John Kotarski and The Legend of El Azan

John takes El Azan for a spin on the Flint Public Library lawn in 1979. (Photo courtesy of John Kotarski.)

One of my favorite Flint Expatriates posts deserves another run. The story of Flint's legendary downtown horse and its colorful owner last ran almost three years ago. Here it is...


At last, the legendary John Kotarski has made contact and supplied a treasure trove of photos capturing a time when horses roamed the yards of Avon Street and the thoroughfares of downtown.

John wrote:

I am enjoying the stories about this character called "John Kotarski." In fact, I recognise some of the tales myself.

Kotarski with El Azan and Jill Ackles with Arthur Donaldson's Arabian on Avon and Second. (Photo courtesy of John Kotarski.)

The horses of Avon Street. (Photo courtesy of John Kotarski.)

Go here for more photos. And here are the original posts...

Tom Wirt provides photographic evidence that Flint is at least a one-horse town.

I ran a post in January called Pale Rider Revisited about the days when horses roamed Flint. (Full post is reprinted below.) Now we have an update on John Kotarski's horse, which we now know was named Alazon:

TRom writes:

That horse was mine before John bought him, and before me, it was owned by the family who had the stable and room for three horses in Flint. Another girl in the neighborhood, Michelle (I forget her last name) was also a co-owner of Alazon (a Mexican Creole and former race horse). It's a strange and wild story, the family who owned the property was definitely not your Ozzie and Harriet variety. And the old man was an exhibitionist who lived to wear next to nothing claiming it helped him "breathe" since he had emphysema. He was an odd and basically harmless guy. But you could still have a horse in the city at that time and teen girls flocked to that stable. I'm sure the clause is no longer in effect, because once the horses were gone, the clause would be void. We lived a block away from John, who was a friend of my family's. I was relieved when he bought Alazon, I had already moved away to college. But then john told me Alazon was kicked by another horse in the paddock where he boarded him and this shattered a front leg, which could not be repaired. A sad way to go for a strong horse.

Here's the original post:

I have to admit I was always a little skeptical of my sister Marty's claim that she met some guy in downtown Flint once riding a horse and wearing a Mexican poncho. I thought it might be some sort of Clint Eastwood fantasy. She even had a name — John Kotarski.

Keep in mind that Marty claims she can't remember anything that happened to her before the 9th grade and, at 15, regularly drove the family car to get to her driver's training lessons, which seems slightly illegal, even in a car-loving town like Flint.

But Flint Expatriate readers have backed her up on this one. It seems the urban cowboy lived on Avon Street and even had a fictionalized children's story written about him in The Flint Journal. And, as I should have expected, Tom Wirt even has a photo of the horse nibbling grass in a Flint backyard. I find it hilarious that Tom lived next door to the horse, but never met John. I guess when you live in Flint and your neighbor has a horse and a poncho, you just assume he also has a rifle and it's wise not to ask too many questions.

So Marty...I apologize for doubting you, but I'm still not buying the story that you smashed up the family station wagon trying to avoid a squirrel in the Powers' parking lot.

And John Kotarski...we expect to hear from you soon.

Here are some more details from Macy Swain ...

"Oh, I knew John Kotarski well, and yes, he was a big East Village character. He did have a horse, boarded via a grandfather clause on Avon Street. In the early 80s I wrote a serial Christmas children's story for the Flint Journal featuring a fictionalized version of Kotarski -- I think I named him Cliff; when the story finished, on Christmas Eve, John and his horse Ali rode through downtown in the Christmas parade. One famous story about him was when he tried riding the horse into Doobie's and was forever after banned. He's now happily married to an Ann Arbor academic. I don't know if he still owns any places in Flint. Yes, he did gut a place on Second Street. Remember when the "sheet people" rolled through town? I had dinner with them in that place on Second Street -- some young lovelies were feeding a long-haired guru brown rice. Really, really strange. John put them up for a couple of weeks. He was a bit loud and overbearing but had a good heart and I was and am fond of him."

Marty's original question...

 "Does anyone know anything about a guy named John Kotarski? He was kind of a hippie lawyer (supposedly) who left the profession. When I met him he had a roller skating rental kiosk in downtown Flint. When you rented skates from him he also offered you a glass of wine (whatever). He was quite eccentric and he rode around town on a horse and wore a Mexican poncho and a hemp woven hat. NO...I am not dropping acid! He's a real guy!"

Pale Rider Revealed

Tom Wirt provides photographic evidence that Flint is at least a one-horse town.

I have to admit I was always a little skeptical of my sister Marty's claim that she met some guy in downtown Flint once riding a horse and wearing a Mexican poncho. I thought it might be some sort of Clint Eastwood fantasy. She even had a name — John Kotarski.

Keep in mind that Marty claims she can't remember anything that happened to her before the 9th grade and, at 15, regularly drove the family car to get to her driver's training lessons, which seems slightly illegal, even in a car-loving town like Flint.

