December 22-26, 1971: Christmas in North Carolina
	October 30-31, 1971: A Visit to Muskegon
	Return to the Index for 1971

Once I'd gotten all settled in my new duty assignment, I began taking advantage of my proximity to my northern relatives and friends and making visits to Chicago, Muskegon, and now, this weekend, to Detroit, where my Uncle Bud and his wife Evelyn live.

The Trip Up to Uncle Bud's House in Detroit

Getting up to Detroit from Indianapolis was, like my recent trip to Muskegon, a trip I'd never made before; the route was fairly fast, but not a great deal of it was on Interstate highways- at least not until I got to northeast Indiana.

I got a very early start on Saturday morning, heading out around 5AM. By late morning, I was coming into the city of Detroit- up until now the second-largest city I have ever been in (the honor of "largest city" going to Chicago). My Uncle Bud had given me directions to get to his house in north Detroit.

It seemed to me as if Detroit was even busier on its freeways than was Chicago; perhaps this was true, given that Detroit, the "Motor City", is home to much of the American automobile industry. I came in from the west on I-94, and the highway (which I remember thinking was in need of some repair) got more and more congested.

By the time I got to the downtown interchange between I-94 and Woodward Avenue, traffic was moving slowly, even on a Saturday morning. I got off I-94 to get on Woodward Avenue, heading northwest.

M-1, commonly known as Woodward Avenue and familiarly as "Detroit's Main Street", runs from Detroit north-northwesterly to Pontiac. It is one of the five principal avenues of Detroit, along with Michigan, Grand River, Gratiot, and Jefferson avenues. These streets were platted in 1805 by Judge Augustus B. Woodward, namesake to Woodward Avenue.

Woodward Avenue is the dividing line between Detroit's East and West sides and connects to some of the city's major freeways like Interstate 94. Woodward Avenue exits Detroit at 8 Mile Road, which is also the boundary between Detroit and Ferndale, the suburb in which my uncle lives. The name Woodward Avenue has become synonymous with Detroit, cruising culture and the automotive industry.

Woodward Avenue was created after the Detroit Fire of 1805. The thoroughfare followed the route of the Saginaw Trail, an Indian trail that linked Detroit with Pontiac, Flint, and Saginaw. The Saginaw Trail connected to the Mackinaw Trail, which ran north to the Straits of Mackinac at the tip of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan.

After I crossed into Ferndale, I began seeing business signs with that name. My uncle told me that about a half mile after crossing 8-mile Road, I would find Cambourne Street, which offered a convenient way to cross both sides of the now-divided Woodward Avenue.

I took that street west to Livernois, at which point I turned North. Livernois ends at Oakridge Street, and my uncle's house was just on the north side of Oakridge and just to the left of the T-intersection of Livernois and Oakridge.

On the drive up, I was trying to recall the last time I had been here at my Uncle Bud's house. I knew that it had to have been on a family trip up to Muskegon at some point, and those trips tapered off in the mid-to-late 1950s after my grandmother had died. It was then that we started going to Florida fairly regularly in the summer.

So I figured that it had been at least a decade since I was here last. When I was, my Aunt Vy had still been alive, and I remembered her vividly. Since her death more than five years ago, my uncle Bud had remarried- to a very nice lady (by most accounts, although there were some family members who thought of her a bit less charitably) named Evelyn (all of my uncle's wives had both a "v" and "y" in their names).

I was able to recognize the house, which I had remembered was a simple, two-story brick house. I have put a current aerial view at right, although it is of course current to the 2020s. My uncle's house is still there, but if memory serves, it seems as if many of the other houses on his street have been replaced with larger affairs.

Uncle Bud

Aunt Evelyn

Uncle Bud and Aunt Evelyn were waiting for me when I arrived at lunchtime. This was the first time I'd met Evelyn, and I found her to be quite pleasant if a little "clingy" to my uncle, but he didn't seem to mind.

Uncle Bud

My father's brother is the best example I can think of the benefits that unions- at least those in the auto industry- brought to the workers in that industry. Bud spent a career at General Motors, actually building cars in the factory. He was able to raise a family, have this nice house in the burbs, take vacations, and, most importantly, retire with a pension.

Bud was actually able to retire a few years ahead of my Dad, even though my Dad was a few years older. He seems to be in quite good health for someone pushing 65, and I hope he is able to enjoy his retirement for a long time. Evelyn seems like the kind of woman who will take good care of him.

On Saturday afternoon, my uncle and I drove down to the center of Detroit. I wanted to take this opportunity visit my second foreign country (after South Korea)- Canada.

My uncle has lived in Detroit for a very long time, and he knew exactly how to get across the Detroit River that separates Detroit from Windsor, Canada, with minimal fuss at the "border". Actually, we didn't cross the river but we went under it through the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. Also known as the Detroit–Canada tunnel, it is the second-busiest crossing between the United States and Canada, the first being the Ambassador Bridge, which is just a half-mile downriver.

