Michigan Summers - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Michigan Summers

Sunday was the first day of summer and we had perfect weather on Father’s Day here in Michigan. My son and I played golf with another father-son duo, then had a lakeside family barbecue afterwards.

Michigan summers are the best. I learned that from my parents in 1966 after they spent time at my uncle’s cottage on Paradise Lake in northern Michigan as described in this 2015 blogpost. Yes, we’ve been doing this blog for 6 years and the memories are still rolling in!

My first exposure to a Michigan summer came a few years later, when Tom Jacobs from Minster (now Loramie, I think) invited me to spend a long weekend in July of 1967 for a frat party at General Motors Institute, where I was to attend later that fall. He had a brand new GTO which was promptly pulled over around Wapak for speeding. But that didn’t deter us from making my first visit to the Michigan college now called Kettering University. The fraternity had a party on the beach at nearby Kensington Park. The beach was unbelievable, full of bikini-clad young ladies whom the 30 or so frat partygoers quickly befriended.

We didn’t think to bring any sports equipment, so improvised by using a watermelon brought along for food to play a coed “football" game. The watermelon floated nicely and could be thrown almost a well as a regular ball. The girls loved it and we loved watching the girls dive after the watermelon. And that night we sat around an open fire right on the beach. Needless to say, I was hooked on Michigan summers from that moment on.

A cute girl from Lincoln Park, MI and I exchanged addresses, so I wrote her once but never received a response. A year later a letter arrived from her that had been lost in the mail for that long. The Post office was just as bad then as now! After calling her and explaining the postal delay, we arranged to meet up on my way back to school the coming fall of my sophomore year. I think of her occasionally when a song by Michigan native Bob Seger comes on the radio, because many of his songs were about summers in Michigan; for example, these lyrics from Night Moves. Bob had a '60 Chevy, mine was a ’62, but unlike the famous rocker, my back seat showed only a little wear from this venture.

Out past the cornfields where the woods got heavy

Out in the back seat of my '60 Chevy
Workin' on mysteries without any clues

Workin' on our night moves
Tryin’ to make some front page drive-in news
Workin' on our night moves

In the summertime
Mhmm
In the sweet summertime

We weren't in love, oh no far from it
We weren't searchin' for some pie in the sky, or summit
We were just young and restless and bored

That all changed during one Ohio summer that eclipses any in Michigan as recapped in this previous blogpost, the summer I met my wife. We’ve enjoyed Michigan summers ever since because after college and getting married, we moved to Michigan in the summer of 1973. The weather between Memorial Day and Labor Day is nearly always sunny, 80 degrees, bug-less, little rain and low humidity with just a slight breeze, perfect for all outdoor activities. To top it off and to really take full advantage of the perfect Michigan summer weather, we bought and totally rebuilt a lakefront home in 1989 that someday hopefully long into the future, we'll have to be carried out of feet first. My favorite place on earth is on the back deck overlooking the lake. Ditto for Bob Seger as he also bought a house on our lake.

When we travel to visit family in Loramie and Russia, we are many times asked by old friends if we’ll ever move back. I always say never say never, but...

We also liked the distinct four seasons in Michigan, even the winters, taking family ski trips up north and skating on the frozen lake, but after retiring, the warmth of Florida drew us south, so we bought a place in Naples to steer clear of the Michigan winters. My first exposure to Naples was in 1975 as an engineer at Ford while doing performance testing at their Florida proving grounds, long since sold to developers. My wife would join me and spend the days at a Naples beach resort where we stayed. We really liked the area but felt at the time there were too many old people. My wife still feels that way! It is said there are a lot of old people in Naples, but their parents live on the east coast!

Michigan summers and Naples winters; best of both world’s. A way to really appreciate Michigan summers is to listen to the Pure Michigan blurbs that are to used support tourism. Here’s my favorite:

https://www.michigan.org/pure-michigan-ads

The Pure Michigan spoofs are also hilarious, for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5tJaRrZZMs

Probably the best part of summer over the years was going to old Tiger Stadium and now Comerica Park with my son for a baseball game. The Tigers were really good back then, winning the World Series in 1968 during my college years and again in1984 when my son was 5. We knew every player on the team as well as their up-to-date statistics. Arriving early for batting practice, we’d stand in the outfield bleachers trying to catch a ball, which we did once, a long fly by future Hall of Famer Alan Trammell.

Another native Michigander who also wrote songs about his summers here is Kid Rock. My favorite is All Summer Long with these lyrics:

It was 1989, my thoughts were short my hair was long
Caught somewhere between a boy and man
She was seventeen and she was far from in-between
It was summertime in Northern Michigan
Ahh Ahh Ahh

Three months of perfection coming up!

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