Monday, June 10, 2013
Conversations with Hiawatha Bailey – 2013
arwulf arwulf - theodore grenier
TG: You have always been so good with us kids.
I think you were one of the very first people I met in Ann Arbor. You were working at a gas station at Fourth and Huron. Across from the Embassy. Taught me how to wipe windshields while you pumped gas. I watched you climb up onto a sort of catwalk where you wrestled with rubber tires. You remember this? 1968? Early '69?
HB: Oh my God yes I totally forgot it was called Casey's Gas and Appliance my probation officer's office was right across the street so he sit and watch to make sure I went to work. Everyone stopped in on their way to the Sunday concerts I couldn't stand it and after a few weeks I jumped in the car with somebody went to the Sunday Concert and never went back, I love you Ted thanks! And we used the inner tubes from tractor tires on that catwalk to shoot the rapids at Delhi!
TG: So that's what you were doing up there near the grimy ceiling of that greasy old garage! Sizing up inner tubes. Want you to know you were an excellent introduction to this town, and to Southeast Michigan--even under the wretched conditions you describe. I just wandered in and there was this tall graceful person with rich brown flesh and almond shaped eyes, named after one of my favorite First Nation heroes as described to me then by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
I think you were one of the very first people I met in Ann Arbor. You were working at a gas station at Fourth and Huron. Across from the Embassy. Taught me how to wipe windshields while you pumped gas. I watched you climb up onto a sort of catwalk where you wrestled with rubber tires. You remember this? 1968? Early '69?
HB: Oh my God yes I totally forgot it was called Casey's Gas and Appliance my probation officer's office was right across the street so he sit and watch to make sure I went to work. Everyone stopped in on their way to the Sunday concerts I couldn't stand it and after a few weeks I jumped in the car with somebody went to the Sunday Concert and never went back, I love you Ted thanks! And we used the inner tubes from tractor tires on that catwalk to shoot the rapids at Delhi!
TG: So that's what you were doing up there near the grimy ceiling of that greasy old garage! Sizing up inner tubes. Want you to know you were an excellent introduction to this town, and to Southeast Michigan--even under the wretched conditions you describe. I just wandered in and there was this tall graceful person with rich brown flesh and almond shaped eyes, named after one of my favorite First Nation heroes as described to me then by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
{Discussion of recently demolished “Szechuan West” restaurant, formerly “Kale’s Waterfall”}:
TG: I remember my father telling me he went to Kale's. It probably reminded him of a night club in Billings, Montana. He tried to go in Zal Gaz across the street for a drink {we're talking 1968} but they wouldn't open up 'cause he didn't know the Masonic password. At least that's what he said. And then it was Szechuan West. I'm really missing that waterfall, the beautifully decrepit interior, that Jack Ruby-vintage bar, moo shoo vegetable and the sesame noodles.
HB: Went there after the senior prom, my date was so country she ate the fortune cookie fortune and all!
TG: Baby that is the best thing I've seen in writing for a while. I'm gonna savor it like one of those drinks with the little umbrellas off the edge.
HB: Yeah and now she wants me to be-friend her I will but we ain't going out for Chinese!
HB: Can't believe it torn down silly ole town!
{referring to the carp who lived in the wishing pool at the foot of the man-made waterfall}:
HB: "I wonder whatever happened to those poor fish, probally died from copper poisoning!"
origins:
TG: Where were you born and where did you come up?
TG: Where were you born and where did you come up?
HB: I was born in Columbus Georgia in 1948 in a house that my Grandfather and my father built then before I was one we moved to Hamtramck and then the Eastside of Detroit and then to a small farm in Belleville Michigan.
TG: What can you tell me about your earliest impressions and memories?
HB: One of my earliest impressions was a dislike for the Catholic school that I went to in Hamtramck and the Mother Superior there. My likes the movies on Woodard on Sat. afternoons Belle Isle and the fountain there and Motown music.
TG: Your patience with and love for children is well known. Can you tell us about the grownups who cared for you when you were a little person?
HB: I love kids cause I think I get their point of view I try and treat them like little people with the same abilities and not much of the experience yet. When given credit for common sense we generally develop it. I was cared for by Mother and Father and Grandfather on Dad's side and Grandmother on Mom's side and my big sister Gwendolyn.
TG: Maybe you'd like to talk about your mother, your father and anybody else in your immediate or extended family.
HB: Mom is in heaven but as she was leaving she made sure that we were not going to be sad whenever we remembered her she said it would not be fair to the love and good times we all shared so " Love me but let me go" and I figure if my Father could learn to do it then so could I.
TG: Got any words for your recent or remote ancestors? Anything you want to say to, for or about them.
HB: To my African and Native American ancestors I say thanks and I realize that we gave a lot more than they were able to take.
All Power to the People
Hiawatha
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