Birch Run

It’s Late in a relative sort of way, the hours of the day have almost run their course, all the things mankind had to say have been said, done, dreamed, enacted in music, on the stage, in our physics and chemistry. Two millennia and some change since the last victor of martyrs died, empires rose and fell, lent gods and holidays to the calendar. It’s late.

I don’t sleep so well. Again. I went for a drive, yonder a piece, north up Birch Run way. Autumnal sunburst of alder, birch, maple, cherry, box elder, walnut against dark clouds. I went close to where the webbing between thumb and forefinger would be in a mitten. If you come from the west in a straight line, more or less, it’s a cross section of rural MI.

One of the things I wanted to do before the winter and the second wave of ‘rona hits was to get an oil change. I did that this morning. The guy poked his head up from under the hood to show me what looked like three tennis balls. It took a moment, but I realized they were walnuts in their seed covers. I think there are probably huge parts of this country that don’t know what the fuck that means. A squirrel had been making a nest in my engine block where it was warm. The question isn’t really why is this common knowledge locally, but why is common practice? You’d think natural selection would kind of take care of engine block nesters. It’s hard to guess things from facial clues when everyone is masked.

North of Flint Birch Run is farm land and woods, bales of hay and alfalfa still green in the fields, brown stalks of corn. Local politicians’ placards, a few Biden Harris, a number of Trump Pence, one just Trump and one handmade Remove Whitmer, Fat Hand made Font in bright red on a harsh Yellow sign. I noticed it at first because this old guy was walking a St. Bernard, from about a quarter mile back I saw the dog pause to sniff the sign, by the time I had caught up the dog had lifted his leg. On the way back I saw a beagle doing the same. Like a good hydrant of tree of telephone pole, the local pups had chosen that sign to communicate.

Why did I go up there, besides the lovely and dramatic view? There is a marijuana dispensary that was having a good sale, and it was a lovely and dramatic view. For some reason that part of the state has dispensaries in towns that have one gas station, a bar and a convenience store. Some of those towns have two dispensaries and no convenience store. They do things a bit differently. Things are priced well but there is an accuracy gap. It’s hard to explain. I liked these guys, they weren’t trying to rip anyone off, they had what they claimed at the price the claimed just not the selection. Um, say a place said ALL CANDY BARS A NICKEL and listed candy bars like Toblerone, snickers, Cadbury, mounds, Aero, bit o honey and rocky road. When you got there, they had a huge display of mounds.

I had a squirrel living rent free in engine block, saw dogs great and small peeing on a recall
Whitmer sign, so what if I have a bag full of mounds bars? I was tired of throwing cans of soup.