Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 41

(Ml 'Strong Medicine: Try swallowing this Arthur Hailey tale made into a melodramatic TV movie. See Mike Duffy, Page 9E. Monday, April 28, 1S86 COMMUTING 3 TELEVISION 8-9 GENERAL NEWS 10 CLASSIFIED ADS 11 DETROIT FREE PRESS Call The Way We Live: 222-6610 FORDSON HIGH: An American Experience Uicllic cUhirtor (Ljxo 3 (jiA (J5j jji Detroit needs a good hex to trot out for tourists il 7 tar 41 fe- "Some think we are not clean, that we make the city dirty; they say, 'Why can't you date, drink, eat Instead of finding out why we have these traditions, they Jump to conclu-slons." Charlotte Goutimy Free Press Photos by PATRICIA BECK What Detroit needs is more folklore and tall tales to pass along to tourists. To demonstrate what Louisianans can do with hardly anything, I'll share some experiences I had recently in New Orleans, a popular tourist and convention town. "Miss Lucy Fordham's place," said a local woman, nodding toward a large, old house.

The name she mentioned may not have been Lucy Fordham. It was something like that. Anyway, my tour guide pointed out the house's most striking architectural feature, a huge porch. "Miss Lucy lost most everything in The War," she continued. When Southerners speak of The War, it means the Civil War, as if there had been none since.

"After that," said my informant, "Miss Lucy never sat on her porch again if the wind was blowin' from the north." Great stuff. Who cares if it's true? It should be true. Urban mysteries work the' same way. Some people believe in voodoo in New Orleans, for example, and that's pretty mysterious. A gift for an ailing friend I was in a gift shop perusing doo-dads when a well-dressed man came in to consult with the well-dressed woman shopkeeper.

I tell tyou this to explain I was not wandering some back I "Going to visit a sick friend," the man explained. "He's recovering from surgery rough of it can you suggest Like a doctor asked to consult on a particularly difficult case, the shopkeeper listened carefully and asked questions. "What is the man's age? type of surgery? how long has he been ill?" Then she took some charms carved of wood and bone and some little cloth bags from a showcase. The bags were full of who knows what toe of bat, eye of newt? The two discussed the virtues of each. Finally the man made his selections and the woman put them all in a little box.

The man popped the box in his briefcase, tucked his Wall Street Journal under his arm, and was off. Ye gods! A vanishing passenger Later I heard the legend of Marie Laveau, although she is not considered a legend but a genuine presence, especially among cab drivers. Laveau was a free black woman (1794-1881) who practiced hairdressing and voodoo witchery. Her tomb is in St. Louis Cemetery No.

1. A few years back New Orleans cab drivers began reporting picking up a black woman, dressed in black, in the downtown area at night. She would give directions without giving any -n v' Fordson students come around a curve, full speed ahead, during a recent track practice. Msh it Amefmmf Either choice brings built-in conflicts "I classify myself as an Arab-American. I feel like I've lived here quite a while, and I feel comfortable." Fouad Zaban non-Arab students against the Arabs.

Students at Fordson have, for the most part, learned to live with each others' cultural differences, but occasionally there are fights or cutting words about "dirty camels" or "sand It is not easy being an Arab-American the day after 241 Marines are blown up in Lebanon or while a hijacked TWA jets sits on the tarmac of Beirut airport. By TOM HUNDLEY Free Press Staff Writer "Some think we are not clean, that we make the city dirty; they say, 'Why can't you date, drink, eat Instead of finding out why we have these traditions, they jump to conclusions." Charlotte Goutimy, 18, born in the United States "We come from countries that are underdeveloped, that have many problems. But here, we should conduct ourselves as if we were in our own countries, but without all the problems. We are not here to absorb pleasures. You come here to get an education and then go back and serve your people." Ahmed Algazaly, 19, horn in Yemen, came to America at age 5 "My parents don't speak English.

But even though I speak Arabic at home, half my friends are American. I don't have any Among them are Muslims, Christians and Druze. They come from families rich and poor, traditional families that take a dim view of American life-styles, modern families that assimilate rapidly into the American mainstream. Nearly 40 percent of the 1,755 students at Fordson High School are of Arabic ancestry. Most of the Arab students at Fordson are Lebanese Muslims, and a majority of those have arrived since the late 70s.

The number of Arab students enrolled in the school is likely to double within 1 0 years as tensions in the Middle East, particularly in Lebanon, compel growing numbers of refugees to seek haven within Dearborn's well-established Arab community. For Fordson's Arab-Americans those students who are U.S. citizens by birth or through naturalization the question of ethnic identity in this kind of environment is complex. In a very real sense, they are caught between two cultures. Sometimes it is a generational conflict between parents who want to retain traditional values and children who don't.

