Well, I'm here in Ghent, the neighborhood in Norfolk where I'm destined to live for the next year, or perhaps for the rest of my life to judge by how much I love it so far. The grocery store is about a block and a half away, and the produce section has gooseberries for only $2.99 (thank goodness! Just imagine if gooseberries were not in abundant supply!). They call their produce section "The Farmers Market", which has sent me scampering back to the keyboard to finish my countdown.
I am confident that in a neighborhood like this one I will eventually find a farmer's market of some worth. And I can't say that I went to Kalamazoo's Bank St. Market as often as I thought about going, nor nearly as often as I should have. But there are aspects of the Farmer's Market in Kalamazoo that I can confidently say I'll miss. What makes it unique, of course, is that it's been my farmer's market. I know which vendors I like to buy from and where to buy what, and I can typically count on bumping into three or four people I know and don't often see over the course of a Saturday morning's transactions.
This may all sound like laziness about getting to know new places and meeting new people, but it's not. I see the Farmer's Market I've been enjoying (too seldom) for the past number of years as emblematic of so many things that make the North American Midwest special. First of all, it's a place where you can enjoy the sheer bountifulness of the place: in spring, the new potatoes and early peas; summer blueberries, strawberries and sweet corn; in fall, the concord grapes, squash and apples. You can watch the seasons change not only in the products for sale, but in the humidity or crispness of the air, the fogginess or the clarity of the late-morning light. You can take your time and greet your neighbor, stand outside and drink in the fact that it isn't cold (anymore or yet). Its sublimity resides in its simplicity.
On the east coast, midwesterners have a reputation for being simple, plain folks. Yet, how often have you seen a bar on the shores of Lake Michigan cluttered with potted palms and Hawaiian-shirt uniforms, trying to pass itself off as Caribbean? Remember the restaurant recently opened in a prominent downtown hotel that touts itself as a "New-York-style bistro"? Why do we midwesterners struggle so hard to pretend to be something we're not? Even we are forgetting how wonderful and fulfilling our own simple, sublime place in the world can feel on a brisk, late-August Saturday morning.
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