In July, 2003, I was Jess and I were living on Maryland Ave., on the Eastside of Flint. The neighborhood had changed pretty dramatically since I had last lived there. In the 80s it was poor and crime-infested, in the 90s, it was just poor, and by 2003 it was crime infested again. That summer a gun went off next door and we found a body down the street one night. On the other hand, we were a close walk to all sorts of good food, the cultural center, the river, two great parks (Kearsley and Whaley). We liked our neighbors and our landlord.
I worked parttime down the street at Angelos as their weekend night-shift dishwasher, which meant that I witnessed the slow nightly progression (9 PM – 6 AM) of teenagers, college students, ravers, prostitutes, and schizophrenics, in roughly that order. I was able to take liberties with that job that were unprecedented before and after. I listened to a lot of James Brown, drank a lot of coffee, and ate a lot of coneys.
Frankly, too much happened that month to cover anything in too much detail. This is the short version. Jess went to visit her family for the 4th, and I went up to Lisa’s mom’s in Traverse City for a couple days. We explored the abandoned asylum on the edge of town — a huge complex that had just begun to be converted into condos — and then her cousin flew me back to Flint. I took the bus home, and took a nap. That same night I look my longest nightwalk ever: 37 miles around the entire perimeter of Flint’s city limits. I left at 4 PM and got back at around 7. I walked to Richfield and Center and headed north from there. I stopped for dinner at the Atlas at about 10. At a little after midnight, on the golf course near Woodcroft, the bateries died, so no more Eminem. It was an incredible, epic undertaking, and more happened than I can describe here.
When I got home, we had a problem. Fleas. They’d been left by the house’s previous resident, who had evidently left his door wide open for any and all strays looking for shelter. I got some powder from the landlord, but these flease were so angry and muscular that it only pissed them off. I had my brother pick me up in the middle of the night. During the next couple weeks Colin came to visit to help put together a Flint-based Scavhunt, but with all of our flea problems, we didn’t advertise very well, and when the time came, nobody signed up. So it goes. We did, however, have a good time watching two full seasons of the Adventures of Pete and Pete.
This was also when I met with Rev. Friedman to explain that I wasn’t a Unitarian anymore. I asked about a friend of mine, and she told me that he had recently died. The funeral was to follow the next day. After Jess and I saw Colin off, and she set off to her new job (at the mall), I walked to the UU church for Hal’s funeral, and from there, on to K-Mart where I bought clothes for the upcoming excursion to California. I got several striped and Hawaiian shirts, and spent most of the afternoon and early evening at Borders, six miles from home, reading the plays of Lee Blessing. Why? Well I was going to assist him, wasn’t I? I finished my coffee and book and started home. I’d made it as far east as Knight, when a girl across the street, with a thick accent asked if she was headed toward Center road. I told her that Center road was a five miles the other way, and we started walking together. On the way she explained that she was from Newark and was touring the country as a “magazine roady” of sorts, hawking zines door-to-door. We had an interesting debate about Flint vs. Newark (which town was tougher) and drank a couple beers at the Double Day before her ride arrived and I started home.
The next morning, Jess drove me to Bishop, and I flew out to California. Hallie picked me up at the airport and we stopped for lunch in Oxnard on our way to Ojai. We took the Pacific Highway out, and it was beautiful. I spent the next week with the marvelous likes of Ted Levine and Abigail Deser as we worked on Lee Blessing’s new play for the Ojai Playwrights Conference. Daniel and Michelle and all of the actors I met, all of the interns, the events, this weird, warm, dry place called California with lizards running all around! It was a fitting and eventful end to a fitting and eventful month.
Where were you in July, 2003?