The Best Non-Fiction Flint, Michigan: Books about the past, present, and future of American cities

If you're looking for the heart, humor, and, at times, horror of Flint, Michigan — and cities like it all over the country — look no further than these five non-fiction books.

Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line by Ben Hamper

I was assigned to the Cab Shop, an area more commonly known to its inhabitants as the Jungle. Lifers had told me that on a scale from one to ten — with one representing midtown Pompeii and ten being then GM Chairman Roger Smith's summer home — the Jungle rates about a minus six.

"It wasn't difficult to see how they had come up with the name for the place. Ropes, wires and assorted black rubber cables drooped down and entangled everything. Sparks shot out in all direction — bouncing in the aisles, flying into the rafters and even ricocheting off the natives' heads. The noise level was deafening. It was like some hideous unrelenting tape loop of trains having sex. I realized instantly that, as far as new homes go, the Jungle left a lot to be desired. Me Tarzan, you screwed.

Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City by Gordon Young

I was headed to a vacant house owned by a friend of mine named Rich. Like me, he had grown up in Flint and eventually moved to San Francisco, where we met. He owned three “investment” properties in Flint, although the fact that all of them were empty indicated they weren’t exactly generating a lot of income. He had happily agreed to let me crash at one of them. “It’s good to have it look like there’s someone actually living there,” he had told me. “It keeps the thieves from steal­ing the plumbing.” 

It took me a while to find the house because downtown still had an inexplicable number of confusing one-way streets, an unnecessary rem­nant of the days when growth and good fortune meant traffic congestion. I’d also never spent much time in the Carriage Town neighborhood. It was unfamiliar terrain when I lived in Flint, a neighborhood to avoid unless you were in the market for drugs, hookers, or an ass kicking. 

Rich’s sister, Berniece, was there to greet me when I finally arrived. She still lived in Flint. Although we’d never met, she showed me around the house like I was an old friend, presenting a very practical house­warming gift—a four-pack of toilet paper. She seemed worried about me, offering advice like “Don’t let anybody you don’t know into the house” and “Be careful who you talk to on the street.” I tried to reas­sure her that I knew how to take care of myself. I was from Flint, after all. But I sensed that my San Francisco pedigree, the new Patagonia shirt with lots of snaps and pockets that I’d bought for the trip, and my teal-striped Pumas were undermining my street cred. 

Before I try to pawn myself off as a minor-league George Orwell writing a Rust Belt version of Down and Out in Paris and London, I should point out that Rich’s house wasn’t as rundown as many in the neighborhood. It was the well-preserved former home of Charles W. Nash, the president of GM in 1912 and founder of Nash Motors. It was just across the street from the Durant-Dort Office Building, the beautifully restored birthplace of GM. Unlike many of Flint’s empty structures, the Nash House had luxuries like plumbing and electricity. The water heater was broken, but a cold shower would be better than nothing. Inexplicably, the place was painted pink, destroying any chance I had of establishing myself as some kind of tough-guy writer, a Buick City Bukowski. 

The wood floors, wraparound porch, handsome stained glass win­dow, and high ceilings oozed Victorian charm. There was no sign of habitation other than an awkwardly modern glass table in the dining room, a couple of folding chairs, and an expensive-looking Persian rug in the living room. Our voices echoed in the empty space. The bulk of the tour was devoted to the house’s four doors and eight locks. The kitchen door had been nailed shut from the inside with a two-by-four after a break-in. The side door was locked and seldom used. If there was a fire, Berniece advised, the front door was my best option, other than the windows. 

“I’ll try not to burn the place down,” I joked. 

“It’s not you I’m worried about,” she answered. Like any city with a lot of abandoned property, Flint houses regularly went up in flames. 

I decided to bed down on the nice rug. Besides adding a little padding, it was close to the fire exit. 

The Magical Stranger: A Son’s Journey Into His Father’s Life by Stephen Rodrick

But on November 4, Americans are taken hostage in the U.S. Embassy in Iran. I fold my papers and stare at pictures of blindfolded Americans. I don't connect the dots. Then, two weeks later, in the middle of a November night, Dad calls from the officers' club in Subic Bay. Mom says he wants to talk to me. I rub the sleep out of my eyes and cradle the phone. He says he's sorry. The boat is being turned around, off to the Persian Gulf, as a show of strength. I don't know what that means. I just know there will be no trip to Hawaii. 

Dad's letters continue to arrive from somewhere in fits and spurts. They used to be marked on the back with the number of days until his return. Now he just circles the seal on the envelope with a question mark and an unhappy face. 

