I spent a little time last week in the village where I was a teen, Vicksburg. The occasion was the awards ceremony for the Southwest Michigan Tournament of Writers. I’d received dispensation the year before from the director to enter, even though I was not a local. The stipulation was that I confine my writings to Vicksburg. I did, and managed to win an honorable mention in my age group (1). I tried again this year with a heartfelt recollection of my ‘burg years and the events that had brought me back to the village. No repeat performance, although there was more competition this year with more entries and collapse of the senior and adult categories into one group. There were over a 100 entrants all told and 15-20 in my category. Fortunately, Vicksburg Arts compiles all entries into a book they sell on Amazon, so at least I got another chit for my CV. You can read my entry if you send Amazon 12 bucks for the book* (2). From judges’ comments, I learned my entry was poorly proofread (guilty!), sometimes imprecise and sometimes rambling. I may have approached achieving their word count a bit too vigorously. I’ve taken those comments and fixed up my entry, which is what you see below.
My life would have turned out much differently had not fate landed me in Vicksburg, and I am forever grateful. Perhaps by reading the following, you’ll understand why.
Head in Tree Town, Heart in the ‘burg
How’d I get to Vicksburg? Remember those dog food commercials in the 80s that featured that cute rambunctious bulldog (3)? This Ike was sure a lucky dog when in ’64 the Fisher Body brass kicked my dad from the Tech Center to Comstock to raise their biggest metal stamping plant ever. Dad’s eagle eye caught a red shingle ranch on the North shore of Barton. Thus began my 5 years in the ‘burg, where the teachers, coaches, students, friends, and neighbors helped me grow from the shy fat boy bullied by the cool kids in Birmingham, to the tallest (and skinniest) player in the Wolverine Conference who graduated almost at the top of his class then headed to Ann Arbor to attend U of M.
Tree Town wasn’t heaven – studying was expected – but it came close, establishing. Hold that lasts to this day. Nearly everyone there is from somewhere else. True “townies” can name the AA elementary school they attended. I’ve spent 47 of the last 55 years here, and, as occupants of our ’58-built house since ’85, Kathy and I are seniormost members of this 13 house neighborhood, the two other families claiming longer residence both second generation owners. Still an Ann Arbor (AA) outsider, me, like my wife, born of Michigan grads (in Ohio), faithful football season ticket holder since ’64, recipient of 3 post-graduate UofM degrees, and 28 years of University paychecks. She can only count 44 years of Tree Town living, interrupted for those 4 years in D.C., but that’s another story.
I came to Vicksburg as an outsider, too. Boy, did Vicksburg take me in. Leaving wasn’t hard, as look where I was going! Shortly after joining UofM faculty, one of my colleagues – Bruce Richardson, a small-town boy himself – said to me “Bob, a lot of smart people come out of small towns, and the smarter they are, the faster they come out”. Not a completely nice comment, but it sure would have fit that tall guy headed east in ’70.
Things went o.k. in AA. While resisting the siren song of hippiedom, hearing a lot of great music, I shed my flirtation with law school and dove into the math and science that was my strength. That worked! On to med school! “Where you from?” in AA or Chicago – was an innocent conversational opening, not a “microaggression”. Students meeting anew quickly learned each other’s origins. Not everyone was from them ritzy Dee-troit suburbs. Some even hailed from a Wolverine Conference town! When one’s origin was sufficiently unique, nicknames were born. Yes, I was called “Vicksburg” a few times. It coulda been worse. One guy on our floor from Marlette, up in the Thumb (2020 census pop’n 1855), tried to tell us that his town was a pretty big place. Henceforth, he was “Big City”.
I never tried to hide my small-town roots. Hard to do with those weekly reminders, the Commercial delivered to my dorm room. My more-sophisticated hall mates got many a snigger from reading about the goings-on. I taunted a couple old girlfriends for a while, went to parties back in Kalamazoo, and had some VHS friends up for concerts. Summers were in Kalamazoo, working in that plant my dad helped establish. Dad sold the Barton Lake house after I went to AA. Living with Dad, I still could hang with some of the same gang that was still around.
