If you haven't already, check out Flint Expatriate and Central High grad Jim Abbott's excellent book, Imperfect: An Improbable Life. You don't have to love baseball to enjoy this book about Flint, fatherhood, and living a meaningful life. (Although the baseball sections are really great, as well.)
"The lives of many of the breadwinners in the cul-de-sacs and verdant streets near Burroughs Park would change in the 1980s, just as they would all over Flint, when General Motors began boarding up its manufacturing plants. For decades a man in Flint could chart his course from the playground to high school to an assembly line or management job at GM, the path their fathers and grandfathers had taken to middle-class stability. When the jobs disappeared, so too did Flint's hope, and the street corners that had been edgy in my father's youth became strictly off-limits in mine."
I read that a few months back. It was a pretty incredible read for someone from Flint.
ReplyDeleteI just started reading it and I'm really enjoying it. I have a soft spot for sports bios, and this one is vastly better written than most. And it has a lot of themes that have nothing to do with sports. Also like the structure built around Abbott's no hitter. Not sure how I completely missed this when it came out.
DeleteThere are no cul de sacs to speak of around Burroughs Park, just a few dead ends. Life was pretty sweet in that neighborhood throughout the 1990s and still is compared to most of the rest of Flint.
ReplyDeleteWell, dead ends count as cul de sacs. They don't need to have the rounded turnaround at the end, although that is the most common use of the term.
Deletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cul-de-sac