Festival Week

Well, as I mentioned last entry, this past week was Coast Guard Festival week in Grand Haven. The high point of the summer for our little town. The week where a smallish town of 25,000 people explodes into a metropolis of 300,000 . Can you say traffic jam kids?.......I knew you could. Traffic issues aside, it’s an interesting time to wander around the waterfront. Between the visiting Coast Guard ships, the carnival on main street, the art show up in the park and various other events, there’s plenty to see and do for the tourists who wait all year to descend on our little dot on the map. Of course the locals bitch about all the hassles that the extra folks cause and avoid the West side of town like the plague so it’s possible to walk around down on the boardwalk and not see a single face that you know……. Living where we do it’s about a half hour hike from the house to the waterfront and even at my age it’s a heckuva lot easier to walk it then it is to try and drive it and it’s not like I can’t use the extra exercise so it’s a win / win situation.

My first foray in the abyss, not counting the car show, which was pretty much a bust, was Tuesday evening. It was hot, low ‘90’s and I was wishing about half way there that I’d had sense enough to put some shorts on. I’d thought about touring the Coast Guard boats to take some pics (like I do most every year), but once I got down there, between the heat and the crowd already in line, I decided it would make more sense if I stopped at Butch’s Beach Burritos for a bite to eat and then hike out to the end of the pier in search of a cool breeze. There were hordes of strangers tromping up and down the boardwalk in both directions but once I got out on the pier itself the crowds thinned out to a manageable level. About halfway out to the end there were some kids (anybody younger than 40 nowadays…..) that were doing stunts on their trick bikes. In the hopes of seeing one of them unintentionally sail off into the water I hung around a bit and took some shots of them doing their stuff. I showed ‘em a couple of the pics I took and then I headed out to the end, where I finally found the breeze I was looking to find.

After a half hour of basking in the cool breezes and waning light of the day I headed back towards the belly of the whale (downtown)…….As I strolled along I shot some pics of the boats, the waterfront and the carnival and arrived, at exactly 8:30pm, in front of the Post Office where the street had been closed for the annual Street Dance. The Sea Cruisers were the band on hand and they were doing an admirable job of playing “50’s and ‘60’s tunes for all those folks who were less inhibited in public than I and actually took the phrase, street dance, to heart and got out there and danced……..as planned previously, I met the wife there and we sat on one of the benches available and listened to the tunes for awhile. I wish I could’ve gotten out there and bopped around a bit with all the old folks out there reliving their youth, but I guess I’m still to uptight for some things……..I’ll have to work on that cuz I know my partner likes to dance. Not that I don’t, I do, but it’s usually done in the basement where no one can see the twisted gyrations of my chubby little body in action

Somehow the rest of the week got away from me (working 56 hours might have something to do with it….) and all of a sudden it was Saturday, the culmination of the last 8 days. I was at work from 8:00am until 2:00pm, so for the first time in years I didn’t attend the parade. I entirely missed getting my Scottville Clown Band fix for the year. My wife, who I can never get to go to the parade with me…….was running the parade route, giving water and encouragement to the band kids as they went marching down the street in the heat, tooting their horns and beating on their drums. If I had gone to the parade I’d probably have looked out of place anyhow with no kids (too old or too cool for parades) or grandkids (too young yet and soon to be way too far away) to drag along with me. So, instead I worked and then headed for home for awhile.

About 4pm though I decided it was time to hike on down to the waterfront and see what I could see. It was another hot day, although not a scorcher like earlier in the week, and I made my way along, keeping to the shady side of the street as much as possible. As I headed down Washington street past the public Safety building (Fire Dept. & Cop shop) my eye was attracted by a visual pun. Parked there, out by the sidewalk, ready to be fired up and rode was a big, black, Harley Davidson bike with Public Safety painted on the tank. I started to chuckle as I thought, Harleys are called Hawgs......and cops are sometimes called Pigs so the image of a pig riding a hawg just struck my twisted sense of humor as funny.......oh nevermind. It was a nice looking bike though........

