That was the last thing Klaus had to say before we left J.C.' s diner to go our separate ways. On my way home, I decided I would drive by my grandparents' home. Every once in a while I'll do that, even though it's very painful to realize that they're gone now and that house belongs to someone else- a total stranger. When I come to the house, I park in front and just sit there, recalling that during the Prohibition Era this house was a blind pig and my grandmother was the proprietress. As a young boy, I would walk the three miles from my house just to sit on the front porch with "ma" so I could listen to her tell stories about the "old days". It's been thirty years since I've been inside that house, which was a second home to me when I was growing up. I have a feeling that if I were to go inside now, that my grandfather would still be sitting there in his favorite chair wearing nothing but his BVDs (the kind with the back flap that buttons up) reading "True Detective" or "Field and Stream." I am tempted to walk up the front steps and ring the doorbell, but I don't dare.
Not far here was a little pond and a garbage dump. In the summers of my childhood, I'd go down to the pond and catch tadpoles and pollywogs, or I'd walk over to the dump and scrounge around for hidden treasures amidst the trash. Say, what's happening to me? Maybe I'm dying. No? Then why is my whole life- beginning with my earliest memories- suddenly passing before my eyes?
It's my birthday, I'm five-years-old old and I'm sitting on a wooden pony on the fifth floor of Hudson's Department Store in downtown Detroit where I'll be getting my first professional haircut. Later that same day, my mother takes me to Sanders for a Hot Fudge Sunday. Cut to that little pond I mentioned. I've been catching pollywogs with a strainer and putting them in a jar when a big kid comes up to me and orders me to leave. I refuse and he wrestles me to the ground, demanding that I say uncle. When I refuse to say uncle, he gives me a good pounding, then takes that jar of mine and empties its contents back into the pond. I don't cry, but holding back the tears, I vow to myself that I'll get him back some day. But I never do.
So many things from my childhood have disappeared, like that pond, for instance, which is no longer there, and the garbage dump, and the creek where we fished for carp and the bridge that spanned it- all of that's been gone for years. Gone, too, are the vacant lots where we played pick up baseball in the summer, and the woods where we had bonfires in the fall, roasting marshmallows over the fire while warming ourselves. Now that I think of it, my grade school is gone- torn down years ago to make way for a Farmer Jack's. And the schoolyard where we held our marble tournaments before and after school (knuckles down, no hunching) and played kick ball and dodge ball- that schoolyard where I had so much fun- buried and paved-over into a parking lot- gone. Gone the way of the sheeny-man who came into our neighborhood riding an antique horse that clop, clop clopped down our street pulling a wagon full of junk while the sheeny blew his shrill-sounding horn to let the neighborhood know that he had arrived. Gone too, the ice man who carried big blocks of ice with silver tongs for our ice box; and gone- the man who delivered the coal that went rumbling down the coal shoot and into the coal bin, a fascinating place in its own right when you're still young enough to appreciate such things as coal bins All that's gone.
Within walking distance of my grandmother's house is the movie theater. I'm six and I'm standing in a long line with all the other kids holding a quarter in my hand: the price of admission back then. For a mere twenty-five cents you've gained entrance to that darkened theater to watch three movies, a newsreel, a serial, (Flash Gordon was my favorite.), cartoons and coming attractions. Seven years later, in that same theater, I sit down next to a strange girl and ask her if she would like to neck with me, and she consents, taking my hand in hers and leaning her head on my shoulder. (Necking wasn't really allowed, and if you weren't careful, a very official-looking usherette, who wore a uniform with gold buttons down the front and epaulettes on the shoulders, would shine her flashlight on you.) The last time I drove by the Lincoln Park Show it was advertising itself on the marquee as Adult Entertainment.
The Depression having ended by the time I was born, my earliest memories begin around the time of World War II. My mother is sitting down at the kitchen table placing little green stamps in her ration book. Once the book is full, she'll go to a redemption center and have the stamps redeemed for money to buy food with. That was the year we planted a victory garden in the vacant lot next to our house. In a similar vein, the kids on our my block had paper drives and collected scrap metal. It was all part of the war effort, for as young boys we were learning how to be patriotic and to love the flag and "the country for which it stands"- America. As a matter of fact, my very first lesson in patriotism came in the form of a warning from the big kids on my block never to let the American flag touch the ground or I'd have to burn it- just one of a number of taboos I learned as a child similar to, but nowhere near as fearful as, "step on a crack and break you mother's back'.
Where are they now?- my comic book collection and those hundreds and hundreds of matchbooks that I picked out of gutters and found in empty fields on the way home from school. And why? Because, as a kid of nine, I found the endless variety of match covers fascinating. What happened to my Lionel train- the one I woke up to find underneath the Christmas tree, my Red Ryder be-be gun and my American Flyer bike?- where are they now?
At that age, my indoor world was a world of tinker toys, erector sets, and games- all kinds of games: hockey, basketball, football and my favorite, APBA baseball,- and the radio. Every Sunday, after church, my dad would buy a paper from the paperboy, and when we got home, I would do is spread out the comic section on the living room floor, then turn on the radio and listen to the Sunday comics being read over the air. During the week, when I get home from school, the first thing I do is turn on the radio and listen to my favorite programs: Jack Armstrong, All-American boy, Captain Midnight, (I wear my Captain Midnight decoder ring that glows in the dark), Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, and broadcast from WXYZ, our very own Lone Ranger. Hi-o Silver, away. In the evening was Baby Snooks, The Great Gildersleeve, Inner Sanctum, Lights Out, My Friend Irma, Bulldog Drummond, The Shadow, Mr. Keane, Tracer of Lost Persons, Name that Tune, Mr. I.Q., Life with Luigi, and another local favorite, The Green Hornet.
