DETROIT - Saturday Night
Just blocks away to the southwest Lakeshore drive becomes East Jefferson Boulevard along the Detroit River. It is blight at it’s brightest as the headlights sparkle, not on the water, but upon the gridlock of literally miles of African American cruisers in their shiny new icons of newly found middle-class consumption. We pass the new chrysler plant where "Jeep, ‘The Only One’" is assembled using robots to release workers from the drudgery of repitition so they can roam the dark streets and empty fields that now dot most of the East side of Detroit.
Every few blocks the cars pull over for an impromptu party. I turn off the radio and roll down the windows. It’s 73 degrees and the sound is that of one great boombox. We watch the police move in and disperse the players only to watch them pull over once again at the next liquor store parking lot - something that appears in abundance in this neck of the woods.
The people are relaxed - casual for the most part - all ages, from early teen to generations above. Each vehicle is full - ready for the unexpected catch perhaps. One car stops at the curb. Out steps diversity: Black. White. Latin. Several Sport-uts and pick-em-ups simply double-park to join in the jam. This is a life where people still pay more for their car payments than their house payments. This is Motown on a late Spring Saturday Night.
We turn down a side street when the traffic stops dead near downtown. We circle and zig and zag around through Greek Town which is packed with another class of diversity in from the white suburbs for an evening of frolic. It’s all very festive. We continue past a magnificant old city hall of something.. set apart by dark abandoned brick buildings once the glamor and excitement of the ‘Big D’. Overhead is the new two car people mover which joins the high-rise hotels of Renascence Center with the Convention Center - all on the waterfront. The view from the 27th floor was spactacular looking out across the city and up and down the river during the winter of ’92 when I stayed there during the launch of ‘The New Jeep". We count one person riding the train - just one. Makes you wonder doesn’t it? It’s certainly not as exciting or entertaining as the gridlock below on Jefferson Avenue.
We find our way back onto Jeffferson ahead of the crowd now, driving under Cobo Hall and southward towards the Ambassador Bridge which joins Michigan and Canada.. We jiggle around dark, narrow pot-holed streets past the Produce Mart. Across the way is Windsor, Ontario The city is old and small compared to this side, but with bright neon illuminating the recently built casinos. Up-river on the American side we see downtown as it looks on the post cards: Bright, peaceful - even evoking hope and anticipation in a city whose infra-structure is so decayed that salvation must come from starting over anew.
After our moment of tranuility we find our way up Woodward Avenue past the boarded-up J.L. Hudson Company, once the department store to gentry and travelers alike where I rode the twelve floors of excelators as a kid - up the down and down the up. I remember the special treat lunches at Clifton’s Carfeteria whose mirrored walls reflected my attempts to sample every item on display..
The glamorous Fox Theater on our left is alive and well where "Grease" is playing. We are distracted by a huge two-story block-long night club withlive music and bodies leaning over the walls of the open patio. They are all caucasion.
Next, it’s Popeye’s for chicken. Yes, they have red beans and geens. It’s our midnight snack before we make our way to our distination: The Detroit Eagle.
That was Starday night. Now it’s Sunday afternoon after our champaign brunch. Good stuff. Good conversation with our fine host who takes off to spend the day with his lover. We end up resting a good porting of the day. We had kept a tight schedule since even before leaving home two weeks ago. In the last afternoon we packed up and headed out to the country again. Our plan is to camp out and visit moms again in the morning. We find a State Campground this time - and fall asleep early out in an open area because of the fear of more storms coming in which may fall trees. But the night ws quiet - private. In the morning on our walk to the showers we discovered the damage from two nights before - during that noisy storm we heard in Detroit, the wind had broken a whole bunch of trees down and splitting ohers off at the top. Amazing, really.
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After enjoying the woods and soaking up the sun for awhile, we drive the twenty minutes over to the village of Ortonville. Mom and I sat at the dining table and identified family photograhs dating back five generations to tin-types (metal plates) taken before 1850. Mom said, "We’ve had a good visit this time." I felt so too. I went outside to take some pictures and she and rodtney had a nice visit also.
 Great, Great, Great Grandfather Maternal - Born in England BISHOP |
Great, Great, Great Grandmother Maternal - Born in England BENSON |
Now we were really underway back towards California. This begins another phase of our trip. The first phase is always getting ready. Then the trip across to Chicago. Then Southern Michigan - my homeland. Now we were exchanging our focus on people to a focus on Nature. No more family or extended family all the way across the country - except for Minneapolis. We had decided to drive north and across to Yelowstone on back roads mosty. Our destination today was the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes across the state on Lake Michigan once again. We headed north through flint and Saginaw and then northwest through Cadillac - rural, mostly flat and covered with maple and birch forrest with clearings for farming. In the state of Michigan you are never more than six miles from a body of water (which is why it’s called Winter - Water - Wonderland. And in Michigan if it moves, they race it - from cars to belt sanders. People like to go !
We reach the dunes in time to watch the sunset. Summer sunsets above the 45th parallel are long and broad. We eased our way around lakes and Grand Travers Bay. Our second state park was right in town by the water.
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Woke up early on Tuesday morning. Decided to do McDonalds for a change. It was going to be a very senic day - all the way up the Lake Michigan shoreline to Macinac City and across the world’s longest suspension bridge. When we get there it’s very cloudy and raining mist. So we stop and shop and have fresh fish and chips and some souvenir shopping.
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In Michigan, if you don’tlike the weather, you wait five minutes - it’ll change - and it did. By the time we finished buying some of the famous smoked lake trout to eat later on, the skies were clear.
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