Soon, it's the morning of November 28. Mom sleeps in; Chrissie has been up with the croup. By 11 am, I'm trying, unsuccessfully, to skate backward at the Roller Barn for eighth-grade gym class. I can tell you the electoral-college breakdown of the Carter-Ford presidential election and the status of Kenny Stabler's wobbly knees, but when it comes to the things that confer acceptance upon boys – hitting a baseball, building a catapult for Webelos, roller-skating backward – I'm hopeless. I need someone to show me how, someone to tell me that it really doesn't matter anyway. But that man is always 8,000 miles away. 

So I fall on my ass. The cool kids snicker. My gym teacher calls me over. I'm relieved at first because it stops the laughing. But the teacher's permanently upbeat face has gone flat. She points to a man standing by the snack bar. He wears a black uniform and carries a white hat in his hand. It is Lieutenant Commander Laddie Coburn, Dad's best friend. I slowly skate over and sit down on a bench. He hesitates, sits down next to me, and puts a hand on my knee. 

"Your father has been in an accident."

The Poisoned City by Anna Clark

In the first full account of this American tragedy, Anna Clark's The Poisoned City recounts the gripping story of Flint’s poisoned water through the people who caused it, suffered from it, and exposed it. It is a chronicle of one town, but could also be about any American city, all made precarious by the neglect of infrastructure and the erosion of democratic decision making. Places like Flint are set up to fail—and for the people who live and work in them, the consequences can be fatal.

Through a series of disastrous decisions, the state government had switched the city’s water supply to a source that corroded Flint’s aging lead pipes. Complaints about the foul-smelling water were dismissed: the residents of Flint, mostly poor and African American, were not seen as credible, even in matters of their own lives.

It took eighteen months of activism by city residents and a band of dogged outsiders to force the state to admit that the water was poisonous. By that time, twelve people had died and Flint’s children had suffered irreparable harm. The long battle for accountability and a humane response to this man-made disaster has only just begun.

William F. Buckley Jr. Comes to Flint by Stephen Rodrick

In honor of William F. Buckley Jr., journalist and Flint Powers graduate Stephen Rodrick looks back at our encounter with the man who, according to The New York Times, "marshaled polysyllabic exuberance, famously arched eyebrows and a refined, perspicacious mind to elevate conservatism to the center of American political discourse." And endeared himself to many people, including me, who disagreed with his politics.

Take it away, Steve...

In another time, guys hung the heads of dead mammals on their walls. Apparently, they thought this impressed the ladies. But as time passed, proving that you were a hunter lost its aphrodisiac powers with the gatherers. Nowadays, sensitive men have replaced Bambi’s mom with Godard posters, Picasso lithographs, and/or vintage, preferably pre-1979 Debbie Harry shots at CBGB’s.

On my mantel is the key to the City of Flint given to me by William F. Buckley Jr.

This might explain why I am chronically single. It was the spring of 1984, my senior year at Powers Catholic. I had already made a series of fundamental errors: There was the year playing freshman football under the Darwinian Dan Duncan who would have been right at home at Gallipoli. Then there was the time I volunteered to run up to 7-11 and buy Mr. Winchester some smokes only to get my brand new yellow Lands End shirt covered in grass stains and blood after getting picked off like a gimpy antelope by three kids from Flint Northwestern.

Still, my favorite mistake was passing on a chance to see a triple bill of f time for, uh, Spandau Ballet at the Royal Oak Music Theatre. The show was quite entertaining with lots of foppish hair and frilly shirts. I completely disregarded the fact that a middle-aged balding man playing synthesizers provided most of the band’s sound. I forgave a lot because I’d become an Anglophile, which in early 80s Flint made me a jackass.

I blame it on my friends Gordon and Jim. Despite the fact that they both grew up on the not always happy-making streets of Flint, the two of them had developed an obsession with the United Kingdom. Gordie even looked like Sebastian Flyte as played by Anthony Andrews in the BBC production of Brideshead Revisited. Well, except he wasn’t gay — dude was a playa! — and it’s doubtful Sebastian ever placed his face against a yellow legal pad and said, "Man, look how greasy my face is!" Jim’s take was more rock 'n’ roll, perhaps most tragically summed up by his insistence on wearing a Clash T-shirt from their Cut The Crap tour, which was actually just crap.

Somehow the American version of Anglo mutated into preppiness. We all sort of wished we went to a prep school. They just seemed cooler. I remember Jim and I almost picking up two Carman girls at an Our Lady of Lebanon dance by saying we were lacrosse players from Cranbrook. (This was slightly less entertaining than the OLOL Dance held on the night of the Larry Holmes-Gerry Cooney fight, where I drank an entire bottle of Mad Dog and then proceeded to tell everyone that I was, in fact, Gerry Cooney. Ah, so many memories.)

