Return to Leelanau, without having been.

I had a ridiculously beautiful morning on the Leelanau Peninsula last week that was actually beautiful and completely ridiculous. I’m currently up north, away from sv Ruth Ann, earning some boat money, and freezing my ass off. It was easy for me to get another driving job because I drove a semi for so many years while working on boats. In the last couple weeks, I’ve spent several days helping out the Traverse City location of the company I drive for. That location has a contract with Amazon and they are overwhelmed with holiday deliveries. Luckily, there are relatively few residential deliveries. Instead, Amazon sends pre-palletized loads of packages that we deliver to rural post offices so that the men and women of the USPS can deliver to the actual retail customers. More than once I have ended up on the Leelanau route.

When I, or one of my fellow Grand Rapids drivers, is sent to help out the Traverse City guys, the process is daunting. We leave our Grand Rapids terminal at 1:00 AM to drive about three hours up to Traverse City. After scanning the ubiquitous bar codes, the pallets and packages are loaded on our truck for us to cover one of their routes ... and then drive all the way back to Grand Rapids. It is almost always a thirteen or fourteen hour day.

On one particular morning last week there was a Winter Storm Warning. I got to do the Leelanau route in all the snow and ice that such a warning implies. But the route also took me onto that beautiful peninsula where I stopped at the little storefront post offices in Lake Leelanau, Suttons Bay, Leland, and Northport. I also had a rug and a treadmill to deliver to specific addresses; the rug to a house and the treadmill to an apartment complex. My first stop on the way out of town was the main Traverse City post office. The roads were fine on that first short leg in town but I had to use a bunch of ice melt and all my rusty winter driving skills just to get my truck out of their dock.

The rest of the trip around the peninsula was daunting but doable. The downtown Post Office was the only one with a truck dock. Everywhere else I had to lower the skids to the ground with the truck’s lift gate and unload all the Amazon packages onto carts that could get through the door and into the buildings. All the while getting soaked with sweat and pelted by snow.

When it came time to deliver the rug out in the middle of the peninsula, I had to watch the overhead power lines for the last couple miles to make sure that I didn’t yank the electricity off of someone’s house in the middle of a winter storm. When I finally got to the last turn, my delivery was up a hill into a swanky looking neighborhood; each large house barely visible through the woods was down a quarter mile long driveway. Halfway up the hill, the truck’s tires began to spin as the back end shimmied. My forward progress had not only stopped but the truck and I were slowly sliding backward. I surrendered, backed down the hill, and tried to call dispatch, but I was so far out in the boondocks that there was no signal for my phone or the company tablet. I drove back into Suttons Bay and was able to make the call. Eventually, my dispatcher in Grand Rapids just had me return the rug to our Traverse City warehouse.

But first I had to find the apartment complex back in Traverse City and wrestle a fancy -- heavy – treadmill through a slushy parking lot and into the leasing office.

The Leelanau Peninsula is a beautiful area. I would have much preferred it in the summertime, but I will concede that the snow clinging on the trees and the sight of the grey, slightly foggy Grand Traverse Bay were sublime. I spent much of the morning on M-22, a state highway with its own brand. I’ve spotted M-22 stickers on cars all over the country and I even have my own M-22 story.

Years ago, while in high school in Charlotte, Michigan, my best friend Doug and I hatched a plan to do a bicycle camping trip around the Leelanau Peninsula. We were young and invincible but were somehow smart enough to make a test run rather than just head north with a couple bikes and a tent. In preparation, we decided that we would ride our bikes over to Eaton Rapids from Charlotte and back. It was about 10 miles one way and I think we had planned to stop for lunch or something and then head back. We might have even planned to stop at Miller’s Ice Cream Shop. It wasn’t carb-loading or anything planned, we were just going to do it. It must have been a weekday too, because, as the story ends, we’ll learn that Dad wasn’t home.

We had no gear but we each had a bike and a water bottle. One decent summer day, we just started pedaling east down M-50; another storied state highway. This was over forty years ago and I have no way of knowing for certain, but I don’t think we paid much attention to the weather forecast. It seemed like a decent morning, we had talked about doing it, and ... hey, you wanna go today? Sure.

