Steven Harper Piziks

Darwin is no longer working for Albion.  The council decided to give him a severance package.  As you probably guessed, there's a whole lot going on here.  The short, polite, version is that the council made a mistake, and now they're paying for it.  Good.

I'll let you in on a secret: I never liked Albion.  I pretended I did, and tried to see the good parts of the town.  Cute park, surrounded by some nice countryside.  But the longer Darwin and I were associated with the place, the less I liked it.  Run-down, dumpy, half-empty, and filled with insular, short-sighted people.  Half the stores downtown are empty and decaying.  A furniture place has dedicated more space in its show windows to Trump/Pence banners than to actual furniture.  Sure, the town has Albion College, but the college keeps itself to itself, even requires the students to live on-campus.  You don't see any students or other young people around the town itself.  There's no night life, no shopping, no real activities.  The big event of the year is the Festival of the Forks (think "river forks"), and it's a boring, badly-organized affair.  Getting groceries involves a 40-minute drive.  The town has one movie theater that closes at 9 PM.  You get the idea.

Here's a tidbit: back when the Cedar Point amusement park--the one that evolved over the decades into a world-class roller coaster park--was getting started, it selected Albion for its location.  Cedar Point saw the town's many advantages.  Albion is just off a major highway, is equidistant between Detroit and Chicago, easy to reach from a number of places in the Midwest, and is surrounded by inexpensive land that would allow for easy expansion.  It would bring hundreds of jobs to a blue-collar town that had been recently devastated by several factory closings.

Albion said no.  They didn't want an amusement park in their backyard.  Cedar Point instead went to Sandusky, Ohio and became fantastically successful there.  This tells you everything you need to know about Albion.

Our thinking was that this would be Darwin's last job before he retired.  We'd put up with being separated during the school year until I could retire and move there with him.  I had toyed with the thought of looking for teacher job near Albion or even taking early retirement and eating the financial loss so I could at least be with my husband.  So very glad I did neither.

We put the house on the market, hoping it would sell quickly.  The real estate market is hot, hot, HOT everywhere, right?  Also, Albion's housing market is filled with houses that are either super expensive (because they're near the college) or super cheap (because they're falling apart).  There was literally NOTHING mid-range and decent on the market.  Ours was the only house in that category.  Easy sale, yeah?  Nope.  Not in Albion.  We got only a couple showings and no offers.

Meanwhile, Darwin took a temp position as city clerk and treasurer in the city of Charlotte, which is within commuting distance of Albion.  He could continue occupying the house in Albion while we tried to sell it.  We still got nothing.

After a couple months, we were about to take the house off the market when we got a surprise offer.  Yay!  Darwin alerted the temp company that he would have to leave Charlotte in a few weeks.  They made noises about paying his rent at a hotel or apartment if he'd stay for a couple more months, but it didn't actually happen.  C'est la vie.

We closed down the house in Albion.  We packed everything up and divided it into two parts.  One part was stuff that would go to the lake condo in Waterford, and the other part was stuff we'd have to put into storage.  Fortunately, I found a storage facility that's literally within walking distance of the Waterford condo.

It was tricky finding a moving company.  Albion to Waterford is legally a long-distance move that requires a special license, and many companies won't handle that.  With a growing sense of anxiety, I called all around the Albion and Waterford areas.  At last, I found a company that would do the job.  It was a small, mom-and-pop organization, but as long as they did the move, I didn't care how they small they were.

On moving day, two guys showed up with a U-Haul truck and a U-Haul trailer.  The company was so small, they didn't have their own truck!  The guys muscled everything aboard.  At one point, Darwin overheard one of the guys saying that he hadn't had breakfast, and the other guy said that, yeah, he was getting a hunger headache, too.  I went up to them and said, "I'm heading over to MacDonald's for a sack of hamburgers.  Do either of you want anything?"

Huge looks of relief, and one of the movers offered a high-five.  I dashed out and returned with bags of food, which everyone devoured.

Once we arrived in Waterford, the guys muscled a couple huge pieces of furniture upstairs, including a heavy dresser and a bed.  The high-five guy collapsed theatrically to the floor once he set the dresser down.  Then they hauled down a bunch of stuff from the condo that also had to go into storage, drove it over to the storage place, and unloaded it.  It was nine-hour day, in all.  I tipped them huge.

