I was visiting some friends the other day, engaging in a little poetry soiree to celebrate that fact that Foster Neil, founding editor of The Michigan Poet, had traveled to the U.P. for the first time in his life. As we drank beer and ate cheese and chips and guacamole and cannoli, several people read poems referring to Phil’s 550. They couldn’t believe I had never been there. Truth be told, I had never even heard of Phil’s 550. So I drove out there this afternoon, making only one wrong turn, finally figuring out that it’s called Phil’s 550 because it’s located on Route 550, and hoping it would be like Ma ‘Cille’s Museum of Miscellany outside of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. It is not. I don’t think I saw Phil (I saw Ma ‘Cille every time I visited her museum). Phil stocks a lot of beer; there may be more beer per square foot in Phil’s than in any other store north of the 45th parallel. Some of it is good beer, brewed locally and named creatively—Flying Sailor, Flying Hippo, Barbaric Yawp. Phil also sells wine and Doritos and tie-dyed sweatshirts advertising Phil’s. I did not buy one because I possessed only ten crumpled dollars and there was no cash machine. Phil also sells ice cream cones, but just three flavors remained, it being after Labor Day. So I pulled back onto 550, passing the Tourist Park trailhead, and turned toward home.
I don’t think I will write any poems about Phil’s 550, but you never know. I thought I would write a poem about Ma Cille’s or at least steal some imagery, but here it is thirty years after I moved away from Alabama, and I never have. I would like to write a poem set in the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, and every time I pass through Philadelphia I vow to stop there, but I never have. The Mütter Museum has on display 139 human skulls, amputation tools used during the Civil War, and pieces of Einstein’s brain. Who could resist?
The trouble is whenever I come across objects or words or names that really should be in a poem, they never end up in mine. Last June, I drove across the eastern half of the U.P. and crossed into Canada at the Soo. The bridge across the St. Mary’s River is uniquely designed, an American crest lit in red, white, and blue, and a Canadian crest lit in red and white. From a distance, you think you’re going to cross two bridges. Then I turned south toward Toronto and drove a few hundred isolated miles through rocky outcroppings. No restaurants. No bathrooms. No wildlife even. But there were roads, and they had truly tempting names: Hanging Pot Rd., Seldom Seen Rd., Go Home Lake Rd. When I give directions to my house, I would like to be able to say, “Turn left on Seldom Seen Rd.” I would like to write a poem that refers to Little Go Home Bay. I’m saving up names the way I save up words beginning with the letter X for abecedarians.
When I turned onto Rte. 550 this afternoon searching for Phil’s, I turned away from a sign with an arrow that said “Wildlife.” Next time, I’m going to turn toward wildlife. And then I’m going to hunt out Country Rd. 492, where I’m told there’s a historical marker commemorating the invention of the highway center line. There’s undoubtedly a poem in that too, but you can have it.