It’s at this point in the day — Kate off to school, me still unshowered — that I pause to recheck the calendar and figure out everything I have to do in the next eight hours or so. Today the answer is: Oy. A lot. As much as I’d like to stay here on the couch, chin in hand, looking pensively at the fall color outside the window, alas I cannot. So I’m giving myself until the end of my current cup of coffee to get something up, and that’ll just have to do, my little cupcakes.

It isn’t helping that the sky is darkening by noticeable degrees as I write. The streetlights just came on, which means a downpour is moments away. I hope the adult supervisors released Kate from her morning safety-patrol station early; I’d hate for her to walk the remaining two blocks in wet shoes. (Yes, my daughter is in the safety patrol. She sought out the sign-up sheet on her own. I’m thinking it may portend a career in law enforcement, in which case I plan to be one of those old ladies who smokes pot on the sun porch of the nursing home, “for my glaucoma,” just to drive her insane.)

The rain is the result of winter approaching. Tomorrow it’ll be 20 degrees colder and by Friday, when the American League playoffs come to town, the forecasters say we may see a few snow flurries. I wonder if that’ll take the starch out of the A’s, who are probably unused to snow flurries on a baseball field. We shall see. I maintain no opinion on the outcome of the series, other than a generic, “Go, us.” It’s fun to be in a baseball town at playoff time, though; everyone’s in caps with the Olde English D and there’s a certain merriment in the air. If you’re fortunate enough to live in a Sunbelt state or somewhere that property values are rising, well, you live in a different place. It’s glum here in the Mitten, where the economic gloom and doom is nearly apocalyptic. A house down the street with the same square footage as ours just sold for $60K less than we paid not even two years ago. Families are swallowing hard and making tough decisions: Ride it out or cut and run? Fall is always a little melancholy, but this is something new.

So I guess I’m saying we could use a World Series run right about now, if not for distraction than just because it’s nice to get a little good news in the morning paper.

The WashPost has a story on the Ohio governor’s race, where, surprise surprise, “the culture wars are being eclipsed as a voting issue by economic worries.” Well, it’s about goddamn time. The Republic nominee, Kenneth Blackwell, is running in part on the usual mixed grill of “values voter” issues — abortion and, especially, keepin’ fags from marryin’ up. Buckeye voters are saying that stuff doesn’t matter, not this year, and it gives me hope for the future of not only my native state, but all the rest except possibly Florida and Texas, which are lost causes anyway. I’m neither the first nor the last to point out that these are ultimately the most cynical of issues, a Red Scare for the new millennium. We have bigger fish to fry. Or, put another way, when families are wondering if they even can even afford fish to fry, all the rest is just static.

My friend Jennifer Brunner is running for Blackwell’s old seat, Ohio Secretary of State, the one he disgraced with the 2004 Ohio election debacle. Here’s hoping it’s a landslide.

Coffee’s gone. The shower awaits, and the day’s sprint.

Had a little bidness yesterday at the Guardian Building. I’d admired its Deco exterior from the street a time or two, but was unprepared for the glories of the lobby. It’s Deco, but colorful; if Deco were a force in Mexico, it would look like this, the vaulted lobby ceiling:

There’s a lot of vaulted-ness, in fact, which contributed to the building’s nickname — the Cathedral of Finance. People forget that in the ’20s, Detroit was Silicon Valley. Hustlers, dreamers, entrepreneurs, sharpies looking to get rich quick and working men just looking for a good day’s wage poured into the city and in large measure, they all got what they wanted. In the bargain, Detroit got some of the world’s finest pre-Depression architecture (although Chicago got more).

I like architecture of this period because it suggests a world where nothing existed but possibilities. You don’t find much public-space art like this anymore:

That mural is called “Michigan” and ignoring the obvious slight — Hey, where’s the U.P.? — it suggests a place where we knew how our bread was buttered. On the southeast corner:

And over in the southwest:

Farther north are nods to mining and fishing. Is that a full-strength economic-development package, or what? No wonder that goddess in the middle is holding two horns of plenty. There was enough to go around. (Not reported: Sometime before this mural was painted, rapacious timber tycoons clear-cut the towering white pines that covered entire state. I mean, denuded it. It was an environmental disaster befitting Russia in the 20th century or China in the 19th. Beware, Pacific Northwest. On the other hand, that pine rebuilt Chicago after the fire, and provided the seed money for the auto industry. I wish they’d left a little behind, however.)