And then Darwin and I had to unpack and rearrange a whole bunch of stuff. 

The entire thing had me thinking "Didn't we JUST do this?" in despair.  Because of course, we had.

But now we're consolidated into one household again.  Darwin is living with me and I with him, and Albion is receding into the distance like a bad memory.

So Darwin and I were looking for the silverware and trying to buy curtains at a department store.  Department stores don't stock more than two or three examples of any given curtain type, so we had order them, with the help of a Friendly Clerk.

The was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with the on-line order. The Friendly Clerk couldn't get the computer to give us the colors we wanted.  Finally he managed it and set up the order.

"Do you want ruffles for the curtain tops?" he asked.

"We're gay," I said, "but we're not that gay."

The Friendly Clerk couldn't decide whether he was allowed to laugh or not.

But a few days later, when the curtains and rods arrived at Albion, Darwin discovered most of the curtains were the wrong color--a dingy, nasty gray instead of the wine red we'd ordered.  And so the following weekend, when Darwin came to Wherever, we trooped back to JCPenney to complain.  We dumped a big pile of curtain packages on the counter, and the clerk, a different one, re-did the order.  Now we're waiting again.

I went to Albion two weekends in a row in here, and by the second visit, most of the house was put in order.  Complicated TV/Roku/Cable system: check.  Bedroom: check.  Bathrooms: check.  Curtains: working on it.  Kitchen: check.

The kitchen is, at least to me, an important room that requires a great deal of thought and care.  Dishes and food and sundries have to be arranged for the greatest level of convenience.  Dish cupboards should be near the dishwasher for ease in putting everything away.  Foods need to be arranged so that what you're likely to use most often is close to the work space.  Appliances needs to be set up so they're reachable, but not in the way.  And so on.

I was flummoxed by the lack of overall storage space in the kitchen.  Once the everyday-use stuff was set up, there was no room for lesser-used stuff like the Crock Pot and large casserole dishes.  Then I came across a tall, shelf-lined cupboard in the laundry room a few steps away.  There we go!  The secondary stuff went in there, and we were good.  However, I still have a bunch of regular-use appliances in Wherever, and no room in the Albion kitchen for them.  There's no countertop space for my bread maker, stand mixer, and Instant Pot. 

However, the kitchen has a huge amount of floor space.  Freakishly huge, in fact.  Darwin and I can't figure out what the architect was thinking by having so much floor space and a relatively small amount of counter- and cupboard space tucked into one corner.  But it occurred to me that we could put an island in that space.  I found one on-line.  It's the perfect size and the decor goes with the kitchen.  We'll get it.  Eventually.

We also need a kitchen table.  The table Darwin took from our Wherever house we put in the new dining room because Darwin didn't want the dining room to look so empty.  (He's ignoring the fact that the dining room in "my" house is now a giant empty space, but . . . )  We're going to buy an inexpensive one later.

I made a beef roast for our first meal in the newly-done house.  It was delicious, but we were hampered by the lack of silverware.  Plasticware doesn't work well with roast beef! 

By now, we were both seriously annoyed and mystified.  Every box had been unpacked, every storage bin had been checked.  No silverware.

Sighing, we went upstairs to assemble the Desk from Hell.

With the house dickering finished, we had to work out how to move.  We had a closing date on a Friday, but we couldn't move in quite yet. The house needed some desperate work. Structurally it was fine (the house inspector we hired turned out to be a former student of mine--just how small is this world?), but the carpets were a dark brown shag and all the walls were painted an equally dark brown.  This gave the interior a dark, dingy look, and neither of us was eager to live in such a house.  It took a week for the painters we hired to repaint the house, including the basement and the kitchen cabinets, and another day for the carpeters to do their thing. 

In the meantime, Darwin was commuting from Wherever every day.  He was up at 5:00 AM every morning for a 90-minute drive to work, and he never got home before 7:00 PM.  Bedtime had to be 9:30, so he was spending maybe two hours a day at home.  It was exhausting him, and I could see it in his face.  I rarely saw him--when he actually was home, he was often dozing in a chair.

