Farewell Hessel 2021

About two hours after this posts I'll be leaving Hessel for most likely the last time in 2021. I suppose something might crop up which would allow me another trip to Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula - a drain snake delivery or the like - but I don't expect it.

The funny thing is that I'm not melancholy about it, which is odd for me. It's usually a downer of a trip, the last one of the year or season or whatever you want to call it, but I'm really trying to find and keep a better outlook on things. This includes the idea that, hey, life goes on. Enjoy what you have and deal with reality. Every day truly is a blessing.

So I'll let Hessel go for this year with one final observation. It amazes me how much less activity there is here after Labor Day. I mean, Hessel isn't exactly crowded by any metric in the summer save for a boat show which does draw around 10,000 for its single day. But other than that, there aren't all that many people here even in the height of summer. Yet I can still see, and it is very noticeable I assure you, how much the activity drops off after Labor Day.

Sitting on the front porch reading, I might not see another car in an hour. The number of walkers are down. The handful of stores and restaurants don't have anywhere near the activity they have from May until the first of September. The Presbyterian Church next door has fewer cars; the Catholic Church I attend significantly fewer people. It astounds me.

Ah, well. Such is life I suppose in a tourist area.

Hotel Snob

I joke from time to time about wanting to become a curmudgeon. There are days however when I actually believe I'm becoming one. 

With my job I sometimes have overnight trips. When this happens I do not stay in dives but I don't stay in five star places either. I'm not going to name the places I'm talking about because I know how internet algorithms work and do not want to be inundated with pleas and queries about how to make things better. I don't want the bother and I recognize that it could all be just me.

Anyway, on one such overnighter this year I found the coffeemaker not quite right, and the shower water not quite hot enough, and the cable selection not quite what I would have liked, and the pillows not quite fluffy enough, and the this and the that and the other thing. But intellectually, I know there really wasn't anything wrong with anything. It was all good. Then at my next stay at a similar inn I found myself thinking the same things all over again.

So am I in fact becoming a curmudgeon or simply a hotel snob? Not that either are truly admirable qualities I suppose. I simply feel I can justify curmudgeonly behavior a bit more readily.

Square back

I'm pretty sure I've written about this before but, hell, why not write about it again.

Me Grandpa Joe was cantankerous enough. I'm not overly proud to say that he's the only adult family member I ever raised my voice to; one should never, ever, raise their voice towards a parent, grandparent, or adult family member. You simply should not. Yet I yelled at Joe a few times. The damn thing is, I don't think he cared. I doubt it mattered to him one lick. We were just both mad at each other for an instance, and that was that. To be sure, it never seemed to affect our relationship.

He was a considerate man, when all was said and done, I don't care what no one says. Some of my most sublime moments involved him, indeed, came about from him.

I lost my first grandparent when I was 19. Me Grandmaw Hutchins passed away suddenly, I believe it was June 1979, while Mom and Dad were down there visiting. I've always been glad that Mom was there, that she had the chance to see her own mother one more time before she passed. As I understand it, me Mom was on the phone with one of her sisters and had turned to ask her mother about something. Grandmaw turned to answer, but before any words came from her mouth her head head turned down and she was gone. The doctor said she was dead before her chin hit her chest, the stroke was that bad.

Me Pops called us, as the three oldest of us had not gone south that summer. I'll never forget answering the phone, as I was home from the Shop for lunch. "Your grandmother passed away," was the first thing he said. Funny, I suppose, but he sounded the same way in 1991 when me Grandma Cosgriff left us in June of that year. Art, the man we rented a cabin from at the time, came to our cabin with his phone (there were no cells then) and said me Pops needed to speak to me. I was sure it was about Joe but Dad said, in the exact same way as he had said 12 years before, "Your grandmother passed away." His mother had died suddenly late one Sunday night.

As my wife and I walked out to the end of the dock that evening, the kids already being asleep in the cabin and me wanting a minute, we ended up sitting on a bench at the end. "Well, I always knew Joe would be the last to go, " I said somberly. Me Grandpaw Hutchins had left us at the end of May 1987. Joe, he didn't take care of himself at all, so of course he'd outlive the others.

