My niece, ever the promoter of all things Detroit-- and god bless-- recently posted a link to Instagram of photos the Detroit Free Press had collected. The common thread among the images is Packard and the long derelict Packard automobile plant in Detroit.
Looking through these photos is a sober reminder of the impermanence of it all. You look at the images of the ruins and one can't help but think of the thousands of jobs, the thousands of automobiles, the pride, the prestige, the magnitude of business that at one time all seemed so solidly affixed to the foundation of everything that was America, the very substance of a rising world power. It was all so very, well, American. Packard was a symbol of just exactly what it was we did so well. The plant, the product, the employment, all the jobs and resources required to feed that factory-- like everything else about American manufacturing, decline and demise seemed impossible. As with so many other tiles in the mosaic of our industrial heritage-- both here in Michigan and throughout the US-- we are continuing to discover just how temporal it all is.
Whether it is manufacturing, construction, humanities, or the arts-- there is not a human endeavor that is immune from the effects of time. Especially here in the US, where the economic landscape has so thoroughly transformed much of a culture we took for granted in the 1940's, '50's, and '60's. I don't say that to sound alarm, only to encourage us to never ever take this moment, this place, these things for granted. What we have will not last forever. It might be worth a snapshot now and then.
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