Mon Apr 27, 2009 at 15:41:05 PM EDT
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( - promoted by Mik Moore)
The dual meaning in the headlines about GM's plan to eliminate the Pontiac brand is not lost on me. I grew up in a neighborhood in Pontiac, Michigan. The place. Headlines like "GM to cut 1/3 of workers, kill Pontiac" and "GM to pull the plug on Pontiac" are reminders to me that though GM has just recently decided to kill the Pontiac brand, they pulled the plug on my home town a long time ago.
My mother's family has lived in Pontiac since 1960. I grew-up in her childhood home in a neighborhood quite different than the one she knew. We lived with my grandfather and he and my mother remember Pontiac as an up-and-coming area for young families. They remember a city with jobs, new homes, and good schools. Pontiac can boast that it is the home to Automation Alley and the county seat of one of the wealthiest counties in America. Yet, the auto industry is dying and working class families in Pontiac were hit by this downturn hard and early. As for the wealth of Oakland County, Pontiac has an average household income of $31,207 compared to the Oakland County average of $61,907. You can drive a mile from our family home, leave Pontiac and enter Bloomfield Hills where the median household income is $170,790. You can’t help but see the disparity in wealth. I remember feeling anger and jealousy as a kid at the huge houses, fancy new cars, swimming pools, and giant swing sets in the backyards.
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| Rachel Feldman :: If you seek a pleasant peninsula… |
I visited Pontiac two months ago and realized that the GM plant down the street from my home is no longer just inactive, it is completely gone. When I left it had been in the process of closing down. My uncle, who used to work there until he was forced into early retirement and bought out of his contract, said at the time that they were just scaling back. Now all that’s left is a big slab of concrete surrounded by chain-link fence.
Driving a bit further down South Boulevard I came to the Pontiac Municipal Golf Course. I remember when the new apartments and condos on the golf course were built, they were an attempt at the nice suburban homes we saw in neighboring towns. My high school used to hold father-son golf tournaments there. I looked at the brown-green-yellow grass and I could admit that maybe the dead grass was just left over from the winter freeze. The cracked pavement in the parking lot, the broken street lights, the potholes on the road and the dents and gaps in the fence, on the other hand, are not part of the changing of the seasons.
While I was home I learned that one of Pontiac’s two High Schools is closing down. I read that in March a state-appointed financial manager took over fiscal management of the city of Pontiac. The city’s cumulative deficit is said to have reached nearly $12 million.
I can’t help feeling guilty about leaving. I’ve asked friends of mine who grew up in different parts of the state and have also moved away. Most of us feel the same way.
Gov. Granholm boasts about all that is great in our state and even I get nostalgic. I miss cool Lake Michigan water. I miss being close enough to Canada to get the CBC from an antenna, going to the Cherry Festival in Traverse City, collecting Petoskey Stones, and going to DEMF (the Detroit Electronic Music Festival in Hart Plaza).
This year Detroit hosted the Final Four and I heard people talk about Michigan with excitement for the first time in years. Now I even see advertisements enticing people to visit our mitten-shaped state. Maybe Pontiac will be better off in the hands of a state appointed financial manager. Regardless, I still believe that Michigan is a “pleasant peninsula” as the slogan says. Sometimes it’s just hard to see the forest for the trees. Sometimes all I see are laid off workers, vacant lots, and abandoned High Schools.
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