Going Downtown

Ann Arbor in 1958 was the perfect place for a kid and a bike.  I think my life hit its peak when I had a Schwinn and two dollars in my pocket on a nice summer day in Ann Arbor.  I would climb out of bed and put on the uniform.  A white tee shirt, blue jeans and tennis shoes.  In the fifties, we rolled up the cuffs on the jeans.  The right cuff was rolled up a little higher so that it would not get caught in the bicycle chain.      

Off to enjoy the world.  I coasted three blocks down Miner Street to Miller Ave.  Turned left on Miller and headed to my first stop at Campbell’s Bakery.  Campbell’s was on North Main, one store from the corner of Main and Miller Ave.  Campbell and Sons opened in 1948 and offered a host of American baked goods.  Every morning they had all of the classics: bismarks, cream puffs, eclairs, donuts, Boston creams and long johns.  They had a variety of cookies, cakes and baked breads. My favorite was the chocolate covered long john.  This was a gigantic pastry stuffed with custard and coated with chocolate icing.  The consistency and quality of the baked goods kept us coming back for years.

The next stop was Riders Hobby Shop.  Riders was a block and a half west of Main Street on Liberty Street.  It had everything that an eleven year old ever wanted.  Lionel trains, models of every size and description, gas powered model airplanes, BB guns, bicycles, a slew of Wham-O products, Frisbees, sling shots, boomerangs, and army men. I could easily spend an hour just looking at all of the great stuff. 

When I was ten, I bought a boomerang from Riders.  A fine, wood Wham-O.  I had watched the adds on TV and was very impressed that you could throw one of these things and it would come right back to you.  I went to a big field by Mack School and fired that sucker with all my might.  The boomerang sailed over the weeds toward the end of the field and disappeared.  I waited for the return.  A few minutes, a half hour, an hour.  How long can it take for the boomerang to work its magic?  None of the instructions gave a timeline.  For the rest of the summer, when I was outdoors, I looked for the returning boomerang.  To this day, sixty eight years later, it still has not returned.  When I am sitting on my patio smoking a cigar, I scan the sky looking for the boomerang.  It is a mystery how the weapon invented by the Australian Native People can find its owner but it does.  I know that someday it will come hurtling back to me and I want to be ready.  These devices can drop a full sized kangaroo.  I need to see it coming before it drops me.

During “Bargain Days”, Riders would get fifteen or twenty beater bikes and sell them for a dollar apiece.  Thirty kids would line up at five in the morning and dash to get their one dollar special as soon as the doors were open.  I tried but never got one.  I think most of the guys who succeeded ended up on the offensive or defensive lines at Michigan.             

Okay, time for a snack.  We had two great “Dime Stores” downtown.  There was a Woolworths and a Kresges.  Both conveniently located on Main Street.  The great thing about the Dime Stores was that you could actually afford to buy a lot of the cool stuff that you saw.  I bought a new kite every March, balsam wood airplanes, glass piggy banks, a glass liberty bell bank, and a plastic reindeer that pooped jelly beans when you pulled its tail.  I still have that very cool item and it still works.  Both stores had a candy and nut counter.  At Kresges, for less than fifty cents, I could get a quarter pound of whole cashews.  These beauties were salted and heated in a special glass oven and display case.  I bought a little white bag of hot cashews and headed to the soda fountain for a cherry coke.  In 1958, the only bottled coke you could buy was coke.  There was no diet coke or flavored cokes.  Just coke.  So it was a special treat to go to the soda fountain and enjoy a fountain coke with cherry syrup.  Talk about living large!  Hot cashews and a cherry coke was as good as it could possibly get. 

Well, I still had a lot of time to kill.  Maybe I’ll ride out to Michigan Stadium to see if there was a baseball game going on.  I know.  That sounds strange.  A baseball game in the big house?  In the fifties and sixties, the gates to Michigan Stadium were never locked.  Anyone could stroll in at any time.  A lot of high school and college athletes used it as a training facility.  They would run the steps.  In essence, they would start at the top of section one and run down ninety two rows of seating, traverse to section two and run up ninety two rows of seating.  The star athletes would continue through all forty four rows of seats.  A lot of my friends organized baseball games in the stadium.  We brought our balls, bats and gloves and set up a diamond in the northwest corner of the field.  We used shirts for bases.  We chose teams and played a nine inning game.  Left field was obviously a short fence.  We all pretended to be Al Kaline or Rocky Colavito when we popped one into the left field seats.  I played baseball in the stadium at least ten times.  I doubt that the groundskeepers wanted us there but we were never tossed out.  Definitely a little different than the high security days of the 2020’s.

Unfortunately, no one was playing baseball today. I decided to take First Street home and stop for a chocolate malt at Washtenaw Dairy.  The Dairy is on the corner of First and Madison.  It opened in 1938 and was one of approximately fifteen neighborhood dairies in the city.  In 1958, they made, perhaps, the best handmade malt in the world.  In 2025, the “Dairy” is still the same.  Talk about classic.  The counter and soda bar may have changed a little but they still make the same, world class, chocolate malt.  I can’t go to Campbells or Kresges or Riders but I can still go to the Dairy. 

In fact, I frequently am asked to join my friends at the Dairy for a cup of coffee and a Dairy donut in the morning.  Another long standing institution in Ann Arbor is Muehlig’s Funeral Home.  Many of my friends are in their 70’s or 80’s and they spend a lot of mornings at the Dairy.  When they ask me to join them for coffee and donuts they don’t say “let’s meet at Washtenaw Dairy” they use an alternative name and ask me to “meet them at Meuhlig’s Waiting Room”.

I may have revisionist memory but I don’t believe my life has ever been better than it was when I rode my Schwinn into Downtown Ann Arbor.