Remember the last great spasm of nuclear war terror in the 1980s? That was when Ronald Reagan’s fanciful “Star Wars” missile defense system threatened to destabilize Moscow and Washington’s carefully crafted safeguards against blowing up the world.
If you are too young to remember those days, movies like The Day After or the event scarier British movie Threads will give you a good idea of what we feared. There was also a very good realistic novel called Warday, by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka, (Holt, Rinehart, 1984) about two journalists who travel the country five years after a limited nuclear war and write about what they’ve seen.
Much of the nation, even those parts not damaged by nuclear events, is shabby, rundown and ruined. Many places in the novel, in fact, look much like Highland Park, Michigan, does today.
That’s no exaggeration .
Highland Park is a ruined, devastated town that was once a thriving symbol of the modern age. Sturdy homes, some built by the finest craftsmen, lined streets beautifully forested with elm trees.
But the real wonder of this place was a huge, red-brick factory, set a couple blocks back from Woodward on Manchester.
There, in that building, much of which still exists, America, and then the world, was put on wheels. That was where the first moving automobile assembly line began in 1913, and Henry Ford cranked out millions of Model T’s, the first car the masses could afford.
Eventually, in the late 1920s, he took auto production to the Rouge, though they still made tractors in the Manchester plant undil 1973. Chrysler, however, stayed in Highland Park till 1992.
But when Chrysler left for Auburn Hills, Highland Park, a city that had been in slow decline for decades, crumbled.
Today, it does indeed resemble a town on the fringe of an atomic Holocaust. For some years, Harriet Saperstein tried to breathe some economic life into the place, through the non-profit economic growth organization she ran, HP Devco.
She tried and failed to get the Ford Motor Co. to help, but she told me back in 2004 that they had decided to put their philanthropic efforts elsewhere. They did, however, keep up the old administration building, the one that sits on Woodward Avenue with Pewabic tiles embedded at the top. The grass was kept mown, and whenever a window was broken, it was almost immediately replaced.
Sadly, as time went on, Highland Park’s ruin deepened. Harriet retired, and later HP Devco stopped filing any forms and had its non-profit status revoked by the IRS. There was a glimmer of hope in 2014; the Woodward Avenue Action Association bought the Ford Administration building; announced plans to turn it into both an industrial learning center and an interactive museum, possibly with holograms of old Henry Ford himself explaining the exhibits.
That was genuinely exciting. But nothing ever happened, and today the site just sits there, sadly decaying, crappy plywood covering vanished windows. Highland Park no longer has a high school. Its elementary school students sued the state because they weren’t even taught to read. They lost in the Michigan Court of Appeals.
Today, Highland Park, which had more than 50,000 people before the Great Depression, has barely 10,000. Its once magnificent McGregor Public Library is boarded up, books rotting inside.
But one man still believes. A.J. O’Neil was born in the city in 1962. Though he grew up mainly in Berkley, these days he not only hangs out in HP, he has a business there.
O’Neil founded Detroit Bold coffee a few years ago (“Awesome Style Coffee for Hardworking Humans” his business card says.) Now the business is starting to take off. He roasts and bags the beans in Highland Park, 75,000 pounds of ‘em so far this year.
“Yes, absolutely. Highland Park is coming back,” AJ told me over lunch at Red Hots Coney Island on Victor Street.
“It’s below the radar, but some young artists are starting to move here. Creative people.”
The non-descript eatery has a plastic Coca-Cola ad featuring Babe Ruth over the counter. They’ve been there since 1921, and they’ve survived, still owned by the original family, partly because they have — really — the best coneys in Michigan.
I’ve learned to pay attention to AJ, who once held the world’s longest Danny Boy singing contest, back when he operated AJ’s Café in suddenly fashionable Ferndale.
“My coffee wakes you up and keeps you up till you get the job done!” he told me. Sounds about right, I thought, for a drink designed to spark the rebirth of a battered industrial town.
Sure enough, Detroit Bold is what they serve at Red Hots, where Richard, the proprietor, has two pictures of himself on the wall, in an identical pose, sweeping the floor in 1967 and again in 2017.
Any other metropolitan area would long have helped Highland Park, and the birthplace of the assembly line would be a restored national landmark. But we haven’t.
Hamtramck, Detroit’s other little enclave city, is experiencing a renaissance of sorts, with young writers, artists and the richest ethnic mix anywhere. Greg Kowalski, the closest thing Hamtown has to an official historian, also pays close attention to HP.
“We in Hamtramck are always concerned about what happens in Highland Park. We truly hope for its revitalization. The city has a lot of strength and a good sense of community; it just needs to be fostered more. We wish them well.”
Kowalski told me that recently he, too, has seen some “promising signs of a rebirth,” in Highland Park.
They are, admittedly, hard to see.
But wouldn’t it be something if the little town, battered and left for dead, somehow showed them all?
***
Why McCain’s funeral was such a big deal: There was some puzzlement in liberal circles, and even more among those further left, as to all the mourning of the death of U.S. Sen. John McCain.
Wasn’t he, in fact, pretty much a conventionally conservative Republican? Didn’t he vote for the horrendous Trump tax cut bill slammed through Congress late last year? Didn’t he oppose abortion rights and vote against the Affordable Care Act?
Wasn’t McCain an enthusiastic supporter of every war we’ve had? Didn’t he pick a totally unqualified nitwit as his choice for vice-president ten years ago?
Well, yes. All that is true. But McCain was also a decent human being. He had flaws and made mistakes, but sometimes could admit them. He had friends in the Senate who were Democrats and liberals. Occasionally, he was on the side of the angels.
He crusaded in favor of putting limits on campaign spending, earning the wrath of many in his own party. He voted against Donald Trump’s attempt to repeal Obamacare without anything to replace it.
And he was, indeed, an authentic hero, even if he served in an unjust war — Vietnam — this country never should have gotten into. He was a career military man who had no choice, and spent five years being horribly tortured in prisons in Hanoi.
Had McCain ever become President, I am sure I would have disagreed with him on many policy issues. I am equally sure he would never have disgraced the office and this nation.
Today we have a presidency occupied by the most unworthy character ever to disgrace the place where Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Barack Obama lived and worked.
Our nation is headed by a draft-dodging slob who couldn’t care less about our laws, or the history and traditions of the Presidency.
This is a creature who actually said of McCain, “He’s not a war hero. I like people who weren’t captured.”
We owe John McCain one last thank you for not allowing that man to appear at this funeral.
When this finally ends, the White House will need fumigating. I just hope there is something strong enough to do the job.
