It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,
Everywhere you go,
Take a look in the five-and-ten, glistening once again,
With candy canes and silver lanes aglow.

– Robert Meredith Willson

My favorite “five and ten” was Woolworth’s. It, like so many familiar places Downriver, used to transform at this time of year into a Christmas wonderland. Cotton snow trimmed the display cases, sometimes accented with sparkly silver dust that clung to our wool mittens much better than it did to the cotton snow. Woolworth’s was where Mom and Dad bought our Christmas staples – spare colored bulbs, replacement bubble lights, and pounds and pounds of lead tinsel to hang on our Christmas tree. It’s amazing that our generation ever amounted to anything, considering the amount of lead we must have absorbed through our fingertips each Yuletide season.

While the transformation of Woolworth’s was dramatic; it was the transformation of the most unlikely places that I remember – and miss – the most.

The National Supermarket was, most of the year, my least favorite destination. After Thanksgiving, however, my pals and I begged to go along with our parents on grocery shopping trips. We wandered along the dairy and frozen food cases, with our necks stretched and contorted as we stared upward in awe at the array of toys by long-gone American toymakers like Deluxe, Topper and Ideal displayed high above us on the supermarket top shelves. Jimmy Jets, Playmobiles, Battlewagons and Secret Sam Spy Cases topped our Christmas lists.

Even Clay’s Sinclair Station reflected a little North Pole décor with its evergreen rope hung in the windows and wound around the sign pole out front, accented by red bows and berries. And, in addition to S&H Green Stamps, Dad used to get a free Christmas ornament with every fill-up between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. I remember driving home, cradling one of those little glass treasures in my palms and thinking such a beautiful piece of artistry must have come directly from Santa’s workshop.

Woolworth’s is a retail history footnote, the only toys in supermarkets now are related to gourmet cooking, and “Holiday Countdown” instant lottery tickets are the most festive item we’ll find at our local gas stations.

A lot has changed about Christmastime Downriver since those magical seasons of our childhoods. But some things – the really important ones – maybe not so much as it seems.

My family and I will be bringing down Christmas decorations from the attic soon, and I know that at the very bottom of a boxed marked “ornaments,” wrapped in tissue paper and an old yellowed sheet of newspaper, is a small, faded glass ornament that I held in my hands on a drive home from Clay’s more than 50 years ago. It long ago lost all its sparkles and its shine, but when I hang it on my tree, it’ll be looking a lot like Christmas – in my home and in my heart.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Fill ‘er Up – with Memories

I stopped at a local gas station last Saturday morning with my two daughters – the oldest driving, thanks to her newly-issued permit. She slipped from behind the wheel and headed into the gas station/convenience store with her sister – the same one we’ve been going to since they were both in car seats – in search of their usual gas station fare; a bottle of pop, a snack, and maybe a pack of gum for later.

As I watched them go in, and began pumping gas, my memories carried me up the road several miles and back in time several decades – to Clay’s Sinclair Station.

Clay ran the place with his “boys,” and it was a regular stop for my dad and me at least a couple of times a week. I don’t remember Clay’s last name. Don’t know that I ever knew it, really – same for the names of his “boys.” There were two of them, and teamed with their dad, they were like a pit crew to every neighborhood car that stopped to gas-up. That’s what dad always called it. We never “stopped for gas,” or “went to get gas,” we always stopped to “gas-up.”

Before the engine of dad’s ’55 Chevy sputtered to a full stop, one of the boys always had the hood up to check the oil and water; and the other set the pump and washed the windshield. Clay’s job was, my dad always said, to “… chew the fat with the paying customers.” In the few minutes it took the boys to tend to the Chevy, he and dad caught up with all the local sports, shared stories about working for a living, and managed a couple of comments each about “the old ball-and-chain.”

Clay’s wasn’t a place to get snacks or gum; although there was an old Coke machine out front that dispensed those little 7 ounce bottles of pop for a nickel – but only part of the year, because in the winter it was unplugged and emptied, so the pop wouldn’t freeze. And, now that I think about it, you could get gum – but it was from a penny gumball machine put there by the local Rotary Club.