No human being better personified the American-as-Englishman than William F. Buckley Jr., Firing Line host, spy novelist, and former New York City mayoral candidate. He spoke in a clipped, hesitating manner accentuated by excellent arching eyebrows. In the spring of 1984, the Flint glitterati laid off some more Buick City workers, pooled the savings, and announced that Buckley was speaking at the Whiting Auditorium and then attending a cocktail party at the University of Michigan-Flint (or maybe it was Mott Community College.)

Luckily, we had a friend named Jon Kells who had a really hot sister, but more importantly in this context, a dad who taught at Michigan-Flint. We scored tickets to the speech and reception, but that wasn’t enough. We gamed the extremely limited flights arriving at Bishop from New York City and cut our afternoon classes to meet Buckley at the airport. Some guys blew off class to get blow jobs or smoke pot, we cut out of Mr. K’s choir torture so we could accost a middle-aged man at the airport.

It seemed right at the time. The best thing was this was celeb-free Flint and three camera crews showed up at the airport! WFB, as his friends called him, made some brief remarks, none of which, I swear, touched on his 1960s support for segregation. After a few minutes, he was rushed away, declining our offer of a ride. We barely touched the hem of his Brook Brothers suit.

I don’t remember much from his Whiting speech. He used a lot of words I never heard of and there were some empty seats; I mean it wasn’t The Nutcracker, what do you expect? The reception was held in some prof’s drafty, vaguely gothic house that probably could be bought for $127,000 back then and could probably be bought for $126,000 now. It was a momentous night for me: my first cocktail party. Now two decades later I know every cocktail party is exactly the same—intolerable made bearable by creeping drunkenness and the idea you’ve been there long enough to split without pissing off the hosts who you probably don’t even like, and hell, the alternative was staying home at watching Homicide: Life On the Street on DVD—but at the time it seemed like something, well, out of an Evelyn Waugh novel. Buckley was pounding vodka and grapefruit and had a frozen look on his ruddy face that I now realize was half public persona, half get me the fuck out of here. Waves of assistant professors shook his hand and asked him what he really thought about Gore Vidal, who I didn’t know. Well, I don’t know him now, but I at least know of him.

I don’t know if it was the early spring weather or middle-aged smart folks starved for a little intellectual glitter, but all the grown-ups got stinking drunk, like stinking straight-night at the Copa drunk. After an hour or so, Buckley had enough. His blue eyes began searching for his designated driver. Alas, he found him, but the hapless or happy prof was wasted beyond even the lax Michigan DUI standards of the mid-80s.

He then turned to us, and stage-whispered, "Say, are you boys still good for that ride (pronounced rhiiide)?" We nodded yes. Then Buckley grabbed his Mackintosh and muttered, "Let’s get out of here, then." He said goodbye to no one, which seemed quite British and awesome.

We went out to my car. Buckley blanched for just a moment when he noticed it was a two-tone Chevy Chevette. He piled into the passenger seat and placed his black loafers down on a sea of Taco Bell wrappers and a boom box holding the first Smiths cassette. I lurched the car into drive. Someone asked a complicated question about Reagan and Thatcherism that Buckley answered with a bon mot so heavily accented in alcohol and an American accent not known to common men that I floored the Chevette through a blood red light on Saginaw Street. Buckley didn’t lose his cool, offering just a cautionary stuttering of, "Ah, ah, ah," as he pointed his patrician forefinger toward the next potentially lethal intersection.

It’s a moment I thought of recently after the death of the writer David Halberstam who perished after a Cal Berkeley journalism student ferrying him to an interview with Y.A. Tittle turned left on red with tragic results. Maybe it was luck, maybe it was Buckley’s Yale-educated and old school Catholic God waving off the traffic, but we didn’t get broadsided by a Chevy Blazer.

Buckley was staying at the recently opened and soon to be shuttered Hyatt Regency. As we pulled into the circular drive, I screeched the Chevette to a stop and shut down my V-4. "Now, now, that was an adventure," said Buckley with a smile. I asked him if he could sign something as a memento for me. "I, I think I can do better than that." He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small, blue velvety case. His manicured finger popped the case open. Inside was a gold key. The inscription read, “From the Citizens of Flint, Michigan.” Buckley pulled out a fountain pens and signed, "To Stephen, Best Wishes, William F. Buckley." He gathered his trench coat and disappeared into the revolving doors.

