...I want to turn up one of those seasonal roads which lead off of M-119... fronted by rectangular white signs warning that the roads are not plowed in winter. I could drive far enough off the main road that no one would see us when we stop. You might not even ask why I am doing it. In The Mackinac Bridge Wrote Me a Letter Hill's glimpses into life vary from humorous to poignant to fanciful to observational. Topics include a drive on M-119 through the Tunnel of Trees, a hawk's posture, mouse coffee, the last swim of the year, and the opening of deer season. Hill also reminisces about watching Johnny Green and the Michigan State Spartans play the Indiana Hoosiers at the old IU Fieldhouse. Hill recalls wondering if he would meet another "Frank Hill" and he revisits canoeing across the Straits of Mackinac to impress a girlfriend his first summer on Mackinac Island. Hill even admits to some of his nighttime dreams, thereby lending credence to his wife's claim that he may not be "as normal as pumpkin pie."
The Mackinac Bridge Wrote Me a Letter
And Rabbits Fall From Trees
By Frank HillAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2015 Frank Hill
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5049-1344-7Contents
It Was Not Love At First Sight, 1,
I'm OK With That, 3,
Swept Up In The Current, 5,
Going With The Flow, 7,
How Stupid Was I?, 9,
A Letter From Dad, 11,
Whatcha Thinkin' Dad?, 13,
That Was Then, 15,
One Size Fits All ... Sort Of, 17,
One Of Life's Gambles, 19,
A Sign Of The Times, 21,
The Tunnel Of Trees, 25,
The Mystery Of Creeks, 29,
Mouse Coffee, 31,
Closing Time, 33,
Just A Dream, Nothing More, 35,
Good Posture, 39,
The Mackinac Bridge Wrote Me A Letter, 41,
The Butterfly Stroke, 43,
A House Once Stood Here, 45,
Birthdays, 47,
A Familiar Voice, 49,
Not Everybody Can Be An Astronaut, 51,
Being Braced For Life, 53,
The Sentry Beside The Stairs, 55,
Time And Time Again, 57,
The Last Swim Of The Year?, 59,
When It Is Too Cold To Swim, 63,
Opening Day Of Deer Season, 65,
The Introspective Deer Hunter In His Tree Stand, 67,
Escaping Cabin Fever In November, 69,
November, 73,
Depends On Your Point Of View, 75,
Imagine That, 77,
Water And Ice, 81,
Wrapped In Thought, 83,
A Chickadee In Winter, 85,
Putting One Foot In Front Of The Other ... Or Putting It Elsewhere, 87,
The Warmth Of Snow, 89,
Sometimes Winter Is ... Well, It's Just Winter, 91,
The Ides Of March, 93,
Twilight In Late March, 95,
Rabbits Falling From Trees, 99,
Morris, 103,
Improbable As It May Seem, 105,
Organized Fun, 107,
Options, 109,
Noticing While Trying Not To Be Noticed, 111,
Florence Ensle, 115,
The Grasshopper, 117,
CHAPTER 1
IT WAS NOT LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT
* * *
I suppose my awareness of Michigan began
at Broadview Elementary School when my teacher,
Mrs. Wooden, required us to learn the names of
all of the state capitols.
So, somewhere in the recesses of my mind,
temporarily pushing aside thoughts of basketball or
Roy Rogers, the King of the Cowboys,
was the name of a city called Lansing.
It was in a state which proclaimed itself to be a pleasant peninsula.
To this Hoosier boy, Michigan then went into hibernation
until Michigan State's basketball team and its star,
Jumping Johnny Green, visited Bloomington to play
Branch McCracken's Hurryin' Hoosiers at the old IU Fieldhouse.
Michigan State University was located in that city
I first heard about in elementary school.
Now MSU was playing IU on a wooden floor and,
because of Mrs. Wooden, I knew about Lansing.
What goes around comes around ...
especially when it is a basketball.
My dad and I sat two or three rows from the elevated floor,
thanks to Dad's boss, an IU letterman from his football playing days.
I could see the action up close and the elevated floor
may have exaggerated the jumping ability of Johnny Green.
Regardless, he definitely could jump.
Darn him!
