Page 2 - Demo

A%ufffder I was born in Detroit%u2019s Grace Hospital on December 11, 1949, I came home to a comfortable colonial that had been built a few years earlier. It was in the new suburb of Harper Woods, which was planned to be filled with similar two-story houses. When it instead rapidly morphed into a community of small bungalows, my parents moved to the more exclusive Grosse Pointe Woods. There, they could only afford a fixer-upper, but they transformed the neglected French Provincial house into a showplace.Sadly, my parents were quite dysfunc%ufffdonal, and I have few pleasant memories of them. They each suffered from their own family dramas, which le%ufffd them con%ufffdnually on-edge and defensive. Both, however, felt proud at having been raised in Grosse Pointe. It gave them a feeling of being superior to those who had grown up elsewhere. This helps explain why they had such contempt for nearby Detroit. To them, \like Chicago,%u201d as my mother once sneered. It was gri%ufffdy and heading down hill. Essen%ufffdally, it was an ever present, looming source of embarrassment.As I was growing up, Detroit%u2019s popula%ufffdon became increasingly black due to white flight. One by one, downtown stores closed, and businesses and factories relocated outside the city. Detroit was disparaged even more than before. Then, a%ufffder the 1967 riot, my father and his partners moved their business to outlying Troy. Just as I was going off to college, my parents built a home there as well. It pleased them that the increased distance from the city created a good buffer from its many woes%u2014both real and imagined%u2014and Detroit was relegated to a distant and lesser galaxy far, far away.So, despite growing up just a few miles from Detroit's city limits, my parents rarely took my sister and me there%u2014perhaps less than 25 %ufffdmes. When I was very young, we some-%ufffdmes a%ufffdended an older Lutheran church on Detroit's east side%u2014un%ufffdl a new one was built a few blocks from our Grosse Pointe home. We occasionally shopped at Sears and Montgomery Ward, twice stood out in the cold to watch the Hudson%u2019s Thanksgiving Parade, twice visited the Belle Isle Zoo, and went to the State Fairgrounds three %ufffdmes%u2014once for the Barnam & Bailey Circus and twice for the Ice Capades. One winter day, my father took us to Palmer Park so we could sled down its snow-covered hill. To impress his business clients, my father had season %ufffdckets to the legi%ufffdmate and very posh Fisher Theater, and my sister and I got to a%ufffdend on the rare occasions there were last minute cancella%ufffdons. He also had season %ufffdckets to major-league spor%ufffdng events. Twice, when clients were unable to a%ufffdend, my sister and I were taken to a Red Wings%u2019 hockey match and a Tigers' baseball game. While my trips into Detroit were infrequent, some were quite special%u2014but all were filled with family tension.A%ufffder leaving for Western Michigan University, I rarely returned home. A%ufffder gradua%ufffdon, I found a job in Indiana, moved there, and met John. We soon married and have had a wonderful life together. In our late 60s, John began assembling a series of vintage postcard albums featuring his home state of Indiana.