Chicago Trip I: the Places Between Cities

I took a road trip with my two best friends, Mike and Nick, a few weeks back. It was an early bachelor party for my August wedding this year. Better to get these things out of the way early, and avoid being a still-drunk groom cliche later.

We started our trip riding out of farm country, Adrian, in what can only be considered a light class monster truck. Mike, my oldest friend, was the driver, and the only man I know capable of parallel parking an F-250 in a spot meant for a Prius, Lucky we didn't have to; the concept of a truck for personal use was a novelty in Chicago, and granted us a very special parking spot.


But out journey was not as easy as finding that spot.

We have a saying in Michigan. There are only three seasons: Fall, Winter, and Construction. Illinois and Indian, as it turns out, have the same saying. Routed from I-94, our five hour journey turned into a back roads adventure, eventually dumping us off in Gary, Indiana.

I have no photos of Gary. I grew up, and live still, just outside Detroit. I walked the Cass Corridor nightly between 2005 and 2010 in order to avoid parking fees on campus. I'm used to seeing abandoned homes, empty stores, hollowed out skeletons of things stripped then burnt. I grew up by a city of fire.

But in Detroit, there is hope. The corridor has WSU. Where, I used to park, there is now a textile shop. The old Blimpy was torn down to make way for high rise apartments. When all else failed, all I had to do was look up, and see the Downtown sky line in ink black silhouettes, incandescent, and neon lights.

In Gary, the sorrow went on, seemingly forever.

I know we left Gary, Indiana at some point. I just can say when that point was.

"We've got to be out by now," Nick, my newest friend, said, appealing to the logic of time and space in a place frozen from both.

Mike checked the map. It, too, was unsure.

Finally, Mike said, "Oh, we're coming up from the south."

"So this is the South Side now?"

It might as well have been Gary.

Slowly, the South Side turned into the city interior: Streeterville, then the Miracle Mile. All turned glass, and glorious. It the world inside Chicago, Gary might as well have not existed.

Driving through it, I feel that Gary is more than just a place. It's an idea. It's a sense of despair, of loss, of a time and place that left it behind. In Gary--and all that surrounding sorrow that Gary seemed to infect--time was immaterial. And to its detriment, very material to the world around it.

That's all from Elliot at the Kitchen Table

Freelance: Part V

Another in a series of articles done for the Observer & Eccentric website and newspapers. This is my coverage of the Big Reveal, on the 20th of November, and a feature for Thursday's Christmas Open House.

http://www.hometownlife.com/story/life/2014/12/02/thursday-open-house/19771195/

That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table, wrapping up his holiday shopping with the joy that he didn't have to go out on Black Friday.

Freelance Part IV

I continue my relationship with the South Lyon Herald in this weeks online edition. My article on the local hop gardener, Nick Mascero, can be found here.

South Lyon is a wondrous, historic community with surprises and treasures at every turn. The South Lyon Herald is equally amazing. Please read and pass this on.

This is also the link: http://www.hometownlife.com/story/life/home-garden/2014/10/16/growing-hops-home/17233255/

That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table, feeling like a big shot.

The Sound of Silence

I drove a man home the other day. He lives on the outskirts of Ypsilanti Township. It's pretty much Milan. The edge of the world.

He's a nice man--friendly, though very quiet, which is unusual for most of the men that I move around. Once we reached his home, and I helped him out of the van (he's in a wheelchair and needs a great deal of help getting around) I became anxious.

I had no idea why. There was nothing around us. Nothing was stirring in the nearby woods, and the neighbors were out for the day. But the anxiety grew in spite of me telling it that there is nothing to worry about.
Nothing
That's when it hit me: my day is a crowded room of somethings. My body is constantly moving. Even when sitting, I am shaken by the vibration of the van's engine. My ears are busy with the voices of others, the radio, the road noise, noise, noise.

This man lives in the woods. Neighbors are scattered far, and there isn't a freeway for five to ten miles depending on which direction you take. In that silence and stillness, my ears were straining for something. The idleness of gently blowing leaves, and the whistle of wind through the trees were too subtle for ears accustom the metallic cacophony of the city proper. I needed to make a concerted effort to appreciate this moment of solitude. 

But he went into the house, and it was time for me to go. The moment was left behind; my day felt worse off for it. Back in the car and the chaos, my mind searched for that moment again, screaming to know the sound of silence.

That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table with a little help from Simon and Garfunkel.

Class Water-War

In Michigan there is a clear, geographic divide between the classes. It isn't like Manhattan or Chicago, where you need to wait for a street sign to tell you that this is the point of no return. 

In the low lying lands of Southeastern Michigan, you have the blue-collar communities. The once marshy land has been developed into a dry, concrete jungle. Here people live mostly hand to mouth; the few that grasp at the cusp of white-collar are usually pretenders. They got their mansions during the building of the housing bubble and scam, and owe twice the amount they paid for it, or their jobs pay nearly enough for two who do not have kids. That frees up an easy thousand dollars a year that would have been burned on school jerseys and ballet lessons.

