Sheraton / Delphines

When I was sixteen one of my dad's students, Steve Zammit, got me a job at the Sheraton Inn in Ann Arbor as a dishwasher for Delphines restaurant which was located in the hotel. I went in for an interview and was hired on the spot and literally started as soon as the interview was over. My friend Ben went with me to the interview and was waiting out in the car for me. He ended up having to get a ride home from the hotel since I was working late in the evening. 

Working at the Sheraton was my first real job where I punched a clock, got a paycheck, and even had health insurance. Ironically the health insurance that was provided back then was much better than the insurance I pay for today. The chef that hired me was named chef Muse, but he wasn't there very long after I got hired, so I never got to know him very well. His replacements name was Chef Ferante, and she ran a really tight ship. 

Chef Ferante was a really attractive woman, and being sixteen, I really enjoyed working for her even though she was tough. I learned a lot from her, and I was able to moved up from being a dishwasher to being a prep cook part time. I still had to do dishes the rest of the time, but at least there was some variety, and I was learning some pretty good life skills. I remember in one employee meeting she made a comment that I remember and I have used many times throughout my career. She said that if someone gets good service at the restaurant, they might tell a couple of close friends about their experience. If they get bad service, they will tell anyone who will listen. That was such a true statement, and something I would later tell my employees when I owned a restaurant.

I really enjoyed hanging out with the cooks, and I became friends with a number of them outside of work. As was the case through most of my high school years, most of my friends were much older than I was. It was kind of fun hanging out at the bar across the way and going to baseball games and things like that. 

I had some issues with my grades getting lost in my Junior year in high school, so when I started my senior year, I wasn't able to start on time because I didn't have enough credits to stay enrolled. By the time the school figured out where the mix-up was, I was about a month behind. I told the chef that I really needed some time to get caught up, but she couldn't give me the time off. One night I got stuck working a banquet by myself that was going to run until early morning, and I also had to get an assignment in. I ended up with my only choice being to quit the job. I remember driving home with tears in my eyes because I really liked working there, and I hated quitting the way that I did. 

Working at the Sheraton gave me a solid set of cooking skills that I use to this day. Restaurant work is hard work, but it is also very rewarding. I often say if you want to get a true understanding of Just In Time inventory, work in a restaurant. There is nothing more just in time than inventory that goes bad in five days. 

Dixboro Gas Station

When I was in high school, my friend Lisa started dating this guy Tony. I had just started driving, and I was always working on my car, and Tony worked with a guy named Bill Smallwood who was the head mechanic at the GM Proving Grounds. Through Tony and Lisa, I got to know bill pretty well. 

Bill worked at GM during the day, but in the evenings, he would work on cars in his own garage at his house. He would buy cars that had mechanical problems, fix them up, and then sell them. Since he never put the titles in his name and only took cash for the cars, this was a pretty lucrative side business for him. 

I started working with Bill every free moment I got, and there was never a shortage of things to work on. At times his driveway looked like a mini junk yard. He was always bartering with the local junk yards to get parts for one car or another. Often times he would trade a shell of a car for an engine to put in another car. He would do just about anything mechanical on a car except for rebuilding transmissions. He would do some work on a transmission like replacing a clutch, pressure plate, and throw-out bearing, or replacing a torque converter, but rarely would he go any further than that. Other work he would farm out to a transmission shop that he had a relationship with. 

I learned a lot from Bill, and he loved to teach. I used to ask him questions I knew the answer too just so he could have the opportunity to teach me something. Even if I knew the answer, there was usually a new nugget of information in the explanation that I didn't know. Bills garage was heated, so we worked on cars year round, and he had a huge assortment of tools. I really learned a lot from Bill and I got to know a lot of people in Dixboro as a result. 

Dixboro was a small town just outside of Ann Arbor. Through Bill I met Jim who owned the Dixboro gas station. In my senior year in high school, I worked for Jim at the gas station. I pumped gas and was a light duty mechanic. I did mostly oil changes and basic maintenance, but there were times I got to work on an engine too. I remember one time changing a timing chain on a Dodge pickup owned my one of our plowing customers. 

Once I finished high school, I ended up getting a factory job, and spent less and less time in Dixboro. The skills that I learned working with both Bill and Jim have served me well my entire life. I actually don't care about cars at all. I don't look at a car and think it would be cool to have. A car to me is a tool that gets me from one place to another, and if it can carry me and my bike and kayak, then it is a cool car. What I liked about cars in high school was fixing things that were broken. I love taking a problem breaking it down into small pieces and figure out where the failure is. To me working on a car or fixing a server computer are basically the same skills. Fixing things is what gives my life purpose.

Herb David's and other Teen Year Jobs

My first real job was working at Herb David's Guitar Studio. I can't remember exactly when I started working there, but I think it might have actually been before I was fourteen and old enough to work. I was definitely working there when I was fourteen until I was sixteen. I had been taking guitar lessons there for a little while, and one evening after my lesson, Herb asked me if I would be interested in working for him. He had a kid that had been doing cleaning and stocking, but he had quit. I was exited to the opportunity to get a real job and stop delivering papers in the morning. I started working for him when he still had his space on State Street in Ann Arbor. 

My official title was "The Kid". My job description was to do whatever Herb wanted me to do. One of my main duties was keeping the place clean. I had to dust all the guitars, clean the kitchen, bathroom, and lesson rooms, vacuum everywhere. I also had to move stock from the basement, take repairs to and from the shop, and run all kinds of errands. Whether it be shopping for bathroom supplies, getting things from the hardware store for the shop, or taking the deposit to the bank, I kind of did it all. I also helped customers with questions about guitars when the sale people were busy.

In 1982, Herb bought a house at the corner of Liberty and 5th avenue, and we moved the business into there. The basement was where we stored the new stock guitars, the first floor was the sales area, the second floor was where the lesson rooms were and Herbs office, and the third floor was the repair shop. It was really a nice layout for the shop. 

I really enjoyed the job and working with all the people there. Herb was really a tough employer though. He would do a white glove test on all the rooms, and he always found a piece of molding above a door or window that I had missed. Getting paid was always a challenge. Pay day would come and I would go to his office to get my check, and he would decide that was the best time to do an inspection, or he would have an errand he needed run, pretty much anything to delay giving me my check. Inevitably, I would get my check and run up the street to the bank and get there a few minutes after 4, and they would be closed which would mean I didn't have any money to do things on a Friday night. 

It's funny, but getting paid has been a problem that has recurred throughout my professional life. I have had a number of managers who will sit on time sheets or invoices without signing them for weeks delaying my paycheck over and over. I remember one manager taking almost three months to sign and an invoice. Situations like that have made it feast of famine over all my years as a consultant. I have been really fortunate in the past few years to have good managers who really put a priority on people getting paid for their work. 

While working at Herb David's I also had a couple of other jobs too. There was the paper route in the beginning, but then a pet store opened in the mall near my house called Scamp Pets, and I got a job there for a while. Tom was the name of the owner, and he worked around my schedule at Herb Davids. He was really a nice guy and it was quite a contrast working for him verses Herb. I did stocking, cleaning the fish tanks and other cages, and sales. He had one of the old manual cash registers, which weren't all that old at the time. Credit cards were still swiped manually, and we had to call in for authorizations if it was over $20. Checks were still the most common way to pay for things, so it really was a different time. 

I am not sure how long I worked at Scamps, but I think it was less than a year. Tom's son started working there in the evenings to help out, and he ended up hiring another girl to run the cash register. It was hard to him to keep working around my schedule at Herb Davids, and since I was going to school downtown for high school, I decided to keep working at Herb's and leave Scamps. Shortly after that, Tom got really sick and ended up having to sell the business. My friend Ben Lewis' mom bought the store, and ran it for a number of years. Tom died very shortly after selling the store.

