By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
How far would you go to volunteer?
Fred Fife's answer to that question is 154.4 miles.
One hundred and 55 miles, tops.
That's how far it is from his driveway in Defiance, Ohio, to Dogwood Fine Arts Festival headquarters in Huntington Bank, where he was stuffing programs Monday afternoon. He has also sponsored students to see the authors.
Fife had visited the Heddon Museum and attended the dedication of John Mishler's Wind Song outside Dowagiac Middle School Performing Arts Center, where he saw author Sarah Vowell on Oct. 25, 2006.
Fife returned Monday night for Mishler's lecture at Southwestern Michigan College.
Fife, who turns 37 this week, really, really liked Vowell, who he knows will be appearing in Akron in October.
"If someone has half as much fun as I did when I met Sarah Vowell, then I enjoyed it twice as much," Fife says of his version of "Paying it Forward."
"There were a couple of dogwood trees there in the corner. I got to put those in a lady's SUV," Fife recapped his day. "Until I assume room temperature, I will be a patron of this festival. It was a magic night. After I left Wood Fire (for Vowell's reception), I walked across and saw (Stone Lion in Beckwith Park) and I roared at it, I was so stoked."
His photo from Wood Fire he got autographed in Indianapolis, where he sat right in front of her. "I actually got to come behind the desk, she leaned in and gave me one of those Mona Lisa smiles," he said.
"I told her, 'I'm the guy who made you a mix tape and gave it to you in Dowagiac,' " he said.
It contained classic rock such as the Rolling Stones, whom he saw at Chicago's Soldier Field in 1997, and Pink Floyd and was in response to one of her essays.
"You've got to walk a fine line because you don't want to cross over into stalker territory," Fife said. "I kind of mourn here in this age we're living in that you can't be an earnest, super awesome stoked fan without getting some raised eyebrows. I sound like an old fogey, but young people have no highs or lows. They're jaded. That's what's so awesome about this place," where school children grow up thinking the normal way to read a book is to read it, then discuss where the plot and characters came from with the author.
"If you distill a 20-ounce bottle of water down to one drop," he said, "that's why I'm here. All the positive things that go with the festival. (Bobbie Hartline) told me when I ordered my Sarah Vowell tickets, 'When you come up here, you're one of us.' And she's absolutely right. The vibe is so friendly. I walked into Beeson Street. Where I'm from you don't walk into a bar unless you're a regular. I just feel lucky to be a peripheral fringe player. I tell people about it and they always say, 'Is that up by Detroit?' There are other cities in Michigan! Detroit isn't even a city. It's a war zone."
"I'm not going to be able to be here Saturday, but that's quite a double bill," Fife said of Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Roger McGuinn of the Byrds and John Sebastian of the Lovin' Spoonful.
Just as he regrets missing Franz Jackson's 95th birthday bash.
"I knew I was missing out on a once-in-a-lifetime deal."
McGuinn "is one of the few guys I can hear play a Rickenbacker guitar and enjoy it. Him, Pete Townshend (of the Who) and Tom Petty. I'm a Gibson, Les Paul, Fender guy. I can almost play guitar badly."
Fife, whose father was an auctioneer and his mother ran an antiques store, is the youngest of four.
"I had this photo album we got from an estate sale from the '50s. These two ladies went out to Hollywood, met all of these celebrities and had their pictures taken with them and autographed – Dean Martin, Bob Hope, Jimmy Durante." He took it to distinguish himself with Vowell, just as he's thinking about taking Vowell a glass suitable for sipping bourbon to Akron.
Defiance sits about 40 miles east of Fort Wayne, Ind., and 45 miles south of Toledo. "it's a cultural wasteland," Fife said. "Its only claims to fame are Sam Hornish ("he made the mistake of going to NASCAR after dominating open-wheel racing") and Chad Billingsley (baseball player with the Los Angeles Dodgers). "Angela Davis went to Defiance College for a short time."
Defiance, which has had four Lilac Festivals, "is like the opposite of the coin from Dowagiac. It paid no attention to its history. No even vain attempt to be culturally aware or anything artistic, but they're trying now. If I could, I'd move here.
"I used to be a machinist and a forklift operator," Fife said. "The place I used to work is barely open now and is probably a year away from being sent to Mexico. My nephew's brother-in-law still works there and he says the place is on a ventilator. Now I work with my brother Tim. He runs a repair shop out of his garage and I'm his wrench monkey. The pay isn't great, but the hours are good – I've got today off. He hunts for meat and eats everything he hunts."
Fife returned to Dowagiac in spring of 2007, but last year "the Grim Reaper was taking everybody around me."
His father passed away. A friend was struck by a train and killed. An aunt died. A brother suffered a heart attack.
"Hearts in our family are bulletproof," he said. "After 40, they turn into Ford Pintos and you back into them wrong" – he mimicks an explosion – "You're done. So I'm enjoying my 30s while they last. I know the Grim Reaper's lurking around every corner, waiting for my odometer to turn over to 40 and for me to eat that last Big Mac."
"Good TV's hard to find," he said. "The only TV I make time out of my schedule for aside from 'Family Guy' is '30 Rock.' The whole ensemble is awesome, but I'm a huge Tina Fey fan. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts."
Vowell the humorist certainly left her Dogwood Fine Arts Festival audience at the middle school PAC laughing reading from her essays and discussing religion, politics, airport security and her mistaken belief that when her generation came of age "gardening would just stop because it's so boring. Not me, but people I know still garden."
A multi-faceted media celebrity from Montana by way of Chicago, Vowell was a contributing editor to NPR's "This American Life" and a frequent guest on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, "The Late Show with David Letterman," "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" and "The Colbert Report," the voice of Violet in the animated film "The Incredibles," a "3-D actress" with a bit part as a public defender in the "Six Degrees" series premiere and an op-ed columnist for the New York Times, although it was the San Francisco Chronicle that predicts she will "continue to be one of the most important voices of her generation."
Unless, of course, you encounter her at a Berkshires B&B, then she is the "black hole of breakfast, a decided void of gloom sucking the sunshine out of a New England day. … They probably didn't want to think about presidential gunshot wounds, but when I'm with strangers I turn into a conversational Mount St. Helens. I'm dormant, dormant, quiet, quiet. Old-guy loners build cabins on the slopes of my silence. Then poof! It's 1980. Once I erupt, they'll be wiping my verbal ashes off their windshields as far away as North Dakota."
The strangest historical place she's been might be Mormon headquarters in Salt Lake City with its wall-sized mural "like a Yes album cover."
"I'm a history buff," she said in Dowagiac. "I'm never more than a 1-800 number away from ordering the Time-Life World War II series off the TV. I have set my alarm so I wouldn't miss a morning C-SPAN live remote from the house of Revolutionary War pamphleteer Thomas Paine. I celebrated my 30th birthday at Grant's Tomb. The historical periods I like to learn about aren't so much costume dramas as slasher lit. The French Revolution is a favorite because it features the beloved plot of carnage in service of democracy, but I prefer American history."