Arrived home from Denver Sunday at 4:30 pm, was greeted by an enthusiastic spouse (always a nice feeling!! ) that was excited to “take me downtown to show me something”. So changed socks and headed back out to downtown Ann Arbor. The “surprise” was a nice one. The Strange Fruit touring company was putting on shows for the Ann Arbor Summer Arts Festival.

The “Strange Fruit” touring company was putting on shows for the summer arts festival.

They do put on an entertaining show, all done strapped onto “sway poles”. Twelve foot long fiberglass poles they stand on and . . . sway. Check the photos and their web site. They have visited forty countries and many places in the US (they are Australians) and if they happen to visit a location close to you go see them. This particular show was called “Swoon” and even a non-artsy person like me could see why it was called that…. they all fell in, and out, and back in love again after their awakening.

May your poles never break,
George

The Detroit AutoRama is not just a car show. It has just about any vehicle that can be customized – customized and on display here!
The stars of this one included a number of “Ridler” competition entries. A super prestigeous ultra custom car competition. Stars Tow Mater
and Lightening McQueen from the movie Cars were on hand also.

There was also enough chrome to satisfy the most bling-bling crazed rap star, not to mention 30 inch rims – a cool 30 G’s for a set of four – if you had a vehicle they would fit! See the entire photo collection when you have some spare time. I should look up to see how many acres Cobo Hall covers, but when you are walking, up an aisle, back down, up again, down again… and so on, THEN you head downstairs yet! Totally done in for the day, we were just going to do a quick pass through the lower level, until we found they hide the “beaters” downstairs. These guys were there for the fun of the show, not the prestige, popping open the trunk of the car to pull out another Bud, and another and …. The street racers AKA “The Fast and the Ticketed” are downstairs, so it draws a younger crowd… the fact the bikini contest is held in the same area does not hurt the drawing power at all!

the fact the bikini contest is held in the same area does not hurt the drawing power at all!

Speaking of drawing power “Mysterio” from the WWE was signing autographs, not that I had ever heard of him before, but there were literally Hundreds of people waiting in line to have a short stocky wrestler sign anything they could. Amazing, since the back of the line must have been several hours…. and a good chance he would finish for the day before they even got there.

There were a lot of custom choppers on display, the width of the rear tires is remarkable. The surprise of the show for me was an entire section of customized bicycles and tricycles. It was obvious many were done by younger designers, but still I did not realize the extent to which people modified these. (Note I did not say it was my favorite part of the show, only a surprise.)

Well, until the final Mustang is chopped, channeled, shortened, bobbed and lowered,
George

Several months ago George Sr. asked if we had ever been to the Plymouth Historical Museum in Plymouth Michigan.

Well, we had to say “Nope, never been there”. Not given to idle chit chat, we understood he was asking for a reason, and with a little (?) prompting were able to get it out. Well it was easy enough to find information on where the museum was, but not so easy to verify that what he wanted to see was actually at the museum.  If you know him, you know he had to be looking for either 1) Steam Engines or 2) Radio related stuff, not necessarilly in that order.
So it was number 2, radio stuff that he had heard about.

Last Sunday was the first time since then that a) we were all here, and b) we had the time, so off to the museum we went.

Plymouth is not all that big of a town, but it is very nice and well maintained, so we were not sure what to expect of the museum. Well it turned out very well indeed. The family price admission got all five of us in at a reasonable price. The volunteer at the front ticket desk was highly enthusastic and gave us a free ten minute spiel on the history of the history museum. Apparently the primary benefactor is in the historical range her self. She was there at the time, going strong at 96 years!

If you can believe it, we actually asked “Which way to the radios” just to show the fever pitch we were at to see the collection. Pushing and shoving each other and the other patrons out of the way we stampeded to the exhibit! At last, there it was, as good as advertised, and as as large as life! We spent a long 15 seconds looking the “shack” over and taking photos and then moved on to the next exhibit, the blacksmith shop which was next door to the indian encampment.

The museum advertised “The largest Lincoln museum” in Michigan. Not sure how that compares to the other 49 states and the size of their Lincoln Collections, and/or museums, but it was a pretty extensive collection of things considering that was 150 years ago.
As always Nancy took time out to chat with some others at the museum and met a friend there.

Dad tried out the telegraph key to send the alarm telling eveyone the bridge was out over “Deep Gorge” while I listened to the sounder, but it was to late, the train did not stop before it crashed into the water far below. If only I had taken time to learn the Morse code this tragedy could have been prevented.

Another major collections is the Daisy BB Gun room. I did not realize it but the Daisy Company was founded in Plymouth! (Maybe that explains all the broken windows in the old buildings.)

The pictures are posted, and as usual we took quite a few.

Enjoy

Until the last BB narrowly misses an eye,
George