Motor City Memoir

(Please ignore the post dates; they're fake in order to control the chapter chronology. Thank you.)

2009-12-10T22:58:00.002-05:00

View more of Gary Glaser's work at:
http://www.glaserproductions.com

Dave Mesrey introduces the series

2008-12-01T12:36:00.012-05:00

My friend Gary Glaser has a tremendous track record as a filmmaker; he's won Emmys, Tellys, and dozens of other awards. This project won't likely win him a wooden nickel, but I'm sure glad he took the time to help me document some of these stories before I forget 'em all.

In the meantime, just scroll down, have a look around, and let us know what you think.
And come back periodically. We'll add more content as our schedules permit.

—Dave Mesrey
(P.S. If you should experience audio or video trouble, please just refresh the page. That oughta do the trick.)

David Mesrey writes:

My initial idea for this series (whatever it is) was just to have something to share with my kids and my grandkids. However, there aren't any little Mesreys terrorizing the world yet (count your blessings, folks). So for now, I'm stuck sharing these stories with you.

We should've titled this one "Put Me Outta My Mesrey."

I look like a petrified cab driver on his first day on the job. In Beirut.
Or, perhaps, like Stephen Stills at Woodstock: I'm scared shitless.

I'm not too comfortable in front of the camera, as you can plainly see, but I do warm up to it on occasion.

Here, I'm cruisin' with Gary in my tricked-out '91 Corolla down East Outer Drive in late 2007, just a few blocks away from the so-called "Shap House" at 5800 Nottingham, where I lived from 1969 to 1987.

"Shap," as you'll see in later episodes, is the code name I used as a teenager for my dear schizophrenic mother.

This is the neighborhood where White Boy Rick cut his teeth sellin' crack in the 1980s. Where guys really did walk the streets with plastic shower caps on their heads while they waited for their Jheri curl activator to activate, where they cradled oversize boom boxes to their ears, listenin' to Fab Five Freddy and the Electrifying Mojo, and where they pedaled around on the most tricked-out, pimped-out bicycles you've ever seen.

It's where, as a 9-year-old boy, I befriended an 8-year-old neighbor named "Wah-BEE-yo," who I ran with for a few years before he moved away and they boarded up his house.

One day in the summer of 1979, just before he moved, "Wah-BEE-yo" came out of his house wearing a red T-shirt with black letters that read "WILD BILL."

I asked him why it said that, and he just stared at me incredulously.

"Cuz that's my name," he finally said (as if it needed explaining).
Only then, perhaps, did I begin to comprehend Ebonics.

In the midst of all this lived the irascible, irrational Shap, and after my father died, she became the man of the house — and she ran it with an iron fist. You don't fuck with Shap.

The white kids in my school knew it, and the black kids on my block knew it. She was a hard-drinkin', chain-smokin, polio-riddled wretch who plodded along with a broken gait and a permanent scowl. Her angst and her anger were almost cartoonish in their transparency.

If Shap showed up unexpectedly while I had friends over, they'd take refuge in my closet till the coast was clear. Or, if logistics allowed, they might climb out a window and scurry off to safety.

And if Shap pulled up in the driveway while I was hoopin' with the brothers in my back yard (on my 8-foot rim — alley oop!), everybody'd jump the fence and run for cover, while I had to stay and face the music.

"I don't want any goddam niggers in my yard!" she'd tell me.
Yeah, well, I didn't want any goddam Shaps in my house either.

But I was an only child, and Shap always got the last word.
She came from the Sparky Anderson School of Management:

"It's my way — or the highway, punk!"

Although I had no siblings, I did have plenty of roommates. I shared the Shap House with six cats and, at times, two dogs, all of whom seemed to eat better than I did.

That was my neighborhood.
And that was the Shap House.

Let's take a little tour, shall we? ...

Little Mike's American Roots

2008-11-15T16:48:00.004-05:00

David Mesrey writes:

This dilapidated old building is kind of like the Roman colosseum to me. The remnants of Little Mike's Market remain (for now) at the corner of Charlevoix and Seyburn, just a few blocks west of Van Dyke, near St. Charles, where my father attended elementary school in the 1930s and '40s.

Somewhere in my aunt's basement, there's an old black-and-white photo of Little Mike. He's sporting the requisite white grocery-store apron and standing next to a lovely, smiling, wholesome American housewife type, as they admire an equally lovely bottle of E&B.

