Photograph courtesy of the Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University.
THESE ARE micro-stories and events, tiny tales, written to be read or heard. The worst stories, of course, are not read, heard or ever written. They happen without witnesses. Or witnesses never testify. These stories, though, are their own witnesses, testimonies to an earlier time (circa 1980) in Detroit, Michigan.
Tennessee Williams wrote in The Glass Menagerie that “in memory everything seems to happen to music.” Indeed, a number of these little fictions happen to music. One song in particular could play like an anthem for all of these stories: the Cars’ droll hit “Good Times Roll” – “Let the stories be told/they can say what they want.” This prologue will introduce the stories through the conventions of literature – voice, characters, setting (including Detroit, its cars, its music and its sports), symbolism, plot and meaning.