DOWNRIVER

Except for the first two years of my life, and for six months in 1952, I lived in “Downriver Detroit” communities until I left for college.  In 1952 my dad was obligated to be active in strike activities due to his working as an electrician at Great Lakes Steel.  He couldn’t travel to wait out the strike like the three of us to my grandparents’ home in Omaha.
 
“Downriver Detroit” is in my blood.  This was brought “home” to me listening to my son Jeremy singing  “Downriver Song” on Short’s Brewing Company’s stage in Bellaire last weekend.  “Jeremy Porter and the Tucos” had a gig there on July 22 and another one the next night in Traverse City’s “warehouse district.”  
 
My parents lived at 645 S. Crawford Street in the Delray section of Detroit, from 1946-1948.  This area is now being plowed under for construction of the entrance/exit ramp of the new bridge to Windsor, Ontario.  After the arrival of my sister in 1948 the four of us moved to a brand new WWII tract home in Riverview, 8 miles south of Delray.  My earliest memory in life, no doubt because it was such a momentous day, took place in 1948 traveling with my parents and new sister to the Lazy-Boy Showroom on Dixie Highway north of Monroe.  We were on our way to purchase a console television with an 8 inch screen.  As a two-year-old I loved watching the goldfish in the store’s indoor fish pond!
 
Ill-fated dreams of upward mobility (see the “Self Employment” article in the “Vocations” section of this website) led us with hope and promises to Grosse Ile in 1957 when I was in sixth grade.  My father, an electrical contractor, had done work for a bachelor, Southwestern [Detroit] High School teacher.  He was a philatelist, a stamp collector, of some renown with a secure walk-in safe containing his vast and valuable stamp collection in the middle of the Grosse Ile home.  Thanks to his hobby, I own a cane he gave me to start a collection.  The cane was used by President Grover Cleveland who was a personal friend of the postmaster in Trenton on the island’s mainland.  The postmaster in turn was a close friend of our stamp collecting predecessor. 
 
During the summer of 1964 I worked as a counselor at a boys camp near Alpena.  Only on the drive back to Downriver did my mother inform me that the family had sold our home on the island earlier that summer.  She, the matriarch of the family, had decided to move to Gibraltar where she could maintain, at this location legally, a small antique shop out of the home.  She was afraid to tell me of the planned move until the last possible hour because she thought I would hate her for her decision to move.  I understood all the financial reasons for the move.  Nevertheless, she was generally right about my emotional reaction.  Gibraltar is still “Downriver” but it is light years distant from the affluence of the residents and the opulence of the homes on Grosse Ile.  When I got back to campus that fall, I changed my official address during the registration for classes to my girlfriend’s address which was the address of the Alpena County jail.  That’s true, but it’s a different story. 
 
Jeremy sang his “Downriver Song” last week on the 22nd.  I had heard the lyrics before while listening to the band’s CD.  Hearing it live from the stage in the downtown of northern Michigan’s Bellaire sung by my son…had a huge emotional impact on me.
 
“Downriver Song”    
 
Well the story starts many years ago
The jobs came on as the river flowed
The foundry floors were stained with blood
And the boots were caked with river mud

And my old man worked his paper route
Because his old man couldn't be put out
He still goes back every now and again
To see what's changed, what's in the wind

He's not sorry that he left there
He's not sorry that he's gone
Downriver Song

The years went on and the jobs went south
The bars filled up, my old man got out
The streets filled up and they emptied again
They stayed alive when the cash got thin

They're not sorry that they left there
They're not sorry that they're gone
Downriver Song

They don't take to strangers well
They don't got a lot to sell
Oh the stories I could tell
The stories I could tell

Eventually I was on those streets
With a guitar and songs, not the foundry heat
I never passed any judgment there
Everyone I knew was always fair

My old man returns now and again
To see what's changed, what's in the wind
And I make it back myself, sometimes too
And I call `em my streets, tried and true

I'm not sorry that I'm left there
I'm not sorry that I'm gone
I'm not sorry to have my roots there
I always felt like I belonged
I felt like I belonged
Downriver Song
                            
             Written by Jeremy Porter    (Lyrics found at:   http://www.thetucos.com/lyrics.php#cDR)

​My homes in Detroit, Riverview, and Grosse Ile.  “Downriver” is one of those words that has morphed from an adjective, i.e. “downriver Detroit”, into a noun.  See Wikipedia.

​Photo #1:  Facebook post image by Jeremy Porter
Photo #2:  Photo by Noreen Porter
Photo #3:  Photo by Kristen Porter
Photo #4:  Photo by Jeffery Gower