Road Trip

It's time to head out of the City, Bay City that is, and point the jalopy towards Music City. We hear there is a ginormous flea market there this weekend and we're going to check it out for ourselves. Don't you just love this old photo? This was actually taken in front of our general store many many years ago. When one of these contraptions pulled in front of the store I'm quite sure it drew a crowd. For Bay City that could be 5 or 6 people! These vehicles drew crowd just like these old paddlewheelers draw a crowd still today. They travel our river with a quiet and stately grace. They sneak up on you. You can be minding your own business plugging away at the computer or washing dishes and glance up and there one is right outside our window. Sadly 2008 was the last year they will cruise the rivers of this great fly-over country. The economy has caught up with them too. We will miss the Queens..........their appearance always caused quite a stir in these parts no matter how many times you had seen one. The news would travel fast up and down the river.........DJ, this is Calvin, a Queen is headed down river! Jerry, this is DJ, DQ is coming! Homer, DQ alert, grab your camera! And no matter what we were doing, we'd grab our cameras and binoculars and head to the riverfront to watch their graceful passing. Sometimes on a really quiet day we could hear the riverlorian telling the passengers "Folks, this is Bay City, where they shot the airplane crash scene from U.S. Marshals starring Tommy Lee Jones." One of the Queens even stopped Hollywood during the filming so they could all watch her stately cruise up river. Good-bye Queens! Thanks for all the good memories!