I’m south of the lake along the pond, listening to a local jam band finish up their set. 4 songs in 20 minutes & no lyrics: the mark of a good band.

My buddy, Jelly, is enjoying sundown on the phone, chatting to his girlfriend who is across the river attending grad school at the University of Missouri. The pains of long distance relationships simplified by technology.

Jelly’s theme of the night, “roll with it.” It’s a theme I keep forgetting. I’m around the music all the time, but seldom do I heed its advice as much as when I started writing.

Instincts only get one so far. After that you have to train the body to perform the desired craft.

Or to appreciate it, all over again.

I should publish now. I think my other friend is coming up the road. She invited us. Wow, she’s in the music.

And banjo great Randal Saul is about to thrown down.

Shout out to the “pack”

And “happy birthday,” Bugh.

- Finn

Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.” – Luke 12:43-44

There have been some recent events that got The Region Business community chattering. Watercoolering.

On more than one occasion I’ve been asked about the situation because of my resourceful insight. So before the events flare up for its upcoming round of speculation, I will give me take on the events:

Last night I went and bought groceries at the local store. Bagels, apples, nothing spectacular.

It was 11:00pm on a Sunday night and the checkout girl Walmart-greeted as I walked in. I thought I was coming in late and she was feigning her happiness. But she was sincere. Smiling, humble, gracious.

Fearing the wrath of the employees – for I’ve been on that side of the time clock - I scrambled to get to the essentials before hustling back so they could get home sometime tonight too.

But as I got slid into her line, she greeted me as soft and penitent as when I first arrived. As did the gentlemen in front of me, looking worn from his fast food gig as he happily scrambled up the change to buy his bag of pretzels.

During the transaction, the gentlemen was raving about a contest in which he just won a car.

“The others, they wanted the Caddys. But I didn’t, you know? I don’t want to pay for those repairs…my uncle has a Caddy…I’m glad I got the Buick.” - was the gist of message.

I said, “No, I hear ya’,” I said as I took my receipt and started bagging my groceries.

The whole time I kept thinking that something was different about this conversation. This wasn’t an ordinary lottery. But before I could sharpen my thought, the gentlemen bagged his bag, apologized for being in the way, and took off before I could chuckle at his absurd politeness.

Then I turned back to the lady.

The checkout girl spoke with almost a sheepish cadence as if she was afraid of getting into trouble. I wanted to apologize.

“I’m sorry for that.”

I finally got my chuckling out when I said there was nothing to be sorry for.

Then it all made sense.

She said, “We used to live together at the (name omitted on purpose) shelter. He just won one of the cars at the donation auction there. Now he can drive to work.”

(I think I get that quote close to correct.)

She went to apologize and I said, “It’s a great story.”

I should have said, “That’s the most beautiful story I’ve heard in a long, long time.”

I would have used more detail but it wasn’t my story to tell. I feel guilty for telling as much of it as I did and I hope their success story continues and they get to tell it in great detail to a great many people many, many times because it’s such the story worth telling.

Being a child whose mother benefited from President Carter’s vision of welfare, I can’t not be touch by that. I can’t not defend that.

These are the stories we need to watercooler about.

These stories of people getting back up, battered and bruised. And getting their hands back into the dirt. And of the many great charities and churches doing good works to help these people who should never have had to suffer.

These are the people I want to rave about, talk about at length, and support and defend with unrelenting passion and vigor if they fall under the mercy of the positioning of lesser people.

These are the people worth commenting about. These are the stories that should be getting the pages of column inches

instead of the petty puff pieces that pander and placate to the public’s prayers to parade vicariously through pirates.

“Second star on the right, and straight on till morning.” - J. M. Barrie

With the thousands of people in The Region alone still suffering the ripples of corporate indulgence, that last thing I want is to be reminded of it, again. Or to give it anymore press.

There are too many other pilgrimages to promote.

Who’s with me?

(the sad truth is that if this story gets any traction, it won’t be because of the good souls I met at the grocery story last night)

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.

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.