The Vermettes of River Rouge
(Magpie and Dee at Potemkin Village. They have eight children between them, and happy Mother’s Day! Photo Socotra.)
It is Mother’s Day, and I got up earlier than the northern Michigan dawn to get m crap out of the way before dealing with that of the folks. I have to do the brunch at the Country Club with Raven and magpie. Yesterday, I was lucky. I had help with the logistics of getting them out of the Village and into the bracing northern air.
Dee came up, and helped keep things organized. She is a wonderful woman, but exactly how wonderful I didn’t know.
I was reading the account of the discovery of Air France Flight 447 with a certain morbid fascination in the New York Times magazine this morning. If you travel a lot, or even a little, there is something about the random zap the universe can throw you, killing without warning, only providing a moment of stark terror before slamming you into eternity.
That is why Dee’s story- well one of them- resonated so strongly this morning. See, she is one of the Greatest Generation, though a little young for it. She and her older sister heard the news about VJ Day and took a bus from River Rouge to downtown Detroit and spent the day hanging out in the lobby of the Book-Cadillac Hotel, watching the madness and joy of the victory celebration.
(The Side Door Saloon. Raven’s men’s group used to lunch there every week, and I hoped it would stimulate him. It didn’t, as best I could tell.)
She lost a brother to the war, or at least to cruel fate, and that was just one of the wonders I re-discovered it at the table of the Side Door Saloon on the north side of town when we took Raven and Magpie to lunch.
The outing was a full-on production number. They had not been out in a while, and Dee made the long journey up from Torch Lake to see them. She is a bit younger, still full of vim and vigor. Her husband Bob was a force of nature of a man, so it was not unusual to see him as the focus of the clan, but let me tell you I was floored with Dee’s story.
With the folks the way they are, we carried the conversion. Magpie can chat away with us, but the conversation is disjointed and can veer off in unknown directions. Not so with Dee. She is focused.
(Sign from Cliff Bell’s hotspot. Photo Bell’s.)
It was good to have another grown-up to talk to, someone present both in this moment and others. She had e-mailed me about going to Cliff Bell’s hot nightclub on Park Street, just off Grand Circus Park in Detroit. It was one of the happening places in Old Detroit, and is one of those places in the problematic re-invention of the Motor City.
I walked by there the other day, marveling at what might or might not be happening amid the ruins of the city, and I did the research to put the place in context.
“Cliff Bell was a bootlegger, before he was a celebrity showman,” I said. “He ran a wet spot as an annex to the Detroit Athletic Club, which was officially dry, but the members would slip over to Cliff’s annex to get soused.”
“Oh my, yes. He had to close that place and open something lower key when the DAC got too high profile. All the important people- car guys and Judges- belonged. A lot of people were in the business.”
“I heard it was like one-in-four people in Detroit were in the booze business.”
“That seems reasonable. Daddy was.”
I was trying to get a spoon of chili into Raven’s mouth and I turned in amazement.
“What?”
“Oh, yes. Daddy went to Leavenworth for a year-and-a day for it. He was convicted of trying to bribe the FBI.”
“Holy smokes,” I said. “Tell me about it.”
“I should write a book,” said Dee. “Can I cut your burger in half and give some to your husband,” she said to Magpie. Mom nodded, and she deftly cut the world-famous oliveburger and we navigated the slice over to Raven, who held it on a napkin, puzzling over what to do with it.
“Daddy’s name was Ernie- Earnest Vermette. He was a bootlegger and an autoworker and a ship-builder, and after he retired he was a bank-guard with a uniform and a gun. He used to joke that his stretch in Leavenworth was so long ago that no one thought to check on whether he was a convicted felon.”
“Vermette sounds French,” I said. Did they immigrate to Detroit?”
“No, the Vermettes came from Frenchtown. I am not sure where it was, exactly, but around Monroe someplace. He moved to River Rouge with his brother and cousins. Uncle Frank never worked an honest day in his life.”
“Wait a minute. Your Dad was descended from the original French population of Michigan? I had no idea they were still around.”
“Oh, sure. My grandparents didn’t speak English, only French around the house. That is why Daddy had a tough time when they moved- he didn’t know English.”
“This is incredible,” I said, watching the equally incredible sight of Raven attempting to apply a spoon to the burger in the napkin in his hands.
“There were ten children in the family. Ernie married Mom when they were still teenagers and had a baby every two years. There were six brothers and the four of us girls.”
“What were their names? I said. “I need a pen!”
Dee smiled placidly. “Arnold, Dale, Eugene, Bob and Ray. Bob and Ray were in the War. Bob was in Europe with the Air Corp and Ray was in the Navy in the Southwest Pacific. Little Jerry died when he was two, and I never met him. The girls were Virginia, Barbara and Ivadelle. She was a pistol. Uncle Joe used to dress her up and put makeup on her to ride along on the booze runs to Chicago. She was only twelve, but she could pass for older, and seeing a couple in the car made the police less suspect.”
“Good God, that is amazing.”
