Detroit's Ghost Town Delray and O-So Memories

O-So pop was a local Detroit soft drink sensation bottled in Delray at 8559-61 W. Jefferson Ave. Not as famous as Vernor's Ginger Ale but just as beloved. John Kar's bottling works opened in 1922, located north of the Peerless Cement factory and just south of the old Delray Bridge onto Zug Island, also known as the "one way bridge" no longer in use.

Adults from the Baby Boomer generation remember that O-So was the bargain pop of our day. The clear-glass bottled soft drinks were colorful and the flavors were fabulous. Linda J. Kulczyk remembers watching the mechanized bottle filler in action. "The place smelled like bleach and sugar water. Rock and Rye was my favorite flavor," she wrote on the Old Delray facebook site.

Other popular flavors were creme soda, lemon-lime, cherry, grape, strawberry, root beer, and orange. I don't believe they had a cola drink, though I could be wrong about that.

John A. Stavola, Jr. remembers "as a kid, they bottled the soda right there and the dude (perhaps Ed Kar, son of the founder) used to fish right out of the back window of the place." Diana Bors McPeck used to work there when she was young. Her grandparents were friends with the owners. Diana recalls, "I was paid in pop!"

One of the old timers working the same shift as me at the Zug Island coke ovens was nicknamed 'Pop'. He would buy several cases of assorted flavors of O-So pop every day in the spring and summer and roll them in from the parking lot on a hand truck (dolly) with a cooler full of ice. Pop sold the stuff for a dollar a bottle, a 400% markup. He also sold salted peanuts in the summer and fresh roasted chestnuts in the winter. On a hot day, everyone was glad to hear him call out "COLD POP." He was a door machine operator on the receiving end of the ramming machine. For the life of me, I can't remember his real name. Everybody just called him Pop.

When I worked as a laborer at Zug Island in 1967, the Delray downtown area already showed signs of two decades of neglect. Many of the shops and second story residences became little more than tenements for transient workers. After the Detroit Riots in July, the writing was on the wall for Delray. Like many other Detroit neighborhoods, White flight went into hyper-drive.

It is always sad to see an established community fall into ruin and abandonment. But almost one hundred years of history and heavy industry had taken its toll on the Delray neighborhood and turned it into what it is today, a virtual ghost town within the Detroit city limits. 

Delray lost its ethnic heart and soul in the sixties and seventies. What was once a vibrant European mixture of Hungarian, Slovakian, and Polish immigrants dispersed among the Detroit suburbs, notably the Downriver areas of Allen Park, Lincoln Park, and Wyandotte.

Now, all that's left of the Delray neighborhood are mostly memories and photographs fading in family albums. Remember any of these places? First Slovak Church (Holy Redeemer), St. John's Catholic Church, The Hungarian Village Bakery, Hevesi Cafe (with dining and dancing), Joey's Stables, Fox Hardware, Szabo's Meat Market, Delray Baking Company, Al's Bar, Kovac's Bar, and King's Chinese Restaurant. They are gone but not forgotten.

Realistically, Delray is zoned for heavy industry and will never recover as a viable residential area. But I could be wrong. What impact the new Gordie Howe International Bridge will have on Delray is yet to be known or felt, but it marks a new age for Delray. One thing is for certain, the area is ripe for redevelopment.

For more detailed information on the community of Delray, check out this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delray,_Detroit

Detroit's Greektown Stella - Iconic Homeless Woman Remembered

Photo taken of Stella Paris by a Detroit Policeman

I hadn't seen or heard of Greektown Stella for several decades, then several days ago, I found out that she had died almost seven years earlier on January 16th, 2011. When I saw her photograph on a recent Facebook post on the Old Delray/Old Detroit site, I knew that face and suddenly felt very sad. Whenever I go to a Greek restaurant or see the film Zorba, the Greek, I privately think of the crazy old Greek woman who patrolled the dimly lit Greektown neighborhood in Detroit from the late1960s until the early 1990s.

Stella was a modern day Cassandra that nobody wanted to listen to. Over forty years ago, whenever my friends and I would go to Greektown for dinner or shop at Trappers' Alley, Stella was often ranting something in Greek or broken English at the top of her lungs at all hours of the night. Stella's piercing voice would echo off the brick buildings. She was impossible to ignore. Because she was a permanent fixture on Monroe Street, we quipped that she was being paid by the restaurant owners to provide local color for the Greek neighborhood.

