Deer camp diaries: Nothing says revenge like a Bartles and Jaymes cut-out in a deer blind

Dear Diary:

I was lost.
It was dark.
The woods had repeated for miles by the time I came to a fork in the two-track. I’d been in the area last year to do a story on the very deer camp I was headed to. I should’ve known where I was going, but I didn’t.
Right or left, that was the question. One would get me to Chisler’s Lodge, where there was the promise of a barbecued buck and some beer. The other possibility could have taken me off the map, off the edge of the world for all I knew. I chose my way and, soon enough, electric lights were visible in the darkness of the woods. I could hear the deliberate sounds of humans. I pulled into a clearing, where a row of pick-ups were parked outside a well-lit cabin. I heard men laughing. I saw their heads through a window.
This must be it, I thought. It just looks a little different during the night. I’ve made it!
But, like that other explorer, Chris Columbus, I was wrong. What I took for the land of Chislers was actual the land of Linkes.
It didn’t dawn on me until I was out of the car and walking up to the door: I didn’t see one familiar face through the window as I went up to knock.
Still, the fellas waved me in.
“I think I’m lost. I’m looking for Chisler’s Lodge,” I said.
I explained who I was and what I was doing out in the woods that night with a camera dangling around my neck and a notepad in the back pocket of my blue jeans.
“Well, this is the Linke deer camp,” someone roared. “Come on in and have a beer.”
So I did.

LINKE DEER CAMP

Inside the cabin is what one would expect from a deer camp. Logs flaming in the fireplace, radiating hypnotic heat. An old Olympia beer mirror hangs on the wall. The furniture is about the same caliber as a college dorm room’s. A couple guys throw a game of euchre at a table. Opening Day isn’t until Monday and it’s only Saturday. Time to have some fun.
There is, of course, enough beer to go around.
“We used to have some parties out here, but we’ve scaled it down the last few years after our dad died,” Rick Linke said.
From what I could gather, Dickie Linke, Rick and Brian Linke’s old man -- the family that owns Linke Lumber Co. -- started the deer camp on 120 acres in the 1930s.
The dozen or so guys there that night were starting new traditions.
“This group is just starting to get together,” Rick said. “Stragglers from all over the place. Delvey’s always been around. And Brian, of course.”
Delvey Lindeman points to a picture on the wall taken around 1973 in front of the “old cabin.” There are about 10 or so guys clad in black-and-red. Four bucks are roped up behind them.
“I’m one of the ‘last of the mohicans’ in that picture,” said Delvey.
He was just a teenager in the picture. But, he explains, many of the other guys have died off.
A new cabin was built, mostly with whatever materials the guys could get their hands on.
“The lumber was torn off the walls of our (old) cabin and that’s what was used to do the walls in this one. We used whatever someone had laying around and brought up,” said Rick Linke.
Now, in the cabin, were friends and family from as far away as Pennsylvania up for the hunt.
“We eat, drink, play cards and get in a little hunting when we can,” one of the fellows said.
I ask if they get bucks.
“Usually there’s always a few hanging there Opening Day,” Rick Linke said.

DELVEY’S MISSING GUN

Delvey did the math of how long he’s been coming to the Linke camp.
“This is my 43rd year,” he said.
He’s inherited the duties as camp cook. That night, I had missed a feast of roast elk and mashed potatoes by about a half an hour. Bad timing. Delvey has a fairly elaborate menu planned out for the rest of the week that includes turtle soup and homemade sauerkraut.
Delvey has also inherited the role of camp storyteller. He tells me about the time Dickie Linke made off with his rifle in the 1970s.
“I ended up in a nice blind that had a roof on it and straw on the bottom,” he said. “I was sitting there. The sun was out. I peeled off my old wool clothes. I put the strap of my gun in my hand. I woke up, and there was no (cussing) gun.”
At this point, I have to interrupt.
“So, you fell asleep?” I asked.
The rest of the gang in the cabin -- drinking, watching TV, playing cards -- laugh.
“Yeah,” said Delvey. “And then what happened, he came up to me, and he started whistling like a buck, and blowing and snorting and kicking the ground. He said I never broke a snore.”
Dickie then slipped the gun out of Delvey’s sleeping hand and caught up with another guy from their camp who was out in the woods.
“Here they come over this little hill and I’m walking back and forth like a tin soldier,” Delvey said. “Here comes Dickie and Bob. They got their heads real low to the ground. They said, ‘Delvey, did you see that big buck? I wounded one.’ I said, ‘Dickie, if I would have seen him, I would have thrown a knife at him, because someone stole my (cussing) gun.’ That was it. They fell on the ground laughing.”

