Our skiers traversed Beaver Creek and the ski ranch today. Beaver Creek is “across the street” from RAM, which is a state-run conference center named after The Commander’s brother, aka my uncle “Austin”, which was his middle name and what we called him. He was the director of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources when I was a child/teenager and he was the father of my beloved (alas, late) cousin Teri and grandfather of her daughter Anastasia, who he never met because he died when Teri and I were barely out of our teens. There are big freeway signs pointing out the exits for this place.

He was a naturalist with a phd and The Commander often talked about how he would store OWLS and things in the family refrigerator in their grandparents’ farmhouse where they lived in Garden City when they were kids. (Last I knew there was a fast food restaurant where that house used to be.) Ralph Austin was a few years older than The Comm, Frances Carolyn (they were #2 and #3 out of five children) and I get the idea that he looked out for her, driving her around with his friends, etc., back in the day when 25 cents would fill the gas tank.

She revered him and, as luck would have it, she married a guy he (and everybody in the MacMu family) got along with (aka my dad), a flight instructor in WWII. I’m thinking Austin might have been a flight instructor too? That’s not how my parents met but I think Austin was at their bare bones wedding out in the American southwest. Mom took a train out there and that’s a good story but not tonight. My MacMu grandfather wanted to go too but it didn’t quite work out because war. F*ck war.

Austin married Helen and they had Sally and Teri and they visited the moomincabin every summer AND THEY HAD NO PROBLEM USING THE DAMN OUTHOUSE! They qualified as “cool” aunt and uncle but I had a LOT of cool aunts and uncles. I do remember that Austin witnessed my FinFam uncle Duke and a friend of his illegally fishing at the moominbeach and did NOT turn them in.

I won’t write more about the MacMullan family tonight. I’m kind of laughing because until a few days ago, I had never heard the conference center called RAM. It is his initials but RAM also matches his state government work personality when he had to deal with “difficult elected officials”. Years ago, a Detroit Free Press columnist (Bob Talbot) wondered who Ralph A. MacMullan (of freeway sign fame) was. One of the things his research turned up was that my uncle was one of the few people who could shout down (long dead) Michigan yooperland firebrand senator Joe Mack. RAM!

Photo credit to Little Cat Z.

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