But Flint Expatriate readers have backed her up on this one. It seems the urban cowboy lived on Avon Street and even had a fictionalized children's story written about him in The Flint Journal. And, as I should have expected, Tom Wirt even has a photo of the horse nibbling grass in a Flint backyard. I find it hilarious that Tom lived next door to the horse, but never met John. I guess when you live in Flint and your neighbor has a horse and a poncho, you just assume he also has a rifle and it's wise not to ask too many questions.

So Marty...I apologize for doubting you, but I'm still not buying the story that you smashed up the family station wagon trying to avoid a squirrel in the Powers' parking lot.

And John Kotarski...we expect to hear from you soon.

Here are some more details from Macy Swain ...

"Oh, I knew John Kotarski well, and yes, he was a big East Village character. He did have a horse, boarded via a grandfather clause on Avon Street. In the early 80s I wrote a serial Christmas children's story for the Flint Journal featuring a fictionalized version of Kotarski -- I think I named him Cliff; when the story finished, on Christmas Eve, John and his horse Ali rode through downtown in the Christmas parade. One famous story about him was when he tried riding the horse into Doobie's and was forever after banned. He's now happily married to an Ann Arbor academic. I don't know if he still owns any places in Flint. Yes, he did gut a place on Second Street. Remember when the "sheet people" rolled through town? I had dinner with them in that place on Second Street -- some young lovelies were feeding a long-haired guru brown rice. Really, really strange. John put them up for a couple of weeks. He was a bit loud and overbearing but had a good heart and I was and am fond of him."

Marty's original question...

"Does anyone know anything about a guy named John Katarsky? He was kind of a hippie lawyer (supposedly) who left the profession. When I met him he had a roller skating rental kiosk in downtown Flint. When you rented skates from him he also offered you a glass of wine (whatever). He was quite eccentric and he rode around town on a horse and wore a Mexican poncho and a hemp woven hat. NO...I am not dropping acid! He's a real guy!"

Joe the Quilter

I've always wondered how someone becomes a professional quiltmaker, and I know many readers have as well. Lucky for us, Flint Expatriate Joe Cunningham, who now lives in San Francisco, is here to tell the tale. Take it away, Joe...

I was born at McLaren hospital in 1952 and graduated from Swartz Creek High in 1970. Played guitar all over mid-Michigan in the ‘70s. Had a band called Two Steps Higher that acted as a sort of house band at the old Rusty Nail for a couple of years. I used to run the amateur night at Doubie's. Had a band in the early '80s called The Suttle Family, played a lot at Hat's Pub and other places downtown.

I got started making quilts in 1979 when I had returned to Flint after a couple of years on the road and a friend of mine, Larry...Larry...what the hell was his last name? Oh, right Larry McCarthy, an artist who used to live in lofts downtown, told me he knew a woman who needed a guitar player for some folk gigs she was doing. (Larry was a wonderful artist who made grotesque landscapes of faces, etc. with a ball point pen.) Anyway, the woman—Gwen Marston—had a house full of boxes of quilts. She had a grant from the Ruth Mott Foundation to document the collection of Mary Schafer from Flushing, a great quiltmaker, collector and historian. She liked doing the documentation and collecting all the info on the quilts, but dreaded writing the actual catalogue.

I myself had just finished my only year of college, studying English. I wanted to be a writer. So I offered to write the catalogue. "Fine," she said, "But first you would have to learn about quilts." So I read all the available literature: only about a half a dozen books at that time had any scholarly content. Then one night she came over to my apartment—in a house owned by the infamous John Kotarski—and brought me a small quilt, a thimble, and needle and thread, and showed me how to do the actual hand quilting, so I could write with conviction.
We played some gigs together; I wrote the catalogue; then I started to sit at the quilt frame with Gwen and quilt. Then I wanted to make my own quilt. Then I had the idea of becoming a professional quiltmaker. You don't need a license, a diploma, nothing. Just a business card. We got some gigs talking to quilt groups, then I wrote some magazine articles, then I got a book contract, then the next thing you know, we were professional quiltmakers. We bought some land and built a house up on Beaver Island and started the annual Beaver Island Quilt Retreat, attended by quilters from all over the world.

I returned to Flint in 1989 to start a musical production company with the late great John Johnson, a local composer and musician who died in a car wreck with Bruno Valdez in Feb, 1991. Gwen and I then moved back to the island. We split up, then I went off on my own and ended up in NYC for a year, then in Vermont, as host of a radio show. In late 1993 I was hired to move out here to San Francisco to write all the materials for some international exhibitions of quilts from the ESPRIT quilt collection. It was just a five-month job, but here I met Carol LeMaitre and got married and started a family. Now I travel all over the country to perform my one-man musical, Joe the Quilter, and teach classes. I wrote an essay for the upcoming quilt show at the deYoung Museum and will be doing some lectures, seminars and docent training for the exhibit.

To learn more about Joe and his work go here.
And find out about Gwen Marston and her work here.