DELVEY’S REVENGE

But Delvey had his own fun playing pranks on both his own father, Delvey Senior, and Dickie Linke.
The first trick gives new meaning to the term “killing time.”
As Delvey tells it, Delvey Senior was hunting in a tree on the edge of a quiet swamp one year. Delvey sent one of the kids from camp to sneak into the stand with a surprise.
“I put a Big Ben (alarm clock) out there, wound it and set it for 8 o’clock in the morning. It was all quiet. You could hear a mouse squeal out there. Everybody’s looking up there. Pretty soon it’s 8 o’clock and ‘ring-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding’ And then, all of a sudden, ‘BOOM!’ It stopped. He shot it,” Delvey said.
Sidenote: when Delvey BOOMS he really BOOMS, filling the cabin with his large sound effect for mock rifle fire. The guys look up from the card game and howl with laughter.
But it wasn’t the first time Delvey made his old man shoot at an inanimate object. At least the other time, he thought he was shooting at a buck.
“I put a deer head up on my dad’s shooting lane,” he said. “It was one of these old ones that were over a fireplace. In the evening, he went out there, he wouldn’t see it for awhile. Pretty soon, he saw it, and it looked like a buck turned at him. But it was just a neck mount. It looks like a big buck staring at him. ‘BOOM’ I heard him shoot. ‘BOOM’ I heard him shoot again. ‘BOOM’ The third one knocked the stuffing out of it.”
For his other stunt, Delvey used a resource he collected while in the food and beverage industry: a life-sized cutout of Bartles and Jaymes.
One year, he put it in Dickie Linke’s deer blind.
“So, he’s going to his stand with his flashlight in the morning on Opening Day,” Delvey recalled. “He’s coughing at them, but later he said they kept smiling at him. He coughed again. And they kept smiling at him. He got a little closer and spit, and said, ‘Sir, that’s my stand. And, furthermore, you’re trespassing. This is private property.’ He was talking to them until he got up there.”
Delvey seemed to have gotten his revenge.
And, as I sat listening to him and to all the other stories the guys had to share with me, I realized that I was glad I’d gotten lost and ended up here.
I wasn’t so lost after all.

Deer camp diaries: Get your buck before one gets you

Dear Diary:
So, I got my buck.
Well, I’m not sure if it was a buck or a doe. I barely saw it.
I didn’t even need a gun.
I didn’t need to sit in a blind all day.
All I needed was my trusty Ford Focus, a stretch of M-55 and a little bit of dusk.
As you can guess by now, I haven’t yet bagged a deer this season, but one definitely got me. It came out of no where while I was driving to an all-lady deer camp last Sunday, just one of my stops as I traversed the county with nothing but a notebook and a camera in search of deer camp adventures.
Crash! Screech! Thump!
There I was in a ditch.
But I was a writer on a mission, so I pressed on.
Hunting deer is a tradition going back thousands of years in the Manistee area, from the Native Americans to the current camps that abound from the woods south of Wellston up to Copemish; from the big lake east to the hills of Marilla.
It was my aim to visit as many of them as I could to capture the true deer camp experience.
What ensued was a strange week where the personal trials and tribulations of this humble scribe threatened to overwhelm my attempt to cover the subject.
Deer camp is all about the thrill of the hunt, and there are always many obstacles: weather conditions, lack of deer, baiting laws.
My own mission was fraught with as many problems and difficulties.
But the journey itself is always part of the story.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

The quest started on such a happy note.
You see, I have good news, diary. The preface to my strange and bizarre week of deer camps is that I’m recently betrothed.
That’s right, Meredith and I are engaged to be married.
The weekend of Halloween, we went downstate for a party where we announced our pending nuptials to our families. It also gave me a chance to pick up the slug barrel for my shotgun, which my brother, Chris, had at his house. It was an opportunity that was thoroughly bungled.
We’re a family of bird hunters -- mostly grouse and woodcock -- and I’ve never bothered to bring the barrel to Manistee. But if I wanted to slay a deer, I’d need it.
The party was at Meredith’s parents’ house, an hour north of my brother’s in the Detroit area.
“Hey, dirtbag,” I said in the voicemail message I left him on his cell phone. “Grab that slug barrel and bring it up to the party, would ya?”
Maybe I should have been more pleasant in the message and cosmic justice would have been more in my favor. Or, I should have just called his landline.
“You bring that slug barrel?” I asked Chris after he arrived with his family.
“What are you talking about?”
“I left you a message,” I said.
“I haven’t had my phone since Friday,” he said.
There was no time to trek an hour south before heading back up to Manistee, so, instead, there I was, the Friday before the Opener, heading back downstate for the barrel.
I drove eight extra hours to get it.
I didn’t see a deer near the road the entire time.