Those easy jaunts to the ‘burg – either 15 miles from Candlewyck or 100 miles from AA – disappeared after I was admitted to the University of Chicago then matched to Barnes Hospital in St. Louis. Learning medicine over those 8 years didn’t leave time for much else, especially trips home. My fellow residents were all top-of-the-class eggheads, so the competition was fierce. Sharing details about one’s beginnings helps humanize, keeping our heads from blowing up. Curiously, most of the guys I called buddies were also from small towns.
In St. Louis, there was some time for the radio, and I never missed those Saturday late afternoon broadcasts of Garrison Keillor’s “Prairie Home Companion”. His tales of the quirky, stubborn, resilient, sneaky-smart, and life-loving residents of Lake Wobegon took me right back to the ‘burg. Garrison’s gift is to portray these small-town folks not as helpless rubes, but as special, unique, and lovable individuals, people you root for. Imagining I could fit into some of his stories, I came to feel more and more comfortable – and proud – being a small-town midwestern boy. My first chief at UofM, Giles Bole, grew up on a farm outside Battle Creek. We both talked with that midwestern twang. Giles was a hotshot researcher, invited to take his show on the road to places like Stanford and Harvard. He said he turned up his twang for those Harvard eggheads. Hearing him talk, they figured he wouldn’t have much of anything intelligent to say. Then his superior intelligence kicked in, and what he said was appreciated, understood, and unexpected.
Then, as Rodney Crowell sings in “It ain’t over yet” (4): “I got caught up making a name for myself. You know what that’s about.” It was my dream to become a Professor of Medicine at my beloved alma mater, and here I was on track to do it. I neglected all sorts of things while I had my nose to that grindstone. I thank God for my dear wife, who stayed with me while chasing her own dream, and the few remaining members of my little family who stuck with me. And thank goodness you can’t keep those Vicksburgers down. I missed the 10threunion as I was on-call. VHS70’s class president Steve (a.k.a. Hummel) began to throw parties for our old crowd, usually at his house, but sometimes at a local restaurant. Fun, and nobody gave a crap about my credentials other than to remind me how I screwed myself out of being class valedictorian, losing by 7 ten-thousandth of a point (5). Our class’s insult artist, Ott, took to calling me “Mister Ike”, not buying my explanation that that title would be appropriate were I a qualified surgeon in England.
My best friend from the ‘burg, Eric, lived many places after graduation, rarely near me. After one of his moves back to Michigan, he found himself in this area so came to my house. I was at the hospital when he knocked on our door. Kathy answered, and Eric followed his introduction with a pitch for subscriptions to several magazines he said he was selling, blowing his cover when he burst out laughing. We’d have some great times over the years, sharing a house on Lake Bellaire Memorial Day weekends, often a dip in Eric’s pool around Labor Day, and a small boat cruise of Alaska’s inside passage plus trip to Denali in 2014. Like a good friend should, Eric often improves on my ideas. When the 30th reunion was rolling around, I suggest we rent a place on Indian Lake for the week before . We can do better, he said, and we spent a week driving and hiking around the Keweenaw.
