Host: Rob Prince (00:01)
In this episode of My Michigan Story, Life in the Great Lakes State.
Zach Bigelow (00:05)
The
entire house was just screaming. I heard upstairs people running out. Why 2K happened? Holy
Host: Rob Prince (00:14)
CRP
Host: Rob Prince (00:16)
Zach Bigelow scores one of the most epic and unrepeatable pranks in history. Ed Smith learns the Mackinac Bridge isn’t as tall as he hoped it was.
Host: Rob Prince (00:25)
And I said, Well don’t hit the bridge. And so I took out the video camera and I started videoing and I was looking and I said, Boy, that looks awful close there.
Host: Rob Prince (00:38)
and Drake Ficaro watches his friend fall down pyramid point.
Drake Ficaro (00:42)
And
he’s literally got like one arm hanging off. And at that point, if he goes any fur like he’s done. It is the last stop before the
Host: Rob Prince (00:50)
This is like
Host: Rob Prince (00:51)
Wily Coyote like hanging in midair. Yeah. Those stories and more, up next on My Michigan Story, Life in the Great Lakes State, the New Year’s 2026 episode. I’m Rob Prince.
It’s a new year in Michigan now, 2026, and as exciting as that is, I’m not sure any New Year’s Day will ever compare to that New Year’s Day in the year 2000. That’s when we got to find out if we’d really fixed all the Y2K computer bugs so that all the computers in the world wouldn’t suddenly think it was January first of the year 1900. I was working in television as a producer-director in Grand Rapids at the time, and I remember they told us that if there was a massive Y2K disaster on January first,
We were all supposed to come into the station to help tackle the emergency. Personally, I thought if the world did come crashing down on Y2K, the last place I was gonna go was to work, but thankfully it didn’t come to that. For some people, however, the global tension over the Y two K bug was merely an incredible opportunity for an unforgettable practical joke. And that somebody happened to be Zach Bigelow from Jonesville. He shared this epic Y two K story with
At our August 2025 Open Mic live event at Ramshackle Brewing Company. Here’s Zach.
Host: Rob Prince (02:17)
Well
Zach Bigelow (02:17)
In the sticks where the outside light was one of them mercury lights. Uh-huh. And that’s about the only thing you could see for a good mile around because it was isolated house. Uh-huh. There was a whole house my buddy was having a party. There was a whole house of us. Two story f old farmhouse.
Host: Rob Prince (02:37)
No one was in there but you guys? Yeah.
Zach Bigelow (02:39)
It was his his pl his
Host: Rob Prince (02:41)
okay.
Host: Rob Prince (02:43)
Yep.
Zach Bigelow (02:44)
And there was like I said, there was probably about twenty, thirty of us in there just having a good time. He put out a big spread. Well I I was pretty sober at that point because I quit drinking and I’m like, wait a minute, I know what’s coming up. So I went downstairs, down the basement, and I found the breaker box. And I sat and I hid until I’m hearing him count. Five, four, three, two, and then at one I hit the main breaker box.
Host: Rob Prince (03:14)
You were willing to sacrifice millennium
Host: Rob Prince (03:16)
Seeing the turn of the
Host: Rob Prince (03:17)
for this trick.
Zach Bigelow (03:18)
The entire
house was just screaming. I heard upstairs people running out. Why 2K happened? Holy crap. Just mass panic. Twenty, thirty people. my
Host: Rob Prince (03:30)
How many people would you say? And everyone went for it.
Zach Bigelow (03:35)
everyone panicked because ev we didn’t have you know there was no cell phones or not.
Host: Rob Prince (03:39)
Right. And you’re in the middle of the of the country so you can’t like look and see that it’s on elsewhere. Right. my god.
Zach Bigelow (03:45)
Everyone
had a Y2K hat right then in there.
Host: Rob Prince (03:50)
And
Zach Bigelow (03:50)
Of course the the mercury light was wired into the house. So when they went outside, it was pitch black, dead of winter, everyone thought Y2K had happened, the Mad Max times are here. And I waited and they’re all like, What do we do? What do we do? And I kicked the breaker back on and I walk upstairs and everyone’s like, Where were you? I’m like, man, I can’t
I got sick. I had to go puke. And they’re like, Where were you? The power went out. Why do you K? I’m like, No, that didn’t happen. Like, yes it did. And I’m like, No, it didn’t, because I went downstairs and turned the breaker off.
