Photo of Lansing, Mich., by Churl on Flickr, licensed under the Creative Commons.

I’d woken up a while ago but laid in bed, listening to the sound of the houses being put up for sale. The thump, thump of twin hammers landing on twin “for sale” signs had become like the dripping of a leaky faucet or the barking of a neighbor’s dog. It’s the beat that this city, my hometown of Lansing, Mich., moves to. When the realtors finish hammering, they leave only the occasional thud, as a car bobs and weaves through the potholes that cover our streets, like the scars on the arms of laid-off auto factory workers.

I’ve never known this city in any other way. Of course, at one time, the Fischer Bodies Factory was not a pile of rubble but a bustling machine; and at one time people were moving in, not moving out, the repetitive thump of signs going in replaced by the satisfying smuck! of signs being pulled out. There was a time when downtown Lansing’s brick roads were just the finishing touches of a beautiful capital city, and the capital building was the most beautiful building I’d ever seen, with vaulted ceilings and glass floors that looked right down to the story below. Now it’s something of a relic, and the brick streets are just another reason the auto-body shops are always packed — FORD stands for Fix Or Repair Daily here.

Almost all of the Lansing-Detroit-Ann Arbor area of Michigan is in shambles because of the auto industry’s collapse. As the factories that once provided the majority of the jobs for many cities turn to dumps of oddly shaped rocks and bits of steel cables, more and more middle-aged men are seen walking around their neighborhoods at two in the afternoon with no job to go to and nothing to do.

You might thinka place like this would be good for reflection, but it’s not. Men whose daydreams were always set to the gratings and churnings of factory machinery cannot think without the noises, cannot reflect without moving their fingers over the greasy parts of cars, so they sometimes lift old, decrepit cars up on jacks in their driveways; and as they drip oil on the pavement, they tinker with the undersides with no particular goal in mind.

Michigan, where 10 percent of the GDP used to come from manufacturing cars and parts for cars, is dying not only because of the crisis in the auto industry, but also because of the crisis in the state’s collective mindset. If it doesn’t get any better, Lansing, Mich. will become like Gary, Ind., the eyesore of a booming metropolis. What’s scary about Lansing is that no one, it seems, is fighting against this possibility, but instead treat it as an inevitability. Of course, there is the possibility that Michigan will be able to find some other industry that can sustain its population. But these men are car men, factory men, rough-around-the-edges men. What else can they do?