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A TALE OF THE CITY
By Mike Hanley

It's budget time, and as usual the news is full of stories about the dire fiscal straits of the City of Saginaw.  For anyone who may not be able to understand why many of us chose to remain in the City, let me explain by telling the story of my family's life.

My wife and I and our two young boys live at the corner of South Bates and Adams, in a "Craftsman" house built in 1925, situated between the Heritage neighborhood and Adams Boulevard.  It has hard wood floors, coved ceilings, Arabian arches, the original sconces and chandeliers, and cedar shake siding.  There are only five houses on our block, all owner occupied.  We paid $50,000 for the house in 1994.  Its value has increased 35% since then. 

Our yard is large, with two small stands of cedars and lots of other trees and flora.  There's railroad property in the back, and over the last couple of years I've converted it to a playground, complete with a swing set, sandbox, and tent.  All the ground is covered with playground mulch, and it's pretty much surrounded by trees.  It looks great!

We spend lots of time in the yard in the summer.  Friends visit, I bar-b-que, and we have a few beers while the kids play.  Seven-year old Nicholas is a bike rider now, and we take off together to take a leisurely ride down Adams Boulevard more and more.  We've stopped at Bill's Party Store a couple of times - what a great neighborhood store!

In the fall, the Arthur Hill High School homecoming parade comes down Adams, and last year we held or first annual parade party.  The weather stunk!  I assume it rained in the suburbs too.
In the winter, if you look from the living room back through the sunroom window, with the snow on the cedars, you'd think you were in the woods up north!  

Our neighborhood is diverse - black, white, yellow, brown, renters and owners, poor and comfortably middle class, young families and seniors.  We know and like most of our neighbors.   We talk over the fence.  The widower from across the street comes over or I go to his place to have a beer once a week or two. 

He raised his ten kids right there.  I went to school with a couple of them.  He picks up our papers and watches our house when we're out of town.  He's kind of a surrogate grandpa to the kids (I'm sure he'll make a special memory for them when they're grown and he's long gone). 

I doubt that our neighborhood is much noisier than any in the suburbs.  We've seen one fire truck from our yard since we moved here.  We have a low crime rate.

One and one third miles east of our house is the Children's Zoo.  Ojibway Island (site of the fireworks), and "The Crayon Playground", Nicholas' favorite, are on the way, as are two other playgrounds.  So is the entire Old Saginaw City Business District - which is surging with redevelopment initiated by LOCAL residents (the crimes you've read about are very unusual, and I certainly don't believe they represent a trend).  Our family goes to the Water Works to see the Christmas lighting each year.  There's so much to do, we can't take it all in.  Special thanks to PRIDE for a really great event! 

A few weeks before Christmas, we take the kids to the Children's Zoo so they can visit Santa ("that's where the real Santa is" Nicholas declares).  We visit real reindeer there too, and the kids ride the Carousel.  I take them to the sledding hill at Hoyt Park on the weekends in the winter (bring back the ice rink and toboggan runs!).

It's also one and one third miles to Kessel's, the closest supermarket (unionized again!).  Within those 1.3 miles around our house, just about every shopping and service need we have can be met by people who know our faces and frequently our names when we walk through the door.

Closer to home, we have the Court Theater.  They have great (and inexpensive) shows for kids and grown ups too.  My mother in law frequently walks Nicholas 3.5 blocks to the matinee.  He and I occasionally walk over to Michigan Coney Island for breakfast or Coney's and a pineapple shake.  Of course, there's also Fuzzy's, with all it's old time charm.  Mom and the kids stop at 7-11 for milk and sometimes a Slurpee after school (Nicholas goes to Kempton - a "Golden Apple" award winning Saginaw Public School).  Everybody knows Nicholas and Nathan (the three-year old) and they ask them all about their lives. 

Nicholas and I sometimes walk to Michigan Lutheran Seminary for Friday night football.  It's like walking back into the past, in the best possible way.  We also walk to the Butman-Fish Library four blocks away to check out some children's books. 

My wife and I like to go out on the weekend.  Our babysitters are two thirteen-year-old best friends that live two blocks away.  They're great girls.  They give the kids presents every Christmas.  They've become like extended family to us. 

The choices in "grown up" places to go are far too many to mention.  We love Zorba's - the county's only Greek restaurant.  There are lots of great bars with all kinds of entertainment.  Not to slight any of them, but we're an "old married couple", and our favorite is our neighborhood place.  It's like Cheers, and no, I'm not going to name it! 

A great house and yard with great neighbors and great amenities all around us.   My hometown, the town I grew up in, and in many ways, it's stayed the same far more than it's changed. 

So the next time you read about Saginaw's "dire straits", think of my family.  As you can see, our neighborhood offers lots of things many suburban neighborhoods don't.   With all of the City's problems, some real and some greatly exaggerated, we wouldn't rather live anywhere else.
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