When we turned sixteen,
my best friend, Butch Johnson,
was the first kid in the tenth grade
to have his own car,
a 1939 Ford coupe,
seating
three in the front seat,
three in the rumble seat,
and two on the running boards.
Our gang cruised the loop
on weekend evenings,
circling the main streets
of twin cities Menominee and Marinette,
starting at Electric Square,
so named because it was
Menominee’s first intersection
to have electric lights.
We’d pass the churches and the courthouse
on Ogden Avenue,
whistling at the girls out for a walk.
Talking about teen stuff,
mostly sex, which nobody
knew anything about
though it was still more than I knew.
When we stopped
at Menominee’s sole traffic light
and another kid drove up
a drag race was obligatory,
with the two cars accelerating
down Ogden Ave.
up to fifty miles per hour.
Then we’d stop for gas at the
Zephyr station next to the Interstate Bridge,
nineteen point nine cents per gallon
except when a local gas war was on
and it dropped to
nine-point-nine.
Each rider chipped in
a nickel or a dime,
plenty to cover
fuel expenses
for the evening.
The half-mile Interstate Bridge
spanned
the Menominee River,
connecting the two towns,
terminating at its south end
in
downtown Marinette at Dunlap Square
where
we’d see our twelfth-grade high school
social studies teacher, Ferdie Davis,
strolling with a fellow teacher
and
discussing literature or philosophy.
We might stop at the A&W in Marinette
for a root beer float.
Passing my grandpa’s drug store, the Dew Drop Inn,
and the Salvation Army on Main Street
we entered Menekaunee,
originally a fishing village
and now
notorious
as the region’s toughest
neighborhood,
including a strip
of six rough-and-tumble bars
where it was rumored
that someone would get murdered
almost ever weekend.
Then we drove across the Menekaunee Bridge,
a drawbridge that opened when sailboats
left Green Bay and headed for their river harbor,
an irksome nuisance for impatient teenage drivers,
and headed north on Sheridan Road,
passing Menominee’s finest homes along the bay shore,
and returning to Electric Square
where we would start our trip all over again.
Now, some seventy years later,
each time I visit my home town
the first thing I do
is to
cruise the loop.
