Michael Kay - Sitting on a Dock by the Bay?

For some unknown reason, my thoughts have turned to a friend of mind I haven't seen or heard from in forty years - Mike Kay. We went to junior high school in Dearborn Heights together; then my family moved to Allen Park, so we went to different high schools, but we still remained friends. It was the Vietnam era, and he joined the Navy, while I went to Eastern Michigan University.

He and I were watching some 8mm home movies, which my parents took of sharecroppers in Arkansas in 1963. Mike was inspired to paint what he saw in his mind's eye - an oil painting of two weary black women trying to cool down after a long, exhausting day in the fields. Sitting on a dock, they dangle their tired feet in the water and contemplate eternity. Mike's vision was, no doubt, also inspired by Otis Redding's iconic song. I call the painting - Dock Ladies.

My mother purchased this evocative painting from Mike for fifty dollars in 1965, and she passed it on to me before she died. I have proudly displayed it in my home for many years, but when I remarried, my wife wanted to put her art on the walls. The two weary black ladies have had their faces turned to the wall of my closet for the last five years. Many people have wanted to buy this painting from me over the years, but it is not for sale.

When Mike originally painted this scene, he placed a watermelon between the ladies, that they appeared to be too tired to finish. When he realized that this could be construed as politically incorrect (a term which had not been coined yet), he painted a small wild flower in its place. Even the daisy looks wilted, but it adds a sensitive touch of beauty to the otherwise oppressive tone.

Mike fell off my radar one day many years ago. He moved to Traverse City, Michigan, and was involved in community theater there as a set designer and artist. When several of my letters to him were returned with no forwarding address, I lost touch with him. My efforts to locate him over the years haven't been successful.

If you are out there, Mike, contact me with some information, so I can get your painting back to you. It deserves to see the light of day. By the way, how the hell are you?

The Dutch Psychic--Peter Hurkos

I was just settling into an interview with someone who knew John Norman Collins. It was a late lunch meeting at Haab's--downtown Ypsilanti's oldest and finest restaurant. I overheard two women, sitting in a booth adjacent to us, talking in hushed tones about John Collins and those times. What a coincidence!

After the lunch crowd, the restaurant was almost empty, so I interjected myself into their conversation. "Ladies! I'm in town this week doing research and interviewing people for a book I'm writing about John Norman Collins."

Both ladies said in unison, "Really?" One of the women had worked for the county police as a dispatcher at that time, and the other claimed to be a psychic.

"How amazing is this?" I said. "I just learned something new about Peter Hurkos--the Danish psychic who was summoned onto the unsolved murdercases by an Ann Arbor citizens' group."

"He helped solve the Boston Strangler case, didn't he," the lady psychic added.

Peter Hurkos being fingerprinted.

"Not really," I said. "He played a controversial role in that case. Boston police arrested him for impersonating an officer when he aggressively interrogated an emotionally disturbed man. He was told to leave town or face a judge.

Back in Los Angeles, he parlayed his experience into a nightclub act. Hurkos entered the coed killing media circus in an attempt to punch up his waning career."

Hurkos was hired for one day as a consultant for the disturbing Tony Curtis movie The Boston Strangler--a film John Collins was obsessed with. Years later, Hurkos was hired to appear in a cameo role in the movie version of the Collins' killings entitled Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep--which began filming in 1969 but was never released.

I explained to the ladies, "Mr. Archie Allen--head of an Ann Arbor citizens' group--offered Peter Hurkos $1,100 for expenses to come down from LA to look into this case. Hurkos asked for $2,500 plus expenses and was insulted when the group could not raise more money. He reluctantly agreed to come anyway because of all the potential free publicity generated from this case--especially if he got lucky and helped solve it."

"The man had powers," the lady psychic insisted. "He was a painter who fell off a ladder and banged his head, or something like that. I don't remember exactly. From then on, he could sense people and events from handling their things. He had the gift."

"Yes, I know. That was his claim to fame."

The former police dispatcher added, "Yes, that's right. I remember Lieutenant William Mulholland--an investigator on the case--saying, "He (Hurkos) is making a believer out of me."