All well and good so far? Clearly my years in Vicksburg gave me a solid foundation for my brain, and for my heart, many friends and many wonderful memories, except maybe one. But I gave that one little thought till my retirement. Free from having to get up, put on the white coat, and go see patients, I quickly got into that favorite retiree sport: not pickleball, but decluttering! Guided by Magnuson’s The Art of Swedish Death Cleaning (6) and Washtenaw County’s on-line guide “Trash to Treasures” (7), Kathy and I went at it. We didn’t send Marie Kondo any money, but invoked her “joy, no joy” test frequently. One medium-size box brought plenty of joy, till I got to the bottom of it. Marked “Vicksburg Items”, it contained some little trinkets from those times, all my English papers (complete with Mrs. Pharriss’ red ink), even a handful of George Wallace for President pamphlets. Then, on the bottom, were several sections from the Kalamazoo Gazette and the Vicksburg Commercial. Yellowed and brittle, as you’d expect a newspaper from 1968 to be, I knew the story right away from the pictures, long before reading. My friend, classmate, teammate, and namesake Ike had driven his dad’s station wagon, containing Ike’s teammate Pat and 3 boys from the class of ’68, right into the path of an eastbound Grand Trunk freight. An event from over 50 years ago I thought I’d forgot is one for which I recall every detail as if it were yesterday. After wallowing all morning in that sorrow and loss, I recalled that I’ve found it helpful to write about troubling things, helping to make sense of them. The late Detroit Free Press cartoonist Guindon had one with his characters sitting at a table, pen in hand, staring off into space; the caption “Writing is God’s way of showing you how sloppy your thinking is”. My way was set. I would go and learn all I could about this event then write it up. Too big for my new blog. Maybe a magazine featuring Michigan stories? Maybe a book, if I write enough words? But what I could tell with the words I’d be generating at that point would have too many holes. Some field research was necessary. The train from AA to Kalamazoo was familiar from visiting my dad in hospice. I knew the choo-choo was the way to go-go, particularly with the 3 hours round trip giving sitting time rather than fighting the traffic on 94. The Radisson ”spaceship” was 2 blocks from the train station, and Enterprise rent-a-car would meet you at the station and take you to their place 3 ½ miles west on W. Michigan, where you’d pick your car, repeated in reverse. The Kalamazoo public library was 3 blocks away, and there were microfilmed Gazettes chronicling events of that fateful week. 15 miles south is the ‘burg. I was pretty sure their District Library would have old Commercialsbut couldn’t find any in their on-line catalogue. Instead of just looking for myself, I asked Eric for advice, who said Sue
would know. She was editor of South County News (SCN), the monthly that replaced the Commercial. She did plenty of scut for her dad Meredith Clark, publisher, back in the day. She directed me back to the VDL, and there they were. Sue liked my mission, met us at the library, took pictures, and wrote me up! (8). She was such a wonderful person, so full of life at 80, always interested and always interesting. I counted her as a new friend. Then she died, suddenly and unexpectedly. Her SCN solicited remembrances and published mine (9).
Could he fate of my collaborators made some of my classmates reluctant to talk about the accident? No, it wasn’t that. Knowing I could milk my ‘burg crowd for reminisces and insights, I arranged on each of my trips to meet as many as could respond to my invitation to gather at some restaurant in the area. I wasn’t forceful in how I conducted these “meetings”, but I had my briefcase full of clippings to show and did. My friends reminded me of many things I had forgotten or never knew. There were more and more quiet stretches and subject changes with each meeting. Finally, when it was just me and him at the table, Jim put it to me “Bob, a lot of people just don’t want to hear about this thing anymore.” I guess some people deal with past events by shutting out painful ones. Not me. I was accused by one of my psychiatry instructors of having a “hydrodynamic” theory of emotions. Still do. Negative emotions are like pus: need to be drained when encountered. When I figured my ‘burg sources had run dry, those train trips stopped. Some additional information came from unexpected sources. It turned out that the lawyer solicited by the 4 boys’ families suing Grand Trunk was the father of Sam, also a lawyer, and my friend since we met as freshmen on the 4th floor of Chicago House, West Quad. He directed me to the county clerk, who got me the court records from the Grand Trunk trial.
That was plenty to go on. The book practically wrote itself, although it came up kinda short. I couldn’t find a magazine I thought would take this 2,338-word article. Jeff Bezos has been a pal, publishing 8 (and counting) of my books (10), but found this first one too short for a paperback. Amazon does offer a Kindle, free. I’ve printed up a couple runs, the first in time for VHS70 50th. I left them in the car but made copies available to the interested. Several were. Copies sit in several public libraries – Vicksburg’s, Schoolcraft’s, Kalamazoo’s, and Ann Arbor’s – and the Vicksburg Historical Society, and are available through Docere (11).
So, I consider the book a success, even if Mr. Bezos hasn’t written me any big checks. While the pain of that fateful time in October ’68 won’t ever go away, I now have a much better grasp of those events, and a feeling for how they shaped us. Moreso, re-engagement with the ‘burg: the people, places, and memories have been precious benefits. COVID influenced everything those days, curtailing the research trips, but also getting me to Zoom with my classmates monthly leading up to our 50th. I volunteered to set up the meetings as Zoom is part of the software the U gives me. Hummel (class president Steve)got me the class list and I was off and running. Since I didn’t screw it up too badly, Hummel passed me the torch for organizing our 55th!
