Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 18
ISPENTTHENIGHTinDearbornfortworeasons.First,itwouldmeannothavingtospend
the night in Detroit, the city with the highest murder rate in the country. In 1987, there were
635 homicides in Detroit, a rate of 58.2 per ioo,ooo people, or eight times the national av-
erage. Just among children, there were 365 shootings in which both the victim and gunman
were under sixteen (of whom 40 died). We are talking about a tough city-and yet it is still
a rich one. What it will become like as the American car industry collapses in upon itself
doesn't bear thinking about. People will have to start carrying bazookas for protection.
My second and more compelling reason for going to Dearborn was to see the Henry Ford
Museum, a place my father had taken us when I was small and which I remembered fondly.
After breakfast in the morning, I went straight there. Henry Ford spent his later years buy-
ing up important Americana by the truckload and crating it to his museum, beside the big
Ford Motor Company Rouge Assembly Plant. The parking lot outside the museum was
enormous-on a scale to rival the factory parking lots I had passed the day before-but at this
time of year there were few cars in it. Most of them were Japanese.
I went inside and discovered without surprise that the entrance charge was steep: $15 for
adultsand$7.50forchildren.Americansareclearlypreparedtoforkoutlargesumsfortheir
pleasures.GrudginglyIpaidtheadmissionchargeandwentin.Butalmostfromthemoment
I passed through the portals I was enthralled. For one thing, the scale of it is almost breath-
taking.Youfindyourselfinagreathangarofabuildingcoveringtwelveacresofgroundand
filled with the most indescribable assortment of stuff-machinery, railway trains, refrigerat-
ors, Abraham Lincoln's rocking chair, the limousine in which John F. Kennedy was killed
(nope, no bits of brains on the floor), George Washington's campaign chest, General Tom
Thumb's ornate miniature billiard table, a bottle containing Thomas Edison's last breath. I
foundthislastitemparticularlycaptivating.Apartfrombeingridiculouslymorbidandsenti-
mental,howdidtheyknowwhichbreathwasgoingtobeEdison'slastone?IpicturedHenry
Ford standing at the deathbed shoving a bottle in his face over and over and saying, “Is that
it?”
This was the way the Smithsonian once was and still should be-a cross between an attic and
a junk shop. It was as if some scavenging genius had sifted through all the nation's collect-
ive memories and brought to this one place everything from American life that was splen-
did and fine and deserving fondness. It was possible here to find every single item from my
youth-old comic books, lunchpails, bubblegum cards, Dick and Jane reading topics, a Hot-
