Midland Meanderings

Since Brugger's folks in Midland, Michigan, are getting up there in years and require more help than they did once upon a time, we do our best to venture northward and spend time with them several times a year. This was the week for our Spring trip, which coincidentally fell over Easter weekend.

Waiting for Del & Fern to pick us up from the airport as the rain pours down

Friday, April 18, 2025
Because getting an even remotely reasonable rate for flights typically means traveling at the least desirable times of day, Brugger and I got up at 4:00 a.m. and drove to Greensboro for a 7:15 a.m. Delta Airlines flight to Saginaw (MBS) by way of Detroit (DTW). Both outbound flights were slow to get off the ground but made up time in the air, so we arrived in Saginaw right on time at 11:15 a.m. Shortly thereafter, Del & Fern arrived to pick us up, and so, off we zoomed to Casa di Brugger. Rain was coming down in blinding sheets, and driving proved kind of hazardous, but we thankfully made it to our destination damp but none the worse for wear.

 

I'd had a miserable night, with less than three hours of sleep, so once we were settled in, Brugger and I half-zonked out for a little while. We needed groceries and other provisions, so once she and I had at least partly regained our senses, we made our traditional first-day-in-Midland pilgrimage to Meijer...which was a freaking madhouse. Usually, things in this town are pretty mellow, but Judas Priest...I've never seen such a frenetic, wall-to-wall, oppressive bunch of human beings seething and roiling in confined spaces since I lived in Chicago. Oy! Anyhoo, we stocked up with goodies, I grabbed a geocache, and back to the barn we flew.

 

For dinner, Ms. B. and I headed to Molasses, where they smoke the best dead animal this side of Hillsborough, NC. The Three Amigos sandwich—loaded with brisket, pulled pork, and bacon—may be the finest concoction of smoked meats anywhere. The accompanying Maple Old Fashioned didn't cause me any grief, either. Once done, I sought and found another nearby geocache, and then we returned to the casa, to spend the rest of the evening in traditional fashion: with the family in front of the downstairs TV.

I didn't make it very late.

The Three Amigos sandwich with dill potato salad at Molasses in Midland

Saturday, April 19, 2025

Having been seriously sleep deprived the past few nights, I slept in a little later than usual this morning. Once up and reasonably refreshed, I set out after some geocaches, the first couple of which were out on the Père Marquette Rail Trail, near downtown Midland. The morning started out dreary and cold, with a stiff wind blowing, but after a while, the sun came out and I warmed up very quickly. Once off the trail, I parked the car at a fairly central location near downtown and set out on foot after several more caches. Most of them were quick and easy, but at one of them, I dropped the unique container as I was returning it to its proper location, and...horror of horrors...I was unable to find it again. I never like to be responsible for losing anyone's cache, so I drove up to Meijer, picked up some implements to fashion a replacement, and returned to the scene of the accident. It's not the world's most permanent solution, but I hope the substitute container will hold up until the cache owner can set it back to rights, if he so desires.

 

At the Jefferson Street overpass above Highway U.S. 10, one of the nationwide "Hands Off!" protests of the current administration was going on, so I headed over to support the effort; I didn't realize an advance sign-up was required, though (I'm guessing because a limited number of people could occupy the bridge at the same time), so I sufficed to drive by and offer some serious honking and waving to show solidarity. I don't know how much good these protests stand a chance of doing, but it is heartening to see the growing pushback against the malignant policies of a narcissistic, moronic tool who's done more damage to this country, our international relations/alliances, and basic human rights than any other in my lifetime, if not ever. I'm glad to see increasing resistance from official quarters as well, and it's more than about time.

 

For dinner, Ms. B. slow-cooked a pork tenderloin all day to make Bahn-Mi rice bowls. We'd made this dish at home a while back, and it was good, so the folks were keen on trying it out. This time... it was even better. One of Brugger's finest concoctions! 

Art under the U.S. 10 overpass on the Pere Marquette Rail Trail

The trail along the Titabawassee River

The Currie Street suspension bridge viewed from the trail

View of the "Hands-Off" bridge takeover (from the event's webpage)

Brugger's pulled pork banh mi rice bowl. Delicious!