I get to the ‘burg a lot these days. Kathy seems to like my friends, at least most of them, and we’ve met some wonderful people. I even roused up an old teacher for her to meet, finally getting youthful nonagenarian Mr. Horn out his lair on XY. My basketball coach, he still insists he was right not to play me, even when I’m buying his beer. Of course, Mr. Horn likes Kathy. He always had an eye for pretty girls. We’ve done “Christmas in the ‘burg”, hit beers-and-brats, attended baseball and basketball games (I enter free thanks to a senior pass from Mike Roy) , gone on a “Historical Vicksburg” tour, attend services at VUMC (Vicksburg United Methodist Church) whenever in town, always hit “Something’s Brewing” (whose proprietor Heather we befriended when she had a shop on South Street downtown), and of course Distant Whistle. I even get my haircut at Getty’s! As I hinted before, Kathy likes the ‘burg. For her birthday 3 Julys ago, I bought her something from an ad in the SCN, a glamor photo shoot by Linda Hoard (12), who’s niece-in-law to my classmate Kevvie. Kathy’s a writer, too, and has pitched and sold her children’s books at Gilbert & Ivey. We’ve even given thought of getting our own Vicksburg getaway, to the point of spending an afternoon with a realtor looking at lakeside properties. The meeting with our financial advisor which followed got the sober recommendation that we could swing this only if sold our Ann Arbor house. No way that’s going to happen, so we just must hope for rising book sales as we rest in Tree Town. But we’ll keep visiting for sure. It’s only 108 miles from my door to Distant Whistle, a place where both my brain and heart are very happy. But, whenever I’m walking Main Street I’m pretty happy even before Andy and Dane open their doors. Maybe it’s Heather’s latte.
References
- Ike B. da vinner. WordPress4/19/24. https://theviewfromharbal.com/2024/04/19/da-vinner/
2. Ike B. Head in Tree Town, Heart in the ‘burg. In: Vicksburg Arts Tournament of Writers Volume XI. Adult Edition 2025 pp123-132. https://a.co/d/7uvsghv
3. The TV Madman. Lucky Dog Food – Ike The Lucky Dog (1986). YouTube. https://youtu.be/dSdl5hjG7-E?si=pMdxmfTt7wBGv7P8
4. New West Records. Rodney Crowell – “It Ain’t Over Yet (feat. Rosanne Cash & John Paul White)” [Official Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/EFrpzPR6TLY?si=AUIuBSL3bGeO-cy3
5. Ike RW. Make it add up, doc. Strategies Account Manag 2021;2(4) SIAM.000542.2021 https://crimsonpublishers.com/siam/pdf/SIAM.000542.pdf. (invited)
6. Magnusson M. The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter (The Swedish Art of Living & Dying Series). New York: Scribner, 2018 https://a.co/d/bhuzu0X
7. Water Resources Washtenaw County. Washtenaw County Trash to Treasure Guide. your guide to local repair, reuse, and recycling. https://www.washtenaw.org/281/Turning-Trash-into-Treasure
8. Moore S. Dr. Ike plans to write about 1968 Vicksburg car accident. South County News April 2020.https://southcountynews.org/2020/04/18/dr-ike-plans-to-write-about-1968-vicksburg- car-accident/
9. Ike B. Goodbye Sue. South County News. July 2020 Issue 86:8. https://southcountynews.org/2020/07/09/goodbye-sue/
10. Dr. Ike’s Amazon Author’s page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Robert-Ike/author/B095CPDZGP?ref_=pe_1724030_132998070&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true
11. Ike R. The Accident. Amazon (Kindle) 2021. Published 5/18. Updated 3/20/24. Available at:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B095BS8VRJ and directly from Docere (email: docerellc86@yahoo.com)
12. Ike B. Glamour. WordPress 11/12/22. https://theviewfromharbal.com/2022/11/17/glamour/
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