“Ivadelle always said Uncle Joe paid really well. Momma had four boys in a row, and my older sister threatened to get rid of the baby if I had turned out to be a boy. She wouldn’t believe I as a girl until they looked under my diaper. We were very close. She was 17 years older than me, and always took good care of me.”
“That is like Raven’s brother Jim,” I said, patting him on the knee. “He was sort of the deputy Dad for him after grandpa passed away.”
“After they arrested Daddy they asked him what he did for a living. He said he was a speedboat pilot. They put him on a train handcuffed to an FBI agent. Ernie was a skinny guy, and when the G-man fell asleep he just slipped the cuff off and stayed put. He could have run and jumped off the train, but he was determined to do his time and get back to the family. He was a good man and a great father. The boys were so afraid of him they never did anything wrong.”
“How did the family survive with their breadwinner in the slammer?”
“Oh, The boys in the network took care of us. There would be a knock on the door at two or three in the morning, and a guy would be there with his collar up and hat pulled down over his eyes and a big wad of cash would appear. We had more money when Daddy was in jail than when he was working.”
“You need to write a book,” I said in wonder.
(Leavenworth Prison dormitory a little before Ernie’s time, but still hard.)
“Oh, there a lot of stories he would tell about his time in jail. They had cockroach races, and attached cigarettes to them with twine to send them to other cells. When Daddy got to jail, everyone knew him, and there was a shout of “Hey, Ernie” from the kitchen when they saw him in the line.”
“It is hard to imagine,” I said. “I mean, that normal people got sent to jail for selling liquor.”
“We had a false floor in the garage- the neighborhood had alleys, and Mom and Dad could not travel while they were holding liquor down there. We were hijacked one time.”
“That would have been the Purple Gang,” I said. “they never smuggled their own booze. They just robbed bootleggers who brought it across the river. I can’t believe your family was ripped off by the Purples.”
Anna the waitress came by with a plate for Raven to put the partial burger on. It was a mess of bun and patty and sodden napkin. She asked if any of us wanted dessert, and we shook our heads. “Daddy never liked cherry pie,” Dee said thoughtfully.
“Why was that?”
“Well- he always called his year in Leavenworth as being in College. When he was in line at the mess hall one day, a buddy in the kitchen slipped him a whole cherry pie, and Daddy slipped it up under his shirt. One of the Guards noticed something unusual and tapped him on the stomach with his night-stick and it clanked on the tin.
“Ouch,” I said.
“The guard made him eat the whole thing right there in front of him. Daddy never liked cherry pie after that.”
“Perfectly understandable,” I said, waving to Anna for the check. “That is all sort of hard to digest. The whole story. You need to write this down.”
“I will get around to it. Maybe when I get back from Sweden.”
“It is incredible, Dee. Simply incredible. What a window into Detroit’s history.”
“Oh, there is more,” said Dee. “We lost Bob during the war, just a month before his 21st birthday.”
“Was he killed in action?” I asked.
“Well, it is sort of strange story,” she said, “but it looks like your father is getting a little antsy. I can tell you later in the car.”
“Sounds great,” I said, and started the process of getting Raven ready to get out of his chair and into his coat and hat. Like I say, it was a whole production number. Not like moving liquor across the Detroit River, but about as much as I could handle.
(Rum Runner similar to Ernie Vermette’s. Dee says he used to say the Detroit River is paved with cases of liquor.)
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Flowers & Peanut Brittle & Raven & Magpie
There was a nice Easter wooden thing at the door to the apartment in Potemkin Village Assisted Living when I arrived, and after knocking on the door, I saw the Mother’s Day flowers from the kids looked great. Magpie was delighted to see me: “We were so worried,” she exclaimed brightly. There was a flicker of interest in Raven’s rheumy eyes, and I saw, in addition to a two week growth of beard, that he is continuing to lose weight.
He is a tall man, still, and now probably weighs less than he did when the world was young and he was going into the Navy. “Lunch is in twenty minutes,” I said, “and why don’t we get Dad shaved so he looks fresh.”
It took a few minutes to find the electric razor and get him off the couch where he was curled up, legs crossed. I chatted with Magpie as I worked, telling her about the big excitement in the killing of Osama bin Laden, though it did not register. The War on Terror is gone, I guess, and that is fine. Maybe we all ought to get over it.
“The flowers look great, Mom. I see Anook sent candy with hers.”
“Oh, yes,” said Magpie. “Very good of her.” It was a plasticine bag of gourmet peanut brittle, more on that anon, and I told her that an old pal was coming up the next morning to go out to lunch with us. She did not recall who that was exactly, but she is still bright and happy and we sang some show-tunes as we went down to lunch.
Raven toyed with his food, and Carla the waitress took the initiative to spear some bites into his mouth. “I can’t stand to see them not eating,” she said, and smiled. “The food is decent. I eat one meal a day here in the winter and I am filling out, if you know what i mean.” She did a little pirouette with her coffee pot.