Host: Rob Prince (04:25)
Okay.
Zach Bigelow (04:28)
It was the best prank I think I’ve ever pulled on on that amount of people.
Host: Rob Prince (04:32)
I bet a few of still think, still tell people.
Zach Bigelow (04:35)
I hope so. So that was a perfect prank.
Host: Rob Prince (04:39)
my gosh. Perfect prank and some dedication. You h you needed to know some basics about home electricity and also sacrifice that moment with your friends. Yeah. Of seeing them lend do you feel any regret for that? No.
Zach Bigelow (04:50)
Not at all. It was worth every minute. Just to hear the chaos in upstairs. I wish I could have seen it, but just to hear that chaos was worth it.
Host: Rob Prince (05:03)
that’s great. Zach Bigelow. He shared that story at our August 2025 Open Mic Live event at Ramshackle Brewing Company down in Jonesville. Thanks so much to Zach, Andrew Stella, and all of the awesome people down at Ramshackle Brewing Company who welcomed us so graciously for that open mic event. I miss you guys and we’ll be back down there to see you again real soon.
Just the idea of making New Year’s resolutions is pretty annoying to a lot of people, largely because of the seeming futility of it all. So few resolutions live to see February. My New Year’s resolution for the last twenty years has been to keep my mouth shut, since my mouth seems to get me into more trouble than anything. Clearly that isn’t working. But if you think making a New Year’s resolution for yourself isn’t that productive, imagine making a New Year’s resolution for your spouse. That’s what my parents tried one time.
And you don’t have to be a couples therapist to guess that that didn’t turn out too well. I interviewed my mom about that little experiment at her home in East Lansing. Here’s my mom, Kathy. Okay, mom. So tell me about the time that you and Dad came up with New Year’s resolutions. Yeah.
Kathy Prince (06:21)
Well, we had, you know, it was that time of year, like kinda like it is now, you know, the Christmas time and we were thinking about what we’re gonna do for New Year’s Eve. And we thought instead of writing our own newsr New Year’s Eve resolutions, we would write resolutions for each other. So I would say we probably had been married maybe twenty five years and so
Host: Rob Prince (06:42)
Twenty five years you’ve been married and this still didn’t seem like a bad idea.
Host: Rob Prince (06:47)
Mm-hmm.
Kathy Prince (06:48)
In fact, I th I thought it seemed like a good idea and Pa Pa thought it was a good idea. And so, you know, we gave it some thought. And then on New Year’s Day, we gave each other our list of resolutions. Now, sadly, I do not remember exactly what we our resolutions were. I think my
Host: Rob Prince (07:09)
But it was a list. yeah.
Host: Rob Prince (07:11)
It wasn’t just one. How many were
Host: Rob Prince (07:13)
Any word.
Host: Rob Prince (07:14)
there?
Kathy Prince (07:15)
Not a lot, maybe three or four. And I if I you know, what I remember of it, I think for mine involving Bill, it might have had to do with like picking up around his chair where he sat. huh. And I you know, one thing when he mowed the lawn, he never mowed in nice, sneak, straight lines. And I feel like that could have been there, but why would I care in January? I don’t know. But some of the things that I thought were just general things that would help a person.
you know, adapt to his life. And honestly, I don’t re quite remember what he wanted from me. Maybe a little less opinions on how but I wish I wish I had the lists. I wish had the specifics. So we exchanged them and then we were furious with each other.
Host: Rob Prince (08:07)
Furious Furious
Kathy Prince (08:12)
I was so mad at him. He was so mad at me. And we never you know, we don’t like mad at each other. I mean you know, we get irritated stuff you do, but we were not y sh shouters or screamers and we weren’t in this case either. But the fury, the intensity of the fury was palpable.
Host: Rob Prince (08:36)
How? Since you didn’t really yell at each other, how could you tell?
