It's last call at the Moose Club in Lowell Michigan. Mile 17516

Jimmy Stagger and his roadie gather the amplifiers and guitars to load in the van outside the Century Post Pub. Stagger plays here often, and he's always sending me Facebook invites. I didn't expect him to be a sixty year old musician with a tweed cap from Donegal on his head. He must be okay because Bar Divani, a fancy wine bar on Ionia in Grand Rapids, hired him to entertain their Mardi Grass celebration. He looks as sharp an Irish American as they come. The Century Post stands by Sneakers, a bar and restaurant that will be tended by Annie, who stood outside the Moose Lodge in a herringbone tweed overcoat, finishing a cigarette, her last call beer waiting on the countertops inside. She'll be serving the lunch crowd there Saturday, as she told me. New on the block, the North Country Trails Association has set up shop in a storefront. I guess that means trails are growing more vital in the Midwest. Right by the Century Post, a trail association seems an appropriate addition. Everyone but the bar tenders have departed, six different couples sitting at different tables all got up at once.

I fueled up at the Shell Station, attended by a nineteen year old woman yawning and growing doe eyed cross eyed. She has an hour and a half to go before she can punch out. A probably, those hours hold some pretty strenuous mopping and cleaning duties. A young man is working too and I have to ask. Boyfriend or fellow employee?

A small theater stands near the main corner in Lowell and the first time I saw it, the marquee advertised a benefit concert by Brian Vander Ark. Tonight, it advertises three weekend nights of Texas Holdem, the poker games running in the upstairs rooms, lights on in the upstairs windows. I wonder if the Odd Fellows or the Masons met in those upstairs parlors back in the day? A few players smoke outside, probably waiting for the night's next tournament.

I have been offered last call and I don't need it. What I need is to make south for the freeway so I can make my hotel in Lansing before Three in the morning. What is stupider than staying out at night glfor nothing more than a story?

I step out to my car, and I hear the mills of King Milling Company grinding flour at this time of night.