Life In The Aerie

By Mary Hannington

I don’t know if it was a trend unique to my city or if it was popular everywhere, but everyone I knew in Detroit had a Weber grill and we barbequed all summer. We cooked steaks, ribs, chicken, brats… roasted corn and potatoes. We still all do. BUT I don’t know anyone that has a Weber grill anymore.

I lost three of them. How they got the damn things over my six-foot fence I’ll never know, but they did it somehow. And in later years, as Slouchy NEVER emptied the ash until it was overflowing, I imagine it was a messy affair.

I had a friend who found his at a pawnshop down the street and convinced the owner that the intelligent thing to do was to let him take it back home.

After the third grill left the backyard at the Hannington compound I said, “Screw this!” I found a grill made by some artisan in his garage. A western type deal, it was welded steel with cast iron parts and had a little horseshoe that you could swing out over the fire and heat up a cup of coffee or some barbeque sauce and an overhead bar with various hooks that allowed you to hang pots of beans or other barbeque-like fare.

Not only did it look cool, but also there was NO WAY anyone was lifting that fucker over a fence!

I’ve lived in Detroit for over twenty years.

I’ve been a victim of crime.

Mostly, these “sprees” could be traced to a new crack house nearby. And I know a thing or two about crack. At some point in time the Columbian mules, who delivered kilos of cocaine hidden in shoes or the linings of luggage started teaching American dealers how to make crack cocaine, a much more highly addictive product.

Smart economics on the Columbian’s part…

OMG I just watched Jimmy Fallon get two women to see who could blow the hardest on either end of a tube with a pink ball inside. It might have been sexy except he had them wear huge bright-colored nose plugs.

Sorry got off track…

Like I said, I’ve lived here for a long time and have played in this city for even longer and I have never REALLY been in fear of my life. At some point you get streetwise, you know how to fit in and people just don’t mess with you.

When you live here you become a part of a neighborhood and for the most part if you dig on folks in the hood, they will dig on you and let you do your thing. On the east side, where I am, there is Berry Sub, Indian Village and West Village, to the north is Boston/Edison and Brush Park and to the west Cork Town and Mexican Town.

In the Cass Corridor, a bohemian stronghold, you used to be able to find a variety of women for sale - nubile sixteen year-old runaways, dwarves (who had a dwarf pimp) and even a hooker in a wheelchair (if you like that sort of thing). Up by the border of Detroit, by 8 Mile, you had the more traditional streetwalkers.

The gay hang was Menjo’s and the punk hang, right next door was Bookie’s.

There were card games in the back of Chung’s Chinese restaurant, the numbers racket in Greektown and Leo Derderian, who ran the Anchor Bar once had a bank of pay phones for the bookies who worked out of his bar AND the reporters from the nearby press houses.

My old haunt, Harmony Park had its down and out, mostly Vietnam vets, some who I employed and some that I fed, but they were never a threat rather they watched out for me.

It’s a city - it had and has all these things.

Anyway, I was talking about crack houses and the thing about crack is it’s cheap. It’s also extremely addictive and this drug caused a rash of crime we called the “smash and dash”. Someone would break a window rifle through the house to find something worth ten bucks and dash off.

I could always tell when there was a new crack house. On my walks I’d see the pints of empty over proof rum bottles scattered about, folks used rum to soak cotton wads wound onto a rod to light and heat their pipes with. I’d think, “Oh here we go again.”

It was really just a nuisance. It was more of a hassle to replace the broken window, but screw the boom box that went out the same window. I could and did live without it, no problem.

The fender guitar was never played, a gold Tiffany ring (that's a lot of crack), a collection of hot sauces?, money, cel phones, two coats, a purse, planters... One guy used to steal shrubs!

Oh no, not the shrubbery!

At one point I had the idea that if we just all taped envelopes to the door and easy to get to windows that said “Dear Crack Addict here is ten bucks.” The whole process would be simplified. It never really took though. Eventually the cops would bust the crack house and the smash-and-dashers would go someplace else.

Entering via a window, I have had carry out food stolen from my fridge. This was just after I had painted the kitchen and had the locks off the window. Surely some observant, out-of-work painter from nearby and who was maybe homeless, he had propped open the screen door, which alerted the neighbors who called in the early morning. All the champagne bottles - the variety of available booze went untouched - I owned were stacked on the back porch. Clearly he planned another pass. And he also made off with a silk skirt still in the box it came in. A burglar with distinctive taste… it was all very amusing, until I found a large hunting knife outside the window.

There were a number of car break-ins and more house break-ins. A burglar, who once stole Christmas presents from under my tree. It wasn’t until my 250lb neighbor tackled the suspect, who was seen jumping over my fence, that it was discovered it was a woman.

I wasn’t home at the time and had to go to the station afterwards to make a statement. She was blaming the crime on a boyfriend. The problem for her was there was one set of footprints, she was SEEN jumping my fence AND it turned out she was wearing one of the presents!

I’ll never forget the cop, who with an averted grimacing face held this jacket up with a pencil so I could ID it.

“Yup” I said, “It was meant for my assistant.”

I DO own a gun.

It is only a laser tag gun, though it looks real enough. I’ve thought that maybe I could deter a break-in with it, but what if it causes the perp to draw a REAL one? I’d be in deep doo-doo.

There IS a baseball bat in the corner of my old bedroom, but I have never had to use it.

I know self-defense and I would use it if threatened and have used well-placed elbows to remove drunken, unpleasant men from my presence and can report that a good head butt when approached from behind works well. These tactics were used to remove myself from a potentially harmful situation.

BUT as far as I can remember in my whole adult life I have only used violence in anger twice, once to protect another and then again to stop a stream of verbal abuse that had been ongoing for a long time.

I love life, the human body and I am endlessly fascinated by human beings.

I may talk a tough game, but I could never fire a bullet into another human with the potential of fatally wounding them.

And most of my crooks are just kids.