Sedimental Journey

Today we got a shockingly early start on our way out of Detroit, thanks to United Airlines. They managed to mangle our daughter Sophie’s flights so badly last night that it would likely have resulted in an overnight stay in the Denver airport (no hotel as compensation, because it was ‘weather related’ and not ‘mechanical problem.’) So she chose instead to come back to Sarah Rose’s for one more night that ended abruptly with multiple alarms sounding off at 4:20AM. This greased the way for a rapid reload of the thus far trustworthy Versa (not wise to leave stuff in the car in Detroit as a general practice) and we headed out to Detroit Wayne Airport by 4:45. After dropping Sophie off, there was little point in retracing the 22 miles from the airport back to Rosie’s house, so we continued on in light fog towards Chicago and a brief rendezvous with Andrea’s second cousin Marsha.

We shared a snack at XOCO, a torta, coffee and pastry bar started by Rick Bayless, who now has three establishments including the famous Frontera Grill on the corner of Illinois and Clark streets in the North River area of downtown Chicago. Other than a predilection for high concentrations of salt, the food was quite delicious. After a quick four-sided perusal of Millenium Park and the infamous Bean (all by car thanks to the 'dome of heat' they talk about here on the weather) we headed out to Lake Shore Drive and turned north. The combination of waves of substantial apartment buildings on one side of the drive, and the seemingly endless expanse of lake and sandy beaches on the other stretched on almost endlessly. Breaking away from the shore, we turned north, slid past elegant Evanston mansions, and got in our hour in Milwaukee (including a drive-by of their art museum, with striking nautical architecture that suggests either a sailing ship, a whale, or a bit of both,) and a quick pass through their lake front, which was equalled Chicago's in loveliness. Lunch was at a merely OK deli on the north side of Milwaukee. Since as usual we needed to cover several hundreds of miles, our visits to these two culture-rich cities (especially Chicago) were the height of superficiality. But such are the trade-offs in an enormous and ambitious nation-spanning round trip. Our next destination was Madison, Wisconsin, and we pulled in on a sultry afternoon with the temperature hovering around 95 degrees and the humidity rising. I need not dwell upon the joy Andrea experienced from the weather.

Der Rathskeller

A Piece of Old Madison

Madison holds particular significance for the two of us, since it is where we met, and also where we got married nearly 42 years ago. This was our first visit back in all those decades, and it was eye opening; actually, more like shocking. We retraced the route to our haunts, including apartments and houses we had lived in, and tried to figure out where all the old stores and restaurants had gone. Remarkably, the apartment we first lived in, and the house where Andrea was living when we met are both still standing, but that is the exception in this dynamic city. A large part of Madison has been swallowed up and covered with an enormous array of substantial university buildings, in nearly every direction. Areas that used to be filled with old houses now sport multi-story rental apartments, and it seems that every specialty now deserves its own edifice. It was almost humorous to see some of the original modest buildings, which now seem to be kept around to lend an air of authenticity and to suggest a link to the long history of the school. Walking around the city made me feel like an old dog going to mark his usual spots, except all the hydrants had been removed.

Lake Mendota
 from the Rathskeller Patio

It was humbling to think of all the changes that have taken place. When you leave a place and don’t return for quite some time, your memories are freeze-dried and suspended in time. It was almost like stepping out of a time machine, into a world that is vaguely familiar yet changed in almost every respect. Looking at all the young faces made me think that we had been completely and very effectively replaced. And there was nothing to say that a current student’s experience of the University, in all its glorious hugeness, and of the city with all its manifold updates, is any less valid than our good old memories. A comforting piece of continuity could be found in Der Rathskeller, part of the student union, that’s a pseudo beer hall in the German tradition. It remains dark and has the same heavy varnished wooden chairs that were there decades ago. The outdoor patio is a delightful place to sit and eat lunch, and although it has been enhanced a bit with an outdoor grill and a set of beer taps, the scene was a replay of our time there. In fact the entire student union was largely the same as we had left it, which may or may not be a good thing, but we liked it. Dinner was at Gino’s Pizza, which was established in 1964, just a few years before we came upon the scene. We went there not because of critical acclaim, but rather because it is the last restaurant remaining from our times in Madison. The pizza was . . .well, it was the same old pizza that we ate back then; the flavors were bright, the tomato sauce snappy, the green peppers crisp, and the sausage redolent with herbs and spices. But I think what I was really savoring was the connection to the same experience, in the same milieu, across the span of time.

Trying on Shoes, Ann Arbor

House Made Bread
Zingerman's Deli, Ann Arbor

In a Tavern, Ann Arbor

One final thought about universities. We have just visited both Madison and Ann Arbor, the home of University of Michigan. In both cases we were blown away by the immensity of these teaching establishments, in the size and scope of the buildings they occupy, in the vast array of specialty subects they cover, and the sheer expanse of the territory they fill. Our higher education institutions are impressive indeed, and they’ve obviously become a huge business. But I have to wonder about the contrast with the sometimes shoddy, oft-neglected schools that are supposed to prepare students for this upper tier of instruction. It would seem that without improvement in ‘lower education,’ the fate of higher education will be to teach the literate classes of other nations (in addition to the elite sector of our society.) While this is a noble enterprise, it does little to advance the idea of education for all, nor the concept that the key to improvement of a society is to educate and elevate its people. I found myself wondering if what I was seeing was simply the result of the Student Loan Program - - making easy money available for higher education, and fostering the rampant growth. Too bad some of that money could not find its way to the lower grades.