Our Man in Kalamazoo

It’s always exciting when a travel reporter arrives on assignment in a new place. And one of the first things we seek to learn is the origin of the placename. Such origins are pretty easy to learn in PoV Country. For instance, Lafourche and Terrebonne are French for “the fork” and “good earth.” Galliano, Larose, Leeville, Gheens, Thibodaux, Chauvin, Bourg, and Montegut are named for historical landowners and businessmen. Dulac is French for “the lake.” Cocodrie and Pointe-aux-Chênes are named for an animal and a tree. Bayous Petit Caillou and Grand Caillou are named in French for pebbles. Bayous Blue and Black are named for the perceived colors of their waters. Houma is named for the historical tribe. Cut Off is named for a canal. Grand Isle is an island. Golden Meadow was named for an ill-fated farming enterprise in the early 1900s subsidized by midwestern railroad investors who drained their reclamation farm by carving an outflow canal to Bayou Lafourche, thus giving the village a nickname—“Yankee Canal.”

Which brings me, of course, to Kalamazoo, Michigan—a place where the time-honored rules of naming after landowners and businessmen or animals and trees or lakes and canals and islands or even railroad investors cannot possibly apply. Northwest of Chicago, due west of Detroit, and snuggled above Indiana between Lakes Michigan and Erie, Kalamazoo is a small city bigger than Kenner and smaller than Lake Charles. At street-level, it is a remarkably picturesque combination of the old and the new structures. In the distance, there’s an old industrial smokestack of concrete and bricks aside a brutalist-style building of slate and metal panels. Leaving the high-rise hotel with its exterior of glass and aluminum, I am less than a minute away from one-story, flat-topped, red-brick buildings built in the 1950s. There’s a Phillips 66 gas station with a vintage sign (a circle, not a shield) on Portage Street. Not far away is Uncle Ernie’s Pancake House, which by exterior appearance and high quality of food clearly does not represent a national chain. Similarly, O’Reilly’s Auto is really owned and operated by somebody named O’Reilly.

Mom-and-pop businesses like these are nestled in small strip malls that stand harmoniously with residential areas. And a remarkable thing about Kalamazoo neighborhoods is that all the multi-story bungalows, prairie-style houses, and Victorian homes are nestled in their own patch of the woods. It seems that folks prefer to build between the firs and broadleafs rather than cut them all down to clear their yards. Unruly neighborhood shrubs also show this sort of rustic harmony.

Besides trees and shrubs, there are notable animals in Kalamazoo as well. No, there are no swarms of lovebugs or termites like those we might experience at this time of year in PoV Country. But unlike PoV Country, there’s an Alligator Sanctuary here, where gators are preserved in their natural habitat and not under piquante sauce. There are also a good number of Canadian Geese in the parks and on college campuses; they seem to thrive here, with both adults and goslings honking about, despite the fact that their visas could be revoked at any time for no reason. (Maybe that’s why they’re honking.) Despite these animal homes, there is no public zoo. Why? Because the name of it would sound too silly.

However, folks have been dealing with their silly sounding placename since the 1700s, when “Kalamazoo” first appeared as a river name on maps. The word sounds so unusual that three centuries later gift shops around town sell T-Shirts with the phrase, “Yes, there really is a Kalamazoo.” Townsfolk sometimes prefer to carve away unnecessary syllables, as did Kazoo Books on Parkview Avenue. In any event, eliminating syllables is much easier to type into smart phone search boxes and thus good for marketing.

Nonetheless, “Kalamazoo” makes a great rhyming word for writers. Like in the phrase “from Kalamazoo to Timbuctoo,” from the Little Golden Book titled The Train from Timbuctoo. Likewise, in Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hatches the Egg, Horton the elephant is taken “…to Boston, to Kalamazoo, / Chicago, Weehawken, and Washington, too.” In 1969’s Top 10 hit “Down on the Corner” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, the city name is rhymed with the name of an equally silly sounding musical instrument: “Poor boy twangs the rhythm out on his Kalamazoo / Willy goes into a dance and doubles on kazoo.” In this case, Poor Boy’s “Kalamazoo” is a Gibson guitar, so named because the historic Gibson factory is located in the city.

There is one deep, historical connection to PoV Country in Kalamazoo. This city was the last domicile of the “Lafourche Realty Company,” which may have managed the residual landholdings from the ill-fated Yankee Canal project in the early 1900s. The whereabouts of that yankee office, however, are currently unknown despite my investigative efforts.

But what does the name “Kalamazoo” actually mean? In reality, there are too many answers. You can roam the streets and websites for days, as well as talk to people and to artificial intelligence, and still not arrive at a consensus. Many explanations refer to water, as in “place where water boils” or “reflecting water” or “fast waters” or “smoky waters.” One peculiar explanation is an old Chippewa Indian word meaning “He who is inconvenienced by smoke in his lodge.” This particular explanation may now be obsolete in Michigan, as both medicinal and recreational generation of “lodge smoke” has become permissible by new state laws.

Whatever the meaning of “Kalamazoo” is, there’s one thing that this reporter has learned by investigating the city. I came to this conclusion while eating at Bimbo’s Pizza on Burdick Street. I also learned that that name is a contraction of “bambino,” which, of course, is Italian for “baby” and, in this case, not any other meaning. The Lesson: Sometimes you just gotta forget the search for meaning and eat good pizza instead. POV