Allen Park's Uniroyal Giant Tire--Fifty-Nine Years Old--Heralds Entrance into The Motor City

The original U.S. Royal Tire exhibit was a Ferris wheel attraction at the New York World's Fair of 1964/1965, held in Flushing Meadows Corona Park in the borough of Queens. The fair was open for two six-month seasons. In 1964, it was open from April 22th until October 18th, and in 1965, the dates were April 21st until October 17th.

The history of the U.S. Royal Giant Tire is pretty straightforward. Originally rigged as a Ferris wheel and powered by a 100 HP engine, it was over eighty feet high. It carried close to 2,000,000 people at the World's Fair, many of them famous world figures. There were twenty-four barrel shaped gondolas, each carrying up to four people for a total of ninety-six passengers paying a quarter apiece. 

At the fair's end, the tire was disassembled and shipped in twenty-one truck loads to Detroit and reassembled as a static display outside the Uniroyal sales offices in Allen Park, Michigan. It is one of the world's largest roadside attractions. The Uniroyal office has since moved, but the Giant Tire still stands.

The tire is not made of rubber, but sightseers don't notice the difference whizzing past the landmark at seventy miles an hour on Interstate 94. The tire weighs just under twelve tons and is anchored in twenty-four feet of concrete and structural steel. It is rated to withstand hurricane force winds.

When the Michelin Tire Company bought out Uniroyal and Goodrich in 1990, they renovated the landmark in 1994 with a fresh coat of paint, a modern looking hubcap, and neon lights for the Uniroyal lettering. Four years later in 1998, the Giant Tire was modified again to resemble a "Nail Guard" tire. An eleven foot long, 250 pound nail (world's largest) was sticking out from the tire to promote their new puncture proof product. The nail was put up for auction on eBay in 2003 and sold for $3,000, with proceeds donated to the Allen Park Historical Museum.

In 2003, the Giant Tire was once again renovated as part of the I-94 corridor revitalization. The neon lettering was replaced with reflective lettering and spotlighting. It has remained a Detroit landmark and an Allen Park roadside attraction for fifty-three-years heralding the entrance into the Motor City from Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus, Michigan.

It has been noted that the one thing the Beatles wanted to see on their American tour was the Giant Tire. Whether they stopped along the freeway to take a good look at it on their way into Detroit from Metro Airport isn't known, but when Paul McCartney and Wings were touring in 1976, the moment was commemorated.

http://www.freep.com/article/20120312/COL14/203120336/Mark-Phelan-You-ve-seen-the-Giant-Tire-now-see-inside-of-it

For more detailed information on the Detroit's Big Wheel, consult The Giant Tire by Steve J. Frey: http://www.gianttire.info/?fbclid=IwAR2HT6p9Cva5dHSNZl-Ff0dRj053V6Eu--R5FuZtyauH3alhNuDMtladjkM

Allen Park Wrestler Lou Klein and Protege Heather Feather

Lou Klein

Allen Park, Michigan resident Lou Klein began his pro-wrestling career in 1941 after dominating the Michigan amateur ranks and earning four national titles. In the beginning of his pro-career, Klein donned a mask and wrestled as the Green Hornet so he could earn a living while protecting his amateur standing. For a time, he wrestled with Red Bastien in a tag team, but most of his career he worked as a single performer known to be a "scientific" wrestler. Early on, Klein's tag line was "The Atomic Blond from Detroit" and later in his career "The Man of a Thousand Holds." His signature finish moves were the Boston Crab and the Atomic Drop.

After thirty-six years of competing in the squared circle, Klein retired on July 9, 1977. Later in his career, Klein was known as a developer and promoter of new talent which he would manage into the professional ranks. In addition to teaching wrestling holds, and counter holds, he prepared new-comers for the professional ranks and pro-wrestling's code of Kayfabe--the representation of a staged event as genuine and authentic.

Kayfabe required wrestlers to stay in character in the ring and in public and not give away trade secrets. Kayfabe can be considered a verbal non-disclosure agreement. This three-syllable word is a Pig Latin carny term for "Be Fake" spelled backwards. If anyone came backstage who wasn't in the business for example, security or someone else would shout out "Kayfabe!" and the alert would travel through the ranks. Then, the wrestlers would put on their game faces for the press or whomever the interloper was.

