Dear Lyzako,As you well know, Labor Day in Michigan signals the end of summertime, the festivities ranging from outdoor music festivals to baseball games to the State Fair, the aroma of charcoal filling the air nearly everywhere you go as the curtain falls on another growing season. The weekend following the holiday is just as rich in tradition locally with our annual Dally in the Alley, this year's event marking thirty-one years since its inception. Can that be right? Thirty-one years?
Indeed it is, and I did my part to support the Dally by imbibing in local brew and generously contributing 'tips' to the coffee cans marked for proceeds to benefit the North Cass Community Union.
It was a beautiful day with highs in the mid-seventies and a fresh breath of cool air after the sun dropped. We watched some DJ who's name I don't recall spin deep house grooves on the stage at the corner of Hancock and Second, the Fisher Building framed perfectly in the background while several folks in the crowd danced awkwardly to the rhythm. One older woman herky jerked in circles with her eyes closed, slow stepping and placing alternating feet into an invisible bucket while balancing on one leg and making swimming motions with her hands.
I ran into Carl, Walt and Jerry, who casually handed me a printed card calling for entries to the next Dirty Show while mugging for Walt's camera phone, the resulting wave of his hand placed perfectly in the shot as though he were Tom Cruise avoiding the paparazzi. Walt gave out with his usual quackquackquack of a laugh when he saw it, his eyes closing to slits behind his glasses as his cheeks swelled with smile.
At some point during the evening, a friend and regular attendee herself told me that she had seen a photo of yours truly on the Dally website. “What was I doing?” I asked her. “You were standing right over there, with a beer in your hand, just like you are right now.”
Yesterday morning, remembering what she had said (in actuality I had scrawled a barely-legible note on a post-it the night before to remind me), I logged onto the Dally home page and searched through the pictures myself. It took a while, but I finally located the shot she had described in the photo album from 2003 and have included it here so you can see for yourself just how damned handsome, young and slim I looked a mere five years ago.
Of course, the fact that I was surrounded by Raging Grannies may have had something to do with that.
As Always, Looking Forward to the Fall,
Marty Sherman
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