Prior to turning sixteen, I had one other job that I only held for a couple of weeks. My friend Brad had gotten a job at SEMCA which stood for Southeast Michigan Consumer Alliance. it was telemarketing job selling a discount card that was accepted in quite a few businesses in Ann Arbor. Since I was only fifteen, I had to get a work permit which is really the only reason I mention this job since I didn't work there long enough for it to matter. 

Getting a work permit meant going to the Ann Arbor Public Schools administration building. I talked to a woman and she started filling out the permit, but at some point she said she couldn't give me the permit because the company didn't carry workman's comp insurance. I really didn't understand why that was a problem since all I was going to do was use a telephone, but the woman wouldn't budge. As she was walking away from the counter, I looked around and reached over and grabbed the work permit pad that she had left half filled out, and I took it. At school the next day, I had one of my friends who had good handwriting fill out the work permit and sign it with a fictitious name. 

It took less than two weeks to realize that commissioned telemarketing was not the job for me. I learned very quickly that I had a phobia of talking to strangers on the phone. I had a script that I was supposed to read from, but I typically started stuttering and rarely made it through the script. I also didn't know in advance how much people hate telemarketers. Being hung up on was actually very polite compared to some of the responses I got. I can't remember if I actually quite or just never went back, but I do remember worrying about the work permit. The form stated that once an employee quit, it was supposed to be returned to the Ann Arbor Public Schools. I am pretty sure that never happened, at least I never heard from them. 

I have always enjoyed working, and even when I had crappy bosses, I still learned something from the situation. Every experience, especially those in my younger years, molded me into the person I am today. My work ethic and tolerance were shaped by these early jobs, and with each subsequent job I became more skilled in one way or another. All experience is learning, and even if it doesn't seem like it at the time, everything learned helps you in the future.  

Paper Routes

When I was young, all I ever wanted to do was get a job. I liked having money to do things and buy stuff, and I really wanted to make my own. I mowed lawns, and I did other things like sell vegetables from the garden along with metal pipe I found in the woods. 

In fifth grade I got my first paper route. It was a Detroit Free Press route, so the paper was delivered in the morning, and the route was pretty spread out because most people got the Ann Arbor News. I can't remember the kid I took it over from, but I think he was the older brother of a friend of mine. Being a morning route, I had to get up in time to have all the papers delivered by 7 am. This eventually meant that I had to get up at 4:30 am to get them there on time. 

In the summer time, the paper route wasn't bad because I could ride my bike. I had baskets on the back and one on the handlebars. For most days, I could fit a lot of papers in each basket, so I didn't need to restock as often, but Thursday and Sundays were brutal. On Thursday you had the additional ads that needed to be inserted in the paper, and on Sunday the paper was thicker in general, plus you had to insert the comics and ads in each paper. The Sunday paper was too thick to take on my bike, so my dad and I built a large wagon to carry the papers in. 

In the winter time, I would ride my bike if the roads were clear of snow, but it was often pretty treacherous. The rest of the time I would have to walk the entire route which was several miles long. When the sidewalks were covered with snow, it was extremely difficult to deliver papers. If the weather was particularly nasty, my dad would usually help me with my route. 

By the time I was in junior high, I had expanded to five routes and was delivering papers everywhere north of Plymouth road and west of Green road. It took me hours every morning to get the papers delivered, and I was always tired. Delivering the papers was half the battle, the other half was collecting from the customers. 

Being a paper boy really meant that you owned your own business. Basically the paper company was providing you franchise services. Customers could sign up for the paper and pay a set price via the company, but then everything else fell to the delivery boy. I would deliver the papers, bill the customer, collect the money, and then pay for the papers. Whatever was left was mine. One of the problems was that if a customer didn't pay, it came out of my money. It was a lot of work to keep track of who had and hadn't paid. There were bonus's if you sold new subscriptions though. I actually earned an Atari video game system by selling enough new subscriptions. 

By the time I started high school, I had another job at Herb Davids, and I also worked at Scamp pets for a while, and even a telemarketing job for a couple of weeks. I was ready to be done with delivering papers. My dad had been helping me more and more as the routes grew, and he ended up taking over the paper routes when I stopped doing it. I never quite understood why, but he said it was a nice way to make some tax free cash, so he continued delivering the papers for several years after I quit. 

Looking back on it now, delivering papers was one of the hardest jobs I have done in my life. Considering I was only ten years old when I started, that was a ton of responsibility to take on at that age. Considering I was still swimming until seventh grade, my days were packed with the paper route, school, swimming, and almost no free time at all. I definitely learned a lot from the experience. Understanding how a business runs in elementary school is not something most kids have any idea about. Forrest got this same kind of experience because we bought a restaurant when he was ten, so that is probably why we are so alike when it comes to working. 

These days there really aren't any newspapers, and if there is home delivery, it is not done by children anymore. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not. I think having elementary school age children getting up at four in the morning is probably detrimental to their education and social development, but on the other hand it builds a strong work ethic and an appreciation for what it takes to make a dollar. I would say the paper route was really significant in defining my work and business sense. 

I am not a Musician

I always wanted to be musically talented, but I never was. My sense of pitch is extremely poor, and so is my sense of time. That didn't prevent me from wanting to learn to play an instrument though. 

I vaguely remember learning the recorder at some early point in my life, but I can't really place where it was. When I was in fifth grade, I had the opportunity to tryout for the band. I was really excited and wanted to play the trumpet. The band teacher said that my mouth wasn't the right shape for the trumpet, and he said I should play the tenor saxophone. I was a little disappointed, but my parents rented me a sax, and I started learning to play. I learned enough to play in the band throughout fifth grade, but at the end of the school year I had to turn in the sax.

My parents suggested that I switch to the clarinet the next year because it was cheaper and easier to carry. I really didn't like the clarinet. It was similar to play, but it didn't have the sound I really liked in the sax. Plus my friends were still playing saxophones in sixth grade, and here I was moved to the clarinet section that was all girls. I got a fair amount of ribbing for that.

In seventh grade I went to another school. I was back in the public schools, and I ended up in band again. This time there was another boy in the clarinet section, and battled hard for last chair. I don't think either one of us ever practiced, and neither one of us continued in band after seventh grade. I did however also take a music appreciation class that year.

The music appreciation class had a section for piano and a section for guitar. I really wanted to learn to play guitar. My mom advised against it telling me that she tried to play guitar when she was young, and it was too hard. I took the class anyway, and I really enjoyed playing the guitar. I could check out a guitar and take it home to practice. We also played the piano in that class, and I think I already had taken piano lessons at that point. I don't really remember for sure. 

I can't remember when my parents got a piano, but I think it was when I was still in elementary school. My dad had a student who was a concert pianist who helped him pick out a used piano. They bought a Cable baby grand piano and put it in the front living room. For a couple of years my sister and I had private lessons with a man named Joe Bauer. I don't think he was a bad teacher, but the thing I remember about him is that he wore this horrible cologne. By the time my lesson was over, my eyes would be watering, and I would have a terrible headache. I learned a few things on the piano, but I hardly ever practiced. 

In eighth grade, I took another guitar class at school. This time it was just guitar, and I really enjoyed it. This is where I met Chris, and she and I became close friends. We would both check out guitars and I would go over to her house to practice together. She seemed to get better very quickly, and I stayed about the same. I learned enough to enjoy playing, but it was clear, I was never going to be very good. 

My parents bought me my own guitar that year from Grinnell's Music store in the mall. It was a nice Yamaha with mahogany sides and back and a spruce top. Grinnell's was really struggling by this point, so my parents got a really good deal on the guitar. I still have it to this day, and it is a nice sounding instrument. My parents also signed me up for guitar lessons at Herb David Guitar Studio in downtown Ann Arbor. 

