He's Coming Home....For A Visit, That Is

  A photo of Van and Rich taken during Van's last visit to Flint

I can see it now. 

He’s counting down the days. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a  calendar set up at his home in Macon, Georgia and he’s using a big black Magic Marker © to mark the days off. 

30 days.  29 days.  28 days. 27 days.  26 days.  25 days.  24 days.  23 days.  22 days.  3 more weeks!

After some seven years, my buddy Van VanDeWalker is going to be visiting his hometown of Flint, Michigan and to say that he’s excited about this visit would be the understatement of the century.  He’s pumped!  If you could put anticipation for a trip on steroids – Van would make Barry Bonds look like a piker when it came to being “juiced”!

No longer does Van have to settle for reliving the memories of biting down and hearing the snap of a Koegel Vienna with Angelo’s coney island sauce, mustard and onions…he’s going to be able to enjoy one, two, maybe three.

Van can attest to the fact that not only does seven days without a Halo Burger make one week – imagine seven years between a Bill Thomas olive Halo burger.  Knowing Van  he’ll probably tell you that having to live all those years without a Bill Thomas Halo burger was a living hell – something akin to being water boarded by Dick Cheney.

The anticipation for this trip is high…really high…and it makes sane men do strange things.  If I were a betting man, I’d place a few bucks on one of the first things that Van does when he gets off the plane at Bishop Airport is to kiss the ground.   Yup, he’ll get down on his knees and kiss the tarmac and hope like hell that airport security doesn’t bitch slap him.  I’m sure that before Van leaves the airport in his cheapest you can find but still expensive rent-a-car, he will buy a Flint Journal from one of the airport coin boxes to read back in his motel room.  And, if I know Van, he’ll be sneaking a peek at a headline here and there while waiting for the traffic lights to change on the way to his budget motel. 

One of the reasons that Van will be visiting Flint will be to attend a high school class reunion,  but one day of his three day visit will be taken up by doing one thing – joining me for a tour of the old town and seeing first hand just how much things have changed. 

Whether it was going to Kearsley Park on a hot summer day to learn basic lessons of safety at Safetyville, USA or taking in a Thanksgiving Day Northern/Central game at Atwood Stadium on a cold winter day – that’s the Flint that will forever be a part of a lot of us.  Or maybe it was jumping on an MTA bus and meeting all our friends downtown to see a movie at the Palace or Capitol Theater, or enjoying a ice cream sundae in the restaurant at Smith B’s or a bag of caramel popcorn from Dales. There are so many moments and places that both Van and I are going to relive as we drive around Flint and remembering how it use to be.

When we drive by Windmill Place – I’m sure we’ll have a laugh remembering when that Saturday a long long time ago when I participated in a “Celebrity Hot Dog Eating Contest”.  The organizers of this even pitted me against some small bellied “celebrities” from WTRX, Channel 5 and some other media organization that I can’t remember and they didn’t have a chance against my hot dog eating skills – me, the well-trained eating machine.  These guys were no match and I didn’t even have to pull out all of the stops to trounce the competition.  . 

Van will be surprised as I take him to one of the new sub-divisions in Grand Blanc and remind him that the radio station that we once worked for – WTAC – once stood where these beautiful homes now stand.  I’m sure he’ll also be surprised by all of the changes on S. Saginaw in Grand Blanc….this wasn’t the way he remembered the way it looked.

Van will also be surprised when I point out to him that the “Jumbo Video” store on Dort Hwy., across from K-Mart, is where the Ember’s Lounge once stood.  It was at the Ember’s Lounge where all of his friends left him alone on the dance floor to do a drunken Pee Wee Herman dance as we enjoyed our drinks and watched him from our table.

Our sight-seeing trip to Flint wouldn’t be complete without checking out the Citizens Bank weather ball or driving by that forty foot waitress in front of at the coney island restaurant on Corunna Road.  For old times sake – we’ll probably buy a lottery ticket or two at Paul’s Pipe Shop and see first hand all of the improvements downtown from the Durant Hotel to Channel 5’s new Flint headquarters to the new grocery store that just opened.  We’ll probably visit the old neighborhoods and share stories about what made living there so great and as we’ll probably pay a visit to Gracelawn to honor family members who have left us that made these memories we’ll share possible. 

So, join us in counting down the days.  August 20-23, 2010 – Van VanDeWalker visits Flint.  Believe it or not – on August 21^st – Van and I are going to combine two of our loves into one thing….coney islands and Scrabble.  So, don’t be surprised if you see two guys chowing down the dogs at Angelo’s while they’re playing a game of Scrabble.  You’re more than welcome to watch – but please – no helping the participants.  

