Detroit

Day 38. - 249 Miles

Yes... Detroit. But only because I feel the need to visit my childhood homesteads and see what they look like now. Talk about a development boom... but then I shouldn't have expected less, not after 40 years. (38 since I last visited, my High School Adventure.)

Somehow, reentering Michigan made me smile. I went to Grove Drive in Livonia and stopped at the first home I really have strong memories for. The neighborhood really is small, a really short road... it seemed so long when I was a kid. But no more fields, all sold and developed. And the road is paved, where when I lived there, it was oiled dirt and often swallowed cars into post-winter thaw sinkholes.

The house though is as I remember it. I took pictures and thought it would be nice to look out back, so I knocked on the door to ask for permission. 45 years since we lived here... but the people who answered were the very people who bought the house from my parents. They remembered his name... proof enough for me. Laffin, because Earl's memory flashed back and he thought for a moment I was my father... then realized my father had to be older than him.





Best of all, they invited me in and I got to see and get choked up within. My old room, everything. The finished basement, bar, even the old Hi-fi rig my father originally installed. I mean, we're talking pre-stereo here.







And the basement room where we played scrabble, monopoly, and of course, strip-poker. ;^D



Then on to Ronsdale Drive in Beverly Hills Village... but no one was home, and they had changed the house exterior considerably.



I decided I'd done enough remembering and found lodging for the night.

Total Miles: 10,492