I'm about to go to bed at 10:00 in order to get up at 3:00 to catch a 5:50 flight to Cleveland and then on to Grand Rapids. That's Grand Rapids, Michigan, The Furniture City. The 69th largest CSA (Census Statistical Area) in America.
When I was growing up in Muskegon Heights, forty miles away from Grand Rapids, GR seemed like an unimaginably large place. Sitting in the back seat while my parents were driving through it at night, I remember freeway ramps stacked (what seemed to be) four and five decks high, like a gargantuan roller coaster. And it was brilliantly illuminated, after having driven for an hour through the corn and potatoes and darkness. In Muskegon, the freeways were on the ground, as was everything else. It's an architectural truism that the tallest structures around tell you what people value. In some places it's cathedrals, in some places it's financial high rises. In Muskegon, it was smokestacks. (Now it's highway signs to escape to Grand Rapids...)
Since I left my hometown, I've subsequently lived in the 10th, 11th, 39th and 48th largest CSAs; I've spent at least a little time in 13 of the top 20. And poor Grand Rapids, so gigantic to my child self, is starting to feel like flyover country, just as ignored by the rest of the powerful as Muskegon Heights was ignored by Grand Rapids. Little fish, big fish, giant fish, shark.
I divide my time between Boston (#10) and Middletown Springs (there isn't even a number to describe Middletown Springs... let's just say we're two hours away from #199). The intellectual and emotional whiplash is enormous, most weekends. And lest I whine too much, Nora has three of them — #1, #10, and #whatever MS is. She used to navigate New York with aplomb, but now it's draining and alien; Middletown Springs is home. (She's still plenty confident in Manhattan, though. I know where about six things are; one of them's an ATM and another a pool hall. Nora knows where everything is, and what lane you should be in to get there.)
I'm looking forward to being in Grand Rapids, even though it will remind me of all the reasons why I left West Michigan. It'll be clean, though. People in that part of the state mow their lawns with tweezers. (But, as I was reminded by a high schooler from a similar place, never on Sunday.) In New York and London, the Ponzis are based on finance; only in West Michigan would a pyramid scheme be based on home cleaning products. It's big Santorum country this year.
The Furniture City was built on lumber shipped from The Port City, Muskegon. Logs floated down the Muskegon River from Roscommon... "value added" by the sawmills in Muskegon... further "value added" by the furniture factories in Grand Rapids. Ever wonder why Herman Miller and Steelcase and Haworth are all in Grand Rapids and Holland? (Of course you didn't, unless you're a commercial interior design geek.) It's because their predecessor companies, and lots of craftsman knowledge, were all in The Furniture City in the 19th Century. And pity the poor guy up in Roscommon, felling trees and building log rafts to float the harvest downstream for a buck a day if he was lucky.
Still the case, of course. The Vermonters work 14 hour days tending their 80 cows, selling milk for pennies a pound to better-paid dairy processors who at least get to work indoors, who sell it for triple that to even better-paid grocers who don't have to lift hundred-pound pails, who send their proceeds to fantastically well-paid corporate grocery managers who don't do anything more strenuous than type. Social class, it's said, is related to the size of the muscles you make your living with. Your back, your legs, your arms, your hands, your fingers, your eyes. When Mitt was at Bain Capital, he probably didn't even have to type much – he just scanned his eyes across his domain and uttered his mandates.
Small places, big muscles, small money. Big places, small muscles, big money. Twas ever so.
On my way to Grand Rapids, a very laden place. Will it be draining and alien, or will I navigate with aplomb?
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