From 12 to

Sorry no blog last week, I went back to where I grew up from age 11 and up till I was married. I had quite the time, lots of memories and my ex-wife, of which was the main reason I returned.

Right now I'm full of memories from almost every turn, some of them vague, others good, and the bad ones seem to not have shown them selves. It helps when you have close friends for well over forty years and who still talk to you. Even the sons of old friends are friends.

I grew up in Windsor, a small city across the river from Detroit, which was huge as compared to Windsor. I had families on both sides of the border and still do, which makes it more interesting.

Growing up in the Motown days was nothing else but great music and what was then, a great city in Detroit and where you could go anywhere. But that's all gone. The huge castles off Woodward Avenue are gone or burned, some of them still stand though.

It was the home of all the slick Motown artists, Supremes, Temptations, Stevie Wonder, even the Jackson 5. On Friday and Saturday nights, many of the Motown acts would travel to as many schools they could and where they would lip-sync their latest hits.

But it was also a strong influence from tough white bands like MC-5 (who influenced the British punk movement) as well as Bob Seeger and Alice Cooper and tons more. 

For us it was the best place to be on the planet.

And it was my beginning a career when I got a job at a local TV station to work in the mailroom. That job ended two weeks later as I got a promotion to the editing room. That's where I learned how to edit film, although far from making a feature film.  It was only 16mm film commercials, which we taped or glued together and take to a projection unit where the commercials ran.

No digital here. Not even VHS.

Later I was transferred to radio where the station had a 50-thousand Watt broadcaster that would boom through ten states. But my hope was film and there was an opening soon (much easier than trying to find a job now) for the news film department, run by a World War 2 cameraman.

That's when I got into TV news and we did stories both on the Canadian and American side. Detroit was it's toughest then, homicide rates went up to almost a thousand murders. And we witnessed a shooting just a few yards away. 

It was exciting and I loved every minute of it.

And last week, I was there again. 

And I met with my ex. We already had contact with each other and both of us looked forward to catch up after more than 26 years.

It worked like a movie. And we're a lot closer now.

Now the question is this; what's the movie?