My outdoor world was the streets, the vacant lots, the fields and the alleys of my neighborhood. In the street we played hockey in the winter and touch football in the fall; in fields and vacant lots we played pick up baseball and built our underground fort where we slept out on hot summer nights playing Hearts and Crazy Eights by candlelight, or we climbed up the rope ladder to our tree house where, with our binoculars, we could spy on all our neighbors. Alleys were for alley-picking and for war games played with cap pistols, be-be guns, and sling shots. We made walkie-talkies out of old tin cans and string, kites using clothes line, parachutes, and model airplanes. In the vacant lot next to my house we played cork ball- if you ask me, the greatest game ever invented. You could play cork ball using a large bobber or an ordinary bottle cork for a ball and a broomstick handle for a bat. A ball that landed in the alley was a triple, on the other side of the alley, a home run..
Item: our alleys were paved with cinders back then. The White Street gang lines up on one side, the Garfield Street gang on the other. There's going to be a rock fight. Before you know what's happening, the sky is filled with rocks. You throw, you duck, you throw another rock and then you duck and then something happens- your face is burning and throbbing. You've been hit. My god, you could have lost your eye. You could cry, but you don't. You are a casualty in a rock fight and you will carry a scar beneath your eye for the rest of your life, and you didn't cry- you are a hero. That night, after your father comes home from work, you get your first good licking. In bed that night, you pull the covers over your head and listen to your favorite radio programs before you fall asleep.
I'm back in the real world again, saddened by the sight of my grandmother's house. Whoever lives there now has let in fall into disrepair. No, I wouldn't want to go inside; it would depress me to see how everything would be different. No, I'll go now. I turn on the engine and head for home. I wonder as I drive past the familiar landmarks of my youth how time has changed so much, transforming Main Street into block after block of blighted buildings. Where there was once an ice cream parlor, a barbershop, and a shoe repair, there are now ugly abandoned or boarded-up buildings. Our two dime stores: Niesner's and Woolworth's, and Winkleman's, a classy women's clothing store, are now a dumpy-looking Dollar Store, a Temporary Jobs Office, and windowless Community Mental Health Center. Cunningham's, with its lunch counter where you could sit and have a chicken salad sandwich and a cup of coffee while you waited for your bus, is gone, and Sanders closed its doors ten years ago.
Last week I went with J.C. on a delivery run down near the docks in River Rouge and saw the Columbia, one of the two Bob-Lo boats, in dry dock. It's being restored. All the same, there will be no more picnics on the island because Bob-Lo Island, with its roller coaster, its dance hall and its many amusement rides, was sold to private developers and everything was torn down. At one time we had four such amusement parks; now there are none. Gone are the penny arcades of my youth, the slots where for a penny you could get sepia-colored pictures of ballplayers and boxers, movie stars, wrestlers and cowboys. All that's gone. But most tragic was the demolition of Hudson's, as thousands lined-up to watch the spectacle of this great landmark implode into a huge pile of rubble.
When I think of all that's been lost, I am saddened. One magnificent railway station demolished, the other, Michigan Central, an empty hulk. Now that all of its windows have been busted out, it's nothing more than a vacant shell of a building. And those lavish movie palaces of a bygone era, almost all them gone- closed or destroyed. The great burlesque houses, like the famous Gayety and The Esquire- they, too, have vanished, as have those magnificent ballrooms, the Grande and the Vanity; those proud hotels, the Sheraton Cadillac and the Fort Shelby; and finally, the Vernors' plant- the first one, the one located at the foot of Woodward Avenue where you caught the Bob-Lo boat way back when. I believe it's been more than fifty years since they tore it down. A local product, Vernor's has the distinction of being the first soda pop in America. Today, it is owned by one of America's largest conglomerates: the Pepsi Cola Company.
I remember the day the carnival came to town and seeing the boy with webbed feet, the bearded lady and the man who had a baby growing out of his stomach. Until the day I die, I'll never forget that man with the baby. Of all the freak shows I've seen, that's the one I'll never forget. How on earth, this six-year-old wondered (as he stood inside that stuffy tent with the smell of sawdust in his nostrils, holding on to his daddy's hand) could a man have a baby growing out of his stomach? How did it happen? That was in the city of Ecorse some fifty years ago on the fourth of July. I remember it well, especially watching the fireworks from atop the Ferris wheel, a burst of sound- boom- then splashes of color lighting up the sky, appearing in an instant, lingering for a moment, then fading away into the dark
A light goes on inside the house. I turn on my engine and drive off, but before going directly home, I take the overpass that connects suburbia with Detroit. Reaching the highest point of the overpass, I look out at the cityscape, all aglow and spread out like a magic carpet of light. Directly below- the refinery, with its eternal flame; then farther out, the Ambassador Bridge with its colorful beads of light, strung along the bridge from one side- the American side- to the other- the Canadian side; and then, at the farthest point of vision, the mills and factories bordering the river, their myriad lights; candles glowing in the dark, their smoke stacks; vertical canons, sending up ghostly wisps of smoke into the night sky -light to ward-off the coming darkness of a fascistic America ruled by powerful and impersonal corporations in league with a government indifferent to the dreams and aspirations of its people, the working people of America. We cannot let this happen; this relentless juggernaut has to be stopped. If we don't stop it and stop it soon, before it is too late (if it's not already too late), the lights will go out all across America and darkness will cover the land.