In addition to his gym and wrestling school, Klein owned the local Tastee Freeze on Allen Road. Occasionally in the summer, Klein would set up a ring outside next to his gym or ice cream shop and let the kids play on it. Klein and some of his wrestling cohorts would teach the guys some grappling moves. My Allen Park High School friends Mick Osman and Earl Rennie made pocket money helping set up the ring for local promotions. Jack Ulrich remembers setting up and breaking down rings for Klein in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

Heather Feather

One of Lou Klein's proteges was Allen Park resident Peggy Jones. He first met Peggy when she was working the counter at the Thunderbowl bowling alley. At 5' 10" and weighing over 300#, Peggy always stood out from the crowd at North Junior High and suffered more than her share of verbal abuse and body shaming. Klein approached her about coming to the gym and begin training for a possible new career.

She did and four months later, Klein--acting as Peggy's manager--introduced her to Big Time Wrestling promoter Eddie (The Sheik) Farhat. What Peggy lacked in speed and wrestling prowess, she made up in bulk and strength. But there were two things Peggy needed to go pro--a gimmick and a stage name.

For a gimmick, Farhat had Peggy primarily wrestle men as a parody of feminism and the growing woman's equal rights movement of the 1970s. For a stage name, Farhat came up with Heather Feather. She wrestled throughout the Midwest, but Detroit was her home base. Feather would hang ringside during a bout and taunt the male wrestlers trying to shame them into a match. Then in an unscheduled ringside interview with the announcer, she would amplify her challenge making the men look weak and cowardly. The crowd loved it. Heather Feather was the first woman to wrestle and pin a man and soon became a fan favorite.

The Fabulous Moola and her crew.

Her debut match was an eight-woman Battle Royale in Detroit at Cobo Hall. Several of the lady wrestlers with great effort threw the newcomer into the front row seats. Heather Feather was the first woman eliminated that night. Peggy was black and blue for her pains, but she was $200 richer. Her tenure lasted five years from 1973 until 1978. 

Toward the end of her career, Feather wrestled an eight-foot-tall bear in an interspecies match. Victor, the bear, was found as an orphan cub and rescued. Pro-wrestler Tuffy Truesdell purchased the bear and trained him to wrestle humans. Victor wore a muzzle and was declawed. Truesdell and Victor toured the wrestling circuit as a novelty act. The bear was undefeated by over 100 men but could only get a draw against Feather. Once again, she bested the men but left the bear's undefeated record intact.

Heather Feather was one of the featured wrestlers in a wrestling mockumentary called I Like to Hurt People. In a rare break from the Kayfabe code of silence, the film's host Dr. Sonia Freidman asked Feather, "What's a nice twenty-three-year-old-girl doing in this racket?"

Out of character, Peggy answered, "It's really kinda hard to say. There are lots of reasons why I'm in it. Mainly it's a way of proving myself. A way of making me something in life. Have you ever met a girl built like Rosie Grier (famous 1960s football player)? I've been this tall and this weight since I was twelve. I won't lie, it was tough growing up."

When Dr. Freidman asked Feather how long she thought she would last in her chosen profession, she answered truthfully, "A girl can only last as long as she looks young. As soon as she starts looking old, she's done for. A man can do this until he drops dead in the ring." It wasn't long after this candid interview that Heather Feather was released from her wrestling contract. Kayfabe had been violated.

 

After her pro-wrestling career, Peggy Jones (Heather) became a mother and raised her daughter in Taylor, Michigan. She died of cancer in 2014.

https://fornology.blogspot.com/2018/05/detroits-wrestling-titans.html

Henry Ford's Electric Railroad - The DT&I

Near Oakwood Boulevard

Arguably the most recognized icon in Allen Park next to the Big Wheel off I-94 are the concrete arches which straddle the tracks of the Detroit, Toledo, and Ironton (DT&I) railroad that cuts through town west of Allen Road and east of Pelham Road. Everyone in town has walked or driven across the tracks at Champaign Road on their way to Allen Park High School and wondered about these silent sentinels.

I remember gazing out the second floor windows of my geometry class and daydreaming where those tracks could transport me away from the drone of Mr. K. and the tapping of chalk on his blackboard, charting out axioms and postulates. Phewy!

Students who lived southeast of the school took the shortcut home through the hole in the fence and walked down the tracks and crossing over wherever they needed to. I remember the diminishing perspective of the arches as they stretched into the distance. The DT&I went about five miles north of Allen Park to the Rouge Plant, and it stretched south through most of Ohio, connecting with major east/west lines along the way.

The Rouge Plant

The Ford Motor Company (FMC) at Henry Ford's behest purchased the bankrupt and poorly run DT&I in 1920 for a mere five million dollars. Frustrated with shoddy rail service, assembly line production delays, and exorbitant shipping charges, Henry Ford recognized the strategic importance of affordable and reliable supply lines for the uninterrupted mass production of his Model T. Henry Ford was determined to control every aspect of production at the Rouge Plant, from the shipment of raw materials into the plant to the shipment of the finished product from the plant.

