 
Bigdiesel07
Member
Username: Bigdiesel07
Post Number: 7
Registered: 04-2008
| | Posted on Sunday, April 27, 2008 - 10:16 pm: |    |
Thank you Leoqueen, Sean_of_detroit, and Crumbled_pavement, and actually everybody who has posted in this thread... |
Jrvass
Member
Username: Jrvass
Post Number: 630
Registered: 01-2007
| | Posted on Sunday, April 27, 2008 - 11:19 pm: | |
My Brother from Chicago, Mother, and I went and visited an old family friend near Schaeffer Hwy. and McNichols today. Poor dear is all stiff at 93. She used to chop/pick cotton in 1922 at 7 in Arkansas. 300 lbs/day is a lot for a 7-yr-old.
And you thought you have it rough.
But that's not the purpose of my reply. I could've taken the freeways and mile roads to get to her house. I just took the most direct main roads... Woodward, Coolidge, Schaeffer, McNichols... to her house and back. To take the freeways (concrete canyons) would have been just as long time-wise, and probably more gas, definitely more miles.
Certainly not as relaxing or scenic. |
Jrvass
Member
Username: Jrvass
Post Number: 631
Registered: 01-2007
| | Posted on Sunday, April 27, 2008 - 11:29 pm: | |
IOW... if freeways piss you off, don't use them unless it's convenient for you.
Not as bad as a great fire, or an epidemic, or a riot, or having to pick 300 lbs of cotton a day at 7-yrs-old and being raised by your 14-yr-old sister. |
Bigdiesel07
Member
Username: Bigdiesel07
Post Number: 8
Registered: 04-2008
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 12:07 am: | |
Yeah... I hope she is doing alright Jrvass. |
Jrvass
Member
Username: Jrvass
Post Number: 632
Registered: 01-2007
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 12:35 am: | |
BD-07,
Evelyn or Willie? Willie is loved by all she meets. She is a sweetheart.
She still remembers me 45 years ago telling her to get in my toy car (I was 2-3). "Where you wanna go Willie?"
"Let's go get some ice cream!"
"OK! Let's go! {mrrrrr...}"
I think it is the worst times in Detroit that sometimes brings out the best in its citizens, FWIW. |
1st_sgt
Member
Username: 1st_sgt
Post Number: 152
Registered: 11-2006
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 9:04 am: | |
My Grandma told me about a heat wave in Detroit were people were dying left and right, and about a flu epidemic that killed thousands. I guess these would be low spots in our history. Anyone have information on these events? |
Gazhekwe
Member
Username: Gazhekwe
Post Number: 1985
Registered: 08-2007
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 9:11 am: | |
The flu epidemic was actually worldwide, the Spanish Flu, 1918. One of my grandmas was a visiting nurse in Detroit at the time. She worked so hard at that time she was just exhausted and fainted on the streetcar. People were afraid she had the flu, but fortunately, she did not.
Here is a Wikipedia link to the Spanish Flu story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S panish_flu |
1st_sgt
Member
Username: 1st_sgt
Post Number: 153
Registered: 11-2006
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 9:35 am: | |
How about the depression.
My Grandpa said he would walk miles and had to stand in line for hours to make enough money for food for his family for one day.
And that he walked from/to Butternut and Trumbull to a job at the Detroit Zoo daily working on a government work program. He walked to save bus / trolley fare and used the money for his lunch. (Later He was a guard at Burns for 30+ years and walk miles every night.)
I still have my GGrand fathers shoe repair tool box (They lived next to my grandpa on Butternut street.) with the metal foot, hammers, tacks, needles, twine and glue (The sticks of glue are hard as a rock and had to be melted and applied). They used it to keep their shoes repaired during the depression and WWII.
I can’t comprehend what they went through trying to survive. |
Umbound
Member
Username: Umbound
Post Number: 113
Registered: 02-2008
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 9:38 am: | |
There really is a list of stuff here you could put. but i would have to say when kwame got elected and re-elected. or the riots also. |
Bragaboutme
Member
Username: Bragaboutme
Post Number: 204
Registered: 02-2008
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 10:54 am: | |
Kwame is irrelevant Unbound, I also disagree with the riots as being the worst.
BigDeasel07 I think many have missed the point, the riots were the outcome of what was going on in the turbulent 60's, and for those of you who blame CAY, not only was he not the mayor at that time, he never had a hand in inciting the riots of 67'.
Like 67', and 43' those events were brought on by civil unrest from what some on here attested to of building freeways and plowing through well established neighborhoods, only to create deadends and permanent detours.
I want to here from people who were living in the city at those times, and describe the tragic events that led upto the riots of both years. Remember these riots lasted days, not months. So the years, months, and days that led to these events should be "The Worst moments in Detroit history", not the actual occurrance. |
Eriedearie
Member
Username: Eriedearie
Post Number: 1381
Registered: 08-2007
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 11:03 am: | |
Bragabountme - there is a HOF thread on the 67' riot. Plenty of recollections and pictures have been posted. Take a gander over there. |
Bragaboutme
Member
Username: Bragaboutme
Post Number: 205
Registered: 02-2008
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 11:24 am: | |
Eriedearie thanks, but that thread talks about the riot itself, and the after effects is what everyone remembers.