Within a few years of the encounter, I stopped buying Buckley’s novels and sailing books and became, quite frankly, ashamed at my earlier conservative leaning, over-compensating with votes for Jesse Jackson and Ralph Nader. (I still am a bit of an Anglophiliac, I’m listening to "The Kinks Are The Village Preservation Society" as I write this.) For years, the Buckley note remained buried in a drawer, a reminder of a not so happy time in my life. I took it out a few years ago, and thought about it in a different way: here was a famous man who, when confronted with three slightly insane teenage fans with varying hygiene and acne issues, treated us with grace. I work as a journalist in New York now and sometimes cover politics. I thought I might run into Buckley at some similarly lame cocktail party. It never happened. Perhaps it was just as well. Not even Evelyn Waugh could write a better second act.

The Magical Stranger by Stephen Rodrick

 
Longtime Flint Expats readers are already familiar with the amazing writing of Stephen Rodrick, my partner in crime at Powers Catholic High School. We had the improbable bond in Flint of having fathers who were Navy pilots. Steve wrote two of the greatest posts on the blog. L'Affair de Moofla chronicled the high school prank that went a long way toward consigning both of us to mediocre colleges. And William F. Buckley Comes to Flint recounts our night on the town with the conservative icon. (Thank God we weren't born 20 years later; we might have had to hang out with Rush Limbaugh.)

The Magical Stranger is Steve's first book. It will be released on May 14, and it's a powerful story of a son's efforts to come to terms with the loss of his father.

On November 28, 1979, Commander Peter Rodrick died when his plane crashed in the Indian Ocean. He was just thirty-six and had been the commanding officer of his squadron for 127 days. Eight thousand miles away on Whidbey Island, near Seattle, he left behind a wife who never recovered, two daughters, and a thirteen-year-old son who would grow up to be a writer—one who was drawn to write about his father, his family, and the devastating consequences of military service.

In The Magical Stranger, Rodrick explores the life and death of the man who indelibly shaped his life, even as he remained a mystery: brilliant but unknowable, sacred but absent—an apparition gone 200 days of the year for much of his young son’s life—a born leader who gave his son little direction. Through adolescence and into adulthood, Rodrick struggled to fully grasp the reality of his father’s death and its permanence. Peter’s picture and memory haunted the family home, but his name was rarely mentioned.

To better understand his father and his own experience growing up without him, Rodrick turned to today’s members of his father's former squadron, spending nearly two years with VAQ-135, “The World-Famous Black Ravens.” His travels take him around the world, from Okinawa and Hawaii to Bahrain and the Persian Gulf —but always back to Whidbey Island, the setting of his family’s own story. As he learns more about his father, he also uncovers the layers of these sailors’ lives: their brides and girlfriends, friendships, dreams, disappointments—and the consequences of their choices on those they leave behind.

For more information, visit www.themagicalstranger.com.

Powers Catholic Turns 40

Powers High School, the setting for many excellent adventures, has reached middle age. Melissa Burden of The Flint Journal reports:

Tuition was $450 when the ninth- through 12th-grade school opened its doors in 1970. Today, the cost is $7,200 a student per year (or $600 a month) and is higher if the student isn’t affiliated with an area parish.

The school opened with just shy of 1,500 students after seven Catholic high schools in the county merged to become Powers.

The Powers vision was honed in the mid 1960s, a time when the costs to run private Catholic schools were rising considerably as there were fewer nuns teaching who took less salary than other teachers and as schools began to struggle with offerings, recalls Joe Forlenza, who was assistant principal when Powers opened and served as its principal from 1974 to 2002.

“A lot of them could not continue to afford the quality of education, the variety they were used to,” said Forlenza, who coaches freshman and junior varsity football for Powers.

But joining forces, they could provide more programs for students.

The $4.2-million school, the site chosen when 80 percent of area Catholics lived north of the Flint River, was financed with donations from the parishes and a mortgage that was paid off around 1980, Forlenza said.

Voting for Family and Country

Flint Expatriate Stephen Rodrick writes about everything that can go into casting a single ballot in a presidential election.

"I bit my lip all fall. I watched the markets fall and McCain's botched response remove the last doubt that he was going to lose, perhaps badly. I avoided political conversations for the most part, but found myself at a friend's house on the Upper West Side watching the last debate with a group of Ivy Leaguers and policy wonks. The derision of McCain began early. After the 17th joke about his strange facial expressions, I left, telling my host that I didn't have a problem with folks not supporting him, but the vilification of a man who spent longer in a prison camp than Obama spent in the Senate wasn't how I wanted to spend my evening.