Clay’s was the place you went for gas, oil, and “good used tires,” and “reliable batteries” – as the sign in the window promised. And there were some bonuses, too – S&H Green Stamps and, once in a while, “special edition drinking glasses” – one free with each fill-up of 10 gallons or more.

I was snapped back to the present by the “thunk” of the gas pump stopping and by the voices of my daughters – they brought me a Diet Mountain Dew – urging me to hurry up, so we could get going to where ever it was that was so urgent for them to get that morning.

I hung the nozzle back on the pump, screwed on the gas cap, took the receipt from the slot, and made my way around my car – to the passenger door – as my daughter started the engine.

While it sometimes seems that things have changed so much, it’s really not the case, you know? Clay’s Sinclair Station, and everything about it, may be just a memory from my childhood; but I realized that I was doing exactly what my dad and I did on all those Saturday mornings Downriver for so many years – making little everyday memories that will last a lifetime.

Remember when 'Trick or Treat' MEANT 'Trick or Treat'?

Halloween isn’t a big deal to my kids. Halloween parties are. Each of my daughters is going to two parties, and they’re hosting one jointly at home.

Heck, back when we were growing up Downriver, in the ‘60s, Halloween WAS a party! A one-night street party that stretched for blocks in every direction – just for us kids. We ruled that night – one of the few we were allowed out past the full illumination of the street lights – dashing from one front door to another, shouting “Trick or Treat!” while trembling adults with bowls of sweets huddled behind closed doors, ready to offer us treats as tribute to escape our dreaded trickery!

Ahhh … and there was trickery for those who failed to provide us treats. Awful, sometimes unimaginable horrors … soap (yes, I said soap!) on screen doors, overturned trash cans – their contents spilled like entrails, and, in the most horrid of cases, eggs on aluminum siding!

Yes, devils we were, when our sugar hunger was not fed!

My kids and their friends make a short, token outing on Halloween night. I guess it’s all they can manage after two nights of partying. They lethargically wander from door to door and they knock – yes, knock – or worse, they ring a doorbell, and only when someone appears at the door do they offer a feeble, half-mumbled “trick or treat” – knowing full well that they’re getting a treat, and the adult at the door knowing full well that the kids are standing there without a single trick up their sleeves to back up their unconvincing ultimatum.

So, friends, when lethargic trick-or-treaters like my kids and their friends show up at your door on Sunday night, toss them a treat; but when you do, remember what it was like for us all those years ago … adrenaline driving us from door to door through the darkness in our Ben Cooper costumes, sweat collecting under our plastic masks, and treat yourself to a few Kit Kat bars.

And, before your sugar buzz subsides, run outside under the cover of darkness and soap that cranky neighbor’s screen door!

Tramps Like Us, Baby We Were Born to … WHAT?!

Dion and the Belmonts convinced the guys and me that we could grow up to be "Wanderers."

When the guys and I were growing up Downriver back in the 1960s, none of us really had to think about what we were going to do when we grew up. Well, that’s not completely true. Some of us thought about being the next Bart Starr or Rocky Colavito, and one of us thought about being the next Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, but that was dream stuff. Year after year, what we were going to actually do was vaguely shaped by our favorite singers, at each stage of our lives.

As kids, Dion encouraged us to be Wanderers. Hey, what 12 year old guy couldn’t identify with a lifestyle that would let him “… roam from town to town, goin’ through life without a care … with my two fists of iron, and I’m goin’ nowhere …”

Yeah! We wanted to be Wanderers and roam around, around, around, around … 

Then, as teens, Bob Seger convinced us that we could be a “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” and his lyrics sounded like they were written with us guys in mind. “Ain’t good lookin’, but ya’ know I ain’t shy, ain’t afraid to look a girl in the eye …”

Well, maybe we couldn’t actually look a girl directly in the eye, but they knew we were lookin’ at ‘em! And it was the chorus that summed up the life we were going to lead anyway, “… Then I got to ramble, ramblin’ man; Lord I got to gamble, gamblin’ man …” 

As young men, just beginning to find our place in the world, Bruce Springsteen provided our theme song and the soundtrack to our restless years when he sang, “… Baby this town rips the bones from your back, it’s a death trap, a suicide rap … we gotta’ get out while we’re young, ‘cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run!”

