Top 10 Strangest Things Michigander’s Have Seen While Driving

You would think that growing up in a village with a population barely above 1,000 people, in a township that boasted north of 6,500 total people, and a graduating class of not even 150, residents of Brooklyn, Michigan may be a bit sheltered. Nay, Nay. Chances are the children raised in Columbia Township during the peak of NASCAR's twice-a-summer visits to Michigan International Speedway, we saw things that would make Madonna blush.

T-Shirts with cuss words written on them, sleeveless shirts, tank tops, topless tops, short shorts, short short short shorts, 'are there shorts', sans-shorts, bare-cheeks, beer chugging, whiskey slamming, campground fighting, grocery store arguing, party store meltdowns, and Main Street spinouts.

Looking back it's easy to see that when MIS was selling out twice a year, families that lived in the area would treat race weekends like they were snowed in. The Monday of race week they'd go to Bill's IGA and stock up on the essentials. No one self-respecting Brooklynite would dare go out once Wednesday hit. That's when the diehard Petty, Elliot, Earnhart, Marline, Bodine, and Burton faithful would start making their way to the campgrounds and infield.

We saw a lot of things growing up in that era, but it took a race weekend in 2014 to change all of that. You see that was the summer a man on the side of the road, shirtless, holding a Red Stripe in one hand, and in the other was a towel with something squeaking inside the folds. This shirtless man then opened the towel and I thought I knew what I was looking at, but it wasn't until he looked at me and asked:

Would you like a baby raccoon?

Yes, the man who didn't have a shirt, but had a towel handy just in case he were to encounter a baby varment in need of nursery care, asked me if I would like a baby raccoon. I said no. To which he replied:

Man my wife is gonna kill me if I bring home another baby raccoon...

I was left to assume, as you are, that this was not his first baby raccoon abduction, and it more than likely wasn't his last.

Here are the Top 10 Strangest Things Michiganders Have Seen While Driving: