From Toledo to The Motor City

The drive from Stoughton through Chicago was painful. Construction was everywhere around Chicago. We finally made it through the one lane pot-holed roads and into Indiana for the long boring stretch of middle America. We arrived about 6 p.m. into a lovely campground, midway between Toledo and Detroit.
We spent the first day in Toledo at the library. The library was phenomenal. The feeling was cozy bookstore- with lots of couches, little cafes- even a gift store selling old library books. The staff at the historical section was great – getting us set up to access the city directories and old maps. After getting our research done, we stopped at a local tradition- Tony Packo’s – for lunch. We ordered a sampler platter- each- and ended up with enough food for two more meals. Guess Klinger from MASH was right- Tony Packo's chili is great! (Check out the wall of their "Famous Buns".

Detroit, the Motor City, was next. The drive was a challenge- construction had miles of the freeways down to two lanes – with lots of orange construction cones- with no one working. The construction itself wouldn’t have been a problem- but the traffic was a mix of huge trucks and insane 20 year old drivers. The driving style was uniquely Motor City- high speed, constant lane changing to get one car length ahead and tailgating. It was an exhausting drive into the city. And, the traffic was heavier with huge sections of major interstates completely closed.

We finally made it into Detroit and found our way to the library. What a contrast to the Toledo library. The library was old style, cold and un-used. The city directories, a irreplaceable resource, were in huge paper directories with pages falling out. The staff did help point out areas of the city where we should drive with “windows up and doors locked”.
Once we started our house/cemetery hunting, we discovered what they meant. The city felt like a cross between rural Guatemala and a city after the blast. There were blocks of beautiful old houses that were now in the middle of a ghetto. Roofs were caving in, stairs were crumbling, weeds were growing everywhere and trash was littered all around. Spaced in between the beautiful old homes were blocks of parking lots and empty lots where once had stood gorgeous neighborhoods. The roads were pot-holed and in a general state of disrepair. We did a lot of driving and found a number of the old family houses- taking our "drive-by" photos.

We couldn’t visit Detroit without seeing Motown Studios. We arrived for their anniversary celebration and found the yards surrounding the studios filled with bus loads of black tourists. We tried our best to “blend in”. The tour was an amazing story of Berry Gordy and his vision for Motown. He started the studio with money borrowed from his family in an old house on Grand Avenue. As the company grew, he bought 6 additional houses on the same block and set up administrative offices, studios and house for “etiquette and dance lessons”. The artist list was a list of who’s who in the music industry- Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, the Supremes, the Temptations, Michael Jackson….. When we finally got to the recording studio, the guide had the “girls’ on the tour do a rendition of “Stop in the Name of Love” and the guys followed with “My Girl”. Imagine the scene- John and 8 black tourists singing and dancing to a Temptations song. John turned to the very large black man next to him and said, “Help out the white guy, OK?”.

The other major tourist attraction was Greektown. Covering a 3 block area, it was once a true Greek- town with lots of little Greek restaurants and tavernas. It’s now become the surround to “Greektown Casino” and felt a bit “touristy”. We did have an interesting dinner – and conversation with the Cypriot owner.

Being in the heartland of the automotive industry, we made a stop in Dearborn, the home of Henry Ford and “the Henry Ford Museum”. The museum itself was a bit disappointing- a hodge podge of old cars, planes, farm equipment and appliances with very little attempt made to make a story of how it all tied together. They did have the "Rosa Parks Bus" and the "Kennedy Car" (the car driven in Dallas when he was assasinated) Photo courtesy of Flickr . The highlight of the tour was the Rouge Factory. It was home to the factory building the Ford F150’s – a combination of automation and a lot of labor specifically on the doors. The museum did a nice job of presenting the history of Ford and the auto industry. But, when it came to “the future”, they opted for a multi-media sight, sound, smell and touch theater with lots of hype, but little talk of new technologies and plans for the future of the industry. I guess that’s why our auto industry is in such dire straits while the Japanese seem to be going great guns.

We had some free time while exploring Detroit and found the Eastern Market. On the weekends, it is home to hundreds of vendors and a huge farmers market. We were there during the week and the surrounding stores and restaurants were open- selling fruits, veggies, fish, spices. We had a huge corned beef sandwich at the Russell Street Café.