How do you start a story about a road like Route 41? I live in Chicago, so I'm near the northern end of the journey, and a flip of the coin says we'll go north first, back to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, to drive through the cathedral again.
Will it be like it was that first time, awe-inspiring, or will it be one of those times when you go back and it's not as good as it was the first time? Have you ever experienced that, you go somewhere, maybe on a vacation, have a wonderful time, and the next time you go back, it's a big disappointment? Why does that happen? Why does it sometimes seem that the things that we would like to see stay the same forever, are constantly changing, and the things that we would like to see change, the things that we would like to see improved generally, that these things remain the same?

So we go to the upper peninsula and then head south, through the small communities of the U.P. (that's what they call the Upper Peninsula, the U.P.). We'll stop in little towns where they sell pasties, little meat pies that the Cornish descendants make. Their ancestors came from Wales to mine the copper from the hills at the base of the Keweenaw peninsula, the peninsula on a peninsula.
For a miner come from the old country, working the mines of upper Michigan was no different than the darkness of the mines back home. So they came, to start a new life in a land of opportunity, and they brought their customs and their food with them.
We stop and buy a pastie, and yes, it's true what they say of food from the British Isles, dull and boring, and a pastie leaves this reputation unsullied. But try one anyhow. Who knows, YOU might like it.

As we travel south, we'll pass through the tourist areas of Michigan and Wisconsin, where summer brings the vacationers from the big cities of Milwaukee and Chicago. These summer sojourners trek north to their summer homes on little lakes dotted around Wisconsin and the U.P. The talk starts in the spring, "have you opened up the cottage yet?".
Weekends in the spring bring the families, to open up the cottages. Then when school gets out in June, Mom and the kids become part-time residents, and Dad comes up (to the cottage) on weekends.

Have you ever had a second home in a vacation area? I remember when I was young, my Dad has a summer cottage on Paw Paw lake, in Watervliet, Michigan.
We would go up late in the spring and open the cottage up. Granma Ryan would stay there throughout the summer. It would take a day or so to get everything set up, and then the summer routine would set in. Town wasn't that far away, so we walked there. The Army-Navy Surplus store was the big attraction.
When it got hot, we'd go for a swim, either at our own beach off our pier, or down to the county beach where we could watch the girls and dream about working up enough nerve to go talk to them.
Dad was going to set me up with Smitty's daughter. Smitty owned the local grocery store, and his daughter was about my age, gloriously beautiful, and mature in the way that teenage girls are, compared to teenage boys of the same age. My body was still searching for puberty, and would do so throughout all of high school and beyond.
Clearly, she was out of my league, but Dad was going to set me up with her. It didn't happen, but there was excitement for awhile, anticipating this thing that would never come to pass. Almost as good as it really happening. Daydreams for days, about me and Smitty's daughter, but it never happened.

Dad did own a boat, but it didn't run most of the time, and he was not very mechanically inclined (a trait which I can tell you is inherited, it's in the genes). But the guys and I would get on it, tied up at the pier, and we would pretend we were going somewhere, or play pirate. It's amazing how far you can go on a little imagination.

At night, we would go swimming in the dark. Have you ever done that? You walk out into the lake, maybe the moon is out and it throws a little light on the water, or the lights from the cottages around the lake reflect off the water.
You swim out a little, and then just float slowly in circles, taking in the peace and quiet. The only sound is the quiet slapping of the waves against the shore. You dive down under the water and open your eyes in the blackness, and it's almost like you're in some other world.
Coming up, you notice the patchwork of the trees against the darkened sky, an eerie Rorschach Test of lines and angles and shades of dark. Of course, if you are of an impressionable age, it doesn't take much imagination to begin envisioning monsters and creatures all around you, and so you hustle out of the water and into the house, and coming in too quickly, your face gives you away, and Dad and the others sense your fear and tease you about it.

Vacation homes bring a new set of friends and enemies. My step-sister was an enemy. Not that I wanted her to be an enemy, not that I wanted to be her enemy; she had made a decision. I guess she was fearful that this interloper, this natural-born son would somehow or other dethrone her from her seat of power. See, Dad had remarried, this being about the third or fourth time, and so had inherited a step-daughter as part of the deal. But I lived with Mom, and just visited Dad for awhile in the summer.

I avoided her, this step-sister. I made friends with some whom she had known first, and they became my friends, and we all avoided her. Funny how some of us seem to come by bad manners naturally.
I'm sure her mother, who was always nice to me, didn't sit this young lady down one day and say to her, "be sure to treat Larry poorly", it just came naturally, as it does to so many. I wondered why, and years later, would understand that such behavior arises out of fear. Fear or fears. The competition for attention, the insecurity of wondering whether we are loved or not.
Moms and Dads are so busy trying to keep things together that they overlook the little things that make all the difference; the spending of time, the listening, the playing together. Time is money, the saying goes, but I think time is much more valuable than money. Spend time with your children rather than money, and see what a wonderful investment it is.

Thousands of people pour out of the cities of the Midwest, and end up in summer homes in places like Wisconsin and Michigan and Indiana, and they run up and down route 41 to get there. Route 41 is the denominator they have in common, as they drive hither and thither up and down it, to and from summer homes next to quiet lakes, homes with piers jutting out into the lake, and boats tied up alongside. Maybe a few of them swim out into the lake at night, in the dark, but almost all of them fail to see the boogieman that is there.