New York City

No I cannot forget where it is that I come from
I cannot forget the people who love me
Yeah, I can be myself here in this small town
And people let me be just what I want to be
– John Mellencamp

Everyone comes from somewhere — a big town, a little town, a hodgepodge of villages strung together in moves dictated by imposed change. Somewhere along the journey to adulthood, those places take root in character shaping, with experiences and inflections molding the individual. Must an individual stay in one place to claim it as home?

I spent my first 27 years in Michigan. I grew up in a house on a dirt road in a small town — Novi. It was so small in the late ’70s and early ’80s that I rode the school bus for over one hour to get to the elementary school located in another town, West Bloomfield, in the Walled Lake School district. We had a Northville phone exchange that changed from 313 to 810 to 248 as the rural small town grew to be a suburb throughout the 80s with the sprawl of development. I went to university in a medium-sized town, East Lansing in the middle of the state, an intellectual Big Ten haven in the midst of rural farm country. I moved to the big town in 1998, Detroit, Michigan, which is now, by all accounts, a shrinking town.

Scene on Detroit River, Belle Isle, by Frederick M. Delano, undated 1860s courtesy: Bentley Historical Library, U of M

I officially left Detroit on New Year’s Eve 2003. Things were looking up for Detroit demographics in those days — pre-2005 Super Bowl fever was sinking in with entrepreneurial upstarts and Kwame Kilpatrick seemed on target to incorporate decent politics with his youthful swagger.

But hindsight is what it is. Six years later I’m a long way from returning to Detroit, and as times have taken a turn for the worse, I’m starting to feel like a phony Detroiter. I gave birth in New York to a Brooklyn baby, for goodness sake.

I started 2004 in New York, wide-eyed and scared of the unknown, in the dust of 9/11 detritus, unscathed by the difficult decade on the New York nerves. Originally, my big city sabbatical was going to last a few weeks; I wanted and needed to escape Detroit for a moment after a bad row. New York was decadent and seductive and thankfully anonymous, but more than I could handle — too many people, too much concrete, too damn fast. It didn’t take long to grow accustomed to the intoxication of power and possibility that has wooed millions.

On a whim and a dare, I extended my stay for one year in New York City, declaring my intent to move back to Detroit when I achieved success with writing pursuits, hoping buy a big house in Indian Village after I made good on dreams come true. I wrote a long sappy email to close friends about my intentions and sense of purpose. I even kept up an apartment for a time in Michigan.

Indeed, things change when people make changes. My hypocrisy: I like to go home, but the truth is, I don’t want to stay there. At least not all the time. At least not right now. At least not for more than a couple weeks at a time. What kind of Detroiter does that make me? The fractured city of Detroit makes me feel a host of emotions — loyalty, relief, pride, fascination, boredom, amusement, sentiment, nostalgia — and recently — guilt.

I should get over it and move on.

Yet, I won’t, I can’t, seem to let go. I’ve still got my identifiable flat Midwestern drawl and countless miles logged on the route from I-80 to I-75. I know the familiar turns taken high in the sky LGA to DTW. Michigan is where my mother immigrated to with our family in 1954, escaping persecution. It’s where my father found home after a fractured upbringing. It’s where my 99-year old grandfather lives his twilight years. But, it’s more than my family that pulls me to Detroit. There’s something there that reminds me of who I am, as I relax on the big-wide open highway surrounded by GM, Chrysler and Ford makes, moving forward with speed and confidence, and when I linger in small quiet nooks built for natives, reminded of all the good that sails beneath the radar.

I prescribe to the notion of place. I like reading books about the landscape of places, I pay attention to setting in film and I attempt to generalize qualities of those who come from certain regions. Michigan people are: hard-working, down-to-earth, humble, provincial, dreamy, the sleepers who will rise to the top in any challenge. Add Detroit to the mix — and staunch joins the list.

Playwright Ron Milner

Detroit has a grip on me, to point of obsession. I’ve rationalized leaving with my efforts to help those who are there, to tell people about all the great things Detroiters are doing, to try to woo them away like me to be aspiring Detroiters from afar. There’s safety in numbers. And now as many Detroit natives have returned to survey the barren landscape, looking for connector points to fill in the dot, the exodus continues for those who’ve given up on the town.

Here lies a personal point of contention: the struggle of those with Michigan roots who jump ship. I suspect I’m not alone; for several years the majority (80 percent, I’ve read) of young people churned out of the state have opted to relocate, to spread their lives, talents and loves in other places. Some leave for the big city with wanderlust infused with only a gutsy single suitcase, some leave because it’s the safe bet. What these people share is that they come from somewhere else — a place they chose to leave behind.

Doug Coombe's photographs from 2004 show D-Troit in NYC

I see them here, in big New York on small skinny streets — the aspiring DJ at the post office hustling his way into three jobs around town, awkwardly trying to keep up with the wear of long subway commutes, the long-gone successful writer and filmmaker who reminds people of her Detroit pedigree, the shoe designer who shyly mentions Detroit at the end of his bio, the graphic designer who expresses his loyalty with his dedicated Detroit/U of M/ Michigan State sporting schedule, or the musician that everyone thinks lives in Detroit but ends up more often crashing at a New York pad to export the energy, contact and creative motivation. Sometimes, I feel like I know more Detroiters here, than there — an inflating sad sentiment.
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