At the bottom of the Mitten is the state’s motto: Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam, circumspice. If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you.

And that, really, was the highlight of yesterday. So let’s do the bloggage, segueing smoothly from the Guardian building to the Guardian newspaper, and its report on yet another eating disorder: orthorexia.

Which is? An obsession with eating only “pure” food, to the point of obsession and mental illness:

Most orthorexics, would, like Hackney, find it difficult, if not impossible, to visit an average restaurant. They spend hours each day thinking and talking about food, making meal plans, scanning the latest food research on the internet, visiting organic farms for “perfect” produce and slowly preparing, serving and chewing their food. One orthorexic I came across in California hadn’t eaten out in years and consumed nothing but grains: primarily popcorn. Another was so obsessed with organic food that she spent hours in the healthfood shop, arguing with the assistants over which foods were packaged using organic paper and adhesive and were therefore “uncontaminated.”

There are so many ways to be crazy in our culture, it’s a miracle anyone’s sane, isn’t it?

Now I’m out to rake leaves. As I do, I will comfort myself with thoughts of how pleased I am to be living in a country with a mature, long-sighted president whose diplomatic skills are second to none and will surely guide us through the current North Korea maybe-nuke crisis with the sort of genius he’s shown so often in the past.

I mean, speaking of crazy.

In a perfect adult world — that is, one where I was at liberty, with sufficient funds, and without children — I would have gone to a screening of “The Departed,” then had dinner at a nice tapas place. Maybe one of those baseball games we had in the D this weekend, had I been lucky enough to get a ticket.

As it was, though, I saw “Akeelah and the Bee” on pay-per-view, ate a pizza from the Sicilian bakery down the road and spent a weird Saturday afternoon mourning what we left behind in Fort Wayne.

Yes, mourning: As I think I mentioned not long ago, in the Fort you’re never more than a 15-minute drive from the country, and this is the time of year we’d spend part of a Saturday at Ohlwine’s Orchard, filling brown grocery bags with apples apples and more apples, along with a gallon of cider, and head home feeling all apple-y and autumnal and good. This day is followed by several weeks of pies and applesauce and (my favorite) Cider-Roasted Chicken (recipe from Betty Rosbottom’s “American Favorites,” if you’re interested).

Last year I went looking online for u-pick orchards in the Detroit area. The closest was, I’m not kidding, 47 miles away. I settled for the Eastern Market selection and decided I would make a better plan in 2006.

Now it’s 2006. The Free Press offers a pdf of their guide to orchards and cider mills, more than three dozen, complete with a map, hours and all the rest of it. I downloaded it, and we decided to go picking after Kate’s soccer game Saturday. I studied the map and found the ones that seemed to be closest. One was on 37 Mile Road; to put this in perspective, we live between 7 and 8 Mile. Another was out by the airport. Huge advantage: We could drive nearly the whole way on freeways. So we chose that one.

As we neared the airport, Kate, reading in the back seat, asked, “How long have we been driving, anyway?” The answer: 35 minutes. But in 10 more we were at the exit and headed west. The pavement ended and gave way to washboard dirt, a very good sign that lasted about 30 seconds and we saw the traffic stopped ahead. Workers in color-coordinated T-shirts waved us into a parking lot along with a crowd that might have rivaled that at the Tigers game. Across the road was a carnival, complete with rides and inflatable jumping things. We quickly realized we had wandered into a venue of what’s now called “agritainment.” You know all those stories about the country mouse getting fleeced by his fast-talking city cousin? Rest assured, he is getting his revenge.

