Historians! Help Streamline My Trip to Michigan

Oh, man, so I found this old map of Pontiac and I found Luke Phillips’s farm on it (warning PDF). So, since I’m going over there to try to look at his grave, I though, well, shoot, shouldn’t I try to scoot by the old farmstead? Like you do? But how do I find the approximate whereabouts of the old Phillips farm? Oh, sure, if that were my “F. Phillips” there (that’s Frank Phillips, though not the Frank Phillips who is my grandpa’s dad. I suspect that Frank Phillips is Luke’s nephew and who my Frank might be named after.), because there is a motherfucking Phillips Road. Oh, it’s cool, other Frank Phillips’s family. I’m not jealous at all.

But how do I find the approximate location of Luke’s farm in the city of Pontiac? On the one hand, that lake is still there–Galloway lake. And I’m guessing current University is Luke’s Clemons Road. And Perry/Lapeer is obviously the new route of Lapeer. But I’m having a hard time looking at Google maps and figuring out what would have been his little plot of land, since Galloway Lake is not the same shape.

Do you think it’s roughly where Joy, Commonwealth, Opdyke, and Pontiac Roads make a tiny square?

In Which I Admit My Stupid Plan

With the blockbuster that was Easter and then the less-stressful, but still not-good-place inducing fun of Father’s Day, I’m going to Michigan in a week. To see my family. I feel anxious about it and then I feel terribly guilty that I feel anxious about it. Which, you know, fun. But I am hoping to do a tour de cemeteries for dead Phillipses. I just need to talk someone into driving over to Pontiac to see Luke and Patience. But their kid, Oscar, died in Marshall, and his kid, Frank, died in Battle Creek, and Grandpa is in Battle Creek. So, that should be easy enough.

And there will be babies! Lots of fat babies. One who has taken up biting as a hobby, I hear, which, all things considered, seems like a fine hobby to have.

Edited to add: So, I called my dad to confirm that Frank is dead in Battle Creek, since it seems weird we would go to Battle Creek at least twice a year every year for my whole live and never once visit his grave and my dad told me that now that my mom can see, she’s going to be mad about how fat I am. So… yeah, this is already going to suck, I can feel it. If you’re keeping track–I will never find a man who will marry me AND apparently my mom will be grossed out by me. Man, you know, this totally feels like concern about my “health” and not at all like an attempt to make me feel insecure and off-kilter.

Ugh.

Ooo, Stormy

We had this wildly scary storm last night. Not in a “Oh my god, I need to kick the dog out of the closet so I fit in there” way, but in a “an anthropomorphized version of the storm is going to kill you in your bed” way. Which, I realize, from the outside probably looks the same. But a tornado necessitates getting up and taking shelter. A supernatural killer storm? Well, you can hide, but it will find you.

So, there was constant lightning, like sparkling sequins, but huge. And thunder. Almost continuous thunder. But the part I couldn’t sleep through was that the rain came whipping around the house from all different directions, first knocking on the bathroom window to be let in, then the front bedroom window, and then, even in the narrow space between the house and the creek, rattling the glass, wailing along the sills.

Obviously, these are metaphors that need some work. Reading back, I realize that my supernatural killer storm is wearing a dress with awkwardly large sequins that rumble against each other as he runs towards my house, menacing his intended victims by tapping on windows with his pointy killer fingers. Not actually that scary.

But you’ll have to forgive me. I didn’t sleep very well.

Oh, and the other thing? The power went out at least once, briefly, but I must have been very sound asleep because I didn’t wake up when the CPAP machine turned off. No, what woke me up was that thing coming on, sounding for all practical purposes like a monster gasping for breath after being under water for some time.