Kathy Prince (08:39)
Well I think there was an intake of breath that took
And and then i i I f I feel like for like that at least certainly the whole month of January, you know, you might say to something, Well, if I had picked up it wouldn’t be you know, i i they kept coming up, you know, little things, you just innocuous things. Well, I’m not perfect, am I? You know, things like that. I think it took us a good six months to completely set it aside. And I think our resolution the following year was
Don’t make resolutions for other people. It’s not a good idea.
Host: Rob Prince (09:22)
Thanks, Ma. Kathy Prince. She shared that story from her home in East Lansing.
The Mackinac Bridge, aka the Mighty Mac, sure is tall, isn’t it? It feels even taller when you’re driving over it in a small car during high winds, but as our next storyteller discovered to his horror, the Mighty Mac is mightier in the middle than it is along the sides, and his New Year’s resolution might be to measure twice and sail once, to paraphrase an old woodworking adage. Ed Smith shared this story at our November 2025 live event at The Lit in downtown Grand Rapids. Here’s Ed.
Host: Rob Prince (10:14)
Well, in nineteen eighty seven, inspired by my trip aboard the Janie Regan, a schooner out of Maine, I decided it was time to move on from my little sailboats that you could sail around in the afternoon or something and get into something that I could navigate with a compass and use the charts to
plot my course and where you could sleep on the boat and so on. Well one Sunday our friend told me that there was a sailboat for sale by his neighbor, and I went to look at it and it took me a year to decide, yes, I would buy that boat, because he hadn’t been able to sell it and he’d reduced the price by half. And so he
knew that I didn’t have any way of hauling the trailer. This was a twenty four foot, you know, good sized boat and I didn’t have any way to tow it. So this was in East Lansing. And he said, Well where where are you gonna keep it? Where and I thought a little bit and with our family history of Drummond Island, I said, Well Drummond Island, which is
several hours trip, of course, from East Lansing, and he agreed to take it to Mackinac City and I thought I could get the marina to come and get it from there. But he ended up when we got to Mackinac said, I’ll take it all the way and backed it in. So I had my sailboat finally and had a number of wonderful trips with the family and had some friends at
like to sail and I had one friend who was particularly good at managing the rudder and the tiller and keeping on the course. And this was pretty remarkable because he was blind and had grown up sailing when as a kid and so had, you know, this experience in background. And I would set the course and then he could feel the wind and
and the tiller and everything and follow that course. And flash forward. And I had friends that lived on Beaver Island. And so the idea was we would sail to visit my friends. And so we sailed to to Mackinac, to the marina there, stayed overnight and in the morning started out to Beaver Island.
Well, from there you you’re gonna go under the Big Mac, the bridge, and I had never sailed under there before. So as we were approaching the bridge, I thought I’m going to video record this adventure of going under the bridge, and my friend was at the tiller, and I said, Well don’t hit the bridge. And so I
took out the video camera and I started videoing and I was looking and I said, Boy, that looks awful close there.
I don’t hit that bridge yet.
Four to four.
I think we’re gonna clear. Okay. Call.
Host: Rob Prince (13:58)
We’re not too
Host: Rob Prince (13:59)
No. Tiller to port.
so
We were on the th you know, the s one of the side areas, not in the big high area in the middle, but I thought this is a big bridge, there’s no way, you know, that we can’t go under it. But the mast hit the bridge, snapped the four stay, you know, the c cable that holds the mast up, and it came down. Since we were sailing the sail kind of cushioned the falls of it
It didn’t injure us or anything. And the video ended with the expletive. And there we were. And so we had to turn around and motor back to the the marina. But they did not have the material to fix the boat. And so the next day we paid somebody to drive us
down to another town where there was a marina that we could get the repair, and we’re back at Mackinaw. And then my friend began to develop some pain and and it got worse. And so he called his brother in law, who lived in Sheboygan, who came and took him to the hospital where he had gallstones. And so we were thinking
Better to have had that happen here than out in the middle of Lake Michigan or on the island. And so he was able to get repaired of the stones and eventually we moved on and put our boat back in storage and drove home to East Lansing. While we were still there at the marina, we went downtown to Mackinac City to a t shirts shop and got t shirts.
that had the Mackinac Bridge and I had them put an X at the spot and embroidered it with I hit the Big Mac So I still have that t shirt to mark the occasion.
