Thursday, June 18, 2009

The Road Home

A Flint expatriate tries to get repatriated at slate.com.

13 comments:

  1. Nice article - and I have to confess I share your desire to buy a house in Flint and your general obsession with our former home! That will never change :)

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  2. Nice article! I love reading stuff like that... :)

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  3. Good job, you remind me a little of Bill Maher.

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  4. Good piece Gordy. You know Cadillac St. has some historic significance in that it was the site of the Soap Box Derby races for many years.

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  5. Great article. Glad I found your website - I love all the pictures!

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  6. Very well done. I've been a Slate fan for some time; I'm a bigger fan now.

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  7. not sappy, not dismal. good article. i'm sorry that you had to ride around with eashoo all day.

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  8. Loved the artical. I also have wanted to buy a house in Flint for a few years, but what would I do with it? My childhood home on the corner of Hamilton and Milbourne (Next to Tom Ford's house) is empty with boards for windows. Sad. I remember my Grandpa putting on a new roof for us, it was so steep that he had to tie himself to the chimney with a big rope.
    Cheers,
    Peter

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  9. great article. honest, but as anon put it, not dismal. I'm even impressed by the two comments on there, I would fully expect the typical 'build a wall around it and let it rot' comments, but they're both very supportive and encouraging of Flint's rebirth.

    Welcome home.

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  10. Dave from MillingtonJune 25, 2009 at 12:54 PM

    Nice article. Extremely well written with one exception; "as a town where residents sell rabbits for "pets or meat" to survive."

    Not true. Moore created that outlandish story at the expense of that poor woman as being typical of Flint. It should not be repeated as being representative of the area. A low-life cheap shot then, and it remains the same today.

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  11. My understanding from Steven, who cuts my hair and happens to live on the periphery of Woodcroft, the Swartz Creek/Miller Road neighborhood, is that a five bedroom Parkside Drive home that had $460K worth of slate roofing done 5 years ago, and had $150,000 put into its kitchen, recently sold out of foreclosure for $135K and change. On a half acre. $6000 annual taxes.

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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.