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You know how family gatherings can trigger conversations about people and places from the past? That happened here this week..
A digital version of "remember when . . ." followed our Tuesday posting of a commentary by MSU sociologist Carl S. Taylor, who reflects on economic, social and safety changes since his childhood around Dexter Avenue and Webb Street on Detroit's west side.
"It was a beautiful school," a reader in her late 70s recalls of Caroline Crossman Elementary School," now vacant and decaying.
The 65-year-old professor describes his old neighborhood as "a new urban frontier," adding: "The area of Clairmount and Hamilton -- corner of my first school, Crossman Elementary -- seems like a ghost village. . . . My windowless school is stripped and hollowed-out, a symbol of the half-defunct Detroit Public Schools."
That reference coaxes memories from a reader in her late 70s, who posts a site comment under the screen name BoopsterGrams. Her evocative recollections describe a decidedly different era in Detroit, which had more than 1.6 million residents when she began attending the same school:
"Caroline Crossman Elementary was my school from 1941-1946. It was a beautiful school and I lived at 934 Clairmount. It was a great neighborhood with a Mom and Pop grocery, meat market, hardware store, bakery, five and dime, two drug stores with lunch counters and Gus's Confectionery on the corner for ice cream cones!
"We could catch a streetcar and go to Woodward and Clairmount and transfer to another streetcar and go to the Detroit Zoo, or go the the other way and go downtown Detroit. It was safe and I loved it!
"So sorry to see what has happened to this once beautiful city. We used to walk to the Fisher Building. My Dad was a rod buster and worked on that building when he was a very young man."
Rod busters are ironworkers who set reinforcing bars in concrete forms. The Fisher was built in 1927-28.
The vivid comment, relayed to Taylor, tickles nostalgic touchstones from his mind. Here's how he responds Friday:
"Your reader is so on target. I recall Buddy Bar-B-Q on the corner of Clairmount and 12th. Cunningham Drugstore, Cancellation Shoes on 12th, Janet's Children Store and a host of other small successful business. My brother Al and I went to Dr. Black, a dentist above Cunningham's.
"Yes, great bus ride down Clairmount and Woodward, where Horn's Record shop had a collection of great records of jazz, blues and Motown.
"A few folks wrote me and scolded me about living in the past. I smile, for memories are rooted in my harmony. Let the music play. Good food, good people, progress and civilization during the industrial era. Crossman was my beginning. That past defined my future."
Sometimes it doesn't take much to flip calendar pages back to the way we were during eras that are gone forever, and that define who we are now.