Herb David Guitar Studio was located on State State street near Washington when I started taking lessons there. It was located on the third floor of the building right across from Wazoo Used Records. There was a bakery on the first floor that sold chocolate croissants, along with a head shop. I cant remember any of the names of the teachers I had at Herb Davids, but I had several over the years. When I was 14, Herb hired me, and my job title was "The Kid". Basically I did whatever was needed, cleaning, stocking, running errands, you name it. I also got free guitar lessons.

I worked at Herb Davids until I was 16. After I stopped working there, I never took lessons again. I have always had an interest in playing guitar, and I pick mine up every now and then and play. I keep thinking I will work on learning to play more, but then something else comes up that takes up my time. 

One of the problems I have is that I can never stay focused on something long enough to master it. I learned enough about music to learn the mechanics and a little bit of theory, but I never put in the hours necessary to get really good at it. I would never have been able to master the guitar or piano because of a lack of natural ability, but I could have gotten a lot better than I did. I really do enjoy having a lot of variety in my life, so I have lot of hobbies that I am okay at, but nothing that I am great at. The one exception would be computing because not only was it a hobby, but I also do it as a career. I have done pretty well with that, but I still wouldn't consider myself a master. I learned enough about music to be able to express a little bit of the music within me, and that is enough to bring me joy in my life. 

Frozen Yogurt Recipe

You might ask why I would write an entry about a recipe. The idea here is to give you an idea of how I feel about food in general. I am in no way a foodie. I am not an adventurous eater, and I really don't like trying new things. I enjoy a meal with close friends and family, but I dread eating in front of people I don't know that well. People who eat with me know I always wear a red shirt when we go for Mexican because I am guaranteed to wear several splotches of salsa before the end of the meal. Even more if we are having margaritas with dinner. For me there are things that I like, but very seldom do have cravings for anything in particular. When I am at work, I will eat exactly the same thing everyday for months.

I gain weight very easily, so I am very conscious of my diet. Carbs are enemy number on in my book. I avoid processed foods almost entirely. Most of my meals are made from fresh ingredients, and I eat a lot of fruits and vegetables with very little meat. Unless it is a holiday or a special event, you will never find bread, potatoes, white flour, white rice, or candy in my house. I hardly ever have desert at home, and I try to avoid snack foods like chips.

One of the other things I do a lot of is make my own food. This goes beyond using fresh ingredients. For example I brew my own beer using grains, I roast my own coffee, I have canned tomatoes, and made pasta sauce using roma tomatoes from my garden. I grind my own hamburger and my own breakfast sausage. I have made my own cheese, and I always make my own yogurt. 

So here we are at frozen yogurt. I have been making my own Greek yogurt for years. When I bought an instant pot a few years back, I started making much larger batches. I start out with a gallon of milk and use the yogurt settings on the instant pot to make the yogurt. I usually let it go for about 15-20 hours. Then I pull the yogurt out and strain it through a stainless steel Greek yogurt strainer. Then I either leave it plain or mix in reduced strawberries. For the strawberries, I usually reduce a large container of strawberries down on the stove, and I don't add any sweetener to it. Once reduced, I separate them into two cup containers and freeze. If I start with 2 gallons of milk to make my yogurt, after straining, I will usually have almost 8 cups of yogurt. Adding in two cups of strawberries makes a nice strawberry yogurt. 

Unless I have my son and girlfriend helping me, I really cant eat that much yogurt, so I got to thinking about making frozen yogurt. I bought an ice cream maker and started experimenting. I wanted to make a no sugar added frozen yogurt that would be good for my brother who is diabetic, and good for me because I like to stay away from sugar. I have tried a number of different low calorie sweeteners, but lately I have really liked using a blend of monk fruit and  erythritol sweetener. 

Here is the recipe I came up with that I really like.

• 3 cups strawberry yogurt from the method above
• 1 cup milk
• 1.5 cup monk fruit /  Erythritol blend
• 6 tablespoons vodka

The vodka keeps the yogurt from freezing too quickly and keeps it from getting too hard in the freezer. I start out by heating the milk, sweetener, and vodka in a small sauce pan until the sweetener is dissolved and the milk is just starting to froth. Don't let it boil or scald. I let the milk mixture cool then mix together with the three cups of yogurt in a mixing bowl. Once thoroughly mixed, I add it to my ice cream maker and set it for an hour. I have found that I usually have to add about 15 minutes to the time unless everything was chilled in advance. 

Once the yogurt is almost solid in the ice cream maker, I remove it and put it in an ice cream keeper that I put in the freezer. Letting it chill for about 2 hours will give you really nice scoopable frozen yogurt. After a day in the freezer it gets pretty hard, but setting it out on the counter for 15 minutes usually does the trick to get a nice scoop.  

For a vanilla version I just use three cups of plain yogurt instead of the strawberry and add two tablespoons of vanilla extract. 

I really do enjoy the entire process of making the yogurt and the frozen yogurt, and I love having full control over what I am eating. 

Friendships Throughout My Life

One of the things that Facebook has done is to remind me of past friendships. I remember when I first signed up on Facebook, I would look up old friends, and then I would see other old friends I had forgotten about on their page and so on. Ironically I added all these friends, but now all I really use Facebook for is as a news feed and to keep up with local events. Every now and then I will see a post from a friend that I will read, but very few are all that interesting. Honestly, I don't have any interested in what people are eating or drinking on a daily basis. 

I did get to thinking about friendships throughout the years lately. Throughout my life, I have usually had one or two close friends, and then a number friends or acquaintances. I always find it interesting when talking to people how they will mention friends and events from their childhood, and I wonder how they can remember so much detail. The one thing I realized is that it has to do with family dynamics. When Kat is around her kids, she is always talking about things they did when they were younger, and she is always asking about how childhood friends are doing and relating stories from years ago. So each of her kids are constantly getting their memories of friends and situations refreshed, so those neurons are constantly being reinforced. 

My parents hardly ever knew any of my friends. I never had people come over to my house to play, and if I did, my mom would make a point of embarrassing me in front of my friends, so I just got used to never bringing anyone around. If my mom knew the families of my friends she would usually have a reason not to like them. My mom hated one of my closest friends in high school, Benji Lewis, and forbid me from hanging around with him. The thing is, she had never met him. She knew his mother, and the reputation of an older brother, and that was all it took. So throughout High School, Ben would call and say he was John Graph. John Graph was a kid that I knew in junior high that my mom had met once. We weren't really friends, but as far as my mom knew, we were best friends. Ben and I were friends well into my twenties, and my mom never knew about it. 

I really do think that the reason I have very few childhood memories is because none of them were ever repeated. In my mom's world, if she wasn't involved in something then it wasn't important. To give an example, one time I was at the cottage with my son and daughter, and we were talking to my mom and sister. We started talking about triathlons and running events that we had been involved in. My mom was furious, and when I asked her about it later, she said she didn't run, and she was angry that I brought up a topic that didn't involve her. I asked why she wasn't interested in what her kids and grand kids were doing, and she just said that running was stupid, and she couldn't understand why we would do that. My dad was always interested in things we did, and he listened really well, but he wasn't one to reminisce about the past. I realized after he died that I really knew nothing of his past which was a primary motivation for writing this blog. 

I realize that I have the same deficiency as my father. I talk to my kids all the time, and I love hearing what they are doing, but I never ask about friends from the past or remind them of things they did when they are little. That is one of the big disadvantages of being a parent, by the time you realize you are doing something wrong, your kids are grown. Maybe I will be a better grandparent. My dad was definitely a better grandfather than he was a father. I don't mean that in a negative way at all. My dad really did try hard, but by the time he figured it out, Forrest was born. 

So I started thinking about friendships going all the way back, and I figured I would just list them here with as much detail as I could. I am only going to list the friends who I really thought were close friends, not every kid I ever played with. 

