Michigan - Day 16 - Detroit

Camp Dearborn
Tuesday, 16 July 2019

As we were driving along the road out of the campground, we passed a very large bird in the grass on the hillside.  Large as in I thought at first it was a Great Blue Heron.  But at the 5 mph park speed limit, I had enough time to puzzle over why a heron would be feeding on a hillside instead of in water, which is where their food is.  And as I got closer I thought the body and the posture didn't seem right for a heron.  And then I noticed some red on its head.  Herons don't have red on their heads.  And suddenly I realized it must be a crane!  At the bottom of the hill I parked at the camp office and pulled out the bird book and, sure enough, a Sandhill Crane looks like that, with red on its head, and they're supposed to be in Michigan during mating season.

Sandhill Crane

Great Blue Heron

You can see how much they look alike, and the bird book even agrees they do.  But the crane's body is bigger and the feathers are more plumed out, and there's that red on the head.

I took the dogs out on a last walk before the drive and stopped at the entry booth and said to the young woman, "There's a Sandhill Crane up there on the hillside."  And she said, "Yes . . ." as if waiting for me to get to the point.  I told her I was just surprised because I always connect them with sand - which is in their name, after all.  She finally unbuttoned with the information that they come to the park every year, and the staff puts out bread for them to eat. 

the usual route map

close-up of Detroit route

The drive to Detroit
A car passed me with the personalized license plate of: 084 x 130.  There must be some significance to it - nobody pays for a special plate that's meaningless - but I can't figure it out.  Any ideas?

I'm seeing cattail marshes alongside the interstate.  Maybe when I get back down south my eyes will be newly opened and I'll see cattail marshes all over, but I don't remember ever seeing them until I started this trip up in Pennsylvania.

I heard a car horn today for the first time in Michigan, and it wasn't a car but a semi driver who was blowing at the car that suddenly cut right across in front of him and then kept going for 3 more lanes to get to an exit.  Complete idiot.  So dangerous to do that anyway, let alone in front of a tractor-trailer.  One of the things I learned when Momma and I made our trips to Florida and around Texas was that there's always another exit, you can always turn around if you miss the right place.  Of course, on this trip I've learned those turn-arounds aren't always particularly convenient, but they're a lot safer than what that idiot did.

I had several places on my must-see list in Detroit and several more on the if-there's-time list.  At the head of the must-see list was the Motown Museum

Motown Museum
We got there an hour early because they said tickets were on a first-come-first-served basis, and I wanted to be sure to get in.  It had the added advantage of us being able to park right out front, which was a good thing because the only parking for this place is on the street.  And there's a funeral home immediately next door so I'm sure at times there's competition for the parking spaces.

I used the time to walk the dogs around the neighborhood.  A block down the street in a little park I found this:

I have no idea who it's supposed to be in honor of.  There's no sign at all anywhere and I couldn't find anything online.  But the face is so definite that I'm sure it's not just a generic statue.

Universal Triumph, Dominion of God

In the street behind the museum I found this:

The sign says:
   Prophet Jones
   Universal Triumph
   The Dominion of God
   Church Inc. Thankful Center #1
   Dominion Ruler
   Rev. Lord James Shaffer
   Rev. Princess Maggie Shaffer

All of that was odd enough to me that I looked it up.  It was founded in the 1940s by James F. Jones, who considered himself a prophet and Divine Ruler in direct contact with God.  When he died in 1971, he was succeeded by this James Shaffer who appears (according to the sign) to still be running things - except he died in 2014.  Jones himself is so revered by church members that they consider him the second coming of Christ and the celebration of his birth takes the place of a Christmas celebration.  I'm not making this up.  Here's the Wikipedia link for those who want to know more.   en.wikipedia.org/Church_of_Universal_Triumph

Motown Museum

Back at the museum, I found a line was already forming on the front porch and I was afraid I wouldn't get in even though I was there first, so I dumped the dogs and went on up.

Many signs said absolutely no photos allowed, so I put my camera back in the RV, which was a mistake.  If you go, take your camera because they do let you take photos at very specific locations.  They say they're protecting their copyrights.

Our tour guide was very good at her job and I did the best I could to take notes.  What follows is my best stab at it, although I can't possibly capture the spirit.

The Motown sound and the recording studio were started and produced by Berry Gordy, who eventually bought this house and a string of others on the street to house the business.  Many of the original artists were folks who lived in the neighborhood.  Gordy's family required a $10/month contribution from each family member to the family "savings and loan," and that's where Gordy borrowed the $800 that first started the venture - the family insisted on seeing a business plan before they'd loan the money, which probably contributed to the success.

Gordy had once worked on the assembly line at the Ford Motor Co. and thought he could apply the same principles to producing hit music and promoting new artists.  He was right.  He was committed to helping the young artists reach their full potential.  He recruited Maxine Powell, an etiquette expert and talent agent, to teach the young artists grooming, manners, clothes styles and choreography.  Some of the kids couldn't read music, which made their success even more remarkable.