He was probably a nice guy, but he had two strikes against him:
He had grown up in Ohio and was playing for a team from Michigan.
I mean, come on, how nice could he be?
I cannot recall which team won that game.
I could look up the score on the internet but
I do not want to risk having the game's outcome contaminate
my pleasant memory of attending that game with my dad.
In any event, those invaders from far north of Bloomington
added to the knowledge initiated by Mrs. Wooden.
I'M OK WITH THAT
* * *
When we kids were in junior high school
we talked often of the big high school we
would be attending in the ninth grade.
It was said to have many students and
I believed there was bound to be another student
with the same first and last names as mine.
Sometimes I wondered what this guy would look like.
Would he be taller than me?
Shorter?
Smarter?
More athletic?
Less athletic?
Funnier?
Well, I had no reason to worry.
He did not exist.
After a few weeks attending high school
I realized nobody else had my name.
Oh, there were many who were taller,
smarter,
more athletic,
funnier.
Kind of like guys I met later in college ...
and the Army ...
and the working world.
Over the years I became ok with that.
It helped that some of the taller guys
were not smarter than me and
some of the smarter guys were not taller.
The funny guy?
He was a good athlete but
he was not better looking than me.
Well, ok, he was better looking.
But I'm ok with that.
SWEPT UP IN THE CURRENT
* * *
When I was a teenager my parents drove to Detroit
with my sister and me to visit an aunt and uncle living there.
Dad did the driving; he always did.
It was summer and Dad took me to a Tigers game.
That baseball game was my first exposure
to the abundance of water in Michigan.
A downpour caused some streets to flood.
The drive back to my uncle's house was difficult,
especially because Dad was not
familiar with the streets of Detroit.
For some reason that rainy day
got my uncle talking about a strange place,
a place called the Straits of Mackinac.
He said a bridge was being built there
so people could drive cars to the U.P., whatever that was.
More water had something to do with it.
I guess I wasn't interested.
It was an uncle I barely knew
talking about a place I had never been.
My mind turned to home and whether
Brenda Snyder liked Louis Bailey better than me.
You could say I drifted off.
It is easy to do that around water.
GOING WITH THE FLOW
* * *
That canoe trip on the Muskegon River
was several chilly autumns ago.
To keep our body heat up
we paddled faster than was necessary.
Of course we also wanted to be
the lead canoe in our group.
Nobody said we were racing but
neither did anyone say we weren't racing.
I do not know if my wrist rubbed
against the side of the canoe
or got caught by an overhanging tree branch.
Sometimes, in a narrow stretch of a river,
tree limbs seem to be reaching out for you,
similar to when spectators stretch to touch
the bicyclists in the Tour de France.
Whatever was the cause, I discovered at
the end of the first day on the river that
my wrist watch was missing.
I assumed it was at the bottom of the river,
its second hand moving as slow as the current.
If so, it may have become a shiny but
non-threatening lure to the fish.
Eventually, sediment probably covered it
and perhaps, year by year,
especially when the river was swollen by spring rain,
my watch got pushed to Lake Michigan.
I realize time moves slowly
but that was several spring rains and several years ago.
Things have changed.
The river continues downstream,
carrying canoes on its back and cargo in its belly.
HOW STUPID WAS I?
* * *
My first of three summers on Mackinac I met
and dated a lovely young co-ed from Windsor, Canada.
She was a student at Marygrove College.
What she saw in me I cannot say.
I do know I wanted to be with her and to impress her.
One day I demonstrated my canoeing skills by
borrowing a canoe and going across the Straits
with her to Round Island.
As we paddled we could see a freighter coming
in our general direction.
We were not concerned until it turned,
probably to stay in the shipping channel.
It came dangerously close and I was scared
it might suck our small craft into its stern and huge propellers.
On another occasion we were with friends at night
at Arch Rock which, in those days, was not fenced off.
As I have said, I wanted to impress this young lady.
Enough said about that.
The passing of many years has emphasized to me
that sometimes we survive in spite of ourselves.
Don't be that way.
Survive because of yourself.
A LETTER FROM DAD
* * *
That first summer I worked on Mackinac Island
letters from home were written by my mother.