Several newspaper accounts at the time of her death list Stella Paris' age at ninety-five or older. No birth certificate, citizenship, or immigration documentation exists for her, so she was denied public assistance. Stella is believed to have been born on the Greek island of Samos.

Doug Guthrie, writing for The Detroit News on January 21, 2011, discovered that "(Stella) had come to this country in 1938 through an arranged marriage to restaurant owner John Perris. She raised three sons and never wanted to learn English (but she spoke broken English of necessity). Stella was four feet, ten inches tall and very trim. She passed away from a heart condition. Stella's body was laid out at Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral on East Lafayette Blvd.

In life, Stella suffered from mental illness and the scourge of schizophrenia. She had family who tried to take her in, but she wanted to be in Greektown where she felt comfortable, even when sleeping outside contending with the weather and other aggressive street people. She carried a nightstick for her protection, given to her by the police at the12th precinct downtown. "The Greek community took care of her by giving her food, shelter, and love," said Frank Becsi. "Stella is buried at Woodmere Cemetery."

"Stella was a blessing to me," says Shelley Rigney, someone who remembers her fondly. "I was young and she would always tell the 'Wolf' types not to bother me because my Momma knew Jack Tocco (Detroit Mafia Don) & my Pappa was a big crazy Irishman & I was the only baby girl in a house full of Big Boys. She would laugh and tell me, 'Ya justa keep walkin'. Don't you let any of that Trash even stick to your shoe.' God bless her sweet soul & kind heart... I still have ribbons and all the things she gave me."

Stella led the hard life of a homeless street person. Even when she was in her fifties, she looked much older than she was. A retired Detroit policeman who wishes not to be identified walked the Greektown beat for years. He tells a more sobering, less romantic story of Stella's street life.

"(Stella) claimed to be some sort of Greek princess, or that her late husband was the king of Greece, or some similar story.... She would hear voices and stand on the street corner and yell at the voices... you could hear her half a mile away on a calm day.

"She was your basic homeless bag lady, and unfortunately, her mind was not all there.... Stella's favorite motel was police headquarters at 1300 Beaubien, just up the street from Greektown. Some (of the officers) took her in as a mascot, providing her with some old marksmanship badges, chevrons, and a nightstick (billy club) that she carried faithfully....

Stella on the street.

"I do know that many of the merchants in Greektown took pity on her regularly and provided her with food as needed. As I said, (Stella) was an icon. Actually, she was a perfect representative of so many mentally challenged people in the United States today."

Detroit policewoman Cynthia Hill said, "From our perspective, she never meant any harm. When I was working as a teenage police cadet, I noticed the officers let her sleep in the basement (of police headquarters) and bathe in our sinks in the women's restroom on the first floor. At first, she scared me. They told me, 'It's just Stella.' Later when I became an officer, I would see her on the street and feel the same way."

News of his mother's death came as a surprise to her seventy-year-old son, Anthony Perris of Livonia. He told The Detroit News that her life began on the streets when she was in her fifties. "The family assumed she had died fifteen years ago when she disappeared from Greektown," Perris said. "We didn't know that she had been ordered by a judge into an assisted care facility because she was brandishing a knife."

Stella Paris spent the last years of her life peacefully at the East Grand Nursing Home on East Grand Blvd. At the time, the facility desperately searched for any relative who could shed light on her immigration status. Because of the common misspelling of her real last name, the Perris family was never notified. Stella was indigent, so the nursing home took her under its protective care. But when Stella needed heart surgery, they were simply not in any position to pay for her hospital bills.

We have all seen homeless people in our communities. Some do their best to be unobtrusive or obsequious, while others rant and rave, wrestling with their personal demons. They are all desperate people living a tooth and nail existence. In our several encounters with Greektown Stella, my wife and I tried our best to avoid and not engage her in conversation because we didn't know what to expect. I regret that decision now.

Shelley Rigney laments, "Stella was a woman who was tossed aside by many, but she still managed to survive somehow. Now I wish I would have taken time for her. She had a lot to say and teach others."

Finding out about Greektown Stella's death brought it all back to me. Rather than our scorn and apathy, these people need acts of kindness and generosity, not only during the holiday season but throughout the entire year.

