Going to the Fair

Gary McLister and I saw Little Steve Wonder open the Motown Review at the Michigan State Fair in August 1963.

The fairgrounds are in Detroit on the east side of Woodward Ave. just south of 8 Mile Road.

It was Gary’s idea to go. Someone had taken him to the Fair some previous year, so he knew where it was. It was probably a Sunday because I worked late afternoons at Clark’s Market on Thursdays and Fridays and all day on Saturdays. I think back – I wonder if we told our parents where we were going. Probably not. Our plan was to be home for supper. Gary and I had turned 15 that spring.

We walked to the Windsor Terminal for the Tunnel Bus between Windsor and Detroit. That bus took passengers to the Immigration and Customs Office on the US side, where you would get off, walk in line to a Customs Officer, tell him where you were going and then get back on the bus. We may have had our birth certificates, or maybe something less officious, like a library card. Going to Detroit was not a big deal in those days. ID may not have been required. (The photo here is more recent. The Canadian flag was not adopted until 1964.)

The Tunnel Bus let us off at Grand Circus Park, the place where Detroit’s main streets radiate out from the downtown. We got on a Woodward Avenue Bus and rode it north, past United Shirt, the giant Hudson’s, Griswald’s, and the other downtown stores, past the Detroit Institute of Arts on the right and the huge library facing it on the left. Past the Olympia where the Red Wings played. Farther on north we went, past big houses and big churches, car lots and smaller stores. People got on, people got off, mostly African American people, but that didn’t mean anything to us. Gary and I had Black friends at school, we went into Windsor’s Black neighbourhood all the time. Even Mr. Lemon, our math teacher, was Black and nobody ever said anything about that. Mr. Lemon was just another (good) teacher.

The Tunnel Bus had cost just a quarter, but the Detroit bus fare was more expensive than we expected, and when we got to the Michigan State Fair, we had to pay to get in. I don’t remember how much it was, but it left us with just enough to take the buses home and maybe split a pop. No money for a hot dog, so lunch was out.

With no money to spend, Gary and I wandered the fairgrounds, taking in the sights. I think Gary saw the sign. Free Motown Review. We went through the entrance into an open area with a stage at the far end. We walked over and watched the band set up. The drum set was impressive. A set of horn players tuned up. Guitars came out of cases and plugged in. Guys in shinny suits walked around, arranging microphones, setting up their chart stands and chairs.

All this was fascinating for Gary and me. We stood right in front of the stage which was about as high as we were. We jumped up to get a glimpse of what was going on at the very back.

A few other people were watching with us by the time someone led a skinny kid up to the front microphone. He wore dark glasses and carried a really big harmonica. The kid reached out to touch the microphone and get his bearings. We realized he was blind. The skinny kid stood around, touching the microphone from time to time to be sure it was there. The band members were getting settled in their places. The kid asked “Now?” And someone in the band said “Not yet.” This happened a couple more times until the guy in the band said, “Okay, now.”

And Little Stevie Wonder yelled into the microphone, “Everybody say YEAAAHH.”

And Gary and I said to each other, “It’s Little Stevie Wonder.” We knew this song from the radio. The crowd behind us yelled “Yeah.”

And he said it again, “Everybody say YYEEAAAAAHHH!” And Gary and I realized a crowd had closed in around and behind us. The crown yelled shouted back “YEAH!”

And the band broke into Fingertips as Stevie Wonder began playing that giant harmonica and we were really into the music until we felt the crowd pushing and jostling us. I first thought, “Hey, you don’t need to push, we were here first,” but then Gary and I realized we were the only kids in the crowd who were not Black.

We slid out across the area in front of the stage and then through the crowd to the back of the area that had just about filled up. We were too short to see much of the people on stage from back there. Little Stevie Wonder finished Fingertips and then started into High Heel Sneakers.

We were getting menacing looks and motions from some of the guys in the crowd so I agreed with Gary when he said, “We better get out of here.”

We were home for supper. The bus ride back down Woodward was hot and seemed like it took a lot longer than it did to get to the fairgrounds. I looked at the Black people getting on and getting off. I felt different than I had that morning. I had known there was racism. I had seen discrimination, but I had never been part of it and had intended to never be part of it. I joked with the girl whose locker was next to mine at school the same as I would with anybody else. Racism may be elsewhere, I thought, but if I wasn’t racist, I could live in a world without racism.

That simple idea died the day Gary and I saw Little Stevie Wonder at the Free Motown Review.

Four years later, parked on the Windsor side of the Detroit River, we listened to the shouts and gunshots, and watched the glow in the night sky as the city we enjoyed and felt a part of was ablaze in riots. I knew, we knew, the Gary’s and the rest of us, that racism was something we had to find ways to undo, diminish, sweep away and out of our lives. I think we knew too that we were the generation to do it. It was on us.