I said goodbye to South Bend at Simeri’s. We drove there past white houses and scruffy parks, past railroad tracks, the old Studebaker buildings, and kids on bikes tearing up cracked sidewalks as the sun went down. I hadn’t been before. Someone had once mentioned a bar with a great patio, and so after dinner I suggested we grab a drink. It was, in that honest, Midwestern way, exactly as described. Several people were playing dimly-lit pool in the main room. Several others sat by themselves at the bar. We ordered and headed outside, the only ones sitting around one of the small circular tables on that really great patio. There was music playing on distant speakers, and maybe I’m making this up, but I like to think we heard some Tom Petty, some Elton John.
When you’re young, people tell you that this is the time in your life to be adventurous. To try something different. To move somewhere far away. They say it with good intentions, but under the assumption that your life is always easy to give up or that you don’t yet understand what it means for things to be permanent. I didn’t feel that way when I left South Bend. Over beer and salty popcorn on a warm Indiana night, that assumption, that indulgence, felt almost cruel.
I’m writing this post three months after that last night in town, in a small coffee shop in San Antonio, Texas. Several posts ago, Tracy mentioned my move and my current job, and I felt compelled to write something more. We started this blog in spirited defiance of those people and publications who might contend that our city is dying. Along the way, at least for me, it stopped feeling like a crusade and began to feel simply like a lived-in life. So now I just want to say thank you. Thank you South Bend for your Farmer’s Market, your library, and your numerous diners, for your chilly St. Patrick’s Day parades, your dive bars, and your concerts in the park; but most of all, thank you for being that place where I learned what it meant to be a member of a larger community. It’s where I learned, as Tracy once said, to have an appreciation for where I am. Wherever I might be, that’s not something I’m likely to forget.
Simeri’s Old Town Tap
Location: 1505 West Indiana Avenue
Contact: (574) 289-1361
Note #1: On weekends in the summer Simeri’s has live music!
Note #2: I've heard from a regular that the bar menu is apparently quite good.