Raven was by turns vaguely interested and not. I tried to keep up the light banter with Magpie. She leaned forward, choked on her tuna-fish saad and confided something.
“We have to make up stories about the people here,” she said. “Don’t look now, but that attractive women by the window, sitting with those people? She says they are not her family. I think she looks good for eighty. Do you think she is eighty?”
I tried not to turn around and look, at least for a decent interval, and when I did I saw a woman who could have been eighty, and who obviously had been a great beauty in her day, though her blue eyes had an arrested fixed sort of look. Well, she would, I thought. This is the dining room for the Villagers like Raven who have issues. I shuffled through the stack of mail at the table to have something to do. Of the hundreds of letters there were precisely four that required action, and secure destruction of the dozens of pre-approved applications for new credit.
Neither of them liked the desert, which was a fruit cobbler of some sort, and eventually we found ourselves back in the unit, which was stiflingly hot. I turned on the television- the remote has disappeared again- and Raven nodded off. Magpie glanced at the paper and shuffled some of the mail with me.
“I am going to go take care of a couple things,” I said, after taking a large garbage bag of junk mail down to the trash room. “I will be back for happy hour and take you down to dinner.” Magpie nodded. “Remember, we are going to go to lunch tomorrow, off campus, and then we are going to the Club for Mother’s Day lunch on Sunday.”
“Magpie nodded happily. “Remember to tell them at the desk we won’t be here,” she said, and scooping up the small stack of action mail, headed out the door to safety.
I came back at four to see them watching an episode of “Bonanza” and eating the peanut brittle. I got Magpie a glass of wine and Raven was enjoying the candy and a glass of mil with ice. They really liked the peanut brittle. “I canceled dinner,” said Magpie. “Where shall we go?”
Sigh. In the two hours I was doing the bills, Mom forgot that lunch was out tomorrow, not dinner last night. Sigh.
“Mom, it is lunch tomorrow we are going out to. Remember?” She looked at me with bright eyes and said: “No.”
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Lafayette, We Are Here
I wound up pestering some pals for a chain recipe scam that I got from a good pal, who knows about the “Cloak and Dagger Cook-Book,” and I shotgunned it out without thinking.
I was agitated about that cop and his speed gun down in Ogemaw County, and the $100 ticket that is sitting in the pile next to the computer here in the Little Village by the Bay. It could have been worse; I got off with no points and it is only a hit to the wallet.
So I apologize- I am not quite myself this morning and thoroughly out of sorts with the alpha and omega of the universe. I did not need a refresher on the decline in County revenues and the necessity to impose a travel tax on the unwary public. Inflation is up, so is unemployment, housing and commodity prices are down, and I could convince myself to be uneasy if I tried.
Apparently the Government is floating the idea of installing tracking devices on our cars sort of like the ubiquitous EZpass that would tax our mileage. If there was ever a concept that would have me headed to the gun-chest to shoot the device, this is it.
The hell with it. Anyway,the scam went like this: produce a recipe without thinking too hard and send it to someone on a list, add you name and send it on. For all I know it could be part of some caloric plot to bring down the internet, but the damage is done, and the hell with it.
I have one recipe that is simple, tasty and a thoroughly guilty and unhealthy pleasure.
Now, when I do chili dogs, I make my own chili from scratch, with hot Italian sausage and peppers and all that stuff, dice the vidalia onion for the topping, get signature hard rolls, and grate my own cheese for the topping. But this is a fresh take on what is arguably a Motor City Classic from the legendary Lafayette Coney Island Restaurant. I think I have it exactly…it is funky and totally perfect for a pre-or-post Tigers or Lions game, after a stop at the Elwood Grill, or an imaginary trip to the long-gone Lindell AC.
Lafayette Coney Island Famous Coney Island Hot Dogs
Rolls: Wonderbread hot dog rolls
Sauce: Wolf’s brand chili, with or without beans.
Onion: Diced fine
Dog: Have to have “snap,” which is the key to Lafayette’s interpretation, and makes a crispness under what is undeniable soggy concoction. Sabrette natural casing is a good choice, the original New York pushcart style frankfurter that is famous for the snap! Ken Oringer, the world famous chef at Clio’s in Boston is quoted as saying, “I love hot dogs, especially Sabrett® hot dogs in New York. Natural casing is the key- you could also order in bulk from the world famous Katz Deli, but this is not something to over think. It is Detroit street food. If it has a natural casing, you are in.
The Wolf-brand chili is exactly with the sly Greeks use at the Lafayette Coney Island. It is not chunky, like my chili, but rather a strange, almost creamy texture that complements the snap of the hot dog casing. You can do this at home and completely re-create the dining experience, if, that is, you found some Greek on the street to come in and shout something incomprehensible toward the kitchen as you sit at your dining table.
Directions:
Simmer the dogs. Open the can of chili and heat. Remove buns from package and open on a plate. Tong in the dogs and ladle the Wolf’s brand chili on it. Sprinkle the diced onions on liberally. Grated cheddar cheese is an option.