We both lived on the east side of town and several blocks to the south, we would have turned onto Shepherd Street, as M-50 was called on that side of town. Over the bridge at US-27, now I-69, we passed some gentlemen farmer houses with big beautiful yards. The well-heeled lived on the north side of town near the country club but this stretch was a close second; although today there is a Meijer store over there and I imagine - lots more traffic. Soon we were cycling out into corn and cow country. Big farms spread out on each side of the road with giant “wolf trees” along the ditch and in the yards of old farmhouses.

We passed a big grain elevator and then a gravel pit on the other side. There was a lonely, run down country market; really just a party store with bait and ammo. And then more corn and more cows. We weren’t racing, the riding was fairly easy, but as we cruised along the sky was darkening to the south of us. It was concerning but we were already about halfway to Eaton Rapids, so we pressed on.

When the first chilly downdrafts hit us, I think we might have stopped to rest our legs and take a closer look at the clouds. It was then that we could see that the weather straight behind us was just as bad. Tall, dark clouds loomed over Charlotte where we had started, but we were so close by then it only made sense to continue. If we needed to take cover or something, more cover was closer where we were headed. The dark horizon ruled out running back toward home. We mounted our bikes and got going again.

The storm swallowed us up in a pincer move as it swept over us from the south and then swallowed us up from behind. Horizontal rain came at us and hit like rubber bullets. The wind blew across the open fields picking up debris and smattering it against us. We were soaking wet and covered on one side with leaves and dirt. Fighting against the cross breeze, we struggled to stay demurely on the shoulder as cars and trucks flew by. The big trucks would cause a maelstrom of leaves and debris that threatened to cover the rest of us in the detritus of the fields.

The squall had passed by the time we made it to the edge of Eaton Rapids. As the sun started to peek back through the clouds, our clothes started to dry off. We had bitten off a bit more than we knew how to chew and were exhausted by the trip but especially from battling our way through the storm. Up ahead, around a curve near the river, was the old Miller’s Ice Cream Parlor. We pulled in, shook the last of the leaves out of our hair and found a table inside. The old parlor was a classic ice cream shop with dozens of ice cream flavors in buckets behind the glass of a long row of coolers. The counters were marble accenting the black and white tile floor. Even our little table had a black and white marble top on a wrought iron frame. We sat on round cushioned chairs with curly wrought iron legs that would have fit at a woman’s vanity table as well as it the matched the parlor decor.  

I don’t remember what we ordered but this was long before cellphones, so I called Mom from the payphone back by the shop’s restrooms. She had been distressed by the weather and was quite happy to know that we had stopped. Before I could even explain how tired we were, she was sending Uncle Gord to get us with his pickup truck. Mom had the family station wagon but also had my younger brother and sister at home. Dad was at work but luckily Uncle Gord, a truckdriver, just happened to be in town that day and he was on his way.

Whatever we might have ordered, I don’t think we ever got our food. Just as I was returning to our table after calling Mom, smoke started coming through a floor vent behind the ice cream coolers. After a few moments, the smoke seemed to surge into a billow. A young waitress grabbed a fire extinguisher off the wall and headed into the basement. A couple minutes later, she returned, white as a ghost, and holding the fire extinguisher before her like an injured child.

“It doesn’t work,” she whispered of the extinguisher as if it could have been hurt by her words.  

The decision was quickly made to call the fire department – which was right next door. However, the fire engines could literally not make the tight turn out of their station and into the parking lot of the ice cream parlor. Instead, they burst out of their building, sirens blaring, and screamed down the street past us. They went around a block, and came back to turn left into the parking lot. Just as the firemen jumped off their trucks and burst into the shop, I could see Uncle Gord’s old pickup with the extra tall bed topper slowly pull in behind the fire trucks. He greeted us with a smirk and we quickly loaded our bikes.

Uncle Gord was a bit of a free spirit, especially in his younger days. As a truck driver, he had surely seen stranger things than an ice cream parlor parking lot filled with fire trucks. Back in the day, he had water-skied in the shows at Cypress Gardens down in Florida and had taught all of us kids how to ski behind his boat. We all learned to step off onto a slalom ski rather than getting up on two skis and then dropping one. It was a special time and place to grow up. One time out at “The River” he casually picked up my guitar and played an Eagles song. Before then, I had never even known that he played. He was one of my heroes. He was also probably part of the reason I smoked Camel Lights for a time.

Doug and I never did make that Leelanau trip.

Small Town Midwest Life – long before we had hashtags.