You Can Take Me Out Of Flint, But You Can't Take The Flint Out Of Me

Paul's Pipe Shop in Downtown Flint

You can take me out of Flint, but you can’t take the Flint out of me.

When I moved to the Port Huron area from Flint some twenty years ago – there were a lot of things that I missed about my old hometown – first and foremost – The Flint Journal. When you live in Flint, you can bitch and complain about the newspaper, it’s only when you move to another town and it’s not delivered to your doorstep daily that you realize just how much you miss it. Back then, the Flint Journal had substance and girth compared to the ultra light Gannett owned Port Huron Times Herald – a newspaper with sections as large as ten whole pages. There were occasions when I would drive this store in the city of Capac (about twenty-three miles away) that carried the Sunday Flint Journal and buy a copy to take home to read. I kind of felt like one of those people who make a big deal about buying the Sunday New York Times and then dedicate their whole day to doing the crossword puzzle and devouring every page and article in the paper – except I was doing it with a Flint Journal….imagine that.

When I moved to Port Huron – I didn’t know a lot of people and some nights my entertainment consisted of coming home from work and eating what I call “a Flint dinner” while watching television. I didn’t have HBO or Showtime – just basic cable – but occasionally my friend (the late Jack Hood from Rainbow Video) would send me a box of screener movies that he had received that I could watch while eating dinner. This dinner was not a healthy dinner by any stretch of the imagination – but it was filling – and it was pure Flint. I would go to the local store in Port Huron and grab a the biggest package of Koegel’s polish sausage that I could find – fry them in a pan on the stove and would then plate it with the perfect Flint companion food -- Paramount potato chips (which were still available at the time). Now that’s a dinner!

Here’s another thing that I took for granted in Flint that I couldn't get in Port Huron some twenty years ago – bagels! I’m not talking about those Lender-like bagels that you can find in the bakery section at Meijer – I’m talking about real bagels like you use to find at Pumpernik’s when they were in business. What I would have given for one of those huge crusty bagels from Pumpernik’s with my morning coffee. Twenty years later, there’s still no place in the Port Huron area where you can purchase real bagels – so anyone who’s reading this where you can purchase real bagels – enjoy them and whatever you do -- don’t take them for granted.

You can’t write about memories of Flint without mentioning the one other item other than cars that Flint is known for – the coney island hot dog. About three months after I moved to Port Huron, I decided that I would go to lunch at the downtown coney island and I got into a discussion about coneys with the cook behind the grill there. The discussion about Flint coneys compared to Detroit/Port Huron coneys is similar to the pizza debate that people of New York and Chicago have over their pies. This cook would have nothing to do with a Flint-style coney, and if I remember right, he made some disparaging remarks about Angelo’s in particular. All I can remember is thinking was how much of a bastard this guy was – how dare he insult the Flint style coney – especially after you have eaten one of his runny ass chili slop dogs. Don’t let anyone disparage the Flint coney dog – they’re definitely in a league of their own!

A lot has changed in twenty years. The Flint Journal has been downsized to a three-day a week newspaper – but even at that – it’s still a better read than the Port Huron Times Herald. I no longer have “Flint dinners” – although I am able to have coney nights with my family – thanks to those big delicious bricks of coney sauce that we purchase from Abbott’s Meats just about every time we visit the Flint area. Then, there are the bagels – and there’s not a whole hell of a lot we can do about that.

The Flint Journal, Pumpernik bagels, Koegel polish sausage, Paramount potato chips and Flint-style coney islands. Some of them have changed. Some are gone. Some remain. Along with those items – there are other things about Flint that I have pleasant memories of that have shaped me into the person that I am today…such as: having my picture taken in the four for a quarter photo booth at Kresge’s, ice skating with friends at Whaley Park, seeing the movies “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Woodstock” at the Palace, buying my first FM radio at Montgomery Wards, and even bumping into my old high school classmate Melvin McCree buying lottery tickets at Paul’s Pipe Shop.

I have pleasant memories of being a child and checking out “A Cat In The Hat” from the library at Potter school, eating fish n’ chip dinners from St. Leo the Great on Friday nights, enrolling in the summer radio workshop at WFBE, learning road safety at Safetyville and cooling off on a hot summer day in pool at Kearsley Park.

I enjoy where I’m living today and the life that I have in the Port Huron area, but I can’t deny the impact that living in Flint has had on me. Ask anyone who has left Flint for other cities and other towns and I’ll bet you a dime to a Dawn’s Donut they’ve got stories, too…because it’s like I said earlier….You can take someone out of Flint, but you can’t take the Flint out of someone who’s lived there.