Anyways, when I got back to the Shop Joe was sitting with a cup of coffee, so I made meself one too. And it was quiet, very quiet, and still. We was just sippin' at out coffee. 

Joe was draggin' on a cigarette. In a minute or two he said, and he actually choked up, pullin' hard on a cigarette, "I'm sorry about your grandmother." Obviously me Pops had called him too.

"Thanks," I replied. "Well, I'm lucky," I continued. "Ain't many 19 year olds get to know all four of their grandparents." I was lookin' him square in the eye. He was lookin' square back.

"Yeah," Joe said, dragging on a cigarette. And we just sat, I dunno, for most of the afternoon, drinking coffee, him smoking.  I really don't know where Zeke, me Uncle John, was. Likely just sitting on his tool chest as he always did when nothing was up.

But you know what? I ain't never gonna forget just sitting there with Joe.

Joe's Mulberry Tree

I wrote yesterday of the high winds and storms which caused a power outage in Woodbridge, my neighborhood in Detroit. I was going for the joke then, but today I feel more serious. You see, one of the casualties of the storm was me Grandpa Joe's mulberry tree.

I've written here:

https://thesublimetotheridiculous.blogspot.com/2017/06/mulberry-season-2017.html

of Joe and the mulberries. One of my fondest memories was watching him stop as he walked along the alley near the Shop and picked at the mulberries when they were in season. He was like a kid, he really was, in taking a minute and eating a few of those berries as he went by. I wonder what youthful memories it brought back to him...

That particular tree was little more than a bush in those days, and you could readily pick hundreds of mulberries as they were in easy reach. I still picked them until a year or two ago, when the growing process took the last of the easy pickings out of reach.

It was blown over by the wind sometime Tuesday night, and now will have to be cut into pieces and dispensed with. 

Joe was an ornery, cantankerous old coot in many ways. And the mulberry bush-then-tree simply a common sight in the alley. Yet the two together formed a lasting image which shall always live in my mind. It is a great insight into all which is good in the world. 

No blog today

No new blog today. Power is out and I'm doing this from my phone and don't want to use a ton of battery life. That is all.

Meck-an-ick

Words. We all use them. Some of us actually use them well. Some of us give them their own special tweak.

I don't know why he said it this way. Maybe it was disdain for having to resort to one rather than fix a problem himself. Or maybe it was an ongoing little joke. Perhaps he didn't even realize he was doing it. I'm open to suggestion.

Me Grandpa Joe didn't say 'mechanic'. He said, meck-an-ick. "We better send it to a meckanick," he might opine when surrendering a car to a higher power. 

I think it was only that concessions to reality rattled him enough that Joe had to alter that reality just a bit. So he said meckanick. It eased his pain.

Dude, Where's My Car?

It's happened before and it will happen again, I guarantee it. Today, in fact, it's likely to happen. At least, that wouldn't surprise me.

Yesterday while out with Mom my van started running hot. We got home okay; so long as we were moving the temperature gauge stayed where it should, so once I saw that it was creeping up whenever I idled I just got moving as quickly as I could, taking more freeways than Mom would have liked. She likes to see both country and small towns and we simply couldn't do that. I truly felt bad for her. I hate like hell to disappoint Mom in any way these days. I mean, I never in any way, shape, or form liked disappointing her of course. But it's a more acute feeling now.

Be all that as it may we got home safely. But of course this morning I need to get my new old van to the mechanic. I know what will happen after that.

Once me brother Phil gets me home (he'll pick me up from Downtown Mobil, my most excellent mechanics) and I check my email before heading to the Shop, I will walk back out the door and look, as I always do, for my van. And not immediately seeing it my first thought will be one of panic and anger. I will gut wrenchingly lament, if only to myself, "Are you kidding me? Someone stole my van?"

Then I'll remember what happened Sunday and where my van in fact is this morning. I know that will happen because it has happened before. 

Isn't it amazing how quickly our minds leap to the negative? Or, worse, forget what just happened? Human nature I suppose.