Carnivore Dreams – Day Four

Didn’t take my own pictures.  Why?  Good question.  I keep relying on my daughter to do that and I friggin’ forget.

This is our beach and looks about like this right now.  Right across the street from our house.

This is our harbor  on Grand Traverse Bay which empties into Lake Michigan–or vice versa.  My dad had his boats here for decades.  My brother who had several here just bought a new small one to keep here.  He’s in Florida most of the year now.

This is our town.  I will have to take my own photos.  I spent the day on my brother’s boat.  We caught one small lake trout.  It was a new boat for him and a virgin fishing trip, so any fish was a good fish.

This is within a block of my house.  It’s a nice town.  It didn’t always look like this.  When I was a child, it was a ghost town and this harbor did not look like this.  It was not a tourist town.  It had once been an area of commerce during the lumber boom.  Now it’s a happenin’ place.  Now our DDA carries on and nearly comes to fisticuffs.  Half of them quit, one got fired, all due to covid carrying on.  Now they have no quorum.

I like it better in the winter when the masses all leave.  But you still have the old Elk Rapids folks vs. the nouveau rich tourists–the usual clash.

My family has been here since 1850.  Blacksmiths, livery stables, steamboat transportation, lumber industry. My relatives owned pretty close to this piece of ground we perch upon.  My great grandfather ran the last steamboat to run in the inland waterway.  These days make me ineffably sad.  I seriously wouldn’t mind going back.  Tomorrow I have to fool with more technology nightmares and this social media and media in general –and what is happening to America is enough to break your heart.  I remember such peaceful times compared to this — mostly due to less media of all types.

But it was a good day anyway, in spite of things feeling off balance.  It was necessary to toast the initiation of the new boat and first fish with a beer, so I cheated a little, but I spilled half the beer on me, so I didn’t drink much.  Otherwise, it was a chicken thigh, six ounces of seared ahi tuna,  a couple bites of fresh lake trout (we had to ration it out)and two brats.  A bit of a smorgasbord.  A lovely feast.  A touch of a rum mojito with mint and monkfish, a little chardonnay.  But no coke and no junk food.

So a bittersweet day, I guess you’d say.

Happy Monday.