The carnival was only part of it. There were pony rides, a petting zoo, a pumpkin patch, crafts for sale, food and inadequate restrooms. You might be asking yourself, “But was there a massage chair with masseuses available for a quick rubdown?” Oh yes. And was there a rock band laboring through Free’s 1970 classic “All Right Now”? Mm-hmm. I looked around for any indication that we might be able to pick some apples. I couldn’t even see any trees. We crossed back over the road to the pumpkin patch, where people stood in line to get their gourds weighed by an unsmiling teenager and pay for them to an even less happy grandmother. APPLES $10 BAG, the sign said.

I waited in line. “Where do we pick apples?” I asked the grandmother, who reminded me of Marge Simpson’s sisters. “Kitty-corner over there,” she said, taking my tenner and handing me an empty plastic bag. “What varieties do you have, and is there a map to the orchard?”

“Guy over there’ll know,” she said. “That’s what we have,” pointing to a hand-lettered piece of cardboard, reading, “RED GOLD DELICIOUS EMPIRE MATSU.”

I hate Red Delicious apples. I can tolerate a few Golden Delicious, but only when they’re absolutely fresh. Empire I’ve never had before. Matsu I’ve never even heard of. I like an apple to bite back a little. There’s no shortage of sugar in the world, and tart-crisp is the apple for me. Specifically, Cortlands. I like Jonathans for eating, but for baking, ahh, it’s the Northern Spy.

“What about Cortlands? Jonathans?” I couldn’t imagine a serious apple orchard without these.

“Guy over there’ll know.”

We trudged back across the road, and found the guy over there. I said, “If you don’t have a decent tart variety I want my money back.” Somehow granny’s mood was catching.

He assured me Matsu was the one for me, although “most people just want the Delicious.” Northern Spy? “Oh, them’s all gone,” he said. He did have one other variety not on the card — Jonagold. Ah well.

We made our way into the rows of Matsu. The apples were green and softball-size. We filled half the bag, then made our way over to the Empire, the Jonagold, and topped off the parcel with a judicious few Golden Delicious. We were nearly alone; only two other families were in evidence. The relative isolation, and the pretty trees, and the smell of rotting windfall fruit worked its spell. It didn’t take long to fill the bag. We didn’t feel the need to stop back at the carnival for some kielbasa or whatever the hell it is they were selling.

I kept thinking, “What would Alice Waters do?” Try as I may to resist, I’ve fallen for her preposterous image of the countryside for too long. (It is only the adult version of the children’s-book countryside — chickens in the barnyard, cow in the pasture, sheep in the meadow — that I swallowed whole as a child.) That is, of a countryside dotted with rugged people living an authentic life, tied to the soil and the timeless rhythms of the earth. They have no time for artifice or posing, because they have to spread manure or tend to the cheese ripening in the…wherever cheese ripens. The cheese house. They get up at dawn without complaint. They don’t watch television. And so on.

And time and again, I learn that the pictures in the cookbooks aren’t true, that farm wives love Velveeta as much as suburban soccer moms do. They plant the apples that sell, and when they sell, they throw in as many ancillary money-hoovers as the acreage will accommodate. It’s really sort of funny, when you think about it.

Note: The Matsu are not as tart as I like, but not bad at all. Haven’t tried the Empires yet. But next year, I’ll make do with what’s at the Eastern Market.

Well. I think you should know I just wrote and ashcanned a lengthy post on a subject about which I can summon a great deal of petulant snark. Reading it over, it occurred to me that:

1) I felt better just having written it down, like the therapists say, and;

2) I need to grow up. I’ve been invited to write a short essay on a topic I enjoy for a new venue, and it’s something I ought to be devoting my time to. Also, I need to strip a wallpaper border. Both seem like a better use of my time.

So.

I’m opening the floor to comments on two subjects. People keep telling me my readers are smarter than I am, so it’s time to prove it. I want expert opinions on two questions.

First question: Can wi-fi wear out? I’ve been having a problem with our wi-fi network and my laptop. The signal dwindles, fades and drops out entirely, then roars back at full strength and immediately drops again. This happens intermittently. Trouble-shooting the problem, I find it’s only happening to me, with my G4 PowerBook. Alan’s somewhat newer (by eight months or so) iBook, with its plastic case and far less punishing use schedule, is not having problems. I know that the aluminum-case laptops generally are less sensitive than the plastic ones, but I’m befuddled. What could be happening here?