Turns out, most of us really were born to run. Born to run a stamping press, or a hi-lo, or a cash register, or even a laptop computer; right in that town that threaten to “… rip the bones” from our collective backs. We also were born to give bike riding lessons and help with homework, and say “you’re right dear,” to our spouses – even when we have no idea what we’re wrong about. 

So where are Dion and Bob and Bruce now? I guess there’s no commercial appeal for songs about what we’ve actually become! Well, Neven, Joe, Fred, Larry, Mark – all the would-be Wanderers, Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Men – all the Downriver tramps like us – here’s at least one verse we can call our own …

"Baby this life rips the pay from our grasp,
It’s a debt trap, a suicide lap
We gotta’ hang on as long as we can,
‘Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to … pay the mortgage!"

(Take Me) Back to School!

I wish I was going back to school.

My kids are facing their return to school this week with the same mix of excitement and dread that my friends and I did each September, when we returned to St. Cyprian School in the early 1960s.

I can still relate to the excitement, but after decades in the working world, I look back now and see how misplaced the dread was then – and is now for my kids. St Cyprian, like all the schools Downriver, was full of caring people (in our case, mostly Sisters of the IHM Order) who dedicated their lives to making certain we were successful – in school, and later in life.

My kids – all our kids – are returning to that same sort of environment today. And they’re surrounded by good friends who will share with them the challenges of conquering math and completing homework assignments.

Back in the fall of 1964, I knew that Joe and Neven, Larry, Mark, Johnny, Eric and all the guys had my back in Arithmetic, in Science class, in Religion class and on the playground. It didn’t stay that way in the decades ahead, when we all grew up and many of us went our separate ways. At work, co-workers will abandon you in a heartbeat to save their own positions.

Study hard, finish your work, and get good grades. That was the simple equation for success at St. Cyprian. In the working world, we all learned it’s work hard, do your best, and get laid off because the PAT isn’t sufficient to satisfy the Board of Directors and the shareholders.

Back to school this week? I’d love to be there! Back to work tomorrow? I feel a stomach ache coming on …

When Did Summer Reading Get So BORING?!

My summer reading is boring! Has been for years, unfortunately.

Titles like "The World is Flat," "Who Moved My Cheese?," and "First Break All The Rules," as well as the latest corporate IT process manuals and HR policy documents, have made up my summer reading list - recommended by senior management, of course - for most of my adult life.

It wasn't always like that, though. Not back in the early 1960s, when my summer reading list was made up of titles from the Riverview Memorial Elementary School Library summer program. The library was just a few blocks walk from my house on Hinton and I was a daily visitor.

I'd like to say that was where I first discovered classics by Faulkner, Hemingway and Henry. But that would be a lie.

My taste ran to titles almost nobody heard of, and probably fewer remember - "Big Mutt," by John H. Reese, and "Utah Lion," by James Ralph Johnson; as well as any "Hardy Boys" adventure, and all six "Power Boys" adventures (bet you don't remember those brothers!).

Summer reading was fun back then. Every cover I opened led me on a new adventure, and every page fueled my imagination. I devoured summer books with the same appetite - and almost the same speed - as Popsicles from the Good Humor man; sometimes getting literary "brain freeze" from the excitement.

I miss that. Somehow all this "meaningful" summer reading I've been doing is, ultimately, meaningless. Enough!

Today, I'm dusting off my copy of "The Call of the Wild," grabbing a Popsicle from the freezer, and heading to the back porch for some good, old-fashioned summer fun!

