MY SECRET LANSING

"My Secret Lansing" was a summer-long writing contest organized by the Lansing Poetry Club open to poets and prose writers in Clinton, Eaton and Ingham counties about a real person, place, event or object in and around the Lansing area. Local poet and president of the Lansing Poetry Club Ruelaine Stokes and former Lansing poet laureate Laura Apol wanted the project "to draw out hidden lives, hidden writers, and hidden local gems — places, people, things".There were 141 entries, 68 of which are published in the "My Secret Lansing" book. 

Roxanne Frith

I am very proud to announce that C was awarded first place in prose for her piece "Silver Balls in the City".

In the late 1970s, Jim Barnes and his partner, Mark, lived with their book-eating basset, Sammy, in a second-floor walkup on Chestnut Street. I had recently left my parents’ barren suburb, and I loved everything about Jim’s old house under old trees — even the outside stairs that were so slippery in winter. I loved that Sammy was still allowed in the house despite his depredations. I loved the Christmas decorations of a few silver balls strewn over a glass pane laid across two cinder blocks. In my parents’ house, Christmas ornaments were hung under my mother’s rigid direction, each strand of tinsel draped, not tossed. For me, the scattered silver balls represented joy, freedom, an openness to beauty everywhere. They meant welcome.

 Jim created communities, mainly through celebrations. Our motley group of students, artists and workers gathered for parties he called Tube Tours (a reference to reefers and perhaps something more … .) We smoked weed and sometimes did mushrooms as Pink Floyd exhorted us crazy diamonds to shine on. I looked at the posters of Patti Smith and David Bowie, tried to read their faraway gazes and poised hands, and wondered what message they might hold for me. The guys would spend days on role-playing games like Consensus or Risk. I was too earnest for games, but would pick up an acid “trip book” — line drawings, lines of insight, the occasional reminder that I could always, if I chose, see the whole thing as a “Cosmic Joke.” Once, Jim passed me as I was staring into space, observed that I had “littleorphanannieeyes.” But his house was a safe place for waifs and strays.

 In the summer I worked alongside Jim at a group home for adults with mental disabilities. Breaking away from the regular staff (aka “House Mothers”), we took the residents kite-flying, organized a new-wave dance. After a visit to the State Fair, a middle-aged resident sketched a field of ovals. “What’s that, Charlie?” asked Jim. “A picture of all the people whose faces you’ve forgotten?” He was sharing, I think, the universal human dread of oblivion.

 In 1981, I left for California and then for Europe. Jim sprouted a lumberjack beard and moved Up North. He grew leaner, changed his name to Moksha and finally disappeared altogether. Remembering him, I see Charlie’s page of faces, filled in and shining like silver ornaments. Each seen, named, valued: as I was. None forgotten.

Jim Moksha Barnes was one of my best friends from a group  of guys from St. Johns who lived together in the Omega Hotel on Sycamore St. in 1973. Part of Tube Tours was the Autumn party during the '70s known as the "hoopla". This came during the period of Gay Liberation and folks of all sorts attended, a potpourri of gender, race and sexual preference. Those were joyous times, sadly and abruptly interrupted by the dawn of the Plague to which Jim succumbed in 1994.

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I am quite pleased to announce that I entered the contest and my piece is included in the MSL book. My first published work! (aside from this blog). It was prose entitled "Nip n' Sip and The Summer of Love".

In the summer of 1967, my family was awaiting the return of my older brother from Vietnam. The war was escalating as were the casualties, recounted weekly by Walter Cronkite. We were a small family with just 2 children. Dad had survived combat as a Marine at Guadalcanal so he knew firsthand what his eldest son was experiencing. Although I was only 13, I was aware of the underlying worry and anxiety in the family especially with my Mom. As the return month neared, she was having dreams about taxi cabs coming up our gravel drive. In those days, it was the cabbies who delivered telegrams to rural areas.

On Saturdays, my father would run errands in town. We lived in the country a few miles north of the airport. I would go with him sometimes, to hang out, to get out of the house and give Mom some peace and quiet. As a treat, we would have a late lunch at the Nip N Sip drive-in and listen to Detroit Tiger baseball on the car radio.

Nip N Sip had been a family favorite with coney dogs, the best onion rings in town and root beer served in frosty mugs. There was no inside seating. Ordering was done via kiosks attached to metal poles and the food was brought to you by local girls wearing jeans and you ate in your car.  You could also pick up your food at a drive-through window. It was on the way home, just north of Motor Wheel factory and CW Otto Junior High School on old US 27. The game didn’t begin until 1pm and we both would be starving.

A warm afternoon of salty, greasy, satisfying food with Ernie Harwell giving the play-by-play. The Tigers were becoming a powerhouse in the American League with a roster of soon to be legendary players: Stormin’ Norman Cash, Willie Horton and my fav, Al Kaline. For an hour or so, our minds were relieved of the quiet burden that all service families carry.

The cab never came.

I'd had this tale in my back pocket for sometime and a shorter version appears somewhere in this blog. It is a fond memory.

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Curiously, the gala for MSL was held at the event center in Old Town called Urban Beat. While I was there, I thought about an infamous watering hole, The Mustang Bar, and wondered, chuckling, if I was bending my arm in the same place. Yep, I was correct!

c. 1970's

The Mustang had a reputation for being a rough establishment back in the day. I reckon it ranked in the top five in Lansing that if you wanted to get knifed, you'd have a pretty good chance of fulfilling your wish at this place.