If you’ve ever eaten at a Denny’s, just imagine that same dining experience except with food that’s about half as good. You’d think I wouldn’t have ever eaten there more than once, like most people, but because the Flame was so close to the liquor store, and because there was this one waitress my uncle had a thing for. Anyway, it sounds like an old joke, but if there was anything that would have ever gotten me to finally speak up, it would have been the food at the Flame.

Beyond that, there was a park down Main Street with rusty old swing sets and monkey bars you’d be a fool to touch without a tetanus shot. The park sloped down to the Huron River, which was littered with old tires and shopping carts and stacks of newspapers still in their bindings. There was a bank against the river where the railroad ran over it, and that’s where the kids from the high school hung out at night, blasting their car radios, drinking beer, smoking pot, whatever.

I know, you think I’m probably exaggerating. If you saw Milford now, you’d think I was crazy, with all the upscale housing developments they’ve got there now, and Main Street with all its antiques and healthy sandwich wraps and salons. There’s a big white gazebo in the park now. They do concerts there in the summer. If you tried to smoke a joint under the railroad bridge now, the cops would be there in three seconds.

It was a different place back then, is what I’m trying to say. A lonely place, especially for a kid just turning nine years old. With no parents. Living in a strange house with a man he barely knew. Uncle Lito had this little one-story thing behind the store, this sad little house with mint green aluminum siding. He took the poker table out of the back room, and that became my bedroom. “Guess we won’t be playing poker here anymore,” he said as he showed me the room for the first time. “But you know what? I was losing money most of the time, so maybe I should thank you.”