Condiments: mustard, ketchup, relish all optional.
Option: “Loose Dogs” is the same thing, only with browned ground beef folded into in the Wolf’s Brand chili.
Do NOT over think this. Perfect for football parties- I mean, perfect. Do not try to improve it- I can do (and do) much better, but this is just what it is- a Detroit classic! The picture is from my two Coneys on Tuesday night.
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
El Detroit-o Cinco de Mayo
(Hotel Eddystone near the Masonic Temple. Nothing worth anything is left in the well-built structure. Photo Socotra.)
Well, the conference wraps this morning and it is soon going to be my happy feet tapping on the gas pedal of some anonymous rental on the concrete strip north.
It is more than a little emotional. Not as much, maybe, as the raw adrenalin that coursed through my veins as I found myself walking in the raw cold darkness down Michigan Avenue in the empty city the other night, coming back from the Lafayette Coney Island, where I voted for Lafayette over the adjacent American Coney- the latter is a nicer and cleaner facility and the former has the best goddamn chili dog outside of the Vic Socotra kitchen.
(Lafayette Coney Islands with everything and a Labatt’s Blue. Photo Socotra.)
I will share the recipe in the Cloak and Dagger cook-book, since it is the ultimate bachelor meal, and I can do it better than the Greeks in their Coney-speak, but sitting in a place that is alive and unchanged since it opened was pretty cool, considering the rest of the down is abandoned.
But in the darkness, alone, I found myself on hyper-alert, full adrenaline jolt, wondering about each moving thing in the darkness, and if that Coney would be the last ill-advised thing in my life.
No shit, Detroit is abandoned.
I had to see it for myself, and rented a cool ten-seat van to haul my butt around the vastness of what used to be the Motor City once things reeled down yesterday. It was awesome. Every bit of it had a story, as Rod Stewart used to say, and every picture conveyed a story of misery and gritty survival.
There are people living here amid the ruins, and all I could think of was what was Rome, and the fact that history might have passed the town by, but there were still people and still life, even if it was nothing like it had been.
I will break from tradition here, and say, just go to the Facebook site and check the photos…
Lauren-the-driver drove up a few minutes before the appointed minute. Not as many potential passengers showed up, though I had thoughtfully provided a case of Labatt’s Blue and some pre-mixed vodka tonics, and I was gratified to say that it didn’t matter.
(Lauren and the Bus. Photo Socotra.)
It is the best $230 bucks I have ever spent. I was lost in a reverie from the time the bus pulled out until our little party had hurtled out through Hamtramck to the closed American Axle plant, whose loss has not yet wiped out the hamlet inside the Detroit City limits (though it will), to Palmer Woods (where I used to live), to the Fairgrounds and the giant stove, and Baker’s (the “keyboard lounge” letters have been crowbarred off the marquee) and back from 8 Mile down to the New Center and the Fisher Building and the former GM HQ and Motown Hitsville to the World’s Largest Masonic Temple surrounded by bombed-out buildings.
(Perhaps the most icon of Detroit’s ruins, though by no means the largest. Photo Socotra.)
The last stop I requested was a ceremonial pass through the circular drive in front of the Michigan Central Station just south of Corktown, where there used to be a ballpark at the corner of Trumbull and Michigan.
I asked Lauren to pull the van over to look at it- I had missed it on the passage to the train station, which sits majestically in the middle of a vast campus of abandoned Corktown buildings.
In this photo we are sitting directly behind Home Plate at a Big League stadium, with a couple traffic saw-horses indicating where the dugout were that Al Kaline and Gates Brown and Ty Cobb used, waiting to take the field of dreams.
Damn. That was just the home team. JTodd asked me if I remembered Reggie Jackson’s HR off Doc Ellis in the All-Star Game of 1971.
JTodd is from Pittsburg, and hence his interest. He said, looking at the empty lot, “Jackson hammered a slider on a line to right-center field, clearing the roof and slamming into an electrical transformer about 100 feet above field level, at a distance from home plate of about 380 feet.”
I leaned forward to the window, trying to place where the towers had been. The only thing on the vacant lot besides Home Plate and the saw-horses was an outré flag pole that the demolition crews had left upright. No flag, of course.
(Mr. September Reggie Jackson slams one in the 1971 All-Star Game. Photo UPI.)
“Timing the home run was impossible to do directly, but with some physics, some jokers derived the kinetics of Reggie’s swat. When all the factors were put together, the speed off the bat was more than 122 mph, and would have socked the ball right out of the stadium if it had not hit the light pole. Would have been more than 530 feet if it hadn’t, and might have hit a car on I-75.”
“It was impressive, I grant you, but that isn’t the home run I remember.”
“Which one was that?” asked JTodd.
“Mickey Mantle’s last appearance at Tiger Stadium. You know who served that one up, don’t you?”
“It was that drunk Denny McClain, last 30+ game winner in Major League Baseball, right?”
“Yep. Denny said he must have taken something off his fastball and served it up, belt high, right down the middle for the Mick, by mistake. Then he winked.”