(If it matters, last night I had a close call with my laptop, a strange sort of e-mail crash that necessitated a restart-from-DVD and other scary stuff. If it were an ER episode, it would have ended with the patient smiling but a defibrillator would have been involved, too.)

Second question: Cashmere — what the hell? Every girl knows that cashmere is everywhere these days and never more affordable. What once used to be a $400 sweater can now be had for around $80, if you’re not picky about labels. I bought one of these sweaters three years ago, at a Loehmann’s-type shop in Toronto. I love it and wear it constantly. (Kate loves it, too, because it’s soft and it encourages snuggling. What mommy doesn’t love her little girl cooing against her ribcage?) But. In the last year it has started to pill. Pill! I hate pilling. It’s the surest sign of cheap clothes, and it’s something I thought cashmere was never, ever supposed to do. I’m beginning to think some angora is involved here. Someone who knows wool, please solve this mystery.

And finally, another huge thank-you to Mindy for turning me on to the Zip-It, despite my earlier problem. We had a slow-running shower drain the other day. Water was still standing when I stuck the toothy shaft of the Zip-It down the drain. With no effort whatsoever, I pulled out…a hair clog the approximate length and girth of a gym sock. The standing water went out so fast it left skid marks, and with a great, satisfying sucking sound, just like Ross Perot promised.

I threw the whole thing away and told Alan the happy news: The drain snake could stay in its lair for a while. “But I’m throwing the Zip-It away, too,” I said. “We can buy another.”

“Why?” he said. “You can use it again.” I should say at this point that I was talking to his back; he was working on his computer.

“OK, you clean it off, then,” I said, holding up the whole disgusting mess, now encased in a clear plastic newspaper bag.

We decided spending $3 for another was a bargain after all.

Ron’s series continues. Today’s focus is Big Pharma:

When General Motors Corp. CEO Rick Wagoner has nightmares, they might be about Toyota. Then again, they might be about Mae Gumbinger.

General Motors will pay about $16,000 for drugs this year for Mae and her husband, GM retiree Ralph Gumbinger, the equivalent of giving the couple a new Chevrolet Malibu.

The story is full of little jaw-droppers; every story about GM is full of jaw-droppers. Most Americans simply don’t understand just how big this company is, which is the underlayment for a certain what-can-you-do attitude you find around here among GM workers (most people) and those whose fortunes are tied to it (everyone). The company is the Nimitz, a giant aircraft carrier plowing through heavy seas. It can take a few torpedoes. If it can’t exactly turn on a dime, well, it’s unsinkable too.

Or so people believe. Please, no Titanic jokes.

Anyway, those jaw-droppers: GM spends $17 million a year — $17 million! A year! — on erectile dysfunction drugs. Sixty percent of the money spent on antibiotics is flushed down the toilet, because they’re prescribed for conditions that don’t respond to antibiotics. In 1999, seven years ago, half of GM employees were getting name-brand drugs, even when generics were available. The introduction of a generic equivalent for Zocor, a cholesterol-lowering statin drug, presents the opportunity for GM to save $100 million a year.

(Again: $100 million. For one drug. This is one big company.)

The passage about Zocor is unclear, but seems to imply that workers have a choice to switch to the generic; “education and financial incentives” are the plan to get more of them to do so. How about this for a financial incentive: Switch to the generic or pay for it out of your own pocket, bub. I’ve had drug plans like that, and I know they’re out there. The day Zocor went off-patent earlier this year, pharmacy benefits managers all over the country were on the phone to the generic drug plants in India at 12:01 a.m., wondering when those pills were going to start rolling out, and how soon could they get them. When $100 million is at stake, you play hardball.

Unless of course, the choice is part of a labor contract, which is entirely possible. Defiance, Ohio, my husband’s hometown, is a GM town, and its retirees are common in my mother-in-law’s social circle. They whine like toddlers over the idea of a $5 co-pay for prescription drugs, because they used to pay nothing, and now they have to pay something.

