Northwest Detroit Six Mile& Outer Drive

[Alfie1a]

'I also seem to remember partying a couple of times in a parking lot near St Scholastica back in high school or maybe college."

SMRJim, yea there was a lot of partying going on there and a lot of what not-too.

[tapstevenson]

Allen,
I remember the meat market and a bakery. I think there was a dairy queen on outer drive toward the freeway as well. If I am ever back in Michigan I will let you know, I would love to tour the area again. Only glimse I get now is on google earth.

[xayen]

Hello again, Patrick Stevenson here. Anyone out there from the northwest neighborhood around six mile and outer drive? I grew up there in the 60's went to Isaac Newton School, played at Peterson park and ran all over for blocks. Anyone remember Gil's hamburgers?

i attended newton till around 1965. There was a science teacher named John
Harris did you know him? I lived around 7 and southfield.......I to played baseball at Peterson Park.Is that hungarian strudel shop on 6mi still in business it can't be..........Wow where did the time go? Now I am retired married and live in Thailand. Did you know Claytons candy store? It was later
converted to a laundry mat where they had a pop machine and my brother would reach in and pull cans from the rack lol
Dan C
PS wasn't gills hamburgers on 7 mile. 6 to go for a dollar

[G-DDT]

First off, I'm glad you dusted off this old thread, for I would have commented on it sooner, had I known of it's existence. To be honest, I like this thread. It's filled with the "Hey, how are ya'?", "Didya' know...?", etc. type of community that I see lacking now. That is the way this forum should be now.

You got folks not from DY who are clearly not from Detroit [["yeah, my profile says I like 'Cobo Hall' as my favorite hang-out; folks will never guess I'm a troll from St. Louis who lifted their own info. off of Wikipedia."); at best they are out-of-towners who visited once for a business meeting or to see some away game. They may know statistics, they may know Google map streets, they may cite building ordinances, they may know city guidelines and by-lines, they may have great heads for finance and automobiles, but they seem to lack any genuine personal stories about growing up in Detroit. Gawsh! You'd almost think they were investors from Chicago getting temperature checks from the local populace and adding socio-political harassment to boot.

Second, I would be greatly surprised if any of the majority of contributors to it from seven years ago promptly resurface to chime right back in. Sadly, they are all user-names that have not been present on DY in the last two years that I know of [[like Alfie or Tap).

To add, I grew up in North Rosedale Park. I went to Holy Cross Lutheran, while most of friends went to Cook Elementary or Christ the King. Being near Evergreen, we either went up one way to Fairlane or off another to Northland for all our mall needs. My parents lived on St. Mary's before moving there. We always called McNichols 6 Mile [[when you go east enough on 7 mile, it sort of becomes Moross; I used to think the same with 8 Mile and Vernier, but I was wrong.).

Obviously, kids from my generation were less adventurous for good reason during the 80's. We didn't go past Southfield, we rarely strayed past Evergreen, and except to haunt businesses on 6 Mile and Grand River [[like the Grand-Fenkell shopping district where Foodland, A & P, Great Scott's, Kresge, Cunningham's, Hallmark's, and other stores were), we did not venture into the residential areas beyond. It was only when I got older and fell in with the notorious Christ the King youth group crowd that Grandmont figured into things.

NRP was the shizznit for a lot of things, but I can go on too long [[and have in past threads).

Outer Drive was always the busy street we had to double check to cross. Warwick was the street with the big tree in the middle of Verne. Westmoreland was the street that had all kinds of barricaded off block parties and had a median street with an awesome weeping willow on it. Stahelin was the street we avoided where the Journays [[sic) lived-a family clan of thieves, and that was a big reason we didn't stray far in Detroit, because we hated bike thieves with a passion growing up. The stretch of Bretton Dr. is where all the bigger, fancier homes are, and they were awesome to look at around Christmas time with the lights on them.

There was Fellowship Chapel [[where a kid we knew stole a bunch of percussion components to pay off his ridiculous debts to another kid) right across from where my mom worked at the photo/video store next to the shoe repair store and a short-lived bookstore. There was Big D party store [[guy there sold us rolling papers and cigs-no carding-partly because our dads did send us up for errands, but, hey! the guy also gave us 5 quarters to the dollar to play his pinball machines there). There was ParkLane party store which was run by awesome folks until they sold it. The In & Out which would mysteriously catch fire on a yearly basis [[on Grand River was Universal and Special Way party store-all party stores I mentioned eventually banned the aforementioned thief for his compulsively clumsy attempts at robbing them.). Knudsen's was my mom's favorite [[and she will still buy bread from there when she is in the area); it wasn't far from Kathy's Chessecakes. Closer to Southfield was a Chinese restaurant [[oddly parallel all the way over on Grand River near Bretton and Southfield was another corner edge Chinese restaurant-Sun Yi's, I think). There was a Dairy Queen and an NBD Bank near Outer Drive. Closer to Evergreen there was the Family Buggy restaurant [[where my brother worked for way longer than any human being should), and across from that was Chauncey's record store where I'd go to play video games.

My grandmother lived on Forrer off of 6 Mile in a house my grandfather had built.

[tapstevenson]

This is Tap, I'm still upright and taking nurishment