Kimmy - Kimmy lived across the street from me when I was little. I don't really remember anything about her, but I do have a couple of really fuzzy memories. I know we went to Nursery school together at the little school house in Dixboro. I can remember my dad driving us there in his old Saab. There was a Marathon gas station nearby that we got most of our breakfast bowls from because you would get a bowl with a full tank of gas. I know Kimmy's mom watched me when my mom was pregnant with Carol. I don't remember her last name, and they moved away when I was very young. 

Mike Chisholm - Mike and I were friends on and off all through elementary school and junior high school. We kind of went our separate ways in high school since we went to different schools and we just lost touch. Mike had a brother names Scott who I also hung around with, but Mike was the one that I was really friends with. The big thing I remember about Mike was that he was really talented in art and music. He could draw just about anything, and he could also play the piano by ear. He could hear a song on the radio and just learn to play it. 

Jeff Bailey - Jeff lived at the other end of the street from Mike. I only have a vague memory of him. I think we were only friends briefly in elementary school, then he moved away. 

Jon Norris - Jon moved in next door when I was very young. His mom became friends with my mom, so Jon and I spent a lot of time together. Jon also had a half brother David who was my age, Jon was a year younger. The big thing I remember about Jon was that his grandfather had a farm just west of Ann Arbor, and I got to go to the farm with him pretty often. It was cool because they had sheep, and would could play in the hay loft. At one point Jon got a horse and I got to ride him a couple of times. I really can't remember what the horses name was though. I don't remember when Jon moved away. His parents got a divorce, and I never saw him again. I did see David once just after I bought my house. He became an electrician, and I hired him to upgrade my electric panel. 

Trey Wilbur - Trey lived a street over from me. He lived in the nicest house in the neighborhood. It was located right next to the woods and had a pool in the back. Trey and I were friends for a couple of years. The big thing I remember about that friendship was that his father made homemade firecrackers. They were triangular, a couple inches long, and they were made out of newspaper. At the time fireworks were illegal in Michigan, so it was kind of cool to have access to firecrackers. I really wish I knew how he made them, but I never got to see the process. I do remember how this friendship ended though. We each had bows and arrows. I told him that he was stringing his bow wrong because it was a re-curve bow. He disagreed and as most kids would do back then, we bet $2 on it. We asked my dad what he thought, and he agreed with Trey, but I wasn't willing to aqueous. My dad said I was wrong, and he paid Trey the two dollars. I never talked to Trey again after that, and I was really pissed about him paying off my bet. I still do archery to this day and have a couple of re-curve bows, and I can guarantee you that my dad and Trey were wrong on that one.  

Corey Bertcher - Corey and I were friends in elementary school and then again in junior high school. We worked together at the Michigan Theater a lot when we were in junior high. We rode the university bus down town because it was free, and besides working at the theater, we spent a lot of time hanging out in downtown Ann Arbor. It is hard to imagine these days, but I was 11 years old when I started taking the bus downtown by myself. Of course Ann Arbor was a much smaller town 40 years ago, but this was in the days before cell phones, so there was no way for my parents to know where I was. I kind of remember calling and checking in now and then, but it was totally different than it is now. Corey was another friend I lost touch with when I went to high school because we went to different schools. 

Donny Byton - I am sure that I am spelling the last name wrong. Donny was another kid that I was friends with for a very short time. Since I was going to a new school in 5th grade my parents wanted me to make a friend before school started. Donny lived up the street and I started hanging out with him. They were one of the few religious families in my neighborhood, so this was a new experience for me. I remember eating at their house once, and they all started praying before their meal. This was something I had never seen before, so I thought it was kind of unusual. Donny's older brother is the one who gave me the mini bike that I refer to in one of my other posts. Donny was the one who got me going to the Michigan Theater. I would volunteer there, and then I got to see movies for free. I also got free popcorn and pop which was pretty cool for a fifth grader. I don't really remember why we stopped hanging around, but the mini bike and Michigan theater had big impacts on my life. 

Debbie Newdstat - I am sure I am spelling the last name on this one wrong as well. I met Debbie at St. Paul's in fifth grade. She probably lived a little over a mile away from me, but it was no big deal to ride my bike over to her house. We used to ride bikes together, and ride out in the country on the dirt roads. I remember the first time we rode out Nixon road, and we were so impressed with ourselves for riding out past the city limits. We didn't know where we were, but it was exciting knowing that we were somewhere else. Her father ran an import export business, and he had all sorts of merchandise in a barn out back. He gave me a lock that attached to my bike and and locked through the spokes. It would prevent someone from riding the bike, but not from stealing it. Once I left St Paul's and went back to public schools, I didn't see Debbie anymore. 

Lisa Rocca - Lisa and I were friends all through junior high and high school. I'm a little fuzzy on how we met, but I think it was through a park near my house where we would both walk our dogs together. Lisa and I were close friends, and often people would think we were brother and sister. Initially she lived near me on Georgetown Street right near the park, but later she moved to the other side of Ann Arbor. We still remained friends, and she ended up going to the same high school I did. When I got my first car, her mom would pay me to take Lisa and her sister Jennifer to school. By that point, they had moved closer to me again. We were friends even after high school, and I was an usher at her wedding. When moved out of my parents, I lived in Detroit with Lisa and Tony for about 6 months. When I moved back to Ann Arbor we lost touch, and I haven't seen her since. 

Scott Baetz  - Scott and I were friends during junior high. He was part of the first social group I was a part of. Lisa and Scott were in the group, and then there were a couple of other girls that were friends of Lisa, Debbie and Hope, then later there was Rob who was older, but he was able to come up with beer, so we enjoyed hanging out with him. There were others in the group, but I don't really remember them. Scott and Lisa were the two that I would hang out independently of the others, so I considered them both friends. As with so many, I lost touch with Scott when I went to high school. 

Chris Waichunas - If you were to ask me who my first love was, I think I would have to say Chris. We met in an 8th grade guitar class. She actually had some talent, me, not so much. We became close friends and started hanging out all the time. I would go over to her house, or we would go downtown. I remember always just wanting to be around her. Unfortunately she didn't feel the same way toward me. She just wanted to be friends, and that was a good thing. She was my closest friend for a while. She did finally say that she would be my girlfriend, but that only lasted for a day or so. It turned out that it really wasn't me, she wasn't interested in men at all. She went through a lot when she came out to her mother, and we remained friends for a while, but by the time we got to high school, we were in totally different clicks. We did go to the same school, but never really connected again. 

Ben Lewis - This is a hard one to write about. There are very few friends that I can look back on and really remember their faces, but Ben is one of them for me. As I mentioned in the opening to this entry, my mom hated Ben, so we always had to find ways to trick my mom. I am not really sure how I met Ben. He just seems like the guy I just always knew. He was a year younger than me, so we were never in classes together. Ben and I were always doing things together, and Ben was the type of guy that just got to know people. He had very few inhibitions and wasn't shy at all. He would talk to anyone and say anything. He was just a real genuine human being. He wasn't the brightest person I have met, but when he was interested in something, he would learn everything he could about it. He loved Led Zeppelin, and read everything he could about the band. We both had similar tastes in music. I went to my first Crosby Stills and Nash concert with Ben. Ben and I were friends all through high school and beyond. Ben is the one that met the members of Jaxmyth, a band that I ended up managing for a short time. I also met my friend Steve through Ben. I could write a whole post on my friendship with Ben, and I might at some point. Ben and I kind of went our separate ways in our early 20's. Ben joined the military, and I would see him occasionally at one of the parades in Ypsi, and he would stop by the house parking whatever military vehicle he was driving in the parade on my front lawn. When I had my restaurant, Ben stopped in one time and we talked for hours after closing. He had bought a farm and was raising goats. He said when he was in Iraq, he got to hang out with some of the goat herders, and when he came home, he told his wife that was what he wanted to do. We had become friends on Facebook, and we found out we shared an interest in brewing beer. He shared a spent grain bread recipe with me, and we talked of getting together to brew sometime, but it never happened. One night I saw him online, and he posted a cryptic post about going down the rabbit hole, and no one was going to be able to find him. I watched some of the replies go back and forth and assumed he had been drinking. About a week later his wife posted on his page that he had died. It took me a while, but I eventually reached out to his brother and asked what happened. He said that Ben suffered from PTSD after several tours in Iraq, and he hung himself that night. I was stunned. You always think there is going to be time to reconnect with people you once knew, but I missed that opportunity with Ben. 

