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44 the minnesota review Amy Spade Versions In Ford's first Mack Avenue factory, the auto was fixed—not on the famous assembly line—and up on blocks until meticulously finished, painted, shined. Some details were paid attention to, others not, a necessity of time: All the Model Cs were the same color. The center black iron furnace, heated with coal, burned hot enough to mold pipes. A small, wooden supervisor's desk lay over in one corner, strangely alien amid the iron and steel. In the epic Diego Rivera mural of the assembly line covering four walls in the Institute of Art, the workers are surprisingly clean, white, muscular, dressed in gray coveralls and energized by unified purpose, Detroit at the peak of prosperity, the union era. The foremen wear suits, executives peer down from offices at watches on long chains, efficiency minded. Black men man the furnaces, white light filtering into the Rouge plant. Both versions have been presented to me by Detroit museums, but if I drive Jefferson Avenue, south of downtown, the cityscape turns dreary, sulfurous, the air visibly filthy and fiery: a darkened wasteland of broken faces. This is the auto industry I know, the one that was all used up by the time my downriver classmates dreamed the same slim, fallacious, museum-bright dreams for themselves. Kids grow hungry, wives angry, men futile, their hands smooth, their nails dean. ...

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