And what she suddenly concluded was that she didn’t want to, or have to, be married to someone like me a second longer—which is exactly how it happened.

Outside, it is no longer snowing, but the streets impress me as too icy to risk a rental car. Our time in town feels already much too short, and in bad weather even the idea of the botanical garden begins to sink into the unlikely zone—though for Vicki, my guess is, it will make no difference.

I’m sorry, however, to miss a renter. There is nothing quite like the first moments inside a big, strapping fleet-clean LTD or Montego—mileage checked, tank full, seat adjusted, the heavy door closed tight, the stirring “new” smell in your nostrils—the confidence that here is a car better even than the one you own (and even better than that, since you have only to ask for another one if this one craps out). To me, there is no feeling of freedom-within-sensible-limits quite like that. New today. New tomorrow. Eternal renewal on a manageable scale.

I walk down to the snowy cab queue at Larned Street, but as I reach the icy corner I am stopped short and for a moment by a sound. On the chill Saturday morning airs, a faint hsss murmurs up the city streets from the sewers and alleyways, as if a cold wind was thrashing ditch grass somewhere nearby and, out here near the river, on the edge of things, I was in danger. Of what I have no idea. Though what I know, of course, is that I am running a tricky race now with my spirits, trusting my enthusiasm will outstrip the perils of usual, mid western literalness which can gang up against you quick and do you in like a doomed prisoner.

My cab driver is a giant Negro named Lorenzo Small wood, who reminds me of the actor Sydney Greenstreet, and who drives with both arms straight out in front of him. On the dashboard he has an assortment of small framed pictures of babies, two pairs of baby shoes and a mat of white fringe, though he is not much for talking, and we get quickly out into the snowy traffic, weaving around dingy warehouse blocks and old hotels to Grand River, then head for the northwest suburbs. It is faster today, Mr. Smallwood says with humming uninterest, to stay on the “real streets,” and avoid “the Lodge,” where it’s already wall-to-wall assholes heading for their cabins up north.

Strathmore, Brightmoor, Redford, Livonia, another Miracle Mile. We speed through the little connected burgs and townlets beyond the interior city, along white-frame dormered-Cape streets, into solider red-brick Jewish sections until we emerge onto a wide boulevard with shopping malls and thick clusters of traffic lights, the houses newer and settled in squared-off tracts. Outside everyone is “dressed for it,” a point of traditional pride among Michiganders. A freak spring snowstorm means nothing. Everyone still has “snows” on his Plymouth, and a winter face of workmanlike weather how-to. Michigan is a place where every man is handy with a jumper cable, a metal lathe and a snow blower. The mechanical nuts-and-bolts of anything is never a problem here. It’s what’s reliable and appealing in such an otherwise gray and unprepossessing panorama.

Far out crowded Grand River I am struck by what seems like thousands of restaurants, and by how dedicated the population is to going out to eat. As much as cars, meals are what’s on people’s minds. Though there is a small and heart-swelling glory to these places—chop houses, hofbraus, rathskellers, rib joints, cafés of all good quality. Part of life’s essence is here. And on a brooding spring eve, a fast foray out to any one of them can be just enough to make any out-of-the-way loneliness bearable another nighttime through. In most ways, I can promise you, Michigan knows exactly what it’s doing. It knows the enemy and the odds.

Mr.