I like to run. If you don't know this by now you don't know me very well. In which case, thanks for reading! For the rest of you, you'll be happy to know that I had a great time at the Detroit Marathon this weekend. Unfortunately, I was not running this year as I have a race in a week and a half and needed to rest and instead volunteered on Saturday and Sunday to make sure I didn't miss out on the action. True, looking at the maps for the race I longed to be lacing up my shoes and running across the bridge, thinking of how tired my legs should be leaving the tunnel, and how I would need that last boost of energy to get off of Belle Isle.
But, alas, I decided to dedicate my time to supporting those who would be going through the race, first by giving out packets on Saturday and then sitting at mile 24 for encouragement. I was the guy that was cheering people on when all they really wanted to do was stab someone for how long they had been running. The early runners didn't see me. The middle runners were happy to see me. The runners at the end hated that I was smiling and wanted to throw me into the river in a body bag.
That's how marathons work. And its fun.
But before I start gushing too much about why I love to run and the spirit of the race, let's get to the point of all this. I was volunteering on Saturday with a guy named Lou. This was his first marathon. He was 67 years old and filled with a lot of stories about life. He was a bit shorter than I was and had a lot more belly on him, but not any more than any other 67 year old man should.
Lou grew up in Detroit. I know because he told me, unsolicited. In fact, he told me a lot of things unsolicited. He now lives in Brighton, about as far from Detroit as you can be to still be considered part of that blob on the east side. He had a heart attack recently due to his exposure to Agent Orange during Vietnam, and in Vietnam he nearly died one day when he ventured to Cambodia by mistake. These are just a few of the unsolicited tales from good ole Lou.
Anyway, Lou met me at 6 am in Tim Horton's at the foot of the Belle Isle Bridge. 6 am on Sunday is already pretty early, but meeting Lou at 6 makes things really early. Lou is a talker. In fact, I don't think he knows how to stop talking. It was always a challenge to get a word in edgewise. But, he's also one of those grandfathery people who you enjoy listening to for hours, even if you don't know what the heck he's talking about.
Standing in Tim Horton's he immediately informed me that he had scoped out the place where we'd be for the day and found a great parking place. Parking was really the least of my worries as we would be standing for the next 7 hours unable to move our car, but nevertheless I was appreciative of his preparedness.
After sitting in his car waiting for the sun to rise, I learned a great deal about Lou. Not just the aforementioned stories, but also that Lou had grown up on the east side of Detroit in the 1950s and remembered a lot of great things about the city. Downtown Detroit was the place to go for first-run movies. I was unfamiliar with this term, but apparently movies weren't released all at once back in the day. Only the biggest places got the first-run movies. And Downtown was the biggest place around. He would take a date downtown, put on a suit jacket, and have a fancy dinner. Then it was off to the movie to see a brand new film that nobody else around could see. Those were the days.
He also told me about how Belle Isle was the place to go in the evenings. You could stay at Belle Isle until midnight or later, watching the stars and feeling the breeze off the river. His go-to line was to ask the girls to come watch the submarine races with him. If you know anything about submarines, you'll know they are underwater and that it would be quite challenging to watch them race. In other words, this was his code to get girls to Belle Isle to make out. Ah, thanks Lou, I got it now.
Lou is one of those guys that you could easily roll your eyes at and seek others to help take pressure off the conversation. When Vietnam is a central part of a guys' life and that's his lead off story, its easy to write a guy off as a crazy nut job. But, I wanted to give him a chance. First off, I was stuck with the guy for the next 7 hours and it was highly unlikely anyone would be along to take the pressure off. Secondly, I did find his stories interesting. And as if some kind of young person, unspoken duty came over me, I decided that I needed to listen to him.
As any good listener does, I asked questions. I asked Lou why he left Detroit. I figured I knew some of the answers. The riots, white flight, the usual suspects, but I heard different things from Lou. Yes the riots had scared him. But Lou was in Vietnam when the riots took place. It wasn't that he had been changed by the riots, it was how the riots changed Detroit that scared him. When he returned from Vietnam, not only was he returning to a different country from when he left, he was returning to a different city. Neighborhoods weren't quite a safe as they had been. People weren't quite as friendly as they had been.
Lou still worked downtown at this time, though by now he had bought a house and moved to Warren. What finally pushed Lou as far from Detroit as he could possibly go was an escapade he had at work. He worked in a cubicle that he shared with whom he described as a 'black woman who was very nice.' One day while rummaging through her purse, a tiny object fell out and rolled over to Lou's desk. He bent down and picked up a small bullet for a handgun. It was then that Lou knew his time in Detroit was over.
Lou has never looked back. When he came downtown for the marathon, it was his first time back in a long time. He was still nervous of any person walking by themselves, suspicious of their motives. He wanted his car within sight so he could watch it throughout the race, in case one of those suspicious characters decided he liked what was inside. Lou even told me be brought his wife's car down instead of his because hers was older. He was glad I was there so he wasn't alone.
Lou reminded me of how big a battle Detroit really is. I'm a kid here, young and naive. I see a lot of the momentum of the city and tend to dismiss a lot of the talk of how it was. I suppose that's the trouble with youth, we know only as much as we've experienced, which usually isn't much. But, I think, in that way, we are able to renew. We don't have the experiences and stories that Lou has. We don't know what Belle Isle was like or how amazing downtown was. We only know what it is like now.
We need to remember that there are many people like Lou out there with stories. And people like Lou, who have these traumatic experiences and memories of simpler times in the city, are always going to be afraid. Until we are able to provide Lou with solace and comfort, Detroit will always be a place filled with haunting memories and fearful people. And think its important that as Detroit moves forward, we don't forget the people who saw it first.
No comments:
Post a Comment