DETROIT - The house where the Bus was raised is not much of a home anymore.
The inside is charred, the windows are covered with plywood, and the roof is mostly gone. About a quarter of the homes in this Northwest Detroit neighborhood are in similar shape.
"This used to be a neighborhood," Henderson Rhodes said yesterday. "Now, it's just a hood."
Mr. Rhodes, who has lived on Aurora Avenue since 1969, wore a Pittsburgh Steelers jacket and T-shirt displaying one word, "Bus," and a single number, 36. The Steelers cap he wore was signed by the Bus himself, otherwise known as Jerome Bettis.
Mr. Bettis will suit up for the Steelers on Sunday as they face the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XL seven miles away at Ford Field. Mr. Bettis has become one of the most compelling stories of the game - the most publicized event in American sports. In perhaps the final game of a 13-year career that will most likely land him in the Hall of Fame, Mr. Bettis returns home with an opportunity to win the National Football League championship.
The story is compelling in a different way, though, as witnessed during a tour of Mr. Bettis' old neighborhood, which the family left in 1993 after Mr. Bettis signed his first professional contract after graduating from Notre Dame. All of the grim statistics that detail Detroit's condition - a third of its residents live below the national poverty line, the population has been halved since 1955, the city averages one homicide a day - are on view.
At Mackenzie High, 10 blocks from the Bettis home, five police cars were parked in front. Around 10 a.m., two officers searched a youth's car near the school entrance. Any vehicle entering the school parking lot had to first pass by a student security force. Across the street, most of the businesses have vanished, their buildings shuttered.
"The Bus stopped here," was posted on the school's marquee, reminding students that Mr. Bettis graduated from Mackenzie. A more ominous message was scripted on one of the vacant buildings: "Good thing we brought the Glock."
William Boyd, who lives in a tidy home on Aurora near the Bettis residence, said his son attended Mackenzie but not his younger daughter.
"It's a bad place; nothing but trouble," he said.
Mr. Boyd, like Mr. Rhodes, has watched the neighborhood deteriorate, particularly after the Bettis family moved. Mr. Boyd, a retired postal worker, remembered 30 years ago when there were only four African-American families living on the street. Gradually, the neighborhood became more integrated. Everyone got along, and the homes were well-maintained.
Then the whites started leaving for the suburbs, residents said, followed by the younger, more affluent blacks. In their place were renters who cared little about their homes and youths whose presence added a nervous edge to the neighborhood, according to Mr. Rhodes.
Detroit and its business owners will gain more than $300 million from Super Bowl week, city officials have said. Residents on Aurora Avenue doubt they will receive any of the windfall.
For example, Mr. Rhodes pointed to a pile of trash sitting curbside intended for bulk pickup. But the city has canceled such collections, and there has been no promise that the service will resume.
"Knowing that, why would you put [your trash] there?" Mr. Rhodes asked to illustrate the neighborhood's decline.
Sean Simon, who attended Mackenzie with John Bettis, Jerome's older brother, said the neighborhood will be rooting for the Steelers and is proud of the Bus - whom former neighbor Deanna Jones describes as a classy guy. But most residents have other pressing issues - Mr. Simon included.
"I'm more concerned about my next paycheck," he said.
Mr. Simon said the neighborhood's dangerous reputation is ill-founded.
"There are no really bad people around here. It's people who have to do what they have to do to survive. [But] if you're looking for trouble, you can find it."
That environment has older residents, such as Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Boyd, wishing they could move. But they can't. They're living on a fixed income, and their homes, which are paid for, can't be sold because no one wants to live there.
"I can't go nowhere," Mr. Rhodes said.
Little is being done to rescue neighborhoods such as this one, but everyone appears to be an expert on the ailments.
On Cedarlawn, one block north of Aurora, Mark Woods and his partner, who called himself B.J., picked through the charred ruins of a burned-out house, searching for any metal that could be recycled. It was an illegal activity, but no one seemed to mind.
"This is not unusual," Mr. Woods said. "Some people have lived in these houses for 30 years or more, and they just leave them vacant. You can get them for nothing just by paying the back taxes. It's good for me, but if I had my way, these properties would be renovated."
Following his insightful remark, Mr. Woods, toothless and wearing filthy, worn-out clothes, sensed surprise in his interviewer.
"My dress doesn't match my intellect," he said.
Contact George Tanber at:
gtanber@theblade.com
or 734-241-3610.
First Published February 2, 2006, 1:56 p.m.