Character Sketches from the Road

I had stumbled back to truckdriving just before Christmas last year. The engine on my sv Ruth Ann was kaput and I needed to raise the funds to buy a replacement. I went back down to Florida to drive for a company I had driven for before. I knew the people, the system, and the schedule. I just didn’t get a good feeling from any of the trucking job ads I was reading near me in North Carolina.

In the first week back, I found myself in Albany, GA. There is a large Molson Coors Brewery there where I picked up a load but didn’t have enough hours left to drive any further. The Pilot truckstop in town had been a convenient stop for fuel and to use their scale, but I had rarely slept there. Across the road was a Walmart and I needed a wastebasket. Yes, a wastebasket … and a something for supper.

I wandered around the Walmart and found a few other things for my life in the truck. It was crowded at the front of the store and people were lined up behind the small order self scan areas. Using a human cashier is preferable to me anyway, so I got in line behind one of the few open lanes.

The woman ahead of me in line was a good looking young woman in a bright green tracksuit, with yellow, almost golden piping down each leg and accenting the jacket. She had incredibly long, brightly colored fingernails and impossibly large false eyelashes. Her long braids that were knotted together intricately with little golden strands accented several of the large braids. She was very busy organizing her stuff.

She must have been moving into a new place and had piles of household stuff; mops, cleaning stuff, a laundry basket and a broom. A small knick knack frame containing an inspiration quotation was causing trouble. It wouldn’t scan. The cashier didn’t seem sure how to handle the glitch. Or perhaps she was stalling hoping that the woman would say “just forget that one.” The customer was holding out.

Off to my left were some larger self scan aisles and I began to move my cart. The lights were all on as if the aisles were open, but I noticed that all of the register terminals were opened up for maintenance or something. As I abruptly turned back into the aisle, I nearly bumped into another guy approaching the registers.

He motioned for me to continue and got in line behind me. I smiled and nodded asking how he was.

“Well, I’m all right, but this eastside Walmart has the worst customer service.”

“Yeah, it’s amazing all the customers backed up behind so little help at the registers,” I replied.

He craned his neck back and forth. Then gave up and started unloading his stuff onto the belt behind the divider bar I had placed behind my stuff.

“I never come in here anymore, but I was on this side of town,” he grumbled.

The guy must have been coming off work; a contractor of some kind. He had a plain windbreaker, work t shirt and some jeans; topped with a Buffalo Bills hat. He laid out his groceries and proudly explained the excellent crockpot meal he was going to create when he got home.

I explained that I had walked over from the truckstop and had forgotten to bring a mask. We shifted from bitching about Walmart customer service to talking about the pandemic craziness in the world. He was wearing a mask as was the tracksuit gal, still waiting for a price in front of us.

I explained that I was trying to stay out of the fray.

“I worked for a wise Dutch guy when I was in Indiana. He used to always say ‘Never argue with a fool in public, because bystanders will start to get confused about who is who.”

“I know that’s right!” exclaimed the track suit woman. She hadn’t said a word up to that point but I had apparently struck a nerve.

The three of us had a short chat on keeping our cool in the crazy world. The cashier finally got a price on the inspirational knick knack and the gal was off with a cart piled high. Just the way she carried herself, she seemed like she was starting a new life as much as getting a new place.

The cashier was mildly apologetic and scanned my items. I told her not to worry and poked my card into the machine. As I pulled my card and stuffed it back into my wallet, I told my new Buffalo Bills friend that it was nice to meet him and that I hoped he had a good year.

“It has to be better this year, eh?” I said as I nodded to him.

“It already is better, because I met you.” he declared before turning to the cashier.

I smiled, waved, and walked back to the Pilot. Maybe this will be a good year.

My Poet and I

There is a poet inside me,

Struggling to get out. 

He leans against my heart, 

And presses against the back of my sternum,

Scratching with the sharp toes

Of his cold feet. 

Yet I long to live with him again,

To chat over lonesome coffee,

Somewhere just off the road. 

I can't always hear him, 

But I hear him walking,

Getting nearer. 

And as I prepare for his return

I see Poetry everywhere. 

Not just from the poets, 

But as the birds beat at the air

To let go of the earth. 

And in the leaves of the trees

Waving

In gentle applause.

But also in the cracked sidewalk,

The potholes,

And the dirty truckstop shower. 

It is everywhere,

Just waiting, 

For my poet and I. 

Sailing the Atlantic at Night

 

Suspended between starry sky

And dark sea,

Sailing the Atlantic at night.

