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There is a small antique shop on the city's Southwest side whose comers-and-goers prove the old adage to be true: God does not make junk.
No one who comes inside is junk.
(Photo: Charlie LeDuff)
Joe Bozich, the 80-year-old proprietor of Junque Shop Antiques located on a decrepit stretch of Michigan Avenue near Central Street, can be found every weekday morning behind his workbench, just behind the coffee pot, tinkering with this or that. This is how it has gone nearly every weekday morning since he opened the shop 20 years ago after he retired from the Detroit Fire Department.
"It's where I hide from my wife," he says with all seriousness. "It works. We're happy."
Also to be found in the shop most mornings among the candlesticks and war relics and seashells and china cups and clocks-under-glass is Aloysius, the soft-spoken preacher, who has on occasion been mistaken for a department store mannequin with his fedora, wool trench coat and scarf. His only movements come when he slurps his coffee from a Styrofoam cup. There is also Scott, who talks mainly of his dog. And Billy, who says not much of anything. Wayne, the World War II buff, who talks of firearms, and Joe's nephews and partners, Jon Bozich and Jim Mandl.
But the more interesting and transient characters are the drug addicts and prostitutes who are welcome to enter and shake off the cold or the fog of the prior evening. They help themselves to the coffee pot and the muffins that Joe bakes from scratch every evening. Some wash from the pan of soapy water in the sink.
Respect and compassion
Also available to the street denizens – at no charge – are blankets, coats, toothbrushes, lipstick, rouge, bottled water, candy, potato chips, condoms and diapers.
"Yes, some prostitutes have children and it's sad," says Joe, inspecting a flimsy wrist chain through a jeweler's loupe. His hair is silver and swept back and thinning on the crown. He wears a clipped silver mustache to match, has blue eyes and a slightly bulbous nose.
With a few extra pounds and a beard, Joe Bozich would strike a similar figure to Santa Claus himself. In fact, the English translation of his last name from its Slovenian origin is "Christmas."
In the spirit of the holiday, it should be remembered that the witness to both Christ's death and resurrection was Mary Magdalene, who in the Western church's tradition is described as a prostitute.
And as such, small gestures to fellow humans are exchanged in Joe Christmas' junk shop.
Joe Bozich: "They're just kids who screwed up."
"They're somebody's daughter even if they're 50," he says, dismissing the chain as brass-plated schlock, and instead of buying it, gives it back to its raggedy owner along with two dollars and a muffin.
"Look, I'm an addict, a recovering alcoholic," Joe says. "I tell them only you can stop it. Not your mama.
"They'll kill you out here, and they do. I know a number of them. They're just kids who screwed up. There is no reason to treat them like dirt."
Joe Christmas began cooking the muffins two decades ago, when two young prostitutes walked into his shop. He recognized one, through the rouge and bruises, as the daughter of one of his friends from the fire department.
"Nobody's junk," he says. "Everybody is worth something, even if they don't know it. She's alive and clean now. It doesn't often work out that way. But that's something good."
A woman walks in, her arrival announced by the sleigh bells nailed to the door. She washes in the soapy water and pours herself a coffee. She is cold, she says, and Jon the nephew bags her a donated blanket.
She cries a torrent of tears as she describes how a man in a red truck the night before had robbed and raped her, choked her to the point of unconsciousness and threw her out, naked, in a cold and vacant lot.
'The worst thing'
"It's the worst thing that ever happened. I thought I was dead."
"You've got to get out of the life."
"I don't want to eat out of a garbage can," she weeps. "I'll leave it to God."
She leaves with her blanket and food, a warm cup of coffee.
"Thank you."
"You’re welcome."
The bells on the door tinkle, but no angel has earned its wings. Joe Christmas watches as the woman's dark figure reenters the wild world.
"A mere child," he sighs. "A mere child."
