And it was June 1986. Da Nang. No, wait.
It was definitely Lapeer, Michigan. We would walk to the convenience
store. At the base of the Thumb, we
called them party stores. Sometimes, I
would carry a small bag of carrots so I could stop along the way and feed
Mindy. Mindy was a horse. She lived on a small farm just off the main
road. She could probably hurdle the low
and increasingly incomplete fence, but she appeared satisfied with her present
location. Besides, it was abnormally
hot; the air too humid and the ground too dusty for anything more strenuous
than a leisurely amble. It was 29 years away from having to worry
about compliance with a corporate social media guidelines policy regarding
personal blogs. I am referring to
myself, of course. Mindy didn’t care
about such things – they weren’t small, crisp, orange, and delicious. She knew what was important.
Slats, who I hadn’t met yet, would
later claim that he spent that summer gearing up for the Babbitt for President
campaign. Somehow, that involved six
weeks in a rented villa ten klicks outside of Saint Tropez. Gearing up was different in the ‘80s. In any event, he left that effort the
following year…well before the cornstalks were hip-high. “Strategic differences,” he would
mutter.
But this is neither the time nor
place for that – Michigan ’86 is. Was?
No, it is. So that is where we should
begin.
