I was born in Detroit, Michigan and spent my first 12-years-of-life there (well, the first 12 years of this go around). I came to love Lake Michigan Summers, cider mill Autumns, and, muddy Spring Times. And though I came to hate the frigid cold of a Michigan Winter – there is something magical about Christmas in-the-snow. I learned 5 years later (after a sojourn in South Africa) that all I needed to survive in a Michigan Winter were: snow boots. More properly, I needed MOON BOOTS.
When I finally made it California in 1984 (with the coercion of a former Michigander: Big Steve P.) I started teasing my Michigan cronies that: “The best part of Michigan is underwater,” and “Would the last one out of Michigan not forget to turn off the lights.” Because Los Angeles never gets too cold, and, I certainly don’t here the regrettable term: “Nigger” like one hears repeatedly in Michigan (in fact…I believe that the racism I witnessed in Michigan was far worse than anything I ever saw in apartheid South Africa).
And the ironic thing about the aforementioned Michigan Sayings is: I didn’t make them up –they were already being floated around by expatriate Michiganders. So it seems that there was almost a collective, expatriate consciousness that Michigan would eventually bite the big one (after all – a Detroit crowd boo-ed MARILLION off stage, and I recall JEFF BECK once being hit by a large fire cracker).
I had quite forgot thinking about the State of my birth until my father, a retired Detroit autoworker, in danger of losing his pension with a potential General Motors bankruptcy, asked me to edit his formula for saving the American automotive industry. My father essentially recommended that the American automotive industry become nationalized – and that might work – because only a military-styled operation will get Detroit out of the current mess that it’s in.
But the Feds are suggesting that each of the Big 3 come up with a 5-year-vision plan. This will be tough for a collection of folks who don’t think much beyond their next beer, joint or fuck. I have to say it: Michigan is a State mired in myopia. I don’t know if it’s snow blindness, or that Summer is too short — and one always has to start getting ready for winter – so that Summer Dreams are curtailed – but Michiganders tend to be directed towards that next beer, joint or fuck. A 5-year-vision-plan is quite a monumental request to make of a State full-of-bowlers and softball players. If the Nation went as General Motors went – then the State goes as the Detroit Lions do (too bad the Michigan Panthers didn’t have more years).
On a visit a few years ago, one of my old Michigan buddies (who has a rather high profile job in-one-of-the-Big-3) told me that he had stopped smoking pot for 3 months (as his 50th birthday approached). Too funny. And people wonder why the State is about 30-years-behind the rest of the civilized world. It’s up-in-smoke…Michigan Militia and all. (Did Timothy McVeigh really receive a lethal injection?)
And when a little bit of Detroit landed in Van Nuys many years ago – and started producing the Camero – the whole goddamned plant was eventually shut down because everybody was stoned – and I don’t think the Camero ever recovered.
We’ll see if General Motors gets some martial law – until then: Nice Dreams, Meeshigun.