IN THE HEADLIGHTS

The sad part is that I haven’t needed the barrel yet, mostly because of my car situation.
I’m having a hard time trying to envision myself strapping a buck on my loaner car (a sleek, red Toyota Camry). I don’t know how I’d explain any blood stains to the good people of Enterprise rental car service, or my insurance company. They’ve probably had enough of me already.
I got back into the Manistee area on Saturday, when the fellows at Chisler’s Lodge were having a little soiree to kick off the season and celebrate Ed Knaffle’s 90th birthday. I visited Chisler’s last year for a story, and they were kind enough to invite me out again this year. Since I’d been there before, you’d think I’d have no problem finding it.
No way.
I took a wrong turn in the woods and ended up at the Linkes’ deer camp, which will be featured in Tuesday’s newspaper.
I don’t need to go into any more detail about the rest of Saturday night. A deer camp kick-off party is a time for, ahem, discretion.
Sunday night, I was scheduled to go eat some N.Y. strip steaks with an all-female deer camp headed by father, grandfather and camp cook Gene Smoter.
The history of their deer camp will be featured in Wednesday’s newspaper.
En route to their cabin Sunday night, I was headed east on M-55 just as the sky was blackening. I was barely out of town when a flash of brown filled my high beams. It was running south and I just clipped its rump, but, still, the impact with the deer was tremendous. Its hindquarters bounced off my hood. Shocked, I did what I know you’re not supposed to do. I slammed on the brakes and ended up on the side of the road.
I grabbed the flashlight from my trunk and went into the woods, looking for the deer, but it had disappeared.
It had attacked me like a renegade guerrilla force, coming out of the woods, inflicting quick but lasting damage, and vanishing.
The front end of my Focus was crumpled.
Ruined.
But, alas, still driveable.
I contemplated canceling my dinner with Gene Smoter and his gals, but I didn’t. I soldiered on -- and I’m glad I did. The steak was delicious and their stories were great.
I would visit two more deer camps in my fractured Focus: the Dontz camp and the Berentsen camp.
To learn more about the Dontz camp, check out Friday’s paper. The Berentsen camp will be featured in Saturday’s News Advocate.

POWERLESS

I woke up in the middle of the week with a deer camp hangover and decided something should finally be done with the car. Getting it fixed would turn out to be a quest in itself.
My insurance company offered this improbable solution to my vehicle woes: take it to a collision shop in Ludington and pick up a loaner car in Cadillac.
So, instead of being in the woods, utilizing all the knowledge I’d picked up about deer hunting at the camps I’d been hanging around, I was stuck driving all around the region dealing with the car stuff.
Reviewing the damage with the insurance guy, I noticed a few strands of brown deer hair sticking out of a crack in my headlight.
An insult. A taunt.
But not as disheartening as the next obstacle I encountered.
I woke up the next morning and the power was out at my house. It was one of those dark, gloomy days when the sun didn’t offer any light. After showering and shaving with a flashlight, I called my landlord, who informed me his 79-year-old brother would soon arrive to check out the electricity.
Like many Manistee men (and women) this time of year, the brother was dressed for the hunt when he arrived at my house.
He wore those old school wool pants with the suspenders and a flannel shirt. He told me he hadn’t gotten his buck yet.
I had fiddled with the breaker box in the basement to no avail for a good hour. He came down, flipped a few switches, and within a matter of five minutes had the power back on.
“That went easy,” he said. “We had some good luck. Now, if only I was having better luck with the deer.”
Indeed, I thought.

Roustabout/fly fishing

The box where I keep fly fishing gear is an old suit case I like to call "The Roustabout." Here it is in the trunk of my car after a day of fishing this past summer. Someday, I will make more words about "The Roustabout." But, for now, here is an elusive fragment of it.