As this NYT column points out, Most families in the 1950’s paid their medical bills with ease, but they also didn’t expect much in return. After a century of basic health improvements like indoor plumbing and penicillin, many experts thought that human beings were approaching the limits of longevity. “Modern medicine has little to offer for the prevention or treatment of chronic and degenerative diseases,�? the biologist René Dubos wrote in the 1960’s.

But then doctors figured out that high blood pressure and high cholesterol caused heart attacks, and they developed new treatments. Oncologists learned how to attack leukemia, enabling most children who receive a diagnosis of it today to triumph over a disease that was almost inevitably fatal a half-century ago. In the last few years, orphan drugs that combat rare diseases and medical devices like the implantable defibrillator have extended lives. Human longevity still hasn’t hit the wall that was feared 50 years ago.

Most of those retirees, once upon a time, would have taken their gold watch, shuffled off to Florida, played a little golf and quietly expired by their 70th birthday or thereabouts. Now they’re living to vast old ages, helped along by technological and pharmaceutical wizardry. Now it’s time to pay. Especially if you’re taking drugs for restless legs syndrome.

Oh, well. Don’t want to bore you all silly.

Last Saturday was a fine, sunny one, and I spent my Saturday bike ride stopping at garage sales. (Does this negate the aerobic exercise? I choose to believe it doesn’t.) Scored a nice cut-glass wine coaster and a silverplate serving piece, seen here:

It holds a 9-by-13 baking dish; you can practically see the potatoes au gratin in it now, can’t you? It was black with tarnish, and as you can see, a little elbow grease works wonders. I paid $6 for the two items, and overheard a conversation among the proprietors:

“Can you imagine? He offered me a dollar. I told him, ‘I would rather throw this away than let you have it for a dollar!’ He made me so mad.”

This is not a useful attitude to have in business, is it? Certainly not in garage sales. The bargain in a garage sale is simple: You offer crap you don’t want anymore, in hopes that others will not consider it crap, and will pay you a little bit of money for it. “A little bit of money” — this is the garage-sale bargain, at least my garage sales. You can set your prices wherever you want, but you’d better be willing to come down a little. Many don’t seem to understand this. Case in point: I stopped at a sale not long ago, and immediately spotted a small nightstand. I can use one of those. It was from the L.L. Bean cottage collection, and was brand-new, still wrapped in plastic. A hand-lettered sign said: “Amazing bargain! Was $299, now $199!” Which seemed pretty damn high, but OK, let’s take a look. I opened the drawer, which slid out smoothly, and revealed the original price tag: “WAS $299, NOW $199.”

In other words, someone made a bad purchase, couldn’t use it, and now wants to get their money back. All of their money back. You’ve got to be kidding.

The silver piece was priced at $5. I offered $4. She agreed. Now it has a new home and Thanksgiving to look forward to. I bet that nightstand is still in the original seller’s basement, waiting for the next inflationary spike to make $199 look like a bargain.

Not happening. There’s a generic equivalent now: Ikea. It’s the 21st century, and it’s every man for himself.

I have lots to do today and little to say. You can use the comments as an open thread if you wish — maybe that’ll spark my imagination, if the grocery shopping doesn’t do the trick — or you can say something about these tables. First, the “before” of my mom’s old sewing table, which I started restoring in the spring:

It’s finally finished. The “after:”

I’d say it cleaned up purty good. (Next project: The room it sits in. Yes, that lamp will go. So will lots of other stuff.) And finally, here’s the guest of honor’s setting at my brother’s birthday party, held at my sister Pam’s house:

In her semi-retirement my sister has become an antiques dealer, specializing in glass and ceramics. However, she keeps drinking the profits, so to speak. That china was an auction find, and she got it for an incredible price. It’s gorgeous and flawless and pink, so it’s both midcentury and firecracker-hot, as recent eBay transactions reveal. But even though some gay hostess w/mostest would probably give her four figures for it, she cannot let it go. Truth to tell, I don’t blame her. It really makes a nice table setting.

Back later.

