Grand Rapids Eerily Similar To Spokane
What if you flew halfway across the country, only to arrive and discover you never left?
That kind of thing happened all the time to people like Rod Serling, or even Albert Einstein, which is what caused him to start pondering the time-space continuum. Yet last week, it happened to me, and frankly, it has me spooked.
Here’s what happened: I flew to Grand Rapids, Mich., and when I got there, I could have sworn I was still in Spokane.
The similarities began to strike me as I drove out of the airport:
Grand Rapids is a city of about 190,000 people.
Grand Rapids is the second-largest city in the state, overshadowed by a huge, dominating metropolis on the other side of the state.
Grand Rapids is a city with a big river flowing right through downtown.
On top of all of this, I was driving on the city’s east-west interstate (there is no north-south interstate) on the way to my hotel, which was on Monroe. Somehow, I sensed that Monroe would be on the west side of downtown. I was right. Division, of course, turned out to be on the east side of downtown.
By the time I reached the hotel, I was convinced I had entered a parallel universe, where everything was identical, yet also - in the case of license plates and humidity levels - eerily different.
I calmed my fears by giving myself a little talking to.
“Jim, you’re just having one of your clinical psychotic episodes,” I said soothingly. “Nothing unusual in that. After you’ve been here a few days, you’ll see that you are not really in Bizarro-Spokane. You are in a land far, far away called Michigan.”
Yes, I thought, that’s right. But then as the days went by I noticed more weird synchronicities (meaning, literally “Sting-like coincidences”):
Grand Rapids has a big park called Riverside Park. (It is right off Monroe.)
It has another park, I swear, called Comstock Park.
Grand Rapids has a brand new 12,000-seat arena, right next to downtown, where the beloved hockey team plays.
Grand Rapids has its own baseball team, a Class A minor league team.
On nice summer days, people drive 32 miles to a nice resort town on a lake. (A really, really, big lake).
One of the city’s main attractions is a “historic restored carousel” in a beautiful setting right by the river.
It has lots of Amway conventions.
Coincidence? Or conspiracy?
Soon, however, I realized I was going over the edge, finding parallels where they didn’t exist, or at least, where they existed only in the mind of the clinically psychotic.
“So, they, too, have a street named 29th,” I found myself saying, in a world-weary, nothing-can-surprise-me-now voice. “And yes, right there, just where I would have predicted, is a 30th. Unbelievable.”
On sober reflection (and I was sober much of the time) I had to admit that there were some big differences between Grand Rapids and Spokane:
Grand Rapids has produced a U.S. president (Gerald R. Ford). Spokane has produced Phil Harris.
Grand Rapids has three big museums, including the Gerald R. Ford Museum. Spokane has three museums, too, but only if you count the Broadview Dairy Museum and Boo Radley’s.
Grand Rapids has a thriving zoo, with over 700 animals. Spokane has several locations of Petco.
Grand Rapids is the world headquarters of Amway. Spokane only seems like it is.
So by the end of my trip, I realized that Grand Rapids was not Spokane. I also realized that Spokane was actually superior in some ways: Better coffee, better bookstores, better mountains, better humidity and, at the risk of damaging an entire Michigan city’s self-image, grander rapids.
My sanity was restored until I noticed something disturbing on the flight home. I was on the plane for four hours, yet I arrived in Spokane ONLY ONE HOUR LATER.
What is the explanation for this? Had I really been in Grand Rapids, or had I merely been in Bizarro-Spokane?
I searched frantically through my suitcase until I triumphantly found numerous Amway personal-care products. What a relief. I really had been in Grand Rapids.
, DataTimes