Host: Rob Prince (16:24)
Yeah.
Host: Rob Prince (16:25)
Well we learned something, I’m not sure what, but
Host: Rob Prince (16:29)
Yeah,
but
Host: Rob Prince (16:32)
Ed Smith. He shared that story at our November 2025 live event at The Lit in downtown Grand Rapids. Special thanks to Penny Hawk for hosting us at The Lit. If you’d like to catch one of our open mic live events there, My Michigan Story is at the Lit the third Friday of every month at 7 p.m. You can get more information on our website, myMichiganStory.com. That’s MIMichiganStory.com.
That’s also where you can see the video of Ed hitting the Mackinac Bridge with his sailboat and the custom t-shirt he made to commemorate that event. All of that and more is over at our website, myMichiganStory.com.
Michiganders are often drawn to the edges of things, oddly enough, considering the edges of stuff can be super dangerous. Drake Ficaro’s New Year’s resolution might be to not go near the edges of things anymore, especially Pyramid Point up in the northwest shore of the Lower Peninsula. He shared this story at our june twenty twenty five open mic storytelling event at Apothecary Espresso and Coffee in Farmington. Here’s Drake.
Drake Ficaro (17:48)
We almost killed my friend. we went to Pyramid Point, which is the highest point in Michigan. World Asian wise. It’s a little north of Sleeping Bear Dunes actually. Okay. So you basically you hike up to the point and you can oversee a beautiful, beautiful view of Lake Michigan. this is after we graduated from high school. So we said let’s just do one big trip before everyone goes their separate ways for school. This is twenty fourteen.
Host: Rob Prince (18:16)
What year is this?
Drake Ficaro (18:19)
twenty fourteen. So statue of limitations. I
Host: Rob Prince (18:22)
I think.
Drake Ficaro (18:23)
yeah, I’m I think I think I’m Yeah,
Host: Rob Prince (18:26)
I think you’re in the clear it’s ten years.
Drake Ficaro (18:27)
so we we drive up there, you know, we hike to the point, and there’s this huge sign that’s like, just so you know, it’s over a thousand dollars to have the Coast Guard come save you if you go down the point and cannot get back up. ‘Cause it it’s a it’s a very steep fall off and they’re like if you like
Do not do this. It’s literally just saying in plain English with, you know, a nice big money sign, like, this will be a costly mistake. And of course, we say, Well, we’re not gonna do that, obviously, but that doesn’t stop him from tripping and falling. I see a, you know, guy my age, eighteen, just rolling down pyramid point, but the wrong way towards the lake.
Luckily he gets caught by a tiny cliff and there’s just some rocks and sticks and of course a lot of sand and he gets caught and he’s literally got like one arm hanging off. And at that point, if he goes any fur like he’s done. It is the last stop before the dream.
Host: Rob Prince (19:37)
This is like
Host: Rob Prince (19:38)
Yeah.
my god.
Drake Ficaro (19:41)
And we’re just like, wow, what that that sucks and
Host: Rob Prince (19:46)
It’s hard to
Host: Rob Prince (19:46)
Final.
Host: Rob Prince (19:47)
Ha ha.
Drake Ficaro (19:48)
He’s just obviously the wind knocked out of him, laying there hurt, possibly not all there mentally at the same time already to begin with. We then have to start the trek of how do we get him out?
Host: Rob Prince (20:05)
For under a thousand dollars.
Drake Ficaro (20:06)
Yeah. We’re like, we’re not paying a thousand dollars. I mean we’ll we’ll leave him before we pay a thousand dollars, but I am wearing flip flops’ socks for some reason, which did not not lead to good, you know
Host: Rob Prince (20:20)
Yeah, that’s the cost.
Drake Ficaro (20:21)
climbing yet. But eventually we’re able to like kinda climb down ish and kinda get him off.
