When I was a kid, I used to love to go fishing. Myself and a friend would get up at 5am and ride our bikes a few miles to Lake St. Clair, hop a fence and sit there for hours listening to a transistor radio and getting nothing.
Maybe we'd catch a perch or a carp... maybe a sheephead. Vile.
Oh look, girl caught a fish.
When we were bored we would walk around the cement break-wall around the lake and look at the beautiful mansions of Windmill Pointe Road. Some of these houses put Beverly Hills to shame.
One day we met a guy who introduced himself to us as Randy Helin. He made fishing lures. He took us to a work room/gardner's shed (remember, this was when you could still trust people) and showed us a few things he was working on. He treated us like humans, not like kids. It's a great memory.
I learned later on that Randy was the son of Charles Helin, of the Helin Fishing Tackle Company.
Charles Helin
Image from Helin Tackle Collector
I found the black and white photographs of the Helin mansion on the Detroit Yes forum.
March 18, 1978, the Helin Mansion was torched by an arsonist.
Richard Tucker, a veteran firefighter, was killed as a result of the horrific fire.
I've always been obsessed with the horrible and tragic. My pal Geoff and I took a bike ride up to the mansion to watch it being destroyed. The ruins were spectacular.
I brought along my Super 8 movie camera (silent) and shot this video. Forgive the terrible quality.
The next day when I was delivering The Detroit News on my paper route, I opened the paper and saw the photo of the ruins. Then I noticed the person in the center of the picture. That's me.
My pal Geoff is to the right.
My pal Geoff is to the right.
I ran home to show my parents, leaving my bike behind. It got ripped off.
Ahh, Detroit. We had a lot of laughs.
Charles Helin died in 1979.
