“Excuse me,” I say to the waitress, “what beer is that?”
“Oberon,” she replies.
“Bell’s Oberon!?!” I ask.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“From Kalamazoo?”
“Uh, . . . I don't know.”
“Bring me one. Now! Please.”
“Sure, no problem. You know you’re the second person today that’s freaked about us having this beer on tap.”
“How would you feel if you could get a pint of Kilt-Lifter in Tokyo?”
“Stoked.”
“Exactly. This is about the same thing for a beer-drinking guy from Michigan.”
“Cool, enjoy.”
The woman next to us is so intrigued she orders one too. We toast each other and then take our first drinks. It is at that moment, looking up at the sign above the bar that clearly lets me know I am drinking this Midwestern jewel in the Sonora Desert, that I feel as if my world is collapsing around me.
“The water, it tastes different,” she says after her first sip.
“Yeah,” I say, “that’s the taste of Lake Michigan fermented.”
The waitress comes back and asks if I’m enjoying my beer. I’m not sure if it could be more obvious that I am so I say, “Yeah, it’s good. But next time I come in I expect to see Brador on tap.”
“What’s that?” she asks.
“My youth,” I reply.
She looks me up and down and then says, “We sell beer and sushi, not miracles. You want another Oberon?”
I look over at the little orange ball on the tap and think to myself, “This certainly feels miraculous to me.” Then I look back into her sarcastic eyes and say, “You’re kidding, right. Of course.”
And as I type this, I feel the water of the Great Lakes coursing through my veins once again and the warmth of that cold little mitten has already smitten me. In a few hours I will be stepping into a flying elevator and then stepping out again onto the frozen tundra of my childhood. (Okay, so it’s not quite tundra, but it’s still a lot colder than Phoenix.) Just to make my point, here’s a video to a couple driving in Michigan. Notice their quaint Michigan accents:
The picture at the top of this post is from the 2003 Sufjan Stevens album entitled Michigan. In the summer of that year Helene and I went to Portland, Oregon and caught Steven on his first ever West Coast tour. It was in a small bar and half the folks seemed to be there for the opening act, Joanna Newsom. (Although I wish her well, I am not a huge fan.) The group had on blue Boy Scout Uniforms, U of M baseball caps and in the back was a handmade map of Michigan. Between songs, Stevens would point on the map to where he was taking us next. After the show, I told Stevens that his album’s exploration of what it meant to grow up in the mitten had saved me years of therapy. Here’s a wonderful video from that disk:
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