Cruisin' Down(river) Memory Lane

Thank you, Chris Matthews!
After reading my Cruisin' Downriver blog, and learning I was disappointed at not seeing a '55 Chevy in the hours I was at the Cruise on Fort St., Chris Matthews kindly sent me some photos of her husband Barry's classic Chevys - including the one above with Barry and her seated in it. Thanks Chris and Barry, for making my cruise season complete and for sharing your memories with me - and now with all our Downriver friends!

Fort St. could have been renamed “Memory Lane” on Saturday, June 26 when thousands of cruisers, and thousands more spectators gathered along miles of Fort St. to watch, and be a part of the 11^th annual “Cruisin’ Downriver.”

I watched from the corner of Longsdorf and Fort, just a few blocks from the house I grew up in on Hinton, standing in front of what used to be Mike’s Barber Shop and across Longsdorf from the bank parking lot where I learned to ride a two-wheeler nearly 50 years ago.

Hundreds of classic cars, bumper to bumper at times, cruised along Fort St. We had a different term for those cars back in late ‘50s and early ‘60s … they were called “traffic.” Today, when they gather, it’s more than just a celebration of “Detroit Iron,” it’s a celebration of a past era, and the people we all were back then.

I watched intently for a 1955 Chevy Bel Air. Any color, but cream-over-turquoise would have been ideal. That’s what my dad, Joe Saad, drove for a good part of my early childhood.

It was the car that we all went to St. Cyprian Church in every Sunday. It was the car that dad and mom drove every week to the National Supermarket. It was the car we sat in at the old Fort George Drive-In, and it was the car we’d take to Bob Jo’s Frozen Custard for a cool treat on hot summer nights.

It was on that car that dad taught me how to do an oil change and set a gap on a spark plug. And it was the first car I ever drove – on a gravel back road, long before I was actually old enough to drive. That little foray into the country was preceded by words of caution from dad, “Now, your mother doesn’t need to know about this …”

As I stood there at the curb on Fort St. last Saturday, I saw ’57 Chevys, I saw ’59 Plymouths, I saw Mustangs from almost every year – same with Corvettes, and I even saw a ’56 Chevy, cream-over-red, but not a single ’55 Chevy.

That’s OK, though, because for a few hours that afternoon, I was back there where it all happened for me, and for so many others, nearly 50 years ago. I realized that Crusin’ Downriver is as much about what the cars meant to us, as it is about the cars themselves. And as much – maybe even more – about the people that we rode in those cars with and the milestones in our lives that we passed sitting in those old bench seats.

A Legend Who Taught Us Many Lessons

His voice could smooth the static on my little green RCA transistor radio.

Ernie Harwell sat down at the Detroit Tigers’ microphone just about the time I got interested in baseball. The guys and I used to listen to his calls of Tigers games on hot summer afternoons while we were playing pick-up games at the dusty sandlot near Memorial School, in Riverview.

I’d often fall asleep to his voice on summer nights, with my radio tucked under my pillow when, as Ernie used to say, the Tigers were “… on a west coast swing …”

While we all dreamed of being Al Kaline or Norm Cash, or Mickey Lolich, a couple of us – my friend Jeff and me – used to dream of being Ernie. With our little reel-to-reel tape recorders, we’d sit in my garage and “broadcast” imaginary games, complete with sound effects that we’d provide for each other.

We’d play the tapes back and convince ourselves that, despite our cracking adolescent voices – and our flat Midwest accents – we sounded “just like Ernie.”

To us, as kids, Ernie Harwell was more than the voice of the Detroit Tigers. He was an inspiration. Not just as a broadcaster, but as a human being. It was through Ernie that we first heard about Baseball Chapel and learned that many ballplayers had faith lives too. We saw him live a life of humility and service, putting his fame and his status as a celebrity to work for the betterment of the communities in which his listeners lived.

While for now, we’re saddened at his death; we all can – and should – take comfort in the fact that we, for so long, were blessed to have had “…the voice of Ernie Harwell heard in our land.”

