I lived in a house in Royal Oak with a couple other guys. Paul owned the place, inherited it I think, and slept on the first floor. He was an Executive Chef at the hospital. Dave lived in the basement. He was a quintessential Dave in the late 1970s Cheech and Chong sense of the word. Dave was a heavy equipment operator in the days when construction stopped at the first frost. He worked all summer, driving bulldozers and earthmovers, and then partied like a madman all winter.
I moved into the second floor in the fall. It was a cool open space with a wood planked floor painted black. The long walls were about four feet tall and then sloped upward with the pitch of the roof. On each short end was a window. The window by the stairs doubled as my hobo fridge. I kept wine coolers and cheese between the panes in the winter; back in the day when wine coolers were a thing.
I had a sofa bed that was upholstered in black and white, somewhere between houndstooth and zebra. The couch sat on a cheap oriental rug that defined some space in the center of the open room. It really tied the room together. On the end by the stairs and the hobo fridge, I kept my dresser near the low closet. My desk and stereo were in the space on the other end of the room. A stack of vinyl records, three and half feet tall, with a lamp on top, functioned as an end table.
My girlfriend at the time was still back on campus at MSU. We had this bizarre weekend tradition of White Russians and Chinese Food. Specifically, it was always Almond Chicken from Wong's Cantonese on Woodward Avenue. Wong's made the best Almond Chicken I've ever had. It wasn't the braised chicken, nuts and vegetables that probably comes to mind. It was a chicken breast battered, rolled in sliced almonds, then fried, cut into strips, served over rice and vegetables with fresh green onion sprinkled on top. Magnificent!
[Editor's Note: Checking in 2016, Wong's is reported as closed on Yelp]
One midterm week, she came to my place to escape the hustle and bustle. Except, of course, I was there. We worked out a compromise. She studied in the nude so that I could sketch figure studies while she read, lubriciously strewn across the couch with a Labor Relations Text or something. Though it was just a mechanism to allow me to stare at her awhile, I made it up to her later. Even later, I married her, but I'm not so sure that could be considered making anything up to her.
I don't remember if the party came first or the fire. The party scared me into moving, so the fire must have been first. New Years Eve 1987 lasted three days at the house. A wild and varied selection of Royal Oak's finest citizens called; some stayed awhile, some never left. There was a biker chic passed out for what seemed like 24 hours, on the toilet, pants around her ankles and a butterfly tattoo on her thigh. There was a guy who looked for all the world like Jesus, except his beard was more like bread mold than that of a stained glass icon. Jesus never left the dinette in the kitchen. A BernzOmatic Propane Torch, always at the table, never went out - marathon freebasing.
Each morning that weekend, the living and dining rooms were littered with bodies like a hostage standoff gone horribly wrong. I was also getting the idea that a fairly large percentage of the coke traffic into Royal Oak was going through the basement. It was time to find a new place to live. As cool as it was to be half a block off Woodward Avenue, if the cops busted in, we were all going with them.
The fire was some weeks earlier. I was the token working stiff with a regular job. Paul's swing shift schedule, slinging hash for the MDs was ever changing. It was late fall, after the frost, Dave wasn't working, he was partying - full time.
I was upstairs sleeping. Selling packaging materials to auto industry suppliers was a contact sport. The beeping of an alarm seeped into my consciousness. Half asleep, I rolled over and checked the clock; it was barely past midnight. Paul must be cooking on the night shift this week. Back to sleep.
Minutes later, the alarm woke me again. More awake this time, I laid there trying to decide if it was Paul's or Dave's alarm. What the hell would Dave need to get up for? Maybe it didn't even sound like an alarm clock. Hmmmmm. What is that noise?
That's when I smelled smoke!
I recognized that noise! Smoke alarm! Smoke!
I threw on some jeans and stumbled down the stairs. With the door open to the downstairs, I really smelled smoke! Dashing toward Paul's bedroom, there was less smoke there. I spun around to see lots of smoke in the kitchen! Not good!!
