Phthursday Musings: Notes from Michigan

We are in Holland, Michigan this week. It’s the longest I’ve been away from home since my honeymoon!

In a nearby park, there is a crazy old tree, around which walking paths have been constructed. There is a table by there, and someone had the idea to put on the table a notebook in which to collect thoughts from people visiting the tree. Now, what wisdom could I possibly impart unto unsuspecting Michiganders?

Yeah, it goes like that.

This is my eighth time in Michigan. Three times have been for vacations of various durations. This of course means I’ve been here five times for something other than a vacation.

Last year, META-SPIEL readers may recall I was in Port Huron to, of all things, play golf, in a charity tournament, held by a customer of our company. This afforded me the opportunity to drive around the state just a bit and I got to briefly see glimpses of Battle Creek and Kalamazoo and Lansing. Didn’t really see Port Huron proper, and I went past Flint. But I did feel like I’d gotten a sense of things I hadn’t had before.

Twice, for my previous job, I went to John Ball Zoo in Grand Rapids, where our point of sale system was being installed. Grand Rapids seemed like a surprisingly happening place. When you live in a different Midwestern state, you don’t really hear about the second or third or fourth largest cities in other Midwestern states… whatever the largest non major league, non capital cities are. Think about it: Fort Wayne? Grand Rapids? Akron? Springfield, Missouri? Rockford? Even if you’ve heard the names, if you’re not from within 100 miles, you don’t have any real frame of reference for these places, and I say that as someone who soaks up frames of reference.

June 12, 1999, I saw Pavement at St. Andrew’s Hall in Detroit. After the show, because such a thing was possible then, I drove across the border to Windsor, Ontario, went to a gas station, and purchased some Turkish delight. No visa, no passport needed.

And way back in sixth grade, we went to the national chess tournament in Southfield. I went 4-2-1 there which was pretty good. The mall across from the hotel where the tournament was at, we went there, and Dennis Rodman and John Salley were there signing autographs. I should have gotten in line.

All of this adds up to not having a whole lot of first hand experience with Michigan or, for that matter, Michiganders.

So what did I know about Michigan growing up? I knew that Michigan SUCKED.

The 1989 NCAA Final Four was a BIG DEAL. I was in junior high school, which is, I think, exactly the right team to get really into college basketball. And the best team in the country was the Illinois Fighting Illini. These were the Lou Henson years and that Illini team was stacked. Nick Anderson. Kenny Battle. Kendall Gill!

Well, you all know what happened: Michigan happened. The Wolverines were just a 6-seed, their coach bailed on them before the tournament began, they weren’t supposed to make any waves. But they played out of their minds, got to the Final Four, upset the Illini, and then beat Seton Hall in the final.

To the very best of my knowledge, the Saturday of that Final Four game is when approximately 37,000 kids vaguely near my age somewhere in the State of Illinois collectively realized what everyone in Ohio had long known: MICHIGAN SUCKS.

What’s particularly tremendous about this realization is how thoroughly it sticks, across so many places. I went to graduate school at Ohio State, and I simply cannot overstate the depth of the animus that people there had for “that school up north”, and by extension for the entire State of Michigan. And I’ve had conversations with people about the 1989 Final Four, and… the preceding paragraph is not an exaggeration. I even think 37,000 is a realistic guess.

There was a survey several years ago asking fans of various colleges what their #1 rivals are. At least five different schools cited Michigan. Ohio State, of course. Michigan State, naturally. Notre Dame, for sure. Wisconsin, okay. Illinois… well, let’s just say, this sentiment is not quite so much reciprocated. But still!

The presence of Michigan State in that list should be sufficient to prove that Michigan as a state is hardly a monolith. It’s not even a single land mass! But all of this is immaterial. The animus for Michigan was real, and it somehow spread beyond things like college sports. I can’t explain it in any coherent terms, but, like, Michigan may have been less cool than Indiana to people.

While sort of on the subject of the Big Ten - that’s B1G to you - which isn’t exactly what it used to be, what with the admission this past week of UCLA and USC - here’s a ridiculous little trivia question for you:

What is the one current B1G city which I have not at least driven through?

