Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Michigan: Covert
So it's Saturday, and that means we have to check out of the cottage and be on our respective ways. After one last trip to the beach, of course.
That's Mom, who loves this place more than you could possibly imagine. She comes alive here, especially when she's swimming or hiking with the kids or showing them some other neat new thing. The only bad thing about the week has that the water's been so warm that we haven't been able to tease her about preferring to have to break the ice before she can dive in.
Oh, two other things we did:
1) I played tennis in a tournament with my neice Grace, who had been going to tennis lessons every morning. And we did pretty well for two near-beginners. We won about five games. Out of a somewhat larger number. I have no pictures of this, unfortunately, because I was playing.
2) Dad and Mom and I went to Crane's Orchard in Fennville, which I unfortunately also have no pictures of, but you can follow the link to their website and get an idea. It's all about the cherry pie.
But today we check out, go for lunch at the bakery and pick up more cinnamon rolls, and say goodbye. I'm suddenly alone. I pick up my bike at the shop, where it's been tuned up to keep my chain from falling off quite so regularly, and head down the trail from South Haven to Covert, a little town about seven or eight miles away.
Covert is a wide spot on Michigan Route 140. When I was a kid I knew it as the place you turn left to get to Palisades Park, and the place where we used to go to the library during our summer vacations. Here's a picture of the library, which the sign in front identifies as the first building erected in Covert.
Covert was founded in the mid-19th Century to be a racially integrated community. In my lifetime, the townspeople have been predominantly black, and by all outward appearances working hard to get by, and in more recent years it's occurred to me to wonder how much they may have resented the white kids from the exclusive resort on the beach coming over to use their library. (Because let's face it, aside from the various members of my family Palisades Park is not the most diverse place you could ever choose to visit. Although it's gotten better: when I was a kid I found in my grandmother's house an advertisement that reassured its readers that only gentiles would be permitted to stay at the lodge.)
Anyway, Covert: what really interests me on this trip is the farm market I stop in that turns out to be run by a Mexican-American man named Armando and his family, and has more Jarritos than Coca-Cola products. And that the taqueria down the road is a real taqueria and has big posters advertising money transfers in the window. Which I suppose wouldn't have been surprising at all if I'd stopped to think about it. Except that, other than passing migrant workers on a bike ride or stopping in a farm market by chance, the Mexican community here, which is clearly substantial, is also quite hidden. (Not that Armando particularly wants it that way - he seems disappointed when I tell him that we go to South Haven for our groceries, and not Covert. It turns out he and his family farm 65 acres behind their market.)
I make a terrible mistake in his store and photograph the Jarritos display before asking him. He and his wife grill me about what I'm doing and, after I convince them of my benign purposes, school me on manners. Which is why you don't see a photo of a Jarritos display here.
That's Mom, who loves this place more than you could possibly imagine. She comes alive here, especially when she's swimming or hiking with the kids or showing them some other neat new thing. The only bad thing about the week has that the water's been so warm that we haven't been able to tease her about preferring to have to break the ice before she can dive in.
Oh, two other things we did:
1) I played tennis in a tournament with my neice Grace, who had been going to tennis lessons every morning. And we did pretty well for two near-beginners. We won about five games. Out of a somewhat larger number. I have no pictures of this, unfortunately, because I was playing.
2) Dad and Mom and I went to Crane's Orchard in Fennville, which I unfortunately also have no pictures of, but you can follow the link to their website and get an idea. It's all about the cherry pie.
But today we check out, go for lunch at the bakery and pick up more cinnamon rolls, and say goodbye. I'm suddenly alone. I pick up my bike at the shop, where it's been tuned up to keep my chain from falling off quite so regularly, and head down the trail from South Haven to Covert, a little town about seven or eight miles away.
Covert is a wide spot on Michigan Route 140. When I was a kid I knew it as the place you turn left to get to Palisades Park, and the place where we used to go to the library during our summer vacations. Here's a picture of the library, which the sign in front identifies as the first building erected in Covert.Covert was founded in the mid-19th Century to be a racially integrated community. In my lifetime, the townspeople have been predominantly black, and by all outward appearances working hard to get by, and in more recent years it's occurred to me to wonder how much they may have resented the white kids from the exclusive resort on the beach coming over to use their library. (Because let's face it, aside from the various members of my family Palisades Park is not the most diverse place you could ever choose to visit. Although it's gotten better: when I was a kid I found in my grandmother's house an advertisement that reassured its readers that only gentiles would be permitted to stay at the lodge.)
Anyway, Covert: what really interests me on this trip is the farm market I stop in that turns out to be run by a Mexican-American man named Armando and his family, and has more Jarritos than Coca-Cola products. And that the taqueria down the road is a real taqueria and has big posters advertising money transfers in the window. Which I suppose wouldn't have been surprising at all if I'd stopped to think about it. Except that, other than passing migrant workers on a bike ride or stopping in a farm market by chance, the Mexican community here, which is clearly substantial, is also quite hidden. (Not that Armando particularly wants it that way - he seems disappointed when I tell him that we go to South Haven for our groceries, and not Covert. It turns out he and his family farm 65 acres behind their market.)I make a terrible mistake in his store and photograph the Jarritos display before asking him. He and his wife grill me about what I'm doing and, after I convince them of my benign purposes, school me on manners. Which is why you don't see a photo of a Jarritos display here.