Jennifer Rocca - After Lisa met Tony, I started spending more time with Jennifer, her little sister. I can't remember if she was one or two years younger than Lisa, but we were in high school at the same time, and we had hung out quite a bit as a group. Jennifer and I would go and see movies together and later we reconnected online several times, but lost touch when I was in my twenties. I really would have liked to have dated Jennifer, and often wished I had, but I was afraid to ask her out because I thought it would be too weird being that Lisa had been one of my closest friends. 

Brad Smith - I met Brad when I was in high school. He went to Gabriel Richard catholic school, and I went to Community High. We had lunch at the same time, and we hung at at the same park down by the river. At the time he was friends with Bill Magliano who I already knew, and we became friends. Brad was a year older than I was which worked out well because he got his license before me. I remember we used to go to movies quite a bit, this was the 80's, and that really was the main source of entertainment. We also spent a fair amount of time at Flipper McGees (The Crosseyed Moose) pinball arcade on Liberty next to the Michigan theater. Right before his senior year in high school, Brad moved to Pennsylvania to live in his family home. Ben and I visited him there one summer, and Brad lived at my house for a summer. I also Visited him one time with Tanya while she was visiting her fiance in Pittsburgh. Ben and I also visited Brad at school in Erie Pennsylvania when he was in college. 

Tanya Fak - I had almost forgotten about Tanya until I wrote the passage above. She was another person I met through Ben. She was going to U of M in chemical engineering when I met her. She had a 3 year old son and was working evenings at the gas station behind Ben's house. To say I had a crush on her would be an understatement. Ben and I used to hang out with her at the gas station every night she worked, and we got to be really good friends. Then we started hanging out with her at her apartment and we would help out with her son. She eventually decided to give up on engineering. I had her talk to my dad, and he tried to talk her out of it, but she ended up switching majors. She had a boyfriend who lived in Pittsburgh named Mark Polumbo. We took a road trip together so she could visit him and I would go visit Brad. She had an old Ford Pinto that could barely make it through the hills, but we had a great time. I dropped her off at her boyfriends and she let me use her car to see Brad. I don't believe she finished at the U of M. She moved away to live with Mark, but she did invite Ben and I to her wedding. It was really nice, and it was great to see her again. I was a little heartbroken, but she seemed very happy. I haven't seen her since the wedding.

Bill Magliano - What can I say about Bill, he is like a bad penny that just keeps showing up. I don't mean that in a bad way, it just seems like every five to ten years we go through periods of hanging out. I am not sure when we first met, but I thought it was before high school. I think he originally lived near my neighborhood. We knew each other in high school. Then we met again when I was in my twenties and played a lot of darts together at Cross Street. Then when I owned my restaurant, he was living in an apartment next door for a while and remained in the area. I saw him quite a bit when I had the restaurant. For a while he was kind of dating April, one of my employees. We went out for beers at the corner brewery fairly often back then. At some point in there he met Kristen and ended up getting married, so I haven't seen him as often since. Every now and then I run into him, so I am sure that is a friendship that will remain.

Steve Wells - Steve was another friend I met through Ben, and he also worked at the gas station behind Ben's house. When I met Steve he had a daughter. He lived in a trailer park in Ypsi with his girlfriend Terri. We both had an interest in guitars, and we enjoyed playing darts at Cross Street. He helped out with Jaxmyth for a while. At one point he and Terri broke up, and he lived with me for a time until he decided to move to Florida where his mom was. We kept in contact while he was in Florida. He patched things up with Terri and moved back to Michigan. He had a son named Michael, and they lived in Terri's dads trailer. Her dad was bed ridden with MS, so they had to care for him until he died. After he died the trailer park kicked them out because their trailer was too old and was no longer grandfathered. Steve and Terri and there two kids moved into my basement. This was when I met Lori, Forrest's mom. She was Terri's neighbor, and when they moved in, Lori started coming around. Greg was still living with me at this point, so my house was starting to feel like a flop house. When the recession hit in 92, I lost my job and really struggled to find work. This was probably the lowest point in my life. I started dating Lori, and Greg started dating one of Lori's friends, and eventually I got work, and everyone moved out except for Lori. That happened a couple years after Forrest was born. Terri and Steve broke up again, and Steve and I kind of lost touch. I saw him one time after that and he said he was living with a new girlfriend in Howell. After that I never saw him again. I looked for him for years, but I could never find him. A couple of years ago, he reached out to me on Facebook, and we have chatted a few times. Another one of those, we should get together and catch up, but it never happens. 

JaxMyth -Corky Dumford, Bobby Soxx (Robert Peterson), and Aaron Carson. I was going to list each of these separately, but for the most part the Corky was the only one I did anything without the others unless it was coincidentally being at the bar at the same time. I will write a separate post about my time with the band at some point. Again I met the members of the band through Ben. I believe Ben worked with Corky at a restaurant, and Ben and Aaron became lifelong friends. Bobby Soxx was the leader of the band. He was vocals and lead guitar. He was the oldest in the group, and I believe he was from Ohio. I would say Bobby and I were friends, but we were more down to business than with the other two. Aaron was probably the most interesting of the group. His father had been the head of the Detroit Highwaymen motorcycle club, and when he was a teenager, his father fell off a boat on Strawberry lake and drown. The body wasn't found until a year later. The motor cycle club had been under investigation for racketeering and several other thing, so the FBI though Aaron's dad faked his death to avoid the law. Aaron said that entire year he was followed by the feds everyday. The body had been stuck on the bottom of the lake, and in the spring when the ice melted it surfaced. The coolest memory I have of Corky is going on a road trip to visit his mom. She lived on the west site of the state near Otsego. It was  a rural area, and Otsego was a small town. We went into the town and visited the Otsego Inn and had drinks. The coolest part of the weekend was when Corky showed me a motel that was just sitting out in the middle of the woods abandoned. It wasn't near any real roads, they were more like trails. He said it was Al Capone's. I guess when he was laying low from the cops, he would cross lake Michigan and hang out at his hotel in the woods with some of his guys. I wish I had taken a camera with me, I would have loved to have a picture of the place. Of course this is a long time before cell phones and digital photography. Last year I saw a notice on the Cross Street Station Facebook page letting people know that Bobby Soxx has ALS. I donated to the gofundme page they setup, but shortly after that I saw another message listing his obituary. I recently did a search for Aaron Carson and found his obituary from 2016. I am not sure what he died of, but I saw that he is survived by his mother. Through a little bit of searching, I found that Corky was playing in a band somewhere in Florida. I couldn't find any personal information, just info about the band, but I saw a picture and it was definitely him.

