I grew up in Detroit. I graduated from a Detroit high school. I remember the three cent daily editions of the Detroit News. The News competitors were the Times, and Free Press. There were two editions of the Detroit News that I delivered after school, the early Four Star Edition and the later Five Star Edition. In addition to home delivery the three newspapers were sold in open racks on the honor system. After the demographics changed the newspapers were kept in locked boxes and the public telephones converted to hand sets attached with a shielded cable. Even the change return slots had to be modified to stop petty thieves from stuffing paper up the return chutes to block the change for later collecting. For years at the Northwest corner of Livernois and Michigan Avenues a disabled fellow sold the Sunday newspapers right out of the wire bundled stacks of twenty-five to motorists at the red light. The Sunday editions were twenty or twenty-five cents then. He had at least ten bundles of newspapers and sold everyone of them. The demographics changed and so did his safety. He stopped selling newspapers. I remember riding the DSR, Detroit Streets and Railways, coaches to school every day for fifteen cents one way student fare plus a nickel for a transfer. I took the old Clairmont line to Harper and Van Dyke from Canfield Street and St. Jean Street (there were houses on both sides of the street back then) which was a block north of Mack Avenue. I transferred to the northbound Van Dyke bus to go to McNichols and Newburgh Street. Newburgh was a couple of blocks south of McNichols (Six Mile Road) and I walked the two blocks over to French Road where the old school stood. It was torn down when Coleman Young expanded Detroit City Airport. When this movie short was produced the decline of the neighborhoods had already began. The flight of Detroits productive class to the suburbs wasnt yet an epidemic but soon would be. This video will give the viewer a picture of what Detroit was when I was a sophomore in high school in 1961. I would begin my flight, literally, from Detroit in November, 1962, when I flew to San Diego for boot camp. I flew from Detroit Metro. Johnsons Great Societys Housing and Urban Developments urban renewal program was still a few years away. The decline of the neighborhoods was then accelerated by the rampant incompetence of government central planning demonstrated at HUD and later by the Detroit mayors and city councilmen and women. Democratic Party politicians destroyed Detroit, not white flight. youtube/watch?v=dUW5bqdKWew
Posted on: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 16:01:20 +0000
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