Host: Rob Prince (20:28)
Wow.
Drake Ficaro (20:30)
No, we had to like, you know, throw him over the shoulder, like e you know, the the three legged race up the hill.
Host: Rob Prince (20:38)
He was not able to move on his own power. No.
Drake Ficaro (20:41)
No, but
yeah, he felt like he rolled that yeah. We you know, we got him out. He said, Thanks guys for almost killing me and then we just walked back to the car and everything was business as usual. No hospital, of course. We’re eighteen and seventeen. We’re like, Well, that’s gonna cost money. So we’re not gonna do that. Plus they’ll definitely tell our parents he’s he’s seventeen, so yeah, he would have absolutely
ruined our vacation over that. So but it’s all right. He’s alive now. He’s doing well, I think. Doesn’t live here. Boo, but Yeah, so
Host: Rob Prince (21:17)
my goodness.
Drake Ficaro (21:19)
it’s don’t get close to the edge. That’s where I wanna
Host: Rob Prince (21:22)
Ha ha ha.
Drake Ficaro (21:25)
just
Host: Rob Prince (21:24)
At the good life.
Drake Ficaro (21:25)
go to sleeping bear dunes. You don’t have to go to Pyramid Florida. One is they’re effectively the same thing and one is substantially more dangerous.
Host: Rob Prince (21:34)
Ha ha ha.
Host: Rob Prince (21:37)
Drake Ficcaro. He shared that story at our June 2025 Open Mic storytelling event at Apothecary Espresso and Coffee in Farmington. And special thanks to Drake for helping to organize that event. This is My Michigan Story, Life in the Great Lakes State, the New Year’s 2026 episode. I’m Rob Prince.
Would you like to see my Michigan story, Life in the Great Lakes State, live and in person? Well, you’re in luck because we will be at the lit in downtown Grand Rapids on Friday, January 16th at 7 p.m. In fact, we’re at the lit the third Friday of every month at 7 p.m., and all of those events are free. Then we’ll be in Hastings on Wednesday, January twenty sixth at six p.m. in the Hastings Public Library. We’re also going to be in Hastings every month, though the dates do vary. For more information on all of our live events and other news,
Visit myMichiganStory.com. That’s MimichiganStory.com. That’s also where you can contact us to submit your true story from Michigan. We would love to hear from you because we can’t make this show without your stories. Thanks. I imagine a lot of Michiganders are resolving to do more to help people experiencing homelessness in 2026. Our next storyteller’s New Year’s resolution, however, might be to not help them more.
Darren Lewis shared this story of good intentions gone wrong at our july twenty twenty five live event at River’s Edge Gallery in Windot as well. Here’s Darren.
Host: Rob Prince (23:14)
My life has always been about helping people. And at one time I ran a soup kitchen in downtown Detroit and then almost got a felony giving people peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Wow. So yeah. Tell me about it. You ready to hear this? Yeah, yeah. All right. So literally one of my buddies came to me when I was in college and he was like, Hey man, I wanna help the homeless people in Detroit. And I was like, I’m all in on any crazy idea that you have. Let’s go.
So my buddy’s like, all right, I don’t really know how to do this. So I just start researching it and I find that you can literally contact any church in America and they’ll give you free stuff. Literally, if you just tell them I’m here helping the homeless, they’ve got like six hundred things of mouthwash they’ll just give you like completely free. So I just figure out I’m like, all right, we’re gonna put a bunch of peanut butter together and we’re just gonna go hand them out in the middle of the night. Just to clarify though, just
Host: Rob Prince (24:04)
It was just
Host: Rob Prince (24:04)
peanut butter you’re gonna No, no, no, no, no. I put together like a thousand peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, like
Probably another thousand bologna sandwiches because it was just cheap. So we put them all together, we stuffed them in backpacks, and we headed down to Detroit. I used to run the Detroit mission trip, which is basically like a thing for kids at high school level to come experience what Detroit used to be. But here’s the thing like we would take these kids down there and they had no like street smarts. Our first stop was downtown Detroit. So we’re walking around handing out sandwiches. Well, we get to the train station before four.