Once I arrived in Festival Land my first stop was at the Central Park art show. Once, along time ago, in another life, we did the art shows, pandering photos to the hordes of tourii visiting West Michigan in the summer. From 1983 until 1993, when it just became a victim of its own success and got to be too much to do with 3 kids in tow, we hit parks up and down the coast with a van full of display hardware and framed prints by the boxful. It was a lot of fun and also a lot of work and that’s if the weather was nice. Sometime there’ll be more of a story about those days but right now I was just going to stroll thru the park and see if there were any photographers amongst the knick knack sellers. As it turned out there were several (3) and I stopped to admire their work and talk to each of them a bit about what they’re using gear wise these days (digital, hands down. Sorry Kodak…….guess Kodachrome has gone the way of vinyl records) and what they’re using for printing images. A part of me is doing undercover research in case I was to get a wild hair and want to start doing the shows again, but I know the wife would never go for that……. I’m sure she remembers how much work it was back then……………….

Anyhow, after talking cameras and film, errr image storage, I headed on down the street with the intention of stopping at Dairy Treat for a Hot Fudge Malt, a long time staple of my shoddy diet and then was planning on heading back out onto the pier again for the second time in one week. I don’t believe that’s happened since I was single and had lots of time to kill…..as luck would have it there was no line at Dairy Treat so I stepped right up to the window and placed my order. A couple hours later, after coming back from the pier, the line to the window stretched out across Harbor Drive. Darn near as long a line as at the Pronto Pup stand across the street.

So, with ice cream in hand, I walked over to the channel and plunked myself down to watch the boat people troll their overpriced tub toys up and down the channel under the watchful eyes of the local law enforcement and the Coast Guard. There were boats moored together on the far side of the channel, in anticipation of the fireworks only hours away, with people on board having a good ole time going nowhere……..I’ve never understood why someone would spend $40,000, or more, on a boat and then never leave the “no wake” zone. Least with the hot rod I actually go somewhere before I park it and sit around all day……..

Once the ice cream was gone I picked myself up and headed off down the boardwalk out to the end of the pier. There were kids doing flips off the pier and kids riding their trick bikes into the water, all in the name of fun and staying cool. After hanging out on the end for a little bit, watching the boats come and go, I started back for land. As I was walking back there was an older guy, (not old like me, but certainly not a teenager……) on roller blades heading out to the end. Now Rollerblading isn’t the safest way to go, even on flat, level ground and on the pier it’s even more dangerous cuz of the cracks, holes and changes in elevation that make up the traveling surface. Hell, I’ve seen people just walking out there fall down and hurt themselves so when this guy went down hard on his backside, just as he was going past me, I thought “dumbass, you should be old enough to know better than do that out here”. Easy for me to say, right? Well, he picked himself up and headed on his way, as did I. When I got back to the channel I decided to take a break and sit on one of the big rocks. Just about that time two EMS guys went zooming by me with a gurney, on their way out on to the pier. I thought, “what the heck, I was just there and didn’t see anything” so I sat there awhile to see what they brought back and after about 15 minutes, lo and behold, they came back with the Rollerblading dumbass strapped to the gurney. I wanted to laugh, but it’s not nice to laugh at other people’s misfortune, even when they’re too stupid to understand why you’re laughing. He was conscious as he went by so he wasn’t too bad off, but I’ll bet he missed the fireworks by the time he got done filling out all that hospital paperwork.

After the ambulance drove off I picked myself up and headed back towards downtown. I strolled around for awhile and then decided to go back to the spot on the channel wall where I'd been earlier to see if there was still a spot to be had and as luck would have it, there was......so I sat down and spent the next couple hours relaxing and taking in the world around me. The whole area was elbow to elbow people as far as the eye could see. Not to mention by now there is a a couple hundred boats either tethered in the channel or trolling back and forth with no destination in mind. As the sun set and the lights came on, those people we affectionately call the Last Minute Stragglers started to arrive. They are the folks who don't figure they need to be anywhere more than 5 minutes before the show starts.....and then, as if that wasn't annoying enough, they plant themselves in that small spot of buffer zone that you've been maintaining for the last couple hours between yourself and the folks around you, figuring near as I can tell, that you and a higher power have been saving that spot, just for them.

