You Can't
Go B
A return to hometown Flint sho e
entertainer Sandra Bernhard.
Harry Kirsbaum I Contributing Writer
Sandra Bernhard on stage at the Ark in Ann Arbor
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
Staring at her house from the street,
Sandy pointed out the features her mother
designed — a brick addition to the front of
their modest house, a super Danish mod-
ern design with a modern entrance.
"My parents built it the year I was born"
she said. "I smashed my finger on the
door once and lost a fingernail on Rosh
Hashanah"
She also pointed out the collapsing
eaves, the paint job needed on the garage
door, the general run-down condition of
the house and the neighborhood in gen-
eral.
Driving through the 20 square blocks
that identified our world so many years
ago, Sandy rattled off the names of the
families living in many of the homes.
We'd see the occasional burnt-out shell of
a house with a big yellow sign stuck to a
remaining wall offering $5,000 for infor-
mation leading to the arrest of the arsonist
responsible.
"I don't think this is going to dissipate
those dreams I've had;' she said. "They
might be in better shape than the reality:'
Back In The Day
These were once beautiful middle-class
homes in a neighborhood teeming with
children. No one locked their doors, and
most kids had "refrigerator privileges"
with several other homes — they could
just walk into a house and take something
8
February 21 • 2013
Jh
Rolloff what I did and she kept me after
school:'
For someone who left Flint at 10 years
old and never looked back, Sandy has a
remarkable memory of her childhood. She
still doesn't know why the family moved
to Scottsdale; she only remembers spend-
ing her last night in Flint in 1965 at the
Howard Johnson Motor Lodge on Pierson
Road.
"We left behind everybody we knew
— you get plucked without any real
explanation;' she said. "A week and a half
later, you're living in a motor court hotel
in Phoenix with a kitchenette and a gas
stove:'
The former Congregation Beth Israel in Flint, now a Baptist church
to eat. It is now known as one of the most
dangerous neighborhoods in the city.
We stopped at the Mackin Road Units
around the corner from my old house,
where elderly teachers like Miss Miller,
Miss Rolloff and Mrs. Eckstrom taught
kindergarten through third grade in a row
of one-room schoolhouses that shared a
common asphalt-covered playground. A
place where Sandy and I — two scrawny,
strangely imaginative Jewish kids —
played made-up games like Santa and
Rudolph at recess, hopping around the
asphalt, passing around invisible presents
to kids, then playing on a jungle gym
shaped like a rocket ship made of unfor-
giving galvanized steel. The jungle gym
still stands in the corner of the yard, but
the Units have been converted to a Baptist
church.
"I threw stones where they were build-
ing houses behind the playground, and
they landed in the wet cement;' she
remembered. "Lenny Fink told Miss
A City Transformed
We drove throughout Flint and through
streets that were once so familiar.
"Out of all the places I've ever gone back
to in my life, it's a place that's changed the
most remarkably;' she said. "It bears no
resemblance to where I grew up. It's shock-
ing"
My wife, Mary Ann, a family law attor-
ney, has traveled in the worst neighbor-
hoods of Detroit, blocks filled with rubble,
where even the street signs have been
stolen. Driving around Flint, she said, At
least in Detroit, they board up the burned-
out homes:'
Wherever we drove in Flint, it was hard
not to notice the lack of people on the