Deer camp diaries: Get your camp featured in the newspaper

Deer hunting is a grand part of our state’s outdoor traditions.
No where is this more evident than right here in Manistee County.
The frenzy starts in the weeks leading up to that grand day, Nov. 15.
Pick-up trucks seem to cruise through town with a little more zip. After the opener, blaze orange garments are a common fashion accessory on the streets and at the diners.
“Get yer buck?” becomes the most frequent overheard question.
But, most importantly, mid-November is the time for that annual, singular event on a man’s schedule: deer camp.
The doors and windows of the cabin are thrust open to air the place out. Generators are fired up. Twenty-year-old dirty magazines are pulled off a dusty shelf and spread on old coffee tables. A giant pot of chili is set to simmer on the stove range. Someone gets a blazing fire going. Beers are cracked and alarms are set for 4:30 a.m.
It’s deer camp time.
Now, don’t think I’m dissing you ladies. I’m sure camps all over the state have their female representatives. But, when it comes down to it, from what I know, deer camp’s a dude-heavy affair, what with all the bragging and flatulence.
For years, I’ve felt like I was missing out on this.
I’ve passed up many opportunities to go with the many buddies of mine who do deer hunt, though I’ve heard all of their illustrious deer camp stories.
You see, I didn’t grow up deer hunting. I go after grouse and woodcock, which means that when the firearm season starts, I put up my gun and stay as far away from the woods as I can until the season is over.
To be honest, my knowledge of deer hunting is pretty scant.
But I want you to teach me, Manistee.
I have a proposition for all of you. Let me come to your deer camp. Let’s have a beer and tell me your camp’s background and the stories that go along with it.
Don’t worry: I always follow a strict BYOB policy, so you won’t have to hide your coolers.
Also, don’t be afraid that some of the stories you have might not be suitable for a general audience. While I’ve never done deer camp, I have done similar camps for birds, trout and salmon.
I know when discretion is needed.
Last year, I spent a day at the Chisler’s Lodge deer camp, which has a 70-year history.
Those fellows had some wonderful stories to tell, and I had a great time being a part of their camp, if only for a day.
If you do want to get your deer camp’s story in the paper, all I’m asking in return is that you show a bird hunter the ins and outs of deer hunting.
I’m also aware of the amount of hazing and teasing there will be involved with a 33-year-old man going out on his first deer hunt when many of you have been doing it since you were 12.
I can handle most of this. But, if anyone tells me that the best way to attract the bucks is by running through the woods in my brown pajamas with a pair of fake antlers on my head, I’m not falling for it.
I’m looking to spend time at Manistee County deer camps from Nov. 15 -- 20.
You will then be featured in the series, “Dear Camp Diaries,” which will run soon after that.
If you’re interested, feel free to give me a call at (231) 398-3109 or email me at jcounts@pioneergroup.com.

