Report from the Rust Belt
I’m back in a very wet, slightly balmy Berkeley after spending the week of Christmas with my brother’s family in a seasonally cold, appropriately snow-dusted Detroit. If neighbors and business associates had bestowed any more plates of candies, cookies, pies or racks of choice meat cuts on us, none would have risen later from the Barca-lounger. We ate at home, saw a few movies, ate out, and I got to watch an MTV concert (featuring Linkin Park, a kind of white rock/hip-hop fusion band) live from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland before falling asleep in the family room. With only one, peripheral street light on Mack Ave, after I hit Power on the remote and the vivid colors resolved to blankness: through the picture windows, with snow lightly falling, the many suburban yards reverted to a former narrow strip farm, extending miles inland from Lake St. Clair. Many homeowners of my brother’s block had flown south for the holiday, relegating Belle Isle to the many deer and Grosse Pointe to the Canada geese and ubiquitous black squirrels.
Would that anyone—human, corporate entity or animal—cared much for Detroit. On the day brother David gave us the downtown tour, that city reminded me much as Cleveland had in the 1970s, with extensive, inner-city vacant lots, where landlords had burned their assets to realize insurance payouts. It made it easy to appreciate what fine architecture remains, of course—several of the movie palaces have been saved, as have some fine, early 20th century deco skyscrapers. The Detroit People Mover, which cousin Tim described as a horizontal elevator, completed its irregular circuit in less than record time—we were stranded without power for twenty minutes over the excavation site for a massive new building of a company daring enough to reinvest in the downtown—but what other city’s elevated train stops on both sides of one block’s street (at both the Millender & Ren centers) or passes through the convention center (Cobo Hall), just then mounting the Car Show?
When the World Cup soccer match was held some years ago in an arena in Pontiac, several German students, ignorant of the city planning of an American Midwest city, managed to arrive at the intersection of Henry Ford's Ditch (the first US freeway, which connected his estate in Dearborn with that in Grosse Pointe via his first plant) and the principal northwest radial, Woodward Avenue. Once there, they attempted to walk (or hitchhike) out to Pontiac. Multilaned Woodward, a section of which according to David was Ford's first proving ground, connected Detroit with outlying towns, soon to be populated through the white-flight phenonmenon. Prosperous Royal Oak and Birmingham are almost recognizable munincipalities today. Otherwise, the lengthy strip san sidewalks links the stadiums downtown with the Detroit Institute of Art and Wayne State U, with many seedy stretches, the state fairgrounds, innumerable strip plazas, etc. Several muggings later the student tourists managed to arrive in Pontiac.
Other than once passing through to Ann Arbor, the last time I visited Grosse Pointe was to help my brother move from an apartment to his first home, some 30 years earlier. When, after not having had regular contact with family, important friends and their locales you do make contact, the passage of time is striking: almost as if Father Time with his scythe sat down at table with you. While the cost of living is steep, we enact the rituals that bestow significance to the accumulating wrinkles, dust on the bookshelves accruing like fallen snow, and the empty lots reverting to outdoor animals. It’s probably best to visit more often.
For the second leg of my return flight this unemployed citizen was upgraded to the comfort of Business Class, where I got to see Disney’s
The Princess Diaries, with Julie Andrews as queen of some tiny Pyrenees’ kingdom who prefers to hang out at her country’s embassy in San Francisco. Yes, it’s good to come home, too.
posted by Paul at 9:32 PM