Riots and civil unrest don't occur out of the blue, it is caused by something that sparked that powder keg, ie. the infamous cup that was thrown at the pistons game, the verdict at the rodney king trial, the list goes on and on.
Big Deasel07 is IMO, trying to get at the root of these moments in our history so we won't be doomed to repeat them over(43') and over(67'). |
Detroitnerd
Member
Username: Detroitnerd
Post Number: 2227
Registered: 07-2004
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 11:44 am: | |
Edsel Ford actually opened in 1956, right?  |
Gazhekwe
Member
Username: Gazhekwe
Post Number: 1986
Registered: 08-2007
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 12:42 pm: | |
The Great Depression was at least nationwide if not worldwide.
Detroitnerd, before the freeway opened, property had to be acquired and cleared, and then the building of it took a couple years at least. The impact started several years earlier.
My grandparents home was torn down to build the Lodge. I remember staying on Leslie with them. Milk was delivered by a horsedrawn wagon, and we could feed the horse carrots. This was in the early 50s. The houses were large with big porches, and everyone sat on their porch on summer evenings. At the end of the block was a big iron fence and beyond that, Highland Park Hospital. I could stand at the fence and wave at my mom who was in the hospital after having my brother and two years later, my sister.
What is left of that neighborhood is just devastated. Whether it was the freeway, the urban renewal programs, the flight to suburbia, the loss of small businesses in the area, it all started happening before the 1967 riot.
These were the mayors during that period:
# January 3, 1950-September 12, 1957 Albert Cobo
# September 12, 1957-January 2, 1962 Louis Miriani
# January 2, 1962-January 6, 1970 Jerome Cavanagh |
Spacemonkey
Member
Username: Spacemonkey
Post Number: 468
Registered: 03-2006
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 12:54 pm: | |
"Our great depression is our lives ..." |
Evelyn
Member
Username: Evelyn
Post Number: 210
Registered: 02-2005
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 1:01 pm: | |
Ok, my highway history is fuzzy. I was under the impression that sections of the freeway, later renamed I-94, first opened in 1950. I don’t think it was officially named until 1956, when the federal highway act became law. And I can’t find my copy of “Detroit in Its World Setting: A Three Hundred Year Chronology,” which is a really hand reference for historical dates. |
Detroitnerd
Member
Username: Detroitnerd
Post Number: 2230
Registered: 07-2004
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 1:06 pm: | |
Actually, at least one section of what's now I-94 opened during World War II: The Industrial Freeway between Dearborn's Rouge Complex and Willow Run Bomber Plant. You still can tell the difference between the sections when you curve under Michigan Avenue. |
Evelyn
Member
Username: Evelyn
Post Number: 211
Registered: 02-2005
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 1:29 pm: | |
I might’ve been thinking about a certain part of it. I’m fairly certain that the Lodge/I-94 interchange opened between 1953 and ’54. I think this means I haven’t had enough coffee to really wake up. |
Detroitnerd
Member
Username: Detroitnerd
Post Number: 2233
Registered: 07-2004
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 1:32 pm: | |
I think the Davison, Lodge and Industrial expressways were the ones built before the Ike-signed Interstate Act. Maybe more. Certainly many more were put forward as ideas in the 1945 master plan. |
Gazhekwe
Member
Username: Gazhekwe
Post Number: 1987
Registered: 08-2007
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 1:44 pm: | |
The Lodge wasn't finished until the late 60s. |
Oldredfordette
Member
Username: Oldredfordette
Post Number: 4476
Registered: 02-2004
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 1:49 pm: | |
Evelyn, I agree with you. The freeway system destroyed established neighborhoods and isolated many others. Thus dividing us in more than race and philosophy, things we might have been able to work through if we weren't physically separated.
edited to fix garbled sentence. Damn this new keyboard!
(Message edited by oldredfordette on April 28, 2008) |
Detroitnerd
Member
Username: Detroitnerd
Post Number: 2236
Registered: 07-2004
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 1:50 pm: | |
EDITING FOR 1,000th time:
I think the Davison, Lodge and Industrial expressways were the ones BUILT OR BEGUN before the Ike-signed Interstate Act. Maybe more. Certainly many more were put forward as ideas in the 1945 master plan.
You happy, Gaz? |
Craig
Member
Username: Craig
Post Number: 754
Registered: 02-2007
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 2:12 pm: | |
Re: the freeways... I don't know if they were the worst thing to happen, but I do know that it pisses me off to drive the Reuther and see the big public spaces built on top of the ditch. No one thought to do that on the Ford & Jeffries, eh? |
Jt1
Member
Username: Jt1
Post Number: 11563
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 2:17 pm: | |
I believe that those public spaces were a compromise to move the project forward. If memory serves the freeway would have cut off a community from their place of worship. In order to move the project forward while avoiding additional fight from residents this was done to allow said residents access to their place of worship.