Not a sound but the waves

Rushing past,

Or is it stars brushing by sails?

Where do the stars begin or

The sea end?

Feeling the unseen ocean swell.

Mysterious invisible sails

Obscuring stars,

Black triangles against a dark sky.

What began as a smudge

To the East,

Hardens to a line as stars fade.

Slow motion explosion of color,

Shimmering waves,

The sun burns a hole in the horizon.

Topaz waters fade to blue green,

Clouds flout on.

This will suffice, to me, for a church.

Panic In The Gravel

When I was in Michigan truckdriving, I drove for a company that mostly hauled office furniture, but a small part of their business was baby formula. A well known brand of infant formula was produced near the company’s base in West Michigan. A truckload of product was worth about a half million dollars. And - if you’ll pardon the pun -- it was a highly liquid commodity. 

The trucking company and the company that produced the formula feared that someone could hijack a truckload, roll into practically any location, and sell the formula out the back of the trailer before the cops could show up. Hence, the rule was that the driver who picked up the load had to drive 250 miles without stopping to reduce the chance of a possible hijack. 

The infant formula always went the same route: the plant was in Zeeland, Michigan and the formula had to get to a warehouse in Mt Vernon, Indiana outside Evansville. Back then the most efficient route was to head down the west side of Indiana. US41 was a lonely road through miles and miles of dairy farms and cornfields. A huge wind turbine farm along the way was the only break in the monotony. After running the formula down south, the driver would pick up a load of drawer slides that were manufactured in Southern Indiana and bring them right back to the furniture manufacturers in West Michigan. 

The biggest trouble with driving 250 miles without stopping … was coffee. I needed some to get my mojo up for the drive, but eventually the coffee and nature would call. The 250 mile mark was about two thirds the way down the length of Indiana; just past I-74. However, I often snuck a quick pit stop at the exit off I-65 near Roselawn. This was where I cut across to US41 from the freeway and the long exit ramp made for an easy place to quick pee on the gravel shoulder or in a bottle; depending on the weather. 

On one particular night, as I approached the Roselawn exit, I started to hear a grinding noise from behind me near the drivetrain. I pulled over on the exit ramp and called the night mechanic. He knew the trouble before I finished my sentence and had me get out to confirm that the tractor suspension was low.

Below the catwalk and between the drive axles of the truck was a lever arm to control the pressure in the air bag suspension. The end of that lever was secured with a small plastic part. When that part breaks, the lever arm sags out of position and the airbags deflate. This caused the back of my tractor to sag. The grinding noise I had heard was the driveshaft struggling to spin; it wasn't designed for highway speed and deflated air bags.

Road Service would take two or three hours to get to me or if I had some zip ties or duct tape, I could crawl under the truck and reconnect the lever arm. I liked the idea that I might be able to get myself back on the road, so I volunteered for the latter. I dropped the trailer and moved the cab up about ten feet. The easiest approach was to crawl between the drive tires on the right side. Actually, I can’t remember if I decided that or if it was suggested to me, but it led to a pretty healthy panic that surely cost me a couple years of longevity. 

I grabbed three or four zip ties and wiggled my way between the tires (I was skinnier then). Coming in from the side indeed led me right to the lever arm. I raised the arm back to horizontal and immediately saw where it had to be reattached. To secure it with a couple zip ties was an easy fix. The mechanic had told me there wasn’t much stress or strain on the attachment. This is exactly why Volvo thought they could get away with a fragile little plastic part. The shop would do a proper repair when I returned. 

The truck’s engine was off but the air tanks were full. As soon as the lever arm was back in position, the air bags started to refill. In between the tires with my back against one and my belly touching the other, I suddenly felt the truck moving!

It’s a hell of a thing to be lying in the gravel on the side of an exit ramp in Indiana and to suddenly feel like you were about to be run over by your own truck!! I.had.a.moment. 

After a few seconds of blind panic, I realized that what I was feeling was just the suspension wiggling as the air bags filled. Brakes were applied, the stopped engine was in gear, and the tires were not going to turn. They would move enough to make me almost shit myself but all was OK. 

I wriggled my way back out, took a deep breath of free air, and carried on driving in the foggy darkness down US41. Wide awake now. I wasn't going to need any more coffee; maybe for a couple days.   

Rolling Rolling Rolling ...