God, my breath must smell like Dentu-Creme. I opened the Columbus Dispatch yesterday to the real estate section and read this:

Randy Carr didn’t bother with a home inspection before buying the century-old Victorian brick house on Neil Avenue. “I didn’t hire an inspector to find out what was wrong with the house,” Carr said. “I knew everything was wrong. The insurance company wouldn’t cover it.”

Hmm, sounds like a real wreck, I thought, reading on. (Sometimes, on Sunday morning, you need to look at the real-estate section before you move on to the news.) And then the dawning revelation: I not only know this house, I’ve been in this house, I’ve partied in this house, I’ve been impressed by this house, and whaddaya know, it was falling down all around me:

Although (former owner Corbett) Reynolds had tackled some roof repairs, exterior painting and interior remodeling, he hadn’t been able to keep up with the maintenance of a huge house.

“If the ceiling started crumbling, he would tack up a piece of plywood and paint it black or something very dark. Then he filled the room with his art. People would come in and say, ‘What a great house.’ But what they were looking at was his art.”

Count me among those fooled. I dimly recall a restored-to-Victorian-perfection house, with parlors and butler’s pantries and everything fussy fussy fussy. (A friend of mine rented the third floor, but he was friends with his landlord, and it seemed that every time I visited I’d end up walking through the main house on one errand or another.) One day I came over and the place had gone bipolar — gone were the horsehide couches and glass lamps and all the Victoriana and in its place was black. He’d painted the walls black, the ceiling black, the woodwork black (the woodwork!), and filled the room with Warhol prints lit by little spots. It was jarring, but very cool. I recall thinking, “Someday someone will have to strip that woodwork and will curse his name,” but until then, hey, it was his house and he could do what he wanted with it. Who’d have ever thought all that black was hiding water damage, the same way black pants hide a fat ass.

Corbett, the original owner, was an artist and something of a partying visionary. He owned an abandoned movie theater on the west side, which he rechristened Rudely Elegant and opened as a nightclub. Then it closed, and he went to a schedule where it would only be open one night a month, for an invitation-only theme party. I thought it had something to do with his liquor license, but after I attended the first one I think it was more about the preparation needed.

The first one was the Red Party, held in February. (Link warning: Main page is OK, subsequent photos may be NSFW or homophobes.) The space was filled with dancing bare-assed cherubs and neon hearts. Then came the White Party, the Colors Party and the most infamous of all — the Black Party, which was all about leather. I might still have the flyer for that one, which featured a nude Ohio State cheerleader in a black mask and a black rooster. (It was the Chinese Year of the Cock, which would have made it…1981.)

Needless to say, while no one made me feel unwelcome at these events, it was pretty obvious they were not aimed at my demographic, so I never stayed long. It was always worth the cover charge just to see how they’d decorated, though. Googling around, I see that Wikipedia gives Reynolds shared credit for inventing the circuit party, which the Red Party was.

The real-estate story in the Dispatch didn’t mention any of this. I guess it would have been a tangent.

So, bloggage:

As everyone knows, Peggy Noonan gets on my last goddamn nerve. Which is why I’m singling out this blue-moon rarity, a column of hers I actually like. It’s about what the 9/11 victims said when they were able to make phone calls in their final moments:

Something terrible had happened. Life was reduced to its essentials. Time was short. People said what counted, what mattered. It has been noted that there is no record of anyone calling to say, “I never liked you,” or, “You hurt my feelings.” No one negotiated past grievances or said, “Vote for Smith.” Amazingly –or not–there is no record of anyone damning the terrorists or saying “I hate them.” …This is what I get from the last messages. People are often stronger than they know, bigger, more gallant than they’d guess. And this: We’re all lucky to be here today and able to say what deserves saying, and if you say it a lot, it won’t make it common and so unheard, but known and absorbed.

And that seems like enough to leave you with now. Have a good day.

I’m getting one of those cupcakes. Oh yes, it will be mine.

Couldn’t let the day get away without sending out big ol’ 15th-birthday wishes to the loudest member of our household. The online dog-year calculators all say he’s now a centenarian in people time. This weekend we go visit his Uncle Charlie, who shares both his birthday and his fondness for animal flesh. They’ll get along like aces.

