From Submarines Races to Michael Moore

I live in a state with 9.9 million people and sometimes it feels like they all live close by but, in fact, only 1,027,703 live in the greater metro area where I do. My bedroom community is a mire 10,000 but I tend to forget that we’re actually a separate community because I have to drive nearly a half hour south to get past the wall of humanity. To the north and west, it’s only a seven minute drive to get to rolling farmlands, orchard counties and country roads. I avoid driving in the downtown area like I would avoid sitting on a beehive so when our senior hall offered a short cityscapes tour---billed as a drive-around our downtown with a step-on historian---I was all in. We have some beautiful, old buildings downtown and a rich history that includes Indian tribes, lumber barons, furniture makers and a “medical mile” that in a few years, they say, will rival the Mayo Clinic.

The highlight of the tour for many of us was going to the highest point in the city that in our dating days was known as Lookout Point, a place where people would go to “watch the submarine races”---a euphemism for making out in a car. I googled that phrase for its origins and apparently it began in the '50s with an influential disc jockey/song writer named Murray the K in New Jersey whose theme song sang out, “You're never too old, and you're never too young, to watch the submarine races on the run. Just keep your dial on the Kaufman show, and you make a lotta lovin'…” As our tour group all stood in a small park at Lookout Point most of us were giddy with memories to share. The one and only time I’d ever been there was with my husband and we both got poison ivy which just goes to prove that watching submarines race should only be done from the safety inside of a vehicle. Now, the entire neighborhood up there on the hill seems to be under construction and is being energized with new, classy looking retro-houses and condos to support all the medical research places being built within walking distance---if you don’t mind traversing a ton of steps to get back and forth to work. We were told those steps are a favorite workout place for serious marathon runners.

We had lunch at a brewery, but not an ordinary brewery so common in West Michigan now. This place only brews hard cider and distributes their drafts, bottles and cans throughout a five state area. It smelled like we were eating inside of an apple pie. They make eleven kinds of hard cider and I sampled the ginger peach but if I’d read the menu before ordering off a wall chart I would have tried their Ashmead Kernel described as, “A UK variety introduced to the U.S. in the early 1700’s. This cider has a very rich, dried fruit aroma, big flavor and a full body of apricots and apples..." Now, that would have made me feel connected to my colonial ancestors who I know from reading court records were fined for making hard cider without paying the King of England his tax. (It helps to have famous people in your family tree when you’re doing genealogy research.) According to our tour guide at the brewery, hard cider remained popular from colonial times until prohibition but afterward its popularity never recovered like beer and wine did. It only accounts for 7% of the alcohol market in the U.S.A. and half of that growth happened in the past ten years. A day without learning something new is a wasted day. 

Guess what else I learned this week…that you can order marshmallow dip for your sweet potato fries. Oh-my-gosh, what a good pairing! I had them for lunch in a small, tourist town with a woman I met through the senior hall---let's call her B.L. because that's her name. She’s a long-time widow who seems to enjoy laughing as much as I do and we didn’t lack for things to talk about. Between lunch and shopping the near-by boutiques we spent two-and-a-half hours together. We also made plans to go see the movie, Michael Moore in Trumpland on Monday---her idea---then out to eat afterward.
Reviews said he filmed in Ohio, trying to make a case to undecided voters that Hillary is the best choice. He's a home state boy and many of us here understand his sense of humor so it should be fun. I like that B.L. has taken the initiative in our getting-to-know-each-other process because I’ve come to the conclusion in recent months that I’m a follower, not a leader and that’s been a fly in my not-making-friends ointment. Why is that? Fear of rejection? Insecurity? I’ll let you know if I ever figure it out. ©