Day 20 -- Mackinaw City to Kalkaska, Michigan -- 89 Miles

Today I spent some time reflecting on the opportunities that come our way in life. I wondered, do we all get basically the same "pitches" thrown at us from the pitcher's mound over the long haul, or do some of us get straight-down-the-center fast balls all the time, while others get nothing but curve balls?

This particular question came to me as I was talking to one Gene Smet this afternoon as I looked over his rock collection and rusty pile of tools. The main reason I stopped at Gene's roadside stand was because of his tool collection. Since I've been on the lookout for a particular missing piece to my 19th century blacksmith's vise since we left home, I thought Gene's tool collection just might contain such a piece.

But once I left the truck and walked over, I could see that the rocks were what Gene was really interested in selling. I hadn't even begun to bend over the displays when Gene launched into a high-speed explanation of each and every category of rocks that he had for sale. His favorite rocks appeared to be his sixty square feet of Petoskeys. He kept leading me back there and showing me how cool they were when you added water to them. I wasn't interested in the dull-looking things as they sort of looked like plain old beach pebbles. It wasn't until I got into camp and researched the petoskeys that I discovered that they are solidified coral from 350 million years ago when Michigan was a warm, shallow inland sea. Yup, should have bought one of those.

From the web I learned that: "The Petoskey stone's name dates back to the late 1700s, to Antoine Carre, a fur trapper who was adopted by the Ottawa people and made a chief. Carre, whose native name was Neatooshing, married a princess and had a son with her, who was born in the middle of the night along the banks of the Kalamazoo River. As the sun rose, its rays illuminated the infant's face, which led Carre to name him Petosegay, a word that means "rising sun." A century later, a city of the same name was founded by settlers."

The Petoskeys were only one of perhaps two or even three dozen different rock types I saw on display. One of Gene's next favorite rocks was the "Pudding Stone" which I had never heard of before, even though I adore geology and read about rocks all the time. Gene didn't tell me what type of rock a Pudding Stone is, but I suspect that it's a type of breccia, or metamorphic rock that's formed when layer after layer of sandy sediment is put under so much pressure that it liquefies. Any surrounding pebbles that are harder than the sedimentary matrix do not melt and become suspended in the matrix when it cools.

The next group of rocks that Gene ushered me over to was the copper ore samples. These really took my eye, as I could easily see the tiny threads of copper on the surface of the samples. From the Detroit Free Press I learned that: "Michigan was the nation’s largest producer of copper from 1847 to 1877, according to Michigan State University. The copper-rich ore lived in rock layers deep in Lake Superior. By 1860, three major copper-producing regions had been developed in the Upper Pennisula, particularly in the Keweenaw Peninsula. This is why the best place to find copper today is in the Keweenaw Peninsula." I was thinking that the copper ore samples would be really cool in Concetta's rock garden, especially since most of the rocks already there have the same color to them. I didn't buy the copper ore samples, some of them quite large, but now I wish I had.

But what really took my eye were the petrified wood samples. Gene said that his particular samples came from Arizona, which made me wonder of course how he came to have them since most federally-owned lands in the west prohibit the removal of petrified wood. But that didn't stop me from purchasing a rather large hunk for the aforementioned rock garden. I also purchased a much smaller hunk of reddish rock that Gene identified as Michigan iron ore. Well, having visited a Canadian steel mill when we took our boat ride on the Saint Mary River in Sault Ste. Marie, wherein we saw the piles of Taconite which is made from raw iron ore, I decided I just had to have a piece.

In a perfect world I would have bought a piece of every single ore type that Gene was selling, not just because I adore rocks, and they all looked geologically interesting, but because Gene obviously needed the money. Which brings me back to the topic of this piece: the curve balls in life.

Gene struck me as a wonderful example of someone who has been pitched to by someone throwing those curve balls all his life. He seemed very intelligent. He was wearing a Vietnam Veteran hat and naturally I asked him about it. Yes, he told me, he'd been in Vietnam and had been part of a security detail charged with the incredibly heartbreaking task of evacuation some of the last people to leave that war-torn country alive. He didn't really have anything else to say on the subject, so I told him I'd been in the service about the same time as him, but didn't go to Vietnam. "That still makes you a Vietnam vet," he said.

I studied Gene when he said that. He was dirty and disheveled and probably had no warm home to go to at the end of the day. In fact, I knew with all the tools and hundreds of rocks he had on display that there was no way he could leave his collections by the roadside and go home somewhere. And there was no way he would be able to pick it all up in less than a couple of hours. I glanced at his tired old pickup truck, massively rusted from countless winters where salt is common on the roads, and just sensed that he probably had to sleep in that truck for want of any better place that would allow him to watch over his sole means of livelihood.

Obviously Gene had performed dangerous and patriotic duty once in his life, but after that things obviously hadn't gone so well. But I admired him. He might be homeless, but he was doing what he could to earn a living and he was doing it with gusto. He wasn't just going through the motions, he was genuinely enthusiastic about his chosen pursuit. So yes, I wish I could have bought an example of each and every type of rock he had for sale just to give him a charge of pleasure that someone appreciated not only what he had done so many years ago, but what he was trying to do now. I solute you, Gene, and I feel honored to have shaken your hand.

And if you're out there tonight, just thinking about hitting the road, the Happy Wanderers wish you happy travels and exciting adventures in this great and good land of ours. And if you should see Gene out there on Michigan Route 131 near the town of Kalkaska, stop and talk to him, buy a few of his rocks, then thank him for his service and shake his hand when you leave. He's gotten a few curve balls in this life, but he's still swinging.