Henry Ford announced on July 1, 1923 that he would convert the DT&I from steam locomotion to electrical power. The steam locomotives FMC bought in the acquisition were slow, dirty, loud, and required continual maintenance. The rolling stock acquired was in disrepair after two and a half years of neglect at the end of World War I, so Ford engineers were set to the task of improving the rail line from stem to stern.

On June 1, 1925, trial runs were made with two electrified locomotives made from components designed and built by Westinghouse Electric Company. The power was supplied to the new locomotives by an overhead electrical cable strung from one concrete arch 300 feet to the next one. The power line ran for the original seventeen miles of electrification. At first, power was generated at Ford's Highland Park plant, but later the Rouge Plant generators came online when more power was needed. The top speed of the dark green and red locomotives was 43 mph. Both locomotives entered limited service in 1926.

The concrete arches carrying the power line were designed at the Fordson concrete plant within the Rouge Plant complex. They were in active use until March 1, 1930. Each arch, called a catenary, was built with 95 cubic feet of Ford concrete and 257 feet of rebar made at the Rouge Plant steelworks.

The DT&I was now showing a profit, but Henry Ford was frustrated with interference and regulation from the Interstate Commerce Commission. FMC decided to sell DT&I on June 27, 1929 to Pennroad Corporation for approximately thirty-six million dollars making FMC a thirty-one million dollar profit over their initial five million dollar investment. But more money than that went into the research, development, and maintenance of the line to transform it from a "streak of rust" into a profitable operation.

FMC sold the DT&I line four months before the stock market crash on "Black Tuesday" October 29th, 1929. In March of 1930, the two electric locomotives were scrapped and the overhead power line was taken down. In 1947, some of the concrete arch supports were removed and re-purposed to form an embankment at Mosquito Lake in southern Ohio. These arches were made to last. It took a large crew two days to remove just one of them. Most of the arches are still in place between the Rouge Plant in Dearborn and just beyond Flat Rock, Michigan.

These arches stand as a silent monument to the vision and determination of Henry Ford and his forward looking genius. It wouldn't be long before trolley cars and subway cars would be running on generated electrical energy in cities across the globe. Eighty years later, battery powered and solar powered electric automobiles have become a reality in our twenty-first century world. It seems like an oversight that Ford's concrete arches are not listed in the National Registry of Historic Places.

For a more detailed history of Henry Ford's involvement with the Detroit, Toledo, and Ironton (DT&I) railroad line and the development of the electric freight train, view the following link:
http://www.macsmotorcitygarage.com/2013/10/26/henry-fords-railroad/ 

Allen Park's Missing Champaign Park Train

Courtesy of Images of America - Allen Park.

Every time I visit Allen Park, I find a reason to drive past the high school and look on with approval at improvements made by the district. The remodeled high school has a pleasing facade, the windows throughout the school have been upgraded, and a Performing Arts Center has been added onto the west end of the building. I get into town a couple of times a year but usually make the pilgrimage and reminisce about the old days.

While I was thinking about my upcoming trip to the Detroit area, I flashed on something I hadn't thought about for decades. Whatever happened to the steam locomotive and tender car that was once on display in Champaign Park next to the high school? I remember the train having a cyclone fence built around it topped with barbed wire which did little to deter anyone who wanted to climb over. What started out as a public school hands-on exhibit became an attractive nuisance and a public liability risk. 

I looked into the subject further and discovered that the train was built in Buckley, Michigan by Alco and owned and operated by the Detroit Edison Line. It was in service from 1923 until 1961, when it was driven under its own steam power to its display site in Champaign Park. A special track spur was built off a nearby railroad line. The Buckley No. 207 and its coal tender were removed in 1970 because the floor boards were rusting out and kids playing on it often got hurt. Old No. 207 was cutup with torches and hauled out of the park in trucks for scrap, said Arnie Ciupka, who was an eyewitness to its dismemberment.

On the day of its installation, a crowd of local youth, community members, and dignitaries watched the train roll in. Former Allen Park City Schools Superintendent John Sturock played trumpet at the steam locomotive's dedication when he was in sixth grade.

One of the more notable moments in the train's decade long history in Champaign Park was when it was painted pink by some rapscallions as a Halloween prank in 1965. Two unnamed high school kids from Dearborn Heights and George Jolokai from APHS Class of 1966 decided to turn themselves in and went to the Allen Park Police Station. Reading George's account of the incident makes me wax nostalgic and want to be young and stupid again. What follows is George Jolokai's reminiscence of the train painting incident in all its charming innocence.