More on Stella can be found in this link: http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2010/01/greektown_stella_shouts_no_mor.html  

 

Stella's Funeral Service 

Samuel Zug - The Man Behind the Island

Samuel Zug

Samuel Zug is thought by some people to have been an industrialist, but that couldn't be further from the truth. He was a devout Presbyterian who took an interest in politics and human rights.

In 1836 at the tender age of twenty-years-old, Samuel Zug came to Detroit, Michigan from Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. Using money he saved as a bookkeeper in the Pittsburgh area, he went into the furniture making business with Marcus Stevenson, a Detroit investor.  

The prospect of endless stands of pine, oak and maple trees as raw material, and convenient access to Eastern markets by way of the Detroit River for their finished products made Detroit an ideal place for a young man to make his fortune. 

But in 1859 after twenty-three years in the furniture business, his partnership with Stevenson was dissolved leaving Samuel Zug a wealthy man to pursue real estate and political ambitions.

In 1859 (or 1876 depending on which source you choose), Samuel Zug purchased 325 acres of land along the Detroit River from Michigan's second Territorial governor, General Lewis B. Cass. Over 250 acres of the parcel was marshland with a sulfur spring bubbling up 1,200 barrels of mineral water a day.

The marshy peninsula of land was a part of Ecorse Township before it became the city of River Rouge. In unrecorded time, the land was rumored to be an ancient burial site for a number of native American tribes known to inhabit the area.

Samuel Zug and his wife Anna built a home on the island, but after ten years they decided that the marshland and natural sulfur spring on the site proved too much for them to endure. The Zugs surrendered the land to the red fox, water fowl, muskrats, and mosquitoes. The croaking frogs and singing insects were left to serenade the damp night air because the island was virtually uninhabitable.

In 1888, Samuel Zug authorized the River Rouge River Improvement Company to cut a small canal at the south end of his land. Known by locals as Mud Run, it was dredged out sixty feet wide and eight feet deep. 

Short Cut Canal at bottom of map was Mud Run.

The Zug family peninsula became a man-made island overnight separating it from the north end of Ecorse Township. The channel improved the flow of the Rouge River into the Detroit River, but it did little to circulate water around the newly formed island, leaving a slow-moving backwater.

On December 26, 1889, Samuel Zug died leaving his holdings to his wife, Anne, who died on June 10th,1891. It has been reported wrongly that Mr. Zug died in 1896. My source for the correct date of Zug's death comes from his tombstone in Detroit's Elmwood Cemetery.

The Zug heirs sold the island for $300,000 to George Brady and Charles Noble, who wanted to use the site for an industrial dumping ground. The island was diked with interlocking steel panels and back-filled with construction rubble and dredging waste to raise the ground above the water table and reclaim the land from its natural state.

Heavy industry was about to move onto the island but Mr. Zug never lived to see it. The island's namesake was "Waiting for the Coming of Our Lord" as the inscription on his grave marker proclaims.

In addition to being a bookkeeper and the owner of a successful furniture manufacturing company, Samuel Zug also is credited with being one of the founding members of the Republican Party, which was considered to be the progressive party of the day. Their first official meeting took place on July 6, 1854, in Jackson, Michigan.

The Republicans were an abolitionist party that came to national attention when they won 33% of the presidential vote from the Democrats and the Whigs in 1856. Four years later in 1860, they broke through the two-party system and elected Abraham Lincoln to the White House.

Samuel Zug was an anti-slavery advocate long before Lincoln was elected and The Civil War began. He bought and set aside a parcel of land for refugee slaves in the city of Amherstburg, Ontario, Canada, a destination of the Underground Railroad. What other support he gave to the Abolitionist Movement is shrouded in the dim history of time and whispers of the unrecorded past.

At the time of his death, Samuel Zug was unaware of the mighty industrial complex his soggy marshland would become. He would never know the history Zug Island would make possible or the long-term environmental impact the steel industry would have on the area and its people.

In Detroit's Elmwood Cemetery

Zug Island closes its steel-making operations in April, 2020.            

Delray Lives on in Florida

Detroit's Village of Delray is all but a memory today, but its namesake Delray Beach is going strong on the east coast of Florida. My wife and I had the pleasure of attending a wedding there just before Christmas. Beyond its name, there is little if any resemblance.