Everything was nearly completed on a Monday.  Only the kitchen cupboards weren't quite done.  Darwin and I are well passed the "help us move for beer and pizza" stage of our lives.  I found movers in Wherever and hired them, thank you.

Darwin and I had already divided up the household goods (and by "Darwin and I," I mean "I").  Darwin would take the love seat and easy chair from the living room, and I would keep the sofa.  We have three TVs (a relic of combining two households), and he took one of the big ones, along with his desk, a night stand, and our bed.  I also granted him enough pots and pans to get by (Darwin cooks like bachelor frat boy anyway, and wouldn't notice that he only had one frying pan), the Crock Pot (I have an Instant Pot anyway), and a handful of silverware and utensils.  We took a trip to Ikea and the mall and came away with other stuff--shower curtains, area rugs, and kitchen towels and such.  Darwin was Mr. Cranky-Pants most of the time.  He hates shopping in all its forms, but household shopping he really despises.  He especially hates it when I get picky or when I disagree with a decision he wants to make, so it made for kind of a tense outing.  It didn't help that it was raining in cold buckets.  But we came to detente over chicken at a restaurant.

Darwin and I were also packing. It was a daily project--get home from work, pack until bedtime, repeat.  Additionally, we cleared out the basement.  Max had a teenager apartment down there, but it had my original bed in it.  I told him I needed the bed back, but he could have the twin bed from the guest room. 

At this point, Max announced he wanted to move his bedroom back upstairs. I think this arose from a number of factors: the basement is chilly in winter; the house is bigger and emptier with Darwin gone; a general sense of isolation.  So in addition to the packing, we moved Max.

We arranged for the movers to come on a Tuesday, mostly because I happened to have that day off from work.  They showed up with their truck, bundled everything aboard in a trice (I love watching other people do the heavy lifting), and drove to Albion for unloading.  We followed in separate cars because I had to come back to Wherever that night.

This was the first time I'd seen the Albion house since the new paint and carpet. Ohhh, it looked so much better! The yellows and pale blues and accent-wall oranges brightened up the place enormously.  The white kitchen was similarly bright and airy, though it did need some color.  By coincidence, a bunch of the stuff we'd bought new for the kitchen was red, and we decided to continue the theme.  Red towels and dishclothes, red toaster, red coffee maker, red rug, red microwave, even red-handled knives.  The contrast looked really cool.

That all came later, though.  That Tuesday, I stayed at the house long enough to get basics set up so Darwin could survive.  My main rule of moving is always to set up the bedroom first so when you're ready to drop after all the work, you don't realize you still have to create a place to sleep.  My second rule is to set up the kitchen so you can get food up and running, but the kitchen cabinets were still drying, so we worked on other parts of the house. 

Finally, it was time for me to leave.  I didn't want to go.  I was leaving my husband, my heart, behind.  Darwin was just as upset.  I drove back to Wherever, trying not cry.

That weekend, I went back to Albion to work on the house some more.  Darwin, at least, was better rested, with his new five-minute commute.  We did a hella lot, including the kitchen, but there was always more to do.

The silverware was missing.

Seriously--it was gone.  We searched through all the boxes, all the bins, everywhere.  No silverware.  It was seriously weird.  I remembered dividing it up and packing it, but it was nowhere to be found.

While we were in the middle of all that house-hunting, the Festival of the Forks arrived, and Darwin was specifically asked to attend.  He agreed, and we made arrangements to stay in Albion for that weekend.  We had to be in Albion anyway because Darwin (and therefore I) had been invited to attend Albion College's annual banquet for distinguished alumni.

At the banquet, we met a whole pile of people, all of whom told Darwin how glad they were that he had accepted the job.  This was a little overwhelming for both of us--never had Darwin been greeted with such enthusiasm, nor had he come across a community in which so many people cared so deeply about the position of city manager.

I should mention here, though, that Albion's most recent city manager was left under a cloud of scandal.  Also, the managers before that were apparently iffy at best (from what various citizens told us) and did little to pull the city forward.  To a one, these managers focused on trying to bring back manufacturing, and they all failed.  So the community was desperate for someone with both experience and new ideas.  This is Darwin.

