Posted on 04/08/2002 6:30:18 PM PDT by gohabsgo
Sanders
And, you (ex?)Detroiter's, I don't want to diminish your fond memories of your birthplace ... but, having grown up just down the road I feel compelled to share my own perspective.
I grew up in Toledo, and we felt in many ways like a Detroit suburb ... my Dad named me after two Detroit Tigers, we rooted for the Lions, I had cousins in Detroit, etc.
But I have always felt that Detroit (for whatever reasons) was always one of America's meaner cities. One of my earliest memories was of a Saturday in July, 1949. I was a member of a kid baseball team and we had a coach whose best quality was his ability to line up "road games" for us. We were only 12-13 years old so we got a tremendous kick out of "traveling" all over northwest Ohio and S.E. Michigan. We had a full agenda planned for that day's trip. A bus was chartered and we boarded it fairly early morning, planning to play our scheduled game about mid-morning and then proceed over to Briggs Stadium to watch our beloved Tigers that afternoon.
As we rolled into town that morning our young jaws dropped open and we began to buzz about the stores we were passing, all covered over with movable iron grating. We "small city" boys had never seen anything like it. But we soon forgot it and proceeded to Belle Isle to play our game and then onto the highlight of our day ... a real big league ballgame.
We had gotten our butts kicked real good in the morning (the coach had inadvertently scheduled a game with a top-flight American Legion team (average age 16-17) and then, to add to our misery, our Tigers got beat almost as bad as we did.
Then came the real crusher. We got back to the bus only to discover that it had been broken into and all our equipment stolen.
The riots were scary for us, too. Sporadic looting broke out (the participants rumored to be folks who had motored down from the north). But, because the rioters were few and the reaction from local police was swift, it didn't amount to much.
But golly, you're right, Coleman showed us all what a REAL mean city can be like. About thirty years later I made another trip to Detroit, this time to buy a used computer room air conditioning system. I made arrangements with the broker to meet his salesman on a downtown/eastside corner at a gas station, from there to proceed to a warehouse. Once more, my entrance into town was accompanied by a gaping jaw and bugged eyes as I passed through block after block of boarded-up, crumbling buildings separated only by the occasional liquor store with its' cadre of men surrounding the doors with their bag-covered bottles (at 9:30 A.M.).
When I got to the appointed corner I discovered that the gas station was just a pile of Coleman's "urban renewal?" rubble. So, I sat there for about fifteen minutes cursing the salesman under my breath. This being before the advent of cell phones, I finally screwed up my courage and parted my way through the bunch of Coleman voters surrounding the door to the block's liquor store. I went in and, believe it or not, found myself in the first store interior entirely separating customer from clerk by bullet proof glass that I had ever seen. I asked the man on the other side of the glass if there was a phone. He said "yes, but it's in here!". Where can I call from?, I said. "Well, there was on that pole outside but our rambunctious customers tore it off a while back ... you shouldn't be in this neighborhood, anyhow, he said, go down that way about six blocks, turn left and go six more and you'll find a payphone.
"Thanks", I said, and I scooted. I called the salesman, got the address of the warehouse, and met him there. He was waiting outside a sealed up warehouse, and as I walked up he rang a large industrial strength bell. A few moments later a man peeked out through a peephole and then opened the door .... drawn gun in his hand.
That was not the last piece of equipment I bought from that broker ... but is was my last "inspection trip" to the motor city.
"Remember when you were kid, well part of you still is. And that's why we drink Faygo!"
I don't know who/what this is.
How about White Castle hamburgers? Got those on Grand River somewhere......
No...no fraud there.
The unemployment rates that are considered normal today are almost double what used to be considered normal in pre-1965 America. It really used to be that a young man with nothing but a high school diploma could actually get a job that would support a family. The statistics actually show that people in a wide range of job categories were better compensated back then. The minimum wage today is lower after adjusting for inflatin than it was in 1965. Larger numbers of Americans every year now can't afford medical insurance. The government last year uni-laterally and without public debate cut by 5% the payments to doctors for all medical procedures through medicaire. Our president's recent commission says that in 2016 we're going to have to cut social security payments to low income elderly and yet nobody is trying to make changes to avoid this. In many ways our country is in serious decline.
This decline is to a large extent self-imposed. We have many regulations now that mean destruction of good industries. Many of the regulations make no sense and give no benefit to the environment, there are many examples of this. We know that the runaway government growth is bad for our nation's economic health and yet even under a Republican administration we still keep doing it and there is no real debate to try to turn things around.
LOL. No doubt. These posts are a nostalgia trip. I went to 1 Red Wings game(Olympia)it seemed everyone was drunk. There was a guy swinging a Curious George stuffed monkey from the upper tier and some other idiot grabbed it and tore it to pieces. Next thing I remember is fights everywhere. Same with opening day at Tiger Stadium...always an interesting experience(breast's and brawl's).
Don't forget Bob Allison's(?)"ask your neighbor"(thought he'd be in a home by now, but still broadcasting), Jerry Booth's "Fun House"(Was this a local show?), Top Hat's, Layfette(sp?) Coney Island, A&W mama\pappa burgers, Little Caesar's pizza(the original, not the newer frozen pizza type), Dino's Pizza(Warren), Eastland shopping mall(before being enclosed), Twin Pines milk.
As far as Coleman Young...his legacy is as corrupt as BillyC's....can you say Krugerands?
“Devil’s Night: And other True Tales of Detroit” by Ze’Ev Chafets
Here’s what Publisher’s Weekly had to say in its review:
Written by a native son of ``Murder Capital, U.S.A.,'' who, like the majority of white Detroiters, high-tailed it out of town after the 1967 race riot (in Chafets's case, to Israel), this tour of ``the first major Third World city'' in America is an enormously unsettling read and a tragically accurate picture of a dying metropolis. Through personal observation and interviews with local citizens and officials, Chafets ( Members of the Tribe ) captures the social and emotional hopelessness that has taken hold in the Motor City, best evidenced by ``Devil's Night''--an unofficial, regional holiday (on the night before Halloween) that has evolved from an evening of childish pranks (i.e. soaping windows) into a psychotic festival of burning down houses. Equally unnerving is the author's penchant for sweeping generalizations (``the redneck suburbs'') and his tendancy to shy away from tougher issues such as the root causes of the city's problems. Granted an extremely rare interview with Detroit's controversial mayor, Coleman Young, Chafets fails to ask hard-hitting questions, leaving this work fairly sensationalistic.
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