The original Delray area was named Belgrade but known locally as Little Hungary. It was platted (subdivided) in 1836 for small businesses along West Jefferson Avenue and residental streets built off of Jefferson Avenue. The village was renamed "Del Rey" on October 4, 1851, from a suggestion by a Mexican-American War veteran, Augustus D. Burdeno, who remembered the name from a town he encountered while serving in Mexico. The Spanish name was Americanized to "Delray" when the village received its own United States post office on February 8, 1870.

Heavy industry moved into the area along the Detroit River in the late 1890s. The Village of Delray was incorporated in 1897 and annexed into the city of Detroit in 1906. The population peaked at 24,000 in 1930, dominated by Hungarian and Eastern European immigrants. A Wayne County wastewater treatment plant opened in 1940 leading to the destruction of 600 homes.

The village's population dropped by over 4,000 after World War II, due to the G.I. Bill which provided zero-down payment mortgages for veterans. Large numbers of residents moved into the growing Downriver communities of Wyandotte, Lincoln Park, Allen Park, and Taylor. In the late 1950s, the construction of Interstate 75 wiped out even more homes. Delray's master plan was rezoned as exclusively industrial in the late 1960s. The writing was on the wall: Delray's days were numbered.

The final blow to the village was in 2013 when Delray was designated the location for the Gordie Howe International Bridge, resulting in large-scale demolition of many more homes. The bridge project will ultimately revitalize the area with jobs and other commercial businesses on both sides of the Detroit River. The changing times are always toughest on those people displaced by progress or thwarted by unalterable fate.

***

The city of Delray Beach is located on the eastern shore of Florida between Fort Lauderdale and Miami. Despite a rocky beginning, it has become a gentrified, resort town on the Atlantic Ocean with a thriving artist colony. The earliest known inhabitants of the area were Joega and Tequesta Native Americans but little is known about them. In the 1840s, an American military map notes that Seminole Indians had an encampment in the area.

While central Florida was still a tropical wilderness area, the United States Life Saving Service built the Orange Grove House of Refuge in 1876 to rescue and shelter ship-wrecked sailors. There were ten House of Refuges built along the Florida coastline, most on the Atlantic Ocean. The stations were of similar design. The main floor had five rooms where the station master lived with his family. The second story attic was outfitted with twenty cots and bedding for sailors who washed up on shore alive.

Each station had a brick cistern to collect rainwater from the roof for fresh drinking water. A fully-equipped station was stocked with enough dried and salted provisions to feed twenty men for ten days. Each station provided some basic medicine and first aid supplies, and there were wooden boxes filled with books to help sailors pass the time until they could be rescued.

In 1895, William S. Linton, a Republican Congressman from Saginaw, Michigan, and his friend David Swinton, bought a large tract of land west of the Orange Grove House of Refuge as an investment opportunity. They hoped it would become a prosperous farming community. Michigan Representive Linton named the settlement after himself. He and his partner recruited eight settlers and their families from Michigan to clear the land and grow crops.

A year later in 1896, Henry Flagler extended his Florida East Coast Railroad to Miami through Linton and established a train station there. Overextended on their land purchase, Linton and Swinton sold some of their holdings to Major Nathan Smith Boynton to raise money. Two years later, the settlement was struck by a hard freeze, the crops failed, and Linton and Swinton defaulted on the land.

Creditors moved to collect money from the settlers. Some moved on while others fought to hang onto their land. In 1898, W.W. Blackmer, one of the original settlers, suggested that the settlement's name be changed to his Michigan hometown Delray because of the bad publicity Linton's default created. In 1901, the name was changed. The following year, Delray was chartered as an incorporated town.

A Florida land rush in the 1920s brought prosperity to Delray. Tourism and real estate speculation became the economic anchors for the area. Water and sewer lines were installed, and the streets and sidewalks were paved. In 1927, Delray and Delray Beach merged to become the city of Delray Beach. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Delray Beach became a seasonal artist and writers' colony and gained fame as a resort town.

By the 2000s, Delray Beach underwent large-scale renovation and gentification along Atlantic Avenue, becoming known for its beachfront, nightlife, dining, shopping, art galleries, and luxury hotels. Delray Beach began hosting international tennis events in 2004 like the Davis Cup and the 2005 Federation Cup, which attracted tennis athletes like Serena and Venus Williams, to make their homes in the area.