I'm not sure if I ever set foot in Little Mike's Market, but I suspect the aroma in there was much like that of Eastern Market.

Years later in 1990, when I was 21 and Little Mike 91, I spent a long, sweltering summer sharing a cramped little bedroom with him in his house on Bedford Road. I spent those months coping with stray gunfire and random dog fights, while Little Mike grappled unsuccessfully with his Clapper. In 2004, I wrote about that experience in Detroit Home magazine.

On the day that Gary and I taped this particular episode, a man from the neighborhood sauntered onto the set, as it were, and overheard me talking about the store.

"Aw, Little Mike?" he asked me.

"Yeah!" I said to him. "He was my great-uncle."

"I been livin' here 50 years," he replied. "I remember him — and Housey was across the street."

This guy seemed like a bit of a street creature, but what he said was true, and I'd forgotten all about it. When I was in college at Western Michigan, I met a woman named Rebecca Housey, whose grandfather, it just so happened, was Little Mike's chief rival back in the day. George Housey, too, ran a grocery store on Charlevoix, and I had the pleasure of meeting him before he died.

In fact, in the late 1980s, these two old adversaries were living just a few blocks away from each other on Detroit's east side — Little Mike on Bedford Road, and Mr. Housey on Berkshire. Each would tell me a story about the other, and I'd relay the message.

"He was my competitor!" Little Mike said in his singsong English.

And what did Mr. Housey recall of Little Mike?
"Well," he said, "your uncle was a little firecracker."

And from what I gather, that was rather polite of old George.

Thank Heaven for 7-Eleven

2008-11-11T13:19:00.001-05:00

David Mesrey writes:

St. Clair Shores is just a few miles north of Motown, and in the late 1970s, this was another world for me — a strange new world, one in which I felt freer than I did at home. The kids there were fascinated that I lived "in Detroit!" and I was equally fascinated that they had built-in swimming pools and illegal mini-bikes and kitchens in their basements.

And sometimes I would think to myself, "Man, where are all the black people?"

I started hanging out there in 1977, I believe, when I was just 8 years old. The older kids in the neighborhood who frequented my dad's 7-Eleven ... some of them were the coolest cats I'd ever laid eyes on — at least the coolest white cats. There was one guy, perhaps named Darren, who lived on the other side of I-94, and all the girls swooned over him. He was probably 16 years old. He wore GASS shoes and blue cutoff denim shorts and blue, triple-striped tube socks — and they all fit him like a glove. He, no doubt, smoked pot or maybe weed — heck, he might've even smoked grass! Darren simply exuded cool with every step he took. In fact, I thought he was so cool, he might as well have been black.

One summer day as I sat killin' time in the tennis courts of Avalon Elementary with some neighborhood kids, "Darren" came strolling by. The girls in my group gasped audibly when they spotted him. There were some vague whispers about his sex appeal and his cutoff shirt and his perfect hair. Then one of the girls made mention of Darren's generous package.

"Better get out your magnifying glass," she said to the other.
But quickly realizing her error, she corrected herself. "I mean ... oh, you know what I mean!"

Everyone in the tennis courts knew what she meant:
Darren had the biggest dick in St. Clair Shores.

Then there was an older curly-haired kid named Lee, as I recall, and he, too, was fond of cutoff denim jeans. But they didn't fit him quite as well. One day as he sat cross-legged on the sidewalk outside Stevie Ivkov's house, I noticed that his entire nut sack was protruding from his shorts. As a 10-year-old boy, I was shocked to see this and quite embarrassed for Lee. There were others around, and so I whispered to him, "Your balls are hangin' out."

Almost adamantly, Lee then made the requisite adjustment.

This was summertime in St. Clair Shores. Cutoff shorts, shag carpet, shaggy hairdos, and nuts aplenty.

To cool themselves off, all the teenagers went swimming at the Visanko house on Shady Lane. And if the Visankos weren't home, the kids would hop on their bikes and head to 7-Eleven for a Slurpee or an ice cream cone and to say hi to Eddie. There, my father, Eddie Mesrey, and I would ply them with gobs of iced sugar and corn syrup, and I'd hope to get invited for a dip in somebody's pool. It seems to me that it was always summertime in St. Clair Shores. I remember nothing about the winters there.

Our regular summertime customers were guys like Gasper the stallion and Bobby the blow-dried dreamboat and Joe the neighborhood mooch. Then there was poor, slow Jimmy Russo, who lumbered around on a big yellow Schwinn "paper bike" and had little else to do daily but check on the status of the Better Made Potato Chip man.

"Better Made guy come yet today, Ed?"

"No, not yet, Jimmy," my father would say.

"You think he'll be here Tuesday?"

"Yeah, probably Tuesday, Jimmy."

Jimmy Russo was a bit of a nuisance, but he was harmless, and my father turned a deaf ear to no one. Jimmy's father, in fact — a dark bespectacled, mustachioed man named Buster Russo — ran a Stroh's ice cream parlor up on Harper Avenue and molded me into a halfway decent little outfielder on the 1979 Avalon Tigers.

Then there were the guys my dad let sit behind the counter with him on the milk crates: the sacred, red Twin Pines milk crates, always stacked two high. Those were reserved for Billy Toler and Chuck the Truck Driver, and poor, buck-toothed Joe Randazzo. Then there was the chirpy, portly little oddball named Roger Horsnby, who claimed that his uncle or grandpa or great-great-grandpappy was St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby.

He was full of shit.

Some days when Gary from the VFW stopped by, he'd tell us about his souvenir from Vietnam: the steel plate in his head. I remember one day in June of 1980 when he and my father and one or two other grownups started another kind of pool — this one to determine a winner in their "How Long Before Richard Pryor Croaks" contest.

As a 10-year-old boy, I got in a contest pitchin' quarters at 7-Eleven with Bill Toler. I'd never played before, but Bill was glad to show me the ropes. After he schooled me repeatedly and I'd run out of quarters, that was the end of that. Advantage: Toler.

(What kind of man takes a little kid's money like that? But then again, perhaps my father the gambler instructed Bill Toler to do that to teach me a lesson.)

I ate my meals, typically, standing at the oversized silver microwave — usually a frozen cheeseburger or frozen meatball sandwich, courtesy of the Southland Corporation. Sometimes my dad would spring for my cousin Steve and me to go across Harper Avenue to a greasy spoon called The Clock.

(Steve's father, my uncle George Mesrey, was the previous manager of the 7-Eleven, but he'd dropped dead of a heart attack back in '78. So my dad often looked after Steve.)

For five bucks, Steve and I would eat meatloaf and mashed potatoes and grilled-cheese sandwiches, and we'd sit in the booth and listen to the jukebox for hours. There, I heard the likes of Chuck Berry and the Four Tops and the Platters, but also current '70s stars like Bob Seger and Fleetwood Mac and Pablo Cruise.

And no matter where I turned, there was no sign of Shap.
These were my good old days.

Perhaps my favorite 7-Eleven customer was a rotund, robust former boxer by the name of Gus Sinaris.

Gus wandered in every so often and always made his presence felt. He was in his 50s, a Burt Young, William Conrad kind of character. Salt-and-pepper stubble, flattened Greek nose, and a gruff, yet gracious manner. My head always spun toward the door, and my eyes lit up whenever I heard his voice.

"Hey, Eddie!" he'd say in his raspy, ramshackle fashion.

Gus didn't have a car, didn't have any money, and didn't appear to have any direction. He was always just plodding someplace down Harper Avenue. I couldn't understand half of what he said to my father, but I hung on every word.

Gus, I later learned, was also a popular vendor at Detroit Tigers and Pistons games at Tiger Stadium and Cobo Arena. My father and I even sat in his section once in the lower deck of left field. The fans all called him "Dancin' Gus."

I'm not sure I ever saw him dance, though. I just knew him as Gus Sinaris.

In the late '70s, my best friend Matt Narduzzi had taken boxing lessons from a guy in Detroit named Ducky Dietz. He was well-respected and his daughter, Yvanne, went to our elementary school. But my dad knew something about Ducky Dietz that I didn't.

Back in his prime, Ducky apparently, used to square off in the ring every so often with Dancin' Gus. I'm not sure who got the better of those matches, but my money's on Ducky.

When Gus would come in to 7-Eleven, he'd talk gibberish to my father and me like some kind of mentally challenged Cassius Clay. Seems like he said the same thing every time. And seemingly every time, my dad would turn to me and say, "Watch this, David."

"Hey, Gus," he'd say ... "You remember Ducky Dietz?"

"Ducky Dietz?!" Gus would yell at my dad. "DUCKY DIETZ?!"

He'd recoil in mock horror and start throwing punches wildly in the air and muttering unintelligbly, perhaps cursing the memory of Ducky Dietz for breaking his nose.

One day in the summer of 1979, I attended an end-of-the-season Little League baseball picnic at Brys Park at 8 Mile and Harper. I can remember seeing Gus strolling around the park that day, perhaps collecting empty bottles (like I once saw his son Jimmy do at the race track years later), or perhaps just taking a stroll in the park.

A few hours later, I noticed an ambulance off in the distance, parked on the grass of Brys Park.

I feared the worst, and I ran toward it. When I got there, I found Dancin' Gus keeled over on the ground, gasping for air.

The paramedics asked him what his name was, but he couldn't respond.
I spoke up and told the paramedics that his name was Sinaris. Gus Sinaris.

They asked me how to spell it, and I said I wasn't sure, but I knew it was written on the back of his T-shirt. So they proceeded to roll him over on his side (which was no small task), just to get the correct spelling of his name.

On the front of his shirt, in royal blue letters, were perhaps 30 or 40 random words strewn together, each representing something that Gus liked.

I remember it looking something like this:

TUBBY'S SUBMARINES 7-ELEVEN SECRETARIAT TIGER BASEBALL BILLY BEER DR. PEPPER SEATTLE SLEW DICK THE BRUISER ROCKY MARCIANO COLD CUTS LITTLE CAESARS BALL PARK FRANKS THE BIRD'S THE WORD

MORK FROM ORK TRY IT YOU'LL LIKE IT TASTES GREAT LESS FILLING!

The paramedics quickly carted Gus and his orange T-shirt away, and I thought I might never see him again. But the very next day, my father and I were amazed to see him walking down Harper Avenue as if nothing had happened.

Not too long ago, I ran into an old acquaintance who used to live in that neighborhood back in the late '70s. Although he and I weren't friends, we were contemporaries, and I asked him what he remembered about the store:

"I have great memories of hanging out at the 7-11 with my brother, the Andarys, and the rest of my neighborhood buddies," he wrote to me. "I’m sure we were a bunch of pests – but your father was always kind to us. It was kind of like on Sesame Street and going to Hooper’s store – only your dad was the Mr. Hooper of our neighborhood."

Daddy was a gamblin' man

2008-11-10T22:15:00.011-05:00

Watching this clip, I feel kinda like a community-college student who's studying to be in broadcast news.
(I don't have a prayer.)

For me, the track in the 1970s was the thing to do. I first went to Hazel Park with my father when I was just 5. 1974. It was nighttime, and the "buggies" were racing. My father gave me two bucks and let me pick a horse. Which I did. I was no child prodigy, but I did have beginner's luck and I hit paydirt. I'm not sure how much I won, but it allowed me to keep betting. (Of course, since I was only 5, my father would place the bets for me.)

Time after time, race after race, I kept winning. I came out on top by 50 bucks.

S-H-A-P spells 'Mom'

2008-11-09T13:27:00.002-05:00

The Ice Man cometh

2008-11-08T13:39:00.000-05:00

Shoot first; ask questions later

2008-11-06T12:05:00.000-05:00

A grand-standing ovation

2008-10-20T12:56:00.001-04:00

Robbed of His Pants

2008-10-10T13:41:00.000-04:00

Shap Goes to Jail

2008-10-09T13:42:00.000-04:00

A Losing Bet: Death at the Track

2008-10-03T13:43:00.000-04:00

Up in Smoke: Shap's Final Exit

2008-10-02T16:43:00.000-04:00

Crossing Into Canada

2008-10-01T13:45:00.000-04:00

The last car on the lot

2008-09-30T13:46:00.000-04:00

A Twin Bill

2008-09-29T11:50:00.000-04:00

STAY TUNED FOR THESE EPISODES ...

2008-01-25T16:04:00.005-05:00

The Wrong End of a Drive-By

Sleeping in the Pelleritos' Garage

A Visit to the Old Shap House

Chaos in Kalamazoo

AND MORE ...