Jeff Liesinger - I met Jeff while working at Liebherr in Saline. He was one of the designers in the front office, and I worked in the back doing inventory and random jobs. I was taking classes at the time, so it was really just a part time job. Of all the friends I have had through the years, Jeff probably had the best sense of humor of them all. He always quick with a one liner. We played on a dart team together for a couple of years with Phil called The Blues. When I bought my house, Jeff was happy to come over and help with the demolition projects. I have a lot of memories of Jeff, but my 22nd birthday is one that always comes to mind. I had told Jeff that I had sat at home alone for my 21st birthday because I didn't want to go to Cross Street and have Erik know that I had been drinking underage for the past few years. Jeff had talked to Greg and arranged to leave the front door open when he went to work. Jeff came over and woke me up at 7 am with a 6 pack of beer in his hand. We picked up Steve since he was never working, and we spent the entire day celebrating my birthday. We ended up at Cross Street, and Erik did put two and two together, but he wasn't angry. Greg showed up at some point and agreed to be the designated driver. I have never started drinking in the morning since then, and I am sure I have never had that much to drink again. Jeff got married to Nichole a few years later. We drifted apart after I started dating Lori. Much like my mother, Lori seemed to like to embarrass me whenever my friends were around. I guess that explains why she and my mother still talk, and I don't talk to either of them. 

Phil Lundy - I met Phil at the Cross Street Station. He was looking for a dart team and so was I, so we started The Blues dart team. I am pretty sure the first season Greg was on the team with us, but I don't think Jeff joined the team until later. I was still dating Julie when I first met Phil because I remember going to his house with her, and we tried to play guitars together. Phil could actually play, and I really couldn't, so I think we just ended up having a couple of beers. Phil's girlfriend and then wife Roni was very attractive, and we used to mess with them all the time. Actually that would have been Jeff that did the messing, I was just there laughing. At darts, Jeff would ask Phil if he had brought Jeff's darts, Jeff would say he was certain he left the on the headboard, and he and Roni would wink back and forth. Phil worked at a charter airline at the time, and he was also a pilot. He took Jeff and I on a couple of flights. My first time going to Put-In-Bay was with Phil in a 4 place Piper Cherokee. I remember leaving the airport in Put-In-Bay and I asked him how the auto pilot worked. He said that it had been broken for years and pressed the button. The plane was a rental, and apparently they have fixed the autopilot without telling Phil. The plane banked and started heading toward the monument at the center of the island. Phil turned off the autopilot and got the plane under control going away from the monument, but there were a few seconds there where my heart rate went up. Like Jeff, I lost touch with Phil after Lori and I started dating. 

Keith and Marty - Keith and Marty are more barroom buddies than close friends. I knew them through Cross Street Station where we were all regulars. Keith had been in the military and was going to EMU for design. I am not sure what Marty was doing, I think he worked for a trucking company. Everyone picked on Marty because he looked like Art Garfunkel when he was young. Marty always seemed a little spaced out. The reason I mention these guys was because of a canoe trip I had planned. I had planned a two day canoe trip on the Pine River which is the fastest river in lower Michigan. At one point I had over a dozen people who were going to go on the trip and we were going to have 8 canoes. During the week before the trip, people started backing out. By Thursday night everyone had cancelled. I was at Cross Street Thursday night and I started telling Keith and Marty about it, and they both said they were free, and that they would love to go. I met Keith and Marty the next morning and we headed north for the Canoe trip. We ended up getting two canoes, and Keith and Marty were in one canoe, and I was in the other with the cooler full of beer. Things went to hell pretty much immediately. When Marty had said he didn't have much experience canoeing, what he meant was that he had absolutely none. As I started paddling my canoe away from shore, I could hear Keith yelling at Marty to steer to the left, but Marty took that as paddle on the left which made them turn right into me. They rammed my canoe and push it into a pier that that was standing alone about 15 feet from shore. My canoe turned over and all the beer fell out of the cooler and started bobbing their way downstream. Keith being a man who knows his priorities jumped out of his canoe in an attempt to rescue the beer. Meanwhile Marty was sitting in the front of their canoe drifting quickly downstream, and he started panicking. Turns out he neglected to mention that besides not knowing how to paddle, he also didn't know how to swim. He chose this moment to let us know. So here I was trying to get my canoe righted by myself with a half bungied cooler in the middle. Keith is swimming around like a mad man trying to catch the beer, and Marty is just sitting petrified in the front of their canoe as we are all being pulled downstream by a really fast current. This was all in the first 5 minutes of our trip. Keith finally abandoned his quest to get the beer and swam back to his canoe, I got my canoe to the shore, and got the water out. We ended up on opposite sides of the river, but we each got things settled and started paddling down the river. As we were paddling down the river we ran into group of guys who had seen our ordeal were nice enough to catch a bunch of our beer and return it to us. The rest of the trip was actually pretty smooth. The only issue we had was that we were running out of time to get to the pickup point to go back to the campground. We did make it, and camped the night. The next day we had some rapids, but we were pros by then. After the trip, our friendship remained what it was before, we played darts together at the bar and that was about it. 

Greg Work - I met Greg through darts at Cross Street. After my breakup with Julie, Greg was looking for a place to live, and I could use some help paying the bills, so Greg became my roommate. We both worked a regular day shift, and we both hung out at Cross Street and played darts. While we lived together that was pretty much our routine. When I started dating Lori, Greg met one of Lori's friends Gwen, and they started dating. He later moved in with Gwen and they got married. He asked me to be his best man. As the best man, it was my job to through him a bachelor party and give a speech. I failed miserably at both tasks. Gwen had made it clear that there was to be no strippers, so the party started at my house with a barbecue and drinks. I let everyone know that Gwen had said no strippers, so of course the others in the group decided that we had to go to the strip club. Our first stop was DeJa Vu. After paying our cover, Mike Osborne led us down to the front row and we all sat down. The woman on stage looked at Mike and said people in the front row were required to tip. Mike responded by saying if he saw something worth tipping for her would. We were immediately escorted out by security. Our options became very limited at this point, so we ended up going to Legs on the east end of town. Legs was not as picky about the manners of their patrons as DeJa Vu was. We sat at a table and had  few beers. Then I noticed that Ben and Aaron were at the bar. At this point Ben was already in the service and was home on leave. I invited them to join our party and we proceeded to do all the crazy things that you do at a bachelor party. Since I had bought beer for the party, we decided to take the party home for the rest of the evening. We drank and had a pretty good time most of the evening, but then something went wrong. I am not sure exactly what was said, but Ben and Greg started getting into it. Ben was pissed at Greg for something he said about being in the military, and both of their tempers were starting to rise. I never really knew what was said, Ben just kept saying to put on the green, and they kept going at it. I tried breaking them up, but after receiving a few fists thrown at me, I decided to just let them battle it out. Both of them were so drunk, I was surprised they were still standing. They fought for a bit, and things moved from the back of the house to the front of the house and that was pretty much the end of the party. Needless to say Gwen was not happy with me since Greg had a black eye for the wedding. I actually thought it was hilarious, but that is my sense of humor. My next failure happened at the reception. I had never done any kind of public speaking, and I was extremely shy, so the idea of giving a speech terrified me. It still does today, but I am definitely better now. I had planned a speech and practiced in the mirror, and I had a pretty good idea what I was going to say. I didn't write anything down though. I figured if I tried to read anything from paper, I would just lose my place and never get the speech out. That was some really bad logic to be sure. Gwen's maid of honor did an awesome job on her speech which really made me start to panic. Then the DJ gave me the mic, and I started in on my stuttered attempt at speaking. I got two or three sentences in and the mic went dead. The DJ fiddled with the mic for what seemed like an eternity, then got it working and handed it back to me. At that point my mind was completely blank. I couldn't remember what I had already said or what I had planned to say. I stood there frozen. I stammered out a few more words and did some kind of toast and then slunk off to drink away my embarrassment. Greg and I remained friends even after the wedding. We used to go to his house for bonfires and parties, but over time we stopped hanging out. I haven't seen him since I owned the restaurant. 