Delray Beach is a lovely coastal area in fair weather, but beyond the horizon line in the Southern reaches of the Atlantic Ocean, hurricanes are born. Everyplace has its hazards. Best to have an evacuation plan, fresh water, and a bugout bag ready to go.

Detroit's Ghost Town Delray and O-So Memories

The 1928 Delray Murder of Sportsman Gus Nykiel

A young Gus Nykiel next to his sister Martha. Their father John is wearing a hat. The woman in the striped dress is an unknown employee. They are standing in front of the family grocery store located at 8800 West Jefferson Ave. which became Joey's Stables named for Gus's youngest brother.

August "Gus" Nykiel (pronounced Nickel) was a popular local Detriot athlete who played semi-professional football for a team called The Delray Merchants almost one hundred years ago. The team's name was changed to the Detroit Tigers football franchise, but it failed after its first season with the National Professional League in 1921. Nykiel decided to sponsor the team which became a semi-professional powerhouse keeping the name. They played semi-pro clubs from around Michigan and the Midwest. The Tigers became regional champions and were the team to beat for several years. Nykiel became a popular, sporting world figure who had a sport's field named after him.

Gus Nykiel began his rum-running career shortly after Prohibition began. First, Gus and his three brothers--William, Frank, and Joseph--used a rowboat and made several trips a day hauling liquor and beer to the downriver area. The Nykiel brothers eventually built a fleet of speed boats and became some of the wealthiest bootleggers on the river. Gus and his brothers had ties to the Purple Gang's downriver distribution network.

Delray, Zug Island, the Detroit River, and the Rouge River.

Delray lies across the Zug Island channel and the Rouge River where boats could be unloaded and powerboats could evade Coast Guard patrol boats on the Detroit River. It was an ideal place to smuggle liquor. If a boat had to toss its load, burlap bags full with liquor bottles were tied with loops called rabbit ears. When the coast was clear, smugglers would come back with a grappling hook and retrieve their goods. Sometimes, local Delray and River Rouge boys would watch the evening gun battles between customs agents and smugglers from the shoreline. They would remember where the loads were ditched--usually near or on shallow sandbars. When the danger passed, the boys would dive in and retrieve what they could often selling the Canadian whiskey back to bootleggers.

***

On March 17, 1927, saloon owner Gus Nykiel was arraigned in federal court for reopening his saloon at 8631 West Jefferson Avenue which had been closed and padlocked on federal court order. Several undercover Prohibition officers made buys which resulted in the raid. Large quantities of beer, whiskey, and wine were seized. Nykiel was said to be the owner of four other places where liquor was stored and distributed: 8866 West Jefferson, 465 Clairpoint, 110 Henry Street, and 3021 Fourteenth Street.

Nykiel was released on $5,000 bail. When his case came to trial, he plead guilty to violating the padlock injunction and owning the property but denied ownership of the liquor. He admitted he knew it was stored in his business. Federal Judge Charles E. Simons fined him $1,000. The owners of the liquor were identified as Sam Kert and Sam "Sammy Purple" Cohen. They were under federal indictment for conspiracy to violate the Prohibition laws. The two Sammies were known mentors and associates of the Purple Gang.

***

Gus Nykiel

Nykiel's saloon was shut down permanently, but within a month, he opened a new location up the street at 8824 West Jefferson. At about 10:00 p.m. on June 27, 1928, Nykiel was parking his car in front of his saloon and scratched the paint of James Zanetti's car. Zanetti was a gunman from Chicago hired to extort money from bootleggers and speakeasy owners in the Downriver area for Pete Licovoli's East Side River Gang.

According to Gus's brother William, Zanetti began verbally abusing Gus, so Gus walked up and punched the out-of-town hood twice in the face. "I'll smack you again if you come around here looking for trouble. Tell your friends that Gus Nykiel hit you." Zanetti and Mike Dipisa--said to be gambler "Jimmy the Greek's" bodyguard--returned fifteen minutes later looking for Gus. The two men went into the saloon and spotted him behind the bar. Dipisa said he wanted to talk to Gus outside.

As soon as Nykiel stepped out the door, he was shot five times at close range and fell to the sidewalk. The shooters ran toward their getaway car. River Rouge Constable Edward A. McPherson happened to be in the saloon serving a summons when he heard the shots. With gun drawn, he stepped outside and exchanged gunfire hitting Dipisa. McPherson--for his pains--was shot in the upper jaw. Passerby, Mrs. Catherine Krozyck, was hit in the hand by a stray bullet.

