The mother of all mother's days

12 May 2014

Spring days don’t get any better than the 100th anniversary of Mother’s Day in lower Michigan. Shorts and shirtsleeve weather. The thunderstorms they were predicting never showed up. Brother Bill went off to promote something he’s doing at a go-kart race and we found a Starbucks in the nearest Target store to fuel up for our drive to see Monica’s cousin Ronnie outside Ann Arbor.

Actually, Ann Arbor, which is totally overwhelmed by the University of Michigan, isn’t that far from where we’re staying – half an hour, maybe less, down Route 23. Our destination, however, was the countryside outside the town. That turned out to be a little more complicated and, once again, it was complicated even further by the iPhone GPS.

Out here the famous Eight Mile Road, the dividing line between Detroit and its northern suburbs, turns to dirt, as do several other roads leading up to it. Ronnie lives on a dirt road off a dirt road off the dirt part of Eight Mile and, thanks to the GPS, we saw a couple more dirt roads getting there. There’s a bit of an uproar in Michigan about the roads, which in general are crappier than the ones around Buffalo, and even more of an uproar about how much money is needed to fix them up, which nobody wants to spend.

We wondered just how rustic Ronnie’s place would be, but it turned out to be another version of my brother’s spread. A little less land, a little smaller country house, a somewhat smaller barn, but with just as many cars in it. Maybe more. We didn’t see them all.

What we did see were three Ford Pintos from the ‘70s, two with California plates still on them, and a red DeTomaso Pantera, a sleek, low-slung, Italian-built race car, also from the ‘70s. Ronnie said she drove it once and zipped up to 130 mph in seconds.

Ronnie’s husband, J.C., whose profession was hinted at by the three pistons atop their mailbox, is a Ford man who worked for many years for Roush, a Ford-based NASCAR racing team, traveling all over with them, fabricating engine parts and such. He once drove the Pantera to Vancouver.

At any rate, Ronnie, a retired teacher who works part-time at the U of M Medical School as a practice patient, took us into Ann Arbor and gave us a little tour of the town and the two U of M campuses.

J.C. fired up the grill when we got back and, while I drank hard cider and made friends with their dog, Jethro, he tended to racks of ribs (chicken for Monica). It was a classic barbecue dinner – beans, coleslaw with a kick (jalapeno peppers in it) and roasted potatoes – along with the Menage a Trois red wine we bought Saturday at the gas station-liquor store joint.

We begged off on dessert – brother Bill had a tart cherry pie that he pulled from the freezer and baked up Saturday night – and got back to Highland with the low fuel warning light flashing. Next to the gas station, in what I’m starting to recognize as classic Michigan symbiosis, was a party store and, voila, more Yellowtail Bubbly! This time there was a choice – white or rose. Same low price. $9.99.