Having now been to Michigan multiple times and at least briefly seeing a lot of the state, and having read so very much about the Rust Belt / upper Midwest / Great Lakes region / etc., I will assert this: Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois are very similar. Wisconsin, Iowa, and Indiana are also similar, but I don’t know if they’re very similar.

Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio all have a number of small to medium sized cities scattered about which are maybe not in great shape. Decatur? Battle Creek? Youngstown? Now, sure, there are also places like these in other states. I’ve been to Davenport, I’ve been through Gary, I get all of that. But there’s something more persistent and insistent about those three states.

It so happens that in the last five or so years I’ve read more about the greater Midwest than at any time before. I’ve read the Belt anthologies of Columbus and Youngstown. I’ve read a lot about Cleveland and Detroit. And it all fits, it all makes sense. I don’t feel out of place in Ohio, and I don’t feel out of place in Michigan. It all fits together for me.

I’ve been reading Edward McClelland’s Nothin’ but Blue Skies, appropriately subtitled The Heyday, Hard Times, and Hopes of America’s Industrial Heartland. McClelland grew up in Lansing, somehow wound up as a newspaper reporter in Decatur, eventually wound up in Chicago. I’ve been familiar with his work from elsewhere and just finally got around to this book from about 8 years ago, and it’s still incredibly vital and relevant, in how it gets into just precisely how fucked up things are in so many places where, well, you all live, you all are from. I know enough about who my readers are to know that.

There’s a chapter in McClelland’s book about Buffalo, which gets into how the city basically got completely cut off from its waterfront. Even here in Holland, I found that downtown kind of ends a couple blocks off of Lake Macatawa. Right at the lake, there’s industrial legacy, there’s some kind of metal shredder / recycler. Elsewhere the lake is accessible, but still… you can see even here, in a place that’s doing comparatively well, how the relationship between the people and their environment has been so throttled by the needs of industry. And it kind of helps explain a little bit about Chicago… where downtown is a place of commerce, and the Lake Michigan shore is a place of recreation and long has been, while industry was mostly relegated upstream (or is that downstream? hard to say with the Chicago River) or way down the shoreline to the steelworks on the east side or even into Indiana. There’s a whole lot to be said about the decision long ago to keep the shore “forever open, clear, and free”.

We were in Louisville last year, a place with a similar industrial legacy along its riverfront, but there the work has been in motion for a long time to clean up that legacy, and there is some astounding parkland along the Ohio River there. Downtown Louisville truly has the feel of a place that is happening, that is thriving, where there was foresight and intentionality. I haven’t seen downtown Buffalo, I haven’t seen some of the other places McClelland writes about, but I feel like there is possibility for rebirth, even in the midst of such a difficult climate (and such a difficult political climate)… but one wonders from where the social will might emerge.

We took a day trip to Saugatuck, based primarily on my desire to visit Uncommon Coffee Roasters, the place I like to order coffee from. They have a coffee shop there which sells simple egg sandwiches.

Why is it so hard for places to have simple egg sandwiches??

But they have it there! And they have their excellent coffee. And I met the owner and talked to him briefly and it was all very nice.

While there we rode the Saugatuck Chain Ferry, alleged to be the last remaining chain pulled ferry in the country. The ferry takes you from one side of the Kalamazoo River to the other, via the power of two tall blond college students, and occasionally eight year olds, turning a crank:

In small touristy areas like this, people feel emboldened to decorate the landscape with a surprising number of per capita statues. These sometimes include frightening ones:

Anyway, if you’re in Michigan, go to Saugatuck, buy the coffee, turn the crank, see the scary statue. All highly recommended.

Trivia answer:

Ann Arbor.

A couple I’ve only barely driven through, including East Lansing and, to my surprise, New Brunswick, New Jersey. But I’ve driven through them. Minneapolis, actually, I’ve only been there because I flew into there once to get to Sioux Falls.

But the one I’ve not physically been in, at all, ever, is Ann Arbor. That school up north. Those thieving Wolverines.

I know, I know. It’ll happen. I’ll turn the page. Stop running against the wind. Make some night moves. Nevermore be the beautiful loser. I’ll get down on Main Street, Ann Arbor.

Look: All these Bob Seger references took me past midnight Michigan time!

But it’s still Thursday back home in Brookfield. So it’s okay. Catch you from home next week.