What style of music best describes Detroit? WDET is having a summer-time fun program, asking listeners to call in and say what genre best characterizes the city. I’m driving along I-96 in my Subaru Outback, listening to the lively responses. The answers vary, and provoke passionate arguments: soul (Aretha), rock (Bob Seger, Iggy Pop, Kid Rock), jazz (Ed Love taught us everything about jazz), rap (Eminem), and of course Motown. It must be Motown, several callers insist. We always listened to it in the machine shop. That’s too old, others protest. We love it, its classic, but electronic/techno is what’s big now. Didn’t 40,000 people attend the Hart plaza festival in May?
Stopping at a light on Grand Boulevard, I watch a slim older black man as he crosses the street. His bright Hawaiian shirt and plaid bermuda shorts make me smile. He flashes a peace sign and I flash one back. “Yeah, sister,” he says. I pass the two houses of the Motown Museum and a similar building all burned out, with weedy trees growing up through the front porch. There are very few cars on the street. I arrive at the Fisher Building before the call-in show is over, but I imagine there’s no consensus on one style of music. The last caller I heard suggested The Blues.
I’m early for my appointment, so I walk over to the bank (formerly NBD, then BankOne, now Chase) across the street. In the lobby of the old General Motors Building, a beautifully preserved dark green 1915 Cadillac Touring car is on display. I look at it closely, interested because I have a photo of my grandfather Henshaw driving a similar car, probably not a Cadillac. Judging from the age of my father sitting on the running board, it could be around 1915. Both are handsome vehicles, no doubt. I wonder what speed they could attain on the freeway. My father always said that his father owned the third automobile in Charlottesville.
In the Medical Tower of the Fisher Building, the long shiny bleak corridor leading to my dentist’s office makes me think of Guy Noir, Garrison Keillor’s fictional private eye with his office on the twelth floor of the Acme Building. If someone ever wants to make the movie, this is the location. There are big white globe lights reflected in polished travertine walls and a black and white diamond-patterned marble floor. Even though brightly lit, it’s somehow lugubrious. The heavy wooden doors have frosted glass windows with the doctor’s names lettered in gold capitals, outlined in black. Who does that kind of work anymore?
The dentist is an automobile afficianado, so he likes to talk cars. His dad worked for American Motors; mine sold Buicks. He is surely the only other person alive who remembers that I owned a 1950 Buick Woody station wagon and a ‘53 Roadmaster convertible, with power roof and windows, the coolest car by far that was ever mine. I mention the 1915 Cadillac. He dismisses it, much preferring cars of the ‘20s, when the style moved away from the carriage looks and spoked wheels. The dentist collects vintage Mercedes and drives a BMW. He also remembers that I bought a VW bug in 1965, much to my father’s chagrin.
Released from his ergonomically designed chair, I note the goldfish designs on the brass elevator doors, and take a little time to wander around the huge, three-storey barrel-vaulted lobby. It’s a 1920s cathedral to the auto industry (Body by Fisher) with its brightly painted turquoise, red, and orange Art Deco murals, enormous tiered glass chandeliers, mosaics, and multi-colored marble floors. I look in the quiet Detroit Contemporary Crafts shop, filled with tasteful objets suitable for gifts, then the busy City Knits yarn store, run by friendly black ladies. They always seem to be patiently soothing some customer who’s made a mistake a few rows back in the midst of a difficult pattern. The Pure Detroit shop, with its 313 tee-shirts, Sanders fudge toppings, Faygo pop, and Pewabic pottery, is curiously empty: no customers, no salesperson, but “Baby, I Need Your Loving” is playing softly. Maybe someone is working in a back office. I prefer the tougher Made in Detroit line of merchandise anyhow. I slip out.
Back to the country. All along Six Mile Road rows and rows of bright orange daylilies are blooming. If they weren't so beautiful, we'd be ripping them out as the alien invasives that they are. I come to our field, I am happy to see an old-fashioned rural sight: Mr. Briggs, wearing a big straw hat, is driving his blue Ford tractor and his teenage grandson is standing on the wagon. They’re baling the first cutting of hay.
