WEEKEND IN MICHIGAN

Dan Sara and I took a trip to Michigan this weekend. Dan and Sara saw the White Stripes perform at the Masonic Temple Theatre in Detroit. This picture is where the concert was held; 500 Temple Street, Detroit, Michigan.

After I dropped them off at the theater I drove down Cass Avenue to find a Starbucks where I could spend three hours until it was time to pick up Dan and Sara. The Starbucks was not open; Detroit does not have the foot traffic to keep business open after 5:00pm.

Detroit is an interesting place. Whenever I am in the city it always looks like a gigantic modern ghost town regardless of the time of day. I ended up driving up Woodward into Ferndale, nine miles north, where Diane and I once lived and parked in a parking lot, that now belongs to a strip-mall but in 1979, it was the living-room of the house we rented. It was a strange feeling sitting in my car where once I would have sat in our house.

“Back in the day” as Dan and Sara say, we worked at a shelter in Ferndale operated by the Salvation Army. The property had a large back yard filled with old oak trees where raccoons and opossums lived, and where picnics with coworkers and family were common. The Detroit Zoo is one mile north from Ferndale. One night we were woken from our sleep by the sound of something large sounding landing on the roof of our house. It crept across our house from end to end. The sound of it left our roof and went into a nearby tree. From there we could hear animal screams; then silence. Soon it landed on our roof again and off from the same direction by which it came. We were left in silence wondering what it could have been. Our neighbor heard it too but had no idea what it was. We never found out and the zoo never claimed of any missing or escaped animal.