The Cut River Bridge

About 1986, I nearly lost a brand new Bronco II into a ravine in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. While living in a house across the road from campus at Michigan State University, my housemates and I made a road trip up north. Somewhere along U.S. 2, west of the Mackinac Bridge, we spotted a roadside park on the shore of Lake Michigan. It was most likely by the Cut River where U.S. 2 crosses the river's ravine and empties into the lake. There is a newer park and scenic lookout there now, but I remember a small gravel lot and a couple latrines on a bluff just before the bridge.

From our vantage a hundred feet or so above the lake, the rippling waves danced in the moonlight like a thousand shards of a shattered mirror. The gentle summer breeze whispered through the lush green trees that looked black against the bright reflected light of moon. Most of the guys were awed into silence as we stood in the gravel parking lot … and I heard a strange crunching sound. 

Without an actual thought coagulating in my brain, I suddenly spun around to see my truck slowly rolling toward the ravine. The only thing between it and the bottom of the ravine was one of those almost-oval-shaped ‘landscape timber’ boards the DOT had haphazardly laid around the perimeter of the gravel. I walked back to my truck, which I had locked for some reason, unlocked the door and stepped on the parking brake. The scrunching noise of the brake broke everyone’s bliss and caused them to turn around. There I stood one foot on the ground and the other standing on the brake of my truck. I never heard the end of that for the rest of the weekend.

Well, I just did it again! I can’t believe that this has happened after more than a million miles on the road and countless – literally thousands – times climbing out of a truck. I had dropped an empty trailer and hooked to a load of CHEP pallets. I only had to roll over to the office, collect the paperwork and I’d be on my way. Simple enough. 

I backed into an empty spot near the office, but my trailer was a little close to another tractor so I pulled back out, straightened up, and backed in. There were no lines, no parking spaces there, but a “real” truckdriver leaves his rig straight and square to the world around it. I grabbed my notebook and a mask, and climbed out of the truck. 

As I stepped away, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a wheel turning; the lugs on the wheel were just barely moving. They shouldn’t be moving! Downhill from me was a bunch of other trucks backed into docks, getting unloaded. I couldn’t stop to think about that. I couldn’t stop to think about the fact that I had locked the door. I just started moving. 

I walked back around the front of the truck; set my notebook and mask on the top step; reached into my pocket for the keys as the truck gradually rolled faster; shuffle stepped to the left as I unlocked the door; opened the door; climbed the steps; leaned in to reach for the air brake knobs and yanked the yellow one. The yellow knob controls the truck brakes, and will set off the trailer brakes too. Truck brakes are controlled by air and the system had to evacuate for the brakes to engage. The air spilled out of the brake system in a familiar hiss as the truck rolled another eight or ten feet toward the other trucks. The brakes finally grabbed as the last of the air escaped and the truck stopped -- with about twelve feet to spare.  I had crab-walked next to the rolling truck for sixty or more feet.

It was only then that my heart started to race. What a morning that would have been. My truck was aimed toward the trucks getting unloaded at the docks. Most of those drivers were likely sleeping, waiting for a phone call to tell them they were empty. A lot of those trucks are owner/operators; guys who own their own trucks, buy their own insurance, pay their own repairs. 

I’ve forgot the brakes before; probably many times. However, as soon as I took my foot off the brake pedal and could feel the “looseness” of the truck, I pulled the brakes. Most honest truckers would admit the same. To take my foot off the brake and climb out of the truck without being mindful of that looseness and to have walked across the front of the truck toward the office not knowing, is unbelievable. Distracted parking? The parking lot didn’t look like it had much contour to it, but my truck rolled downhill right at the building and those trucks. I likely would have been fired over that. Amazing that I was so stupid. Amazing that I got away with it.

Do I have to say it again: “I’d rather be lucky than good.”

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Image by Gittensj

Mom's been gone a year.

Mom has been gone a year and I still don't know how to consider that that fact is true. 

I wrote this while helping care for Mom in the few weeks before she passed.  I wasn't sure that I would ever share it and I'm not sure why I have. It makes me feel her presence, perhaps it will for someone else as well. 

My mother is dying, and I don’t know what to say.

She’s always been beside me; even when I was away. 

Now it takes a bear hug, each time I help her stand. 

This untameable cancer was never part of the plan. 

In everything I’ve done, she’s been with me from the start. 

She taught me cooking, and living with an open heart. 

My mother is dying, and I don’t know what to say. 

I just sit and hold her hand, a bit tightly … today.