Through the kitchen, which is still right out of the 1940s, it was two steps down to the landing and a hard right toward the basement. Looking down the stairs, the basement was filled with a brownish grey smoke. Worse, I could see an orange glow coming from the direction of Dave's space. Dave didn't really have a room. I'm not sure he paid much rent. He was Paul's girlfriend's older brother and apparently that got you a cot in the corner of the basement.
I bounded down toward the glow and went into slow motion. Dave was in his bed. Next to the bed was a folksy German chair. It had elaborately spindled legs painted bright colors with a heavily wickered seat, like a thatched roof from the movie "Heidi." Except the wicker was on fire(!), popping and cracking like an evil breakfast cereal, sending little strips of wicker ash into the air. A black blob, which I later found out had been an ashtray, was under the chair. There was our source!
Dave lay on his bed with his arms crossed over his chest, still dressed, shoes and all. Wicker ash covered his face and chest, all over the windbreaker he was still wearing. In the back of my mind, I could hear someone saying "Don't he look natural." I shouted at him and shook him to no avail. He jostled back and forth on the cot but just laid there. I had to do something about the burning chair!
I hadn't had the sense to bring a bucket of water or anything. I had never been in the basement and didn't know where the utility sink was. There is a legend in my family of a house fire and a great uncle running out with an organ stool . . . just an organ stool.
Apparently, I'm following a family tradition of 'grace' under pressure.
Squatting down, I grabbed the front legs of the chair down by the floor. It was fairly light and I carried the chair, still burning, up to the landing. Holding the chair out into the kitchen with one hand, I unlocked and opened the side door with the other and tossed the smoldering mess out into the driveway.
Relieved, I got back in the house and knocked on Paul's door.
"Paul, wake up."
"Yeah," just audible.
"There's been a fire but its out. I can't tell if Dave is alive or not."
"Oh, $%^&*!!," shouted.
Paul burst out of his room, stumbled across the dining room, paused to sniff the air, got his bearings and looked around. The house was still there. Then he clod down the stairs into the basement.
When I caught up with him, Paul was standing on the cot over Dave, holding the windbreaker by the lapels and bouncing Dave up and down.
"You almost burned my #%^&* house down! You almost burned my #%^&* house down!"
Dave woke up.
A little after one in the morning, the three of us stood in the driveway, while Paul sprayed the chair down with a half frozen garden hose.
"You saved my house, man. I'm gonna buy you a beer," Paul declared. Looking at his watch "Right now. Let's go."
The three of us cut through the backyard, jumped a curb and walked across the Auto Glass Shop's lot and up Woodward Avenue, 1:00 AM midweek. There's always a few cars on Woodward, but it seemed eerily calm that night; or that morning, whatever it was. We ambled past the Florist, an Insurance Agency, a Little Caesar's and found a piano bar. I don't remember the name of the place, but I can still remember the sign: "Buddy Clark at the Piano. Nightly 9:00 to 2:00."
We were a motley crew for a piano bar, but there didn't seem to be anyone else but a waitress and a bartender. We sat right next to Buddy, as he tickled the ivories, in a tuxedo.
He finished a tune and asked "What would you like to hear?" The twinkle and the smirk silently said "You crackers probably can't even spell jazz."
"How about some Duke Ellington," I said.
The smirk disappeared but the twinkle remained. "Lucky guess" he must have thought. "Ever since those damned Rolling Stones played "Take the A Train" as a live show intro, all these unwashed rockers think they're audiophiles!"
Just on the verge of patronizing, Buddy asked "Well, there's so much, what Ellington are you in the mood for?"
Oh, ye of little faith. I whipped out my jazz chops, "Gosh, how about "Take the A Train" or "Satin Doll," maybe "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," "Perdido" or "Black and Tan Fantasy." Or maybe that song Paul Gonsalves went crazy on at the '56 Newport Jazz Fest. What was the name of that tune?"
Chagrined, but almost impressed, Buddy played a couple Ellington tunes, then decided it was closing time and disappeared. We finished our beers and headed home. It was almost three, I had to be to work in 4 hours or so, but I had a great story to tell.
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