Ham and Grace
If a computer falls in the suburbs, do we still get lunch?
This was going to be a little tale of how I delivered two pieces of TRS-80 computer hardware to some nice fellows and then ate at Mike’s Famous Ham Place. Even if you don’t know me that well yet, you’re probably nodding in recognition already that if a restaurant called Mike’s Famous Ham Place exists on this planet, I will eventually eat at it.
It is a real establishment, in a part of Detroit that an optimistic public relations intern might call “in transition,” and it looks like it’s been there since the New Deal. Their menu consists of ham sandwiches, ham and eggs, ham and bean soup, and whole hams to order. That’s it. I’m not making this up.
Unfortunately, Mike’s famous for ham, not his social media skills, and their Facebook page made no mention of the three-week vacation he’s taking this month. So you can look forward to a riveting tale of ham at a later date.
The “Grace” portion of this one took place at my first delivery stop. I was frazzled because the customer works afternoons, so I had a limited delivery window, and every highway in southeast Michigan has apparently been firebombed at once. I made it through multiple traffic jams with ten minutes to spare, grabbed a full-size TRS-80 Model 4 out of my trunk, walked into this guy’s house, and tripped over a step.
In my defense, it was right after you walked through the front door, possibly the worst place ever to add a small weird level-up in a postwar ranch house, and the architect should be posthumously charged with what I imagine are dozens of homicides. But it got me, as if it was put there specifically to get me, and I went down, hard.
Where’s the grace in that, you ask? Well, as a husky lad of the lummox variety – a common big galoot from way back, if you will – I know how to do damage control when I knock into shit, trip over something, or otherwise cause mayhem with my person. I crumpled and took the fall directly onto my knees, holding that computer up like I was about to Lion King it toward the heavens. At no point was that ancient artifact in any danger of being smashed across this stranger’s living room floor.
After all, he hadn’t paid me for it yet.
The guy was sufficiently embarrassed, and his dog thought the whole thing was exciting beyond belief, so I was able to leave with my money, lots of pets and licks, and a shred of my dignity.
The other stop, across the metro area in one of the eastern suburbs, was much less eventful. And thankfully, that put me close enough to Mike’s Famous Ham Place that it didn’t completely wreck my day when I saw that hand-lettered ON VACATION sign in their window.
I just got back on 75, pointed the ship south, and they say if some of this traffic clears before the snow flies, I may yet see my family again.