The first thing we noticed was the name on the signage out front: “Seajoy’s”.  We thought maybe it was going to be a seafood restaurant.  But from what we could see, they hadn’t yet changed any of the interior sub-continental décor.

A week later, Andrea report seeing the following four items listed under the name on the signage, each with a corresponding sign-size picture, in this order:

1. Coffee
2. Fudge
3. Tasty Dosas
4. Juicy Burgers

Now we were puzzled.  I wondered if Andrea had seen the sign right.  What kind of restaurant offers those four things?  And what kind of Indian restaurant, if that’s what it was to remain, offers – or advertises that they offer – “juicy burgers”?!  Despite our puzzlement, we resolved to go there once they opened and order exactly those four items.

But when we finally got around to going, the sign out front had the following four items listed and pictured in the same prominent place out front:

1. Wraps
2. Lassi
3. Tasty Dosas
4. Biryani

It was an Indian restaurant after all.  (The name comes from owner Shijoy’s name.) They did indeed serve dosas; my “Seajoy’s Special” dosa was excellent.  But juicy burgers and fudge were nowhere to be found on the menu.  So before we left, I asked our waitress.

It turns out Seajoy’s was originally planned as a different kind of restaurant, one that served Indian as well as American and other dishes.  Hence the confusing signage, which actually did exist for a few days before they decided to go all-Indian and changed it.  And go all-Indian they did; Seajoy’s has a good variety of Indian dishes - North, South, Indo-Chinese, you name it.  Everything we’ve tried the handful of times we’ve gone has been good, and our friend visiting from India (who got to fulfill his lifelong dream of eating a cheese dosa) was impressed by the variety.

What I like best is the mom-and-pop feel of the place.  Shijoy and his crew can be seen bustling around the restaurant trying to keep people happy and get the business to stick where none do.  One time I overheard one of them say to another as they hurried off in opposite directions: “”Focus.”  That makes me want the place to succeed.  That and the really good food.

But I’m sad we didn’t get to order coffee, fudge, tasty dosas, and juicy burgers.  And I’m sorry for doubting you, Andrea.

Later that night, carried away with patriotic fervor and truly American doses of alcohol, we made the following recording, which we post here tonight as our way of saying Happy Independence Day to you and yours.

spangled

Anyway, in this case, the man walked from a house further north on our street to the liquor store across from our house. Every time we saw him shuffle by at his snail’s pace, Andrea and I both wanted to talk to him, though Andrea was a little bit creeped out by the way he seemed sometimes to stare at our house as if scrutinizing each little change we’ve made. Then one day as I was out on the front porch, the man stopped and barked across the front yard, “Who did those windows?” (He was referring to some glass block windows we’d just had installed on a small outbuilding on our property.) I answered cordially enough, and he told me that the person who did it knew what they were doing. Before I had a chance to ask him how we knew that, he dropped the bombshell that would instantly change our relationship:

“You know, I built that building.”

Which explained the staring. The cute old man introduced himself as “Frank” and went on to explain how he knew the original owners of our 1900-built house. He lived down the street as successive generations of the family lived here, and at some point, in the 70s I think, he was asked to do the masonry work on the little outbuilding.

From that point on, every time Frank would walk by and see us outside he’d say hi. Sometimes, I confess, we’d see him coming and go out just to be able to chat. We’re new to the neighborhood, and making friends and hearing all the history from someone who’s lived here his entire life gave us a nice feeling of some kind of torch being passed or something, some kind of approval of our presence here. What further endeared us to Frank was the fact that his old house down the street is situated just like ours, in a place where developers are extremely hungry to tear down and build more yuppie condos or parking lots. (”Bulldozer bacon” was the term reportedly used by one local developer to describe the place we call home.) As we’ve been fixing up our house, we’ve been inspired by our relationship with someone who’s stubbornly stayed here and grown old before us. And one time, literally as we were fixing up our house, re-roofing the building he built, sweat and roofing tar pouring off our bodies, we were reassured by Frank’s approving smile and the words he shouted up to us, which have been with us for every project since then: “Little by little, one step at a time.”

And just the other week, we finally stopped by his house as we walked by. We were invited in and treated to an earful of stories about the neighborhood with Frank’s nephew Vince and his neighbor Kathy. Frank was ill and mostly listened from under the blanket draped across his recliner. As we left that day, we resolved to return again soon with a freshly baked pie or something.

But a few weeks later, before we had a chance to visit him again, Frank P. Felippi died. Neighbor Kathy told us that the illness he’d been suffering from led to surgery with some unforseeable complications. The Ann Arbor News obituary is here.