True confessions of an independent voter

I have fond memories of going to vote with my mom when I was a kid.
I wasn’t a toddler born with an innate political conscience, I just liked the voting contraptions.
The booths, the levers and the sheets seemed like a spaceship.
But it was the secrecy involved that was so thrilling.
“Who’d you vote for?”
It’s one of those questions you don’t dare ask someone, usually along with whether they believe in God or how much money they make.
It comes down to the three things you never talk about at a polite dinner party: sex, religion and politics.
So who did I vote for today?
Not telling.
Voting’s always been a spooky process draped in emotion.
It’s a decision we make that’s a little more poignant than what our brains are usually up to: pondering a Big Mac or Whopper; “The Biggest Loser” or “Jersey Shore.”
For me, it’s even more difficult because I’ve never voted across any party line. Ever since my first election (1996), I’ve went with a mishmash of Republicans and Democrats.
I’m the man in the middle; that elusive voter registered as an Independent.
I want to see economic prosperity and business growth, but don’t think we should sacrifice our humanity for it.
I want to see liberty, civil rights and the pursuit of happiness extended to as many folks possible in our nation, but within logical means.
I want to see government only get involved and use their power to tax when necessary.
When I see at least a glimmer of this in a candidate, I’ll pull their lever, connect their line, punch their chad, or whatever else needs to be done.
I’ve never bothered with the others on the list: Green, Libertarian, U.S. Taxpayers, Natural Law or Pirate Party of the United States, because, honestly, you may as well not vote at all. While third parties sometimes affect the election between the Grand Old White Dudes and the Do-Goody Donkeys, their presence is mostly symbolical.
In my 14 years of independent voting, I’ve found several hints helpful.
Now, the first emotional component of casting a vote is overcoming the dread and apathy.
It’s cliche to say you don’t like either candidate or party.
It’s easier to say, “What’s the point?”
We hear the phrase, “The lesser of two evils.”
The truth is, democracy is a large, messy affair, and elections are the only structured method we have to make sure we’re not going to continue to get royally screwed over and over again.
We may not be able to wine and dine the powers that be; we may not be able to afford setting them up in a Jacuzzi suite with chocolate-covered strawberries and a masseuse; we may not be able to contribute millions, thousands or even nickels to their campaign coffers, but we’ve got a vote.
One measly vote per person, but it’s all we got to sway something as large and unwieldy as government towards our personal, and sometimes highly emotional, wants and beliefs.
After giving myself this kind of pep talk, I’m ready to learn a little bit about the races and elections. During this process, it’s highly advisable to never pay attention to television ads. Both candidates will generally attempt to convince you that their opponent will set fire to your town if elected.
This may have been so in the time of the Visigoths and Huns, but we’ve evolved since then. Just a little, but enough.
Instead, I’ve always relied on newspapers, which cover elections with more expansiveness than television, which is usually quicker and dirtier (and making a fortune off those campaign ads).
Now, with the Internet, you don’t even need to get your information filtered through a newsroom. This is great for you folks who think we in the news-gathering business actually have time to sit around and slant the information we deliver in some sort of biased way.
It also gives the candidates much more “space,” of which the Internet has endless amounts of, to present their views.
I was happy to find a sample ballot for my particular precinct on the Secretary of State’s website. On the page, those candidate’s names who have their own sites are linked to them.
There is enough info on each candidate that you could literally spend hours and hours sifting through it all.
This is the final challenge of the independent voter who wants to take elections on a race by race case.
Time.
I certainly don’t have time to read through the entirety of the material for every candidate running for the Regents of the University of Michigan.
Generally, if I don’t know enough about a race, I’ll skip it. Sorry regents. An uneducated vote isn’t worth casting.
So, once I’ve educated myself fairly well on the candidates, I start weighing my options. I think back to those personal beliefs, and how the issues in the races relate to them.
I do what all voters do. I try to make the best decision in a sloppy, unpredictable system that fundamentally is better than anything else we’ve got.
Then, I drive myself to the polls, usually with a little cheat sheet so I don’t panic and forget what choices I’ve made.
Maybe you’ll see me there today.
I’m the one dressed in my Halloween costume, an astronaut’s spacesuit.
And when I’m casting my votes, I’ll probably still be wishing that pressing the lever will ignite my spaceship and blast me off to another world altogether, one where there aren’t two sides pitted at each other, bent on annihilation.
And I’m just the man in the middle.

Camping memories: Mom had a King Tut arm and Black Panther Afro

I was probably the first person in Manistee County to purchase the new state park Recreation Passport.
You see, my birthday was this past Friday, Oct. 1, the first day they were available.
A little background: instead of getting the $24 sticker you put in the corner of your vehicle window, it’s now only $10 and has been folded into the license renewal process.
The little 2011 sticker has a little P on it that will get me into any park until my next birthday.
There was no better present to buy myself than access to all the wonderful state parks and recreation areas, 98 in total.
Keeping these parks well-funded is necessary to keeping alive the long and storied outdoor tradition in our state.
Growing up in Michigan, camping was always a cheap way for our family to go on vacations.
Two weekends ago, my older brother, Chris, and I were sitting at the Platte River State Campground in darkness, drinking beers after an unsuccessful night of salmon fishing on the river.
We sat in fold-out chairs with our waders around our knees jaw-jacking with his brother-in-law, Andy, our other cohort in our outdoor sporting misadventures.
I don’t know what brought it up, but we started talking about camping. Maybe, since we couldn’t swap fish stories, we had to settle on a different subject.
My bro and I began reminiscing about camping when we were very small kids in the late 1970s, when my old man and my mom would pack us into the gray Chevy Suburban and we’d get out of Bay City.
“We used to go for two-weeks at a time! We’d go way up to the Porcupine Mountains in the Upper Peninsula,” my brother exclaimed. “That’s where we went when Mom broke her arm and had the Afro.”
Being only about 2 or 3 years old at the time, I don’t remember the trip. My brother, five years older, recalls a little bit better the camping trip where my little ol’ mom proved herself a true trooper.
The camping trip where she had the broken arm and the Afro.
I don’t remember it, but it was slightly my fault: my mom broke her arm in order to save my head from getting bashed in.
I was a tad hyper when I was a child. One spring day, to keep me entertained, my mom was pushing me around on a tricycle near an empty swimming pool.
Being the little spazz that I was, I managed to tip right over into the pool. My mom was luckily right there to grab me and we both fell into the empty pool together.
The arm she was using to cradle my head snapped in two during the tumble to the bottom.
Her arm was set in the plaster cast in an uncomfortable position: elbow bent in a V, her hand pointed away from her head, very Egyptian-like.
Since she couldn’t style her normally straight hair, she went to the salon and received a very poofy black perm.
My little Greek mom now not only resembled King Tut, but a Black Panther as well.
Still, that summer, nothing stopped our camping trips.
“You were only a baby,” my brother, who now has two kids of his own told me while we sat near the Platte River. “I don’t know how she took us camping.”
But there’s evidence.
A picture exists that makes my mom cringe with embarrassment when we bring it out of the family photo box.
She’s got the cast, the curls, wearing a blue denim shirt and thick-black rimmed glasses while sitting at a picnic table in the campground. She’s looking down at where I’m sitting next to her with a plate of potato chips in front of me, bawling my eyes out.
“You always were a little bastard,” my brother said at a different state park three decades later.
Still, I’m sure my mom wouldn’t have had it any other way.
While I was crying in the picture, I remember having a blast on camping trips when I was little. It probably even gave my mom a chance to rest a little since my brother and I were so taken with the outdoors.
I’m lucky enough to have memories like these, as I’m sure many of you are.
Hopefully, this new funding mechanism will allow future generations to make similar memories.
So, I implore even those of you who aren’t sure whether you’ll use a state park in the year you’re renewing your license for, pitch in the 10 bucks anyway.
If not for yourself, then do it for all those exasperated Michigan mothers with broken arms who need a place to take their hyper-spazz crybaby kids.

