Going Home
Brian Crocker on Hometown Reunions & the End of All Our Foes
I turned west off Michigan highway 64 and onto Main Street just as the sun was setting Thursday evening, one day before the reunion was scheduled to begin. With the closing of the mine in 1995 and the dissolution of the school district in 2003, the sun setting on the town seemed to be an apt metaphor. Most of the remaining population of my old hometown is retired, since those too young to retire or who had school-age children had to relocate to find gainful employment and schools. There are a number of homes—many of them built by the Copper Range Company in the 1950s—used as vacation and recreation homes by people from Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan, but the year-round population is mostly old and quiet.
Those old, quiet folks who remain, however, do keep their homes maintained. It's not unusual to see a well-kept house with a very neatly mowed and landscaped lawn next to a vacant, decaying house with a lot full of weeds. And both the elementary and high school buildings are at best minimally maintained for use as storage space for recreational vehicles and boats for those "out-of-towners," or for old, accumulated equipment that may or may not prove useful someday to someone. Spacious buildings that once held apartments, a grocery store, a teen center, and even a small shopping center now hold little more than darkness, dust, and stale air.
Gloomy Reflections
Having grown up here at a time when you'd have been hard-pressed to find a vacant house and when the schools were beehives of activity, I drove around feeling like I had just walked into the ICU room of a wizened old relative decaying from cancer: uncomfortable, nostalgic, sad, and wondering if there was hope still to be found.
The gloom deepened as I drove past the house in which I grew up, and I remembered the day I looked out the picture window as my mother frantically carried my older brother across the street to a neighbor who was a nurse. The gumdrop had lodged in his throat, and what little air reached his lungs was laden with sugar. I said goodbye to his lifeless 7-year-old body on my parents' bed the next day.
About 200 yards down the street from the house stood the little A-frame church where I sang the liturgy and hymns and heard the gospel, along with 40-odd other souls, throughout my school years. It, too, now stood empty, its insides charred and sooty. An older schoolmate who had sat a few chairs down from me in the cornet section had developed mental health issues, and one December evening, she broke into the church and set it afire. I attended the congregation's closing worship service in October 2009, which was held in the neighboring Methodist church building.
A Great Place to Grow Up
After touring the streets, I pulled into the lot at the American Legion hall and found an old classmate just outside the entrance. Seeing him brightened my mood, which had been almost as dark as the sky. Inside, I found two cousins and a few other familiar faces, and for a while I forgot what I had been feeling.
The next morning, I walked (twice) the circuit of the 9-hole golf course on which I had learned the game and, for two years, played for the school's golf team. Once back in town, I had little time to notice the state of houses, other buildings, or anything else other than the swarm of faces that were smiling at me across distances of 10, 15, and even 20 years or more.
The laughter, stories, and embraces went on throughout the evening and into the night. Some of us put it into words, but I think everyone felt it: viewed from the perspective of adults in 2012, this had been one great place to grow up. I suspect many of our parents might have had different memories, not all of them as sweet as our childhood ones, which have been aged and refined by many years. But I also feel sure that they would agree—this had been a great place to raise children.
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