The Wolverine Truck Stop and Motor Lodge

October, 2016 – Ann Arbor, Michigan Some time well after midnight, Jack Coulter wakes up and listens. He can hear Tamara’s regular breathing next to him, and, downstairs, occasional sounds possibly from the kitchen. Not too bad. Upstairs, it’s as quiet as the grave. Rising carefully, he smiles down at his sleeping hostess. If he’s…

October, 2016 – Ann Arbor, Michigan Up in Tamara’s room, after a nice ham-and-cheese sandwich from the kitchen, Jack Coulter in his role as Yonar of Iceland shakes his head sadly. “No,” he says. “I never am finding Ymir now.” The room is incredible; it has to be the best place in the house. A…

October, 2016 – Ann Arbor, Michigan Robert Owen Co-Op is a three-story Victorian home that was built in the early 1890s by a college professor at the University of Michigan. During World War Two it fell into the hands of a group of radical students enamored of British socialism and the Cooperative Movement, and has…

October, 2016 — Ann Arbor, Michigan It has been something like a four mile walk by the time civilization creaks into view. Rosy-fingered dawn is just tickling a blush onto the tent-tops of Ann Arbor’s hobotown. This is the finest shantyville in the Midwest, the tramp metropolis with the highest concentration of PhDs in the…

1 October, 2016, east of Ann Arbor, Michigan He wakes up without opening his eyes. It’s a trick that Jack Coulter learned long ago. In the dark, if somebody’s coming for you, they have invariably arranged things so they can at least see you. That probably means there will be light behind them, and if…

29 September, 2016 – Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania After Jack takes his leave of Hokie, swaying a bit, he realizes he is in some need of a suitable place to urinate. Not wanting to shock local custom, he goes looking for the standard place. It’s usually not hard to find. Guided by instinct, he proceeds around the…

29 September, 2016 – Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania has the crappiest hobotown that Jack has ever seen. There’s a huge switching yard a little to the east of town, and just before that yard there’s a very tight curve where the westbound line changes direction by a hundred and eighty degrees in less than a…

29 September, 2016 – north of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania Long ago, or so Jack Coulter has heard, there was a world in which people generally liked their memories. That was because their memories were mostly of the happy sort: weddings and graduations, birthday cakes and playgrounds, summer afternoons on lawns and unicorns frolicking and so on.…