Fenkell & Livernois

It was the summer of 1964. The scuttlebutt had it that Larry, whom we called Tubby, was in some sort of the trouble with the law. I was seven years old.

Tubby was two or three years older. He and his single mom lived in the apartments above the storefront on Fenkell between Tuller and Turner, in northwest Detroit. He was a latchkey kid, back when the phenomenon was still relatively unknown. He'd always had the air of an outlaw about him.

A frisson of danger filled the hot summer night. I wandered the hundred or so yards from our front porch to the alley behind the storefront. All of a sudden, a flashlight shone in my face. "Are you Larry Snarkenfarker [not his real name]?!" the voice demanded.

"No, I'm Tony!" I squealed. The police officer turned and walked away.

There was something unsettling about the encounter. As if, even at that tender age, I recognized the dangers endemic to a state-sponsored protection racket. Happily, this was back in the day when Sheriff Andy Taylor, not the Waco Killers, ruled the roost. Fifty years on, and I may well have been shot on the spot or beaten senseless.

I knew right there neither angels nor automatons filled the ranks of my presumptive protectors. Odd that such a random blimp on the radar screen should have had such transforming ramifications, sowing the seeds of my later anarchism.