"After that, I became more open about my McCain empathy. I argued how he had a proven record of working across the aisle and despises Bush and why his administration would be nothing like Bush's, particularly with heavy Democratic majorities in both houses. But I knew it was window dressing. I would not be voting for McCain if he were not a Navy pilot, if he had not suffered, as my mom put it, like my family suffered."

L'Affaire de Moofla by Stephen Rodrick

The Moofla, who lived so fast and died so young, prepares for an outing at Mt. Holly.

This is the story of two lost boys, a stuffed animal, and a hanging. There is a happy ending.

In 1980, I moved to Michigan after the death of my father, a Navy pilot. Gone were the idyllic evergreens of Oak Harbor, Washington, a military town on Whidbey Island reachable only by ferry or the Deception Pass Bridge that spans the Strait of Juan De Fuca. My mother re-located us to Flint — or, more perfectly to my sullen teenage mind, Flushing. This was so we could be closer to her family. The only bridge I now crossed was a four-lane overpass above the Flint River.

I arrived at the end of eighth grade and spent the last month of the school year at Flushing Junior High. I now attended class with lanky-haired classmates in REO Speedwagon t-shirts known by the previously unheard sobriquet of "burn-outs." They smoked marijuana cigarettes before gym. Back in Oak Harbor, it was hard to buy candy cigarettes. And in Flushing there was a mandatory home economics class. Sewing was required. I was in way over my head.
That summer, I determined there was no way I would get out of Flushing High School alive. I begged my mom to shield me from the criminal element by sending me to Powers Catholic. This was a bit counterintuitive, as Powers was located in a sketchy neighborhood just outside the Great Lake Region’s murder capital. But then again, mom had just moved us to a city with 25% unemployment; faulty logic was the family ideology. She reluctantly agreed to let me transfer perhaps as a nod to my father, who had attended Mass daily.

Powers was not the sanctuary I imagined. Most of the kids had attended one of the county's K-through-8 Catholic schools. Many had friends dating back to first communion. I didn't know anyone. For someone with my Navy-brat background, this wasn't new. Serving as a 104-pound fifth-string defensive back on the freshman football team led to some cartilage-crushing introductions, but nothing lasting.

It was in Mr. Winchester's honors history class that I found my people, so to speak. One of them was Gordie, the fair-haired boy of our class. (He looked surprisingly similar to the gentleman who runs this site). In a strange bit of synchronicity, we shared some heritage: his dad was also a Navy pilot, if a distant one, living in Washington, D.C. We never really spoke about it, but any accredited child psychologist or sitcom writer could have predicted what would happen next. Together, we embarked on an unintentional competition to see who could have the most spectacularly underachieving high school career.
Gordon was a worthy opponent. He was blond and an adept soccer player, Flint’s rough equivalent of an Ibiza playboy. But he never took the sport that seriously, quite content to have a photo of himself deftly cutting between two defenders on the front page of The Flint Journal sports page stand as his crowning athletic achievement. He seemed a shoo-in for senior class president, but was shunted to vice president in a coup very possibly orchestrated by the faculty junta after he received a grade-deficiency notice in choir class. Still, Gordie had the last laugh. The 1984 yearbook features a picture of Gordie reclining across the backs of the all-female student council. They are on their hands and knees.

My decline was just as sharp, if not as public. I tested into various honors classes, but managed a series of Cs and B-minuses that reverted me to regular classes by junior year. On many days, I would not arrive until third period, clutching a poorly forged note claiming extensive dental work. No one seemed to notice I never wore braces. I wasn't getting stoned in the parking lot; I was at the Flint Public Library, reading back issues of Rolling Stone and Melody Maker.

I'm certain I would have been drummed out of Powers if I had not been a junior member of the school's state champion Quiz Bowl team. Quiz Bowl was less about being an intellectual than having a quick thumb on the buzzer. By the time the host had uttered "It is held every April in Augusta…" I was ringing in "The Masters." This is not really a marketable skill, but it did bring our school glory. The state tournament was held at Alma College and the team's victory earned Powers $8,000 in scholarship money that, inexplicably, wound up completely in the hands of a tobacco-chewing quarterback who tortured me in trigonometry. This seemed like a grave injustice. Still, Quiz Bowl gave me a whiff of indispensability.

