Childhood Memories - USS Silversides

Last weekend my wife and I drove from Chattanooga to Manistee, MI to race in the Lumberjack 100. It was a long drive and sent me back to the family vacations of my childhood. My dad’s plant would shut down around July 4^th for 2 weeks so we would load up the car and see how far we could go. Often we would go to Florida or the Outer Banks. One particular year, when I was around 10, we drove to Canada. We had no destination, only to breach the border into Ontario and stay in a regular hotel, maybe to buy a couple cokes with Looney’s. On the way back we drove west across Michigan to Muskegon because Dad wanted to see a WWII era submarine, the USS Silversides. I do not remember being excited about the experience. Following the educational visit aboard the old diesel sub, our car promptly started spouting smoke and running erratically. Amazingly, we were able to limp into an open ford dealership. It turned out that a computer controller had went out and it would be around $400 to repair and they would have the part the next day. In those days, $400 went pretty far with my family so, from my 10 year old perspective, it seemed to cause quite a crisis. I do not remember what I felt but I think it was fear that we might be stuck in Michigan. Fortunately, the worst of it was just that we had to carry all our luggage onto a dirty public bus for a ride to a local motel. The upside, to me, was that we got to spend the day in the motel instead of the car and I was still young enough to get a thrill out of hanging out in a large bedroom with my family and jumping on beds other people had done God-knows-what on.

The point of this telling is that on the way up to the race we detoured into Muskegon and revisited the place that was the source of chaos for one of the summers from my childhood. To stay true to my lineage, I was too cheap to purchase the $15/person tickets to actually board the ship so I just posed awkwardly next to it for a picture.





It was enough for me. It was a reminder that, good or bad, our experiences are what make us who we are. I still remember that little boy who was scared of being stuck in Michigan. A lot has changed, but a lot hasn’t; going outside to ride my bike is still my favorite thing to do—speaking of, I’m late to meet the wife for a bike ride.