Bitter Townie

My brother calls me a bitter Townie.

Within in the past year he has demonstrated genuine dismay that I don’t take on the usual laid back arrogance of all True Ann Arborites (Townies). The arrogance that dismisses U of M students as mere visitors. As mere wannabes. As those who will pine for Ann Arbor for the rest of their lives while we still eat at Jerusalem Garden and Afternoon Delight. For those who go near crazy that they can’t make it back mid-summer for Art Fair while we go to Art Fair or not as it suits us – after all, it happens every year. As those of us who remember when the Fed Ex Kinkos on Liberty was a Burger King (how could I forget? My usual shift was to close the store Friday and Saturday nights). As those of who remember when the old YMCA still stood before the “new” bus station went in. As those of us who remember the Border’s on State St. before it sold out and became a chain. Yes, Border’s started out as one store on State St. in Ann Arbor that had an escalator when they took over the store next door to them. As those of us who bought some of our first great books at Border’s, however that may be defined.

He is dismayed that I don’t reside in Ann Arbor. Or live just outside Ann Arbor while gazing up at the City on the Hill. Or work in Ann Arbor. Or pine for Ann Arbor. Or commute every day to my Lansing job. A hell of a commute, he would sympathize, but an obvious necessity.

I have every credential a Townie needs beside that fact that I lived from ages 5 to 12 in a great little Virginia town called Harrisonsburg. Those years don’t count against my Townie status. Consider the following:

• I was conceived shortly after my father successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation in paleontology at the University of Michigan. Is that high-falutin’ of what?
• I was born in Ann Arbor at Women’s Hospital, a part of the U of M hospital system.
• My mother used to take me in a sling on public transportation to my early pediatric visits. (It really doesn’t get any better than that.)
• I went to Commie High – Community High School, which, when I went there, had great credentials but a bad “rep.” Now, it’s exclusive because of the very years and friends and teachers I experienced. Oh and let’s not forget I can still say, casually, that I had 7 1/2 years of English at Commie High. That’s the kind of thing Commie High was all about. Find your ball and run with it.
• My mother and brother work for U of M. A monolith of hipness.
• My mother actually owns a home within the city limits of Ann Arbor. This is a real tough club to join with the way property values have risen.
• I was accepted to U of M and attended for several months before I realized the program and I were not cut out for one another and dropped out. Yes, I dropped out of U of M. But I was not asked to leave U of M and I did not fail out of U of M.
• Where women of all ages and sizes don’t wear bras in public, at work, at home, or anyplace else. They don’t care and no one around them cares. And it’s not just college students with great bodies that live this way. I lived that way for years, too. Now I live in Lansing.

What I can say is that I have become intimidated by Ann Arbor. I’m just not at home there anymore. I don’t thrive in Lansing but it has become my home. The blocks of blighted, torn-down factories. The economy based on “cushy” state jobs whose employees take their incomes to the burbs and MSU whose employees keep their incomes in East Lansing. And the rest of us, who used to have factory jobs, who still live in the city. I am reminded by a friend who said that “Lansing is real.” Not in an “earthy” sense but in the sense that it never lets you forget what a middle of the road city looks like filled by men and women in coveralls – and in gray flannel suits.

I live in a good, stable neighborhood where the current scandal is that we’ve let grubs go untended and our lawn is currently the worst looking on the block. Other than that we’ve got kids on roller skates and families barbequeing. What I would call very “normal.” Very normal, here. Not Liberty Street by any means. Call me bitter, call me jealous. Hell, call me lost. But also, call me a woman who never had to fight a gray flannel suit because of the values Ann Arbor and East Lansing instilled in me. Because I take up my space in the world.

Call me a Townie because no matter how far I roam, Ann Arbor will always be the place of origin on my birth certificate.