The service at St. Thomas this morning was nice, though I felt like everyone there was wondering who the young guy in the back getting all misty was. It’s stupid, I didn’t really know the guy, but he meant a lot. So I thought I’d write this post in memory of Frank - the cute old man who walked by our house, or stopped and said hello; the mason who built our outbuilding; a link to the past of our home and our neighborhood; and Ann Arbor’s ultimate townie, who lived here his entire life and as everything around him changed still mustered the will to take his walk to the corner store, right up until the end. Rest in peace, Frank. We’ll make our walk just the way you did, “little by little, one step at a time.”

Why am I eating?

I’m eating because you are!

Why are you eating?

At one point, I noticed through the window I was painting a bright light shining in our backyard.  It seemed a little brighter than what might usually come from a car turning onto our street at night, but I dismissed it as someone driving with their brights on or just my having rarely looked out of that particular window at that time of night.

Suddenly I was jolted from my trim painting by a figure on the other side of the glass knocking and shining a flashlight. Yep, the police. A woman knocking, and a man looming behind in the shadows. I give the woman a quick “one second” gesture as I put down my brush and hurry to the side door.

“The music’s too loud, isn’t it?” I asked. The officer said no and asked if I or someone else was trying to break into the house. I replied that no, we’re just having a late work night. She said that someone out walking in the neighborhood had reported what appeared to be a break-in. Earlier we had been carrying furniture between the house and our storage shed and using multiple points of entry to avoid freshly stained floors, so it made sense.  Since it was pretty obvious that I was telling the truth - they must have had a few minutes to watch us through the windows before knocking - the woman officer started to back away.  But before she could turn around completely, the other officer stepped out from the shadows and asked “Is someone in there using a nail gun?”

That’s when it dawned on me that those lights I’d seen in the backyard some twenty minutes earlier were police search lights.  The first officer to arrive must have heard what sounded like gunfire and waited for backup to begin a careful descent on our home.  When I confirmed that yes, we were using a nail gun, he seemed a little disappointed.

Sure enough, when we looked out the front window  after they left, there were several cars out on the street, ready for action.

ADDENDUM: Later that morning, the police got some action on another trip to our neighborhood to fish a dead body out of the Huron River.  The detail of that story that everyone seems to concentrate on is that the woman who found the body apparently waded into the water to “hold onto the body” and prevent it from going over the dam until police arrived.  Which raises a few questions: how far into the water did this woman have to wade to get to the body, exactly what kind of contact did her “holding” entail, and what extent of contact and wading distance would you go through to do the same thing she did?

Even though I’d heard from several people that White Castle did a special Valentine’s Day thing, I was  still half expecting to be laughed at when I asked the lady on the phone from corporate for reservations.  But sure enough, she asked me my location and confirmed that the Castle on Packard near Carpenter participated.

All I told Andrea was that we had reservations and that she should dress up.  At a dinner earlier that week, some of her friends were impressed - “Ooh, how romantic.”  I just sat there and grinned; it was a fun secret to have.  That night, as we drove there dressed in our finest, my anticipation was bubbling over.  I watched Andrea take careful notice of every turn we made, trying to figure out our destination.  First to downtown, then back out towards Ypsi, to the southeast…Andrea wondered aloud what restaurants were down that way.  I could barely contain myself.

Since I’ve never been to that White Castle, I got in the turn lane too late and missed the driveway.  As I pulled into the adjacent vacuum store lot, Andrea said “For a second there I thought you were taking me to White Castle.”  I said nothing and only studied the expression on her face as I maneuvered the car back around to the White Castle driveway.  “You’re kidding, right?  You’re kidding….”

When we entered, a hostess greeted us and asked if we had reservations.  I said yes and gave my last name.  Then we were led to our table and presented with a custom pink-colored menu with my name printed on it.  Each table had a bouquet of fake roses and a candle on it.  The partitions were adorned with more candles, roses, and greenery.  Unfortunately, the florescent lights overhead could not be dimmed, or the restaurant would have looked closed from the street.  I doubt they have a dimmer control anyway.

We ordered a few sliders and were treated to complimentary sparkling cider in plastic wine glasses and chocolate cupcakes.  The service was excellent.  Andrea joked with one of our servers something about having to do this every day, and she replied under her breath, “Girl, you don’t even know…” or something to that effect. (I left a tip before we left.)