***

"Appropriately, the idea to paint the train in Champaign Park pink came to us while we were sitting on the roof of the engine of the train. It was early October, 1964 and some guys I knew from Dearborn Heights had come by. They were seniors, this was junior year for me. I lived across the street from the park, one house off the corner of Champaign and Buckingham. The train had been moved there a few years earlier and eventually the city put up a fence and locked gate, but going over there, hopping the fence and hanging out was not all that unusual. It was a few weeks before Halloween, somehow the talk had turned to pranks.
 
"The notion of “Hey, we could paint the train!” was obvious and it would have died there except I hadn’t tumbled to the fact that blurting out things that just popped into my brain wasn’t always a good idea. Things like “Hey, my dad’s got a bunch of pink paint down in the basement that he forgot all about!”.
 
"On a Friday night within a week of our rooftop epiphany we did the deed. I grabbed a couple gallons of pink paint and some black paint from our basement and we headed over to the train in the dark. My folks were out of town, I’m sure it was after 10:00 PM when we started. Maybe spent two hours painting at most. We were more into transforming the train and getting a reaction to the whole thing being pink instead of just painting initials or slogans. (An early Heidelberg Project?) We used rollers and big brushes, got a lot done before we ran out of paint, and stuffed all the paint cans in a park trash can.
 
"The reaction after that was kinda cool, but I knew I couldn’t tell anyone, so in school it was a lot of listening to other folks tell me they “knew who really did it.” It ran in the Mellus newspaper, folks came by the park to look and pretty quickly it was just there, no big deal.
 
"Until a few weeks later. My uncle was over, he and my dad were talking in the dining room about it. I was in the kitchen. My uncle was into building Heathkit electronic stuff and figured the guys who did it must have had a police scanner. And a lookout. And a whole bunch of guys painting and they must have worked until almost dawn. He and my dad started talking about tipping over outhouses and what a good prank the painting had been since the train looked better, and at least folks came to look at it now.
 
"They are almost dropping the topic when my uncle says “Hey, so what was George up to that night?” Har, har. Choke, choke in the kitchen when my dad answers, “Oh you don’t have to worry about that kid. He was with us up at…no wait, he was home that weekend. Yeah, but ya don’t have to worry about him.”
 
"Phew, it’s sounding like I’m in the clear. Until he adds, “Of course I do have all that pink paint down in the basement. Maybe I better count the cans!” Bigger har, har. Blam! The kick to my chest as I realize “of course”, it’s not like my dad was so stockpiled with paint he wouldn’t know the inventory was down by three or four gallons. I just knew he had never used it. It had been there forever bought from some sale at Sears. Duh! How could I have ever thought he had “forgotten” all about it?
 
"Well, my uncle left and I figure I better confess before my dad goes and counts. Predictably dad does his real angry bit. Wants to know who I did the prank with. I wouldn’t tell him, so he made a simple declaration. I either go turn myself in, or I don’t leave the house. Forever. While I knew I might only serve three to five of that “grounded for life” sentence, that was still too bleak.

"I called the other guys, told them they didn’t have to come with me, but that I was going to go to the cop shop and turn myself in. They manned up and said they would come with me. Next day, we went down to the Allen Park Police Station, asked for the detective in charge of the case, like they must have had a special inter-departmental task force assigned to it. The guy at the desk asks if we want to give our names or not, thinking we were there to rat someone out. I say “Uh, I think you’ll want our names.”
 
"I seem to recall them not taking it too seriously, until they noticed we were being sort of too casual ourselves. Then the “We’ll turn this over to the D.A.’s office” started. Oh, and since I was fifteen, I was still a juvenile, but the other two guys had already turned sixteen, so “You guys could be in a lot more trouble!”

"My friends both glared at me, probably figuring it was a setup all along. One of them had applied to the Air Force Academy, so a possible arrest might not go too well. Then the cops blew their edge when they told us “You know, we were getting pretty close on this case. We had tracked down where you got the paint!”. Wow, ace detecting, that and the ability to read the “SEARS Weather Beater” label on the paint cans.
 
"The city soon contacted our parents, told us to be at the park the next Saturday at 9:00 AM sharp to repaint the train. We spent the next two Saturdays at it, painting all day with some guy supervising us who knew we were saving him a whole lot of work. He made sure we did a job that would last. A few weeks later, they sent my mom a bill for the paint and she went ballistic. No way was she going to pay. The city already had budgeted for the paint, they were going to repaint the train soon anyway, and we saved them the labor. So no way! The guy’s mom who was applying to the Air Force Academy, however, paid it immediately. Case closed.
 