Nykiel was taken to Delray Receiving Hospital where he died from his wounds. Dipisa was taken to Detroit Receiving Hospital where he died from a shot to the head, the back, and his right eye. When police notified Mrs. Nykiel of her husband's murder, she wept at news. "Gus may have been a bootlegger," she said, "but he was a faithful husband and a good father."

Gus Nykiel's funeral service was July 2, 1928 at St. John Cantius Roman Catholic Church in Delray. He was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery. Thousands of people paid their respects along the procession route to the cemetery. The majority of mourners were women, but underworld figures and police detectives were sprinkled among the crowd. 

Gus's younger brother William told Inspector Henry J. Garvin of the crime and bomb squad that he witnessed the shooting. At the inquest, William repeated what he saw. But Garvin thought that the murder was more than a road rage incident. The inspector told reporters he believed the East Side River Gang was trying to seize control of Nykiel's business interests and control smuggling on the Detroit River from Lake St. Clair to Monroe.

James Zanetti was arrested by two police officers after a short car chase and taken to Wayne County Jail. Because he attempted suicide in his cell, Zanetti was admitted to the psychopathic ward of Receiving Hospital, where he was heavily guarded and chained hand and foot to a hospital bed. Nurses reported that at intervals, he would shudder, roll his eyes back in his head, and quiver issuing long, drawn out moans. Psychiatrists believed Zanetti was mentally sick from "crime hysteria" or what was better known on the street as being "yellow." Dr. Polzker believed Zanetti's suicide attempt failed because he didn't have the courage to follow through with it.

The Zanetti trial was slated to begin on August 30th, but the prosecution's primary eyewitness--William Nykiel--could not be found. The case was postponed twice before Detroit police announced on September 8th that their key witness was hiding out for fear of his life in LaSalle, Ontario where they had no jurisdiction to extradite him. The prosecution proceeded without him. On September 13th, James Zanetti was acquitted of Gus Nykiel's murder. After the not guilty verdict was delivered, Zanetti and his lawyers were surrounded by back-slapping and handshaking from their underworld supporters.

Gus Nykiel left his widow and child an estate worth $55,000 which is over $800,000 in today's money.

Delray Backdoor Shut -The West Jefferson Avenue Bridge Still Out of Commission

Rouge River Bridge on West Jefferson Boulevard

After ninety-one years of accident free operation, the Rouge River Bridge, aka the West Jefferson Avenue Bridge, sustained serious damage to its northeast side. Shortly after 2:00 AM on May 12, 2013, an intoxicated bridge operator prematurely lowered the bridge onto the Great Lakes Class freighter, the Herbert C. Jackson. It instantly collided with the north section of the double-leaf bascule bridge. The bridge's hydraulic gearing and its electrical equipment were unharmed in the accident.

The bridge was closed immediately to vehicular and pedestrian traffic, both ends of the double-leaf bridge were left fully open to accommodate unhampered freighter use of the Rouge River. With this bridge in its down position, Great Lakes Class freighter access to the Ford Rouge Plant would cease. 

***

The single-leaf bascule bridge has a long history. It originated in Medieval Europe to help defend castles and walled towns by using winches and counterweights. Commonly known as drawbridges in English speaking countries, this style of bridge was used for crossing a moat or narrow river leading to the castle gate. Drawn upward with winches and counterweights when under attack, these single-leaf bascule bridges prevented easy access by invaders.

Tower Bridge in London

Probably the most famous double-leaf bascule bridge in the modern world is the Tower Bridge in London. Construction began in 1886 and the bridge opened in 1894. Many people mistake it for London Bridge. The Tower Bridge is a combination of suspension bridge and drawbridge on the Thames River.

***

The Rouge River Bridge was completed in 1922 after some jurisdictional legal wrangling and some new law writing. The previous narrow swing bridge had needed replacing since the 1910s, and the federal government had plans to dredge the Rouge River to accommodate direct freighter access to Henry Ford's new, massive Rouge Plant Complex. The inadequate Rouge River Bridge and the Fort Street Bridge would both be replaced with double-leaf drawbridges at the cost of one million dollars apiece. Wayne County voters approved a bond issue to fund construction.

