Back in The Day, Woodward Avenue, which runs for 20-ish miles from the waterfront of the Detroit River up to "The Loop" which runs around the City of Pontiac, Michigan (my hometown!), was "the place" for people young and old to show off (and race) their cars, socialize and "people watch". I'm just old enough to have caught the tail end of the glory days of "cruising the strip".

The two minutes walking distance, from my bedroom window out to the strip slightly mutes the sounds and smells of the rumbling, gas guzzling engines and the acrid smoke born of rubber tires spinning too fast against asphalt roadway, as drivers "Light em' Up" for the mass of over one million spectators. I'm taking it all in with my eyes, ears and camera; later, I had sweet dreams of cruising the strip in my buddy Pete's GTO.

"Motown," "The Motor City," "Detroit": due to an awesome combination of excellent geography (flat, waterway access to the Atlantic Ocean by large ships; fairly centrally located in the U.S.A. and lots of nearby iron ore, coal and natural gas,) the city that sprang up around Fort Detroit was destined to become a manufacturing center. The shipping access, through the Great Lakes and the Erie Canal, also made it a natural point of immigration for hundreds of thousands of immigrants who entered the United States through its eastern seaboard. My grandfather was one of those immigrants.

Gramps came over around 1918 and, on the suggestion of a fellow Italian, immediately found his way to a ship that was going to Detroit. Remarkably, after less than two weeks in his new "home country," Sebastiano Cantarella, with only a 4th grade education, was working in Henry Ford's first assembly plant, and pulling down $5.00 a day.

The increasing number of manufacturing jobs also brought emigrants from the southern United States. While the automobile industry created an opportunity for black Americans to get away from the agriculture-based economy of the southern states of the U.S., and the old, bad history of that area, it also brought southern whites, "crackers" (poor whites) that hadn't been fairing much better (despite the presumptions of "white privilege") then their black counterparts. For a major portion of the populace, the automobile and manufacturing industries provided a lot of hope: work hard, build the cars, make as good a living as the next guy, live in relative peace and prosperity.

Along a Native American pathway that led from the waterfront at Detroit to the central part of the state, early settlers to Michigan established the cities of Flint, Pontiac (named for an Native American chief of the area) and Cadillac (named after a french governo.r) The last two would later have automobile lines named after them. The automotive behemoth General Motors, had its start in Pontiac, Michigan, springing from the post-WWII factory of the former Oakland Automotive Company, named like the surrounding county (Oakland), for the oak treed forests which dominated the landscape.

The original Dodge family built an immense mansion in the heart of Oakland County, with their automobile factories not far away, and as I've already mentioned, Henry Ford had his first automotive plant in the City of Detroit.

Other cities(Chicago, Cleveland and Sandusky) in adjoining states, flanked the "Motor City" area and played major parts in the automobile industry which so shaped the midwestern states of the U.S.; but, no other area played anywhere near the role of the greater Detroit area in the formation of the U.S. automotive industry.

"Automation Alley": that's the manpower and money part of the story. Local manufacturing and supplies industries have formed a coalition to establish the greater Detroit area as the throne room for automotive excellence and know-how, touting the area's universities, technical schools, machine shops, engineering firms and steel plants.

I'll give them all of those things; but, big business generally needs something better than proximity to suppliers in order to lure them in. During the Dream Cruise a large 5 story high mural/banner proclaiming AUTOMATION ALLEY was draped on the side of an office building facing the Dream Cruise strip. Ironically, this was in the heart of the toniest, snobbiest, least manufacturing-oriented community along the strip. A place with virtually no automotive history - but lots of political and economic "pull".

The truth of the matter is that Automation Alley is being made economically attractive to large manufacturers through lucrative tax breaks conceived in the country clubs and boardrooms of the "non-working" class. A sizeable portion of the local blue-collar populace has it ingrained into their psyche that the automotive plants and their suppliers symbolize "the good life" and don't consider the real costs we've paid historically.

Most of the land where the former plants stood are too polluted to be used for anything other than manufacturing, the groundwater is unsafe to drink in many areas, we are advised not to eat the lake fish (especially if you are a pregnant woman) and, until about ten years ago, the metropolitan Detroit area had the distinction of having the highest lung cancer rate in the nation for an area where coal wasn't being mined. Not too surprisingly, as a child I can remember going out in the morning and finding a fine layer of soot on everything from the coal-fired steel foundry about 1 km. away.

On to the Cruise!

The police reported very few tickets, no "Cruise" related accidents and the weather was just stellar: mid-70s, bright and sunny.

At the Phoenix Center, at the heart of Pontiac and in the center of "the Loop", entertainment came from the once famous acts of "Chubby Checker" and "Sha Na Na", a classic car show featured over 1000 vehicles you could look in, around and under, and the sweet smell of dozens of barbeque stands mingled with the smell of the cars and the crowds.

Our local paper ran a story about a gentleman and his wife who had driven from Iowa to participate in the Cruise, and quoted them as saying that the welcome of the locals lacked nothing when compared to the "southern hospitality" which the opposite end of the United States is known for. That's not surprising --- to the residents of "Automation Alley" the sight and sound of those vehicles was comparable to the return of immigrants to the land of their birth, or the return of soldiers after a war. And the strangers from out of town had lovingly taken care of one of our own, that darn near made us kinfolk.