Lovely went out to check the mailbox today and came back empty-handed. This is unusual because the postman puts junk mail into the box if we get nothing legitimate. That way, we know he was there. I pondered momentarily and remembered that today is Columbus Day, a national holiday. When I was in grammar school, our nun taught us that Columbus discovered America, and he is remembered for having done so. It means some people have the day off from work, like the mail service, banks and most government offices. We never got the day off from school, so I guess Columbus wasn’t a very large hero.
In today’s world, Columbus is seen as just another sailor who got lost and bumped into some Caribbean Islands. He didn’t even come close to North America. Two hundred years ago, no one had a clue that he never touched the continent. Columbus sailed back to report his findings to Queen Isabella, his sponsor, that he discovered India. We were all happy that he did and that his trip opened the floodgates of migrants coming from Europe to be free from the oppression of their kings to settle into the wilds of America. The natives didn’t know the Europeans were coming in illegally because they didn’t have stupid laws forbidding it. The laws defining separation of colonies were drawn by those same early migrants.
Today, the climate is different. Many years after the migrants were settled and the lines were drawn to separate the colonies from one another someone discovered a Viking ship buried in the sands of Canada from four hundred years earlier than Columbus. These people argue that Columbus does not deserve to be honored, because the Vikings made the discovery before him, except they didn’t come home and declare they did. Others, who hate the idea of America denigrate Columbus and deny him the finding. They want to change history so they can rewrite it to their perspective. For whatever reason, Columbus has lost favor with the people of America simply because they have forgotten what they were taught in grammar school. The result is that some of us only remember that it is a day the mailmen get off, therefore there was no mail today.
I gazed out the window to look at my once beautiful garden, which I was so proud of, and thought, eh. Winter is coming, and all the weeds and flowers will die, and the wind will sweep them away. Unfortunately, all of my weeds will be swept away, but my neighbors will be swept in. The bottom line is equal part ugly. I often wondered how long it would take for nature to reclaim a manicured garden. I’d say about three years because right now, it has been neglected for two years and it is almost natural. My idea is to hire a bulldozer to come and scrape the entire yard clean. That would give me about three months of pleasure until the weeds take over again. Guys like me belong in senior homes where there are no gardens to look after. If I were to go there, I would probably sit in regret for having left my independence and my weedy garden. My brother is in that situation. He sits in his retirement community in the heart of the city watching cars and busses flow past his window and dreams about escaping to his summer home in Michigan. He sits with as many pots of flowers as will fit on his window sill to substitute for the fabulous garden he gave up. His kids removed his driving privileges and car keys two years ago and he is left to cruise the hallways with his walker while leading a conga line of seniors shuffling after. He spends his hours spreading cheer and doing good deeds for his fellow senior neighbors. At ninety-three he still dreams of traveling except he is left to the mercy of his kids who still lead active lives.
Most of us have the small problem of a money shortage. If we had money, we could hire a full-time caretaker or two to drive us wherever we wanted. They would also manage our pill boxes, pack our clothing, and provide an occasional meal. All we would have to do is wake up, brush our teeth, dress, climb into the car, and instruct “Westward ho James.”
During the garden season, we would sit in a wheelchair and direct the caretaker to pull this weed, cut that branch, and plant the rose bush here. There are many people who live like that. My problem is finding caretakers who know the difference between a flower and a weed and, of course, finding the $300 plus per day to make it happen. Instead, I sit and watch YouTube videos and feel my muscles melting away. My fingers and hands begin to develop tendonitis from overuse of the keyboard, and I wonder what my options will be when I reach the next stage.
Reading fiction novels is an excellent way to waste my years, and I read at least one book per week. Once in a while, I’ll pick a political science book or some other non-fiction genre, and it’ll take me two weeks to finish because I fall asleep too often with the boredom of facts, figures, and theories of how to improve the world. After reading so many murder mysteries, I avoid them because they romanticize killing. The next more popular genre is love stories, they bore me to tears. What I do find interesting a is a good love story salted with many erotic scenes. They remind me of my ‘good old days.’ Biographies are good. They are intriguing, and I love to know how people spent their lives as compared to my own.
