Here Comes Trouble - Michael Moore [24]
As the men left on their search, my sisters started to cry, thinking the kidnappers might hurt our dad, too. Our mother told us to go back to bed and that, with more than a dozen men, no harm was going to come to anyone. At that moment, the police chief showed up with one of his officers and proceeded to catch up to the makeshift posse.
I went with my sisters into their bedroom, which had the best view of the woods. We watched the dads cut through the yards and around the swamp and into the woods, where the silhouettes of their frames disappeared—but the sweeping motion of the twelve flashlights allowed us to know exactly where they were. The movement of those lights looked weirdly choreographed—Sammy would have been proud—as they went up and down and across the trees, crisscrossing each other like the klieg lights at the summer carnival or the Chevy dealer’s Fourth of July sale.
After what seemed like hours, the dads returned, dejected and empty-handed.
“He’s not back there,” we heard Dad tell Mom. “No telling where he is. But he ain’t back there.”
The cops delivered the bad news to Mrs. Good and she broke down again. Her husband put his arm around her to comfort her, and they walked slowly back to their house, as did everyone else to theirs.
The next day Sammy Good was found near Pontiac, Michigan. He had either hitchhiked or taken the bus. He was wandering the streets and he was hungry and he didn’t want to go back home. He was tired of the insults and the bullies and the beatings and the inability to enjoy his dance party in peace. He had made it more than halfway to Hitsville, U.S.A., and it was said later, after he had run away again, that he had wanted to meet the Supremes and help them with their “styling.” I’m sure he could have made a significant contribution, and I’m certain that a more open and diverse place like Detroit might have suited him better.
We never saw Sammy again. He went to live with an aunt, and that was the last anyone wanted to discuss the subject. One month before his high school graduation, Sammy made his way to New York City, perhaps a more accepting and forgiving place, and it was where he went for a stroll one night, down West 13th Street to pier 54, and threw himself into the Hudson River.
The Canoe
WHEN I WAS YOUNG, my grandmother (my mom’s mother), sat me down to tell me the family history. She had an old, musty book of notes and clippings, and stacks of albums with faded photographs. As I was the oldest of the three kids, she wanted me to have this information so that it would be passed down to future generations. But for her, it was not just about handing over the printed material that had been handed to her. It was also about the Irish tradition of sitting the wee ones down and letting them see your face and look into your eyes as you told them “the stories of your people.” My grandmother explained that these stories were the closest thing we had to family jewels. They were who we were, where we came from, how our lives and values and beliefs came to be. In the generations that came before us, they understood that their good fortune (or tragedy) was not just a series of random happenings. They were the result of how one behaved, what integrity one had, and how carefully each of them made the decisions they made.
These family stories were told and retold without the benefit of computers and other digital devices. One’s history was stored in one’s brain. Now memory is kept on a Sony stick. But as technology changes each year (see: Profit), we lose family photos in the numerous transfers along the way. The floppy disk from fifteen years ago, the one you have the family history stored on, is hard to retrieve now, and if you ask a kid to help you, you will be met with a confused look or a quiet snicker. If you “stored