Anyway, the banquet was very interesting, way more so than I anticipated.  Five Albion alumni had been selected as distinguished, and during the banquet, each stood up and gave a speech.  As a speech teacher, I tend to nitpick other people's speaking, and though I don't show it, I get bored easily during bad speeches.  The first speech didn't disappoint.  The recipient was so quiet, you could barely hear.  But then the next lady took the podium and gave a speech reminiscent of a Baptist preacher.  She was getting her moment to shine, dammit, and she was taking it!  She was great!  And then another woman spoke, a former teacher who knew what she was doing with a microphone.  And then a combat veteran who was both funny and poignant.

Back at our room, Darwin and I rested for a while--I'd worked all day before the banquet and was tired.  But finally we decided to go out and see the festival.  We headed out at about ten minutes before nine--and found the festival was shutting down for the night.  Totally dead.  People were heading for parking lots and houses.  We were a little startled and disappointed.  We contented ourselves with exploring the darkened side streets and getting a feel for the residential areas.

Saturday we attended the festival proper.  This started with a parade down the main street, in which Darwin and I walked.  We were there with firefighters and the school marching band and the police and convertibles with local business luminaries in them.  No floats, oddly. 

I'd never done a parade before, and I don't think anyone much knew who I was or why I was walking with the city councilors, but I waved at everyone anyway.  It was kind of fun.  The parade passed by a booth with an LGBT rainbow on it.  I was surprised and curious, both.  They waved enthusiastically at Darwin.  I made a mental note to go back.

After we finished the parade, Darwin and I went back through the main street to explore the festival properly.  Darwin got hung up talking to police and paramedics at the Public Safety tent, and I suddenly remembered the rainbow booth.  I trotted down the street and found them.  The booth was staffed by two older women and a young man.  I introduced myself as the husband of the new city manager, and they were happy to see me.  Well, really they were happy about Darwin.  I asked what the gay community is like in Albion.

"There isn't much of one," the young man said.  "We're not really organized.  This group we've started is new."

I brought Darwin down to meet them, to more enthusiasm. 

"We're really glad to see a gay city manager," one of the women said.  "It helps so much."

The straight community often thinks that there's this vast network of LGBT people these days, and to an extent that's true, but it's pretty much confined to large cities.  Small towns and rural areas are hurting in this regard.  Even with the Internet, LGBT people in outlying areas are often isolated, not only because there are fewer such people to network with, but also because homophobia and threats of violence are still ongoing concerns.

Darwin and I explored the rest of the festival.  Everyone we talked to had hyped it up, so our expectations were high.  It was . . . nice.  Some fun exhibits and a bit of shopping.  But we ran into a number of oddities.  The biggest one was that it shut down very early every day.  On Friday, as I said, it was over by 9 PM, and Saturday it ended at 7 PM.  There was no festival on Sunday at all.  A small fight broke out at one point, and Darwin and I happened to be present when the police were talking about it with the guy in charge of organizing the festival. 

"Next year, we should shut down earlier," the cops said.

 Darwin and I exchanged glances.  Earlier?  They were barely open as it was!

The festival was also split up and spread all around Albion. On the main street were a few booths for local organizations and businesses, along with a stage where local acts played every so often.  The food sellers were three or four blocks away, down at an area normally reserved for the farmer's market.  The beer tent was similarly a few minutes' walk away.  A carnival with kiddie rides and games set up in a small park, also distant from the main street.

This mystified Darwin and me.  Why split up the festival?  Festivals depend on crowds that themselves draw more crowds.  A scattered festival has an empty feel.  Darwin later learned that the food sellers all wanted to be in the farmer's market, so the festival let them be down there.  I pointed out that the stage was usually empty, and there should be an act there every moment the festival is running.  The food sellers should be set up on one of the nearby side streets, and the carnival (which should also have rides for teens and adults, not just small children) should be on another side street.  The parade, which interrupts the festival on Saturday morning, should be moved to Friday afternoon, to kick everything off.  The festival needs more booths, especially artists, crafters, and other merchants, instead of focusing on local organizations.  It also needs activities that take advantage of the river--a rubber ducky race, canoe floats, rafting.

Well, next year . . .

The following week, the city held a special welcome reception for Darwin, and they wanted me to come, too.

