{"id":552,"date":"2010-04-16T08:57:33","date_gmt":"2010-04-16T13:57:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/blog\/?p=552"},"modified":"2010-04-16T08:57:33","modified_gmt":"2010-04-16T13:57:33","slug":"finally-a-positive-vibe-from-michigan-but-wait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=552","title":{"rendered":"Finally a Positive Vibe from Michigan!… But Wait!…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press<\/em>, April 10, 2010<\/p>\n

When my family moved from South Carolina to Michigan when I was nine, there were lots of things I didn\u2019t understand. First, everybody\u2019s Dad worked a shift at a plant. My Dad sold chemicals to those plants, so I knew what they were, but I didn\u2019t get the concept of a \u201cshift\u201d and what \u201cfirst, second, third, split, double, etc.\u201d meant. My first summer, I didn\u2019t understand where everybody went on the weekends. My neighborhood would seriously empty out. I was told, \u201cThey went UpNorth.\u201d That didn\u2019t help — where the heck was UpNorth? \u201cIt\u2019s where people have their cabins.\u201d Oh. I still didn\u2019t understand, but at a certain point — if you want to have any chance of not being a pariah — it\u2019s best to say \u201coh\u201d when something is explained in a way that strongly implies that it is common knowledge. I came to accept that cabins were some sort of vacationy things.<\/p>\n

I was starting to get my bearings but then come fall, just before Thanksgiving, there was another mass migration up north to cabins, but this time it was just Dads and they all had (!) guns. What sort of shift was this? Deer hunting shift, apparently. Oh. Again, I didn\u2019t get it right away. That was until my friend Joe\u2019s mom picked me up to take me to a 5th grade basketball game. Mrs. Peltier had car pool that night, and the only vehicle they had big enough to take us five or six Holy Redeemer boys to the game was their Suburban. It was enormous. Big enough to carry all of us boys plus a dead, bloody deer in the way back. I know this because on that particular day, there was one back there. Mrs. Peltier apologized for not having time to pull it out — Mr. Peltier had just returned from hunting. None of the other boys seemed bothered by this. It was just a Michigan thing.<\/p>\n

So, yeah, there are some special things about Michigan, and one of them happens to be the popularity of tromping around the rural landscape with guns, which — and I\u2019m being perfectly sincere — is great. I don\u2019t hunt. I think there are two reasons for this. One, my family didn\u2019t vacation UpNorth or have a cabin. Second (and I think this is the bigger reason), I don\u2019t like to be cold. And having to sit perfectly still for hours in a deer blind on bitter November mornings — not enticing. But I get hunting. I get why there is a Michigan culture that supports hunting and related lifestyle. Unfortunately, I also understand why there are a very small percentage of zealots who take the guns and rugged independence and separate society to an extreme, and that\u2019s why we end up with groups like the Michigan Militia<\/a> from the 1990s and now the Hutaree <\/a>of today. They shouldn\u2019t define Michigan, but radicals always seem to get a disproportionate share of the attention. I don\u2019t understand why that has to be, but, ya know, you have to move on. <\/p>\n

Some things I get right away (Ernie Harwell), and some things I never will (Bob Seger).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, April 10, 2010 When my family moved from South Carolina to Michigan when I was nine, there were lots of things I didn\u2019t understand. First, everybody\u2019s Dad worked a shift at a plant. My Dad sold chemicals to those plants, so I knew what they were, but I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-rapids-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}