I spent most of my summers as a kid up in Manistee, Michigan; a small town right on the shores of Lake Michigan. There's not much to do here aside from going to the beach, but as kids my brother and I had the freedom to roam the town on our bikes. Before my parents opened North Channel Brewing, there were only small bars and restaurants in town, some of them dives. For the sake of nostalgia, I convinced my parents to do a bar crawl of all the old bars they used to go to in town.
I noticed two things on this bar crawl. If you're far enough north in Michigan and go into a small enough bar, you are everyone's friend the moment you walk in. This was true even of us, three city slickers, all very much out of place. The people of Manistee will always ask you if you live up here, where your place is, how long you've been coming up. My mother says we've been coming up for 18 years, and I can't wrap my head around it. I realized, while sitting in probably the smelliest place I've ever been, full of din and sticky spilled beer, that this tiny little town full of dives, factories, and abandoned buildings is the last vestige of my childhood. All other childhood homes have been sold, demolished, what have you. This is the oldest thing I have and much of it is falling apart. At the same time, though, the people are blossoming and kind, some new shops are opening, and the streets start to bustle in the summer. Growth from din.
Needless to say, this made me want to go home and write. My mom could tell, too, because she's also a writer. As she sipped from her drink (Minute Maid lemonade and Tito's Vodka), she looked at me and said you're going to write about this, huh? I nodded in response, thinking of how very me it was to want to turn a bar crawl into a poem. Growth really can come from all around, even from a puke soaked floor.