41.

Remember what Henri Rousseau said about beauty?

“To see something as beautiful is to see in it the promise of happiness.”

Very few people saw Kalamazoo as a beautiful place.

Statistics tell part of the story. In 1997, at the time its devouring began, the city itself, located along Interstate 94 in southwest Michigan, midway between Chicago and Detroit, boasted an estimated population of seventy-five to eighty thousand. This number had remained relatively unchanged for forty years. The metro area took up twenty-five square miles. Some 31,000 housing units existed within city limits. Racially, seventy percent of the citizens were white, twenty percent black, four percent Hispanic or Latino; three percent were of mixed racial backgrounds, two percent Asian, two percent “other,” and less than one percent Native American. The median income was thirty thousand dollars a year. For every ten females, there were nine males. The average house hold held 2.3 members; the average family consisted of three.

This information tells one kind of story. There are other stories.

The inside of a clam would be an apt way to describe Kalama-zoo in 1997. Damp, raw, cold. Contact leaves a sticky residue on the skin. Entering this rumpled burg from either I-94 or US 131, visitors were overcome by bafflement: Where’s the city?

The sky was a gray blanket on most days. On other days, gangs of muscular clouds taunted the residents who scurried, insect-like, below. In autumn and winter, trees stood naked, as they do in all northern climes, but here, the maples and cedars actually shivered. Black shadows stretched like bony fingers across the snow. Soon, the winter whiteness became slush. Cars sizzled along streets, their undercarriages rotting from salt. Goop the color of an unwashed nickel clung to the soles of office women who scurried from the parking ramp to the City Hall. Once inside the foyer, they stomped their boots on the rolled-out red carpet, which was already as saturated as a burst artery. They chain-smoked Benson and Hedges Ultra Lights and discussed accumulation, lake effect, and Doppler radar. In thick, morning voices, they bemoaned the fact that City Hall never closed, not even when Kal-amazoo Public Schools declared a snow day.

All of these women, and in fact nearly everyone who worked downtown, was born and raised here—here, or in one of the outlying towns and villages: Portage; Paw Paw (the town so nice they named it twice); Lawton; Parchment; Comstock; Galesburg.

None of these lifers loved Kalamazoo. Unless you count the kind of love we feel toward the moon—a dependable, steady presence that smiles upon us when we fall asleep. Sometimes it’s merely a sliver, but it’s always there. Not necessarily something we think about, but it’s not going anywhere. Yes, they loved Kalama-zoo in this way. And when uninformed out-of-towners cast aspersions, they defended it like wolves.

While no romantic love was felt toward the city, its citizens were a sturdy brood, and down to the last, each credited Kalama-zoo for making them this way. When temperatures plunged below zero, when cheeks were cut by the wind, they bore it with grim dignity. Their unsentimentality was born of cheerless, six-month winters with less than a week of sunshine. The city maintained a handful of rich folks, but wealthy ones were scarce. And that’s the way the Kalamazooans wanted it. Sure, they played the Lotto every week, dreamed of owning four or five pickups, of being high-rollers in Vegas, but in day-to-day life, they happily joined softball leagues and bowling teams. They grilled brats and burgers in public parks. Coached third-grade soccer. Enjoyed a nice fritter with their morning coffee. Thought “Why the hell not?” when someone built another sprawling apartment complex on a wooded lot. These folks had a sense of humor that shattered windows. Their peculiar brand of ossification spoke of flooded basements, chemical inhalants, and dead batteries.

And all of this was mixed with a degree of cultural sophistication. There was a strong love of the theater. Local productions were well-attended and enthusiastically applauded. Twice a year, a modern dance troupe squatted and bent its way into peoples’ hearts. Bell’s Brewery and Restaurant offered heady ales and syn-copatic jazz quartets. There was Western Michigan University, a four-year public research institution. Kalamazoo College, the liberal arts school, was perpetually listed on America’s “Top 100 Little Colleges You’ve Never Heard Of (Unless You’re Looking for Colleges You’ve Never Heard Of, In Which Case You’ve Defi-nitely Heard of It, Which Is Saying a Lot).” A few downtown breakfast joints tucked feta cheese and gyro meat into their omelets.

Kalamazoo had a storied history. Gibson Guitars began there. Then it moved away. Checker Motors, makers of the Checker Cab, originated there. Long gone. Kalamazoo Stoves produced high-quality stoves. The Shakespeare Company provided fishing rods and reels. Parchment got its name because parchment was made there. Was.

Nicknames, too, came and went with the industries. Once-flourishing paper mills and cardboard mills earned Kalamazoo the title, “Paper City.” Juicy stalks growing abundantly on outlying farms: “Celery City.” The nation’s first pedestrian walking mall, in 1959: “Mall City.”

In this sense, Kalamazoo was, in the best possible way, like a used tea bag. It had become a soggy, leaden thing. A few squeezes might produce a final spurt or two of usefulness, but really, who was going to bother?

And yet, you could tell that it had once served a purpose. It had once been meaningful and therefore continued to have meaning. It had once been beautiful and therefore continued to be beautiful. It had once been loved and therefore continued to be loved. Kalamazooans loved their beautiful, meaningful teabag, and what, exactly, is wrong with that?