Finally, it's time for the lights and explosions part of the evening's entertainment. We had a good seat on the channel wall, the fireworks overhead were reflected nicely in the water below......kind of a two for one deal. There was some nice stuff being fired off, but the fireworks this year, for whatever reason, seemed a bit lackluster. There wasn’t a whole lot of ohhh’s and Ahhhh’s from the crowd during the show. Once the finale’s last boom had faded off in the distance the great sea of humanity that had been sitting on blankets, rose in unison and headed in an Easterly direction out of the park and towards their cars. After a couple minutes of watching the spectacle I joined in and headed for home. The further away from the park and downtown I got, the thinner the crowd got, until I was almost home and walking by myself again. I got back to the homestead a little bit before midnight and at that point pretty tired from a long day and a lot of walking……Coast Guard week was over and now the amount of summertime left available was a quantifiable amount. Now it’s time to put those plans into action to do those things on the to do list that have not yet been done (say that 3 times fast!).

Sunday morning I got up fairly early and made breakfast for me and my bride. She was taking off for a week up North by Boyne Mountain to be a band camp chaperone, in charge of keeping an eye on about 170 teenagers, of both sexes. Personally, not a job I’d do even if they paid me good…… Myself and Chris were taking off about the same time, on the bike, up to the folks place. From their house we were going to take their car over to Whiskey Creek to show ‘em where the wedding and all the ensuing festivities were going to be held.

The bike ride up was uneventful other than going thru Freemont…..they’d recently removed all the top surface from the main road thru town and left a mess behind to ride on with only two wheels. We took it easy and didn’t have a problem, but it was worse than a dirt road with the gouges in the pavement pulling my front wheel in all different directions.

Once we got to the folks house we jumped in their car and headed for Whiskey Creek. I can’t remember the last time I rode in a car with my mother at the wheel but I’ll bet it was over 35 years ago. It took about an hour to make the trip from Big Rapids via Baldwin and Custer to the campground and once we were there we started out with a visit to the Fetts campsite / wedding site. There was no one home so we did a quick tour in the sprinkling rain and then headed for the lodge to show that off. While we were there we all got ice cream and hung out at the lodge for a little bit. From the lodge we went out to show them our campsite, but nobody was too interested in getting out and looking around so we went on up into the campground to show them the cabin they’d be staying in that Saturday night. After that highlight we’d pretty much done everything we’d came to do so we started the trip back to Big Rapids.

We took the same route back and I took the opportunity to doze a bit from my navigator’s seat up front. Once we got back to Big Rapids we didn’t stay but long enough to make a pit stop and then we were back on the bike, heading for home. On the way back we made a couple of stops along M-37. The first one was at a guy’s house that had some awesome wood carvings out front for sale, including a smallish totem pole. Now it’s not on my top 10 list for things to buy for the campsite, but someday when I have more money than bills I’d like to have a decent sized totem pole at the campsite. So, after looking the woodwork over we jumped back on the bike and went another mile down the road to one of the garden supply places in the area. The reason for stopping there was to check out the neat little deer blinds (least I’m pretty sure that’s what they’re for….) that we could use as an outhouse at the campsite until we can snag that trailer we want. These little deer blinds / outhouses were 4’x4’ with little sliding Plexiglas windows on 3 sides. I had this vision of putting the porta potty inside this little house with some lace curtains for the windows and add a light once we have electricity and viola! Civilization! I’m planning on going back over there Sunday and buying one of them and taking it up to the campsite, hopefully without the wife knowing what I’m doing until I’m done. We’ll see how well that works……

We finally got home about 5:30. I parked the bike, rolled out the “56 and headed for Jeannie’s and the Sunday night cruise-in. There was kind of a light crowd for the evening, but there was still a good time to be had. I did a shoot over by the pond for one of the guys and I have to get busy and get some of those shots printed out this week. I also made $20.00 selling a couple 8x10’s to Jeannie. Actually came home with more money than I left with……that don’t happen too often.

I took a ride around town before putting the car away and then started winding down and getting ready for another week, this one without the benefit of a mate in the house. I’m even gonna have to go to the grocery store and push a cart by myself for the first time in 20+ years. It’s gonna be a guy week around the house this week……although I am planning on doing a little work around the house too……..we’ll see how that works out.


TC