Some Enchanted Evening, Williamston-style
We’d hadn’t seen Bob and Dave for a few weeks so they agreed to meet us at one of the happening new places in Williamston last night–The microbrewery in the polebarn out behind the gas station just off the exit.
The Michigan Brewing Co. is everything the other area micros aren’t. It’s unpretentious and its symbol is the Mackinaw Bridge. A couple other newish places in this part of the state are Grizzly Peak, named in honor of an animal that’s 2000 miles away, and Blue Coyote, which also focuses its theme a couple thousand miles away. GP is part of a corporate chain. Bobby’s mom Brenda served me the other day down at the MBC. We like the MBC polebarn and the Straits of Mackinaw.
So we meet Bob and Dave and have some beers, a few for the road and we headed back to the stoplight in town. It’s 10 degrees out and Bob hasn’t worn a coat yet, so we drop him off at the new restaurant in town, the Red Cedar Grill (after our ditch of a river) and put our name on the waiting list. There aren’t many restaurants in this booming capitol city area anymore other than nasty chain places by the malls. Go figger. The Grill is surely welcome in some ways. Decent food, but what’s with the white walls, postmodern black track lighting and waiters all in black? The cocktail napkins feature a baseball hat. Williamston is a farm town with the fancy new cornfield subdivisions. It never pays to forget your roots. There are mostly terrible bright color prints on the walls. A couple good ones. Oh well. Bob waits in the crowd. We tell him to sit by Mr. McClintock, an elderly local gent who has already adopted the place and seems to own a corner of the bar. Dave and Martha and I are going to see when the movie starts.
We’re going to see “Rumble in the Bronx” at the Sun Theatre. The Sun is run by a local family. $2 tickets to firstrun movies. Only one at time though, no multiplex here. 25¢ popcorn and 30¢ pop. Always good, polite attendance. Bob and Dave hadn’t been to The Sun yet.
We stop in at Rolly’s antique shop which is open, surprisingly enough. Rolly says he always stays open until the movie starts. Good idea.
I ask him if he still has this old red canvas-covered kayak for sale. “Out in the alley,” he says. So we head back and out the back door.
…Just as Martha disappears into the alley and Dave and I are opening the door again, we hear opera. Live. A lady we’d noticed out of the corner of our eye is apparently singing somewhere in the shop. Dave and I are in a hurry to see the boat, check and movie and get back to Bob, but we look at each other as we open the alley door and go check out the boat.
“Uh, that’s real opera, isn’t it Dave,” say I.
We’re both a little thrown. That was really good singing. The door slams shut. We stand and look at the snow-covered kayak. Why are we out here anyway? All I wondered about was the price. We all stop sidebyside and look. There at our feet in the fresh snow are three longstem roses layed out sidebyside.
Dave says “You guys, we’re not really in an alley and this really isn’t a little town. This is a movie set or something. What’s going on here? There’s a lady singing opera inside and an old red kayak and three roses in the snow in an alley. Martha did you hear her? Was it just our imagination?” Martha hadn’t heard, so we said “What are we doing out here?” and rushed back in.
A beautiful lady in a plush red wool coat and her friend were shopping a buffet window. Rolly hovered. We asked if she’d been singing. Her attractive friend said “Yes, something from Edith,” then chattered to the singer in a foreign tongue…French I shortly figured out. I was bit stunned still. Rolly is nodding at us.
We babbled a bit at the two ladies. I said “We like Mario Lanza. We like opera,” for no good reason. “He’s a good tenor,” the lady said. –The beautiful cat-faced lady with lovely dark hair (to just below her ears) and big eyes and red lips, and, and… Wow! Her friend said “Sing something from Madame Butterfly,” then lots more in French. The lady put her hand up, then sat down and said to me, “What do you want to hear?” I blurted “Puccini.” Rolly switched off his TV. She said “Well, I could try….” Then simply opened into a most lovely aria. Loud as if amplified, clear as a bell, soaring and passionate. I about burst into tears right there. I couldn’t look at her. It interfered with my listening. It was so beautiful. Dave E said he couldn’t look at her either. It was like being transported right into a movie. Into a record. A concert of our own. Martha stared at her the whole time because the lady was singing right at me. She was opening up with her arms and such, I could see that. I was electrically buzzing. Martha said she was so beautiful. Then it was over. We clapped. She said she was from Montreal, as was her friend who had just moved to Lansing. She said Yes, she sang in operas, but was really a Mayo Clinic doctor in Rochester, Minnesota. She made a sour face at that. Boring! she said. Music is better, she said. Wow. She seemed like a very famous person to us and we didn’t want to botch it by pestering her, so I never got either of their names. It was more than fame, she was a true and pure artist. Yes, I think we were more awestruck than if we’d met a moviestar. The singing did it to us. Pure, liquid art washing over us in a consignment shop. No camera, screen, instruments or paint needed. We got a full dose just by being alive right then.
Martha and Dave went to check on the movie down the block. I stayed and browsed records. I found a Mario Lanza, which I showed to the lady. I told her about “Heavenly Creatures,” a movie she said sounded really good, which featured Mario in an inspiring role (as a claymation figment of two teenage girls infatuated imaginations). Of course I had to buy the album. Then Rolly and I told them about the Grill and about Spagnuolo’s, the only other good (and Italian) restaurant around. The one lady was new to the area.
Then I rushed back to the restaurant and found our table, with Martha and Dave telling Bob the story. I gave Martha her album as a present, which she really liked. Bob was bumming a bit, but enjoyed our story. Besides, we had to have someone be the coatless foil, who had to wait in a crowd, then got to only hear about the alley, the roses and the aria. He was our listener. You need all parts to have such a storybook evening.
(The movie later on was good.)
–JP