I live so deeply embedded in urbanized America that I rarely see “the country” anymore. You couldn’t avoid it in Fort Wayne, where there’s always a field of corn or beans around every corner. Farm fields serve as a sort of seasonal clock where you can track the passing of the weeks. I know virtually nothing about growing either crop, but after years I know what a cornfield looks like in June and what it looks like in September. I’ve spent most of the summer on or near the water the last couple of years, and when I finally get out of the tri-county area I’m always amazed by the corn: Is it August already?

We went to the lake cottage this weekend, in Branch County, Michigan, which signs now inform visitors is a Meth Watch Community. Alan the cynic: “That means they put up some signs and got some federal money for some comic books that they distribute to fourth-graders.” Well, I hope that’s all it is. I worry about the country these days. The only future seems to be in erecting pole barns on your land to store the rich folks’ toys over the winter (one is, in fact, called “My Toy Box”). We can always hope for ethanol, though.

I like the country north of Fort Wayne because it more closely resembles the country that children’s books prepared me for. Characters in my childhood stories would step out their back door into the barnyard, where they’d shoo the flocks of chickens and ducks aside before strolling to the barn to saddle their ponies. Once mounted it was off down a lane somewhere, maybe to a friend’s farm, maybe to the ol’ swimmin’ hole, where the ponies would graze with loosened cinches while the children swung out over the water on rope swings. Barns were wooden and red, and had cellars and haylofts. There was an orchard, a kitchen garden and a woods. Ma was always in the kitchen, pa out on a tractor. He’d say, “Run along now and do your chores,” which mainly involved gathering eggs.

Needless to say, the real country isn’t like this, at least not in flat areas blessed with rich soils. Prefab pole barns rise over vast, monotonous single-crop fields that stretch from section road to maybe a measly treeline, next to something that might have once been a creek but is now referred to as a “drain” and runs so thick with chemical fertilizer you don’t even want to get close to it, much less swim in it. I don’t know what constitutes a lane here, as the roads are mainly asphalt and navigated by enormous pickup trucks that would flatten any kid dumb enough to ride a pony down them.

As you’re driving north, leaving Indiana behind and approaching Michigan, though, the land changes. The glaciers stalled here, pushing the moraine like a bulldozer and grinding out the lakes people are so mad to recreate on today. There’s some contour to the landscape, the soil isn’t quite as good and wetlands more common. You see smaller fields, oddly shaped, ponds that look natural rather than built by Caterpillar. There are lots of orchards, although orchards must not pay very well because a good number of them are either abandoned or in very poor repair. That’s no matter, though, because that means the rows between the trees fill with deer in late afternoon, and that’s charming to see. The wooden barns remain, some still painted red, others worn down to gray and just waiting for a lightning strike to turn them to ash.

You see a lot of CASH FOR YOUR ANTIQUES signs in driveways, along with FREE KITTENS and HAFLINGER PONIES 4 SALE. I didn’t see any chickens; I suspect most people have jobs in town. Or maybe they’re cooking meth.

Anyway, I like driving through country like this. I slow down. I ruminate. Here’s something I considered: “Would it be wrong to buy a six-pack in Fremont, Indiana and then return the empties to a supermarket in Michigan, where I’ll get a dime a bottle, which I didn’t pay in Indiana?” Reader, I did so. Call me a bad person, but I’m sure it’s worked the other way a time or three in my drinking life. You get your dimes back when you can.

Back at the cottage, I cracked a beer and read on the front porch, where I could watch Kate skate by. Our neighbor at the lake wanted to pave the road in front of our cottages for some time before it finally happened. We were opposed for two big reasons: 1) Our lot was having drainage/flooding problems and we didn’t want to take even one square inch of porous ground out of circulation, and 2) we didn’t have the money. We probably could have raised it, but given that this was his idea, it just didn’t seem worth the trouble.