Afterward, I spent some time writing, and Ms. B. had freelance work she needed to complete. Eventually, we retired to the downstairs den for our traditional family time, mainly watching some of Del & Fern's favorite evening shows. A most welcome, mellow evening.

Tomorrow...believe it or not...we are going to church with the folks.

Sunday, April 20, 2025

There's a bing-bonging clock in the house that chimes the hour, starting at 6:00 a.m., and it usually doesn't wake me up, but today it did. I lay there for a while but didn't go back to sleep, so when the chiming started again at 7:00, I staggered on out of bed. It was as well that I did because I wanted to start prepping our midday dinner fairly early. Fern had very kindly prepared some breakfast for me—waffles and sausage, which were delicious—so once I'd laid waste to those and fortified myself with coffee, I commenced to chopping up steaks, browning the meat in the skillet, and dropping it in the crock pot. If all goes as planned, it'll turn into Beef Stroganoff somewhere around 1:00 p.m.

 

I still had plenty of time before getting ready for church, so I went walking after a couple of newer geocaches less than a mile from the casa. I found those with no problem and then hoofed it back home.

 

So, off to church we went, and Del & Fern saw many of their friends they hadn't seen in some time, many of whom knew Kim. The services there are "contemporary," with a band that plays modern Christian music. Today, it was an uplifting, to-the-point message with lots of rocking Christian tunes. If you follow me, you probably know I'm not exactly "of the faith," but I grew up in it, and my experiences were generally positive. I know a lot of people who can't say that. For today, the only thing that has really pissed me off was Trump's disgusting, wholly false, and inappropriate Easter message. "Unfit" is a gross understatement. Whatever failings this country has ever had in the past—with our policies, our politicians, our relationships—Trump exemplifies everything that we as a country should never be.

Thing is, in that church we went to this morning, that awful human being clearly has an awful lot of devoted fans. I do not approve.

 

The Beef Stroganoff turned out to be fantastic. As with most of my concoctions, I'll probably never quite reproduce it since I rarely use an actual recipe, and when I do, I usually turn it inside out before all is said and done. And dammit, I forgot to buy parsley, which I like to throw on top of the dish, both for garnish and because parsley is delicious.

During the afternoon, I put in some serious writing time and a bit of fussing on Facebook. Ms. B. had to work on some more freelance projects, but after she finished, we needed to make another provision run to Meijer. I found some oysters, so I made oyster stew for my supper—which was fantastic, no matter what any of the non-aficionados of snotty shellfish in the house (which is all of them) might tell you. And we ended the shopping outing by hunting a geocache, which was marginally challenging and a lot painful, given the particular variety of greenery sheltering its hiding place.

 

I may have overtaxed my brain "debating" some contentious points with people on Facebook, but sometimes, it's what I must do. Apart from that, for the rest of the evening, we spent our traditional family time in front of the television. And that's all kinds of perfect.

Midland Nazarene Church

The plated Beef Stroganoff (sans parsley). Delicious!

Monday, April 21, 2025

I woke up before dawn to the sound of crashing thunder and heavy raindrops on the roof. The storm didn't last long, though, so I went back to sleep and remained oblivious even through the bing-bonging of the living room clock until I crawled out of bed about 8:00 a.m. Coffee. Coffee! COFFEE!

 

Midland is full of squirrels, more than anyplace I've ever visited, I'm pretty sure. Gray squirrels, black squirrels,  red squirrels, and big brown fox squirrels. In Virginia, we have lots of grays, mostly small and skinny, but here, like most of the wildife, squirrels grow big and chubby. And most of them are tamer than our skittish little guys back home. Once Ms. B. got up and going, she went out to the backyard to feed critters, and one big fox squirrel came around and immediately made friends with her. This one didn't eat out of her hand, as some have been known to do here, but he was perfectly relaxed and ready for Ms. DeMille to take his close-up.