Not only was Dad a man of few words,
he was not one to write letters.
One day a letter from home arrived and
I noticed the envelope bore unfamiliar handwriting.
The letter, brief though it was,
was written by my obviously excited father.
He had been talked into buying a two dollar
raffle ticket to support a fire department sponsored event.
Dad won!
The prize was a new Studebaker Lark with four doors and,
even better, zero car payments.
The car had value to Dad.
The letter had value to me.
Though Dad lived several more years
and I married and moved away,
I never received another letter from him.
WHATCHA THINKIN' DAD?
* * *
Can you say I love you without using the words?
For my mother's sake, I sure hope so.
My father did not so much use words as he avoided them.
If he caught you smoking in the bathroom
he would ask, "Whatcha doin' Bub?"
If, when he was dying of cancer,
you told him that you loved him,
he would reply, "Same to ya."
All those years he started the day sitting at the kitchen table
with a cup of coffee beside him and a cigarette in his hand,
staring at the floor, saying nothing.
What was he thinking?
Perhaps, behind his wrinkled brow,
his inner eye saw the heavy cases
he would be loading onto his truck that day.
And that would be understandable.
But I hope his mind also visualized words.
I hope he sometimes said to himself that he loved us.
If he said it to himself, then I know he meant it.
I suppose I could have asked "Whatcha thinkin' Dad?"
But of course I didn't ask.
The cancer finally won, just as the doctor predicted.
And I will never know what my Dad was thinking.
THAT WAS THEN
* * *
One December weekend in the sixties
a friend and I drove from Bloomington to Detroit.
Basketball fans, we went to see IU play the U. of D.,
the U. of D. being the University of DeBusschere.
I said DeBusschere instead of Detroit because it seemed kind of cute.
When I woke up this morning, nearly forty years after that weekend,
I could not remember DeBusschere's first name.
I could see his face and his gray hair but his name was lost in the past.
"Dave", that was it!
Anyway, another reason I dragged my friend to Detroit
was that I wanted to see a girl who attended Marygrove College.
I had met and dated her on Mackinac Island.
That was back when Moral Re-Armament, the "MRA", was there.
The MRA's old building became a college and, later, the Inn of Mackinac.
The University of Detroit has become Detroit Mercy.
Marygrove College, once all female, is now co-ed.
My ex-girlfriend married; I do not know her married name.
Dave DeBusschere became a Knick but his playing days,
and his life, are behind him.
I have lost contact with my buddy who went with me to Detroit.
The last I heard he was a doctor in Wisconsin.
What, I wonder, was the last thing he heard about me?
ONE SIZE FITS ALL ... SORT OF
* * *
My second summer working at the Grand Hotel I was able
to assist my college girlfriend, to whom I was "pinned",
get a job at what the Grand then called the "Snack Bar."
As a bellman I ate my meals in the cafeteria known as the "Zoo."
The housekeepers, ground crew, and the maintenance staff also ate there.
Waitresses from the Snack Bar could eat with the management staff
and front desk clerks in the nicer of the two employee dining rooms.
That dining room had a view of the street in front of the Grand and
in the distance, the Straits of Mackinac could be seen.
My girlfriend, whom I will call my second Mackinac girlfriend ...
this gets delicate because she became my first wife ... which she still is.
Well, girlfriend number two (wife number one) was assigned the same
Scottish plaid waitress outfit worn by my first Mackinac girlfriend
during my first summer on the island.
Number one's name was written in ink on the label.
We laughed about the coincidence ... or at least I think we did.
Maybe it was just me laughing.
Anyway, even though girlfriend number one was three inches
shorter than number two, the outfit appeared to fit number two well.
Then, after two months of eating the Grand's pancakes,
number two complained that the skirt of her outfit was getting snug.
Girlfriend number one may have gained less because she was a smoker.
Number two, my present wife, does not smoke ...
though she may be smoking as she reads this.
That brings me to the lesson I am sending now to men of all ages.
If you can skirt an issue, give it serious thought!
Excerpted from The Mackinac Bridge Wrote Me a Letter by Frank Hill. Copyright © 2015 Frank Hill. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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