. The traffic on LaGrange Road (US 45) was two cars wide and a mile down to Lincoln Highway. Any effort to park that far away was just lost energy. I came home. There was half an hour left to get to the parade on time, I am 1.5 miles away and I walk at two miles per hour. If I had just walked to the start point as I originally wanted to do I would have made it.
For the first time in fifteen years, I missed walking in the parade with my Lions Club. It’s not the parade that I missed; it is the beer fest we had afterward to cool down. I’ll watch last years parade and enjoy it jjust as much.
Today my ass is dragging ten feet behind me. That means I’m tired as hell. What did I do to get that tired? Nothing. That is my usual routine: do nothing. That is until it is time to eat; then, I eat.
My sleep last night was broken by four trips to the commode, each one, two hours after the last. I can even tell I am tired when I have to stop typing to make corrections too many times in one sentence. The lack of energy I experience may be related to the beer I drank at the Wurstfest on Thursday night. If I had stuck with hard liquor I might feel better.
I am so tired that I have no desire to bash Kamala Harris, who is running for president. How much worse can she screw the country than what she has done already? At my age, It won’t matter that she turns us into a communist state because I won’t be here to hate it.
Yesterday, I tried sending my daughter a copy of my book, “BAC-British American Colonies, A World Without the United States.” It was too large a file to transmit, so, being the good father that I am, I printed it single-spaced on two sides and bound it with a cover. It came out so nice that I’ll make another copy to pass around to my friends for review. Their comments will help me decide whether to pursue finding a local (USA) publisher or Kindle Books at Amazon.