Sometimes, one finds odd things when out geocaching. The rain appeared to have let up for a while, so I headed out mid-morning to seek a few caches. I found all but one of them, which appeared to be missing; I found only a wire hanger where there should have been a container. At the base of its host tree, though, there were two dead little critters with a few rocks and sticks placed around them. I'm guessing one or more youngsters found the poor animals but also found the cache and removed it. I notified the cache owner, who indicated he'll replace it.

 

On Ashman Street, there's a house whose yard, every Halloween, is decorated with about a hundred skeletons, including one of the twelve-foot-tall variety. Looks like the big fellow has become a permanent fixture there. Fun stuff.

After lunch, the rest of the family went on a shopping excursion, while I stayed home to work on my current novel-in-progress. It was a productive session.

 

For a long time now, it has been clear that telemarketers have mercilessly targeted my in-laws. Because their landline rings every five to ten minutes all day, every day, I've recommended that Fern turn off the ringer and let the calls go straight to their answering machine; however, she doesn't much want to do that because they also receive a handful of legitimate calls each day. After a persistent, infuriating series of bell rings this afternoon, Fern finally yelled at the caller, "No, I'm not interested, I'm tired hearing from you, and why don't you just go into your bathroom and play with yourself?!"

 

You tell 'em, Fern.
 

Family time and bed. And g'night.

Tuesday, April 22, 2025

Coffee and bacon and eggs, oh my! What a fine breakfast!

Kimberly had to take her mom to a doctor appointment this morning, so I spent the morning getting in a couple of miles of walking and then writing. Again, I made decent progress. Once they got back, we went out and helped her folks with some yard work that needed doing.

Ms. B. wanted to visit an arts & crafts store in Saginaw, about thirty minutes away, so after lunch, we drove over. She headed into the store, and I headed after a couple of nearby geocaches. One of the containers was a 3-D-printed tiki figure (at left), which was kind of cool. About 30 minutes after I dropped her off, Brugger called, so I returned to pick her up. From there, we went after a couple of more hides, my favorite being one that was about 20 feet up in a big pine tree. Tree caches are among my favorite kinds, and it's been a long time since I've had a good tree climb, so this one really hit the spot. I didn't even fall out and go boom!

L: Starting the ascent; R: Hey, where's the old dude?

Oh, there he is!

At the cache

That pretty much did it for the afternoon caching, and so, from there, we returned to Midland and decided to visit Whichcraft Taproom, one of our semi-regular bar & grill hangouts in downtown. We enjoyed a couple of refreshing beverages, and then we hauled ourselves out for dinner at Fuji Sushi, the best of the Japanese/Asian restaurants we've found in Midland (there are some newer ones we haven't tried, so we'll be giving them a go on a future trip, no doubt). The sushi was very, very good, though—as with so many restaurants now—instead of a large variety of fish, you get three pieces of three different fishies. Definitely tasty, but I much prefer having several options on the plate.

Back at the casa, I had a Lovecraft eZine book discussion podcast to attend. Tonight's story discussion was "The Dunwich Horror," which is one of my favorite H.P. Lovecraft tales. It was a good discussion, as we all had unique perspectives on the story, and several of us rated it very differently in the "HPL Favorites" column. Tonight's discussion was for Patreon subscribers only, so if you have any interest in Lovecraftian horror—or cosmic horror in general—you might want to consider supporting the eZine. The amount of content and entertainment that Mike Davis provides is exceptional.

 

The usual family time in the family room followed (and I worked on this blog). Tomorrow is the last day of this Midland trip for us, but our flight doesn't leave till early evening, so we'll have most of the day here before we leave. Hopefully, we won't have any flight delays; the late-night arrivals back in Greensboro have tended to be problematic in recent days.

 

We'll see. For now, nighty-night.

Wednesday, April 23, 2025

The family had a few guests pretty early this morning—Kim's cousins JoyAnn and Rosemary, and JoyAnn's husband, Bill. We spent a good while having enjoyable chats, largely about cats. Following that, Kim had to take her Dad to a doctor appointment, so I put in my daily steps and made some forward progress with the current novel.