Darters - Darts has been a large part of my life since I was almost old enough to go to the bar. I can still remember hanging out at the Cross Street Station watching the people playing darts and thinking that looks like fun and a lot more productive than just sitting at the bar drinking. So I bought a set of Darts from Erik, and started playing. Through darts I met a lot of people, and I considered a lot of them pretty close friends. We didn't do much together besides darts, but I went on a lot of road trips with different people to tournaments and challenges between bars. It was really a fun sport. Some of the most notable people I played with were Chicken Man, Garry Elliot, Time Rose, Mike and Jackie, Mike Larno, James and Eric Christie, Judie Murphy, Perfect Steve, Pete Flemming, Doug and Theresa, and many many more. As Forrest has gotten old enough to play, we have been playing in leagues together, and it has been really cool to connect with so many people from my past and introduce them to my son.  

Erik Erikson - Erik was the owner of Cross Street Station. I first met him through JaxMyth when I was helping them get setup for gigs even before I was their manager. The played Cross Street fairly often on the weekends, and they were there just about every Wednesday night, so I was just known as being with the band. I got to know Erik pretty well, and as a result, I was never carded. I started going to Cross Street when I was 18, so I really did feel guilty on my 21st birthday and avoided going to the bar. I got to know Erik even more through darts, and at one point he even hired me to watch the front door and clean the bar at night. I even bar tended sometimes, but not as much as I would have liked. I would often hang around and talk with him at closing. He even helped me setup a kegerator at home. He gave me all the parts from the piles he had laying around in the basement of the bar. I really liked Erik and his wife Karen. I heard they divorced after closing the bar, and Erik ended up dying a few years back.  

Buffy - I met Buffy at Cross Street too. At the time she was married to guy named Noah. I remember he used to work in the building right behind Daedalus where I was working. After Forrest was born, I didn't go to Cross Street very often, so I didn't see Buffy for a while. After my divorce, I didn't get out very often, but one night I went out to the Ypsi-Arbor bowling alley for a luck of the draw, and Buffy and a number of my old friends were there. Buffy had gotten divorced and remarried. Her husband Andy was in the Navy, and they had been living in Hawaii. She had two kids, and they moved back to the Ann Arbor area. I met Andy several times and we started hanging out for while.Then we fell out of touch again, she got divorced, I got married, then I got divorced again, and we got back in touch. Our kids got to know each other, and I became friends with her boyfriend Dan, and we have stayed friends ever since. Forrest and I played on our first dart team together with Buffy in a summer league and we have been hooked on darts ever since. We have gone on camping trips and even spent a Christmas together with our two families. Buffy is one of the few friends that I have kept in contact with throughout the years.

Adolf - I can't remember what Adolf's last name was. He was the only friend I made through Lori. Adolf and a partner ran an auto service center out by the Ann Arbor airport. He was probably 10 years older than I was, and he was married to a woman named Pam and he had a stepson, and I think they had a little girl as well. I was working at Peer Data Systems when I met Adolf, and my boss was an avid golfer. I had never thought about learning to play gold up till then, but the way my boss described it, it sounded a lot more enjoyable than it looked on TV. Lori and I were hanging out with Adolf and Pam one night when I mentioned wanting to learn to golf. Adolf said he could teach me to golf. I went out and bought a set of clubs from Sams Club, and Adolf took me to this really basic course in Ypsi called Hickory Woods. The first time out, it was raining the entire time, but I really did enjoy it. We started golfing pretty regularly after that. The following year I joined a golf league with Adolf and his business partner, so we played every week that summer. After that I got my job at Detroit Diesel, and I wasn't able to make it to Saline for the league the next year. With my new job and then my divorce, I fell out of touch with Adolf. I learned a few years later that he dies of an aortic aneurysm. His death really troubled me because it was the first time that a contemporary of mine died of natural causes. It was one of the moments which made me really think of my mortality and how short life really is.  

Asher Hoodin - When I started Kartech, I got contacted by this kid from EMU. He had seen one of my ads somewhere, and he was looking for a job. He was very persistent, so I agreed to meet with him. I told him that I was just starting out, and I couldn't really afford to hire anyone. I said maybe we could work out some kind of commission thing if he wanted to try doing sales for me. We never really worked together, but we did become friends. He and his girlfriend had a son who was about a year younger than Forrest. When Asher and his girlfriend broke up, he would bring Michael over on weekends when he had visitation, and our kids would play together. We did a lot of things with the kids, and it was nice to have a single dad to hang out with. Once Forrest and I opened the restaurant, we really didn't have much time to hang out anymore, and we drifted apart. 

Marc Myrick - Marc was one of the first friends I made through professional contact. I was working at Detroit Diesel, and he was working at Carlin America, one of our distributors. I was originally sent over to help get them setup on the private wide area network that DDC had built. It was a great location because it was on my way home, and I could test solutions at a remote site, and they were able to get support. Marc and I became good friends. We both enjoyed boating and golf, and Marc had a condo on the lake. Shortly after Asher broke up with his girlfriend, Marc got a divorce as well, so the three of us would do things together with and without the kids. Marc left Carlin America to go to work for a real estate developer, and they hired me to replace all their computers at the site offices and build a VPN network to the servers at their headquarters. Marc and I have always had a large combination of working together and socializing together. Marc got married again to Angela who had a son named Noah, several years later they had a daughter Emily who was born on Halloween just like Forrest. Marc moved away to Las Vegas for a while. Then he came back to Michigan and bought a fish shop and restaurant on the west side of the state. We have kept in touch, but I really should make an effort to see him more. 

Dan Bice - Dan was another one of my early professional friendships. He worked in the training center at Detroit Diesel, and when I first started working there, we had to travel to Oklahoma for business together, and we became good friends. Dan is another one that has an extremely good sense of humor, and he was fun to be around. I really enjoyed working with him. One of Dan's favorite things to do outside of work was go and play laser tag. I went with him several times, and even took Forrest a couple of times. Dan really liked messing with Forrest. One time we went over to another co-workers house to help her dig a hole for an in ground pool. Forrest had a Woody doll from the toy story movie that he took everywhere. Dan spent all day arguing with Forrest telling him that woody was his. Dan left Detroit Diesel and we fell out of touch. He did stop by my restaurant one time to say hi, but that was the last time I saw him. 

Joe Kolasa - I worked with Joe Kolasa for about 10 years at Detroit Diesel. We had complimentary skill sets and worked on a lot of projects together. I really enjoyed working with Joe and consider him one of the best friends I have ever had. We didn't do much outside of work together. He had a family at home that was very active, and we lived in complete opposite directions from each other. For most of my time at Detroit Diesel I had a desk in an old bullpen area right next to Joe. We had so much in common, we were both tech geeks. We loved learning new things and bouncing ideas off of each other. Joe was more hardware oriented and I was more software, but we both worked in each others world enough to understand the other. He had a daughter about the same age as Sarah, and a son about the same age as Forrest, so we were always talking about our kids. When Detroit Diesel decided to let Joe go, they let me go on the same day. I got called to come back a year later, but it was never the same without Joe there. He went on to work at Comcast as a regional engineer. I have never had a friend like Joe before or since.

Laurie Mitchel - After my first divorce, I went through a long period where I had very little social contact outside of work and family. Being a single parent, I needed to find people to do things with outside of the darting and bar scene. I met Laurie at the marshmallow drop at Frog Island in Ypsilanti. She was a volunteering with the Ypsilanti Jaycees, and she was recruiting new members. I gave her my contact information and we got together a week later. I met the president of the chapter and some other people. The gave me the whole sales pitch, and I told them Forrest and I would be interested. I joined and we started going to Jaycee functions. Laurie was our first friend in the group, but we met a lot of people through the Jaycees who I am still friends with today. When I bought the restaurant, Laurie was very supportive, and she even had us cater her rehearsal dinner for her wedding. We went on several camping trips and trips to museums and amusement parks. Forrest and I both had a really good time in the Jaycees, and it was all thanks to Laurie's enthusiasm. Forrest really enjoyed working in the haunted house they used to run. He was so young that he fit in really small and easy to hide places. I have only seen Laurie a couple of times since we closed the restaurant. She is another person I should work harder to keep in contact with.

