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THE HILL
By Peter Welmerink
There's a street called Sunset Boulevard on the west side of Grand Rapids. You need to climb the Bridge Street hill, go under the I-96 viaduct and, just passed the StoneBridge Estates, Sunset is on your left. I am not actually sure why the street was called Sunset. Yes, it is at a high point above Grand Rapids; however, your view is eastward not west. It should have been called Sunrise not Sunset. It also isn't anything close to a Boulevard. I see a boulevard as a two-way traffic-heavy downtown city street. Sunset Boulevard is a narrow residual cul-de-sac. Even the dead-end turnaround is slightly hard to maneuver; you need to keep dropping your car down several times from forward to reverse while cranking the wheel to turn around and head back to the exit (Bridge Street hill).
The street, at its dead-end, stops at a high hill that looks eastward over a curving section of I-96, the lower west side of Grand Rapids and the downtown area itself. The neighborhood west of the freeway, up the hill, is considered the UPPER west side. (I have heard it referred to as the Polish Hollywood. An ethnic joke obviously and some city history that I won't delve into at this time.) From this eastward vantagepoint, the eye meets a sea of rolling green treetops with the occasional roof peak sticking up to let you know the undersea world is inhabited. The sea of green and rooftops stretches for about a mile, then it meets the downtown city area. The downtown buildings jut up above the lower west side neighborhood, spanning an area north to south, flanked on the left by I-196 (I-96 turns into I-196 when you get close to the city) and on the right by the 131 S-curve. The swift moving Grand River cuts a line between downtown and the lower west side though it is hard to see atop the Sunset Boulevard hill.
I couldn't tell you really how many times I had visited this scenic point in my current 37 years of life. I had visited more as a teen-ager and young adult. It was a good spot to sit with some friends and a soda pop and chips, or later with a few cold beers. There was something about sitting up there, overlooking the rushing traffic on the expressway, overlooking the neighborhood that my friends and I were growing up in, looking out to see the "big city" of Grand Rapids rising up not far away. It was a feeling of being on top of the world so-to-speak. You were the master of your domain with a panoramic view of your countryside.
In the summer time when the trees are in full bloom and they are like low lying green clouds bubbling up from the earth, you can't see the roof of the houses. You know they are down there under that frock of green but it is as if there is an verdant ocean boiling about the center of downtown Grand Rapids. The central portion of the city rises up with its varied shapes and sizes of buildings like someone had planted a seed and it had birthed jutting concrete towers.
Can it be said for any city that you can not go far away and enjoy its presence? You can sit on a hill merely a mile away from its center hub and view it as if it is some great monument off in the distance, a monument telling you you're home, that THIS is the place?
END
THE HILL copyright 2001 P. Welmerink
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