 

Late in the afternoon, we packed up to leave and headed out to the Saginaw airport (MBS). Our departing flight was slightly delayed, but it wasn't significant enough to impact our connection in Detroit. I must say, they make very good, very spicy bloody marys at the single little bar & grill at MBS. Once in Detroit, we found that our Greensboro flight was also delayed, but again, not significantly. We had just enough time to grab fair-to-middlin' sandwiches from Subway for worse-than-extortionate prices.

 

We arrived back in Greensboro around 11:00 p.m., less than an hour later than our scheduled arrival time. And wonder of wonders, by the time we got down to baggage claim, our single suitcase was already there waiting for us. Hooray! Anyway, we hit the road for Martinsville and got home just about midnight. We'd found some hot red-pepper stuffed olives in Midland, and I couldn't resist having a martini nightcap with a couple of those. HOOOO, YEAH, they is delicious!

All in all, it was a nice trip to see the folks, and I'm especially glad that we've been able to give them some help (Kimberly doing a hell of a lot, of course), particularly with things that have become more physically challenging for them. I so hope that we'll be able to keep this arrangement going for the foreseeable future.

 

A new cache in Martinsville awaited my attention once we returned. A nice first-to-find on Thursday, April 24, at 8:15 a.m. Yay!

Old Dude at Bryan Nowak's "All Things Writing"

If you're very, very brave, you can watch and listen to Bryan Nowak's ALL THINGS WRITING podcast featuring a weird old dude. It's about The House at Black Tooth Pond, Blue Devil Island, H.P. Lovecraft, monsters...all kinds of scary stuff. Go ahead...prove your mettle!

"The Devil of Transylvania County" to Appear in MYTHS REBORN

I'm pleased to announce that my short story, "The Devil of Transylvania County," will be appearing in the upcoming October Nights Press anthology, Myths Reborn: Modern Tales of Cryptids & Dark Folklore. It's a story of wild and wacky things that happen to some unsuspecting fellows on a fishing outing in Transylvania County, NC. More details will follow soon.

 

You can visit the October Nights Press website here, or their Facebook page here. There aren't any additional details about the book posted currently, but I'm sure it shan't be long.

A little excerpt from "The Devil of Transylvania County" for you:

"From a slow, swirling eddy of weblike mist, something was making its way toward him: a dark, loping shape at least as large as a man. No; as it drew nearer, he realized the thing had to be taller and heavier than the largest man that ever walked the earth. A pair of eyes, like emeralds lit by an inner fire, glared back at him..."

Where There's Smoke...

I spent yesterday morning geocaching in Kernersville, NC, with friend Diefenbaker (a.k.a. Scott), followed by an excellent lunch at Don Juan's, one of my longtime favorite Mexican restaurants. Brugger was returning from an artsy-craftsy event in Hickory, NC, so after I parted company with Scott, she and I barged in on our friends Terry & Beth at their Kernersville home. We downed plentiful wine and tapas, enjoyed some time in their hot tub, and then spent a good hour on their back porch watching a huge column of black smoke erupting from some point about a mile from their house. We learned later that it came from a fire at OmniSource, a scrap metal recycling center, and as of this writing, it's contained but not fully extinguished. The wind carried the smoke column away from our location, but it could seen from I-77 in Fancy Gap, Virginia, about fifty miles north-northwest. One firefighter was injured, but there are thankfully no reports of any others, as far as I know.

In an altogether happier vein, The House at Black Tooth Pond has been getting a decent amount of love, which pleases me no end. Last week, I was a guest on two different podcasts, courtesy of authors Rick Kleffel and Bryan Nowak; of course I will post links to them when they go live.

