Buchanan, Michigan, is only 90 miles from Chicago but far off the southwest-Michigan tourist path. It’s a small working-class town of 4,000 people who speak with that relaxed American country drawl that doesn’t seem to know North from South. Buchanan’s stores have none of the understated boutique look that you find in trendier New Buffalo or Lakeside, 15 miles east. Intead it seems thrown together and lived in, with too many bikes and toys littering the front yards, a battalion of pickup trucks under repair in backyards and driveways, and a hodgepodge of vacant storefronts along the main drag.
One can easily imagine Gorbitz and his tidier, short-haired older brother John fishing for bass in the Saint Joseph River, deer hunting in nearby forests, and making short work of a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon. But one would have to stretch well beyond the good-old-boy stereotypes to see them also as aficionados of a rare gourmet delicacy. And yet the Gorbitz brothers, like their parents before them, are expert hunters of the elusive morel mushroom.
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“Morel hunters never say exactly where they look,” says Phil. “It’s always ‘south of town,’ or ‘near the river’ or something general like that.”
Soon others started scoring. John and Phil’s eyes were the best, often spotting mushrooms that I couldn’t see until they went to pick them. Eventually, though, even I was finding them, including a patch of ten spongy yellow ones. One hillside seemed unusually rich with morels, yielding most of the 60 or so we were to find that afternoon.
A half hour later we were in Phil’s dining room, working on a new case of Pabst and talking about the best way to eat morels.
“To be honest, if you wasn’t coming up here, I’d be sitting in a boat on a lake catching crappies, sunfish, trout, you name it. I’d rather go fishing,” said Phil.
