I never felt so uncomfortable taking a picture as I did for this one.
I am a bus driver, and the school board I serve has this excellent policy of having PD Days the day before a long weekend. This is great because it turns a three-day weekend into a four-day weekend, and we can go farther and longer when we get the urge to travel.
The holiday being celebrated is Canada’s newest time off in February. This year, Family Day coincided with the long-time observance of Valentine’s Day. Naturally, I had planned a trip with my wife and wanted to spend the time with my love doing a crime tour of Chicago on the anniversary of the Valentine’s Day massacre.
We enjoyed our tour and all the other destinations I had also planned. The sad part of every journey is the long, painful drive home, back to the reality of life and the most annoying thing called work. Why can’t we travel all the time?
Why can’t we?
We passed through Ypsilanti, Michigan, when I remembered reading about its unique water tower. Before any of us, or even our grandparents, were born, the people of Ypsilanti realized they needed a water tower to satisfy everyone’s thirst. The builders feared being injured during the tower’s construction, so they added crosses to the structure. There are two visible on the outside and two on the inside. When I was there, I did not take the time to find the crosses, but rather, I left before anyone noticed that I was staring at the “Brick Dick.”
Yeah, you read that right.
The Brick Dick.
I stared, uncertain of what I was going to do.
My wife was sitting in the car. She was exhausted by our full and adventurous weekend, so she did not get out to see this monstrosity of Mankind’s robust (and I mean robust!) display of the power and strength of water.
I did not even care that the water tower, during its erection (NO PUN HERE), served as both water storage and electrical generation for the street lights.
Remarkable as that may sound, I was more concerned with my own shortcomings.
My beloved was still in the car. I could only assume she was wondering what was taking me so long. After all, I was only going to look at a water tower.
I swallowed hard and returned to the car, ashamed that on this Valentine’s weekend, there was no way I could ever compete with what has been described as the World’s Most Phallic Building. Off we sped, as quickly as possible from the big dick of bricks. I probably ignored a few traffic laws on the way.
- Visit All The Places We Have Been To Map for this location and, I promise, more family-friendly destinations.
- Urban legend has it that the tower will fall over if a virgin graduates from the nearby Eastern Michigan University.
- This was an add-on to a more extensive trip, Being Blown Away By The Mob In The Windy City.
