Like a Lamb

I was sitting in a bar, waiting for my laundry to next door dry last week. It was nice talking to the bartender, who I hadn’t spoken to for a while, and while I finished my whiskey and ginger ale she asked me where my wife and I were living at now.

“Oh still in the Vine neighborhood,” I said.

“There are days, mostly in the spring,” she said. “When I drive down there and wish I still lived there, everyone is outside riding skateboards or walking their dogs and it looks like fun.”

“But,” she said. “Other times I go down there and can’t help but see all the broken beer bottles and the trash.”

Thursday, spring was in the air and it was one of the days I was able to look past trash.

The boulders of snow were dwindling, the sidewalks were mostly free of ice and our dog, Mr. Bojangles, was terribly excited.

He’s half Yorkshire Terrier and half Jack Russell (we think, he’s a rescue) February was so cold he couldn't walk far without getting frostbite. So with the sun shining and a light jacket on I went outside with him.

We passed a house with a college kid wearing a tank top and basketball shorts was grilling hamburgers on the porch. There were countless cigarette butts on the sidewalk but Bo wanted to go up and get some meat, the kid laughed.

“Sorry that’s for me little man,” he said.

I laughed.

We passed the adult rehab home. The men who stay there scare a lot of people on the street, but they’re trying their best, and from what I have heard, it’s difficult to get into the program.

Last summer there was an older man who lived there that had trouble communicating. He spent a lot of time outside on their steps. He was always nervous and polite when he asked if it was ok to pet Bo,, even though my wife and I always said it was fine. Seeing his smile light up when he petted the dog always gave me a warm feeling inside.

I don’t think he still lives there. If he does I didn't see him this week. The sidewalk is still blocked by a pileup of snow from the nearby parking lot, so I walked to other side of the street.

Further down the street was a group of WMU students on Spring Break. They were drinking PBR and listening to music. They said hi and asked his name, and laughed when I told him it was Mr. Bojangles. After we left, I picked him so he didn’t step on broken glass nearby.

We walked further down Walnut Street. Ahead on the hill was the remains of East Campus. It’s completely covered now in protective plastic and is set to open in June as an alumni center. I look forward to visiting it.

On Davis Street there are two retired couples that live next door to each other. They are part of the minority of people that own their own houses in the neighborhood.

I don’t know their names, but both couples have small dogs, Benjie and Suzy. They call my wife and I Bo’s parents. When we got married in October Benjie’s mom gave a small wedding present, just a coin purse. We have a special place for it.

When I turned the corner to come back to the house near the open field, I passed a teenager watching his younger brother and sister throw a baseball back and forth. He was reading a book in an oversized tire left by the football team, while his siblings struggled to hit swing a large bat.

When I came back home I heard the couple next door fighting loudly. When I tried to fall asleep later that night I prayed the loud explosion was a firework and not gunshot again.

Today, (Monday) Rhelia took Bo for another long walk and saw someone had planted flowers in their yard already. I saw them this afternoon, after her, Bo and I walked in the opposite direction of a loose pit-bull and I again carried him over some more broken glass.     

Goodbye and Thanks for all the Fish

I felt a melancholy sense of sadness during Harding’s “50 Percent Off Going out of Business Sale!” late last week. The store has now closed, but seeing the lone package of frozen potatoes in the freezer section, the nearly gone supply of soup and the inexplicably still there Halloween decorations made me think about my history in Kalamazoo.

I say this because the store has been a constant since I moved to town seven plus years ago. It’s location near a heavy rental property section of town had made it more or less my grocery store for many of those years. I know fearing change is common problem, and I can still drive somewhere else to pick up lunch meat. But for many of my neighbors, Harding’s was the one place they could walk to in order to buy ramen noodles, or an apple, or even a couple of beers.

It’s strange for me to write about a grocery store closing again, because the first article I ever wrote (St. Joseph High School’s “The Wind Up,” circa 2003) which made me think about possibly writing for a living, was about a family-owned grocery store that closed. It had been across the street from my mother’s work and I had gone there as a child after school let out for years.

I interviewed the family that owned the store and they said they simply couldn’t keep up with giant supermarkets invading the area. I talked to customers who were sad to see it go.  

It was pretty good piece of writing for a 16-year-old.  

The response from my journalism teacher, Mr. Holt, was a lot of encouragement. It felt great that I was good at something other than just tackling a quarterback on a Friday night.

But that’s not what this blog post is about.  

In the first house I lived at in Kalamazoo I had four roommates and we were all under 22-years-old and immature. At that time I worked at a pizza place and the chief reason for me to go to Harding’s was to buy bologna (Yes, you can get sick of pizza) and beer. I would sometimes borrow my neighbors humorously basket equipped bike and buy the above mentioned items.

(They were even more irresponsible than us and ended up getting evicted after a couple months.  They didn’t have jobs, however they had a punk rock band, so they seemed pretty cool.)

If it was a Friday I would also cash my work checks there and get money order for my rent. While I was able to eventually obtain a bank account with money in it, there are still many people in the area who need these functions of a store to pay their bills.

On Holidays such as the Fourth of July and Memorial Day, my friends and I would go to the store and buy burgers, hot dogs and if we had a few good days waiting tables, steak. It seemed the good times would never end.

However, a strange thing happened. I got older.

After several crash and burn relationships, I met the woman who agreed to marry me. She lived near the store as well, and I gave up a fear of commitment while we walked alongside the flour and the baking pans.

I know that it is a lame and sexist joke that, “I married my wife because of her cooking.” Still in my case it’s somewhat true. Rhelia is a great cook. She grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere, where cooking is still an art form.

If you listen to “A Prairie Home Companion,” you’ll understand what I mean. If you don’t well, listen to public radio once in a while, it’s a lot of fun.

We learned to navigate the sales on our tight budget, and she made me great home cooked meals for me in the first time in years. When she wasn’t in the mood to cook, I made some pretty good frozen pizzas.

So when we walked along the emptying isles of the store last week I was sad, not just for losing the convenience of the store, but by losing an important part of the neighborhood. It was crowded, and there were all types of people there. Young people and old people, black and white, people we knew and people I couldn’t have known from Adam.

In addition there were people working the checkout lanes. They were real people, not machines and they checked you out and bagged your groceries instead watching you do it, like at other stores in town.

Even though I don’t know the names of everyone that’s worked there, most of them were nice. The owners of the store said the people could possibly move to other jobs in the company, but most of the 60 people were left without a job, according to an employee I was talking to.

I hope they can find a new job. I hope the location gets a new grocery store, although I don’t have much hope for one. The store was built in 1971 and has been a grocery store all that time. A developer has bought it, but a developer recently bought the Packard Plant in Detroit too.

The difference was the grocery store was still useful.