The Detroit–Windsor tunnel was built by the same firm that built the Holland Tunnel in New York City. The method used to construct the tunnel was "the immersed tube method", in which tunnel sections were floated into place and then sunk into a trench dug in the river bottom. The tunnel sections have three main levels. The bottom level brings in fresh air under pressure, which is forced into the mid level, where the traffic lanes are located. The ventilation systems forces vehicle exhaust into the third level, which is then vented at each end of the tunnel. Total cost of construction was about $50 million.

The tunnel is just under a mile long, and the two-lane roadway is an average of 75 feet below the river surface. The tunnel was completed in 1930 as just the third underwater vehicular tunnel in the United States, following the Holland Tunnel and the Posey Tube between Oakland and Alameda, California.

Uncle Bud directed me to a park on the Windsor side of the river where we got out and walked around. That's where I got the three pictures below. I thought it would be interesting to juxtapose the picture I took today of the skyline of Detroit with a picture from the time when this web page is actually being created- 2022. I found a number of pictures of the skyline; the one on the bottom, which was taken in 2017, came to me courtesy of the Detroit Historical society.

My Picture of the Detroit Skyline Seen From Windsor, Canada The Same View circa 2020

The circular building on the left was Cobo Arena, attached to Cobo Hall (the Detroit Convention Center), but as you can see the complex has changed a good deal. The largest development in downtown Detroit to have been constructed after my visit is the Renaissance Center, a project spearheaded by General Motors and, for a time, its headquarters. That five-skyscraper complex sits out of view to the right in both pictures.

The Center was not constructed until 1973, and so if I had been able to see anything, this being 1971, there likely would not have been any significant progress yet, maybe just land clearing. The building on the right side of the photo, that looks like a black square in my picture, is the Ford Auditorium, which was demolished in 2011.

As for the building in the center, I had to correspond with Mr. Bill Pringle from the Detroit Historical Society to get information about it, as I had a hard time locating it on Google Aerial view. Here is the information Mr. Pringle was kind enough to provide:

"Yes, that’s still here! That’s the Penobscot building. To the right of that, the orange-color building, is the Guardian Building. Those two are some of the best examples of Art Deco architecture in the city. The building in front of the Guardian Building is now called One Woodward Avenue, and was for a long time known as the MichiCon Building, designed by Minoru Yamasaki. Those three gems are still on our beautiful skyline. I’ve attached a more contemporary photo of the skyline from Windsor, taken 2017, to give you a comparison."

I also took two other pictures from the park on the Canadian side- one of the park itself and one of some shipping traffic in the Detroit River:

I also had some difficulty trying to place the park setting based on the Google aerial views available to me, and so when I corresponded with Mr. Pringle, I asked him about that location as well. Here was his reply:

"As for your second photo [of the park], I would guess this is taken from the Windsor side of the river, along their riverfront park. You can see the Ambassador Bridge to the west. I’ve also included a screenshot of Google Maps, where I’d suspect this to have been, circled in red. There appear to be sculptures on the lawn, and the Windsor riverfront still has a sculpture garden along the shore. The flags are interesting – on Google Maps there is a park called “International Gardens,” but it doesn’t appear the same today, if that’s the spot."

As you can see, marrying up views from 1970 and 2020 is not always easy. As I've said before, historical sites, famous buildings, monuments, and mega-structures are relatively easy, but to try to correlate dynamically-changing cities and other locations (like Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima, and even Honolulu earlier this year) can be a near-impossible task. My thanks to Mr. Pringle for his insights!

Catching up with Uncle Bud and Aunt Evelyn was a real pleasure; both were very interested in my Korea experiences and enjoyed the retelling. But on Sunday afternoon I had to head back down to Indianapolis. As I left, I took two final pictures (my last, as it would turn out) of Bud and Evelyn:

It was a nice drive back down to Fort Harrison, even though I did not get back to the apartment until midnight. On the way, I had some thoughts about Bud and Evelyn, and I wrote them down weeks later when I got my slides back and was writing the narrative for them. Here are those thoughts:

"Bud's first wife, Vy, was one of my good friends in the family; actually, she was a great friend to both Judy and myself, and we were both very sad when she died in 1965. There have been a lot of people in the family talking about Evelyn, and how she must have married my Uncle for his money and all that, but I found her to be a pleasant woman, and a good companion for my Uncle. I know that Bud loved Vy very, very much, and that no one will ever replace her, but that is no reason for Bud to be alone at a time in his life when he should be sharing activities with someone."

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	December 22-26, 1971: Christmas in North Carolina
	October 30-31, 1971: A Visit to Muskegon
	Return to the Index for 1971