Is it a Bird? Is it a Plane? Detroit III

"Is this a living history museum?" Dave, Jonny, and I asked ourselves as we wandered around Greenfield Village.  The Village contains recreations of buildings from different ages of American history, from a colonial cottage built in Sudbury MA in the 1600s, to a slave cabin from Maryland in the 1850s.  There are even a few European sites thrown in, such as a cottage built in the 1400s from the English Cotswolds.  There were also demonstrations of crafts, such as turn-of-the-20th-century pottery kilns, looms, and mills, and there were various forms of transportation, such as old-time steam railroads, Model T Fords, and horse-drawn trolleys.  There were costumed interpreters, but there was no common time period, as in most living history museums. It was a marvelous hodge-podge of whatever caught Henry Ford's fancy.  And of course there was a carousel, where we could feel the sheer joy of going round and round and up and down.

We expected to stay in Greenfield Village for just a few hours on Monday morning, May 21, but it was so full of walk-in wonders that we lingered on and on. We thought of Lisa's and Camille's families, and how much the kids would love wandering through the buildings and riding the railroad.

The first section of the Village included important buildings from Henry Ford's life.  We explored his boyhood farm home, moved to the Village from just four miles away, and the early Ford Motor Company building, filled with auto equipment and early Model Ts. 

We paused for a ride around the Village in a Model T.  Ours was one of four recreations, built for $250,000 apiece, to celebrate an important anniversary of Ford Motors.

Henry Ford's hero was Thomas Edison, who obtained literally thousands of patents for such things as the electric light bulb and the record player.  Edison and Ford vacationed together in Florida during the winters and became good friends.  Edison's statue now graces Greenfield Village and his New Jersey laboratory has been moved to the Village.  We watched docents show us how an early phonograph worked. 

The Wright Brothers' bicycle shop, where they invented the airplane, was another Village treasure.

We checked out the tintype shop, where we rested on the sofa used for families getting their photos taken during the 1800s.

We wandered past the Tennessee home of African Americans in the 1930s, insulated with newspaper and displaying a game of checkers played with a painted board and bottle caps.  And we paused to hear a skit by a household slave in 1840s Virginia, telling about preparing a party for her master and mistress, and about the furtive gatherings of slaves "by the river bank" in the evenings.  She led the children in the audience in a mock run away to freedom.

We felt right at home in the Sudbury colonial cottage from the 1600s, originally owned by the Plympton family.  We know all about Sudbury.  We were not so familiar with a windmill from 1700s Cape Cod.  Today's controversial wind farms off the Cape have a precedent.

We loved the Cotswolds, in southern England, and Henry Ford did, too.  The house Ford moved from Britain looked like the one Mr. Toad rode on his wild ride. 

Another interesting stop was the home of Noah Webster, creator of the dictionary.  He was a Yale professor who took a life-long delight in words.

We relaxed during a ride on a horse drawn bus, like ones moving about American towns and cities during the late 1800s. 

We imagined 19th century America at its most idyllic, as we visited a mill and its mill pond, full of ducks.

We reluctantly left Greenfield Village for our drive back to Chicago.  One last delight awaited us.  Jonny had told us, all weekend, about Kuma's burgers, the best in Chicago.  "But these are my people," he warned me.  "No cheesy photographs."  I humbly obeyed.  These photos of the "Mastodon," my choice of burger, are straight off Google.  I consider myself one of Jonny's "people", too, but I wasn't about to offend his other friends.

How the Other Half Lives--Detroit II

Sunday.  We spent the morning in Brookfield Hills, the exclusive suburb of Detroit where Mitt Romney was raised.  We spent the afternoon in downtown Detroit, eating lunch in a gritty sports bar, and then driving through a "blighted" neighborhood featured in a New York Times article about the financial struggles of Detroit.  We got a glimpse of how each half of the city lived.

Brookfield Hills is number four of the richest residential areas in America, outside California and the East Coast.  On our way to Church in the Bloomfield Hills Ward, we passed street after street of elegant homes, set deep in leafy landscaping.  The Detroit Temple and Bloomfield Hills Ward were on adjoining lots.  We didn't see any Romney-looking faces, but the natives were friendly. The Church services could have been in any prosperous LDS community, from Sammamish WA to Weston MA.   

After Church, we stopped by Cranbrook, the private school in Bloomfield Hills where Mitt Romney went to high school.  The school and nearby home were designed by Eric Saarinen, a prominent American architect.  Jonny pronounced the buildings and grounds the most beautiful of any university, let alone high school, that he had ever seen. The photos don't do them justice. We were too early to tour the Cranbrook house, an Arts and Crafts beauty from the early 1900s, but we wandered through the gardens, filled with classical statues and reflecting ponds, and past the outdoors Greek theater.

The school buildings were covered with ivy and centered around an obelisk and astronomical tower.  Jonny checked the school fees, which rivaled Ivy League college tuition.   Mitt's years at Cranbrook were very privileged.

Next stop was Detroit's Farmer's Market.  We lucked upon the annual flower market, which draws 20,000 or more patrons per day.  We met one woman who had hired two buses to bring her friends to the market from a town 100 miles away.  Flats of flowers were as cheap as $7 apiece, with gorgeous hanging baskets for $20.

Flower buyers were entertained by a jazz band, "Luther Badman Keith," and by a restaurant grilling great slabs of ribs and advertising Motown music. (Some of the best photos in this column, including the jazz muscians, were taken by Jonny.)

We arrived downtown just as a Detroit Tigers baseball game began, with fans dressed in black and orange, with big "D's" on their chests and hats.  We hung out at a sports bar across the street, which had the best hot dogs and fries in town, served Detroit-style, with chili, and in many other variations.  The restaurant was named The Bucharest Grill, and also served great Rumanian food.  I ordered the stuffed grape leaves and hummus.

We then checked out the Fox Theater, a historical landmark.  Unfortunately, our timing wasn't right for a tour of its old-fashioned, baroque interior.

We then went searching for blight, and found it downtown and in the suburbs.  Some apartment buildings were abandoned, with all their windows knocked out.  There were collapsing homes right next to sturdy ones, patrolled by dads mowing the lawn and kids riding bikes. The exterior of one vacant house had been decorated with dozens of dolls.  In the middle of a blighted neighborhood, there was a hopeful message painted on the side of a church.

We spent a couple of hours in the Detroit Art Institute, with its opulent collection, assembled when Detroit was full of car fortunes.  Mr. and Mrs. Edsel Ford, son and daughter-in-law of Henry, were major contributors.  One highlight was murals by Diego Rivera, the Mexican socialist painter.  His hero was "The Worker," and the murals featured factory workers, like those at the Ford plant.

The Detroit Art Institute was also full of treasures from many ages.  I loved a Renaissance Bellini virgin and child.  I also loved a modern painting using the same heroic style as a Delacroix painting of a soldier riding his horse into battle.  For the soldier, the painter substituted a young black male in levis!  And, I loved a neo-classical, marble statue of a young woman.

After that busy day, we all crashed.