Your Detroit Memories! (Warren, Troy, Pontiac: how much, find a job, casino)

[GlassPipe]

Great topic -

The first thing that came to my mind was seeing a guy out by the dumpsters at the harbor house on Groesbeck getting beaten by 2 other guys with baseball bats. We were on our way to Taco Bell.

I'm sure I'll think of a few more. he he he...

[rfetner66]

My dad attended Hunter School, and graduated from Cass Tech. My grandmother(from mom's side) still lives on Dumfries. I think my mom went to Hunter also. My dad was a beat cop at the 4th precinct for a few years.

My dad went to Wally the Barber until he passed away last year. He cut my dad's hair for 60 yrs, you don't find that anymore.

Does anyone remember the building on the corner of Bayside..I can't remember the side street. It was the same side street Wally's was on. I remember it walking to church but can't remember what it was.

Does anyone rememer Joe? He lived on Oakwood. He was slow and really heavy.

[belbell777]

yes i remember Joe very well. my grandmother lived directly behind wallys barber shop, corner of bayside & ormond st. on the other corner was Nardini candy store. I must know you or your family. do you remember the other candy store across from wallys ? my e-mail is belbell777@aol.com if you would like to talk

[GlassPipe]

My family was well rooted in the upper east side and eventually crossed the line into Harper Woods after starting a successful electronics business on the corner of Morang and Sommerset.

I spent a lot of summer days at my grandmothers house on Washtenaw in harper woods. That was back when we could still ride our bikes around the block and our parents didn't have to worry. It's gotten a little less desireable around there in the past 10 years though. I remember my buddy, Brian Bayer, chasing down and ice cream truck on his bike and jumping onto the back bumper just to ride the truck on down the street. It was good fun.

My mom doesn't have too many stories to tell me about washtenaw st, but my dad grew up on Old Homestead, a few blocks north. He said they had the biggest house on the street. With 10 kids, I can see where they needed it. He, my uncle, and all their friends always have some stories to tell. One of my favorites is hearing about them riding the schwinns through Eastland before it was all closed in while dodging through the people in the walkways only to be chased by the police across the parking lot where they crashed into the snow fence. lol - his bike (yep, still got it, that's a schwinn for ya) still shows the stress crack in the frame.

They were also big on tennis ball cannons. Fill up a section of piping with some propane and stuff a ball in the end - BOOM! Instant car door dent machine. Or the time the neighbors wouldn't let my Uncle Tom swim in their above ground pool - he shot it with a bow and arrow and spilt the thing right in half flooding a couple back yards in the process.

Yeah, they were hell raisers. I could go on and on with stuff like that.

I didn't grow up there full time, but spent a good majority of my summers there. I had a lot of fun. Nothing quite as crazy as my elders, but fun none the less. I had a buddy who moved from Central Lake to Warren. It was kind of nice having someone else around that I actually knew. We spent a lot of time running through the shops at Hoover-11 and harassing the drive through people at Taco Bell. Gibraltar Trade Center in Mt Clemens was always a good way to spend the day. Always lots of cool stuff going on there. I even worked there for a couple summers when my uncle's cellular chain had a booth. My hobby of people watching got it's start there. There were some really slow days so I had to find a way to pass the time. What better way for a teenager to pass time but to watch the pretty girls. lol...

After I graduated from high school in Northern Michigan I moved south to live with family and try to get a start in the city. Met a lot of interesting characters and got to hang out with the best of the best and the worst of the worst. Really helped me to figure out who I was and for that I'm grateful for the experience. I was shown some great shore fishing spots along Lk St Claire - Brandenburg Pier, 9 Mile Tower, Lakeside Fishing Shop!!!, and the VFW's pier at 12 / Jefferson. Got some nice bass and blue gill out there. Spent a lot of time at Silvers Saloon in Windsor and got to see some really whacked out people at the tunnel. From fist fights to people peeing in the middle of the street while waiting in line. All good fun. Wrecked my truck on the way home after a long day of drinking at Silvers. We were on 94 right before conners when we came around the corner and the state boys had traffic stopped for another accident. Blasted into the rear end of a Porsche. Blew that car apart. No one was hurt and the cops were too cold to deal with a couple kids. We narrowly escaped DUI charges. They made us walk off the expressway on to Conners in the middle of the night. Talk about a scary situation. Two white boys in a not so white-boy part of town. Finally found a phone and hung out outside the gas station until mom came to rescue us. I loved that truck.

