...I’d Buy That For A Dollar.
Posted on 01/12/2014 11:07:45 AM PST by SeekAndFind
My first job out of college was working for a construction company in Detroit.
“We’re an all-black company and I need a clean-cut white boy,” my boss told me over drinks in a downtown bar when he hired me. “Customers in the suburbs don’t want to hire a black man.”
When a service call would come in, we would ask, “Does he sound white or black?” If it was the former, I would bid the job. If the latter, my boss would. Detroit is one of the most segregated metro areas in the nation, and for the first time I was getting what it felt like to be on the other side of that line. In contrast to the abstract verbal yoga students at the University of Michigan would perform when speaking about race, this was refreshing.
And terrifying. I couldn’t hide behind fancy words any longer.
I grew up in rural Michigan, 45 minutes away from any freeway. I’m the first male member of my family in three generations never to have worked in front of a lathe, and aside from one uncle, I’m the oldest with all of my fingers intact. The university had given me some grandiose ideas like “true solidarity with the oppressed,” and I figured “the oppressed” lived in Detroit, never mind the patrimony. I thought I was making a sacrifice. I thought moving here was staying home when everyone else was leaving the state. I thought I was going to change the world and had some vague notions of starting a school. I cringe at how naive I was. I first rented an apartment in the city, sight unseen, that didn’t have a kitchen sink, so I did my dishes in the bathtub.
Aside from bidding jobs, I spent my days like everyone else: sanding floors in cheap rentals for $8.50 an hour, which got me thinking: I could buy a house and fix it up myself. Not that I was sure how to go about buying, let alone renovating a house. It was just an inexplicit dream, some trick that would keep me from leaving like everyone else, make me a true Detroiter.
CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE REST ( AND WATCH THE PHOTOS OF THE HOUSE AND HIS NEIGHBORHOOD )
I’m strictly small town rural but I do know some people who have moved to Detroit in the last year or so and really like it.
My neighbor’s grandson was transferred from NY by Quicken loans and he really likes it. He says it was like tripling his pay. He bought a decent house at rock bottom prices and the empty lot on either side of it. He also says its nice being to drive an hour and go hunting, plus a SWAT team doesn’t show up if a neighbor sees his gun.
Great article. I especially liked his comments about the Occupy group that came to town.
As soon as the clean cut white boy came out of his mouth I would have been gone.
People should not be allowed to comment on an article they have not read.
Is open carry legal there?
Think of it as a Free City Project instead of a Free State Project.
interesting story, worth reading the whole thing...
LOL that would reduce the post count on FR by about 80%.
The only way this would work would be to buy a whole block and build a fortress.
Yea, I started at WKU in ‘79. Left in ‘84. Lived in Barnes Campbell, PF Tower, North, East, Sigma Chi house(s) and apts on Kenton, Center and 13th Avenue.
Worked at Howard’s Cycle Shop and at Rafferty’s when they first opened.
What I remember of it, it was a good time!
I was amazed at how different it was when I was through there a few years ago.
“The only other house nearby was a hideous cinderblock project house built by an architecture student from Cranbrook, the private school Mitt Romney attended as a teenager. It was abandoned, the frozen pipes burst from the cold.”
Typical socialist. Slam romney, an eeeevil ‘pub. $500 for the house is probably not correct. Back property taxes? Back utility bills, such as sewer and water? Last I heard, you had to pay those when buying a Deeeeeetroit house.
The incinerator, protested by “professional protestors”, operated under saint coleman young and the next liberal mayors and city council thugs. Story does not pass the smell test for me.
Open carry is state law which supersedes city ordinances. A couple of cities still try it but every last one has been slapped down by the state supreme court.
Really?...so...let me get this straight...the people who systematically ran detroit into the ground are still there because A)most of the voters can’t afford to move out, and B) the politicians they enabled are still in power and will continue to be in power unless marshall law is declared by the state governor. (not gonna happen) So exactly what is going to stop all of Obama’s people from looting your (or anyone’s) new valuable property? Goodwill?!!
or is that martial law? LOL
I was there off an on from '89 to '98, when I finally graduated. I went back a few years ago and the place had changed a lot since I'd been there last, so I could only imagine how much it's changed since your time there. Scottsville Rd. was still a pain in the a**, though, and 5th St. to the Bypass was still a sewer. I have some fond memories of BG, but I'll never go back except to visit.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
I knew a guy from Campbellsville, Jon Allen, that was in ROTC. He left Western in ‘88-’90 as a Second Lt. He also majored in Photojournalism.
Blonde hair, played the banjo, drove a blue VW Beetle, chewed way too much tobacco.
Used to play a game w/other ROTC guys by crawling across campus late at night trying not to be seen!
Any remembrance?
...I’d Buy That For A Dollar.
BTW from the trailers, the new Robocop movie looks like major suckage.
Sorry to hear that. The cast doesn’t sound too bad. But ultimately, yeah, they were going to have to be awesome to do better than the original. Someday, they’re going to learn that about recycling the old stuff in general.
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