John Sinclair

Well," I continued, "do you know who the citizens' group was?" I gave the psychic another chance to divine the answer. She could not.

"Remember, John Sinclair? He was always in trouble with the Washtenaw County sheriff."

"Yes, we do!"

"Sinclair and a bunch of his followers were tired of the police harassment they were getting, so they offered to help. They wanted to show they were responsible, caring members of the Ann Arbor community. One of their members said she thought there might be something cosmic or supernatural going on with this case, so why not try to get a psychic involved?"

"That's interesting," the women agreed

"My theory is they wanted to throw a wildcard into the mix and make the police look stupid. Soon afterwards, the Washtenaw County police were called the Keystone Kops by the Detroit Free Press."

Sheriff Douglas Harvey

"I remember how upset Sheriff Harvey was with that reporter," the former dispatcher said.

"Harvey did take it personally," I agreed. "I also discovered John Collins came into close contact with Hurkos just before Hurkos left town for LA. Peter Hurkos did not have the slightest clue. I got that information from someone who was there with Collins."

Detroit's Lost Neighborhoods--Black Bottom and Paradise Valley

If suburban Detroit residents were asked what they know about Black Bottom and Paradise Valley, most of them would be clueless. Both of these African-American neighborhoods were paved over in the early 1960s in the name of urban renewal. Rather than upgrade housing and services in those established neighborhoods, city fathers--in league with the Federal Highway Commission--cut an unnecessary 1.06 mile long swatch for Interstate 375 through the heart of these black neighborhoods. The Walter P. Chrysler Freeway is the shortest stretch of Interstate in the state of Michigan.

The Savoyard River ran through the area known as Black Bottom (Fond Noir). The fertile land was named by the original eighteenth century French land grant owners. The area was notable for its dark, rich topsoil. In 1827, the river became part of the Detroit sewer system and was bricked over, covered with fill dirt, and built over. The place name initially carried no racial connotation.

In the twentieth century, Hastings and Antoine Streets were the commercial backbone of Black Bottom and Paradise Valley. After World War I, the established Jewish community began to vacate the area moving west and north of downtown Detroit. Blacks migrating from the South seeking opportunity and factory jobs moved into the aging and inexpensive neighborhood along Hastings Street. In time, African-American entrepreneurs moved into vacated businesses and opened doctors' offices, churches, infirmaries, bakeries, grocery stores, clothing stores, barber shops, beauty salons, bowling alleys, restaurants and hotels serving a vibrant, self-contained, segregated community.

The red-line boundaries for the racially isolated community were east of Brush Street, west of the Grand Trunk railroad tracks, south of Gratiot Avenue, and north from the Detroit River. In 1919, jazz composer and musician Jelly Roll Morton named the "Black Bottom Stomp" after the area. Soon, the Black Bottom dance overtook the Charleston in popularity during the 1920s.


Paradise Valley began north of Gratiot Avenue to Grand Boulevard. This area was the entertainment zone for Detroit's blues and jazz music scene from the 1930s through the 1950s. It was also the center of African-American social life with places like the Horseshoe Lounge, Club Plantation, Club 666, and The Paradise Theater.

The likes of Ethel Waters, Pearl Bailey, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Cab Calloway, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Della Reese, and Red Fox were among Paradise Valley's long list of headliners. Traveling African-American performers loved playing Detroit because they could stay at the Gotham Hotel--one of the only first-class hotels in America that served the black community.

Gambling was big business through the Great Lakes Mutual Numbers House and the Frog Club. Whites and blacks mixed comfortably in Paradise Valley until the 1943 race riots. After that, it was rare to see whites venturing into the area--except to cruise for female companionship.

With the passage of the Federal Interstate Highway Act of 1956, the die was cast for the demolition of a long list of urban communities across the country. In Detroit, over 3,500 dwellings and 300 black-owned businesses were condemned and bulldozed tearing apart the social fabric of the community. The Chrysler Freeway opened in June of 1964 paving over Hastings Street and destroying the culture of its inhabitants. Today, Ford Field and Comerica Park stand where once a thriving community lived.

