middlecoast
I’m home right now, home being the 150-some-odd-mile swath of freshwater shoreline that stretches ever longer with the passing years, centerpointed at 5200 S. 1700 E. Chicago, Illinois, USA, but reaching to Milwaukee, Indiana, Michigan. Trips home become more scattered and complex every time, but even better for their contrast to the rest of my life and the rest of the world. The midwest encompasses. Vowels tilt and mine join them within minutes. And everything is unified by the lake, great, unsalted and sharkless.
I drove around Michigan City (or as the guy on the train called it, Machine Gun City) tonight, pre-sunset, a couple trainspotters stood staked out with their sports zoom lenses on 11th street to catch the train driving down the center of the road when I dropped off my dad to go back to the city. I ate a Dairy Queen sundae in the parking lot. Clouds billowed from the power plant. I made a lot of right turns on red. Carefree living. Lots of beachgoing; I didn’t drown. The Hawaii of red states?
It’s kinda weird to live far enough from home to need a plane now. Or weirder still to fly into Milwaukee, but what a good idea. Thanks Kayak for thinking MKE is a viable “nearby airport” serving Chicago. Just to be clear how much of a nerd I am, I could pick out both the Brewers-Cubs game and an Alterra store from the plane.
A couple years back I made a commitment to visit the Cream City more often, at least once a year, because it seemed irresponsible not to. I have done well in holding up my bargain with myself, third time back this year with more to come. Everyone is immediate and friendly and unpretentious and wants to feed you and you don’t need any real plans. Excessive dairy or frying are not considered noteworthy. Pabst is not an ironic beer here. And city you are gorgeous.
(Also, within minutes of arriving in Milwaukee I saw a guy in cardboard antlers, a vanity plate referring to bowling, and an unironic tirade over brewery preference. Someone on my 10 bus hired someone else on the bus to work housekeeping in their Best Western franchise. Heartland dairyland kindness.)
After midnight people had petered out around me but I figure if you have more than one thing you can go do in Milwaukee at 1:00am you probably should: a good 30 minutes of Scheid, bus-side, and an hour of sleepy radio-sitting in at WMSE. Hardly any talking if you can believe it. Just company.
I walked a lot of Milwaukee downtown alone late that night, expansive and solid, riverfront sausage neon and the mocking curves of the Intercontinental Hotel. I found bowling shoes on the street, in my size, and though the night was desolate the few people I’d pass on bridges and historic wards seemed more like date-rapists than muggers. In the late cab home my driver asked if I believed in UFOs, and when I offered my dissenting opinion, turned the dial from AM to FM in a gestural huff, edging the volume knob ever louder as he gauged I wasn’t being punished quite enough for my skepticism by last year’s dance music.
In the morning Courtney took me to the shuttle (sadly not Badger Coach Lines, or even better, Lamers Bus Lines) to Chicago for baseball. I almost had a peaceful ride to myself the whole way until the Germans got on, and the luggage compartment opened up somewhere along the Edens. Then I had to figure out a place to ditch my oversized bag. Making-friends-with-coffee-shop in 15 minutes or less. Do it. Thank you Adam.
And now Indianaside it smells like the beach and I smell like the beach. It is easy to be here, more than it was to come back to Toronto and more than it is to be at home in real life now, debris and a year of unpacking and unbalance scattered in each corner. It’s so far removed from my new routine, this version of reality, this constant Chicago-Obama-urban-intellect sales pitch, this land of Indiana strip malls parked full by Veterans’ license plates, and the outlet stores filled with endless racks of unsold XS and S clothes because no one, no one here is small. And though the roads twist between these time zones, I am both faraway from and ever interrupted by home, by the New York coffee shop sticker on my friend’s notebook while we play Scrabble among the crickets, by the technology I use as a lifeline (at least I do not bring it to the beach).
I used to complain that there wasn’t enough continuity between all the different parts and places of my life, and now that they have folded into one tiny crumpled wad it comes as a surprise. In the subconscious navigation of these old streets and the seconds’ distance from the shoreline and the people from forever ago (and six months ago) that care and the dreamlike state of eating tacos every day, it’s a version of paradise. But just one take on a larger theme, regional and historical and personal, and not one I’ll ever stop turning over in my head. Next 500 miles of Great Lakes coastline, look out. Here I come.
