Way back in the day one of my nieces was giggling about my mom leaving her purse in the Mission Hill cemetery during a family excursion there. An excursion that my nuclear family was not part of. Oh, not that we weren’t welcome to join it, just that we weren’t in the yooperland at that time.

The photo is of the Spectacle Lake overlook. I have been there many times since I was a child. The graveyard is behind me. Native Americans are buried there as well as immigrants like most of us USA citizens are. (Take a note, Trump.)

Once when we were all young and childless, me and the GG and my brother and his wife took an evening drive up onto the Spectacle Lake overlook. We were joined by several young Native American men. One of those guys kinda glommed on to my brother in an ominous way. I was nervous about that. The rest of them were more interested in the WWII telescope kinda thing the GG had set up and were having fun talking to him. We made it out of there with no altercation. The place is usually flooded with tourists and I think that is the only time I’ve ever been nervous about being there.

Grandma (before she was Grandma) and I once ended up on the Spectacle Lake overlook on a garbage run. The dump was (and still is) on Plantation Road but mom and I were talking a blue streak (I was about 22) and she missed the turn. I knew she had missed it but I didn’t say anything and the next thing I knew, there we were up on the overlook. Of course we didn’t dump our garbage there.

Grandma’s purse was found right away but that began a mini-career of me sweeping behind people and watching for their purses. Henry Ford Hoosegow (downtown Detroit) bathroom anyone? My mom’s purse. I keep everything important zipped into my right-hand polar fleece vest pocket. That’s my purse.

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