I could very well be wrong. |
Craig
Member
Username: Craig
Post Number: 755
Registered: 02-2007
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 2:20 pm: | |
Jt - I believe that you're right. My gripe is that enlightenment came too late to preserve neighborhoods elsewhere. |
Jt1
Member
Username: Jt1
Post Number: 11564
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 2:24 pm: | |
quote:Jt - I believe that you're right. My gripe is that enlightenment came too late to preserve neighborhoods elsewhere.
Couldn't agree with you more. The difference is that when 696 was being built people already understood the destruction that could/would follow freeway development through established neighborhoods. When the first freeways were being built they were probably seen as the wave of the future.
If all freeways were capped, even in strategic locations SE Michigan and Detroit would probably be vastly different. |
Gazhekwe
Member
Username: Gazhekwe
Post Number: 1988
Registered: 08-2007
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 2:56 pm: | |
We lived for a time on the Reuther route along Eleven Mile. When we bought our house, we were told the plans for that were held up more than 20 years due to community opposition. When we moved away several years later, we thought the same would continue, but they managed to get the final links just a couple years later, early 80s. The development of the green spaces was one thing that helped move the project along. |
Jrvass
Member
Username: Jrvass
Post Number: 634
Registered: 01-2007
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 5:22 pm: | |
Maybe Jjaba knows the history better, but the large green spaces were built to accommodate the Hasidic (sp?) Jewish population that lived on 1 side of 696 and worshiped on the other side.
I'm not sure about this... but I believe their teachings forbid them from anything other than walking to worship on their Sabbath (Jjaba?).
Those large parks over the freeway and the variable lighting underneath was not cheap. |
The_rock
Member
Username: The_rock
Post Number: 2295
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 7:54 pm: | |
The death of Albert Cobo. It's been down hill ever since. |
Bigdiesel07
Member
Username: Bigdiesel07
Post Number: 9
Registered: 04-2008
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 8:27 pm: | |
Why do you say that The_Rock?
And while the freeway's have split and divided the city up, and have helped the exodus of people leaving the city, in some ways the freeway's have had their merits.
Without them, the economic trade benefits we get from being so close to Windsor would be much lower. And yes, while we do have semi-trucks traverse through the city, they travel the city streets much less because of the freeway system. |
Detroitnerd
Member
Username: Detroitnerd
Post Number: 2242
Registered: 07-2004
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 8:28 pm: | |
DAMN "COBO CANALS!" |
Nedab3
Member
Username: Nedab3
Post Number: 106
Registered: 01-2004
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 9:01 pm: | |
I never called it anything but the Willow Run Expressway |
Trainman
Member
Username: Trainman
Post Number: 682
Registered: 04-2006
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 10:11 pm: | |
November 27, 2006 when the SMART buses left the city of Livonia.
All the city council members and the three state representatives present were all white.
Most of the bus riders were black.
The SMART 285 bus route served mostly low income and minority residents of Wayne County.
The exact same money that used to pay for the blacks is now paying for new freeways and the SEMCOG AA to downtown Detroit rail studies which will serve the very wealthy far out mostly white areas.
But yet, the vast majority of voters support the federal and state cuts to SMART in favor of increasing the Wayne County property tax which is the highest in the state and also the majority of us accept bus service reductions as a normal way of life and believe that we must pay more for less service at the local level as a given without a choice but to be compassionate for others.
Michigan needs strong mass transit leadership in Lansing with the courage to pay the full ten percent of the fuel tax to support existing mass transit and install competent management of SMART and DDOT. So, let's vote out those who supported the Livonia opt. out and those who refuse to mandate fuel tax money for SMART and DDOT.
Then next August 2010, when the SMART tax expires we will not have to accept more bus service reductions and poor service. |
Bigdiesel07
Member
Username: Bigdiesel07
Post Number: 10
Registered: 04-2008
| | Posted on Monday, May 05, 2008 - 1:23 pm: | |
I have never used the SMART bus or any other transit services, but I can see the need for it.
It is amazing that, on one hand, people will complain about the lack of mass public transit in metro Detroit, but when there is a bill or a proposed tax increase to cover the expenses of building such a system, people revert right back to their old selves by voting against such movements. Now how does that make sense? |
Jrvass
Member
Username: Jrvass
Post Number: 664
Registered: 01-2007
| | Posted on Monday, May 05, 2008 - 6:33 pm: | |
http://www.detroitgasprices.co m/index.aspx?s=Y&fuel=A&area=B irmingham&area=Bloomfield&area =Bloomfield+Hills&area=Clarkst on&area=Pontiac&area=Waterford &area=White+Lake+&station=All+ Stations&tme_limit=12&site=Det roit&srch=0&list=0 |
Retroit
Member
Username: Retroit
Post Number: 52
Registered: 04-2008
| | Posted on Monday, May 05, 2008 - 6:41 pm: | |
This is also good:
http://autos.msn.com/everyday/ gasstations.aspx? |
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