Okay... Mother was right

Given what I know now, I have a memory that bears repeating.

My mother definitely had it right when I turned 15, just before I got my first professional-grade camera.  We were traveling on Northline Road in Southgate just when the News-Herald first announced that the late Heinz Prechter was interested in buying up the land just east of I-75 in order to build Heritage Center, which was to include a series of new car lots and several new business buildings. 

In the meantime, those lands were still cornfields.  My mother, ever the ardent reader of the News-Herald in those days, turned to me:  "You know, if you're really into photography, I don't understand why you aren't taking photos of this area right now."

Okay.  Cornfields?

She continued:  "... Because one day, those photos are going to be worth something.  This area isn't going to look like this forever."

Still, my as-yet-fully-developed brain could not comprehend why I should be shooting photos of the same cornfields I had passed every day.  Those same fields would be there next week, next month.  And next year, what would they be?  Cornfields.  I believed them to be so engrained on my memory that I could never forget what they looked like.

Flash-forward all these years later, and I cannot imagine Northline Road in Southgate being anything other than five lanes.  Picturing it as a two-lane road with ditches is increasingly difficult and, if I want to show someone visual proof, indeed cannot, because those photos do not exist.

Because I chose not to snap photos that day?  No... because myself and so many other people did not.  This is where we come in: years late, but still here today.

I am part of a group dedicated to revisiting Downriver's past, through photos and the written word.  Not just the Downriver at the turn of the century, but also from forty, thirty, even fifteen years ago.  I have found as I have gotten older, time seems to pass more quickly, and that pace is unforgiving.  What I see visually passes as more of a blur these days.  Businesses can come and go faster than ever. 

Many people have said that in our fast-paced, electronic world, we need to stop, catch our breath, and reflect on what has come before us.  Words of advice I should have heeded on that late-1980s day, I am heeding now.  Especially when a general Google search of many Downriver landmarks of the past turn up empty.  No written chapters of their impact.  No visual evidence of the landmarks they once were.  And my (supposed) photographic memory always being questioned, even ridiculed, by those who say they know that such-and-such never existed.

Isn't part of the "proof in the pudding" proving others wrong (gently)?

This column hopes to bridge those gaps and prove those proofs.  I hope I can help provide a service in the coming weeks and months, before it too becomes forgotten history.