As the tobacco ember fades into a dark oblivion, a careful hand emerges from behind the counter. It skirts the glass remains, and pulls the ash tray from sight. Immediately, that which initially contained the skeletal remains of countless cigarettes is entirely renewed. It awaits the careless discard from the smokers stroke. It awaits a broken gesture of disregard.
It reverberates with the reckless rapidity of those events which consumed urban storefronts along Clairmont Street. The four fingers remind one of the four-man patrols which circulated during the early sixties. Suddenly, the ashtray becomes a metaphor…
The filters burn as those buildings at Twelfth and Clairmont did forty years ago…
A clean tray awaits awkward re-development. It desires replacement. One forgets that there were cigarettes there previously.
Staring at the black and white particles which line the bottom of the tray, one remembers the vocabulary by which this conflict is typically portrayed…It seems that it is always a problem of “White on Black Violence” or “Interracial conflict.”
General Baker and the patrons of this bar provide humor as a refutation to this means of structuring thought. General Baker, arrested on the first night of the riots, remembers, and relays the events with a humor that is more confronting than any type of verbal assault one can muster. In the Old Miami, one is confronted with this good humor. Working class people laugh over drinks, despite the jobs that they must work; despite long hours, bad pay, or hectic schedules. Somehow, like General Baker, their humor has a more profound affect on the way in which people shape thoughts concerning difficult circumstances. One questions how a person can live through so much, and yet speak humorously. Beyond the conflict which is expressed by the sheer number of rounds which were fired off, approximately 150,000, one remembers the way in which Baker smiles during his speech. One remembers the way in which he describes the looting of pawn shops as an attempt not to steal the possessions of others, but to get one’s own belongings back.
Similarly, the laughter which abounds at the Old Miami seems as much a system by which people confront that which they are faced with on a daily basis. It is not by titles and generalizations that the listener realizes plight, but rather, through shared laughter. How is it that the situations which transpired at Twelfth and Clairmont can be understood humorously? How is it that the most devastating aspects of one’s life are portrayed most accurately through humor?
The ashtray as a metaphor, iterates the ways in which these events have been rehashed into redundancy. It is always black vs. white. Similarly, the ash tray is perpetually refilled with cigarette ash, and yet, with people like General Baker, and the patrons at the Old Miami, this way of perceiving is refused. It is no longer the same homogenous and scripted lecture on the problems of Detroit, but rather a shared laugh that excites new perspectives and insights.
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