Other times, it is a peer group conflict: the The series continues: Today: Sam Amen and Ahmed Algazaly have different viewpoints about life as Arab-Americans. Sam's story is on Page 4E; Ahmed's is on Page 5E. Tuesday: The new arrivals How Fordson High and an influx of Middle East refugees have learned to cope with each other. 'rnxA problems with American students." Rejecting the melting pot Fordson is the largest of Dearborn's three public high schools and the one that draws from the city's working-class east side. Before the big Arab influx of the mid-'70s, the children of Central and Southern European immigrants made up the bulk of its enrollment.

But Arabs, who began coming to Dearborn in the 1920s, have been part of the Fordson story from the beginning. Through the mid-'60s, Arab immigrants tended to assimilate easily and quickly. Ish Ahmed, a 1966 Fordson graduate of Egyptian and Lebanese descent, remembers that when he was going to school, "Arabs were just another ethnic group. The thing was to be part of America, to fit in. And school was seen as the best way to do that.

"Back then we had a different sense of self. It was about being tough, being from the factory side of town. Now, it's being Arabic, being Muslim. That's not just true for the kids, but for the adults as well." See ARAB-AMERICAN, Page 4E address. Soon the directions.would stop.

When the driver looked in the backseat he would find it empty, even though the cab doors had never opened. Several drivers reported the same phenomenon and refused to pick up any such woman ever again. A new driver, unfamiliar with the goings-on, did pick up such a fare one evening. He was given directions from the backseat, which led to St. Louis Cemetery No.

1, where the driver was told to stop. His passenger got out and walked into the cemetery. Since the driver had not yet been paid, he followed. He saw her walk directly to Marie Laveau's tomb and vanish! Wow. How do we expect to attract tourists to Detroit if all our cab drivers can talk about is the Tigers? "Do It In Detroit" T-shirts are not exactly inspired gift items either.

What we need are Detroit's own urban myths, mysteries and legends. Anybody want to make some up? Samira Mashhour, 17, born in Lebanon, came to America at age 8 "I'm proud of being an Arab-American, but I'm always an American first. I put the U.S.A. in front. I'm proud of it." Sam Amen, 17, born in the United States They are Lebanese, Syrian, Palestinian "People who aren't In the school don't understand what It's really like In here.

We all get along pretty well. They just hear about the trouble we have and they think that's what; Fordson Is really like." Samira Mashhour; and Yemeni. Some are from families that have been in this country for three or four generations; others are right off the plane. Stroh gives California first Sparkler sip -V Hi Guindon's Detroit -4 Sundance Natural Fruit Sparklers come in four fla- vors. They're made by Pa- cific Health Beverage a recently created Stroh sub- sidiary.

4 By DIANE HAITHMAN Free Press West Coast Bureau LOS ANGELES Although the big advertising push won't begin until May Sundance Natural Fruit Sparklers, new juice-based soft drinks from Stroh Brewery are already making a quiet entry onto California's grocery shelves. Sundance Sparklers are the first nonalcoholic beverage from Detroit's Stroh, a beer producer since 1850, and Stroh hopes to carve a profitable niche in the $25 billion soft-drink industry. Stroh enters the non-alcoholic beverage market as natural sodas, juice-based drinks and flavored sparkling and mineral waters growin popularity. Sundance is being produced and marketed through Pacific Health Beverage a recently created Stroh subsidiary in Van Nuys, a Los Angeles suburb. SUNDANCE SPARKLERS are being marketed first in California, rather than in Stroh's home base, Michigan, because of the greater popularity of juice drinks and sparkling beverages in the Sunbelt, says John Bissell, president of Pacific Health Beverage Co.

Although no figures were available, Bissell said consumption is significantly low- "We know that bottled water sales, flavored and natural sodas which really aren't (natural) tend to be highly developed in California," Bissell says. "Something like 50 or 60 percent of those beverages are sold in California, so we felt this was an ideal market to get our first big toe in the water." Bissell stressed that California is not a test market for the product and that national distribution doesn't depend on the product's West Coast performance. And, although the Sun Belt dominates the sparkling beverage market, "this is going to change over time," Bissell said. "For example, in a slightly different category, the wine cooler business, Michigan is now the No. 4 state in the country, I think.

So it's not that Michiganders won't drink (Sundance) it's just that the trends tend to start on the West Coast." SUNDANCE SPARKLERS come in four flavors (apple, orange, grapefruit and cranberry, which is blended with white grape juice) and contain at least 70 percent natural fruit juice from concentrate and 30 percent sparkling water. The company calls it a "uniquely high juice to sparkling water ratio" (most juice-based soft drinks have less So Pfwe3E "i i "We took the tour at Kellogg's. but I know how to keep my mouth shut." or in Mtrhioan i 4 1.