Sukkos in Detroit: An Old Fort and a New Bridge

The wife and I drove to Detroit from Lakewood for Sukkos. She did most of the driving on the 10-hour trip and the weather was great up and back. Both Sukkos weekends were mostly blue skies and warm enough to linger in the sukkah for long periods of time. The adjoining cities of Oak Park and Southfield that make up most of Detroit's Orthodox Jewish community were full of couples walking with youngsters in buggies and a few oldsters like me sitting in wheelchairs being pushed to shul. I was impressed with the large new Yeshiva Gedolah dormitory and seeing the location for the area’s tenth kollel. 

On Chol HaMoed, my three single granddaughters, who also drove from Lakewood to Detroit for Sukkos, always enjoy my tour of downtown Detroit to see what's new, and they decided to walk across the recently opened Gordie Howe Bridge over the Detroit River about two miles west of downtown to Windsor, Ontario, Canada. The gleaming silver bridge, named after the great Detroit hockey star, shortens the drive to Toronto. It took the girls an hour and a half to walk to the Canadian side, get their passports stamped, and return.

While the girls walked the bridge, we went across the street to historic Fort Wayne, where men volunteered and trained for the Civil War (1861-1865). Many men were stationed there as Confederate attacks from Canada and other directions were feared and walls along the Detroit River were shored up. From the Civil War through the Vietnam War (1955-1973), the fort had many uses, as it was an induction center and training site. Some of the Jewish men inducted into the military there were Hank Greenberg (first baseman of the Detroit Tigers) in 1941 and Irwin Cohen in 1963.

Detroit's other bridge, a mile closer to downtown, the Ambassador, is almost a hundred years old and had too much traffic. There's also the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel under the Detroit River. While the girls were walking the bridge, they snapped pictures of the large ships passing under the bridge heading to Cleveland and beyond. Visiting teams that came to Detroit to play the Tigers mostly back in the 1930s and '40s took a huge ship to Cleveland that offered entertainment, restaurants, sleeping rooms and other ways to enjoy the overnight ride before docking on Lake Erie within walking distance of Cleveland's Municipal Stadium. 

I'd like to thank everybody who responded to my last column about my learning that I had prostate cancer. If you recall, I don't have the easy kind, where you go straight to radiation. I had to have surgery to reduce the prostate and am waiting to hear if I need another surgery before I can start radiation. The doctor told me that there are seven levels of prostate cancer and I have the sixth highest. In the meantime, you guys over 60, make an appointment with your doctor. I'll let you know what's going on with me in the next column. 

In the meantime, enjoy the World Series.