HORSEPOWER HAIKU
By: Mike Marino
The UP of Michigan, the Yooper version of the Emerald City in the classic "Wizard of Oz", is a pleasant enough peninsula. It's a lumberjack's wetdream of chainsaws and Carhartt, hunting rifles and fishing poles, forest and lakes, swamps and mosquito's, and of course, beer and pasties for the plaid...the proud...and the many. Not a land designed for the quirky quiche eatin' legions of the limp wristed, instead, it's the French Riviera of the Paul Bunyans and Bunyanettes in the world, who sport a decidely politically incorrect sense of humor like a badge of honor, and stand tall and salute "the color the world inside the lines" universe of convention with a conventional single fingered knotty pine attitude.
You graple with your attempts to affect your best tourist impersonation of the ethereal Rod Serling. Cigarette dangling from your mouth, smoking and wetlipped, you dare to cross the line and enter the realm of the Yooper Twilight Zone.
Your journey of sight and sound has you exiting the heavy metal majestic expanse of the Mackinac Bridge. You've left the land of the Trolls far behind you, only to find yourself now smack dab in the middle of the phenomenon known as...the St. Ignace Fudge Vortex!.
The spot of land that was to become St. Ignace was justified by the Jesuits, and founded by the French many bateau's ago, and today comprises one/third of the notorius and mysterious Fudge Triangle. Comprised of the Holy Trinity of Fudge, St. Ignace, Mackinac Island and Mackinaw City, it's a place where strange occurances occasionally occur every summer as the locals watch the annual arrival and Flight of the Fudgies, as the tourista's are called.
It's as much anticipated and everybit as exciting as last years Tractor Pull and Mudbog Mania, Ladies Hot Pants & Pool Night at the Deerhunt Inn, or the spring arrival of the buzzards returning to roost in Hinkley, Ohio. They descend on the region from around the world, like a flock of crows on a prized meal of roadkill. and curiously are attracted to buying up every tacky souvenir in sight, beer by the buckets, and plenty of the regions other major food group, fudge!
The region is influenced heavily in part by the banning of the automobile on turn of the century Mackinac Island where the horse is king. Not that there's anything wrong with that! However, along with the horse, of course, comes a horrendous amount of horsedroppings, or road apples as they are called. To make up for this "get a horse", something magical happens every June in St. Ignace. The road apples are replaced by roadheads, and horsedroppings give way to raw horsepower, and lot's of it, as the city hosts the yearly chrome-magnon fudge meets chrome ritual of one of the planets largest roadhead friendly classic and collector car festivals and swapmeets around. Youbetcha!
Coupe de Villes to Yoop de Villes, and everything in between have been topping off this small town's tourist driven economic gas tank to overflowing since the inauguaral festival in the Bicentennial Year of 1976 where a mere handful of just 134 vehicles were on display. Today, the town is full tilt boogie for three full days of piston pumpin' power to the people fun, along with a strong backbeat of rock n' roll, and rev it up good times and great oldies!
The year round population of 2,500 locals, give or take, swells like an overactive thyroid gland to a blue suede cruise assemblage of over 100,000 summertime roadheads, motorheads and gearheads. St. Ignace undergoes a miraculous shape shifter transformation of it's own, shedding it's skin, and entering into the role of it's heavy metal alter ego of mechanized machismo and charisma, and overnight, becomes Swingin' Iggy, an overflowing cornucopia of chrome and pop culture. State Street, the main drag of St. Ignace becomes a solid phalanx of vendors, events, information booths, and over 1,800 muscle flexing Motor City mo-sheens that have liberal doses of Liberace flair and style! It's gear eye for the V-8 straight guy!
If you love a parade, then you'll be in a hog heaven pedal to the metal paradise as St. Ignace fires up not one, but two parades during the three day festival with the pizazz and brilliance of an exploding heat seeking missle over the skies of Baghdad. The first is a nostalgic time travel journey to the fuzzy dice galaxy of the past, long, long ago, and far, far away with the Annual Parade Down Memory Lane.
This is where stately, State Street, the main route that meanders silently and sensuosly along the shores of Lake Huron, caressing the coastline with her soft fingers of sexy asphalt becomes...Memory Lane. What the hell, Kansas has it's Yellow Brick Road doesn't it? This is all followed up with a free street dance and sockhop with music. Although a lot of the festival attendee's weren't even born in the era, it does act as a wannabe portal to the past where they can at least experience what they see in the movies and on TV. On the other hand, bonafide card carrying greaseballs with ducktails and greasettes with ponytails will be seeking paradise by the dashboard lights, and shaking their somewhat aged, greying tail feathers all over the joint!
The streets will also be a bizarre bazaar and swapmeet of diverse items as numerous vendors will be on hand, hawking wares from books to videos, tools and collectibles and other assorted roadhead oddities. The swapmeet itself will be held at the Little Bear East Arena, the downtown marina and the Star Line Dock, also in the downtown area. In addition, there will be a variety of car shows, tons of contests, giveaways, fun, food, music and merriment. All in all, it's gonna be an asphalt kicker of a show as well as a super-charged roadhead overdose of vehicular Viagra!
Soon, the Godzilla of all roadhead car shows comes to a screeching halt at the end of the dragstrip. St. Ignace, like Tokyo in the wake of Godzilla's rompin' and stompin' has also been leveled, not by atomic footprints though, but instead by revelry and rock n' roll. The weekend ends, the keys turn in the ignition, the starters fire up those beautiful machines and they pull out, one by one. The sexy growl of the engines begin to fade, the intoxicating perfume of exhaust and fuel linger, but grow faint as all the Little Deuce Yoops disappear for yet another year.
The roadheads disappear until next June, and are once again immediately replaced by road apples, and horsedroppings once again replace horsepower. The fuzzy dice swing and keep time to the beat, as the hula dashboard ornament swings and sways in a rock n' roll heat...and that Amigo is the essence of the Roadhead Highway Haiku!
Classic Cars, Rock n' Roll, Elvis, Drivein Movies & Route 66! Kerouac, The Beats, Haight Ashbury, Easy Rider & Vietnam!
The Roadhead Chronicles goes from the Cold War Fifties Pop Culture of classic cars and rock n' roll to the spaced out Spare Change Sixties of Vietnam and Hells Angels. Not the usual look at the era, instead It's written by someone who lived it and spent a life of being on the road from his beach bum days in Honolulu to the glitz and dangers of the Sunset Strip in LA, and his purple hazed and double dazed days in North Beach and the Haight Ashbury in San Francisco. The Roadhead Chronicles also looks at the history of Route 66, Roadside Neon Culture and old diners and dives!
Mike Marino writes in an offbeat and irreverant style with a beat and a cadence that is all his own. His writing style has been compared to John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck and Terry Southern and one reviewer likened him to Frederick Lewis Allen on acid! Readers and critics call the book "wickedly wonderful", "delightfully weird" and "automotively sexy."!!