In this world, water is a rare thing, contained in a clear pool or else on the tap. The only life inside it is viral--something the chlorine cannot kill. Any water outside of that--your Detroit river and Lake Erie--are dangerous places. People die in them. Pollution is rampant. Both have caught fire in the past.

Up North--or just Northish by Michigan standards--you have the richer, wetter lands of the wealthy. Out there the inland lakes are numerous. The houses built up around them are newer, better. The schools are bigger; the programs funded to excess. Out there, the trickle down politics of Rick Snyder are gospel. A world balanced and paid for by the sacrifice of the working poor is a perfect world.

Going out there is the only time where I feel that there is real tangible evidence of the Aquatic Ape Theory. At my Uncle's home, which is on a lake, I watch as the neighborhood kids hop casually into the boats, and set off into the depths. A lake where, not sixteen months ago, a man died, and it took a full day to recover his body. Yet these kids jumped into paddle boats and kayaks and canoes and take to the water like experts, unaware or simply unafraid of the dangers of open water.

I stood on the dock, my son dangling his feet over the edge and playing with my fiance, and I felt terror. Any moment could mean doom. The water has that power. It is death if it wants to be.

As that wretched emotion begins to take its hold, constricting my lungs and pumping adrenaline into my blood, I do the only sensible thing: I turn away. I walk off the dock and back to the hard, dry land--my natural state.

The state of my social class.

That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table.

Here Comes the Spring

The snow is gone now, save for a few piles of gas soaked sludge hiding out in the Kroger parking lot. The sun is out again, and its rays can finally be felt instead of only seen. On a day like this, when it is all but certain that winter is gone, I like to think of what I heard a fellow coworker say during the throws of the first Polar Vortex:

"I don't want to hear any complaining come July, when its 90 degrees out. If you want to say something, think of what you were doing January 9th, when it was -40 degrees."

I was wrapped in all the winter clothing I could find, feeling the beard on my face freeze over from the water in my breath. My legs ached, as did the foundation of the house. Both groaned in the night, when the winds were at their worst.

It was extreme. It was also amazing.

From NPR.org

There are not many years where you can say it was so cold you could see water crystals floating in the air, nor that you survived weather that would--and did--kill citizens from warmer states.

So when you look back, don't think on the misery of the season, but rather in the beauty of the extreme. Like a tidal wave rushing into the shore, or a hurricane swirling on the radar, the terror and danger also yield beauty like none other. A crystallized wasteland--we may never see it again in our lifetime. Think on that awhile.

That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table, drinking down his custom six pack from Kroger.

Come on, Meijer!--A Craft Beer Exxxxtravaganza!

     On my way to adulthood, like so many, I ran into a snag with a certain alcoholic beverage. This snag--mostly involving an eighteen year old blacking out in the city of Ann Arbor--combined with stupidity of youth with the mildly alcoholic presence of beer. And not just any beer! It was the most bland, commonplace, and trite beer of them all: Miller Lite. My run in with this run-of-the-miller, tried and true and overdone brewing recipe left me with a gag reflex that, from eighteen to nearly twenty-five, left me dry heaving the moment I could smell an American Lager--light or otherwise.
     However, time does go by; I got over my gagging issue, and I have, in recent days, been introduced to the world of craft brewing. It is just added irony that one of my favorite "craft" brewing companies are owned by the Miller-Coors conglomerate--a company only slightly less evil than the beverage giant In-Bev, who owns everything else essentially. Blue Moon is that one; and Bell's would have to be my current favorite independent. Though, Atwater, and New Holland. However, I--being the Michigander that I am--have a love for so many of "The Craft State" local breweries. 
     Yet, somehow the prominence of Michigan's in-state brewing industry does not translate when I actually go shopping for a brew. A quick run down for anyone who does not go to Meijer or Kroger in the same parts of Southeast Michigan that I do: there is one aisle only partially dedicated to beer. Mixed in is usually Mike's Hard beverages and cocktail mixers. Of the cooler and warm shelves, spanning roughly sixty feet long--I'm guessing--there is, maybe, ten feet of craft beer. That doesn't sound too bad, right? Here's the kicker: most of it is out of season or, worse yet, they never stock the seasonal beers to begin with.
     The beer that got me into beer was a seasonal beer: Blue Moon Pumpkin Ale. I live for seasonal brewing. And all I have to say is: Come on, Meijer! Yeah, I know that area that I live is not the most sophisticated, but why can I not get fall beer in the fall and spring beers in the summer? Oh, sure, I see a summer beer, now. It's freaking December! And where is all of your Sam Adam's? Oh you have the Boston lager out and Sam Light? Great! Where is the Alpine Spring or the Old Fezziwig?
     What are you so mad about? says my Meijer. You can always buy any one of our Budweiser beers. They take up half the aisle!
     No, Meijer, I don't think I will. I don't think that I will.
     
     Above are links to the company websites and wiki sites. Also, under "Craft State" is a good article with interviews from the Founders Brewing Company's...well, Founders. It's all worth reading and informative, especially if you are out of state and don't have a craft beer culture like Michigan's.

That's all for for now, from Elliott at the Kitchen Table, drinking Bell's Winter White Ale with a cold cut sandwich.