A happy ending? Movie business needs more time in Michigan

We’re a Rust Belt state with a rusty mentality sometimes.
We value hard work that doesn’t exist in these hard times.
Sometimes, we’re too hardheaded to see a good thing when it’s upon us.
So, please, let’s not ditch the the tax incentive for movies just because the non-partisan Senate Fiscal Agency recently found that there hasn’t been much of a financial reward to the state yet.
Let’s stress “yet.”
We live in a new economy. Foreign competition has got us all scrambling. The manufacturing jobs our state once enjoyed won’t be back.
It will never again be the way it was.
Therefore, it’s time to give the movie business a chance.
It’s one of the only positive things we have going for us. It generates conversation. It puts our ruggedly beautiful state in movies and television shows and makes more shows set here possible.
These are good things.
If we want to see a viable, moneymaking industry grow, you’ve got to give it time. It’s only been a few years, and ditching the generous tax incentives would bring everything that’s been brewing to a halt.
The impact is immediate.
Right here in town, we have 10 West Studios, which take advantage of the legislation. When they shoot scenes here, they bring excitement to our streets -- and put bodies in hotel rooms and mouths in restaurants.
Some Republican lawmakers in Lansing, especially Nancy Cassis (R-Novi), question giving such huge tax breaks to production companies -- around 40 percent of costs.
My question is: if it was an oil company that was having trouble setting up their pipeline, would Republicans be so quick to call the tax incentives a bust? Here, I would argue is the bigger reason: Republicans don’t want to publicly sponsor the liberal, Communist, homosexual propagandists from Hollywood who want to corrupt the minds of our youths with subversive and perverse themes in movies.
The Grand Old Party of Grand Old White Guys aren’t exactly the most culturally hip.
Let’s face it, Republicans: you’re just not all that entertaining.
For the most part, you like boring old Westerns and find anything morally ambiguous unnerving.
A good flick should have clearly delineated Good characters versus Bad characters, with Good always winning in the end.
A few of the folks in the entertainment industry you have on your side of the aisle are Charlton Heston (who, FYI, is in one of my favorite movies ever, “Planet of the Apes”), Chuck Norris and, I’m guessing, Wilford Brimley.
Putting them into the scene of a movie might go something like:

HESTON
The bad guys are trying to pry my gun from my cold, dead hand!

NORRIS
No need for firearms, I’m the cowboy of karate! Hi-ya, partner!

BRIMLEY
I will charm the enemy with this bowl of oatmeal. It’s nutritious and delicious!

The point is, the people in Hollywood making the most engaging stuff are, for better or for worse, usually pretty liberal, as highly creative people tend to be.
This should not be a reason to keep a potentially profitable industry out of our state. Even if it hasn’t paid off yet.
Just because it isn’t something tough like building cars or tanks, making movies in Michigan adds to the local communities where it films.
Let’s see if the tax breaks that have lured production companies here have a happy ending.