I've had the chance to take my daughter to Border's Books to pick out a few new novels since my return, a mega-bookstore in Auburn Hills next to Great Lakes Crossing. My sixth-grader is an eleven-year old reading machine, and she's taken to checking out library books to keep fresh books in her hands. Alas, libraries never have all the latest tweenie fiction, and we bought a copy of a paperback her teacher read to the class last year. This is what my daughter read Saturday afternoon as we drove out to my parent's farm in rural Shiawassee County.
She was reading another book too, about a young man who had to be hidden by his family. He was the third child born to a couple in a futuristic society that allowed only two children to a couple. It is called the Shadow Children sequence. My daughter is smart, so she was interested in knowing about China, which has a limit of one child per couple. China wants to shrink population. She also understood that two children per couple is zero-population growth, with each partner simply replacing themselves. She also understood that if every tenth couple had a third child, population would begin to increase, the magic number of 2.1 being achieved.
Driving out to Grandma's takes one hour if one takes the superhighway, but we prefer to make stops along a blue highway that follows the route of the Shiawassee River. So we stopped at the French Laundry in Fenton (the restaurant sponsors French cinema at the new cultural center) and she wasn't hungry but did indulge me by enjoying a Crème brûlée as I enjoyed a bowl of Turkey Chili. ("It's crem, dad, not creem", my daugher corrected me!) I am the happy father of a smarty-pants.
The French Laundry started in a genuine coin-operated landromat's building, and the popularity of the establishment has led to three expansions. Most people are surprised to learn about the former cinderblock laundromat building that is still part of the structure, now painted with French advertisements for Coca Cola (Buvez Coca Cola) and Orangina, a beverage we always drink, splitting the tall bottle. The laundromat stood on a street corner of a section of Fenton called Dibbleville, and the traffic brought to town by the destination restaurant has fueled a revival of the turn-of-the-nineteenth-century rows of two story brick store fronts. A number of people come to town riding BMW motor cycles, the brand made famous by Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Next, we traveled along westward, and dallied in Linden, another mill town, home once to Joe Beach's Buggy Factory. Recently, a row of brick storefronts crumbled in a conflagration to which no one has found a cause. It spread rapidly due to a lack of proper fire stops between buildings built one against each other. The owner of the land has cleared all the rubble, and the grounds look like a pleasant public park allowing a good view of the mill and the mill race dam. I am certain I'll see a sign for pre-construction sale of a condominium complex next time I drive through; a coffee house named Bear Creek Coffee has brought cappuccino and espresso to Fenton, around 150 years after the village's founding. We stopped there to enjoy a bit of local color, read the new historical marker and take in the Holga photographs in black and white by a very active news photographer from Livonia, Michigan. I guess a true artist will drive hours to find a suitable venue to display his work to the public.
Andrew Jackson is said to have signed water rights on Upper Ore Creek over to the Wolcott Family during his presidential administration. Once possessed of the rights, the Wolcott's constructed a mill where Ore Creek flows into the Shiawassee River, damming up the creek to create Lobdell Lake. When my parents bought a farm house ten miles west of the mill, my parents put a hundred young chicks in a tar paper covered tool shed, and my father and I drove every month to Argentine (another French word !) to buy chicken feed ground on the Wolcott's grind stone.
As I've heard, the Wolcotts sold out the water rights to the Lobdell Lake Association.before the turn-of-the-twenty-first century, and recently a couple bought the idle mill and started grinding organic flours from wheat, sunflower seed and even soybeans. The grindstone is turned by a modern motor. The couple set off a legal battle with the lake association when the husband redirected a stream below the dam, but in the meantime, they rented out space to a bookseller, who sells books to homeschooling families during the week and a baker of fancy cheesecakes. Once, I found a copy of two Kissinger biographies in the free rack outside the bookstore's locked doors. We always stop, and this time I picked up a peck of organic apples. And I believe the organic claim because she discovered a worm hole revealed by her second bite into a juicy Macintosh. I explained she should be happy for a little protein in her fruit, but then suggested she throw it into a ditch for a deer to find.
There's a rumour that more deer live in Michigan now than when the Chippewas reigned on the land. A herd of twenty to thirty have often bedded down in my father's backyard, and this herd size is sustained even though the neighborhood farmers have extra licenses to take multiple deer by bow, rifle and muzzle loaders. A deer trail that traverses from north to south across my father's land has never been abandoned by the herd, and as it passes through five or six farmer's land. One can see many hunting shacks and tree stands from where the farmers' harvest their wild stock. No one in my family hunts anymore, and I try not to eat any animal smarter than a turkey, so maybe that's why our farm house backyard looks like a Serengeti game preserve when dawn rises.
When deer season opens, a promoter in Corunna, Michigan organizes a big buck contest and the bucks with their many pronged antlers hang on display from a horizontal pole at the corner of Michigan 71 and Parmenter Road. As you slow down to enter town, there's the big buck pole with all that hanging meat dangling, and you can't avoid looking upon the dead. We pass by this display yearly when my daughter and I drive to visit her country cousins. Suffice to say, my young one doesn't approve. She was quite startled when she beheld the big buck pole for the first time. As for myself, I eat many vegetarian meals, but I have to admit to a weakness for venison steak. I always wondered how the meat stays fresh hanging out there for the public to see.
Along the River and Through the Hoods To Grandmonther's House We Go; The Car Should Not Slay the Deer in the Way; Thank Goodness the Car Horn Blows, Oh !
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