The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) announced in 2013 it is considering a plan by urban planners to remove I-375. Research data shows the I-75 spur is underutilized and could be replaced with a boulevard to make the area more pedestrian and neighborhood friendly.

The unspoken truth is downtown Detroit real estate is just too valuable and begs for redevelopment. This MDOT pronouncement comes sixty years too late for people who remember Black Bottom and Paradise Valley back in the day.

Victoria Spivey and "The Detroit Moan" (1936): https://youtu.be/pKGuHCWWYU0 

Doctor Who--Madman in a Blue Box

I may be the last person on the planet to discover the British cult science fiction series Doctor Who, but I am trying to make up for it by binge-watching every episode made during the last nine seasons. For other viewers who came late to the series, here is some background and a brief sketch of what the program is about.

TARDIS

The Doctor is the last surviving Time Lord from the destroyed planet of Gallifrey, exploring the universe in a blue police call box called the TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space). His mission is to prevent evil intergalactic forces from harming innocent people or changing history. He uses his superior alien intelligence, mind-boggling ingenuity, a lot of running, and a sonic screwdriver.

Doctor Who began as a BBC series in 1963 and ran through 1989. A made-for-television movie in 1996 did poorly, so plans for reviving the series stalled. The program was reincarnated--or should I say regenerated--in 2005 and is still in production. The original intent of Doctor Who was to be an educational family program exploring scientific ideas and famous moments from history. There have been 826 installments televised since the program's inception, though many of the1964 through 1993 episodes were destroyed, wiped from video tape, or deteriorated from neglect. Once the current show found its new audience, it became an international sensation.

One key to the success of the Doctor is his ability to regenerate himself when his body is mortally damaged. Regeneration was not part of the original concept for the character, but when William Hartnell--the first Doctor Who--became too ill to continue with the role, Patrick Troughton took over. The transformation was described as the Doctor undergoing a "renewal." The concept of regeneration was written into the script for the casting of the third Doctor, and it remains a successful device for recasting the main character.

There have been thirteen actors to play the Time Lord on screen: William Hartnell (1963-1966), Patrick Troughton (1966-1969), Jon Pertwee (1970-1974), Tom Baker (1974-1981), Peter Davidson (1982-1984), Colin Baker (1984-1986), Slyvester McCoy (1987-1989), Paul McGann (1996), Christopher Eccleston (2005), David Tennant (2005-2010), Matt Smith (2010-2013), and Peter Capaldi (2014 to the present).

But the Doctor alone is arrogant, demanding, and largely indifferent to human emotion. His alien perspective clashes with human values, but he learns to admire human beings and develops empathy from them. To balance his abrasive personality, Doctor Who typically travels with a companion or sometimes two or three. Occasionally, he goes it alone. His female time traveler companions serve to soften the doctor's austere intergalactic view. The companion figure is an audience surrogate to remind the Doctor of his "moral duty." They are characters with whom the audience can identify.

Some of Doctor Who's companions.

In the latest series, Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) is the first and second doctor's companion. Her character is a nineteen-year-old shop assistant. Next comes Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman)--a medical student kidnapped by aliens. My personal favorite is Donna Noble (Catherine Tate)--an office temp worker from Chiswick. Other notable characters are Mickey Smith (Noel Clarke), Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen), and Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman). Fellow time travelers include River Song (Alex Kingston) and Jack Harkness (John Barrowman). These characters often weave in and out of the story lines.

The special effects and imaginative settings display a hallmark of technical achievement easily the rival of a Hollywood blockbuster. The exterior camera work is stellar often showing sweeping panoramas of London in all that city's splendor. The show's attention to detail with costumes and makeup in their period-piece episodes helps the actors make their roles plausible. The historically themed shows are often filmed at famous London locations--such as the Old Globe Theatre or Chuchill's Underground War Rooms--giving those shows added believability. 

Doctor Who's writers often reveal a plucky British sense of humor and sly wit, with an occasional dose of comic relief. When the Doctor drops in on the likes of Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, or Agatha Christie, the scripts are particularly witty. Despite the intricate and farcical plot complications, Doctor Who's core values are respect for the interconnectedness of all existence and the sanctity of life--human or otherwise. The writers always manage to bring the story line down to a human level and often leave the audience with a tear in their eyes and a lump in their throats.

