 OCTOBER 17 • 2019 | 5

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ou are Michael Barg. 
You are knocking on an 
unmarked door on West 
Grand Boulevard. It is late 
and dark, and you are having 
second thoughts about showing 
up here now to 
buy an old police 
car.
A woman 
answers the door. 
You start singing 
“Heat Wave.
” 
Because she is 
Martha Reeves. 
Because you are Michael 
Barg, you then stop singing 
(upon request), buy the Crown 
Victoria Police Interceptor 
(not hers) and recruit Martha 
Reeves to come sing and 
dance with your special-needs 
students.
You are not Michael Barg, 
but the students of Ann Arbor 
Academy — and the bakers of 
Bays English Muffins and the 
Yemenis of Roma Cafe and 
many others — are lucky that 
Michael Barg is.
Michael Barg hears 
differently. Both by nature, 
in the form of an auditory 
processing disorder that 
presents as ADHD; and by 
nurture, the lessons of some 
diverse and unexpected 
influences.
Michael heard Martha 
Reeves live for the first time 
at a church with Pearlie 
Louie, who, now 99, is still 
his adoptive grandmother, if 
not guardian angel. Winthrop 
Street with Pearlie was a 
home away from home when 
he needed space and ’
60s 

soul music to sort out 
the admonitions of his 
Heschel-quoting social 
worker mom and bipolar 
dad. 
“No picnic of a student,” 
Michael heard about 
Ann Arbor Academy 
when he was angry and 
disheartened by his 
public-school experience. 
To some, it sounded like 
a 50-mile commute for 
the stigma of special 
education. To him, Ann 
Arbor Academy was a 
haven — a place where 
“things made more 
sense because they met 
me where I was at and 
prepped us for what was 
coming around the corner.” 
Michael heard the siren 
song of Detroit while others 
marched out of town at a 
quickening tempo. Rent for 
his Cadillac Square apartment 
in 2005 — $517, “including 
utilities and internet” — came 
with the newly constructed 
Campus Martius Park in his 
front yard. The sounds of 
people wandering around 
and wondering what they 
were looking at motivated 
him to offer his services as a 
tour guide, back when faux 
storefronts were the best 
window dressing that much of 
Downtown could muster for 
Super Bowl XL.
Michael heard something 
that was definitely not Italian 
emanating from the kitchen of 
Roma Cafe, but it didn’
t make 
him “anti-pasta.” Instead, he 
found himself working side by 

side with Sam, the legendary 
waiter, and the rest of the 
Yemeni staff — hearing about 
the Teimanim, their Jewish 
neighbors of yesteryear — and 
eventually seated at the family 
table for the wedding of Sam’
s 
son, known to everyone as 
Samson.
Michael heard about 
Birthright just in time to sign 
up before he would have aged 
out. To his ears, it sounded 
like a chance to go deeper 
into community and culture, 
beyond the duration of the 
trip. 
And when he heard the 
chaos coming from a special-
ed classroom in Migdal 
HaEmek, he knew he had 
found people he could 
commune and communicate 
with. He taught a class on 
American Perspectives, tossing 
a Detroit Lions football to 
help his students stay focused 

— and limit other projectiles. 
As a leaping off point, his 
students already knew the 
lyrics to “Mom’
s Spaghetti” 
(Lose Yourself) and what the 
Lion’
s logo stood for (losing).
Michael heard past the 
revelry of Downtown’
s diners, 
neighbors and commuters 
— from folks whose 
neighborhood was otherwise 
out of earshot. In 2014, he 
bought the Oakman Party 
Shoppe on West Chicago, a 
venture that would prove both 
“hugely unsuccessful” and 
“touch a lot of people’
s lives.”
The grandson of a Dexter 
Avenue kosher butcher would 
make Eastern Market runs 
— “whole slab of bacon, half-
thick, half-thin enough to read 
the paper through, any leftover 
hambones in a bag with the 
bacon rind, wrapped in twine” 
— for his elderly customers.
He made fresh school 

Ben Falik
Contributing 
Writer

Jewfro
Hear, Michael Barg 

continued on page 6

Michael Barg around the community

BEN FALIK

