As I left the theater that night something unique occurred. The theater personnel repeated to the crowd leaving the theater that there was a curfew in the city and that the Detroit police were directing us to take the shortest route home. It was dusk as the bus slowly cruised up Woodward Ave. The bus was very full and so it slowly moved up the street. People were talking somewhat animated speculating about the curfew, I didn’t hear anyone say they knew why we had been instructed to go home, why the curfew.
I got off the bus near home, the wide main thoroughfare was almost empty. I still had no idea why there was a curfew. As I crossed the street, looking both directions, I looked north and my eyes stuck on a sight I will always remember, a huge army tank was slowly moving up the exit ramp of the expressway. The moment I got into my room I turned on the black and white television.
It was hot and sticky and it had been for several days, a Sunday in late July, July 23rd 1967. I was eighteen years old. It was the kind of hot where you hoped for rain to cool things off but the rain rarely came and if it did rain it just added to the humidity. I was living near downtown Detroit on the campus of Wayne State University. In September I would begin my second year of college at Wayne State, a sprawling large urban university. My major would be political science. My room was not much bigger than a college dorm, a furnished room, bath and kitchen down the hall. All I brought to the room other than clothing, books and toiletries was a used black and white television I had recently purchased for $25. The Palmer House was a half block from Woodward Ave, the street in Detroit that divides the city east and west. Two blocks away were the Detroit Institute of Arts and the main public library for the city and the college campus.
I was sweating at 11:30 am waiting for the bus to take me to the ball park. I was going to a doubleheader at Tiger, (Briggs) stadium, Cleveland Indians vs. Tigers. The games were split that long afternoon. Leaving the stadium walking down the wide ramps toward the exit, full of hot dog, lemonade, peanuts and ice cream more than one person noticed the smoke coming from an area of the city not far from downtown. The grey smoke hung in the hazy humid hot summer air giving it almost a prickly grating quality. I remember pausing a couple of seconds to view the scene, Detroit’s version of a Canneleto painting.
The bus took me a few blocks back downtown. It was early Sunday evening, still hot and walking past a theater I decided on an impulse to see a movie rather than go home. The air-conditioning must have been appealing. The movie was “The Dirty Dozen”.
