Bishop Airport sometime in the 1950s, back in the days when you could, apparently, ride your bike out to look at the planes.
The dashboard of a Buick with 99999.9 miles on it.
One of Faygo pop's area-code billboards. When I left Flint, it was still 313.
The music-filled tunnel at Detroit Metro Airport.
St. Matt's at the end of mass.
Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.
First - one of my BEST memories of childhood was going to Bishop airport, up the stair case to the open air observatory to wait the arrival of the plane carrying one my relatives. This was soooo exciting to my sister and I. Second - just returned from visiting in July and brought back a case of Faygo. At my son's birthday party this week, a friend who is from Pontiac saw the Faygo and went nuts!! She enjoyed a redpop. It is a great way to bond with a fellow Michigander over the little things like REDPOP. The pictures and artifacts are my favorite things about this blog - keep them coming!
ReplyDeleteAnd I forgot... St Matt's in the 1980's was our home parrish. After my sister and I started HS at Powers we left Holy Redeemer for the "fastest mass in town!" That was back in the day when even St. Matt's had more than one priest. You could be in and out before Casey Kasam finished the Top 40 countdown on the radio at 1:00. It never went more than 50 minutes. I really miss that church.
ReplyDeletePeople today would think I'm crazy if I mentioned walking right out to the planes at Bishop Airport with nothing but a 4' chin-link fence between me and the prop wash.
ReplyDeleteIn the early fifties, on any given Saturday morning without rain, I and a friend would ride our bikes out to Trimble Aviation, park our bikes and spend
Deletethe day roaming the tarmac. Between the T hangers and terminal building it was our playground. We never got into trouble and made some friends along the way.
More then a few times went up with local pilots. Capital Airlines was the main
connecter then. I think they were using DC3 then. My dad was a licensed mechanic and pilot there in the thirties and was a barnstormer in the early days. The sky was in my blood from then on. I wished I had a dollar for every
hour spent up there.