Always enjoyed Trappers' Alley and the rest of greektown. It was probably my first experience in a cultural center. The flaming goat cheese and lamb chops sure do sound good right now!

I'm sure I'll come up with a few more. Good idea for a thread.

[and the]

I think Saganaki is sheep milk with very little, if any, goat milk....Kasseri cheese usually. Opa!

[crunchtime]

I remember going downtown on Thanksgiving to see the parade. Do they still do it?

[jill.faraday]

Yeah...they still do the parade. I think it is even on network tv, although I am not sure if it's shown nationwide or not. I haven't been in years, but did take my kids once about 20 years ago.

[FmrMarineMom]

It's usually at this time of the year that I start thinking back to my childhood, living in Detroit. I left Detroit in '66, and the last time I visited was probably about 30 years ago, and as depressing as it is to see what's happened to this city, I still have my good memories of growing up in Detroit.

Of course, at this time of the year, one of the memories would be of the J.L. Hudson's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Went to many of them! Then, when we got back home, Mom would have the dinner all ready for us to feast on.

Also, at this time of the year, the ice skates were sharpened up and ready to go ice skating at Butzel Park. Several of us would get together to go ice skating there. Sometimes we'd get rides there, but most times we'd walk. It wasn't anything for us to walk a couple of miles to go somewhere, and our parents didn't have to worry about anything happening to us.

Then there was all the SNOW! My brother's and I use to have so much fun playing out in the snow......not so much my sister. She'd stay in pretty much of the time, but my brother's and I would stay out practically all day. Oh, we'd come in for lunch and just long enough for our stuff to dry out by the fireplace, but then we'd be right back out until we had to come in for dinner! We'd build snow forts and have snowball fights, or we'd build a snow ramp that would start at the slope of our front yard and cut over onto the driveway, and we'd ride down it on our sleds. If we wanted to earn money for Christmas shopping, we'd go around the neighborhood and shovel driveways and sidewalks, usually for the older neighbor's. Then with the accumulated money that we earned, (not much by today's standards) we'd walk up to Grand River and Oakman Blvd. and do our Christmas shopping.

I recently Google'd a map of my old neighborhood that I grew up in, and I find that the house that I grew up in is gone and now part of an interstate! I lived on Indiana St., between Davidson and Buena Vista. I saw that Noble Elementary is still there, but what happened to Littlefield playground? And I couldn't believe that the tennis courts were still there at the corner of Buena Vista and is it Cherrylawn? Wow, how I remember playing on those courts!

Oh well, there's many more memories...........

[GlassPipe]

Funny seeing all these streets mentioned. I have never lived in Detroit Propper, but I installed windows for Hansons on many of these streets I'm seeing mentioned in here.

Don't buy from them btw - they are crooks. Go with a small mom/pop type shop. They'll appreciate your biz more.

[FmrMarineMom]

Ok, so I found a more detailed map of the area of what was once Littlefield playground, and I now see that what was once referred to as "Big Field", is now called Littlefield. Littlefield playground use to be between Cherrylawn and Northlawn, bordering Buena Vista and Fullerton. Now the area is all houses.

Littlefield playground was like my second home........I was there all the time! Even broke my collarbone when I fell off the monkey bars! Then there was a shallow pool there, that was maybe about a foot deep, and in the summertime they'd turn on the showers so that we could get cooled off, and then in the wintertime they'd turn it into an ice skating rink. Is there anyone else out there that remembers this? There was also a building there where all the playground equipment (basketballs, bats, etc.) was kept, with restrooms, and we use to do crafts in that building, also.

I know I'm showing my age here, but that area of Detroit was a wonderful place to live, back in the '50's!