JTodd pulled another icy Labatt’s out of the basin in the middle of the van. “That was something,” he said. “A mark of respect for a real legend.”
(View yesterday from behind home plate at the former Tiger Stadium at Michigan and Trumbull in Corktown. Left field line is the diagonal behind the saw-horse marking the visitor’s dug-out in the mid frame. Reggie’s HR would have disappeared out of the dream to the upper right. There is a sign on the wire fence declaring this is “Ernie Harwell Park,” a tribute to the long-time Tiger announcer. Photo Socotra.)
“Yeah. Respect for legends. Look at what the city has done for this one.” I took a sip from my traveller and called out to Lauren: “We are done with Detroit, Lauren. Run us back to the Marriott.”
“As you say,” said our driver, and we headed north on Michigan Avenue in the bright sunshine. Crazy town. Amazing we threw it away.
When I got back to the room, I read a note from Dee, who is retired Up North like my folks. She had seen some of the pictures and said:
“It has been years and years since I have been downtown Detroit……your e-mails beckons to me to once again visit….I know it is not the same as 60 years ago, but some renovations seem cool. As a young adult, I frequented Cliff Bell’s night club. I think they have reopened it…..I am not quite sure where it is located. It used to be very nice…..good food, dancing, drinking etc……even had a live orchestra.. “
(Cliff Bell’s club in the Day. Photo Cliff Bell’s Jazz Club.)
I wrote her back, since it was sort of eerie. I had walked by Cliff’s earlier that day. It is back. The little club off Grand Circus opened for business in 1934 after Cliff got clear of the booklegging gig for the Detroit Athletic Club.
(Cliff’s before restoration in 2004. Photo Cliff Bell’s Jazz Club.)
In 1985 the famous club closed and remained empty until in late 2005. Some enterprising folks decided to restore the name and the place. It is hanging on, like the Elwood Bar a few blocks away.
Hell, maybe there is hope for something out of all this misery and desolation. You never can tell, I suppose. It is going to take a hell of a lot of work.
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Day Three in Detroit
(Book-Cadillac Hotel, in the Day.)
Day three in Detroit marks the beginning of the season of discontent. The easy stuff has been done, the free parties are over, and the prospect of breaking it all down and heading on to the next thing looms.
My comrades were starting to fade, as was I, but there were a few things that still needed to be accomplished in this sad, wonderful old place that history has so wronged.
Truth be told, there is not much to do downtown that is not in Greektown or one of the three casinos. There are other things, but they are few and separated by blocks and blocks.
I glanced at my notes- I wanted to see the fabulous $200 restoration of the Book-Cadillac Hotel. And there was the matter of the competition between the American and Lafayette Coney Islands. I decided to not wait for anyone and just do it, which suited the mood. This far west in the Eastern Time Zone, the sun was just going down, the faint red rays still bathing the Financial District with light.
I grabbed a cap and asked for the Book-Cadillac from the Chaldean driver. I asked him if things were really starting to improve- there seemed to be things happening, and the Westin itself had only re-opened in 2008.
“No,” he said, “No change. Everything the same for the last three years.”
“It was Coleman Young who killed this town,” I said.
“Who?”
“Never mind.” He dropped me on Michigan Ave in front of the hotel, and I wandered in to take the escalator up to Registration. Aleysia was very kind, her dark eyes sparkling as she talked with pride about the place, and although there was a function in progress she directed me to the Venetian Ballroom on the fourth floor. I wanted to see it, because it was the wreckage of that room that made the Book-Cadillac one of the poster children for the abandonment of the city.
(The Motor Bar of the Book Cadillac. Photo Socotra.)
It looked great. I went back down the escalator, passing heroic sculpture, to the Motor Bar on the second floor and had a vodka to steel myself for the night. The temperature was plunging. The Capitols Hockey team was losing, and the television showed cold mist emerging from the mouth of the picture on the mound over at Commercia Park.
Michigan, I thought, back in Virginia the flowers are in full riot of color, and it is still winter here.
(Elegant modern sculpture in the equally elegant and totally refurbished Westin Book-Cadillac.)
I finished my drink when the Caps lost, and thanked the staff for their attention. They too were proud of their hotel, comparing number of rooms (500, down from 1,000 when built) and that it has been once the tallest hotel in the world.
That was a long time ago, though.
I was hoping to find the Coney Island Capital of the known universe, and that is how I found myself on an empty Michigan Avenue, in the dark, on foot, chilled to the bone, and wondering what the hell I was doing.
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
The Guardian
You could feel the energy at the Conference- not the one the NAACP was having down the massive halls of the Cobo Regional Convention Center, but the Defense Information Technology convocation.
The Director made an appearance by the miracle of video-teleconference. As you might imagine, the take-down of Osama bin Laden and the posturing of the various agencies for who should get the most credit is taking a lot of time, and he needed to stay in Washington rather than join us in Detroit.