He was undaunted, though, and finally brokered a deal that would install new drainage tile and solve our flooding problem, and then pave the road. The cost per cottage — others were involved — was surprisingly low, and as an amazing bonus, the work would be done by Brooks Construction. For those of you who don’t live in Fort Wayne, this would be like telling a friend you wish you could have a big fancy wedding banquet but you just couldn’t justify the cost, and he replied by saying he knew a guy who would cater your wedding for $5 a head, and then handed you the caterer’s card, reading “Wolfgang Puck.” Brooks is the Wolfgang Puck of asphalt.

So now Kate has reason to bring her Rollerblades. Grosse Pointe keeps its sidewalks in good repair, but cement sidewalks with seams every three feet can’t compete with brand-new asphalt. She’s getting good at it, too; she looks really graceful, and does little spins and hops. On Sunday there was a parade, ostensibly for Labor Day but held to use up decorations bought for the July 4 parade, which was never held due to the organizer’s mortal illness. Now that he’s gone his survivors vowed that the parade must go on. Kate and her friend were the second unit:

As you can see, she’s ready to move to California. I’m sure she’ll fit right in in Venice.

Bloggage:

The first I ever heard of Steve Irwin was, as frequently happens, the most succinct summation of the man I would ever hear. It was when Alan surfed past “Crocodile Hunter” and said, “Oh, here’s the guy whose entire career is based on him goading animals to snap at him.” As you doubtless know, one finally connected, fatally. RIP, crocodile hunter.

(Lance Mannion once wrote something amusing about the amazing triteness of the phrase “he died doing what he loved best,” and I’m sure he’ll have a lot more material to work with now. Oh, and get well soon to Mannion Son No. 1, stricken by appendicitis this weekend.)

No posting tomorrow, friends: I have jury duty, for real this time. (Last time our whole group was waved off at 5 p.m. the night before.) Pray I don’t get seated, because I have a can’t-cancel interview in late afternoon, and I’ll be risking a contempt citation if I don’t get out in time.

A few months ago, in my neverending quest to bore the crap out of every last reader I had, I mentioned I was having slow-drain problems. All slow-drain problems, in my experience, go back to a single source — hair. Maybe in some specialized environments (Jame Gumb’s basement, a morgue) they have other causes, but in a house with two women, you can pretty much count on what you’re going to find when you go a-plumbing.

Our long-haired reader and correspondent Mindy suggested that I buy myself a gadget called a Zip-It, that it would spare us much grief the next time the drains ran slow. It so happened that this weekend the planets aligned and gave me slow-running drains and an errand to an Ace hardware store, sole distributor of the Zip-It, according to Mindy. I snatched one up for $2.99. It’s a long (18 inches or so) strip of flexible plastic with sharp teeth pointed upward. The directions were simplicity itself: Insert into drain all the way to the hilt and remove. No twisting, fiddling or other technique required.

I got it home, stuck it in the drain and pulled it out. With it came an enormous wad of greasy hair. Halle-freakin’-lujah. I disposed of the repulsive nodule in the toilet and turned on the water to rinse away the rank drippings.

Within seconds, the water backed up. Where before the drain was running slow, now it wasn’t running at all. Further attempts with the Zip-It were fruitless. Apparently my removal of one clog had dislodged another one, out of its reach. I considered several options, including calling Mindy to tell her this amusing story. Instead I told Alan. He fetched a drain snake — which I didn’t know we had — and stuck it down the drain. He reported finding one obstruction at three feet and another at five, and now the drain is clear again.

The moral of the story is: Mindy is a long-haired LIAR. What works for me may not work for you. Although Alan says we should keep the Zip-It and give it another try. He was intrigued by reports of its apparent initial success, as illusive as it turned out to be. Who knows — maybe a regular poking with the Zip-It will keep the drain snake in its hole the next time.

Bloggage:

Tim Rutten at the L.A. Times has a theory about the Reuters photo doctoring I hadn’t considered, but makes sense the more I think about it: Blame the bean-counters. Works for me!

When the New York Times publishes a report from Indiana, of course I’ll pay attention. But this thing made no sense to me at all.

This week’s going to be tops in busy. Partly cloudy, chance of no-shows here and there.