Happy Anyway: A Flint Anthology (Belt City Anthologies) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0996836713 ISBN 13: 9780996836715

Verlag: BELT PUB, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

A collection of essays and personal narratives, the book captures a confounding, contradictory city, proving that Flint is far more than the common narrative of an industrial town picking itself up after a big company has moved out or as the site of a devastating public health crisis. The stories delve into the lives within the city—what it was like to be a child on the east side; how it feels to be a parent today, without clean water; who is able to truly lay claim to being “from Flint;” and what it means to finally leave—or to stay, even when bikes, jewelry, or love continually disappear.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Scott Atkinson is a freelance writer, a regular contributor to Belt Magazine, and a former reporter for The Flint Journal. He has written about Flint for The New York Times and other publications. He lives in Flint, Michigan.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Happy Anyway

A Flint Anthology

By Scott Atkinson

Belt Publishing

Copyright © 2016 Belt Publishing
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-9968367-1-5

Contents

Introduction: Greetings from the Middle, 
Paragraph of Doom GORDON YOUNG, 
Love and Survival: A Flint Romance LAYLA MEILLIER, 
Beam, Arch, Pillar, Porch: A Love Story JAN WORTH-NELSON, 
Fresh to Death ERIC WOODYARD, 
No Pawnshops for Old Stories TEDDY ROBERTSON, 
The Spirit of Sam Jones BOB CAMPBELL, 
Flintlock STEPHANIE CARPENTER, 
City Beat: Covering Hoops in Basketball City, USA PATRICK HAYES, 
Flint Out Loud TRACI CURRIE, 
Feeling a Little Subprime TEDDY ROBERTSON, 
2302 Welch WILL CRONIN, 
Being Bama BECKY WILSON, 
Too Fancy for Flint? ANDREW MORTON, 
Do You Realize? LAYLA MEILLIER, 
When Home Says, "Go" SARAH CARSON, 
Garden Party NIC CUSTER, 
The Wild West on the East Side STACIE SCHERMAN, 
Hyphen Flint JAMES O'DEA, 
Growing Up Eastside MELISSA RICHARDSON, 
Meet the Flintstones EDWARD MCCLELLAND, 
A Boy and His Graveyard: Resurrecting the History and Mysteries of Glenwood Cemetery SARAH MITCHELL, 
Dubiously Flint: Remembering (and Forgetting) My Grandmother's Stories KATIE CURNOW, 
A People's Park EMMA DAVIS, 
Bathtime CONNOR COYNE, 
Contributors, 
Acknowledgements, 

CHAPTER 1

Paragraph of Doom

GORDON YOUNG

When you sit down to read a story about Flint, you know it's coming. Somewhere, somehow there must be a synopsis of the city's tragic fall, a compressed version of its four-decade socio-economic swan dive. It's not easy to pull off. Think of condensing The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire down to 750 words or less. The worst end up sounding like they were dictated by a weepy drunk at a class reunion. The best convey the carnage but leave the city and its residents with their dignity intact. I've cobbled together a collection of verbatim descriptions from various writers — some with the talent and empathy to take on Flint, and others not worthy of carrying Rivethead author Ben Hamper's pencil case — to create the ultimate Flint Paragraph of Doom. Read it and weep.

