Double Crossed – The Way Back

I headed back to the bridge. Right off, I ran into Rochelle and Andrea again, the mother and daughter who’d parked next to me in Mackinaw City. They asked if I’d just finished the walk. “Yeah,” I said. “But I decided I’m going to walk back to Mackinaw City.” They wished me luck, and I was on my way.
Not far into my return, I came upon a younger girl pushing a man in a wheelchair. She was a smaller gal, and he was a good size man. At this point we were on the incline, and she was struggling a bit. “Can I take a turn pushing for you?” She gladly accepted. “I’m Tom,” I said.
“I’m Ella,” she replied. I asked if the man was her grandfather. “He might as well be,” she laughed. “Mark has lived next door to my family my whole life. A few years ago, he told me about this bridge walk and said he always wanted to go but could never get a ride. I promised when I turned 16 and got my license, I’d take him. So, here we are.” I asked if they were going all the way across. “No, just halfway and then we’ll turn around. I kind of have some health issues of my own.” Mark turned around and said, ‘Ella, we’ve all got issues.’ As we got near the first tower, Ella asked “Is this halfway?”
I explained the halfway point would be the middle, between the two towers: about another quarter  mile. She asked, “Would it be okay if we turn around here?”
“You can turn around whenever you want, Ella,” I said. She was starting to look tired, so I pushed the chair over the center curb to the other lane.  I offered to push the wheelchair back down to the side where they started but Ella assured, she’d be fine. “You need to be careful; you’re going downhill now. Don’t let the chair get away from you.” We said our farewells and went our separate ways.
I decided to go back and push the wheelchair for Ella, anyway. When I turned around someone else was already pushing it for her. There are so many good people in the world; that warmed my heart. Ella was in good hands; I could keep walking.
Next, I walked with a man who was from Alabama. “I graduated college in 1991 and got my first job in northern Michigan,” Chuck said. “I was a loner, didn’t know anybody up here. So, one day a co-worker asked if I wanted to cross the Big Mac with her. I didn’t really know what that meant but agreed to go along and I loved it. I still work for the same company; they’ve transferred me a dozen times all over the country. No matter where I am, I’ve returned for the bridge walk, rain or shine. This is the 66th walk and 33rd - well actually only thirty-two because they cancelled the walk in 2020 for covid, but we still made the trek to Mackinaw City, so that counts for something.”
Chuck was very interesting. I asked if he ever saw the girl again who first introduced him to the walk. “I see her every day,” he laughed, “We’ve been married 31 years.” He went on to explain she wasn’t on the walk this year due to a knee injury. “But she’ll be back next year,” he assured. I wished his wife a speedy recovery and kept moving. It turns out Chuck was not the only person I would meet who had a first date on the Mackinaw Bridge.
I came upon a couple wearing matching shirts that read Snyder Crew. Scott and Candy were celebrating the 40th anniversary of their first date. “I hope you took her some place special,” I said to Scott.
“I did indeed,” Scott smiled. “We walked across the Mackinac Bridge forty years ago today!” I told him that I had walked across and was on my way back. “A double-crosser, eh,” he said, but I didn’t know what he meant. “When you walk across the bridge and back, they call you a double-crosser. Candy and I double crossed on our first date.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You ask a girl out and make her walk ten miles on your first date, and she married you anyway?” We shared a good laugh about that.
“I sure did,” Candy said. “All our kids have walked the bridge, and our grandkids, too.” Then she told me, “They’re not all here this year, but there are four generation representing Team Snyder today.” She went on to tell me her dad was here for the walk but decided to sit out this year. “He’s 92 and thought it would be best to stay back at the motel.” She quickly added, “He was 88 the last time he walked the bridge and he’s here in spirit.”
“Wow, that’s impressive,” I said. I met such a variety of people that day, that I wasn’t surprised at all to meet Ian.
Ian was a teenager who walked along filling the air with the distinct sounds of his bagpipes. His long reddish hair was tied back in a ponytail. He had a bellow that he compressed under his arm. “It’d be difficult to have enough wind to keep the bag inflated and walk five miles, too,” he said with a heavy Scottish accent. Ian went on to explain the technical differences between Scottish Great Highland bagpipes and the Irish Uilleann pipe. He was speaking way above my pay grade. I smiled and just told him I really enjoyed his music and then asked if he was from Scotland. “No. I’m from Chicago,” he said. Chicago? I questioned his lack of a midwestern accent.
Soon a lady stepped up next to me. With the same accent, she said, “Ian was born in Chicago. But I was born and raised in Scottland. He picked that accent up from his father and me. Now his brother, the one playing the guitar ahead of us, he speaks perfect Midwesterner.” We shared a good laugh about that. I was happy Ian chose to preserve the accent and dialect of his heritage.
I was past the halfway point on my way back to Mackinaw City, on the final stretch for home, or should I say, back to my truck. I remembered Melissa telling me, “Make sure you get a good selfie on the bridge.” I stopped under the south tower and snapped a photo. I started feeling confident as if I had completed the walk. But I wasn’t there yet, and I saw two more people I wanted to talk to.
A man in a wheelchair, in the opposite lane was on his way up the bridge. He was an amputee wearing a red, white, and blue bandana. A second man in similar patriotic colors pushed his chair. One of the men wore a T-shirt indicating he was a Vietnam War Veteran. I was feeling emotional and appreciative of their service. I approached the two men. We exchanged greetings and casual conversation about the nice weather and then I asked the man, “May I take a turn pushing your chair?”
The man in the chair questioned, “Why?”
 
