Today is Jeanette Ratliff's birthday. She turned 45 today. I'm sure she doesn't go by her last name but it was 35 years ago this week that I made my first and only apperance up to Michigan with my mom and dad and one of Mom's friends and family.
1975. A very shitty year. Grandma Ambrose passed away in April and later in the year Grandpa Smith died too. I tried out for little league baseball but this Michigan trip pretty much render me useless when I got back to play baseball. If i didn't strike out, I walked, no in between. The only ball I hit out of the park was a foul ball straight back, and then stuck out on the next pitch. I was stroked to go up to Michigan and Illinois to visit Grandpa and to head out out of town and pitch up more beer cans to take home. That was the big thing, collecting beer cans. Found a shitload of Garten Brau at some Springfield beer store. Plenty of old Stag beer cans as well outside of Lincoln around the lake. Plenty of half filled PBR beer bottles to which being a brat I would throw the damn thing in the air and watch it shattered all over the road. In Palmyra found some old Stag Beer signs outside a bar that me and my brother took home.
We went up to Michigan, my mom's friend had relatives living around Jackson, which was a depressing place from what I remembered but fell head over heels with Jeanette to which we promised to be together forever. She was four years younger than myself and I remember we were running around the yard being brats when the skies opened up and it poured rain like no tomorrow. We kept in touch after that, she came down to Marion the next year, promised to be together forever yadda yadda yadda. We made a promise to stay true till I graduated from high school and then go up there and live happily ever after......
Unfortunly for the young, the attention span is very short and Jeanette never did respond to any letter that I wrote her and I came to find out that she ended up getting knocked up not once, twice but three times before she turned 18 and married the dude who did the nasty. It let me with a broken heart and a bit of anger that I ended up writing a song called All Over Now and gave it to Mom's friend to play for Jeanette at her reception. I guess they didn't like too well and that was the last time I ever made contact with Jeanette again. They divorced and she became born again and ended up being a grandma at 42 but by then it was all in the past.
I never thought that I would be making plans to return to Michigan once again. My GF lives up there and after having her come down here to see how things go when we first met in St Louis last year and then coming here for Christmas it was time for me to venture up there to meet her kinfolk. It's hard to break old habits like going to Arizona in summertime but I did promise my other half that I'd go up there first.
I'm sure there will be places that me and my GF will go outside of record stores. I'm certain we'll make it to Ann Arbor, or anyplace with a FYE. But this trip will not be of only music and cd stores, but rather to visit her kinfolk and visit her places of hanging out. I've never been to Hale but I've seen it on the last Uncle Kracker video that my GF loves to see. There's Frankenmuth, been there and at the old Carling Brewery although I'm sure it's something else now. I tried to talk to my Mom bout where the places we used to go but it brings back painful memories to her that is best left unsaid. But I do remember walking around Frankenmuth and walking around Jackson looking for beercans and going to a Woolworths to buy 45s but at that time I wasn't the serious record hunter. It's all a blur to me.
I'm not sure what to expect when I meet her relatives, I'm not that great around people that I don't know. But my GF will help me through the awkwardness. The way they talk about me up there you'd think the second coming is forthcoming. I don't look at it that way but what do I know? I never had a woman that really went all the way out of her way to impress me but she's a one of a kind.
So, there will be bargain hunts and the meet and greet and sightseeing and hope that the monsoon storms will stay the hell away for that week that I'm up there. I'm sure we'll have fun and perhaps I'll document it here so stay tuned.
It should be an historic event. After all it has been 35 years ago this week since I was up in Michigan.
