Detroit, Michigan, USA – February 2018 — I was born & raised in Detroit, Michigan, USA. I was born in 1954 and lived there until 1972. I was in a real city neighborhood, living on Kelly Rd. We were [content moderated; information removed that might identify writer] from the Catholic Church, Guardian Angels, and its grade school. There was block after block of family homes, lots of Poles and Italians. There are many strands to my living in Detroit. My girlfriends loved to ride our bikes all over the place.
There was a small shopping plaza a couple blocks from where we resided. There was a Manufacturers Bank (still there) and some very distinctive stores. We had a Grinnells store that sold musical instruments, also LP vinyls. I think I found my first Rolling Stone magazine there and my first records. I was amused that there was an album from a group called the Fugs (I was a very naive Catholic girl and did not realize what the name was implying). Next door, was the Civic movies theater. This was before the big multiplexes and Detroit was dotted by small neighborhood movie houses. I remember some names–the Ramona, Adams, Eastwood, the Woods. There is probably many more I have forgotten. The deluxe movie places were downtown-the Quo Vadis, United Artists, the Fox. All the theaters had big noticeable marquees with movie titles and stars’ names in black letters on white marquees.
Going back to the shopping plaza close to where I grew up–one of their distinctive stores was Sanders Bakery. They had an old fashioned soda fountain and many baked goods. Their best cake was their bumpy cake-delicious and decadent. It was known then as chocolate devils food cake. Chocolate cake, chocolate frosting, buttercream on top of the cake in small rows. The combination of chocolate cake, buttercream, and chocolate frosting was heaven to eat. (I saw a form of it in a local grocery store these past few weeks selling under the Sanders brand identified as chocolate bumpy cake). Another store in this area was Alcamo’s which specialized in Italian food. They had salamis on hooks hanging from the ceiling and you knew this because the smell would you slap you in the face as soon as you walked in the front door. There were other stores–Winkelmans and Marianne’s for womens clothing, supermarkets like Chatham and A&P, household furniture store like Papes, drugs stores like Cunningham drug store. My mom who did not drive would walk down there with a small shopping cart and come back with all kinds of food.
While I am on the topic of special places in Detroit, there was the Detroit Zoo and Belle Isle park. The park had music on summer nights (not the rock and roll that was popular but what we called “old people’s music). Other attractions that were downtown were boats taking you places like the Boblo Boats which took families out to an island with an amusement park on it. (it was very popular in the summer). There was another large boat called the Aquanet (or Aquanetta) that took people for cruises on the Detroit river.
With all the fun, there was an undercurrent of explosive change. Many black families were segregated in the downtown neighborhoods. Those families were starting to move in outlying neighbors and I wish I could say that they were welcomed with open arms but they were not. There was a lot of racial suspicion and tension then. It exploded in the riots of 1967. My dad was a police officer who served during that time. I was only 12 or 13 at the time, so my understanding was limited. The clearest memory I had was of my dad and brother bringing the guns that were stored in the basement up to the first floor. It was like an episode of Bonanza-protecting the old homestead. Sometimes he would have gatherings at the house of police officers he knew. Their presence was both comfortable and disquieting. The officers had an air of familiarity of being hard-working men from the neighborhood. On the other hand, the n word got thrown about quite a bit and I remember a young officer saying he did not understand why blacks were not grateful to whites because we gave them “culture”.
In contrast to this, there was plenty of black culture that was celeberated-it was the time of Motown, Aretha Franklin, the Supremes, Al Green, Otis Redding and Smokey Robinson and a lot of people I just don’t have the space to write about. It was also a time of black influenced popular music-the Beatles, the Stones and on and on. A popular local show at the time was hosted by deejay Robin Seymour. I remember the music the best and I liked to end this on a positive note-the music was unforgettable.