(The Albion saga continues . . . )

Darwin put on his interview suit and walked from the hotel to city hall for the interview while I packed up the room and found breakfast for us.  He came back and reported that the interview had gone very well.  Later, we watched the videos of the interviews on-line and agreed that Darwin would get the job.

That was when the complications arose.

We returned home to wait.  The council was going to choose their finalist the following Monday evening.  But during that wait, another city called and asked Darwin to come in to interview.  And then another one did.  Both of them were within easy driving distance of our house. 

I was in agony.  Either of these jobs would make our lives so much easier.  But Darwin was reluctant to schedule an interview until he knew what would happen with Albion.

And we had another problem: my retirement.

We were figuring that if Darwin got a job far away from Wherever, he would take it and I would retire early.  However, I'd recently learned that the penalty for early retirement was far stiffer than I had thought back when Darwin first started job hunting.  Suddenly it wasn't economically feasible for me to stop teaching.

I could hunt for a job with another Michigan public school system, and in the current teacher shortage, I could probably find one fairly easily.  However, moving to another school would cut my salary in more than half and additionally make me into a first-year teacher in the district's eyes, with all the attendant extra evaluations, required workshops, and lack of tenure.  Finally, Wherever Schools has in its written policies that it does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.  Vanishingly few schools in Michigan have that policy, and at this point in my life, I'm not willing to put my currently-secure career into the hands of someone who might fire me because I'm gay.  Another job isn't very feasible.

So I can't retire anytime soon.  But if Darwin took the job in Albion, we'd have to live apart for several years.  I don't like this prospect, for obvious reasons.  Yes, it's true that we'd see each other on weekends and on holiday breaks.  Over summer, I could live in Albion with him.  And yes, it's true that lots of spouses live separated.  Military people and spouses of traveling salespeople spring to mind.  None of this makes the idea palatable, and I begged Darwin to give serious consideration to turning Albion down if they offered the job.

We were caught between awful choices.  It was 99% sure the Albion job would go to Darwin.  It wasn't near as sure that Darwin would find another job, at least not right away, and our savings were dwindling.  Should he take the sure job and the security that came with it, or hold out for a better job that might not materialize? 

Monday evening, I was in Ann Arbor for an unrelated function, and Darwin called me.  Albion was offering him the position.  But there was a snag--before Albion would begin contract negotiations, they wanted a confirmation that Darwin did want the position.  Darwin told them he needed to talk to me first.

I was distracted by the event and couldn't give my full attention to what we were talking about, but I wasn't happy about Albion's requirement that he give a tentative yes.  I've been involved in contract negotiations for decades, and I've never in my life heard of such an outrageous request.

"What do I tell them?" he asked.

I wanted to tell him to refuse it and go for the other jobs.  But I didn't want to be the one who wiped out a secure job at a town Darwin liked.  So I said, "Do you want to take it?"

He paused a moment.  "I do.  I like the town, I like the people.  Everyone is so nice and friendly and kind, the exact opposite of Ypsilanti.  Albion has a lot of potential, and I want to work there."

"Okay," I said.  "Tell them you'll take it."

This Darwin did, which touched off an explosion of emails welcoming him to Albion.  Most of them said things like, "You were the only candidate we wanted," and "We're so glad you're taking the job," and "Sue!"

Darwin also emailed the other cities to withdraw his applications.  Almost immediately, a city councilor emailed back praising his qualifications, begging him to reconsider, and all but offering him the job.  Darwin turned him down.  I was in agony again, but said nothing.  Forward to Albion!

Contract negotiations took almost a month, but finally they were ironed out and Darwin settled on a start date in mid-October.

This meant we had to find a place for him to live.

Darwin and I also visited the town.  Albion is about 80 minutes from Wherever, which meant if he got the job, we'd have to activate the retirement plan, so I was looking around with an to what it might be like to live there.  I grew up near the small village of Breckenridge, Michigan, and Albion reminded me a little of that place, if Breckenridge had also had a small college attached to it.  The town is surrounded by fields of corn and soy, and the closest city of any size is Battle Creek, a 20 minute drive away.

We arrived in town, dropped our bags at our room, and set out to explore.  The very wide main street, lined by many empty storefronts, is paved with bricks--an Albion tradition.  It was a blazing hot summer day, and the main street runs east-west, meaning it was unshaded, and we worked up a sweat checking out the buildings, the businesses, and the river.