Gordy gathered together jazz musicians used to improv who took R&B and added strings and horns to create a new sound.  The music they were given often showed no time or beat - it was just notes and words - so they made up their own.  The studio back-up band was known as the Funk Brothers and eventually played on more #1 records than the Beatles, Elvis, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys combined.

In fact, the various Motown labels Berry Gordy incorporated collectively had 110 Top 10 hits in the 10 years after its 1961 founding, remarkable for any studio, let alone one set up like this one.

Those who got their start here and recorded their hits here include: The Temptations, The 4 Tops, (Little) Stevie Wonder (who was a little boy when he started hanging around the studio, Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, Mary Wells, The Marvellettes (whose "Please Mr. Postman" was Motown's first recording to reach #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop list in 1961), The Supremes, Gladys Knight and the Pips, The Jackson 5, The Contours ("Do You Love Me (Now That I Can Dance")).

They all recorded in the one (count it, one) studio - Studio A - that was in that house where the museum now is.  To prove it, they have photos of the Supremes who are obviously in that room recording - along with the entire orchestra that supplemented The Funk Brothers from time to time.  All crowded into one little room.

There's a Steinway there that was used for all rehearsals and recordings, now rarely played and only by very special guests.  For instance, when Sir Paul McCartney came by, they let him play it, and when he found out what terrible shape the piano was in, he paid to have it restored.  In fact, Motown music inspired The Beatles, and McCartney and Lennon once took a Motown record to their recording studio to demonstrate to the engineers that yes, they really did want to emphasize the bass sound more.

From time to time during our tour, the guide led us in a few songs which, of course, I knew all the words to, despite my poor memory.  I mean, don't you know all the words to "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and "My Girl"?  (Actually, I figure my memory doesn't function as well as it used to because it's stuffed full of  the lyrics of every popular song from the 1960s and quite a few from the '50s.)

Motown studio also recorded MLK's first "I have a dream" speech, given in Detroit 2 months before the famous March on Washington.  I hadn't heard about this either and I wasn't sure I believed our tour guide.  But you might want to check out this news article   www.udiscovermusic.com/great-march-to-freedom-martin-luther-king  which also helps give some clues to the basis for the Detroit riots a few years later.  The Wikipedia article on the episode also gives a lot of context to help understand the situation.   en.wikipedia.org/1967_Detroit_riot

The influence of Motown music went far beyond the pleasure we all got from it when we were growing up.  Oprah Winfrey has said that seeing The Supremes on TV as a girl inspired her because it was so unusual for young black women to be shown positively on TV.  The guards in a South African prison often played Motown music, and years later Nelson Mandela visited to say what an inspiration it had been for him to hear it, especially "What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye.  Quite a reach for an $800 investment.

Buddy's Pizza
There are lists online of foods that are special to each state.  One of them says that an essential dish to try in Michigan is a Detroit Pizza from Buddy's, so off I went.  And it's pretty dadgummed good pizza.

mural to liven up the parking lot

the entrance to this dive

thinking outside the box

The Detroit Pizza is your basic pepperoni pizza, but at Buddy's they put the pepperoni on top of the cheese instead of underneath it.  This allows the pepperoni to get crisp, which really improves the flavor.  And they don't shortchange the cheese, either.  It looks small, and I thought at first it'd be my lunch.  But it turned out to be so much food, it was lunch and dinner, too.  Seriously good pizza.

World's First Floating Zip Code
It really is.  This boat has its own zip code and is really and truly a branch of the US Postal Service.

The J.W. Westcott II (note USPS symbol on the side)

the land USPS branch

Here are a couple of links that explain a little of where it came from and what it does now.  www.jwwestcott.com/heritage  www.detroitnews.com/westcott-rescue

I tried to get in the office to ask some questions, but no one was in sight and, in true careful post office fashion, the door was locked.

The dogs and I went back down the road a short way and stopped to take a walk before driving back to the campground.  We got lucky - it started to rain just as we were getting back in the RV.

The drive back
Just as I was getting back on the highway, I saw across the road a large building labeled "Milita."  There really wasn't a 3rd "i".  I looked it up to see if it was an actual something and not just a misspelling of "militia" and found one other reference.  If you want, you can go to milita.org and find, as I did, that it's an "espacio digital para la accion politica."  "Espacio" means space in Spanish; the rest is self-explanatory.  Since I didn't stop to check it out, I guess I'll just go with possibility #2, a misspelling.  Odd, though, if their business has anything to do with the militia - like maybe munitions or other supplies - that they'd misspell it.

I passed a huge puffy building that looked like the Michelin man lying down and was labeled "St. Joe's Sports Dome."  I was driving at highway speed so couldn't take a photo of my own, and there's not an online photo without a copyright problem and even their website doesn't seem to have photos.  But if you just click the "images" tab under St Joe's Sports Dome you'll see plenty of them that I can't copy.

Tigers Stadium

I also passed the Tigers Stadium, a much more civilized organization that does have online photos, and here's one of them.

And back to our little home away from home.