Doctor Who trailer for the latest season: https://www.youtube.com/user/doctorwho

The Rainy Day Murders Progress Report

Over the past year, the question I was asked most is "When will The Rainy Day Murders be finished?"

For the last five years with the help of Ryan M. Place, I have researched and rewritten the entire manuscript three times and consulted editors twice. My original 144,000 word manuscript was too long and the narrative wandered. Publishing length guidelines for true crime range from 80,000 to 100,000 words.

In 2015, I set a personal goal to finish a top-to-bottom restructuring before the end of year. On New Year's Eve, I dotted the last i and crossed the last t. I managed to trim 35,000 words off the manuscript while improving the narrative flow.

The eye sees but doesn't see itself.

Over the past year, I asked five people to read and evaluate The Rainy Day Murders. Several of them commented on the title. They felt rain was not a factor in some of the seven murders. Fair enough. Currently, I am pitching the project using my original title In the Shadow of the Water Tower. What the final title becomes will be decided at some future editorial meeting.

Beginning with the San Diego State University Writers' Conference on January 22nd, I will begin pitching the book and seeking representation. The publishing business is demanding, unforgiving, and moves at its own speed. May this be the year In the Shadow of the Water Tower sees the light of day.

Happy New Year 2016--Why January First?

New Year's Eve in Kiev, Ukraine.

Historians have charted the origins of our New Year's celebrations to the ancient Babylonians four millennium ago. They marked the new year as the first full moon after the vernal (spring) equinox--sometime in March of our calendar.

Traditionally, the Roman calendar attempted to follow the lunar cycle which frequently fell out of phase with the seasons. After consulting Sosigenes, an Alexandrian astronomer, Julius Caesar was advised to discard the lunar calendar and adopt the solar calendar, like the Egyptians had.

In 46 B.C., two years before his political assassination, Caesar added sixty-seven extra days to realign the Roman calendar with the sun. A year was calculated to be 365 and 1/4 days long.
Caesar decreed that every four years an extra day be added to February. He named the first month of the new calendar after Janus--the Roman god of beginnings. His two faces could look back at the past and forward to the future.  While Caesar was at it, he also renamed the Roman month Quintilis to July, after himself. 

The Julian calendar was replaced in 1582 when Pope Gregory XIII commissioned Jesuit astronomer Christopher Clavius to devise a more accurate calendar. There was an eleven minute error per year in the Julian calendar. The revised Gregorian calendar was implemented throughout Christendom and is the one we use today. Pope Gregory designated January 1st as the first day of the new year.

New Year's Eve in Sydney, Australia.

New Year's Eve is celebrated the last day of the Gregorian calendar--December 31st. Common traditions through much of the world include huge public gatherings, private parties, making resolutions, and fireworks displays. In English-speaking countries, "Auld Lang Syne" is sung at the stroke of midnight. The Robert Burn's song is based on a traditional Scottish phrase which is loosely translated as "long, long, ago" or "for old times."

A tradition in America since 1907 is the giant ball drop in Times Square. The original ball weighed 700 pounds and was made of iron and wood. Today, the orb is 12 feet across and weighs 2,000 pounds. It is electrified with many thousands of LED lights producing millions of colors and billions of patterns.

One thing has not changed over the years. New Year's Eve lights the beacon to the future with hopes for a better year than the last.

Happy New Year, Everyone.


History Channel's short history of New Year's: http://www.history.com/topics/holidays/new-years

Henry Ford's Tough Guy--Harry Bennett

Harry Bennett

Harry Herbert Bennett was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan on January 17, 1892. At the age of seventeen, he joined the United States Navy where he learned the pugilistic arts and became a champion lightweight boxer fighting under the name of Sailor Reese.