But you could tell everyone was having fun.  There were cute old couples there and lots of red clothes.  Since our reservation was during the last half-hour timeblock before regular Castle service resumed, towards the end some regular customers without reservations started trickling in.  One man sat down next to us, bewildered.  The staff gave him table service, and we heard him call someone on the phone and say “You won’t believe this….”

The manager came out and snapped the picture that I linked to above.  He was friendly and excited, and just before we left we saw him posing with the rest of the staff for more pictures.  It rounded out the nice feeling we had as we got into the car and drove home.  A Valentine’s Day to remember.

Our stomachs certainly didn’t forget it the entire next day.

The young man who guided us around the showroom kept suggesting large refrigerators. Andrea’s immediate response was to open the door of each of these models, reach in vain for the top shelf, and say something like “See, no.” Our helper was moved to admit that he didn’t realize how much his wife asked him to reach things in their kitchen.

But even the shorter fridges with reachable top shelves had a capacity built for that kind of Y2K-stockpile mentality that seemed, we agreed, distinctly American. So it was fitting, but no less hilarious to us, when the appliance specialist answered our repeated requests for something smaller with the question “Did you guys live in Europe for a while or something?”

Later, when I did some searching online, I discovered that the internet replicates pretty well this man’s association of small-capacity refrigerators with Europe.  (Though the more common term for 9-12 cubic foot refrigerators in the US is “apartment size”.)

Anyway.  Learning the subtle semiotics of refrigerators while shopping around for refrigerators somewhat mitigates the fact that you’re shopping around for refrigerators.  And for the record, we have not lived in Europe.  We live alone, we  like to eat fresh food, and we know that full refrigerators are more efficient than empty ones.  And our kitchen is tiny.

1. Have you seen a shaved squirrel running around Ann Arbor? My dad got us a squirrel-proof feeder for Christmas, which was working well until the other day - I looked out and a fat squirrel had knocked the thing on the ground and was kind of sitting upright in the feeder and stuffing his face. Tim opened the door and yelled at him, and as the squirrel skittered away we noticed that he has some sort of weird reverse mohawk. I’m not sure if this was natural hair loss or if someone actually took a razor to the poor thing, but it looked unnatural.

2. The temperature is dropping as I type, but if Saturday happens to be warmish, you can anticipate a report on our resident groundhog, whom I refer to fondly as the Otter. This particular critter lives with his family in our backyard and I am completely willing to sacrifice his destruction of our already very rough and ugly backyard for his extraordinary psychic powers. He’s kind of a dumb one - if I open the back door to scold him for munching on our grass, he usually runs his tubby body behind a single stalk of weeds and “hides.” While I won’t be coaxing him out, or bringing Action News over, I’ll let you know what our groundhog says about winter (and you let me know if you have a good name for him.)

Here in southeast Michigan, it happens with a lot of grocery stores names. Meijer becomes “Meijer’s.” Kroger becomes “Kroger’s.” Farmer Jack becomes “Farmer Jack’s.” Even Kerrytown’s little Sparrow becomes “Sparrow’s,” (after owner Bob Sparrow). And it’s common to hear people say that they or someone they know works at “Ford’s.” It makes sense when a store’s name derives from a person’s name.

But it happens also with national chains like Blockbuster’s, Barnes and Noble’s, JCPenny’s, and even Wal Mart’s.  Is it just easier for our little language-wired minds to talk/think about such huge, nebulous entities as if they had  straightforward ownership and eponymic signifiers?  Or are we masking something by making them sound more local, more mom-and-pop, more ours?  (And is this why it always bothers me when I hear people call Buffalo Wild Wings “B-Dubs”?)

Sometimes a company will officially change its name to reflect the fact that so many people already make it possessive, as was the case with Friendly’s.

Others have noticed this phenomenon, but its history and regionality haven’t been pinned down to my satisfaction.  Is it really only a Midwestern thing?  Or was it once a Southern thing?  Which other stores do you know that get turned into possessives?  And which don’t? And where?  And why?

In a busy Midwestern college town, this has to happen to everyone at least once.  The poor guy was clearing snow away from his car using only his hands. I felt kind of bad about taking the picture, and then I remembered that I’d thrown a shovel in my truck that morning in case the very same thing had happened to my work truck.  So I pulled around the block and on my next pass called out “Want a shovel?” We made quick eye contact and he replied “I’m good.”  Maybe he recognized me as the picture taker and interpreted my question as a taunt.  Or maybe he had already resigned himself to that once-in-a-lifetime fate of being plowed in.