All of us who have the privilege of spending time on the Great Lakes have our own special places, places we share with family and friends, perhaps, or ones we go to only by ourselves. We usually try to keep them private, even if we have absolutely no claim to them. I have a few, most of them hard to get to, maybe impossible for most people. But here’s one anyone in a car could find if they might want to. I should probably keep it secret, but since there is really nothing very dramatic about it, nor is there much to do once you get there, I figure that if I ever ran into anyone there, they would be someone I would probably enjoy talking to.

A few years ago I drove two African academics around Detroit. They wanted to get to know this city they had heard so much about. After visiting a few neighborhoods, Downtown and Mid-town, and the offices of InsideOutDetroit, a small nonprofit that does writing workshops in Detroit Public Schools, I drove them down East Jefferson toward Grosse Pointe.