Well, I have done Michigan, getting my wolverine on in Ann Arbor, so for equal time, seems only right that I call on The Spartans of Michigan State (Lansing) today.
Right off the bat, I have to say that the Spartans have one of, if not the coolest logos, in college football, just this side of Marvin the Martian. Kidding, love the Spartan icon.
I’ve always been curious, and I always thought I would see the world, or a major part of it. But from my earliest memories, I had no clue how to accomplish that. For a time, I settled for letting the world come to me, so to speak.
Like my buddies, I am sure, I always tried to learn whatever I could about the outside world from the people who moved to or passed through our little farming/ranching outpost near the New Mexico Border.
Driving in and around Warren, Michigan, Bloomfield Hills, Beverly Hills, Oak Grove, Royal Oak … marveling at how lush and green the grass is in this place. Driving by the golf courses, i am thinking it is a wonder golf wasn’t invented here. Immaculate. Plenty of forestation in this glove-shaped, land swatch between several Great Lakes. So humid. A few of the leaves are blowing off … No color changes in the trees yet. Wait a week or so. The shadows, however, are fall-like. The shadows are long, and subconsciously you know the sun has moved and soon the warm weather will follow it. This place will become a deep freeze. Everyone knows it … and they are embracing the pleasant sunshine today, en masse.
It’s Labor Day and I am sitting just beyond the shadows of multi-story skyscrapers of Detroit — their outer walls adorned with the names and logos of car companies, like so many decorative hood ornaments on a grille.
Earlier this morning on my way to Bell Island, just off the shoreline of this once booming city, and then on to Motown in the heart of Detroit, I motored by the offices of the UAW. Motor City. (Cool logo, by the way, for the United Auto Workers union, with workers icons lining the perimeter of a huge circle, emulating the spokes of a wheel … or at least that is my interpretation … I digress.)
At some point in my childhood, viewing the world through National Geographic, I learned about bears storing up calories and body fat before they winter in a cave — only to come out lean and even more mean when hibernation is over.
For me … just the opposite.
I spent a couple of months underground on The Dirty Gig in Columbia, Mo. and still bare the extra tonnage — a combination of doing most of my lifting with a fork and/or a forklift … oh and that little ice cream three times a day habit that I acquired in Mizzou.
I have never been to a biker bar per se — excluding one of the incarnations of Main Street Saloon in Lubbock — well … because I am merely a motorcycle nut. Big difference.
Regardless, when I heard about a little bar and grill dedicated to bikes — called Triumph — over in St. Louis, I had to get over the bike and on over to Arch City. PingWi-Fi featured St. Lou back in 2010, but there is always room for more exploration.
I was 21 and had talked my way into an interview with the college newspaper because I had earned some stripes at a few hundred rock concerts — and I was savvy enough to dress up a little with a corduroy blazer for the interview (even though the boss was another college student).
Somehow, I was given the job as an entertainment/features writer.
One look at the map and you see why Edward Sharpe &The Magnetic Zeros played Columbia, Missouri — a college town — on a school night. Smack dab between the larger venues in Kansas City and St. Louis, the Mizzou crowd gets some great acts on off nights.
You know how you when you “discover” something new, and then you see it everywhere around you?
Well … I have known about quilts all my life, and I even have one friend obsessed with the art. But, I had no idea anyone cared enough for there to be a quilt museum. Silly me.
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