“You’re all over the place, man.”
Pete swung his arm in a circular motion to emphasize the point.
I’d asked him to critique his namesake essay collection, Pete’s Garage.
“I mean, one week you’re complaining about being stuck in traffic, and then the next, you’re sitting in some five-star general’s office.”
It was true. There’s no rhyme or reason to the subject matter of Pete’s Garage.
I just write whatever the hell I feel like.
“You’ve had all this crazy stuff happen,” he continued. “You’re like . . . I don’t know . . . Forest Gump.”
I liked the comparison.
I’ve never been shot in the ass or awarded the Medal of Honor, but I have had a rich and varied life.
The place where I’d caught up with Pete was evidence of that.
Pentwater: A Lake Michigan beach town.
If you do the hand thing to make a map of Michigan, Pentwater sits at about your second pinky knuckle.
It was the summer playground of my middle and high school years.
From the eighth grade onward, I’d been invited to tag along with my buddy, Kevin, and his family on vacations there.
When I’d moved from Indiana to Michigan, Kevin was among the first kids I’d met at Northview Middle School.
He was an immediate friend.
And tormentor.
Kevin was fond of sneaking up on me while I was chatting up the latest duo of girls we’d met at Pentwater’s Charles Mears State Park.
Like Jenny and Jody from nearby Rockford.
He’d crouch behind me, then jerk my shorts down as I was mid-sentence, much to the girls’ delight.
And my horror.
I was a tighty-whitey guy back then.
Not a good look for a fourteen-year-old.
Or anyone.
And how did one later face the Jennies and Jodies of West Michigan out on the sand volleyball court, having been so exposed?
Awkwardly, to say the least.
Which was all Kevin ever wanted.
Thanks, jackass.
But, sometimes, when he wasn’t busy humiliating me, he could be helpful. Even friendly.
Like the morning not long after we’d graduated from high school when I woke up in our tent, fully clothed, with sand in my mouth, and a melted Dairy Queen Dilly Bar in my pocket.
“Don’t say a fucking word,” he said when he saw I was awake. “Just get in the car.”
And then we drove to our usual breakfast spot in downtown Pentwater, where he debriefed me on all that had happened the night before—after I’d single-handedly downed half a fifth of Bacardi in less than an hour.
That was a poor choice.
At one point, we’d apparently encountered Kevin’s mother outside Rinaldi’s Minigolf.
He’d somehow convinced her that I wasn’t drunk, but the girls on either side of me, propping me up, were.
“You’re welcome,” he said. “Just try to act normal when we get back, okay? Just be fucking normal for a change.”
Okay. Sure.
I could do that.
And then, later that day, he yanked my shorts down while I was talking to two girls.
Fucking Kevin.
Anyway.
Pete and I had never spent any time together in Pentwater.
This, despite the fact he’d been going there since he was a little kid.
Just like his parents and his grandparents before them.
That probably had something to do with the fact Pete’s dad wouldn’t let us take vacations at the same time during the summer.
Someone had to stay behind at Petersen Oil to cut the grass and paint the curbs at all the stations.
It was the best damn summer job a kid could have.
We were completely unsupervised, entrusted with riding mowers, weed whackers, and our own pickup truck.
One of us almost lost a finger, toe, or a limb only once.
Per week.
It was fantastic.
Then there was that time Pete caught his face on fire.
But that’s a whole different story.
Pete and I walked through the little neighborhood connecting the beach and downtown, headed for an early dinner at Antler Bar.
Many of the houses, still quaint looking, had clearly undergone extensive renovations.
Money had found its way to Pentwater.
But it had been thoughtfully and tastefully deployed throughout the town.
Even Sandra Bullock’s place, with commanding views of the channel and the Pentwater South Pierhead, lacked ostentation.
I appreciated that.
Had our paths crossed at Pentwater Beach when I was last there in 1993, perhaps Sandra could have seen me with my shorts down, thanks to my friend, Kevin.
That was before Speed and Miss Congeniality.
Who knows? Maybe we would have hit it off.
After we’d placed our orders at Antler Bar, I asked Pete if he thought I should keep the Garage going.
I’d committed to doing it for a year, and I’d kept that commitment.
So now what?
“Well, do you enjoy doing it?” he asked.
An important question. And the answer was yes.
“Then you have to figure out how to monetize it,” he said.
Ah, Pete. Ever the businessman.
Now, don’t misunderstand.
It’s not all about money—the object—with Pete.
It’s about making money, with productive assets.
Perhaps he thought Pete’s Garage could be such an asset.
I took it as a compliment.
After dinner, as we walked back to the state park and Pete’s camper, I asked if he’d ever thought about buying a place in Pentwater.
I mean, why bother with a campsite when you could have your own house?
And why stop there?
Hell, Pete would buy most of downtown if he thought it a worthwhile investment.
“Yeah, I thought about getting a place,” he said. “But can you really improve on this?”
By this, he meant the site’s proximity to both the beach and downtown;
The views from Old Baldy, the highest point in Charles Mears State Park, with its steep, sand-covered face running directly into the campground;
The pervasive smell of campfire at dusk and frying bacon at sunrise;
The packs of roaming, spying teenagers, of which we’d been a part a generation ago;
The sense of continuity one enjoys from seeing the same people every year;
And the fact that none of it had changed, substantively, in our lifetime.
Pete had a point.
The state park had qualities, even a permanence, a house couldn’t offer.
Like a good friend.
I need to get back here more often, I told Pete.
Which was unexpected.
Truthfully, I thought I’d be disappointed with Pentwater.
As novelist Thomas Wolfe famously wrote, You Can’t Go Home Again.
Such places become idealized in one’s memory, caged in nostalgia.
They rarely measure up in later years and are probably best just left alone.
But I didn’t find that to be true.
Not this time. Not in this place.
I bade Pete farewell in the beach parking lot, just as the park’s first campfires were being lit.
It was good to catch up.
And good to get reacquainted with Pentwater,
Among the most significant places,
Holding some of the happiest memories,
Of what has indeed been
A very rich
And varied
Life.