A half hour was literally all the time she could squeeze in for me, as she was dashing to fulfill family commitments and business details before boarding a flight to Argentina this morning. I was happy and thankful for every moment. Writers know that face-to-face contact, however brief, still is infinitely better than telephone or Internet communication when you're assignment is to capture the essence of a person through words.
When I arrived at her home for the interview, however, I literally could not believe my eyes. You hear so many Chicken Little stories about the doom and death of Detroit that, even though you know better, you sometimes tend to forget that everyone here is not in foreclosure or waiting for their government bailout.
This is the view from the front gate of her home:
And yes, like a goober I stopped to take a picture, like those gawking tourists on the Hollywood home tour, because little brown people who grew up in Spring Lake, Mich., just don't get invited to places like this every weekend.
As I drove down the long, winding road, over the bridge for the creek that runs through the property and past the gigantic lawn sculptures, I kept looking over my shoulder waiting for security guards to demand some identification, then escort me off the grounds. When I finally got to the door, Ms. Hermelin took me into her dining room, an immense space dominated by a long table surrounded by 12 chairs. And there, in one corner of the table, was a tuna fish sandwich on rye she had prepared for me.
Now, in the 35 years or so I've been interviewing people for a living, I cannot remember any subject ever making me a sandwich. She said she was going to make it when we spoke on the phone as I was racing to her house, but I genuinely thought she was kidding. But as she repeatedly said, she knew I had driven a long distance just to speak with her, and figured I had to be famished.
(Problem with eating tuna fish sandwich while conducting an interview: hard to ask questions when your mouth is full, and you don't want to appear ungrateful by not eating it.)
As I drove away from this magnificent residence, though, I got to thinking. I love Detroit, and I always will; I became a man here, and there are so many fantastic people who live here that I'm proud to call friends. One of them, Larry Kaplan, who was the photographer for the first rock concert I ever reviewed for The Detroit News back in 1979, has devoted a room in his condo exclusively for me so I'll never have to worry about accommodations in my travels back to Detroit.
But this isn't home anymore. I'm so thankful to have a place to stay when I'm here, but I don't have an address to call my own after 30 years of living in this city. When I'm here, I long to return to the pastoral surroundings and endearing chaos of my home in Decatur. When I'm in Decatur, I'm girding up to return to the bustle and intensity of a working visit in Detroit. Right now, I feel like a man without roots. That will change with time, I'm certain, but it's a very strange sensation I've never experienced before.
About the only place I truly feel at home these days is behind the wheel of my car – usually driving between Decatur and Detroit.