I would need it. In our junior year, Gordie and I found ourselves in the English class of Mrs. Sealten.* English was a particularly dangerous place for us. We fancied ourselves young men of a literary bent, largely based on our consumption of back issues of Harpers stolen from the library. In European History class, our knowledge of the Black Prince would never match that of Mr. Richardson, our pot-smoking faculty hero, so he had our respect. (Mr. Rich repaid us when he chaperoned our Model UN team on a four-day trip to the Kalamazoo Hilton. He split after the first day, leaving us alone with our policy papers, three girls, and Mohawk Vodka smuggled in a Head & Shoulders bottle). But this was not the case with Mrs. Sealten. We already believed ourselves more learned.
She quickly sensed our condescension, but did not concede the premise. Possibly born in plaid slacks, Mrs. Sealten had jet-black Spock bangs and reading glasses that swung back and forth across a rotating background of unisex turtlenecks. She was on to our game early and placed us at opposite ends of the classroom. She also made regular sly remarks about the crummy colleges we would be attending, if we managed to avoid Jackson state prison.

She was an odd duck. In addition to her classes, Sealten was advisor to The Powerline, the school's newspaper. We didn't write for the paper — that would have been too constructive — we just made a series of cracks about its suckiness. The school's colors were blue and orange and Mrs. Sealten had a small, shaggy-headed stuffed animal perched on a shelf above her desk. For reasons lost to history, it was named the Moofla. Moofla was the paper's mascot and Mrs. Sealten's closest confidant. During class, she would address her fuzzy friend with asides like "The Moofla doesn't like dangling prepositions." As the semester wore on, the conversations became more frequent. Once, when a hapless student suggested an unsuitable essay topic, Mrs. Sealten turned to the creature and asked, "What do you think Moofla?" She paused, apparently considering his reply, and then declared, "We don't think that will work."

This was disturbing.

Most of our teachers tuned out our bratty prattle and counted the days until we were out of their domain. Mrs. Sealten engaged us in a long-running low-intensity conflict. She reveled in mocking Gordon's writing in front of the young lasses he was trying to woo. One day, I turned in an essay extolling the virtues of Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. It was quite late. This I blamed on a confluence of mononucleosis and an implausible automobile accident. Mrs. Sealten went into investigative reporter mode. She ferreted out my lies and called my mother. "Your son is the most manipulative student I have had in all my years of teaching," Sealten told her. Mom immediately placed me under house arrest. I didn't have the heart to remind her I was already grounded.
Gordie and I were pissed, but powerless. Then Mrs. Sealten made a crucial mistake: she called in sick. On an early winter afternoon, her class descended into anarchy. A substitute sat at Sealten's desk with her face in her hands. Crime and Punishment paperbacks and fundraiser M&M's whizzed through the air. Gordon went on an extended walkabout with a bathroom pass. I plotted how I could interest the impossibly tall Sarah Torri in any of my romantic scenarios. This depressed me so thoroughly that I put my head on my desk and began to doze.

Then Gordon returned. I awoke to see him frantically snapping his fingers in the doorway. He mouthed one word.

"Moofla."

I immediately understood. Casually, I rose from my seat and made my way to the shelf holding our raggedy nemesis. A couple of hockey players wrestling on the floor in a homoerotic way provided a diversion. I grabbed the Moofla from behind the near-tears sub and pivoted toward the door. I then tossed the blue-orange furball sidearm to Gordon. A cheerleader shrieked at the maneuver but then stifled a conspiratorial giggle. Gordon tucked the creature under his sweater and stashed him in the safe house of his locker. That night, the Moofla was smuggled to Gordon's Bassett Park home in an L.L. Bean bookbag.

The next day, Mrs. Sealten returned. She eyed us coldly as we smirked into her classroom. She had an announcement.

"The stealing of a teacher's property is grounds for expulsion. Those of you who know what I am talking about should act accordingly before it's too late."
We chose a different path. Gordon had an unhealthy interest in the Red Brigade's 1978 kidnapping of Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro. He had an idea: ransom the Moofla back in exchange for a public apology from Mrs. Sealten for not acknowledging our literary greatness. Like most radical kidnappings, this was bound to fail. Moro had more chance of returning from the grave than we had of Sealten cracking.

Still, we hatched a plan: We would photograph the Moofla at various Flint locations and mail the Polaroids to Sealten, whose address was unwisely published in the White Pages.

It was now mid-December. We set upon our mission with a zeal perhaps better utilized conjugating the verb etre. Our Gallic alter egos, Andre and Etienne, were in danger of failing Sister Grace’s French II class despite a creative skit about a drug deal gone bad in the Bois Du Bologne. On a succession of Fridays, Gordie and I bought a bottle of Riunite, put The English Beat on the boom box, and set out in the most unsubtle of vehicles: Gordie's mom's 1963 Buick LeSabre. We logged many miles. There was Moofla on a chairlift at Mt. Holly. There was Moofla being ravaged by other stuffed vixens on Gordon's bed. There was Moofla reading Playboy. There was Moofla holding a current edition of the National Enquirer to prove he was still alive. And our favorite: Moofla spooning the Baby Jesus in St. Paul Lutheran's nativity scene.