After twelve years of blogging, even this hobby is becoming tiresome. I overthink what to write, but my life is the same every day, and it seems I have nothing interesting to say anymore. Politics has been a fun topic, but hundreds of political people are writing about every political speech, tactic, lie, and activity of candidates. Who cares what I have to say? So why waste valuable time saying it.
In my younger years, I would take a bike ride to get my juices flowing again, but this year, I finally sold my trusty recumbent bicycle and have already spent the money I got for it. I’m running out of options to discuss here, which prompts me to go and eat a sandwich.
Since 2006, Americans have bought over 105 million cars. However, since Covid, sales have dropped to one-third of what they were in 2006. The average number of vehicles per year is over six million. I assume that they are all still on the road and working. My numbers will be low because a significant number of used vehicles are still running and will run for many years to come. We have over four million miles of roads; at times, we experience gridlock and wish we had more. The point I am making is that there are over 25 cars per mile on every road in the country. At first that sounds like a low number, but my guess is that twenty years ago we only had 12 cars per mile. As the years progress and the reliability of cars is improved, more and more of them will strike out and be on the roads.
As a personal observation, as I walk around the neighborhood, I see an increase in the number of cars people park in front of their homes. In one example, I have seen one house with two cars in the garage and four more on the driveway. As families grow, so does their need for transport grow. It is not unusual for families with several high-school-age kids to provide a car for each. Several cars in a family lighten the burden of transporting them to sporting and club events by providing each child with his own transportation appliance. They do the same with cell phones using the argument that the parent wants the child to report his extracurricular activities. What this does is create a new “rush hour.” There was always the morning and the evening rush, now we have the mid-afternoon rush created by teachers and students leaving school. The traffic never seems to end or lighten.
I recently read a book titled City Limits, Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways.‘
The author argued that while we approve of cities widening their roads and adding capacity to allow traffic to flow more smoothly through the town, this only works for a short time. As more people become aware of the faster ride home, they flock to the new road, which becomes jammed as severely as the old one did. On top of that, the area of property taken to make the wide road displaces people and fosters more homelessness. Ultimately, the argument heads toward the need for more public transportation.
One of my recollections of boyhood concerns public transport. In the early fifties, Chicago had a large, well-run public transport system. We were only two blocks from a trolley stop, and walking to the stop was never a problem. As a young boy, I could hop on the trolley, drop my nickel into the box, and ask for a transfer. The transfer was good for several hours; with it, I could traverse the city from north to south and east to west.
The trolleys took their power from overhead electrical wires, thus avoiding any pollution. The trolleys called Red Rockets were painted red and yellow. Most had entry at the front next to the motorman, and longer trolleys had an additional portal two-thirds the way back, often supervised by a second conductor. As time progressed and we evolved the trolleys were replaced by the Green Hornets. They were the same functionally, but were faster, had more comfortable seats, and more hand holds for people that had to stand. I recall reading about a couple of horrible trolley collisions with vehicles and fires which caused many deaths. The cry for safer transport evolved into another type of vehicle that did not use tracks. The idea was that these bus like vehicles could avoid collisions easier because they were not restricted to the tracks. They were, however powered by electricity routed through the same overhead wires. Another leap in evolution came when the electric driven buses were replaced by diesel powered ones. The ugly, overhead wires were stripped from the routes and replaced by the black smoke of the diesels. All along, the price of a ride kept growing and the number of busses running were diminished to the point where it was faster to walk to where you were going. It was certainly faster to drive. After WWII the availability of personal cars boomed and the need for public transport kept shrinking. It has never disappeared but the practicality of running a system in 2024 like the one we had in 1945 is severely limited.
The future of public transportation will evolve into self-driving electric modules that come to your home and drive you to your destination. The highways will be rebuilt to become transport paths with electrical pickups that the modules will use for power. Traffic will be computer-monitored and controlled.
Although drone technology sounds great, they will not be practical for commuting. Imagine as many drones in the air headed for the same place as there are cars today.
I will never live long enough to see that evolution in service. Instead, I will live constantly complaining about awful traffic and over-crowded roads.
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.