“When you served our country, you served me, too,” I said. “I would be honored to push your chair to serve you for a while.”
The man in the wheelchair looked at me and said, “No, you cannot.” His reply caught me off guard. He went on to explain: “I wasn’t drafted to the Army; I enlisted to serve my country knowing full-well there was a war going on. I went to Vietnam, and I left my leg there. I didn’t serve my country expecting someone to someday return the service to me. So, No. You cannot push my chair.” He wasn’t angry when he said this, but he was direct and too the point. I respected his position. Then he repeated, “You cannot push my chair, but you can walk alongside us, if you’d like.” I accepted his offer.
As we walked, I told the men about the stories I wrote and asked if I could include him in a future story about the Mackinac Bridge Walk, and the people I met. “Sure, write whatever you want,” he said. Neither of the two would tell me their name or where they were from, “You don’t need that for your story,” he said. “And no pictures, either.” After walking with them for a short while, the man said, “I saw you walking the other way before you came over here. You probably should go back and catch up with your people.” He smiled and thanked me for walking with them. I thanked the two veterans for their service and headed back to the other side of the bridge. Even though it was just a short time, I truly felt honored to walk with them. As I was getting closer to the end of the walk, I picked up my pace to catch up with another person in uniform.
The man sat high in his saddle wearing a black uniform with white letters across his back that read SHERIFF. True to the days of the old west, he wore a white cowboy hat; the good guys always wore a white cowboy hat. The horse had a distinctive black blanket with white stripes across its rump and matching ankle boots.  It was one of the officers the grumpy lady pointed out in the morning. “That’s a beautiful horse,” I said to the lawman. He thanked me for the compliment, and I asked, “Did you have to arrest anyone today?”    
“No sir,” he replied. “We’re just up here to keep everyone safe.” I thanked the officers and continued. I was feeling that natural high coming back again when I saw the overhead sign: FINISH LINE.  Wow, what a thrill! So many people at the end of the walk looked exhausted and yet fired up at the same time; there was a great sensation of accomplishment.
I went back to the truck and opened the door to the camper. As always, Nova Mae was full of kisses and excited to see me. I had just walked ten miles, and Nova said, “Come on Dad, let’s go for a walk.” And so, we did.
Nova and I walked around downtown, I wanted to find a Mackinaw Bridge Walk Commemorative T-shirt. I told the salesclerk that I had walked over and back. “That’s awesome,” she said. “Would you like us to print ‘Double Crosser’ across the back?” Absolutely.
I called Melissa to tell her all about the day, “It was so cool, babe….” As I told her about all the fun people I’d met, she said she wished she could have gone with me. “Next year,” I said. Nova and I returned to the truck to go get the trailer from the campground, then to retrieve the motorcycle which was still on the St. Ignace side of the bridge. We still had about an hour before the bridge would be open to traffic, so we stopped at Wienerlicious.
 
Wienerlicious is a restaurant with a giant hot dog on their roof. I think they sell pulled pork sandwiches too, but I’ve only had their hot dogs. I found a space in their parking lot, which was really full and there a line was stretching outside the front door. Low and behold, who should I run into? The grumpy lady! “You ever eat here before,” she asked me. “They have the best Chicago Dogs in the world.”
“No,” I corrected her. “They have an excellent Chicago Dog here, but the best Chicago Dogs will come from a vendor with a hot dog cart in downtown Chicago.”
The grumpy woman said, “Why don’t you just go back to Illinois where you came from?”
I smiled, “Because I came from Minnesota.” The woman scowled at me and walked away. Fortunately, that was the last time I saw the grumpy woman – but there’s always next year. I was really hungry and ordered two Chicago Dogs, and one plain hotdog for Nova. We don’t normally feed her people food, but she had been an exceptionally good sport today. After lunch we went to load the motorcycle.
With the bike tied down on the trailer, we should have turned right from the rest area, but instead we went left – I wanted to drive the bridge one more time. The toll was six dollars because of the trailer, but it was worth it.
As we pulled out of Mackinaw City, onto the Mackinac Bridge, I pushed the play button on my tunes. Bob Seger started singing, ‘Took a look down a westbound road, right away I made my choice….’ I asked Nova Mae, “Should we head about twelve hours out of Mackinaw City and see if we can find that bar to stop and have a beer?” We shared a good laugh about that.
I looked in the rear-view mirror at my big two-wheeler riding on the trailer behind Willie. The last words of Bob Seger’s song Roll Me Away, are ‘Next time, we’ll get it right.’ I gave Nova Mae a rub on the head, “We got it right this time; I think Bob Seger would approve.”
 
 
 
 
     
 
 
 
 
 
 
             
 
 
 
 
      Grumpy lady “I enjoy it so much.”
Bob Seger would approve  Never paid off the bet
Drive back home around the big lake the call gitche gumee