Like Patty Hearst, the Moofla embraced the devil-may-care lifestyle of his captors — the booze, the pills, the girls. Some say it was a classic example of Stockholm Syndrome. Others admit he clearly rejoiced in his new-found freedom from Mrs. Sealten.

We mailed the photos.

Soon after, Mrs. Sealten began a class with another announcement.

"It is a federal offense to send threatening items through the mail. These are serious crimes."

This seemed particularly unwise in a place like Flint; the FBI was going to pursue the kidnapping of a Muppetesque animal while the entire city was a Beirut-style war zone and drunk driving was considered a civic right? Not bloody likely.

Still, things were getting too "hot," as they say on Starsky and Hutch. It was time to unload the Moofla. We would return him to his mama — with one significant alteration.

The Moofla would be hairless.

Why? Who can say? It seemed right at the time. One snowy evening, Gordon brought the Moofla into his living room, lovingly placed him on a towel, and broke out his brother's electric razor. Then he proceeded to mow off his synthetic blue-and-orange hair with the sideburn trimmer. Gordie's mom walked by, prepared to speak, gave a sigh, and went upstairs to bed. His older brother then made a cameo. Matt asked if that was his electric razor. Gordon said yes. His brother shook his head and whispered, "You'll be sorry, chump." These were more words than I had heard Matt utter in three years.
Our original idea was to stick the shorn Moofla in Ms. Sealten's mailbox. But then Heineken intervened. As we became increasingly intoxicated, a chain of events that can change lives was set in motion. We stopped at a hardware store. We bought some rope. We drove over to Mrs. Sealten's apartment complex. We drank more beer. We stepped out of the car into the cold, hard Michigan night. Then began some high-octane adolescent brinksmanship. I put the rope around Moofla's neck and tied a sailor knot I almost learned in Webelos. Gordon finally put his athleticism to proper use. He lassoed the excess rope like a rodeo cowboy. He then skillfully hurled the Moofla high onto an upper branch of an oak tree by the building's doorway. Moofla swayed gracefully back and forth under the starlit sky. He didn't look like he was in pain.

"I kinda grew to love that little fella," Gordie said, a hint of regret in his voice.

"He knew too much," I answered.

For a moment, Gordie and I stared wide-eyed at each other. A faraway siren sounded, and then seemed to draw closer. There was a moment of conscience mixed with fear. Should we take it down? "Nah," we cackled simultaneously. We jumped back into Gordie's car and peeled off into the darkness.

Why did we turn it up a notch? I can’t say for sure. Why do little boys set fire to ants? Why do grown men start wars over barren pieces of land? Men do things that are not explainable. Was it the absence of our Top Gun dads to kick us back into line? Possibly. All I know is that I felt truer to myself that night than on any other during my Flint years.

The following Monday, Mrs. Sealten didn't mentioned the shaved Moofla, or the hanging. Actually, she never mentioned the Moofla again. This earned our grudging respect, if not our remorse. The next year, both Gordie and I managed to graduate. The vice principal told my mother we were two of the students with the most potential who did the least with it. We both continued our studies at Catholic colleges — second-tier ones as Mrs. Sealten predicted. Somehow, we both became writers. Gordon is now — wait for it — the well-respected faculty advisor to a college newspaper. He has no mascot.

For years, I thought that if my father had been alive to learn of L'Affaire de Moofla he would have grabbed me by the ear and marched me right back to Mrs. Sealten's apartment complex to make my apologies. Then there would have been a one-way ticket to the military school my mother always threatened to send me to but never did because she is far too sweet.

But then in my thirties I came across a diary from my dad's high school days. It included teenage tales of hot-rodding in cars that did not belong to him. More recently, I found a notice of severe reprimand from the Superintendent of the Naval Academy. It chastised Midshipman Rodrick for a hare-brained, illegal shoeshine-selling scheme. I pull this piece of paper out on occasion and it always makes me smile. Dad had not always been an officer and a gentleman.

Maybe the story of the Moofla’s short life and hard death would have just made him laugh.

Stephen Rodrick graduated from Flint Powers Catholic in 1984 and is a contributing editor at New York Magazine. He also writes for The New York Times Magazine. He previously detailed his late-night exploits with conservative icon William F. Buckley for Flint Expatriates.

*Mrs. Sealten is not her real name. We still fear her.