The Kalamazoo River creates three forks in Albion, which as I said, made the city attractive to mills and factories.  Now, the rivers have decreased in importance, though the biggest event of the year is the Festival of the Forks, a street fair that several people we met mentioned to us.  "You have to come to the Festival of the Forks," everyone said.  We explored multiple parks along the river and found several sites where mills once sat, but now have nothing but foundation stones and a dam.  The combination of river and parks are actually very pretty and pleasant, especially on a summer day in July.

We visited the downtown library, poked our heads into a few businesses, and explored the residential areas.  Housing in Albion makes a strange patchwork.  There's no "poor" and "rich" section of town.  Instead, everything is all mixed up.  Lovely, well-maintained Victorian mansions sit next to decaying homes.  Several areas have vacant lots which are generally well-mowed, but which clearly used to have houses on them.  A common practice is for a city to tear down a condemned house and offer the plot to a neighbor for a dollar so the city doesn't have to maintain the spot. This drives Darwin crazy because it makes for bad fiscal policy--the vacant plot doesn't add to tax revenue, and no new houses go up to replace the condemned ones.  He said he'd definitely put a stop to that if he got hired.

Lunchtime arrived, and we hunted for food.  We passed a garage-sized place called The Little Red Lunchbox.  Darwin was leery, even though he generally likes little diners, but I said I didn't want to drive forever to find somewhere else, so we went in.

The Lunchbox is a tiny place with no tables or booths.  Instead, there's a U-shaped counter with stools.  Deliberately silly decor signs and bric-a-brac dot the walls, along with family photos.  A 1950s fridge sits in the corner.  The top of the U points toward the kitchen, which is ruled by the owner Sue.  When you come in, Sue is usually at the grill in back, and she shouts at you to grab a drink from the fridge and take your damn seat. The fridge is filled with cans of pop.  Eventually she bustles out and demands to know what you want.  If you aren't sure, she'll tell you what you want and make it for you.  When Darwin ordered an omelette (his favorite lunch) but refused the accompanying potatoes, Sue bullied him mercilessly.  "You don't like what I make?" she griped.  "I only use the best ingredients.  Those eggs came from a farm up the road, and that ham is from his neighbor who raises pigs.  No better ham in the country!"

Sue never writes down an order.  She listens to your choices or makes them for you, trots back to the tiny kitchen, and brings it out when it's done.  When it's time to pay, she just tells you your total.  I got the impression that if she doesn't like you, she adds a surcharge.

The counter precludes a quiet or private meal.  You end up facing other people, which pulls you into talking.  It's more like eating in someone's home dining room than a restaurant.  If conversation falters, Sue pops out of the kitchen, leans a hip on the counter, and moves things along.  She hands out puzzles and little games and challenges people to finish them before their meal comes out.  She introduces people.  "That's Herbert.  He runs the garage downtown.  His dog died last week, so be nice to him.  That's Tony.  Don't bring up politics with him because he'll never shut up if you do.  Eat those eggs before they're cold, hon."

The place was fairly busy when we were there.  At one point, a teenage boy came in and gave Sue a hug.  "Can I have a hamburger, Grandma?" he said.  Sue said that of course he could, and she plopped one on the grill. 

Darwin instantly fell in love with the place.  This became important later.

One morning at the downtown bakery, I noticed a burly man wearing an Albion Malleable T-shirt.  I pointed it out to Darwin, and the man noticed.  He was a gregarious person, and he introduced himself as "Junior."  Turned out he had recently opened a restaurant/brewery and named it Albion Malleable after the old foundry.  He gave Darwin a crash course in local businesses and we promised to come check the place out.  I think he figured we were just being polite, but a couple hours later, we went down there to eat.  It's the kind of place =I= like, with a stark wood interior and funky sandwich choices.  Junior is a force of nature, rushing around and putting his hand into a dozen civic projects.  He's third-generation Albionite, and you can tell he loves the town.

We drove home.  The interviews were the following weekend.  It was a two-day affair, with a public meet-and-greet Friday evening, when any citizen who cared to could show up to shake hands with the various city manager candidates.  The formal interviews were set for Saturday morning.

More . . .