BY DESIREE COOPER
Detroit Free Press, Dec. 3, 2002 

We love Palmer Woods, our haven of historic homes from the turn of the 20th Century in northwest Detroit. Many of my neighbors have lived in Palmer Woods most of their lives, watching history come and go.

There are those who remember when former Detroit Piston John Salley lived in a 23,000-square-foot mansion on Wellesley, formerly owned bythe Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit. Others can recount vividly the horror of watching the William Fisher Mansion nearly burn to the ground in 1994. 

But there's something even old-timers are hard-pressed to recall: the last time the roads were paved. My husband, whose neighborhood roots go back to 1965, thinks it was when disco was king.

Whenever it was, there were hopeful signs that the roads were going to be repaired in 1996, when the city also was going to replace the neighborhood's antiquated sewer system. Three years later, a few sewers were replaced, but then the project was postponed.

So most of us continued along the rocky road of life, devoid of hope. We watched, helpless, as the asphalt continued to buckle. Once every spring, city crews spooned a dollop of tar on the gaping potholes, turning the street into a mottled pie crust.

Unable to shake progress out of City Hall, we learned to accommodate. As we drove in and out of the neighborhood, we learned to hold our hot coffee mugs in mid air to compensate for the ways our cars rocked over the crests and troughs of pavement. We never used the change holder in our cars, lest we be serenaded by a jangling louder than a fourth-grade, thumb-cymbal band.

Then, in October, the Angel of Asphalt blessed our humble village. Out of nowhere, trucks began scraping up old roads and laying down new ones.

Far from being grateful, I was stricken with fear and confusion. It was as if I'd turned my usual right, then left and found myself not on my familiar craggy street, but in a frighteningly, frictionless parallel dimension.

It took awhile, but we soon learned to navigate a new way of life. We drove daringly with our cup holders full of steaming hazelnut java, our ashtrays brimming with shiny copper pennies.

Children emerged from their own neatly paved driveways to zip along the streets on their bikes and skateboards. Able to go for blocks at a stretch without a pothole to send them hurtling over their handlebars, they raced furiously on wheels until their faces were pink and on their ears, tiny icicles.

The project is far from finished; we hear it will be done in several phases. If it's another 30 years before our streets once again unfold smoothly as an onyx sea, at least our children will be able to tell their children about the day they took to their wheels and discovered what it was like to fly fast enough to make their own breezes.


Enjoy the new roads and old houses at the Palmer Woods Home Tour from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $12 in advance, $15 on the day of the tour. Ticket locations include Pronto in downtown Royal Oak, Terry's Enchanted Gardens at 7 Mile and Livernois in Detroit, Blossoms on Woodward in Birmingham and Sherri's at Orchard Mall in West Bloomfield. For group prices and other ticket locations, call 313-892-7384 or visit www.palmerwoods.org

Off-road vehicles optional.      

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