Sexual healing

Flint may be many things, but it has never been dull.

Stephen Rodrick — the intrepid journalist who penned the brilliant missive detailing our late night exploits on the darkened streets of downtown with conservative icon William F. Buckley — emailed me a Flint Journal article updating the ongoing saga of Dana Bacon, the embezzler extraordinaire from the Montrose School District. (Rodrick, by the way, is hard at work on another masterpiece recounting an amusing high-school prank we orchestrated. He's been hard at work on it for a long, long time. Steve, are you reading this? No pressure, man, but is it almost done?)

It seems Dana and the assistant prosecutor who sent her up the river were allegedly...well, I'll just let Bryn Mickle of the Journal give you the details. And read to the bottom to get info on the "golden flute":

Investigators say an assistant Genesee County prosecutor showed up at Motel 6 on Friday with plans to have sex with a woman he had put behind bars for stealing $1.2 million from Montrose schools.

But instead of getting sex, officials said Kennan M. DeWitt ended up going to jail amid allegations he has been carrying on a 7-month relationship with convicted school embezzler Dana Bacon.

DeWitt, 46, led the prosecution of Bacon, who was sentenced in November to one year in jail after pleading guilt to 10 felony charges.

He is suspended without pay from his duties at the prosecutor's office.

His attorney called claims that sex was involved "completely untrue" and said DeWitt was trying to counsel the 44-year-old Bacon.

"This is a guy with a good heart duped into helping someone with their own agenda," said Frank J. Manley.

Manley added that DeWitt's actions would be understood once they are placed in the proper context.

"This is not what it appears," said Manley, adding that DeWitt is a licensed social worker with a history of helping people.

Investigators believe DeWitt visited Bacon at jail work release sites around the county and exchanged phone calls and text messages.

The relationship was discovered this week when a Genesee County Sheriff's work release deputy stopped by a Linden storefront being painted by Bacon and saw her talking with DeWitt.

The deputy recognized DeWitt and told Sheriff Robert J. Pickell, who opened an investigation that led to the discovery of a number of text messages between the pair.

Investigators arrested DeWitt at a Flint Township motel where Pickell said Bacon had agreed to meet him.

"The investigation revealed that DeWitt was going to the motel to meet Dana Bacon for sex," said Pickell.

DeWitt was met at the hotel by sheriff's investigators and taken into custody. Pickell said he resisted arrest.

He was released a few hours later pending further investigation.

Genesee County Prosecutor David S. Leyton said he became aware of the allegations on Wednesday and decided to suspend DeWitt indefinitely Friday afternoon on the grounds of inappropriate conduct and contact with a defendant.

DeWitt, a married father, has been with the prosecutor's office for at least 15 years.

"This is an unhappy day for me, the staff ... none of us like this," said Leyton.

A decision on any criminal charges will be made by the Lapeer County Prosecutor's office. Leyton recused himself from the case.

As for Bacon, Leyton said it will be up to a judge to decide if she will be punished. Inmates out of jail through work release are restricted to work-related activities.

Pickell said Bacon told investigators that she felt DeWitt could adversely impact her situation based on his role as an assistant prosecutor.

"He's in a position of authority," said Pickell, who said DeWitt has also visited Bacon at the jail as she waited to go to her work release site.

Bacon has been in isolation at the Genesee County Jail since Wednesday and Genesee Circuit Judge Geoffrey L. Neithercut has met with officials to determine if she should be taken off work release.

"Work release is an honor and a privilege. It's not a holiday," said Pickell.

Bacon had been granted work release to pay back the money she stole, working days at job sites and spending nights and Sundays at the jail.

She had been working at Starbucks, but officials said she was fired after negative publicity about her criminal case. She had most recently been doing painting jobs at various spots around the county.

So far, she has repaid about nearly $8,000 of the $1.2 million she embezzled, according to circuit court records.

Her attorney, Michael P. Manley, said he was shocked by the allegations involving Bacon and DeWitt.

But Manley doesn't believe there was anything inappropriate in the way DeWitt handled Bacon's prosecution, noting that she pleaded guilty to 10 felonies and was sentenced to a a year in jail and 5 years probation.

Bacon was fired by Montrose schools three years ago after officials found discrepancies in district funds.

Authorities alleged she used the money on extravagant vacations and purchases, including a golden flute.

She originally faced upwards of 24 years in prison but was given jail time so that officials could have better control of restitution in the case.

Go here for an update on DeWitt's plans to fight for his job.

And I'm just curious, how do you get one year of work release for stealing $1.2 million? Was DeWitt in on the sentencing recommendation?