Legend has it that sometime in 1916, New York newspaper columnist Arthur Brisbane introduced the twenty-four year-old Bennett to Henry Ford. Brisbane witnessed a street brawl where Bennett came to the defense of a fellow sailor under attack by some local thugs. The naval boxing champion acquitted himself well. When the police arrived, they were going to arrest Bennett, but the newspaper man vouched for the young sailor and he was released.

Brisbane told the young tough he had someone he wanted him to meet. Brisbane was writing an article about Henry Ford for the Hearst newspaper chain while Ford was in New York. They met in Ford's hotel room. Kidnapping wealthy people was on the rise in America and Henry Ford was concerned for the safety of his family. Ford was fascinated hearing about the street brawl Bennett was just in. He asked Bennett if he could handle a gun. He could. Upon the young sailor's discharge from the Navy, Bennett was hired at the Highland Park Ford plant in the art department.

Red-haired Harry Bennett was five feet, six inches tall--built like a fire hydrant and just as strong. He cultivated his tough guy image by wearing a fedora, a hand gun, and a bow tie. People who knew him said he was fearless. With no background in engineering or the automobile business, Bennett rose in five years to become head of Ford's infamous Service Department. He was known within the company as the old man's hatchet man. 

Battle of the Overpass reaching flash point.

The Battle of the Overpass outside the Ford Rouge plant was a defining moment for Harry Bennett and the United Auto Workers (UAW). On May 26, 1937, Walter Reuther, Richard Frankensteen, among other union organizers, were beaten by Ford Service men and dragged and kicked down two flights of steel and concrete stairs. The attack was captured by a Detroit News staff photographer. The next day, newspapers around the world ran the photographs and the story. Overnight, Walter Reuther became the most recognized labor leader in America.

Walter Reuther and Richard Frankensteen

At a National Labor Relations Board hearing held in the summer of 1937, UAW field-organizer Frankensteen testified how Ford's security force assaulted him and Walter Reuther. The labor board found the Ford Service Department had underworld connections with the local Black Hand--a Sicilian gang, and the Dearborn police stood by while the labor demonstrators were beaten. No charges were ever filed.

In 1941, the four-year bloody conflict resulted in the Ford Motor Company (FoMoCo) recognizing the UAW and negotiating their first contract. The Ford executive to sign the contract--Harry Bennett. But this was the beginning of the end of Bennett's tenure with the automotive giant. Henry Ford's wife Clara had as much to do with the contract settlement as anyone. Ford family history notes she threatened to divorce her husband if the labor violence wasn't ended and the contract settled.

Henry Ford II

By 1945, the old man's health and mental state were declining as Bennett maneuvered to gain control of the company. Clara and her son Edsel's widow--Eleanor Clay-Ford--insisted the company remain under family control. Eleanor threatened to sell her stock if her son was not made president. On September 20th, Henry Ford I officially resigned the presidency and nominated his grandson Henry Ford II to replace him. The Board of Directors rubber-stamped the recommendation. Twenty-eight-year-old Henry Ford II was discharged from active duty with the United States Navy to man the helm of his grand sire's company.

Henry's first official act was to fire Harry Bennett. He drove to the Ford Administration Building on Schaefer Road and walked down to the secluded basement office of his late father's nemesis. But Bennett could see the writing on the wall. It was written in dark blue and read Ford.

The former boxer could not resist giving the young Ford a parting shot. "You're taking over a billion dollar organization here that you haven't contributed a thing to?" The rest of the afternoon, the basement was filled with smoke as Bennett burned his records--almost thirty years of company history--the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Henry Ford I

Later that evening, Henry II drove to his grandfather's estate and told him he fired Bennett. The elder Ford's reaction was understated. He simply remarked, "Now Harry is back where he started." 

After his loss of power, Bennett retired to an 800 acre wilderness area outside Desert Springs, California. His last moment in the public spotlight came when he was called to testify in the Kefauver Senate Crime Investigation Committee Hearings in 1951. 

In 1973, Bennett suffered a stroke. In 1975, he entered the Beverly Manor Nursing Home in Los Gatos, California. On January 4, 1979, he died. His death went unreported for a week--the cause was never released to the public.

http://fornology.blogspot.com/2015/10/walter-p-reuther-assassination-attempt.html