Dearborn

The city is laid out on a gird, with Michigan Avenue cutting through like an electric current. The driver follows its gauntlet of neon signs, all staggered at different heights and shouting brand names and businesses with various intensities of color. None of the shops are open, of course, but the way they stand guard over the avenue, it never feels completely desolate; even at the lonely hour of eleven-thirty on a weeknight.

Some of the markers have changed since the last time the driver rode down the strip. Mickey’s dime store has disappeared. He and Paula used to sit there at the counter and sip malteds. Among the other couples and a few younger, high school kids, they would gaze at each other silently in that loving, hypnotized way where their adoring eyes said all. The driver likes to think that he and Paula still have, or had, that same unspeaking connection, but the delights of courtship can’t remain once a couple settles down and struggles to build a home.

In all the schemes they devised while sitting in that cramped fountain –about leaving Dearborn, starting a family and a life together, even choosing California as their destination- their talk never once mentioned coming back. The car lots and parts stores of ‘auto row’ glisten with rows upon rows, and ten-foot high displays, of American-made marvels. Even when they weren’t piecing them together on the assembly line, the workers of Dearborn could never escape the omnipresent fruits of their labor.

But where is Mickey’s? Among signs advertising acrylic paints, displaying the myriad rainbow they come in, and an improbable number of Irish bars –shamrocks and all- there remains no trace of the modest general store. The driver can’t even place where it once stood, that’s how much the car outlets have taken over in less than a year.
He comes upon the green cursive of Pat’s Tavern. It’s still open, with a few cars in its small parcel of a parking lot. That was his favorite of the Michigan Avenue watering holes, so it’s good to see that it has survived. Despite frequent moral outcries and the resulting shame hoisted upon those who frequent them, bars have a way of thriving in good times and bad. It’s the least the city’s workingmen can do to help keep the local economy going, and Pat’s was always worth it. With a pool table worn down in just the right, comforting way and a jukebox that guaranteed every selection would be well received, no matter who was doing the choosing, this tavern may be indistinguishable from all the other ones like it lining the strip, but it is one of the few things the driver misses about Dearborn.