The Crack of Dawn

Volume #380

6/28/23

Newsletter #380

The Crack of Dawn

As I’ve mentioned a few times, when I reminisce about the past it’s not with a nostalgic, warm glow indicating that those were “the good old days.”  For some reason my memory is still good enough to remember the pain and anguish that accompanied the past, thus assuring me that those were not times that I care to relive, but I don’t mind revisiting.  However, being the age that I am (64, soon to be 65), I caught the tail-end of the era before me.  Here in Detroit the demarcation line between then and now is the Detroit Riots in 1967.  Previous to the riots, Detroit was a completely different place.  The demographics say everything – Detroit experienced the most extreme ethnic change of any city ever: between 1965 and 1975 Detroit went from 70% white to 80% black.  Detroit has also gone from a population of 2.5 million people to now barely 700,000.  However, the Detroit Metropolitan Area has over 4 million people, so the white folks didn’t leave Michigan; they moved to the suburbs.

Be that as it may (one of my father’s favorite expressions), the time period that ended so abruptly in Detroit in 1967, lingered on for a bit elsewhere.  For instance:

When I attended the University of Michigan in 1975 there was a wonderful, old, highly atmospheric record store called Liberty Music located right near the campus.  Liberty Music only sold classical music, which seemed anachronistic in 1975, and upon entering one got a pervasive feeling of imminent doom.  Most college students did not listen to classical music, nor were records sold in that manner anymore.

All of the vinyl albums were removed from their jackets and stored alphabetically, in the same brown paper sleeves, on shelves behind the counter.  The customers looked through bins of opened, empty album covers.  If you found any record or records of interest, you took the empty album covers to the counter and gave them to the clerk.  The clerk then located the albums on the shelves behind them, put the records in the covers and gave them back to you.  You then went to one of five small listening rooms – there was never a wait – which contained a record player, a chair, and an ashtray on a pedestal.  You could then sit, smoke, and listen to all the albums, both sides, for as long as you wanted.  I often did my schoolwork there, or just read.  Only rarely did I actually buy an album, and they couldn’t have cared less.

When I was born in 1958 my family lived with my grandmother in her house, across the street from the University of Detroit.  When I was two, we moved to the suburb of Huntington Woods, two miles outside of Detroit.  Now Huntington Woods is predominately Jewish, has big shady trees over the houses and streets, and is a particularly cool place.  When we moved there in 1960 it was predominately gentile, the trees were small, and it wasn’t all that cool.  Twelve very similar houses per block, or something like that.  Within my young, couple of block radius where I traveled, there were two Jewish families: us, and the Zolkowers, and Harry Zolkower was my best friend.  He played the drums, which I thought was very cool.  Harry’s older sister Terry was my older sister Ricki’s best friend.  It was in the Zolkower’s living room – this particular image is drenched in golden nostalgic light – where Ricki and Terry brought home brand new records and played them for the very first time, like all of The Beatles’ records.  Harry and I were always busy fighting battles with army men as we listened to the music.  This sequence is a montage in my head of 1964 to 1969, with teenaged Terry and Ricki, giggling and laughing as they keep arriving over and over again with the newest Beatles’ record, each one better and more interesting than the one before.  It was amazing, and we knew it at the time.  What we didn’t know was that it was singular and there would never be anything else like it.

I distinctly recall Ricki and Terry bringing in a brand-new copy of Abbey Road, tearing off the cellophane, putting it on the record player, and all of us intently, seriously, and quietly, listening to the entire album, both sides.  Terry was about to take the record off when we were all surprised that there was an extra little song, Her Majesty, and we all laughed.  The consensus was that this was not only The Beatles’ best record, it was the best record ever made.  So, of course, we listened to it again.

Just a few blocks from where I lived in Huntington Woods was the slightly bigger suburb of Berkely (an E short of California), which had a tiny little downtown, and that’s where I hung out.  It had a movie theater, The Berkley Theater, and was where I saw many movies. There was also Chatterbox Candy Store that sold exclusively every kind of penny candy, as well as every kind of candy bar.  Then there was Murphy’s Barbershop, where I got my hair cut for 50-cents, which included a tip. 

Across the street was a Sinclair gas station, and their trademark was a dinosaur.  They had inflatable dinosaurs hanging all over the place and I wanted one bad.  After I asked for 150^th time, my father had to explain to me – probably after smacking me first – that he had a Standard Oil charge card and therefore we would never go to Sinclair, and therefore I would never get an inflatable dinosaur, and I had better not bring it up again.

Th-th-that’s all, folks.