Down by the OldMill Stream
	Down by the New Mill Stream

Back from Michigan. The motel we usually stay in is located at the intersection of U.S. 23 and M-59 in Hartland township, Livingston County. It's quite a built-up area now. Back in 1971, when I sold Fuller Brush products in Livingston County, there was nothing there except for a closed quasi-truck stop and a couple of gas stations. Now there's well, everything: food (both fast and not so), Walmart, Kroger, Meijer, etc. etc. On my first day as a Fuller Brush Man, I went alongside a fellow entrepeneur, on the second day I was on my own, and I had a hard time even finding the road on which I was supposed to start because it was a dirt road, and it was pretty much overgrown at the intersection.

Back then, not everyone in Livingston County had running water yet. Hartland was about as run-down a village as you can have this side of [I'll let you choose your own line of demarkation]. There were maybe a couple of dozen houses, so to speak. I made a couple of sales, I remember. One of those was to the town constable, a somewhat plump, broadshouldered man in his forties. If he'd been in the movies, he could have played the constable of a small, backward village in rural Michigan. He did not have the correct amount of cash, so he handed me a tenner and said, "Why don't you run to the store, son, and get this broken up for me." I did, of course. Those were the days. (And that statement, if left alone, would betray an accurate, but selective, memory.)

While I'm reminiscing: among the music I listened to on the radio as I drove from house to house: The Raiders, "Cherokee Nation," Paul McCartney, "Uncle Albert," Joe Cocker, "High Time We Went," and my anthem for the summer, "Signs" by the Five Man Electrical Band.

So, before we headed home, June and I decided to take a quick swing around a small part of Livingston County to see what things were like now. "My" first road: paved. Argh!!! Hartland has twice the houses, all of them nicely kept, a library, and two museums. Little Parshalville still looks pretty much the same; they keep it rustic for the tourists. The attraction there is a grist mill, dating from 1869; in the fall they sell a lot of apple cider. So, the first pictures are from there.

Tonight (Monday), back at home, we had a horrendous storm. It's been a long time since I've seen wind that strong pass through. Our willow tree lost a few of its dead branches. Our neighbors had an entire tree crash. H., the woman next door, was looking out her window when she saw the tree start to fall. She thought it was going to come right at her and fall on her house, so she closed her eyes. Then she heard the crash, and she opened her eyes, and she saw that the tree had fallen into the diametrically opposed direction, laying across the road at a right degree angle. Here are some pictures from the clean-up by a city employee using a backhoe. The colors left behind by the storm and the evening dusk conditions created some fascinating hues.

Next time: Does the Root have a Root? Dependent Origination, part 1