From Monroe, Michigan

I've been on the road of late, shooting case study marketing videos for Microsoft.

My last stop was Monroe, Michigan, a quaint all-American town between Detroit and Toledo, that's done more to make America comfortable than any other: it's the home of the La-Z-Boy Furniture Company and Monroe Shocks and Struts.

Its also the hometown of a man who made things not so comfortable for the original Americans, and they are proud enough of that to have a statue of General Custer at the entrance to downtown.

Viva Dance Company is a small dance studio in an old schoolhouse on the outskirts of a town. They used Microsoft's Office Live software to build a website, and we were there to film the story of the company and how building a website impacted their business.

Eating at Big Boy, having coffee at the corner spot along the flag-lined main streets of downtown Monroe, seeing the full moon just before dark - it all made me homesick for the road.

Comments

[James Waugh]

Dude, you need to explain. There was no full moon recently!

[Veronica]

Hey John! I grew up in one of those "quaint, all-American" midwestern towns. We had a statue - not of Custer and not at the entrance to downtown but right smack dab in the middle of downtown. We called it "the mound" and it was surrounded by a traffic circle that confused every out-of-towner that dared come through. It's a tall statue so to this day I have no idea who or what sits at the top of it. Perhaps it is Custer?

We had Big Boy as well. I loved that place. I used to sneak out of my house in the middle of the night and go down there to hang out with a girl friend of mine who was a waitress on the overnight shift. She was a couple of years older than me and had spent a few semesters at Indiana University until her anorexia got so bad that her parents brought her home so they could watch her. Anorexia or not, I idolized her. I thought she knew everything about the world so I would walk down there at one in the morning just to hang out with her and drink diet cokes (cause of the anorexia and all) and watch her serve hash browns and burgers to the truckers from I-69 and the toll road all while sharing with me her hard-earned wisdom on life, men, and what I could expect from college.

Geez - I can see why you are such a successful filmaker! You really are good at identifying and capturing the essence of a time and place. Look at this - one simiple blog entry and you got my mind running down memory lane!