You could feel the energy about it, though, though no one precisely knows what it all means. An enhanced warning message circulated, indicating the someone thinks international travel may be more dangerous through late summer, though why the month of August should have special significance was not referenced.
Would this development enable us to declare victory against the Taliban and leave Afghanistan? Will Ayman al-Zawahri just move up and continue the jihad against the West? The renegade Egyptian physician has to deal with the Arab Spring, and the great transformation of his homeland could have the most extraordinary impact on Dr. al-Zwahri. Maybe he will run for President on the Muslim Brotherhood ticket.
Or maybe we can hunt him down now, too, and double-tap him. He must have those spiders crawling up the back of this neck; they nailed Osama by identifying his most loyal courier, and there can be no question that he knows something about where the doctor is hanging out. The trove of information grabbed from the bin-Laden compound in Abbottabad is likely to flush some major pigeons.
Funny, really. The town where he was hiding is a nice one, named after Major James Abbott, who founded it in January 1853 after the annexation of the British annexation of the Punjab. I was thinking about that, as I wandered down Larned Street toward Griswald.
It had been threatening rain since we arrived, but the skies cleared up and the pavement dried. I wanted to see the Guardian Building, said to be the most outstanding example of the Art Deco Skyscraper in the world. I was hoping to nail the Guardian and maybe the Buhl Building and the mighty Penobscot tower that anchors the Motor City’s Financial District.
Detroit is funny. There are some things that are here, yet not here; ride the People Mover and you can see through the windows of handsome structures that there is nothing within, or that the ground floors are boarded up and the structures are crumbling. Others are being resurrected as new luxury lofts or offices, but on the streets are the bums and the lost, and even the new and glittering buildings are largely empty. There is a big sign in front of the white marble tower at #1 Woodward, offering really great River views, but there are signs everywhere.
Many of the proud towers had the owners just walk away. Not true with the Buhl, Penobscot and Guardian buildings. I walked past structures designed by McKim, Meade and White, the firm that invented the New York of the century before last, and through the lobby of the Buhl to emerge on Griswald. There was a check-point in the lobby, and I realized that all these buildings are under siege, and there are people who want to sneak upstairs and start stealing anything and everything, from what is on your desk to the copper pipes in the wall.
When I popped out on Griswald I blinked and looked up in amazement, not prepared for what I was looking at. The building’s taller north tower and smaller octagonal south tower are connected with a nave-like block similar to the plan of a cathedral. Colorful tile girds the building. It is unreal. The tangerine-colored bricks rest on a base of granite. Poly-chromed terra cotta on the upper stories was purposefully over-scaled to be seen by motorists on the street below.
Or me.
I had done enough research to get ready, but it did not suffice. In Roaring Twenties, Detroit was a world-wide industrial and commercial hub and the city grew with unprecedented prosperity. The newly organized Union Trust Company was anxious to communicate their public image through their flagship headquarters and new offices.
Cost was no object, and sky was literally the limit. UT commissioned the architectural firm of Smith Hinchman and Grylls to design their headquarters, which selected head designer Wirt C. Rowland to do the deed. He had previously done the Buhl Building, Jefferson Avenue Presbyterian Church and the Penobscot Building expansion. But the UT HQ was going to be the one that put Detroit in the record books.
I walked up to the revolving door and sauntered in to a cathedral. My God!
In fact, the Guardian Building was once promoted as “the Cathedral of Finance.” Its grandeur was, and still is, unconventional. Visitors are awestruck by the explosion of color, craftsmanship and blending of Native American, Aztec, and Arts & Crafts influences.
The building was completed in early 1929, the year of the Stock Market Crash. The Union Trust Company went belly up, but the assets were reorganized as the Union Guardian Trust Company. The building became known as the Union Guardian Building and today is known as simply as the Guardian Building.
The Griswold Street entrance is crowned with a semi-dome lined with symbolic custom tiles by Mary Chase Stratton’s Pewabic Pottery of Detroit.
The lobby features a large glass mosaic and the banking hall’s spectacular mural are both by Michigan artist Ezra Winter. Flanking the sides of the main entrance are reliefs designed by Detroit’s own architectural sculptor Corrado Parducci.
The lavish use of elegant and timeless materials is plentiful throughout the building. For example, the Italian Travertine marble used as steps and wall surfaces, contrasted with the deep red Numidian marble imported from Africa. Brilliantly colored Rookwood tiles fill the lobby’s vaulted ceiling.
Monel metal was used in the large ornamental screen dividing the banking hall and main lobby. Tavernelle marble from Tennessee lines the walls.
Apparently Wayne County scooped the building up for $14 million bucks. That should mean it is going to survive. I tailgated a guy who had an active badge to make the elevator work, and got as high as the 34th floor. I found the elevator to the taller of the towers, but couldn’t activate it.
I went back down to the lobby and browsed in the gift shop where I found a t-short that said “Imported from Detroit.” A nice young man helped me find the shirt with the line from Marshal Mather’s edgy Superbowl commercial: “Imported from Detroit.”
“Great building,” I said.