April Meehleder - When I was thinking about purchasing Schramms Deli, I worked a catering job with Frank, to see what the catering side of the business was like. None of the employees knew I was looking to buy the business. I met April that night, and then I got to know her after I bought the restaurant. April was a great employee, and we got along really well. Right after I bought the restaurant, I ran into Bill Magliano again. I am not sure if he had been dating April or if he wanted to date her, but I started hanging out with Bill and April outside of work, and April and I became good friends. I was really sad when she graduated and moved away. She was one of my original employees and they were all really special. 

Erin Skiffington - Over the years, I had lot of wonderful employees that I really considered close friends. Erin was one of the best friends I had. She was getting her teaching degree in math, and we had a lot in common. We would regularly go to the Corner Brewery after work. She liked craft beer, and we never ran out of things to talk about. Her boyfriend was really involved in political groups in college, so our conversation were always very interesting. The unfortunate thing about owning a restaurant was that it is a temporary job for all your employees. I would have close friendships like this one, then they would graduate and move away. I haven't seen Erin since she graduated, but I remember her as one of my closest friends.  

Clay Byrd - When I think of the days when Forrest and I owned the restaurant, I almost automatically think of Clay. Clay was the most interesting character I have ever worked with. He would describe himself as super gay, and he was as different from me as you could get. He was into women fashion, models, female pop stars, and pretty much anything I was not into. He had no interest in science or technology. Even though we had nothing in common, we had a really good time hanging out. Clay had an infectious sense of humor, and it was a lot of fun tormenting him with my lack of knowledge of current music and acting stars. I remember one time he mentioned something about Beyonce, and I said who is that, I really thought Clay was going to have a heart attack. I guess she was his favorite singer and he kind of worshiped her. I think I had heard of her, but I couldn't tell you what she sang. Clay was also very close with Forrest. One of the things I really missed about closing the cafe was not seeing clay anymore. He is still in town, and I run into him every now and then, but we haven't hung out since the cafe closed. 

Dave Sterling - I met Dave and Liam through the cafe, and as usual, I think Forrest met them first. They were part of the social group that included a lot of the people on the neighborhood, and I ended up gaining a lot of common friends through Dave and Liam. In most things, I usually did things with both Dave and Liam at the same time, but I also did several things with Dave seperately. We were both interested in brewing beer and made several trips to the brew store together and we were also both golfer, so we did that to. So even though I considered Dave and Liam both really close friends, I had more in common with Dave. Dave and Liam invited me to several Mud Hens baseball games including two opening day events. I am not a baseball fan, or any sport for that matter, but I really did enjoy going to those games with them. I actually learned a bit about baseball from them which made it really enjoyable. Dave and Liam got married a couple of years ago in Vegas. Forrest and I were invited, so we took a vacation to Vegas and had a great time celebrating with Dave and Liam. We met them there, and went to a world famous tiki bar, then visited Freemont Street. I was really happy to have had the chance to be a part of their wedding. Dave got a job in Missouri a couple of years ago, so they moved away. They still come back and visit every now and then, and even made it to our annual Halloween / Forrest's birthday party. I really do miss hanging out with both of them.

Kurt Anschuetz - I met Kurt through the restaurant. Kurt has a pretty strong social group in town that includes neighbors and old friends. They all seem to be a part in one way or another of Team Smoot. Kurt is probably the most interesting character I have ever known. He lives an almost bohemian lifestyle, and if there is an off the wall event anywhere in the world, he will organize a team to participate in it. Team Smoot has competed in the international Rock Paper Scissors contest, They have competed in the national dreidel competition. I think they also competed in skeeball competition in New York. He also travels all over the country to see different types of musical acts, mostly roots music. As with most people associated with the restaurant, Forrest met Kurt and the rest of team smoot before I did. Forrest used to deliver food to the brewery, and every time he would walk in the door, if Kurt or any of the team were there, they would chant Luwak over and over again. Technically I live in the same neighborhood as Kurt, but I am more on the outskirts, so I have never been involved in the neighborhood events. Kurt started including me by inviting me to parties, and I got to know a lot of the neighbors as well as a lot of other friends of Kurt. They all seemed to be interconnected. When the cafe was struggling, Kurt offered to step in and help out during the day when I was at work. I appreciated the help, but in the end, the business was too far gone, and we had to close. We remained friends after the cafe and Kurt and I were both part of the neighborhood beer brewing group. Kurt is someone who cares deeply about the community and gets involved to make the city a better place for everyone. I am lucky to have him as a friend. I don't see him as much as I used to when Dave and Liam were around, but we are still very close.

Fritz Passow - I met Fritz my first day of owning Cafe Luwak. The previous owner had mentioned Fritz to me, and he told me that he was a Java programmer. From that first meeting, we got along really well. We both shared a strong love for technology and just basic geekiness. Fritz had worked a couple of corporate jobs, and he moved to the area to be close to his brother. He was taking a break from the corporate world when he got the job at the cafe. If the previous owner hadn't sold the business to me, I doubt he would have stuck around very long, but he ended up working for me for several years. In the beginning, April and I used to go out for beers after a Friday or Saturday night shift, and we always asked Fritz to come along. At first he would politely decline, but then he started hanging out with us. He would always only have one beer, and then leave. Eventually, he started having a couple of beers, and hanging out more and more. Eventually Fritz met Laura and they started dating, and as things sometimes do, they got pretty serious. Fritz came to me one day and said that he was going to get married, so I he was going to have to find a real job. After Fritz left the cafe, I saw him every now and then when he and Laura would come in for breakfast or lunch. Then one day he asked me if I still went to the corner on Saturday nights. I said I always go if there is someone to hang out with. He said Laura had suggested that he start hanging out again. Fritz and I have been meeting up for a couple of beers almost every Saturday night since. It is such a regular thing with us, that we only confirm when we are not going to make it. I consider Fritz one of my nearest and dearest friends. I am very happy that we have stayed in contact with each other all these years.

Tom Dodd - I am going to close out this list with Tom. I met Tom in High school, he was the equivalent of my home room teacher, in my high school they called the forums. Tom had a huge impact on my life both in school and out of school. When I was in school I remember him letting me take one of his humor classes and getting a speech credit for it because I was terrified of public speaking. He also said something in one of the classes that really stuck with me through my life. He said "when you go out in the world and get a corporate job, when they give you the company policy manual, the first thing you should ask is what the policy is for changing the company policy". The lesson was that you shouldn't just accept the world for what it is, but question authority, and fight for change when needed. My first time seeing Depot Town was when I was in his class. He asked if anyone would be willing to help him move. He owned a building in Depot Town, and had lived in the loft apartment, but he had bought a house, and he needed help moving. I helped with the move. Years later when I was working at Cross Street, I saw Tom again. It had been the first time since high school, and we sat and talked for a little while. The next time I saw Tom was after I bought the restaurant. Tom came in and gave me a copy of a book he had written about Depot Town, and we reconnected and became really close friends. Tom was involved with all sorts of community groups including the Depot Town Association. They would have their meetings at my place and Tom often came in during the day for a meal or coffee. He still published the Depot Town Rag, and for a couple of years he paid Forrest to deliver copies to the business in town. After I closed the restaurant in 2010, I didn't see Tom again. He died a few years later. 

There are so many people who touched my life over the years. As I was writing this list, I kept thinking of other people I had forgotten about, but this post is already so long, I had to stop adding people at some point. I know writing a list like this is probably not that interesting to other people, but that really isn't what this blog is for. These are people that I want to remember, and I want my children and grandchildren to be able to read about the small details in my life. Each friendship you make in life shapes who you are and who you become. I hope I have many years left, and that I will have the opportunity to add more names to this list.