The Visitation

Last weekend's Parental Visitation was peaceable and even enjoyable. They arrived on Friday evening. I gave them the Deluxe Guided Tour of Y-Town, including the hallowed halls of the World's Last Hudson Dealership, also known as the Automotive Heritage Museum. The museum's abundance of locally-produced Corvairs elicited the predictable sour comments about Ralph Nader, and someone got their picture taken as if they were about to roar off down a stock-car track in this beautiful machine. Sadly, despite Preston Tucker's onetime residence in Y-town, the only Tucker Torpedo in the museum collection is a fiberglass replica used in the 1988 movie.

Since no one was willing to express a preference about what restaurant to go to, I made an Executive Decision that sushi was to be the Order of the Day. All hail the mighty Wasabi! Fortunately, a certain Visitant remembered her previous experience, and did not mistake the wasabi for guacamole.

Saturday was devoted to visiting the Henry Ford Museum over in Dearborn, which houses among other things the only surviving Dymaxion House, yet more automobiles including the infamous limousine in which John F. Kennedy was riding when he was assassinated, and an impressive ex-C&O Allegheny and other stuffed-and-mounted relics of the steam era. Just barely visible to the left in the Allegheny photograph is part of the diminutive DeWitt Clinton, one of the first locomotives ever constructed on this side of the pond. Or, at any rate, a reproduction constructed from "fragments" of the original, according to the sign. It makes quite a contrast to the monstrous articulated that looms over it like one of its namesake mountain ridges.

Then onward, onward to The Village, with its quaint architecture, eccentric costumes and pervasive sense of fresh-scrubbed cleanliness. No, no, not that Village! This one!

I enjoyed the idyllicly preserved historic houses in the Village, especially those that had some connection to times and places in American history in which I have a particular interest. (Colonial New England, or the antebellum South, for example!). It was amusing to ride around in sputtering Model T's and horsedrawn omnibuses and chat about boilers and steam pressure with the stoker on the resident steamboat, but anyone who knows me will know what part of the Village attracted my fondest attention. I was pleasantly surprised to find an unexpected Upper Peninsula connection here: The "Torch Lake", a former Calumet & Hecla Mining Co. locomotive, was quietly simmering away on one of the roundhouse tracks. I didn't know there were any Mason Bogies still in existence, let alone still steaming on a daily basis! The Edison, a tiny 4-4-0 type, was pulling the train at the time I was there, but judging from the way it spun its drivers on the rain-dampened rails and audibly struggled to haul the short passenger train up the grade behind the Stephen Foster house, they might have been better off using the heavier, six-drivered mining locomotive.

When Pablo visited earlier this summer, he and I drove up to Frankenmuth, Michigan's "little Bavaria". On the way, we drove past something billing itself as the World's Largest Christmas Store. I distinctly remember saying "My mother must never find out about this place." So when she mentioned driving up to Frankenmuth on Sunday, I considered taking a roundabout route that would avoid the cursed spot.

Unfortunately, I did not take into account her network of informers... er, friends... one of whom, upon hearing that I lived in southeastern Michigan, happily informed her that if she was coming up here, she just HAD to visit the World's Largest Christmas Store. So. Christmas Store it was. Eight acres of colored lights and tinsel. Plastic trees in both green and white, not to mention "pre-lit" and fiber optics. Fiberglass Nativities. Dancing Santas. Dancing Irish Santas. Italian Santas. Polish, German, Mexican, cowboy, Laplander, not to mention black Kwanzaa Santas. Policeman, doctor, and "hippie" Santas. Dentist Santas. Decapitated Santas.

The horror. The horror.

Three hours later, we finally made it to Frankenmuth for a belated lunch. Sadly, we missed Brave Combo's appearance at the Summer Music Festival. As usual, I didn't find out about it until the day after. (Carlos may wish to note thisSimpsons connection.)

Sunday evening's outing to the Gandy Dancer, a more traditional seafood restaurant where they actually cook the fish, met with more enthusiasm than the prior exercise in piscatory gastronomy. The fact that the restaurant is located in a former railroad depot is entirely coincidence, of course, and had nothing to do with me recommending it.