By the time you read this, I may well be back from my jaunt across the state of Michigan to my natal city. It’s my birthday, and I’m heading west in quest of my identity.
I suppose you could say it’s my choice to drive from metro Detroit to Grand Rapids, roughly 300 miles round trip, to prove who I am.
No, I’m not suffering some midlife crisis where I have to cut loose my anchor and roam, delving into my inner person.
I’d rather be tacking my sailboat in a brisk breeze or trolling my motorboat in search of pike.
Driving across most of the state is not my idea of a gainful or enjoyable use of my time.
But do it I must. I’m going to Canada in a few days. While I’m not concerned at all about crossing the border into Ontario, I’m more than a bit obsessed with how I’ll get back.
Sure, I have a car — transportation isn’t the issue.
It’s those new George W. Bush-inspired border rules that require a bona fide U.S. citizen, in my case one 63 years old to the day, to prove his or her identity with more than a Michigan driver’s license and a personal resume.
Nowadays, you’d better have a passport in hand. My problem is that somehow, some way, we misplaced our passports after our return from Canada last summer. Looked high, looked low. No passports.
Oops.
Used to be after you crossed the international bridge in Sault Ste. Marie on your return to the states, a border guard would say, “Citizenship?”
I’d say, “U.S.”
Guard: “Where’d’ya live?”
Me: “Plymouth.”
It worked for everyone in the car. Guard nods, and on you’d go, south down I-75 headed for home.
No more.
Lacking a passport, I need not only my driver’s license, but some document proving I’m a citizen. I have to show I was born in the U.S. My birth certificate will work.
Except I don’t have a birth certificate.
I called my mother, Ruth Eleanor Thurtell, nee Houseman, who delivered me, eight pounds thirteen ounces, twenty-one inches of squalling baby boy after 36 hours of labor the evening of May 5, 1945 at Blodgett Hospital in Grand Rapids.
It was in this same Blodgett Hospital, on April 29, 1922, that my father, Howard Travis Thurtell, was born.
Maybe I’ll stop by the hospital, see if anyone remembers me.
Don’t be silly. Just go to the Kent County Clerk’s office. They’ll hand the birth certificate over while I wait. That’s why I’m driving along I-96 wondering how you prove who you are if you don’t have a passport or birth certificate. I think of the story my dad tells about how he got the news I’d been born. My mother was in the hospital, in Grand Rapids. My dad was in the Air Force based near Selma, Alabama. He was flying an AT-6 military training plane that evening. The controller waited till he’d nearly touched down, then radioed, “You’re the father of a baby boy!” The plane bounced across the tarmac.
Big laugh for the guys in the tower.
The border guard won’t find it funny.
My great-grandfather, Herbert Thurtell, was a medical doctor. He practiced in Sutton’s Bay and Benton Harbor in Michigan and in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, where he was elected coroner in 1900.
Border guard: “Nope.”
Herbert Thurtell’s father was Francis Thurtell, born in England, emigrated to Canada and in 1865 claimed land in Leelanau County outside Traverse City under the Homestead Act. His farm lay along what is now M-72. There’s an 18-acre lake that used to be called “Thurtell Lake.” Hey, I found it on an old county map!
Forget it, says the border guard.
Francis Thurtell founded the Prohibition Party in Traverse City in the early 1900s. He and several other Thurtells are buried in the Traverse City cemetery. I have photos of their tombstones.
Forget it.
My mother’s maiden name was Houseman. It was originally “Huisman,” a good Hollander name. My mother’s mother was Suzanna De Young. That makes my mother a full-blooded Dutchwoman and me a halfbreed Hollander. Grandma Houseman was a seamstress. She was born in the U.S. My mom’s dad, Martin Houseman, was a meat-cutter. Born in the U.S. My grandfather had butcher shops at different times in two places in Lowell. The last one was in a building that still sits on concrete pilings in the Flat River, facing Lowell’s Main Street bridge. His first store was in the building where Larkin’s now have their restaurant. There’s a two-page photo of my grandfather’s meat market, taken in the 1930s, in the Lowell Historical Society’s history book about Lowell.
Don’t bother the border guard.
I could show the guard my diploma, proving I’m a 1963 graduate of Lowell High School. Kalamazoo College, B.A.? University of Michigan, M.A.?
Hey, I have some outdated passports. How about the one for when I was an exchange student to Germany in 1962 or when I was a student in 1965-66 at the university in Bonn, Germany?
Forget it.
How about the ID card from when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo, West Africa in 1972-74?
Hey, I’m still carrying the ID card issued to me by the Detroit Free Press, where I was a reporter for 23 years.Border guard: “Man, you can’t prove ANYTHING with a goddam newspaper!”
I certainly wouldn’t dispute that.
Ultimate irony: Those out-of-date passports? That current passport I can’t lay hands on? What do they prove? I don’t recall using anything other than a driver’s license to apply for them. That birth certificate the government insists on? Today, at the Kent County Clerk’s office, I’ll lay eyes for the first time on my natal record.
Here’s the scary part: What if I get my birth certificate and find out I’m not me?