To reroute traffic across the Rouge River while the new bridges were being built, an out-of-service railroad truss bridge owned by Michigan Central Railroad was detached from its moorings. A flotilla of scows pumped full of water to lower them in the river were towed under the truss bridge. When the water was pumped out of the scows, they rose and floated the bridge with the help of tugboats to a location 200 yards upstream of W. Jefferson Ave. The Fort Street Bridge and the W. Jefferson  Avenue Bridge were closed on November 13, 1920, after the makeshift railroad truss detour was in place.

Rouge River Bridge fully open in winter.

Each leaf of the dual-leaf bridges is supported by four 12 foot square concrete footings sunk in the clay to the bedrock 70 feet below the waterline. One worker died of "the bends" during construction because he decompressed too quickly after working in a caisson.

The bascule double-leaves of the Rouge River Bridge were lowered for the first time on August 21, 1922. It opened for traffic on October 17th of the same year. Finally, the bridge reconnected the Detroit neighborhood of Delray with the city limits of River Rouge and the rest of the Downriver area. In 1923, the federal government completed dredging the Rouge River and Great Lakes freighters were now able to navigate upstream, unload their cargo, and turn around in a massive turning basin built by the United States government expressly for that purpose.

In our present time, it is estimated that twenty to twenty-five freighters navigate this narrow waterway weekly. The bridge handled 6,400 vehicles daily in 2012, according to Southwest Michigan Council of Governments data.

Once again, after its ninety-one year record of service, the Rouge River Bridge is closed. The collision with the Herbert C. Jackson on May 12, 2013 was the first accident of its kind in the bridge's history. None of the crew on board the freighter were injured. The 670 foot-long ship sustained a 2 inch gash in its hull about 15 feet above the waterline. The freighter's cargo was 23,000 tons of iron ore pellets destined for the Severstal North American plant in Dearborn.

Bridge's Control Station

Cindy Dingell, spokesperson for the Wayne County Operations Office, told reporters that the bridge operator was immediately tested for drugs and alcohol and was fired from her job, but no charges have been filed in connection with the incident.

Dingell said that Wayne County doesn't have the resources to rebuild the bridge and may have to ask voters for a bond issue to fix it to the tune of $850,000 to $1,250,000. The Rouge River Bridge is the only surviving pony truss bascule bridge in the state of Michigan. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on February 10, 2000.

For more information on how a Chicago Type, double-leaf bascule bridge operates, tap on this link: https://multco.us/bridges/chicago-type-bascule-bridge

For information on my upcoming Zug Island: A Detroit Riot Novel book talk September 30, 2014: http://fornology.blogspot.com/2014/08/zug-island-book-talk-at-pasquales-in.html

Dame Fortune Winks - I Smile Back

All in a day's work at Zug Island.

I had just dropped into Detroit for the day to do a segment on Zug Island with Joe Rogan for his new show, Question Everything, premiering July 16th on the Syfy Network.

Immediately afterwards, I headed south down deserted W. Jefferson towards Downriver but decided to stop at the Zug Island sign and take a picture for a blog post on my trip while I was there. 

I swung my rental car into a small parking lot across the street between some abandoned Delray ruins and pointed the nose of the Japanese car towards the driveway.

Why I felt I needed another photo of the sign isn't clear to me, but I snapped a quick one and returned to my car, shut the door, and turned the key. In that small amount of time, a large car came out of nowhere and straddled my only escape route, a weed ravished driveway. 

My first thought was "Oh, shit! Welcome to Detroit."

The power window on the passenger side of the full size car went down and a white guy with a fancy camera said, "I see we are doing the same thing."

Not wanting to feel trapped, I got out of my car and engaged the person in a conversation. "What's your interest in Zug Island?" I asked as if it were any of my business.

Blast furnace being tapped at night.

"I'm making a documentary film about the environmental effects of Zug Island on the area."

"Fascinating," I replied.

"What's your interest in the sign?" he asked.

I told him I wrote a book called Zug Island:A Detroit Riot Novel. "I'm..."

"I know who you are. I saw your book on the Zug Island website, and I've read some of your blog posts." 

With that ice-breaker, we shook hands.

"Would you be interested in doing a few segments about Zug Island for the indie film I'm making?"