I think I'm immune to Spring Fever!

I'm not feeling it.

Spring officially arrived nearly two weeks ago, but I'm not feeling any symptoms of spring fever - haven't for years. I've come down with some serious cases of playoff fever while following the Red Wings, the Pistons and even the Tigers in recent years. I've certainly suffered through annual cases of cabin fever during our long, gray winters. I even caught a brief, mild case of boogie fever a couple of years ago, when I dug out and played an old Bee Gees album.

We all take precautions to avoid catching the flu, but spring fever is something that everyone wants to catch and I, somehow, sometime, seem to have developed an immunity to it! And I'm more than a little concerned. Listening to the first Tiger exhibition broadcasts from Lakeland on my RCA transistor radio used to bring it on. Brown grass peaking out from under the melting blankets of snow on the lawns on Hinton used to bring it on. Sunny mornings walking to St. Cyprian School used to bring it on. Lots of things used to give me spring fever ...

• Buds on the trees in Memorial Park
• "Open Soon" on the marquee of the Fort George Drive-In
• The plywood being removed from the windows of Bob Jo's
• The slightly rusty chain (from spending a damp winter unused in the garage) of my Evans bike
• Radio advertisements for Boblo Island
• Newspaper ads for Keds and Red Ball Jets
• My first glass of grape Kool-Aid of the season

I still enjoy spring. I sure look forward to it. But I don't embrace it, and it doesn't embrace me, not the way it did back in 1963; when I laced up my Red Ball Jets, gulped a glass of grape Kool-Aid and hopped on my bike (with its freshly oiled chain) to meet the guys at Memorial Park.

What about you? What gave you spring fever when we were growing up Downriver? Do you still get spring fever? If you do, what triggers your symptoms now?

Send me your Downriver spring fever memories, or post some here. Let's start an epidemic of seasonal smiles and optimism. It sure beats hay fever, which - unfortunately - I still get!

THIS is all I’m going to be when I grow up?!

From left: Gordon Cooper, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, John Glenn, "Deke" Slayton and Scott Carpenter. Photo credit: NASA

With another birthday rapidly approaching, I have to admit to myself that I’m never going to be an astronaut. Heck, I’m never gonna’ even make it into space.

Growing up Downriver in the 1960s, the heroes of the boys in my neighborhood were named Shepard and Grissom, Glenn and Slayton, Cooper, Shirra and Carpenter. The original “Mercury 7” astronauts were mid-20th Century American swashbucklers who rocketed into the darkness of outer space, chasing adventure and pursuing the unknown. And they inspired us in ways that Mantle, Maris and Starr just couldn’t.

We didn’t want to simply be like those guys, we wanted to be those guys. Because we were afraid that by the time we grew up, being an astronaut would be different. It might even be just a job, like our dads had!

And we couldn’t imagine anything more boring than ending up like our dads. They just, well, went to work every day – at places like PEP Lines Trucking, or Wyandotte Chemical, or the Riverview DPW.

So, every cardboard box rocket ship we “built” became our way to blast out of the old neighborhood and into the excitement, adventure, and the unknown of what lay ahead for us as adults.

I thought about those days earlier this week, as I made my way downstairs in the early Monday morning darkness of inner space (home), with my family still asleep. I was getting ready to go, you guessed it, to work, and I thought, “… is this really all I’m going to be when I grow up?!”

By the time the coffee was brewed, and I was ready to leave, the rest of the family was up and getting ready for their day – the kids for school, my wife for the office of the small business she owns.

As I drove (not rocketed) off into the morning darkness, I looked back at the lights glowing in the house and thought about my dad, all those Downriver mornings, disappearing into the same darkness … before we were awake … to go to work … to make sure we had everything we needed.

I understand now that the real heroes of my old neighborhood, so many years ago, were actually the guys named Joe and Vic, Ray and Jay, Tom, Bill, and Henry – our dads. And you know what? One of those guys is a pretty good thing to be when you grow up!