Bill, Bobcat Blood, and Bus Trips to Hudsons

I just learned that one of my friends from the old neighborhood passed away in 2001. Bill Wargo lived on the corner of Whittier Place and Riverdale Drive, sort of across the fence from John Kotlarczyk, who, of course, lived across my back fence. I can’t remember when I first met Bill, but when I did, it probably had something to do with bobcat blood.

Bill told me that you had to drink bobcat blood before you could become a Cub Scout. He would know, since he was a year older than me and his dad was the pack leader.

I was dying to join the Cub Scouts. My brother had been one before he moved on to the Boy Scouts. I had all his Cub Scout books-Wolf, Bear, Lion-and had been scouring through them for months before my 8th birthday. I was in kid heaven thinking of all the badges I could earn.

Bobcat was the lowest Cub Scout rank. It was a cool little bronze medal, and when you got it, Bill’s dad pinned it on you in front of the whole pack and all the parents on the stage in the Kentucky Fried Chicken smelling basement of Cherry Hill United Presbyterian Church. But first you had to drink bobcat blood. I did, and it tasted like tomato juice with hot sauce.

They put me in Den 6 and once a week, Bill and I would walk over to Steve Bingham’s house. Steve was a trip, the likes of which space will not permit me to explain, and I sort of mean that in a good way. Anyhow, we’d do all the Cub Scout stuff (make clove apples, fried marble jewelry, macaroni ashtrays, etc.) then get juice and cookies. Six months later, Bill’s mom became Den Mother. It was at a Den meeting at Bill’s house in October, 1962 when I learned the Ford Rotunda burned down. There would be no field trip.

About a year and a half later, Bill did something that changed the way I look at this world, the way I look at schools, kids, and even my job as an education professor at Penn State. Well, ok, I exaggerate a little, but as Christopher Robin once said, “bear with me.”

It was early summer, 1964, and Bill calls me up and asks, “do you want to ride the bus to Hudson’s tomorrow?” J. L. Hudson’s was the biggest department store in Detroit—twelve stories of everything and twelve miles from the corner of Michigan Avenue and Gulley Road. I really never thought my parents would let me go—a ten and eleven year old kid riding the bus alone and spending the day roaming downtown Detroit—but they did.

Bill and I caught the Wayne bus at about 8:00 AM and rode it all the way to the last stop at Adams Street. Bill must have done this before because he knew that our first stop would be at the nearby Quickie Cafeteria for donuts and—I’m pretty sure—coffee, the first time I ever bought coffee anywhere. The bus cost 40 cents, the donut and coffee maybe another 20.

From there we walked over to Hudson’s. What a beautiful building! Huge revolving doors pulled us into a vast shopping space as large as a train station; elevators with uniformed men and women asking for your floor, sliding a brass lever to shut a massive brass cage of a door. Bill said we should get off at the mezzanine. What the hell was that? Bill said it was like the second floor, but that there was also another second floor, which was the real second floor. Yeah, it all made sense.

I only remember two things I really wanted to shop for. One was stamps. Hudson’s had a great little philately department tucked away, almost hidden, between two sections of the building. The other thing I really wanted was a copy of the new Jan and Dean single, Dead Man’s Curve b/w New Girl in School. For those of you under 40, a “single” was a 45 rpm record, a thin vinyl disk with a big hole in the middle that you played on something called a “phonograph,” or perhaps a “stereo.” The abbreviation “b/w” – I have no idea, maybe “backed with.” Who knows?

I think Hudson’s record department was on the fifth floor. You could ask to listen to the record before you bought it and there were phonographs and headphones at various stations around the shop. I really wanted Dead Man’s Curve, a song most of you have heard about a drag race tragedy, which contains the spoken line, “well, the last thing I remember, doc, I started to swerve….” But alas, they were totally sold out. Bummer.

It was lunch time and Bill knew where to go. He said we could eat in the famous J. L. Hudson restaurant, but he knew something even better. We left Hudson’s, walked north on Woodward Avenue, and after a block or so turned right. “This is it,” Bill said, “The Flaming Embers.”

The Flaming Embers was a cafeteria style steakhouse about half the size of your local Denny’s. For a buck forty-nine you got a sirloin steak, salad, baked potato, Texas toast, and a drink. As the name implies, they cooked your steak to order over an open fire. It was the first time I ever ordered steak. I don’t think I even liked steak that much back then, but when you’re a kid on your own, twelve miles from home, everything you pay for yourself tastes furtively delicious.

Not long after that, we took the bus back home and you must be wondering why this was such a landmark experience for me. Can’t you tell? Have you not yet figured out the meaning of the Four Trees?

One summer day about six or seven years ago, my daughter, Eva Mei, and her friend Louise were sitting around our front porch like two bored little girls, because that’s what they were, seven and eight, with nothing to do. I asked, “why don’t you walk over to Wal-Mart?” They gave me a look signifying that (A) they hadn’t understood me or (B) I was crazy. I continued. “It’s not that far and you can take my cell phone. Just be sure to cross Atherton at the light.”

Wal-Mart was maybe a mile away and I was sure they could handle it. But they just kept looking at me like I was making some kind of sick twisted joke. Finally, Louise said, “I don’t think my parents will let me cross Atherton.” Well, you know, when you’re a parent, and your kid’s friend says something like that you can’t push back too much. So, I backed off a bit and told them the story of my trips to Detroit with Bill.

What’s that? You say times have changed? I say they haven’t. Only parents and kids have changed.

Coming soon: I’ve got to talk about Devil’s Night, Mrs. Shay, Sixth Grade, and English Leather.