One reason I didn’t see my mother very much after I went to live with my dad was that we lived so far apart. My mother and stepfather had settled on living in the upper peninsula of Michigan, and my dad and I were in Mesick to stay. It was a three and a half hour trip by car. What you have to realize is that in 1977, there was a nationwide speed limit of 55 miles per hour that was instituted during the Ford administration in 1974 in response to the oil embargo the nation was facing at the time. That made trips back then interminably long. So, my mom and stepfather picked me up on their way down to their parents’ houses for Christmas and brought me back with them for visitation on the way back. I got traded for my brother on the way down, so he got to spend some quality time with my dad and grandparents without me there. We picked him up on the way back north.
As I mentioned before, my stepfather’s parents were great, treating me exactly the same as any of the other grandchildren. Christmas at Steve’s parents’ house was fun, with a houseful of step-cousins. I still remember the clamor over Star Wars among the kids. Each of them was given a little knockoff wind-up robot to play with. There were no Star Wars toys for Christmas that first year, but the market was definitely there. We duelled with lightsabers in the form of gift wrapping tubes. I wasn’t given a wind-up robot, but I had fun watching the younger kids play with theirs. I was the oldest, and that year, I was given not a child’s gift, but a young adult’s gift. I received my first tape recorder!
It may not seem like a big deal now, but it sure was then. My step-grandmother had been thoughtful enough to include a three-pack of cassette tapes and off I went. I recorded everything that was happening, using the included condenser microphone. And as was usual back then, my imagination soared with ideas of how I could use this wonderful gift. When we arrived at my Grandma B’s house, I asked my cousin Peter if we could record some of the old-time radio shows from my Uncle Mike’s reel-to-reel player that we had listened to a few years before. I went home with a cassette tape with War of the Words on the first side and half of the second side, and the origin of The Lone Ranger following that. I’m pretty sure everyone was wishing they had bought me an earphone too at that point, because I was playing it non-stop.
On the way back up to the upper peninsula, we stopped to pick up Jeff, and I ran to my room to retrieve my earphone. It was just a little one-piece earphone that came in a small leather case. I had bought it at a garage sale for 10 cents, but it worked great! Now I could listen to my recordings and not bother anyone. I grabbed some batteries from my grandparents too, so I could listen to it in the car. Thank heavens for prepared grandparents. They always had extra batteries handy.
I had a nice week with my mom and brother and sister. I treasured those few moments we got each year, being together as a family. My mom surprised me with my very own track suit. It was blue, with red and white stripes down the sleeves and the sides of the pants. And she embroidered my name on the back. I thought that was super cool.
When it was time to go home again, they had a surprise for me. I was going to go Greyhound…by myself. The plan was for Steve to take me to the bus station in St. Ignace, a 45-minute drive, and then I would ride to Cadillac on the bus, where my dad would pick me up. The problem was, the bus left at midnight. I was kind of scared. What if I fell asleep? I’d never stayed up all night before. They assured me that it would be all right. So, armed with fresh batteries for my tape recorder and the novelization of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I got on the bus in the middle of the night and rode five hours home. It’s only 4.5 hours now, but you can drive faster now than you could then.
Can you imagine sending your newly-minted 13-year-old son on a bus by himself without even a cell phone or even identification in this day and age? It was an adventure. The bus driver assured me I could go to sleep and that he would wake me up in Cadillac, but it was too exciting.
The bus trip was uneventful. My dad picked me up early in the morning, and we went to the Big Boy for breakfast before heading back to Mesick. I asked my dad for a quarter to play the jukebox at the table. That’s one of the cool things about Big Boy back in the 70s; there was a mini-jukebox at every single booth. You could play three songs for a quarter. Fleetwood Mac was on the jukebox, as well as the disco version of the Star Wars theme by Meco. That was hilarious.
I started going over the menu, since this was such a rare treat to have breakfast at Big Boy. We’d shared many a lunch and dinner there, but never breakfast. My eye was drawn to something that sounded wonderful: the Mexican Fiesta Omelet. It was an omelet filled with chili and American cheese, with diced raw onions and tomatoes on top. Its origins as Mexican are sketchy. It’s questionable whether chili originated in Texas or northern Mexico. Be that as it may, that’s what it was called on the menu. The flavors of this omelet exploded in my mouth. It was one of the most wonderful dishes I’d ever eaten. And it came with hash browns? So much the better! To this day, it remains one of my favorite foods.
When I told my dad that I had a recording of the very first radio episode of The Lone Ranger, he got excited. The Lone Ranger had always been his favorite fictional character. We used to get up at 6:30 in the morning on Sundays just to watch it on TV together. When we got home to the trailer, I crashed for a while, and then when I played the radio show for him and it was fun to see him as excited about something as I was. He was equally excited that now we didn’t have to go to my grandparent’s house to listen to music. We could listen to cassette tapes at home. It’s funny, growing up without a lot of money. You tend not to take things for granted after that.
While I liked spending time with my mom and brother and sister, I was now finally back home again where I belonged. I had a home where I was safe and warm in my tiny room with my sleeping bag. I had a snowmobile. I had my comic books and trading cards and magazines. But most importantly, I had my dad, my grandparents, my aunt, my dog, and my friends and teachers. And I had just traveled a couple of hundred miles, alone. The timid, beaten boy who had gone to live with his dad a year before was gone. At the end of 1977, I was someone else, entirely. And I liked him.
Stay tuned for 1978!
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