Each spring, as Old Man Winter starts thinking about getting his frosty white butt out of town for spring break, we Michiganonians (Michigaroonies? I refuse to be called a “Michigander”) begin to experience a phenomenon that’s unique to states where we spend four months out of every year walking around in stupid-looking little wool hats and wearing our socks to bed.

Mike Ball | Contributor

I’m talking about slush nuggets.

In case you’ve never heard of them, “slush nuggets” are those great little treasures that show up in your yard as the snow melts. I live on a busy street where the snowplows push their grimy little glaciers up into my yard all winter long. By the time March rolls around, I’ve accumulated a pretty substantial heap of road slop and a particularly rich haul of Slush Nuggets.

Now I don't mean those Almond Joy wrappers and Peppermint Schnapps bottles that always seem to poke their way out of the drifts after every gala Saturday night. These would fall more into the category of “trash.” And, of course there are the occasional zoological discoveries, which I probably should technically refer to as “roadkill.”

No, slush nuggets are the riches that transform the chore of cleaning up the lawn every spring into a mini-adventure in social anthropology.

Bear in mind that when I say “riches,” it’s the cultural, not the monetary value of slush nuggets that is significant. Oh sure, there was the rear-view mirror from that 1997 Hyundai that turned out to be worth more than the replacement value of the entire car, but that’s a pretty rare find. Normally, what makes a slush nugget special is the implied story. Each artifact represents a tiny vignette of someone’s life.

For instance, there was the paper plate with the name “Candy” and a phone number written on it in lipstick. Instantly, the name “Candy” conjures images of big hair, lots of eye makeup and possibly a couple of surgically-enhanced body parts. Gazing at this artifact, you can actually visualize a young couple meeting across a smoky pool table - their eyes meet; she scrawls her phone number on the paper plate the very second someone polishes off the last mozzarella stick; he takes it from her greasy hand and presses it to his heart.

The phone number turned out to be (honest honey, I just called it as research for the column) the number of a pizza delivery store. Maybe, I thought, Candy just wanted to make sure that her new friend had a handy way to deal with any sort of “hunger” situation he might encounter.

The fact that the plate ended up in my yard suggests that pizza wasn’t really what the guy had in mind.

Of course some of the stories behind my slush nuggets are a bit more puzzling. For instance, how, when the wind chill is 15 degrees below zero, would someone not notice losing a shoe? Or a pair of boxer shorts? Or their bra? You would think that cold toes would be a dead giveaway. Or the draft.

The slush nuggets I’m currently trying to interpret include a box of crayons with all the tips bitten off, an unopened jar of anchovies, a toupee (very nearly mis-categorized as “roadkill” since it was pretty much the same color and texture as a squashed muskrat), an eyeglass case containing a pair of cardboard 3-D glasses and an inexpensive picture frame with a photograph of someone’s belly button mounted in it (the belly button was an “innie”).

Who says winters in Michigan are not entertaining?

Mike Ball is the Erma Bombeck Award-winning author of "What I've Learned So Far..." and the book What I've Learned So Far... Part I: Bikes, Docks & Slush Nuggets. This column is an excerpt from the book.