Vacation Fun 4: I Finally Go to Hell

Friday, we came home. Looking at our itinerary, we sought some place to visit briefly that would match our excursion into moth man territory. 

"What way should we take home?" I asked.

"Lets go to Hell," Joy said sweetly. 

By Hell,  she meant  Hell, Michigan.  It's a little town on the map,  south of Pinckney and west of Ann Arbor.  I saw it on the map a couple of years ago,  and looked it up on the internet.  Then I wrote a blog about it called "A Trip to Hell" '

Why not?  It was only ten minutes out of the way.  Besides,  so many people over the years have suggested that I go there, I figured it was time to pay Hell a visit, so we could claim to have been "to Hell and back." 

Hell is located on Darwin Road--no joke, it actually is.  The road to Hell is clearly marked and is paved with asphalt, not intentions.  Hell is tiny. There are really only three buildings there--a  cheesy little store  called Hell in a  Handbasket,  Screams Ice Cream parlor, and a restaurant overlooking an artificial lake called the Dam Site Inn.  There is also a wedding chapel, called the Church of Hell. The theory is that if a marriage begins in Hell, it is bound to get better.  There was Hell's playground for the kiddies.  The lake has a dam,  which I guess contained the floodgates of Hell.   There was a camping area,  where a hearse festival was held once a year, I think on Halloween.  There is a post office, where you can send postcards  that say "Wish you were here."  My favorite tee shirt said "Hell--it's still safer than Detroit."   We got our picture taken, bought a coffee mug saying   "Coffee from Hell"   and left. 

Seriously,  though,  it was all not as fun as I thought.  It was a cheap tourist attraction based on a single joke.  The people we saw who lived  there were sad looking, and reminded me of carneys. With the cartoon devils and skeletons everywhere,  the whole place gave the impression of a  bad  Halloween display. 

It's all great fun,  unless you believe in hell, which I do.  Hell is a real place.  It is one thing to capitalize on an unusual name, but this went beyond it. Real hell is no joke.  

Looking at this little place,  I remember we treat the name of Hell as an obscenity. An obscene word is not one that should never be mentions, but one that should be mentioned only when it is appropriate, and respectfully hidden otherwise.   When you talk about hell and Satan too often, or laugh about them too loudly,   it loses its power to shock and frighten.   This  little town tries to make a year round joke over the accidental name, and in doing so have reduced hell to a cheap joke.  

I must admit,  the thought of going through this little town was amusing, and we had a good laugh.  It amused waitresses on our way home when we showed off our pictures.  But I felt sorry for the people who were there. I would much rather see them more heavenly minded than hell-minded.   I would like to see Hell become a little less tawdry and forlorn place. 

Vacation Fun 3: A Magical Fourth

We left Michigan Friday July 5, but I have to tell you about the night of the 4th.

Joy and I went to our hotel early that evening, being exhausted by relatives and eating.  Then about ten o-clock  we heard distant, muffled explosions outside our fifth story motel window.  We pulled back the shades and looked out over the city of Grand Rapids.  Grand Rapids is not a skyscraper town.  It is a low-lying sprawl of commercial buildings houses, and churches.  A shopping mall and a movie theater was right in front of window.   The sun had faded and night had just begun. 

In our line of sight, from one side of the window to the others, were no less than seven fireworks displays going off at the same time. They were timed at different intervals,  so they lasted more than forty-five minutes. 

It was a magical sight. Though they would have looked more spectacular if they were closer,  the  horizon to horizon show more than made up for our distance. 

Some of the displays were small and close-either private or small displays from churches or businesses.  Others were massive, well-planned and elegant.  To the north,  was a magnificent show--precise, elegant bursts in carefully coordinated colors.  To the northwest bloomed a show over downtown,  the centers of government.  To the south was a  high and beautiful display which must have cost a small fortune .   The shopping mall  close by had its own display.

 It was as if the whole city came together to celebrate the Fourth.

This must have been how our founding fathers envisioned the Fourth of July--a  nation celebrating together.  Each display was independent,  but they celebrated together with common purpose and singular freedom,  like  jazz,  each instrument playing with the same chord, different notes,  creative and united,  individual, corporate, and joyous. 

Joy and I held hands as we watched.  It was like a good marriage, two coming together, yet remaining separate. I will never again see such a display in my life.

We held hands in the dark, looking out the window.  Then we went to bed, and thanked God for our three decades of harmony and improvisation.

Vacation Fun 2: Small World, Hun?

We got to Joy's family on Monday, and had a good time.  However, I noticed one odd thing about our conversations. 

Almost all of our conversations revolved around proving over and over again the same  point.  Our conversation can be summarized in one sentence. 

'It’s a small, world, huh!' 

Most of the conversation was about hooking together people, places and things  in unrelated places, and then being amazed at the connection, however tenuous.

Witness the following conversation:

'I met a man a the store last night.  He told me that he used to live in Charlotte, North Carolina,  where you guys live.  His name is Bob. Maybe you know him.   Small world, huh?"

'No, but Bob was my brother's nephew's middle  name.  Never met him, though,  I had heard  of him. Small world, huh?"

"Say, I had a brother, too.  He was named Wally.   He was  Presbyterian.    Small world, huh?"

"Really?  I once lived next to a Presbyterian church.  The pastor's name was  Sheider or Shnieider,  something like that.

Maybe you know him.  Small world, huh?"

"Can't say that I have. But I wonder if he's part of the family that makes  Shneider's Pretzels. I love those things.  I used to date a girl who ate Schneider pretzels. If you're interested in pretzels, I can get you her number.  Small world, huh?"

"Pretzels are German, I think.  One of our ancestors was German, too.  Small world, huh?"

"Really,  I once owned a German shepherd.   Small world, huh?"

. . . And so it goes. 

Oh, the pleasant days we have spent  proving over and over that it is a small, small world, finding connections between people over the smallest things.   

But really, the world is not so small. It's big and wide and full of strange, unrelated things.  Whenever I travel, I am not struck by the connections of life, but the infinite differences. No one person is completely like another.    No one sees the world the same as another.  We are as unique as snowflakes. 

Travel gives us the chance to see the endless variety of the world. No two barns are the same, no two trees are precisely alike.  We  can spend eternity describing the beauty of each leaf on a single tree.

We enjoy connections,  but even more the disconnections.  The more we know about the wonderful differences, the larger the world becomes.

Vacation Fun 1: The Moth Man Museum

My wife and I just returned from a long, short trip to visit Joy's relatives in Michigan--"short" in time, but  not distance.  It was sixteen hundred miles  for five days.   There's not much time for sightseeing on those fourteen hour drives.  So we try to break up the monotony however we can. 

On our northerly trip,  about midway was Point Pleasant, W. Va., on the Ohio River.  Now, Point Pleasant is a sleepy little river town on the Ohio River, with only one claim to fame--it is the home of the moth man.  The moth man is a local legend,  who  allegedly scared some people in 1969.  The moth man is over six feet tall with glowing  red eyes and great bat wings  (Think of Batman with a three day flu).  The next year, a local bridge collapsed--an event which was somehow predicted by  the arrival of the  moth man.  There have been at least two movies made on the moth man,  and he regularly shows up on those paranormal programs they show on the History Channel. There's  big silver statue of him in an intersection  downtown, and a small storefront museum. 

We had already seen the statue, but this time Joy and I decided to lunch in Point Pleasant and take in the moth man museum. Admission was three dollars each.  The whole thing could have fit in an old drug store--in fact, I think it did.  It was run by a bored-looking guy with a ponytail and a moth man tee shirt.   

Inside, among the tee shirts,  feed caps, and bumper stickers were mostly mannequin exhibits, dressed-up figures salvaged from an old  department store.  There was a mannequin in a gorilla suit with a  Halloween mask, bat cape and long fingernails, which represented the mysterious moth man; a mannequin dressed in a black suit,  sunglasses and hat,  one of the "Men in Black" who were supposed to have called on the witnesses later to threaten them into silences; and a  state trooper who was thrown in for no apparent reason. There were original handwritten testimonies by witnesses, props from one of the movies and autographs from the stars.  There were comic books and paintings of the beast, and cardboard cutouts used to disprove the moth man on  of the better History Channel shows.  There was also (again, for no good reason) an account of the first battle of the Revolutionary War fought there in 1774. Since the rest of the world believed the revolution began two years later, this did nothing to lend credence to the moth man. 

Joy and I toured it all in uncomprehending wonder.  What was the moth man? What could it be?  Could we get our three dollars back?  What were we doing here?

Let's answer the questions in reverse order.  We had no idea what we were doing there.  No, we could not get our three dollars back.  But as for the identity of the moth man, that remains a mystery for the ages. 

 After examining the evidence, we can see several possibilities. It may have been a cryptoid--an undiscovered animal like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster.  However, since we were in a heavily populated rural area, close to the original Bob Evans Country Restaurant, it seems unlikely - as unlikely as bumping into Sasquatch at the local Cracker Barrel Country Store.

Perhaps he was an alien from a UFO.  But why would such an alien choose to live at Point Pleasant, when he could go to Las Vegas or Los  Angeles and blend right in?  Here, he would stick out like an elephant in a cabbage patch. 

Of course, the museum offered an explanation as to why no one sees the moth man--mind control.  According to one theory, the moth man transmits a mind beam through his glowing eyes that makes people think of something else while they are looking straight at  him!  So, if you are not thinking of the moth man right now,  you may be under his evil mind controlling spell.

There is another explanation, that seems more likely.  They saw a hoot owl. It would explain the wings,  and the giant glowing eyes.   I believe that a hoot owl,  when magnified through the empty bottom of an empty Jack Daniels bottle,  would account for most of the scant actual evidence. 

Come to think of it, that empty bottle could explain a lot of unexplained phenomena.