In 1965 Detroit had Italian bakeries, Polish bakeries, the Danish bakery, and Mid-Eastern bakeries. We had Dairy Queens, some candy stores, and Kathy's Cakes, a local cheesecake
maker. One of the best things, though, when I was growing up, was the Italian bakery.
I don't know what could have happened to the original bear claw. It was a tender yeast-raised
roll in the shape of a fist- embedded with a variety of candied fruits (including pineapple, cherries, raisins ,currants) and walnuts. A little white icing was always drizzled over the top.
Boy what a treat.
The Danish Bakery down the street here now is the closest thing we have to the old fashioned bakeries we had everywhere in Detroit until circa 1990.
I appreciate the numbers and varieties of donut our bakery makes each morning. We lost one
variety, the sugared twist, when our baker became ill and took a hiatus. I loved that donut!
But we still have glazed, cinnamon sugared, powdered filled, lunchsticks, glazed twists, all manner of breads and cookies. We have some pastries, too, and a couple of meat pies with
veggies. They even make a candy.
They make some pies, several varieties of coffee cakes, tarts, strudels and streusels.
We can order any kind of sheetcake with any kind of icing or greeting. And on Thursdays we
can get orange cake and an Italian creme cake. The latter is a cream cheese cake with cream
cheese icing. It is so moist I wish I had the recipe, but I can tell the thing is a laborious
undertaking!
In Chicago I found many bakeries; but they hardly seemed bakeries to me. I couldn't find a donut. The bakeries in Shy Town usually had continental-type sandwiches, and a few pastries or tarts and flans. I always came away thinking "Where is the rest of your fare?"
Detroit was in the news a few months ago as a city with no large grocery store chains. 'Tis true.
In 1965 when a nearly all white police force roamed the city streets stopping black youth, and even full grown black men for any reason at all or for no reason at all, we had a slew of
those stores. The price proved too big a price to pay in order to hold on to them.
We had over the years, A&P, Wrigley's, Kroger's, Farmer Jack. Great Scott. I'm sure there were
others.
The upscale Farner Jack actually had caviar at Christmas. I could never buy it but my mom sure
did. It made appetizers before dinner nearly better than dinner.
The open Easten Market was a farmers market and a cook's dream. Every sort of fresh fruit,
veggie, and meat abounded along with specialty stores which sold spices, nuts, freshly made pastry doughs, ramekins, mini rolling pens, chocolates from abroad, just about anything anyone
who eats could think of, and some things we'd never thought about having.
Not far from Eastern Market was Ye Olde Butcher Shoppe. I shopped there a while until I
came home one day with bags of steaks, chops, and roasts for a relatively small pittance. My
husband raged the butcher had disrespected him. It was true; but I really was pretty cute, and
the guy put me on the spot; so I didn't go back to that butcher. Besides, they are long gone now.
Now we have the "likka stoh" on every block.
In the northwest section of the city we still do have Mini-Mart too.
This market is small; but has the best meat, and usually the freshest veggies and fruits in season.
This store had to buy nearly a city block for parking for customers at holiday times, even after
the neighborhood shrunk. Their butchers are so professional.
When I was growing up, my mom sent me to the small butcher shop about five blocks away,
then when we moed there was one three blocks down.
She always bought her ground round the same way...pick out a round steak which looks fresh in the meat and where the fat is snow white. Ask the butcher to grind it three times with the fat.
Those hamburgers were unrivaled by anything any restaurant could ever do. Of course, bar
burgers come close.
But when became an adult, trying to buy my own ground round, my stores were not so willing
to specialize it for me.
Mini Mart used to say they had ground it three times. When I opened the pack, I could see they
had not. Now they seem more willing. Maybe this neighborhood is not so crowded anymore.
Their hamburger is delicious. Thank heavens. We have no other butcher shops left around here.
Thirty years ago, when I felt like walking up to the shop across the freeway, I could get it the way I liked. He had every sort of special cut and front end piece of beef there was. I hate beef liver
but didn't have to worry about it because he usually had the calves liver I loved.
If we felt like going up to Guttmacher's ,a mile away, we could get anything under the sun.
Mr. G had all the cuts all the time, so fresh you'd think he had a ranch nearby.
There was even a butcher a block away from Guttmacher, but he moved away witthin months
of the neighborhood starting to change from professional white to professional and working class black. He moved to Troy. I didn't shop there much anyway because he rarely sold a strip or
porterhouse unless it was an inch thick. A bit rich for my blood. I was working class. Neither
of us had graduated university at that time. I earned the money to buy a house with overtime.
Mr. G stayed with his store until he retired. And Mini Mart now sells the ground turkey, both
white and dark meat, their aging customers demand along with ground round. They are the only
or at least one of the last butcher shops around. And to be fair to the liquor stores, a lot of them have a great selection of fresh packaged goods.
Detoiters often come from all over to shop at Mini Mart and the Danish Bakery. Thank heaven.
Our smaller full service independent grocery stores serve better and better quality and variety
of foods on the northwest side.
The Eastern Market on the east side now sells mostly wholesale. I don't know how long
The Broadway Market lasted downtown.
Harbortown Market is a relative newcomer on the far east side. Truly upscale. I haven't been
there at a time a series of pates weren't available. Even downtown Hudson's didn't have such
delicacies in the ready-to-serve food sections.
Hudson's was still downtown in the 60's, 70's, and 80s. There were at least eight or ten movie theaters.
Hudson's was a marvel of a department store. On the first floor there was a nut shop. Every
day the freshest nuts in the world were roasted on site. By the time my children were born
some ten years later, my mother was taking them there to wait for the first nuts to come out
of the roasters.
The second floor housed the most impeccable menswear I have ever seen or seen advertised,
even in Sky Mall.
One of the top floors had toys,and at Christmas, Santa's Toy shop.
Another top floor sold appliances.
The mezzanine sold boutique items and books.
My mother came to Hudson's slowly because when she was growing up, the downtown stores
would not hire black people. Only Sam's Cut Rate, the Jewish store would hire black workers.
But around 1953, Hudson's gave mom her Hudson's credit card. That ended much of her boycott.
That credit card has been a family tradition from then until now. But the flagship store in
downtown Detroit was torn down years ago, after having been left empty for years before that.
Of course Marshall Fields swallowed up Hudson's some years after it abandoned Detroit.
Later, Macy's bought Marshall Fields. But no store embodied the magnificent multi-storied
downtown Hudson's. Hudson's was the most glorious building/experience, bar none.
In 1965, '66, '67, we also had gangs of four...four white policemen riding around the city
stopping black men, putting a gun to their temples, seemed an ordinary day in any sector of
the city.
Enter Mayor Coleman A. Young. Detroiters elected him to curb that menace; so to make a long
story short, white shoppers, businesses, insurance companies, abandoned the city one by one.
Detroit's treasure, Mayor Young, was everyone else's bitter enemy.
Our city has suffered mightily for hanging on to Mayor Young. We had to do it though.
We couldn't get that gun out of the man's cold dead hand.
