But here in Pontiac, actually the first blue-collar suburb west, where cars have been built on the same site since 1905,  it strikes to the quick.  The Pontiac brand had an identity.  It was excitement.  A young person’s car who like performance and style.  A step up from a Chevrolet and a transition to family sedans like Oldsmobiles, Buicks and station wagons.

In WWII they built torpedoes, amphious vehicles and the mainstay Bofor anti-aircraft guns.  I can only imagine the numbers.  And as late as 1984 it was one of the “stand alone” sites where raw material flowed into a foundry and the finished product drove off the line in final process.  Employment was around 20,000.  Everything was available  and I mean everything.

But the US has a strange way of immortalizing people.  Pontiac was the local Indian Chief when the white man came and cut down all the first growth oak trees,  hence Oakland County, they found it made fine carriages, hence the auto business so.. O’ noble savage, O’ fierce warrior, we honor your name with dry cleaners, credit unions and subdivisions.  How long will they kill our prohpets?

hi-lo joe

hi-lo joe and Queenie II

the original pontiac motors headquarters

one of only 26 stand-alone pontiac dealers in US

so what can you expect from hilo joe?  wry observations, odd flights of fancy, early 70′ stoner lyrics and generally whatever pops into my mind why driving around on my trusty steed “queenie ll”  besides, i get tired of thinking about women all the time and yes, i cleaned up the women part.

for the subject at hand, the first 100 days.  this is one of those “milestones”  the media uses to kill time and trees.  the current situation we’re told, happens every 100 years and yet we continue, we nattering nabobs of negativism.

great film clips, nice family, tremendous photo ops, all the right things to say and do and totally reminiscent of that old saying, “you gotta be sincere and once you learn to fake that you’ll be ok”.  but what really has been accomplished?

heard of any legislation lately?  here in detroit the situation continues to decay quickly and daily.  next monday our plant, which builds for two world class products, the cadillac cts and the chevrolet malibu, will be down to one shift on the malibu side and off for three weeks on the cadillac side.  and as we know, on the cadillac side, the rich will always be with us.

detroit is the ground zero of the world economic crisis and usually leads the country out of any downturn but we don’t see that in this instance.  and now gm has basically closed the doors till mid july.

here in detroit we’ve seen nothing. nothing. and if obama can  somehow stimulate the rest of the country to the point where they feel capable of buying cars, then they’ll build a statue of him, chisel down his nose and wash him with a hose.

and though we sang his name

we all went hungry just the same

hilo joe

a real shot of sunshine was bbc radio correspondent nina robinson researching i’m still not sure of.  she was underfed and underdressed and as she jetted off to chicago to shovel more into the bottomless news pit i could only wince at what awaited the poor dear.  london must seem balmy.

speaking of the british press, a few months ago a popular US magazine famous for its interviews and pictures, i only read the articles, had a pictorial on the girls on page 3.  does the bbc have anything like that?  if not they sure are missing the boat.

hilo, hilo, its off to call marvin i go.

hmighk