“Yes it is,” he responded. “It is an unquestioned architectural wonder. We have tenents and valet parking and precious ground floor retail. When Wayne County spent $14,000,000 to buy it no one said boo. What we don’t understand is why they spending another $38,000,000 to renovate it.”
“Hmmm,” I said, hefting the t-shirt. “It is probably the Coleman Young memorial mark-up. The corruption that killed the city is still here.”
“Could be,” he said. “The county doesn’t do anything productive. It is not like they generate any income. They just take it.”
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Ding Dong
(Demonstrators outside the Cobo Convention Facility during the NAACP annual fundraisers, 01 May, 2011. Photo Socotra.)
The word came through several sources- tweets, twitters, newsbreaks, e-mail to personal devices, and it was short and sweet. The Man was dead, shot to death in a firefight in a posh mansion forty air miles from the Pakistani capital.
One of the tweets was from a pal who was camped out in front of the White House. It was a good place to be, crowds swelling, and the President made the announcement at about nine-thirty, from what we could tell.
We could not hear the Presidential remarks, since we were in a casino in Canada. Windsor, to be precise, and the skyline of poor old Detroit loomed so close that it seemed you could reach across the gray water and touch it.
It is further than you would think, both the truth about what happened, and getting back to the Homeland.
The six of us had all plopped down in the Motor City from northern Virginia at varying times through the day to attend the big conference at the Cobo Center. We checked the booth and put out the favors and literature, arranged the little prize premiums to attract interest and traffic through the display, and made nice during the icebreaking mixer to open the display floor.
The operation had already gone down by that point, but the President would not make the formal announcement until the cocktails were done, and the post-mixer plans made.
The demonstration outside Cobo had subsided by then; apparently some folks were unhappy with the NAACP and the financial books of the organization, and specifically peeved at Kid Rock, the noted Detroit performance artist.
(The Detroit NAACP gave their Great Expectations Award to Kid Rock for his advocacy of the city, drawing some criticism because the Grammy-nominated artist has used the Confederate flag during stage performances. (AP Photo/Jim Cooper, File)
The Detroit Chapter of the organization were apparently honoring The Kid, who has been nominated for a Grammy for his re-mix of the Lynyrd Skynyrd tune “Sweet Home Alabama.” Skynyrd was from Jacksonville, Florida, and often used a Confederate flag in their stage act before the band was shattered by an airplane crash in 1977.
Or something. Kid Rock has done some great things for Detroit, and goodness knows the city needs it. I was still reeling from the encounter with the city, up close and personal, and the collision between the crowd streaming into the annual fundraiser for the NAACP, the protesters, and the sleek contractors and high-tech vendors was a little hard to process.
I don’t gamble, but I do like to people watch, and when the group decided to leave the country, it seemed innocent enough. We discussed cabs to travel through the tunnel, but the doorman at the Marriott recommended a short stroll past the Maritime Sailors Cathedral and the $3.75 bus ride under the Detroit River.
So that is how we came to be at Caesar’s in Windsor, amid the flashing lights and chirping electronic sounds on the south bank of the river trying to get back close to midnight, and anxious to find out what had happened all the way around the world in the walled compound forty air miles from the Pakistani capital.
Of course, we had to get past Homeland Security, and that is a story unto itself.
Thanks to that asshole bin Laden, we now have to carry passports to travel across the world’s longest and most peaceful border, and apparently that isn’t quite good enough for the assholes in Customs and Border Protection.
But like I say, that is a different story, and thank God Osama finally paid, and that the US Navy did it.
Ding Dong, the witch is dead. Finally.
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Of Clam Shacks and Queens
You know where my thoughts are this morning. I would have told you the details about my pal Mac’s meeting with a much younger Queen of England, but he reminded me of that meeting in an e-mail, which I noted will require another encounter at Willow.
Then, rushing around to over water the plants, leave a check for the maids and thinking of the dozen things I need to have in my bag (passport for Canada, check, extra battery for camera, check, check, check) I decided to just call him and ask.
The phone rang three times at The Madison and the Admiral picked up. “So, you are a pal of the Queen’s,” I asked.
“Yes,” he said briskly. “A couple of years ago Queen Elizabeth (with a “z” in your parlance) came to Washington on an official visit and asked to lay a wreath at the WWII Memorial.”
“The only time I saw her in person was on one of those. I was jogging up by Arlington on lunch-break from the Pentagon and she came whizzing past with Philip.”
“Well, this was a little more. She asked if she could visit with some U.S. WWII veterans while there. A retired Marine Col. friend of mine working for USMC HQ in the Pentagon had the job of setting this up, so he recruited me along with a few others to be in that group.”
“Wow,” I said. “I only got a glimpse of her and her hat.”
“Well, I was taken to the Memorial, accompanied by my friend, hospital boss, counselor and escort, Kathy Dorner, and we were seated in the front row of some chairs near where the wreath was to be laid. When the Queen arrived at the Memorial, she was being escorted by Pres. George H. W. Bush and Barbara, who as you know are both friends of mine.
