Moon over Michigan

ABOVE: I ate a lot of meat in Michigan - which is part of its allure, really.


If you live here in the Chicago area, they keep playing commercials on the radio and TV from Michigan.org that, quite frankly, make me cry.

They are narrated by Tim Allen in somber tones, with minor key piano music. In my mind, what they essentially say is, "Remember when your life was better, when you didn't have to get up early in morning to head out to sit in an office wearing a tie so you can stare at a computer all day? Remember the 90s when you could golf with your buddies and call it work? Remember, when your life didn't suck? Well, come to Michigan and things won't suck as much - at least once you get through the traffic hell that is Indiana."

Yes, Tim, yes. You are right! You are peering into my soul as no one has since Celine Dion crooned "My Heart Will Go On" during the end credits for "Titanic."

So I took old "Tool Time" Tim up on his offer. Some friends invited me along to their annual vacation to their friends cottage along Lake Huron outside Bay City, the town made famous, briefly, in the 70s by a band from Scotland, the Bay City Rollers. I saw no kilts, and forgot to pack my own should I have needed it for a Rollers 4th of July tribute weekend.

In fact, I went way kiltless, if just for a few minutes, out in the lake. The first day there, the water looked so inviting I mentioned out loud that I have never been skinny dipping. Which led to a dare, which led to me getting a 24 free beers, 12 of them, aptly, Blue Moon, the others local brews Old Bastard and Thunder Bay. I went for pricey craft labels. All I had to do was what I wanted to do anyway, in the middle of the day, with God - and maybe a jet skier - as my witness.

Zebra mussels have mucked up the ecosystem, so the water near the shore has a bit of green algae to manuever, and there were rocks and seaweed to negotiate. But all I had to do was wade out to a sand bar about 100 yards from the shore and the beer would be mine. That, and hope no one called the Coast Guard or that there was no lost sounding fish from the Amazon there waiting to crawl up Little Elvis. Such fish do exist. Google it.

One friend mocked that I looked like Pamela Anderson at the beginning of Bay Watch, the meaning of which I am not quite sure.
Otherwise, no one seemed to notice full moon in the middle of the day - but perhaps the crew of the Space Shuttle, temporarily blinded off the glare from my pasty Irish body. And there is photographic evidence, if you are interested - though why you would be confuses me.

Nay, my closest brush with the law came on a trip to Frankenmuth, to Bronner's, where it is always Christmas. I wanted to go to Frankenlust, which I assumed was where horny monsters hangout. And I think the Bride of Frankenstein is totally hot. But one member of our party is a Christmas Queen, so muth it was - and meet it was, as we ate at a German place where they make the poor waitresses dress like milk maids and the dudes look like the brothers of Sam Adams, beer label version.

In fact, I don't think I have been as carnivorous in my life as I was on this trip. Which is why it's a good thing that I won that beer.


ABOVE: It's Christmas in July - and the other 11 months of the year - in Frankenmuth, Michigan.


Anyway, if you haven't been to the subtle as Las Vegas Bronner's, and you love the holidays, you really should make the journey. I mean, it's so hard to find Christmas decorations in time for the holidays. But where else are you going to find a mannequin torso of a bride with her dress apparently a tree or maybe an evergreen bush? Since the Santa's Village amusement park in Illinois is closed, where else can you pose with elf statues in broad daylight? And that's not to mention the float out front which combined CHRISTmas (as they spell it at Brommer's) with the 4th of July?

Overdosing on the jolliness of it all, as we passed table of women painting whatever you wanted on bulb ornaments, I suggested that we ask for swears. The Christmas Queen was in the midst of spending $500 on this year's theme, so my thought inspired a theme of my own - a Tourette's XXXmas.

Uncooth me let a few f-bombs fly, not realizing there were other patrons nearby, one a dad with a baby. After realizing the error of my ways, I quickly apologized to him. Twice. Three times. But he was pissed. And not just because of the kid.

"Oh, make fun of people with Tourette Syndrome. You the man," he scolded, sarcastically employing the phrase typically used by mooks after Tiger Woods tees off.

I wanted to recommend he rent What About Bob?, with Bill Murray, which has a funny scene about Tourette's. I wanted to say, oh, yeah I'm the bad guy. Did you notice Santa apparently moved his workshop to several sweatshops in Asia, but I am the bad guy.

But, wimp that I am, I was expecting that he would sig the Reindeer Police after me, that every camera hidden in an inflatable Santa Snoopy or giant Precious Moments nativity set was now pointed toward me - that I would be escorted out and handed a complimentary lump of coal. But nothing happened. We posed a small statue of a dog with its mouth suggestively open under one of Santa pounding away at his workbench, just as a test. Somebody we didn't know laughed - and may have bought our creation, for all I know. But I avoided punishment once more.

My partner in crime became a golf buddy on this trip. That's how much Tim Allen's words have touched my soul. I had not golfed in a year - and the last time, was, indeed, in Michigan. It's magical, I tell you, like the Blue Moon, I drank, or some of the things you get to see for free on the Internet.

Plus, golf is way cheaper in Michigan than it is in Chicago - it's as if you have euros, it's that inexpensive. At one course, some people played barefoot, just like former Chicago Bear Jim McMahon likes to do. And at the other course, hot dogs were just $1.50, and the cute cart-tress came by with beers that were $1.50 a can!!!

And I didn't even have to pay for those - because another other new gold buddy felt guilty making us help get his cart out of a ditch, getting my other new golf pal muddy in the process. Feeling like a high roller, I gave the young lady and extra dollar for her efforts.

Yes, Michigan was beginning to feel like Brigadoon, or maybe Never Never Land where for a weekend at least, you didn't have to worry about grown-up things - which means it also was like being back at college.

We stayed up late talking about solving the world's problems, like putting an asteroid on tethers to channel its energy. The jocks just drank, the nerds played board games. Our professorial host just kept plying us with more meat, regaling us his stories in the smoky voice of a jazz radio deejay (or Rick Kogan of the Chicago Tribune, if you know who that is). I met kindly elderly folk, and showered in a bathroom with indoor/outdoor carpeting in a stall with a spout conveniently for cleaning special places.

Then it was Sunday, and a few hours into the ride home time to deal with Chicago traffic, which made me growl. like it often does.

One I got home, I took a nap. As as Tommy Lee Jones puts it at the end of No Country for Old Men, "Then I woke up."

Discombobulated and needing my meat fix, I went to White Castle and ordered the carrying case of 30. I shared it with my Irish friends, a clever ruse to use their pool, one chance to pretend I was back in Michigan for a few more minutes. And yes, this time I wore trunks.