On July 16, 2003, I published this gem of a column about our community. Not much has changed since then, except the number of “For Sale” signs in front of area homes. There are still tons of cars and traffic still sucks.
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This past weekend the ‘Daily? Oakland Press ran a nice feature on the growing by leaps and bounds county — in particular the western part, by Novi and right here in the Northeastern tier.
Of course you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know things are a little more congested and cramped than they were a few short years ago. The whole area is growing. Folks are finding the ‘quality of life? up here really does exist — for now. You don’t have to be an old timer to be able to harken back to those thrilling days of yesteryear.
It wasn’t that long ago that folks in these here parts referred to Ortonville as Hooterville. It wasn’t that long ago when the Gravel Capitol of the World was full of sand and water — not trendy homes and golf courses.
T’weren’t too many moons ago that the opinion of Orion schools, in a word, sucked. Now it’s a district ahead of the curve in many aspects and well respected in and out of the community. But once it cut the football program and was known to be a place full of (How did teens of the day put it?) burnouts.
It wasn’t that long ago that I, your humble scribe, could ride my 1950s Schwinn Hornet from our Clarkston Road home near Walters Lake, to the local Ben Franklin (aka Food Town) store at the corner of Sashabaw and Maybee roads — this was the 1970s. I didn’t have to worry about being hit by a car. A good stretch to coast was on Sashabaw, between I-75 and Clarkston Road. You could really pick up a good head of steam. Swerve from lane to lane and feel free with the wind in your hair.
Of course that was before they added the third lane to help ease congestion during the Pine Knob summer concert season.
I reckon things were a wee bit simpler back before this was a popular place to be — I don’t think things were less thrilling. Come on, what’s more thrilling than having a pig farm down the road? Not too many years ago, said agricultural establishment was known as the Z Farm. Today its barn is a home. The farm — on both sides of Clarkston Road — is a high rent district full of swanky homes.
Before Heather Lakes Estates had a castle it was a corn field with a lake in the middle of it. Sort of a rite of passage as a kid was to go fishing on that lake. To do that, you had to sneak through the corn- field.
I think the term for that nowadays is called trespassing.
Let me clarify my statement. The rite of passage wasn’t the tresspassing or catching of scaled and finned critters. The rite part was having the grounds keeper chase you off the property with a shotgun in his hands.
Some kids even said when they were chased he fired the gun! Those kids were placed high on the rungs of adolecent hierarchy.
Somehow today I think law enforcement folks would frown upon some old coot brandishing a long-gun chasing youths off of private property. Not too long ago nobody thought nuthin? of it — of course I don’t recall any kids telling their parents about fishing on the lake, nor about being chased off the property.
I guess the line from Kevin Costner’s movie, ‘Build it and they will come? is true. If you have a cornfield, plow it under, build nice homes and new folks will move there.
And, just think: when they start fixing all the roads, making them smoother and wider, we’ll have more home and cars and folks to tell stories to. Things change — that’s not a bad thing, but as Will Rogers once said: ‘Lettin? the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin? it back in.?
Comments for that Rush who’s fast becoming an old coot who rambles about the past too much can be e-mailed to: don’trushmedon@aol.com