It was with great relief and a sense of having made substantial progress toward my destination that I bid adieu to Ohio and crossed into Michigan, although five hundred miles remained from that point to Negaunee in the northwestern Upper Peninsula. To put that in perspective, Wyoming – which I’ve driven across more than once and think of as a big western state – is 364 miles across from east to west. (And by astonishing coincidence measures exactly the same from west to east!)
I immediately encountered much more fodder for contemplation than in the entire state of Ohio. One is first struck by the complete and utter absence of foreign cars. I had anticipated this, but it still proved to be somewhat jarring to behold as I live in an upscale town in NJ where the automobile breakdown by make goes: Lexus – 36%; Mercedes – 23%; Others (BMW, Jaguar, Range Rover, Humvee, Infiniti, Porsche, Volvo, etc) - 40.999999999%; Toyota - 0.000000001%. The Toyota is mine.
It was as if a space ship owned jointly by the Big Three and the UAW zapped them all with a super-destructo ray leaving nothing behind but a few particles of imported leather, a handful of melted GPS devices, and a stray Starbucks cup and I was relieved every morning I spent in the state that no one had spray painted graffiti on my car during the night.
The speed limit went up to 70 mph, which made sense for a state in which the automobile plays such a prominent role, so I immediately upped my pace to a comfortable 85. One noticeable discordant note, though, was that gas prices immediately increased fifty cents a gallon as soon as you crossed the border. This surprised me greatly, as I assumed any state relying so heavily on automobile manufacture would do everything in its power to encourage their use including maximizing the efficiency of gas distribution and minimizing the tax on same, but such was not the case.
Michigan is expensive in another way as well. At every construction stretch along the highway there are signs reading “Kill or injure a worker - $7500 and 15 years”. Here in NJ you can kill a worker for $5000 and injure one for only $1500 – less, if you know the right people – although admittedly they don’t give you fifteen years to pay it off; it’s strictly cash on the barrel-head, delivered in a paper bag to a guy with a crooked nose.
I refueled just off the highway in a tiny crossroads town a little north of Saginaw at a gas station/general store which sported a large sign boasting “Second Largest Selection of Beef Jerky in the Country”. This suggested, of course, an obvious question and being the preternaturally curious guy I am I asked it of the clerk: “Where can I find the First Largest Selection of Beef Jerky in the Country?” He merely looked puzzled - clearly the sign in front had been there so long it had become as invisible to him as wallpaper. So I explained helpfully, “You have a sign out front claiming to have the Second Largest Selection of Beef Jerky in the Country. I was wondering who had the First Largest”. He paused, looked thoughtful, rubbed his chin and replied “Must be the place in Alger”. Hearing this impressed me mightily given the unlikely but now confirmed fact that both the first and second largest selections of beef jerky in the country were not only both to be found in Michigan, but in little towns within 50 miles of each other.
My thirst for arcane knowledge thus slaked, and my appreciation for the state growing by the minute, I thanked him and continued my journey. A little farther north, my radar detector burped. I had drifted up to a nice, steady 90 mph so I backed off a bit while scanning the road and woods ahead for any signs of the constabulary. I rounded a curve, and there he was, still a few hundred yards in front of me and busy with another customer that he had pulled over. I might have been a bit blasé about slowing down quickly, but did have it down to 70 by the time I drew abreast of him and passed him. Did you know the sheriff’s deputies in Michigan have double-barreled radar units that point forward and backward? I didn’t. As soon as I had passed him he pulled out, fired up the flashers, and pulled me over.
There are lots of kinds of cops and you can usually tell which kind you’re dealing with by their eyes. Maybe it’s not really their eyes, but the lines around their eyes. Of course if they are wearing mirrored sunglasses, you can’t see their eyes or the lines around them, but any cop who wears mirrored sunglasses is a hard-ass and you already know everything you need to. This particular sheriff’s deputy was of the decent sort: weathered, late middle-aged, with eyes that had seen everything from whole families mangled in wrecks, to the remnants of drunken domestic brawls at ramshackle trailers in the woods. He had eyes that would never be surprised by anything they saw ever again, but you could tell that the things he had seen had bothered him and always would. He called me sir, wished me a good morning, and without any tricky cop crap told me straightforwardly that he “had me at 82 mph back there”. I called him sir and wished him a good morning in return and apologized. When he returned to my car with the ticket he told me that although he “had me at 82 mph” he had written the ticket for 75 and that as such it wouldn’t impose any points on my license. I thanked him. He looked at me with those sad, wry, cop’s eyes of his and the merest hint of a smile and said, “Don’t thank me too much – it still carries a $110 fine”, wished me a safe journey, and we both went our ways. It was worth the $110 to meet him.
The rest of the trip through lower Michigan was uneventful. Nice country, and increasingly full of those unmistakable aspects of light, land and flora that let you know you are “up north”. I arrived soon enough at the Mackinac Bridge (which I’m told is pronounced “mackinaw” and is sometimes spelled that way, too) and headed across the straits to the Upper Peninsula. I got a kick out of being able to see both Lake Huron – the redheaded step child of the Great Lakes – and Lake Michigan simultaneously as illustrated in the two pictures at the top taken from mid-span.
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