posted 2007/10/11 at 20:56
Once you cross the state line into Michigan on US-23, the exit ramps don't really have that many fast food places or restaurants nearby until you get up to the city of Dundee, about seventeen miles north of the border. In particular, the exit I take to get to work has no gas stations and no restauarants. It takes me about a half-hour from when I cross the state line to get to campus, and the only real store I pass on the way there is a fairly small "market" that looked to me like it basically sold everything a modern-day gas station would, minus the gas. I use the past tense because apparently sometime in the past week the store shuttered its doors for good, or at least that's what the sign out in front of the store seems to indicate.
This doesn't affect me much because I always make sure to do all the shopping I need to do while I'm still in Ohio, but this has forced me to consider the demands of rural living. I live within a five-minute drive of both a Meijer and a 24-hour Kroger, and if I weren't boycotting Wal*Mart I could go to one that's even closer than the Meijer and Kroger. Here at the house, if we run out of some staple (say milk), it's certainly a bit of a pain to have to get around and go get some, but it's not that big of a deal. I guess it never occurred to me until now just how difficult it must be for those people in rural Michigan who don't live anywhere close to any kind of real grocery store or gas station to make those trips for one or two items that were either forgotten in the last grocery trip or ran out earlier than expected. The closure of that market just off of US-23 must create a huge pain for the people who live around there, and it makes me wonder if I could live in a similar locale. I mean, yes, I could if I had to, but I think I may be too addicted to some of the conveniences of modern living to want to live that far away from a Kroger or Meijer.
I'm still finding ways in which Toledo manages to screw things up, too. Just before you cross the border from Michigan into Ohio, there's a sign that tells you to tune your radio to 1630 AM to get information on any traffic problems in the area. This is a nice service to have, and even though I don't have any real need for it, the other day I decided I'd tune my own radio to the station just to hear it. Unfortunately, I was then confronted with the fact that my car radio only goes up to 1620 AM before it loops back into the 500s, and 1620 is far to buzzy to make out anything that might be on 1630. Granted, I'm driving a minivan that was made in 1988, so it's not exactly that new of a car, but you would think that city of Toledo (or the Ohio Department of Transportation or whoever is responsible for the traffic station) would have the good sense to put the station on a middle band where more people could access it.
My most vivid memory of US-23 was one time in my freshman year when my father was driving me home from U-M for a three-day weekend. We missed the turnoff onto I-94, weren't really paying attention where we were going, but thinking "this is taking longer than usual".
That's when we saw the "Welcome to Ohio" sign.
"Uh, mom, we're gonna be a little late for dinner..."
Didn't either of you notice that the exit numbers suddenly went from triple to double (and then single) digits? I thought that would have been a bit of a giveaway as to what was wrong.
Like I said, we were talking and weren't really paying attention where we were going.
But Ann Arbor is only like Exit 37, so I don't know where the triple digits would come into play.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon