Where it All Started

Contrary to the title of this book, my life did not start in the 6ix Oh 8ight, the area code in which I spent the majority of my childhood and adult life. You might be asking, “Why do you spell it like that? Is this an attempt to be hip or cool?” No, not really. I merely wanted to use a literary device that states what it is and sounds it out the way we say it here in Wisco (but admittedly, it is pretty cool!). And yes, Wisco is short for Wisconsin.

So, where did I start my journey before being transplanted to the 6ix Oh 8ight?

My lineage is from the area code 810, Michigan, near the Motor City, Detroit, Motown, home of The Big Three (Ford, GM, and Chrysler), the automotive giants. In the early seventies, the era of my birth, nearly every city, town, and country village in the 810 had a role in the American automotive machine. You couldn't drive down any stretch of highway without passing a small mom-and-pop shop or a large thriving facility that made components or materials for Detroit. Unfortunately, the oil embargo of '73 and other factors quickly changed the face of the 810 landscape forever. To this day, there are many abandoned shops and deteriorating remnants of the great American Dream.

My mother grew up in Richmond and the Saint Clair area in a working-class family. Saint Clair is right on the Saint Clair River, directly across from Courtright, ON, Canada. It's a perfect place to sit along the boardwalk at the mighty riverbank and gaze at the behemoth freighter ships passing through. As a young girl, in between the passing freighter ship intervals, my mother and her friends would swim the 1/2 to 3/4 mile across to Canada and then hitch a ride on a ferry to come back.

Richmond, on the other hand, is a picturesque town located more inland, off the river. Gratiot Avenue is a main thoroughfare that runs from the northernmost point of the Kern Block Pentagon, right near where Crowley’s department store was located in the heart of Detroit, all the way up to Marysville, where it carries on as Gratiot Blvd and eventually becomes Electric Avenue (yes, like the song by Eddie Grant). But not before it cuts across the southernmost tip of Richmond and meanders its way past where the Pink School and the old Sinclair station were located.

The Sinclair station was owned by the parents of one of my mother’s friends, and perhaps this is the time and place that planted one of the seeds which shaped my mother’s future. The Pink School was a one-room schoolhouse where my mother received her primary education. When she was very young and crossing Gratiot, the main road separating the two, she was struck by a car, and the antenna of the vehicle left a permanent scar on the side of her cheek. Not to worry, she turned out just fine.

Back in the '60s, someone stole the big bell from the schoolhouse bell tower. Rumors were plentiful, but the culprit was never found. It was revealed a little over fifty years later, in a double secret reunion meeting I attended with my mom and her friends, that it was none other than their former classmate Ch... ... ... Oh, hold on a moment… I’m being told by my team of experts that I shouldn’t reveal any names as it would take away from the great school bell mystery and perhaps tarnish the names of good folk who happened to make a silly decision or good folk who merely heard a rumor and thought it might be true.

My mother’s grandfather Reo worked for Henry Ford as a pin-striping painter. When my mother was a little girl, on weekends and after work hours, he would take her to a local bar called The Richmond Hotel. There she would have popcorn and a soda-pop while, in the back parking lot, he hand-painted pinstripes on the working men’s cars for beer money. (In an odd yet coincidental paradigm shift, I too would grow fond of a hotel bar aptly named after the town it proudly served for many generations. The Friendship Hotel, which is, according to Google Maps, located exactly 555 miles away from The Richmond Hotel.) More on The Friendship Hotel in a later chapter.

My mother’s dad, Robert, worked as a metallurgist for a ballpoint pen company, and in his spare time, he liked to garden, was a member of the Masonic Lodge, and was an amateur HAM radio operator. His call letters were K8IFE, and he would talk to people on shortwave radio from all around the globe, long before the invention of the internet. A little later in life, I would sit around with him and be completely enamored with listening to him talk across the globe to other HAM operators. (Kind of like the first family you knew with HBO and could watch movies without going to the movie theater! More on that a little later in the book.) Incidentally, the term "ham" radio was a slur that professional telegraph companies used during the 19th century to make fun of operators with poor Morse code skills, giving them the name “ham-fisted.” Over time, the amateur radio community adopted it as a term of endearment, so to speak.

Marion, my mom’s mother, who was an amputee due to cancer, worked at the public library and also for Holiday Inn. Marion took no nonsense from anyone and worked harder than most people who had both legs. (I am sure this is part of the reason my mother never took being sick or injured as an excuse to not get some type of work done.) I never met my grandmother Marion, but I know I would have liked her. I have been told she had a funny, peculiar sense of humor. One example is; after meeting newcomers, she would stab herself in the leg with a knife or fork, wait a few moments for the shock to really set in, and then finally disclose that she had a wooden leg. Of the few pictures I have seen of her, she was a very beautiful woman with a wonderful smile, and you can see that wild spark of life in her eyes.

My mother also had two sisters who went on to school and left the blue-collar life behind. One became mayor of an eastern seaboard town, and the other spent her life as a social service worker helping those in need. The latter would also be responsible for our future journey to the 6ix Oh 8ight. As for my mother, she started work life with the Lionel Train company and also for a company making speedometer needles that would go into MOPAR products in the Detroit area. She would later go on to prison life, owning her own business, and eventually managing several Cenex stores in the Wisco 6ix Oh 8ight.

Prison life… that is my mom’s peculiar sense of humor, which stems from my grandmother Marian's sense of humor. One of my mom’s favorite things to do was tell people about her time in prison. I recall a time when somebody had paid her a compliment on how good her coffee tasted, and she replied without hesitation, “Oh thank you, I learned how to make great coffee in prison.”

What the person didn’t know is that my mom was not in prison as an inmate; she worked at a prison as a librarian. Unlike my grandmother, who would eventually reveal that she indeed did not stab herself in the flesh but rather had a wooden leg, my mother rarely reveals that she was not a resident but a facilitator in prison… Sorry mom, cat’s out of the bag now.

Odd yet compelling parallels:
I went to school over 500 miles away, and I had a classmate with the same last name as the alleged bell thief. It’s not that common of a name.

I too would grow fond of a hotel bar aptly named after the town it proudly served for many generations. The Friendship Hotel, which is, according to Google Maps, located exactly 555 miles away from The Richmond Hotel, and the bars look very similar.

5 - is the number of sides in the Kern Block Pentagon, where the old Crowley’s Department store was located at the start of Gratiot Avenue, which is 55 miles from the Loyal Order Of The Moose lodge located in Port Huron at the end of Gratiot Rd.

5 - is the number of words in Loyal Order Of The Moose.

5 - is the number of syllables in the given name of the suspected school bell heist mastermind.

5 - Is the number of syllables in the name Aleister Crowley. Crowley’s was the name of the department store at the top (north side) of the Kern Block pentagon. Mr. Crowley is a song about Aleister Crowley, which I’ll probably talk about in Chapter 5. Ok… ok… getting a little carried away. I have no idea if I’ll talk about that in chapter 5…