Friends, Family, and Michigan Memories      

     Looking back across my middling and muddled years I can see the land of Michigan clearly in my rear view mirror. I lived in Michigan long enough to see and fall in love with Lions, Tigers,  back roads,  Mackinac Island and Boblo Island; but not long enough to let those memories breath right alongside the physical reality in Michigan.

Before moving away to join the Navy I plowed snow and mowed lawns. I live in Charlotte, NC now and if you ask the few dwindling locals here (I am one of the Yankee invaders after all, but not that dreaded Northeastern variety) they will tell you that the winters here can get pretty cold. If you are like me and an agreeable sort, you'll just sort of go along, but let’s get real… Michigan's winter could whomp Carolina's winter, just like when the Lions whomped the Panthers this past NFL season.  The Michigan winter is a struggle to get through, but dynamically offset by some beautiful, rolling land elegantly draped over with a curtain of pure and pristine snow. It is a peaceful scene and pleasant memory. Well....pleasant so long as I was inside by a fire or inside the warm cab of a plow truck, but not pleasant at all when I had to bust out the snow blower and shovel, and clear sidewalks. But I know; enough of my meandering. Let me try to get this train back on the tracks.

Now I was going to start this story out with this line: “Once upon a time there was this girl...,” partly because it was suggested to me, and partly because it's mostly true, but before I get sentimental about 'just another girl', I want to take this chance to write about an old friend of mine who I lost touch with. We were roommates for a spell, in this small and isolated hamlet called Manchester; located in the southwest part of Washtenaw County.

Paul B. was a man I met when I was a couple of years out of high school, and it had to have been the universe conspiring in my favor, as Paul turned out to be a valued friend; a fount of wisdom, a teacher, an editor, a collaborator, a sounding board, a roommate, and a drinking buddy. I could go on and on probably, but I don't want any trouble for either of us with the law of course. Paul played the role of a mentor preparing me, and sending me out to discover my own ‘personal legend’, just as the King of Salem did for young Santiago, in the novel The Alchemist by another Paul, Paulo Cohelo.

I actually met Paul because of the house I was living in. Well the house that I was kind of living in. I had lived in a house on Ann Arbor Hill in Manchester, but after graduating in ‘95 I moved to Jackson for a season of ill repute. I know... it was a lot of fun though! Errrrr, and some regret. Well, anyway, I moved back to Manchester and bounced around, but I ended up in the unfinished basement of said house. My stepbrother and stepsister lived on the first floor, and Paul had moved in upstairs while I had been away. He had taken over the space where my mom and I had lived while I was in high school. At the time, as I still do, I played the drums, except now I actually know what I am doing. One day Paul heard me practicing, and he came down into the basement to investigate. We met and made fast friends despite our difference in age. He was in his 40's and I was still a green, wet behind the ears, pup. Well soon enough I moved up and out of the basement; back into my old apartment, then his new apartment and we became roommates in addition to friends.

Paul had been a professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan, but when I knew him he held the title of bartender at the local watering hole in our small town (population around 1500, I think, at the time). The man had almost every significant piece of American literature published since the start of the nineteenth century. Paul turned me on to the important pieces, the noteworthy writers; Updike, Twain, The Beats, Joyce, Hemingway, the list just goes on and on. I don't want to just pigeonhole him either, Paul knew his stuff when it came to international literature as well. We would kill a case of beer or a bottle of booze, play a game of chess, listen to old jazz, and discuss the power of big tobacco, and transversely, big business and interests on Americans, and our own culture and heritage. Or we would trade war stories and advice on the female front (he had a lot more stories and advice than me obviously). We would tackle some classic cinema like the Godfather trilogy or Scarface; heady stuff for a Real World noob back then.

You gotta understand, at that time in my life, I was in love with the unattainable: the girl, the adventure, immortality, the real vigor of life in its essence. Now of course, I am happy if my joints don't crack a lot during the day. But then? I had read Kerouac and beat poetry, rocked out to the wave of grunge and punk, fallen in love with a real-life fairy, and fallen in love with the potential, and the future. I was young and couldn't see life any other way.  Paul helped me by teaching me the words and stories from the past, the people and characters and their challenges helped to show me what the world was really like. He helped to define and refine who I am and my own, to borrow again from Cohelo, personal legend.

The last of the times I spent with Paul are hazy. I moved out and soon after that, joined the Navy. Now Paul is lost in time. I know what you are thinking, but the man is not on Facebook; I've checked. But at least his voice and lessons are still alive in my mind and heart, and memories.

So to Paul; thank you my teacher and friend. I believe that we all have someone like Paul, who comes along in our lives, and shows us who we are, and helps to send us down our own individual paths in life. To each one of us that person is very significant and meaningful, just as Paul was for me. I hope we can all recognize those folks, and likewise, open our eyes to our own personal legends too.

P.S. About that girl who is just another girl... I hope she knows she isn't, never will be, and never has been. In point of fact, if this girl was just another girl, we would be in trouble because:

A. The universe would explode, because clearly, somehow that would go against all known laws of physics.

B. Nobody would be happy or smile ever again.  

C. I wouldn't have such an amazing, beautiful, wonderful lifelong and loved, friend-- who is also the reason why I got a chance to write for The Blue Water Traveler.

So Erin, thank you very much. You see, instead of starting out, “Once upon a time…” maybe it should read “Here at the end of time…” 

Kyle Harvey