IT WAS NOT LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

    * * *

    I suppose my awareness of Michigan began
    at Broadview Elementary School when my teacher,
    Mrs. Wooden, required us to learn the names of
    all of the state capitols.
    So, somewhere in the recesses of my mind,
    temporarily pushing aside thoughts of basketball or
    Roy Rogers, the King of the Cowboys,
    was the name of a city called Lansing.
    It was in a state which proclaimed itself to be a pleasant peninsula.
    To this Hoosier boy, Michigan then went into hibernation
    until Michigan State's basketball team and its star,
    Jumping Johnny Green, visited Bloomington to play
    Branch McCracken's Hurryin' Hoosiers at the old IU Fieldhouse.
    Michigan State University was located in that city
    I first heard about in elementary school.
    Now MSU was playing IU on a wooden floor and,
    because of Mrs. Wooden, I knew about Lansing.
    What goes around comes around ...
    especially when it is a basketball.
    My dad and I sat two or three rows from the elevated floor,
    thanks to Dad's boss, an IU letterman from his football playing days.
    I could see the action up close and the elevated floor
    may have exaggerated the jumping ability of Johnny Green.
    Regardless, he definitely could jump.
    Darn him!
    He was probably a nice guy, but he had two strikes against him:
    He had grown up in Ohio and was playing for a team from Michigan.
    I mean, come on, how nice could he be?
    I cannot recall which team won that game.
    I could look up the score on the internet but
    I do not want to risk having the game's outcome contaminate
    my pleasant memory of attending that game with my dad.
    In any event, those invaders from far north of Bloomington
    added to the knowledge initiated by Mrs. Wooden.


    I'M OK WITH THAT

    * * *

    When we kids were in junior high school
    we talked often of the big high school we
    would be attending in the ninth grade.
    It was said to have many students and
    I believed there was bound to be another student
    with the same first and last names as mine.
    Sometimes I wondered what this guy would look like.
    Would he be taller than me?
    Shorter?
    Smarter?
    More athletic?
    Less athletic?
    Funnier?
    Well, I had no reason to worry.
    He did not exist.
    After a few weeks attending high school
    I realized nobody else had my name.
    Oh, there were many who were taller,
    smarter,
    more athletic,
    funnier.
    Kind of like guys I met later in college ...
    and the Army ...
    and the working world.
    Over the years I became ok with that.
    It helped that some of the taller guys
    were not smarter than me and
    some of the smarter guys were not taller.
    The funny guy?
    He was a good athlete but
    he was not better looking than me.
    Well, ok, he was better looking.
    But I'm ok with that.
    

    SWEPT UP IN THE CURRENT

    * * *

    When I was a teenager my parents drove to Detroit
    with my sister and me to visit an aunt and uncle living there.
    Dad did the driving; he always did.
    It was summer and Dad took me to a Tigers game.
    That baseball game was my first exposure
    to the abundance of water in Michigan.
    A downpour caused some streets to flood.
    The drive back to my uncle's house was difficult,
    especially because Dad was not
    familiar with the streets of Detroit.
    For some reason that rainy day
    got my uncle talking about a strange place,
    a place called the Straits of Mackinac.
    He said a bridge was being built...