Ford Motor Company bought it. So it’s still abandoned looking. So as we’re walking down the street, I’ve got like 15 kids with me. They’re around 16 to 18. And all of a sudden, one of them goes, Hey, there’s a car rolling up on us real fast. And from beside me, I hear my buddy unclip his holster. And I’m like, fudge, this is about to get real bad. And then they turn the lights on, and I’m like, cool. They’re just helpers. They’re here to help us. the next thing I know is I find myself in handcuffs.
I’ve got all of these kids in zip ties because the cop didn’t have enough handcuffs. So handcuffs is a comfortable position for me. I’m okay with being in handcuffs, clearly. So I asked the cop, I go, hey, listen, what’s all this about? He goes, son, you’re on federal property right now. This is an international railroad crossing. did you not see the goddamn signs? And I go, No, sir, I didn’t see the goddamn signs. so he grabs the handcuffs and walks me to the front of this dirt road. And he goes, You see that sign on the pole?
And I go, sir, the one that’s bent in half and is covered in graffiti. No, I did not see that sign, sir. and then he walks me to another sign that’s also covered in graffiti. And he goes, Did you see that sign? And I go, Absolutely not, sir. This is gonna be a real bad night for you. So I spend the next six hours in handcuffs on this dirt road. The cop finally lets me go. He’s like, Listen, you’re gonna have to go to court for this. This is I’m dropping it down to a misdemeanor. I was like, All right, cool, whatever.
In the meantime, waiting for my trial. I don’t know. Do you guys know who Mitch album is? I was working for him at another rescue mission, and he got wind of what happened to me. he brought me on his radio show, and then channel seven tried to pick us up because they wanted to run a story about how Milani, the guy that used to own the building, was like unfairly treating children. And I was like, Well, I’m not a child, I’m an actual adult. so he’s treating me pretty fairly. I’m gonna be honest with you guys. So
But it ended up, we go on the radio show, we explain what we were doing, and literally they go, So they were gonna get you guys for felony trespassing for just giving out peanut butter and jellies. And I said, Well, yeah, that and anaphylactic shock, we didn’t quite know who might have a peanut allergy, you know. So it would have been really bad. So But no, what ended up happening is we went to trial. we were literally sitting there. I had myself, my friend that almost pulled a gun on the cops.
and then all these kids with us. And the the judge looks at us and he goes, Are you all together? And I was Yeah, dude, you can just run this together, man. Like, if we’re all going down, I’m taking these kids with me, bro. These are gonna be my dependents and right now. So the the judge looks at me and goes, Son, I I don’t know what you were doing down there, but do you know how many dead bodies do we find in that building every year? And I stopped for a second because I can’t stop myself from being a smart ass, but I didn’t think under oath was a good time to
Host: Rob Prince (27:31)
Do you
Host: Rob Prince (27:34)
But I couldn’t help it, everybody. I’m from Downriver. And I literally said, Well, sir, I think it’s zero, but you’re gonna tell me a ton, right? At that point, I had the right to remain silent, but could not. Luckily, the cop that was holding me at that point was like, Look, just chill. He’s gonna let you guys off. I got a long spiel about how I should not be bringing children to abandoned factories. Since then, though, I’ve become a complete degenerate, if you can’t tell. Like,
I don’t help homeless people anymore. I learned my lesson. No good deed
Host: Rob Prince (28:07)
No good deal.
Host: Rob Prince (28:07)
goes on.
Host: Rob Prince (28:09)
Ha
ha ha.
Host: Rob Prince (28:11)
Darren Lewis. He shared that story at our July 2025 live event at River’s Edge Gallery in Windot. And for the record, I do think Michigander should do more to help people experiencing homelessness in 2026, but you know, in a safe way that doesn’t involve felony trespassing. Thanks so much for listening to this edition of My Michigan Story, Life in the Great Lakes State, the New Year’s 2026 episode. Today’s episode was edited by myself, Rob Prince.
My Michigan Story is presented by WKAR in East Lansing, Michigan. Remember, I can’t make my Michigan story without your Michigan story, so submit your story today at myMichiganStory.com.