Dearborn, Michigan

I'm sitting in the waiting room at Detroit Metro Airport after a long weekend visiting my father in Michigan. Michigan is the state of my birth; I was born in Ann Arbor while he attended the University of Michigan.

My home town, for lack of a better word, is Dearborn. I don't have a home town like most people do. I grew up all over the country, first in various student housing and rental homes in the larger Detroit area, then Toledo, Ohio, suburban Philadelphia, Houston. At the age of sixteen we moved to New Jersey, and, aside from four years of college on Long Island, have lived here ever since. But I spent some formative years in Dearborn.

Both of my parents grew up in Dearborn. They attended rival high schools but met and married very young. Both sets of grandparents lived there, so when we lived other places and went to visit that was the magic place. Then, when I was eleven, we moved there permanently and stayed there about five years.

Dearborn is an interesting place. It's most famous for being the birthplace and home town of Henry Ford, and still to this day it is the home of Ford headquarters, as well as the proving ground. As a rich man Ford lived in an estate, Fairlane, that is today available for tours and rental, and the company owns vast stretches of land. Many things are named for Ford--parks called Ford Field and Ford Woods, high schools called Fordson and Edsel Ford, and many roads. The most significant tourist attraction is the Henry Ford, a complex that includes the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village.

Dearborn was also notorious for being one of the most segregated cities in the north. It borders Detroit, but woe to any black family that tried to move in. For more than thirty years the mayor was a fellow named Orville Hubbard, who was openly segregationist--he was said that if a black family tried to move then the town responded like firemen to a fire. When I grew up there were no black kids in the schools.

So something funny happened. They kept blacks out, but Arabs snuck through the back door. Dearborn is now home to one of the largest Arabic populations in the United States, mostly Lebanese. This has caused some cultural problems, as school systems have had to deal with different dietary needs and there have been language issues.

I loved growing up in Dearborn though because it was a classic old-fashioned suburb. You could ride your bike for miles, there were sidewalks, parks, and there were remnants of a Tom and Huck lifestyle. You could into the woods and hike along the River Rouge, you could walk downtown and see a movie at the Calvin Theater or buy a magazine at the Little Professor Bookshop, or shop at the Westborn Mall.

Today Dearborn seems old and quaint. The homes are very small--most of Dearborn is made up of bungalows or Cape Cods, many of them had only one bathroom, unheard of today. Some of the main thoroughfares look a little dingy, with boarded up stores. But I still get a nostalgic kick upon visiting. It is, for lack of any place else, my home town.