On a street that I don’t usually walk on
We walked by this sorta yard jockey on Friday night. I grew up being droven down to a beautiful little art deco type house on Mark Twain Street down there in DayTwa. That was my Mac grandaddy and his wonderful second wife Bolette. I never called Bolette grandmother but she was a good grandmother for me. (My biological maternal grandma was killed in a car accident when my mom was 15). I was always so excited about our trips to visit Grandaddy and Bolette down in Detroit. It was only a couple of years ago that I found out that Bolette and her first husband originally owned that house. And that other people in her family lived on the same street. Her brother Joe and his family. I never met them. When we traveled to Detroit, all of the Macs gathered at Grandaddy and Bolette’s and Bolette focused on the Mac fam, especially meeeee.
When I was a little kid before the infamous riots, it was safe to walk up and down the sidewalk on Mark Twain. There was a lawn jockey a couple doors down. That lawn jockey had a black face for many years. After the riots it got painted white and we were told to stick close to the house when we visited. A little while after that, Grandaddy and Bolette moved out of that loverly art deco house to Beverly Hills in the northern suburbs. Growing up in the yooperland, I didn’t really have a full understanding about racial issues. We had a very small smattering of black kids in our school system then and, as far as I know, they were not treated any differently than I was but maybe that’s not true… My parents always made it a point to us that all people were equal no matter what they looked like. I guess I still don’t understand much about racial issues. We are all human beings.
I loved all of our trips to Detroit and our adventures going in Grandaddy’s Caddy-lac (with automatic windows — I didn’t have a vee-hickle with those until I bought the damn POC in 1996!) to the Henry Ford Museum and downtown to look at all of the skyscrapers. And trips to the downtown Hudson’s and Northland and the auto show at Cobo. So much fun. And yet growing up in Siberia, I could *walk* to visit the grandparents who lived there. They were maybe eight or nine blocks away and, when I stayed there with them, I walked to school from their house, usually with my buddy Helen who lived close to them.
Good night. WKAR is playing a recording of a flutist playing Mozart’s Concerto in G. My first assigned piece of classical music back when I was in 8th grade and had an actual flute teacher (not the damn band director) for the first time in my life. She was married to an airman and moved on but she helped me get enough decent music to keep me going for a couple more years. Thankfully, The Comm was always willing to spring money for important things like flute music for someone as voracious about playing as me.
Sorry, off on a damn tangent. Good night! Love y’all, KW!
October 6th, 2014 at 11:32 pm
It sounds like you are feeling nostalgic. Love the memories of the past. We had a couple of black families in my high school and that’s it. Now my school is much more diverse.