George is to the right. Photo taken by his brother.

"That was it. No repercussions, no arrests, no court records. Simpler times, yeah, but then again it wasn’t like we were out to destroy capitalism or anything. We were just dumb guys with a dumb idea and an overactive sense of mission. The one friend of mine did eventually make it into to the Academy and graduated. I talked to the other guy a few years ago. He had made a career of the Army and had recently retired as a colonel.
 
"Me, I didn’t paint any more trains. It was a fairly thoughtless prank that didn’t take anything to pull off but might have been a whole lot more consequential. We were lucky. The repainting seemed fair, so lesson learned: Do something dumb and you could be held responsible. What a concept! Certainly wasn’t a bad take away lesson…though I still think the train was more interesting when it was pink."--G.J.

Images of America link: http://www.amazon.com/Allen-Park-MI-Images-America/dp/0738551090

Allen Park, Michigan, F4 Tornado--May 12th 1956

Michigan tornadoes since 1950 when records began being kept.

A tornado is a violent rotating column of air descending from a thunderstorm and touching down on the ground, usually spinning counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere. There is no shortage of tornadoes in the deadly swatch of America called "tornado alley"--a nickname given to a large area beginning in Texas and running through the Great Plains states northeast through the Midwest and the Great Lakes, stretching into Canada. The official boundaries are not clearly defined. 

The term was first used in 1952 as the title of a research project by U.S. Air Force meteorologists Major Ernest J. Fawbush and Captain Robert C. Miller. Tornado season runs from mid-March into September--the worst month being June.

Allen Park, Michigan, is located south of Detroit in an area known as Downriver--statistically a low risk area for tornadoes. But on May 12th, 1956, the day before Mothers' Day, an F4 tornado ripped through town and injured twenty-two people, damaging property in its wake.

An F4 rating is listed as "devastating" [207 mph to 260 mph] by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA]. Tornado ranking was developed by T. Theodore Fujita and first used in 1973 and enhanced in 2007 [see link for more detailed information].

--from Images of America [series] Allen Park by Sharon Broglin

Allen Park residents remember the 1956 tornado as one of the worst weather events in their history, the twister touching down on Ecorse Road and cutting across town. Eyewitnesses remember that it traveled down the railroad tracks near homes close to Jaycee Park. There was damage to the Westwood Dairy Bar at Allen Road and Roosevelt Street. Also on Allen Road, Gee's Drive-in hamburger joint had the roof torn off which landed in a yard several blocks away. Across Allen Road, the tornado took out all the front windows of North Junior High School, and close by, all the trees in Thomas Park were leveled.

This was a lucky day for Allen Parkers, only twenty-two people were injured with no fatalities. Flint, Michigan, had a tornado the same day with three fatalities and one-hundred, sixteen injuries. Only three years before, the Flint area had an F5 tornado, the most devastating tornado in Michigan state history--with one-hundred, sixteen deaths and eight-hundred, forty-four injuries.

NOAA Severe Weather 101--Tornado Basics: http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/tornadoes/

More information on the Fujita tornado rating scale: http://www.angelfire.com/nj4/tornadoes/page3.html

Allen Park Historical Museum

One of the happiest surprises on my recent trip to Michigan was the discovery of the Allen Park Historical Museum, a converted farm house built in 1888, located on Park Ave. in a residential neighborhood. Most of the artifacts in the museum are scattered around the house and belonged to the family who originally lived there.

The museum is a work in progress. It needs some funding support and many volunteer hours to get this place into shape. It has a showcase filled with local police and firefighter memorabilia, there's some interesting military gear, some vintage clothing and furniture, and some rare children's toys, long unused.

The docent of this museum is the great granddaughter of the original owner of the house, who built it during the Victorian period. To give some historical context about the era, this farm house was built the same year as the Jack the Ripper killings in London's East End.

My family moved to Allen Park, a suburban community fifteen miles outside of Detroit, in 1962, the year I entered Allen Park High School as a sophomore. I only lived there for three and a half years before moving to the Ypsilanti/Ann Arbor area, yet I list this place as my hometown.

Recently, I've reacquainted myself with the city and some of my former high school classmates on Facebook and have enjoyed interacting with people I haven't seen or heard from in over forty-five years.

Life and time have separated us, but experience is bringing us back together. Many of us have become parents and are now grandparents; we have prepared, survived, and retired from our careers; and we now have time for other people and for ourselves.

We are lucky in our generation, which has seen more than its share of turbulent history, and we mourn for our family, friends, and colleagues who have passed into the great beyond. I find myself caring about people I barely knew back in the day, and that pleases me.