A few excerpts from recent reviews:

"The House at Black Tooth Pond is a great read for lovers of small town horror, cosmic horror, and police procedurals. I enjoyed the combination of these subgenres..."—Rebecca Cuthbert

"Rainey is one of a handful of writers who can give you the supernatural, the cosmic, and the eldritch terror in carefully measured doses that intoxicate you their simple cleverness and their absolute dread. Lovecraft would be proud. So keep the lights on while you read..."—John M. Cozzoli (The HorrorZine)

"The House at Black Tooth Pond climaxes into a beautiful, (you know what I mean) cosmic 'Holy Crow, Are You Kidding Me?,' finale that's completely satisfying. Highly recommended.—Alice Loweecy

"Stephen Mark Rainey returns to haunted Sylvan County, Virginia, with this slow-burn weird tale in the tradition of H.P. Lovecraft, Fritz Leiber, TED Klein, Twin Peaks, and maybe even The Trollenberg Terror..."—Joe Maddrey

Speaking of Ms. Cuthbert, who was kind enough to give Black Tooth Pond a nice review, I found her collection, The Six o'Clock House & Other Strange Tales, a most engaging read, with several tales that I found superlative (my review is live at Goodreads; still pending on Amazon). She is also an accomplished graphic artist, and very kindly created a nice promo graphic for Black Tooth Pond that I am more than happy to use and share. Thank you, Rebecca!

I've started listening to the audiobook of friend/author Scott Thomas's 2017 novel, Kill Creek. Several chapters in, I'm enjoying it very much. The narration by Bernard Setaro Clark is smooth and engaging. Will give this one a full review when I'm done.

Till next time...

Despite All the Turmoil and Gloom...

It's a beautiful spring day, so I took a bunch of photos while I was on my morning walk (four and a half miles today). It was a bit breezy, and several little cyclones picked up piles of pollen and slapped me across the face, which resulted in a sneezing fit or two. It's a bit overcast, so the colors in the photos didn't come out as brilliant as they might had it been sunny, but I expect you get the picture.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled doom and gloom.

Cache In, Trash Out in Browns Summit

Geocaching is not solely about hunting hidden containers and scribbling your moniker on a log sheet. Geocaching is intended to be an environmentally friendly activity, so, in keeping with that concept, geocachers periodically get together at what's known as CITO ("Cache In, Trash Out") events, where the focus is on cleaning up litter.

As they do each year, friends Tom & Linda (a.k.a. Skyhawk63 & Punkins19) hosted a CITO event this morning near their place in Browns Summit, NC, along a stretch of rural road that they adopted in honor of Tom's parents. I got up early and headed down to the event ("Bud & Ann Memorial CITO Spring 2025") where a fair number of geocachers were gathering to attack trash. For the next hour and a half, we scoured a mile-long stretch of the roadway, which passes through a lovely section of forest along the Haw River. By the time we were done, one would have been hard-pressed to find a speck of garbage along there with a magnifying glass.

To cap off the morning's work, Tom & Linda then hosted a lunch event ("Post-CITO Lagagna Fest—Yum!) at their place, featuring Linda's fantastic homemade lasagna. Afterward, friend Diefenbaker (a.k.a. Scott) and I set our sights on a bunch of new geocaches around Reidsville, which we knocked out during the rest of the afternoon. A good, productive time from start to finish.

 

The CITO event was long-planned, and I'm glad I took part in it; however, I was sad to miss the local "Hands Off!" protest, as many folks of my acquaintance attended them around the country. I applaud everyone who turned out for these important—and peaceful—protests, as Trump's executive power has gotten far enough out of hand to frighten to anyone who reveres the United States Constitution. MAGAts sure as hell don't, and it's way past time to see a change.

DISTANT EARLY WARNING ALERT! Booksigning at Magnolia & Main Books, Ridgeway, VA, May 17, 2025

Our little corner of southwest Virginia has a small but well-stocked and beautifully appointed bookshop called Magnolia & Main Books, which you can find—perhaps shockingly!—at the corner of Magnolia and Main Streets in Ridgeway, Virginia. The proprietor, Traci Morton, loves books, her business, and actively supporting local writers. Last year, she hosted a booksigning for me, which turned out to be well attended and profitable for both her business and me (see "Books, Brews, and Bashes," July 21, 2024). 

I'll be doing another signing at Magnolia & Main from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 17. I'll have a wide selection of my books available, especially The House at Black Tooth Pond, which is set in a fictional version of this area (and you can read the starred Publishers Weekly review here).

If you're local, please pay Magnolia & Main Books a visit!