By Ruth Ann Sanders
   
    There’s a stretch of road in Bay Mills that everyone in town knows by name. Everyone has either fond memories, funny stories or resounding grief tied to it.
     It’s been called by a lot of names over the years, but most recently, the “55 stretch,” probably for the fact that the speed limit is 55, while the two ends that connect allow only a 35 mile per hour run. Years ago when the two geographically divided sides of the reservation were still prominently known as “the farms” and “the mission,” the 55 stretch brought them together. My mother recalls the “old road” that was routed a bit differently and not paved at all.
    My great aunties and uncles have told me stories of an old two-track running through the swamp. I, myself, remember an old bumpy road with no shoulders or street lights. A road you could walk from one end to the other and never see a passing car. A “thoroughfare” of sorts for us kids to get back and forth from one side of the rez to the other to play together, visit family or gather at one of the ball diamonds for a game. Virtually everyone in town has some sort of memory tied to that piece of blacktop. 
    As a child, I rode my bike across it to visit my family in the farms and Brimley. I walked it alone at night on the way home from open gym or youth group, always with the fear of a big ol’ bear jumping out at me. (I never saw a bear out there until I was in my twenties.)
    As a paramedic, I worked a handful of fatalities on it, and triumphed with survivors of horrible accidents on more than few occasions.  If the call wasn’t directly on it, I at least crossed it nearly every ambulance run. Our county dispatchers even used the term “55 stretch” when sending us out there. 
    Now the young people see a modernized road complete with street lights and shoulders for safety, as well as brightly colored center and white lines. There’s so much traffic that you hear one of your friends or family members at least once a week say, “I got stuck behind someone on the stretch.”         Share with these young people your individual memories, whether they be good or bad. Whether you walked the stretch in the freezing rain and never saw a car to pick you up, or dipped smelt out of Deep Crick; perhaps you trapped beaver or hunted rabbits just off the beaten path, or went to visit a sick elder who has long since passed on. Keep the memories of that old stretch of road alive…. And watch out for those corner.
    Sanders is a BMIC member.