“I almost got a chance to brief Mr. Bush during the Gulf War,” I said. “and I was sick the day he came out to Forrestal when he and Gorbachev met at Malta and missed him.”
(The Queen, a Park Ranger, Prince Philip and the Bushes, walking toward Mac. Photo Reuters.)
“Well, after the wreath-laying, she was walked around the Memorial to view the displays, and then ended up where we were sitting. I was invited to meet her, and we chatted for perhaps five minutes. She asked where I was stationed and what I did in WWII, and when I said I was in the Pacific with ADM Nimitz, she commented that her husband was in that theater also. Actually, he was in the China-Burma-India Theater, which I don’t consider the Pacific, but I didn’t argue with her. I thanked her for coming to visit the Memorial, which she thought was very inspirational, and we parted as friends. As she talked with a few others, I was then approached by her escorts, the Bushes, and we had an “old home week” talk, including introductions to Kathy. Kathy was overwhelmed because she got to see the Queen of England and meet a U.S. President (both firsts for her) all in the same day!”
“What was she wearing?” I asked. “She is always doing something amazing.”
Mac paused, remembering. “That day the Queen was all in a light blue — hat, suit et al, like her yellow on Friday. She was a very pleasant person to visit with, and I considered it an honor to have had the privilege. Brief, enjoyable, and memorable. Of the two thousand invited guests to the Abbey wedding Friday, she was the only one I knew.” He paused, thoughtful. “There were no “heads of State” invited except other Monarchs, and those are all family, thanks to Victoria. The Prime Minister was there, but no prior Prime Ministers, like Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher.”
I thanked him for the story- I told him I was working on some Detroit issues, since I was leaving this morning for the conference, but I confess this morning my mind is elsewhere. I am going to be with my butt in an airplane again when you get to clearing out your email queue this morning, headed for DTW and a cab to get downtown to the Marriott Renaissance Center.
I was reading the latest issue of Playboy- founder of the empire Hugh Hefner has just got engaged to a woman 113 years younger than him, and I wish the happy couple well. There was a review in the latest issue of Playboy, which I read only for the articles. The women whose pictures grace the pages of the magazine are so young as to be from another world- at least not mine.
So I actually do read the articles, just to realize what a fogie I have become. They review all sorts of products and activities I have never heard of before. Some I understand. There is a new book out called “Clam Shack: The Ultimate Guide to New England’s Most Fantastic Seafood Eateries, by Michael Urban.
(Clam Shack, by Mike urban to be released in June. Photo Urban.)
The clam shacks scattered along New England’s coastline have been magnets for tourists and locals for decades. It is different than Michigan, though we actually have more coastline than any state except Florida.
We used to drive up to Maine, to Porky’s place in Belfast from Boston. We would stop at theplaces that would steam up a liquor box of Quahog Clams, melt a pound of butter, and let you sit by the side of the road at a picnic table and just drive yourself nuts.
It is mostly seasonal eateries along that holiday road with plenty of character, and you can see the water the stuff comes from. Deep-fried clams, scallops, flounder, lobster rolls on those rolls slit down the top, not the side, steamers, chowders, corn on the cob, french fries, onion rings, homemade ice cream.
I am going to see none of these- the only thing on a bun in Detroit worth eating is a half-dozen Coney Islands, which I will be telling you about presently.
But forgive me if I dream of other things, even as we are about to plunge together into a city of dreams and ghosts. Forgive me if I think of hundreds of miles of New England shoreline. And lunch. I am not going to have time to have anything to eat before leaving, so I have to say that the recipe that Mike got from Bob’s Clam Hut really got me going. There was everything I needed in the reefer to give it at least a go. Bob’s has been around almost as long as I have, since 1956, and it is one of the few clam shacks in my knowledge to have a mission statement:
As a military man, it resonates. By the time you read this I will be wheels-in-the-well for the Motor City. According to our research, it will be temperatures in the 50s and rain.
Hey, it’s Michigan. Here is something from Mike Urban’s book that would be tasty in the chill rain up there, and better if the clams were not from the can:
Bob’s Clam Hut Chowder
1 medium peeled potatoes, cubed to 1/4 inch
1 small onion, minced
1 rib of celery, chopped course
1 cup water
1 tablespoon fresh thyme
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon Lea & Perrins Worchestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
5 cups clam sauce
2 cups minced clams
4 cups whipping cream
Directions:
Combine all ingredients in stockpot except the clams, cream and four cups of the clam juice. Heat to a boil, then simmer until the potatoes are soft, or about 20 minutes. Stir in the clams, cream and the rest of the clam juice. Heat to simmer (do NOT boil) for about 10 minutes and serve immediately. Garnish with crumbled bacon if desired. A round boule of sourdough bread ready for ripping is useful, with fresh creamery butter. Oh, hell, carbs may be my enemy, but just get a mini boule, scoop out the middle and serve the goddamn chowder right in it.
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com <http://www.vicsocotra.com/>