Flint is an incredibly unique place. Historically, it is the American dream turned into the American nightmare. It's the ultimate, American post-industrial ghost town. For decades Flint has been a symbol as much as a place: it's a stand-in for American rust belt decline. This is America's most apocalyptic, violent city. Flint hasn't always been this dangerous or depressing. The Vehicle City was once home to mile-long car plants and a thriving, blue-collar middle class. The birthplace of thud-rockers Grand Funk Railroad, game show geek Bob Eubanks and a hobby shop called General Motors. Today, with its automotive workforce down to 6,000, less than a tenth of its 1970s prime, Flint has the highest homicide rate in the nation and an average home sale price of $15,000. Flint isn't Vehicle City anymore. The Buick City complex is gone. The spark-plug plant is gone. Fisher Body is gone. What Flint is now is one of America's murder capitals. A big part of the problem is there just aren't enough jail cells for all the criminals. If all the empty houses, buildings, and vacant lots were consolidated, there would be ten square miles of blight in the city. Flint has been demolishing homes as the city shrinks with residents leaving in search of jobs. A city built to manufacture cars would be returned in large measure to the forest primeval. Now, for many, the catastrophe of a water supply that may be poisoned indefinitely appears to be the final insult. Apparently, Flint's citizens needed to keep drinking poisoned water for a year before the state could figure out how to unpoison their water. Flint now drowns in the hell that has become of much of America's Rust Belt. It is not, to state the obvious, a fun-loving college town like Ann Arbor. It's a dismal cascade of dreck, but it's still home.

CHAPTER 2

Love and Survival: A Flint Romance

LAYLA MEILLIER

I could not appreciate what Flint had taught me until I let myself fall in love. For years I dodged it; I could not even commit to a favorite color or TV show, let alone a person. When you're not in love you can never be hurt in such a vulnerable way. As a young woman, I don't blame this city for my lack of puppy love; I blame this city for my fear of feeling vulnerable.

My first love was a bike. A sleek hunk of purple pipe with sparkly wheels and handlebars. I collaged my bike in goofy stickers I had begged my mom to buy me at Rite-Aid one day. I was not permitted to leave my neighborhood, but I did not mind because my world seemed vast.

At the time, we lived on Mountain Avenue in the College Cultural neighborhood, a place in the city considered more suburban without a too-safe uniformity. There, homes range in size and era of origin and the people tend to be unique and artsy. They look out for one another. In other words, it's a go-to spot for young couples moving to Flint with extra money. The house we had was a brick duplex that looked like a German cottage. My stepdad owned a glass company in the north end that has long since been closed down. In its day, the company did well. There is never a scarcity of broken glass in Flint.

Although I was told time and time again to put my bike in our doorless garage behind the house each night before bed, one night, like ya do, I forgot. I left the nose of my bike barely peeking out from behind the house. To my naive surprise, someone took it in the night.

The news of this evoked a sadness I was not familiar with at the age of ten. At ten, one cries easily, pouts easily, sobs easily, but I could not make a sound. I felt as though my eyes had turned to stone and I wished I could not see out of them. My parents told me about the theft in an awkward family meeting, standing in our cramped kitchen. They filled me in on the normalcy of this sort of situation in my hometown:

"There is nothing we can do. The police are too busy with other things. This happens all the time."

I went to my bedroom in a haze. A week went by and I didn't even go outside to play; instead, I took to throwing weird shit down our dumbwaiters and retrieving it in the basement laundry hamper. Then, one day, my bike was back!

"They found it," was all I was told by my numbly shocked mother.

Years later, I was hanging out with my now ex-stepdad, catching up around the holidays, and he was feeling a little toasty. "I lied to you that time when we were living on Mountain," he said.

"What?"

"I lied about your bike."

"What do you mean? What happened to my bike?"

"The police never found it."

"Yes they did; it was my bike ..."

"Yeah, but I found it. Not the police." I stared at him in shock as he unfolded the tale of how he happened to be driving through the east side one day, looking for a house that needed an estimate pre-installation of new glass, in his big company truck, and he noticed a yard that was "covered in colorful kid shit." He figured he'd check it out. Lo and behold, my bike was amongst the mismatched wreckage. He planned to confront the people living there, a reasonable goal for a man of his size, covered in intimidating tattoos.

"I found your bike, laying on its side, on the ground."

"Those bastards," I said. I never let my bike lay on the ground. I always used a kickstand.

"Yeah, right, the bastards! So I...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: BELT PUB
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0996836713
• ISBN 13: 9780996836715
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 200
• Herausgeber: Atkinson Scott
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchbär; info@buchbaer.de; ; Weberstr. 67; Osnabrück; 49084; Deutschland