"Do steelworkers have dirt under their fingernails? Sure," I said. "But I don't live in the Detroit area anymore, I'm leaving at the crack of dawn tomorrow."

We both looked disappointed. Then I was quick to add, "I'll be back in town in a few weeks doing research on my current project, The Rainy Day Murders, about John Norman Collins and the coed killings of 1967-1969 in Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor."

"That works for me," he said. We exchanged contact information, and I waited a couple of days for a gmail with more information.

What this young filmmaker wants me to do is give a short biography of Samuel Zug at Zug's grave site and then do a couple of other segments about my experiences working on the island in 1967. Sounds easy enough.

Back then, the area was little more than a slum; now it is a ghost town, another casualty of rust belt technology impatient for redevelopment.

When completed, this film will be submitted to indie film festivals. Then, the producers hope to secure theatrical distribution and/or seek television broadcast opportunities. Whatever the outcome, it's a great experience for me that I couldn't miss.

I'm not one to believe in luck or fate, but if I'd been one minute sooner or later taking a picture of that sign, and if I hadn't been doing an interview with Joe Rogan that very morning on another project, I would have missed out on this opportunity. 

I think I'll put this experience down as dumb luck and follow Dame Fortune like a damned fool.

Detroit Shout Out 2 - Zug Island, the Firemen, and the Police

A couple of days before my first book talk, I decided to cruise the Detroit Riot areas and look at the current state of some of the neighborhoods. There are still signs of the devastation, but much of the area has been cleaned up, the vacant lots awaiting reinvestment and redevelopment, thanks to Detroit mayor, Dave Bing.

One area I drove through was old Delray, now, all but a fading memory. Most of the buildings have been razed, but so have some of the rust belt industries. The Solvey Chemical works has been taken out, and Scott Paper is no longer there, but Zug Island's blast furnaces still dominate the skyline and the olfactory senses. One of the blast furnaces continues to operate, and coke oven battery #5 still belches out smoke and steam like clockwork.

In the past, I've been denied official admittance to the island to do research for my novel. I took another approach this time. Driving up to the security booth, I rolled down my car's window and waited for someone to come out of the shack. When I showed the security guard a postcard with my novel's cover and title on it, I knew I had his interest. By this time, a second guard wanted to see what was taking soon long. I pitched my novel for three minutes and they agreed to pass out a bunch of bookmarks for me at the plant. Then I turned the car around and left. If nothing else, my visit will generate some conversation.

Fresh from that success, I saw the only building still open for business in Delray, the local fire station. It struck me that the fire fighters are part of the Detroit riot story, so I walked into the fire hall. A fireman took me in to talk with the chief in his air conditioned office. "What's it about?" the chief asked.

Delray Firehouse #29

"That monstrosity across the street," I answered. I gave them my mini-pitch, which they were very interested in. They agreed to put some of my bookmarks in their mail room. The chief suggested I go to the area's main station house at the Southwestern Safety Center.

"Joe over there is crazy about anything having to do with Detroit. You should go over there."

The center has a police station next to the parking lot, so I went in there first with the same story. By now, I perfected my pitch. They took some bookmarks and wished me well. The fire hall was on the opposite side of the building, so I walked around and found someone polishing the chrome on a fire truck. "Hey!" I said. But before I got too far into my pitch, the fireman said, "Come into our lunchroom. The guys are eating back there."

Former party store and soda shop.

Six or seven firefighters were waiting around for the next emergency run. "Hey! This guy is an author and he wants to talk to you." At that, they all stopped what they were doing and politely listened. I left the rest of my promotional materials there with them. What an interesting day in the neighborhood!

I was feeling pretty good, so I decided to try and find the house I spent the first five years of my life in. I hadn't been back to the old place since we moved out in 1953, but it wasn't far from Zug Island. As I drove down Oakwood Blvd, I recognized a brick building and turned right. Then I saw the old soda shop on the corner of our street. It was now boarded up but not burned down. I remember my grandmother buying my younger brother and me penny candy there, and if she had enough extra change, she bought us ice cream cones too.

Home Sweet Home

I turned left and found our address--444 Bayside St. There it was, a vacant lot. All of the homes on this short, three block street were intact and lived in--but ours.

Sometimes, it is too late to go back home. Still, I can't believe I found the spot after fifty-eight years. What I wouldn't give for one of those ice cream cones now.