-
Chapter 39
- Northern Illinois University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
c H A P T e R T H i R T Y - N i N e George Sharp is no longer with us. George had become a nuisance. With mind and health well gone, ambition vanished, he was derelict on a limitless sea. Saturday Super Maxwell took him to Bellaire and turned him over to the county authorities. Now it’s the infirmary or the state hospital. —Elk Rapids Progress, August 14, 1917 George Sharp committed to Northern Michigan Asylum by probate court. —Elk Rapids Progress, August 18, 1917 i See doZeNS oF PeoPle stooped over in the fields hoeing and picking vegetables in the hot sun: beans and corn from what i can see. Some are leading cattle toward the low white outbuildings in the back. Some are employees; others volunteer. (They understood the benefits of sweat back then. Therapy, they called it. i called it enterprising.) Northern Michigan Asylum has been the largest employer in Grand Traverse county for some time, a place where the “therapeutic A GOOD HIGH PLACE 199 landscape” was an integral part of the “moral architecture” and where “moral treatment” was provided that could cure what had been “hitherto considered incurable.” The hospital is directly across the street from another large employer, a whorehouse called the Swamp House. it’s a toss-up, i think, which therapy would be most beneficial. The main building is located on Gray Street, appropriate, though parts of the complex have more cheerful-sounding names running through them like Blue Street and Red Street. iwalkupthemainwalkway,pastthespotKachinasatlastsummer before they realized they needed to let Topini come home. Sitting there this time would do me no good. The white concrete walls of the asylum close in on you despite the twenty-foot ceilings. The mammoth Victorian structure must have seemed enormous to the people who built it, but i can see it isn’t big enough. Maybe it’s due to the sheer number of unfortunates, upwards of three thousand, housed within its walls. But i don’t think so. i notice that the walls (twenty-one inches thick, i find out later) are all rounded and equipped with mahogany handrails. No corners or edges anywhere. Nothing sharp or distinct. Wire covers the windows, and the five-panel oak doors with transoms over them have circular peepholes for viewing inmates. The men occupy the section with even room numbers; the women’s side has odd. There is a women’s wing of equal proportion to the men’s. i’ve often wondered if women were crazy in equal numbers or whether they were more easily discarded. All a man had to do was sign his name and drop her off. i read a few years later that “mental retardation, depression, barroom brawls, fear, business reversals, sadness, nostalgia” were among the maladies that could lead you here. There were other things, of course. Being sick, drunk, and a public disturbance could do it. How’d you get here? Uncle George asks me. There is a painting of the lighthouse on old Mission Peninsula a foot above his head. i can’t make out the artist’s signature. i think about standing to read it, then don’t. They are into light and beacons. The train, i say. old Pere Marquette was how i’d gotten there, on the flyer. changed trains at the Williamsburg spur. [3.235.249.219] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 15:50 GMT) A salmon-colored curtain, one of at least twelve, forms a rectangle around us. Tuneless humming noises come from one rectangle across the room, soft crying from another. The room smells like a mixture of hard cider and disinfectant. You won’t make the run back home in time, he says. No, i say. i would spend most of my savings and stay in one of the hotels in Traverse. A nurse materializes, then shifts about in the background, but we ignore her. We’re good at ignoring. TimepasseswhileUncleGeorgedozes.Thenheopenshiseyes.He seems to have dropped half his weight since the chautauqua festival, though he’s not pale. He’s feverish, and there’s a readiness to him. His arms are stiff and straight at his sides. He’s using all his effort to keep from gripping the bedsheets. instead, he pushes down with his palms with what looks like a Herculean effort, enough force to lift himself into the air or push the bed through the hardwood floor. Mostly it’s quiet here, he...