I used to look forward to hanging out in Elkhart, IN. I had family who lived along the St. Joesph river. I’d play around n get in trouble with my cousins while my family finished remodeling the house.

The St. Joseph River used to scare me. My family lived near the damn. The damn had a steep dropoff. The boat could slide right through one of the openings and over the edge. One day, the driver slid around behind a buoy during a turn to go back upstream. The boat struggled. Barely made it out of the current. The current is always strongest at the end of the opening of the edge of a cliff.
I could only suspect the natives of Elkhart, IN are feeling the same way at present. A small manufacturing town 15 miles east of South Bend, IN, Elkhart only had so much which drew the public eye. They used to be able to boast being the home of a famous NBA player, but when that player is Sean Kemp, you tighten your lip back up. Then again, given the sports stories of the day, fathering many children with many mothers amongst other things is bluesy if anything.
I live in a town that sponges off of Chicago more than it depends on Gary. Elkhart’s major industries are mobile home and RV manufacturing. They’re one of the top two centers for their industries. Currently, there’s now 15% unemployment in Elkhart County, IN and 18% in the city of Elkhart, Indiana. I wish Obama’s crew would have been filmed eating at a local dinner along the St. Joseph river while he was in the town, but the fact he showed up there was story enough.
I take another moment from the main concerns of my life and think about Elkhart along with Ft. Myers, Florida. I haven’t been to Elkhart in years. If you’ve read any of my posts then you’ve read about my Christmas n New Years experiences in Ft. Myers. The vacant storefronts and empty domestic car dealer lots have that “remains of a ghost town” feel. I went lookin’ for tumbleweed. The road leading up to the Mucky Duck on Captiva Island was lined with “For Sale” signs. Much like Elkhart, Ft. Myers doesn’t survive on hedged industries. Medicine dependent on the snowbirding elderly as well as tourism. Neither is surviving.
Obama will be in Ft. Myers on Tuesday. I don’t know what it’ll take to restore the economy. What to do with 20th century manufacturing towns in the 21st century is a question in which the answer will come with a Pulitzer Prize. Not that it can’t be done, but that it’s that serious, complex, and detailed of a question. The best answer, at best, is that it will involve a concentrated effort. Change of this magnitude takes a generation. Unfortunately, our nation usually can’t wait past a commercial break. In the case of towns like Elkhart, I can’t blame them.

I’m guessing it will take Will and repeated efforts.

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A crafted stone baptismal fountain in the sancturary of Immanuel Lutheran Church. iPhone photo by DB Fraizer

My mother told me the news in that “I haven’t had a chance to tell him,” sort of way as we rode with my grandfather to our Sunday night dinner.

I knew who my great uncle was more than I knew him. We were family though we weren’t that close. We weren’t distant – he lived along a long country street with my grandfather’s family but for the couple years he lived in Minnesota (I don’t normally mention Minnesota this much in a lifetime). Our relationship was a textbook case of happenchance amongst extended family. All the same, I respected and took pride in him. He ran the physical plant services at Valparaiso University. They named the energy center after him some time ago.

But as we went in to Immanuel Lutheran Church to attend my great uncle’s wake, I quickly became re-reminded of the power atmospherics play in an event: thick brick walls, rustic stone floor, a sizable, soothing baptismal fountain and a big pipe organ that is rumored to have been donated by my great-grandmother (my grandfather denies the rumor so much that it only makes it plausible). I’m not saying that DaVinci’s work adorn the walls and Michaelangelo painted the ceiling, but the first “Christian” churches were little hidden rooms in the back of store thatches, out of site from the Roman government that would have hauled them away had they been found. And, yes, they were found often. I’m not trying to claim “victim” for the Church, they were persecuted until they got power and then they persecuted until a balance was maintain (if…but that’s a story for another day), but Immanuel Lutheran Church does a great job holding to the materials, colors and tones of the biblical area, mixed with a big pipe organ. The ambiance artistically pays homage to the beauty and humility of the Church as opposed to the power, majesty or fraternalization most churches project. No gold chalices and blue-eyed Jesus’ in these dwellings. Immanuel Lutheran Church has the blend of beauty and respect you can’t find in a funeral parlor, making it the archetypal reason why churches make for great wakes. That, and that metaphysical connection…

It’s those little things this lowly copywriter (or copy writer) from the Chicago, IL area tried to keep in mind, that penitent sense of beauty and respect, as I wrote my book of blues. It’s the same approach I strive for now as I try to learn how to publish a book of blues.

4 Days til I venture to Minneapolis.

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