AADL Talks To: Steve Adams

Sun, 02/25/2024 - 6:09pm

When: February 5, 2024

Steve Adams was born, raised -- and still lives -- in Ann Arbor, and he can trace his family's local roots back to the Civil War. In this episode, Steve recalls growing up in the historic Black neighborhood near Mack Elementary School, and a progressive teacher at that time, Allene Green, whom he credits with having a major influence on his life. Steve recounts his connection to several iconic Ann Arbor institutions: Pioneer High School during the school's division into Ann Arbor's second high school, Huron High; the Del Rio restaurant and other local music clubs and venues; the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festivals; and, in particular, Border's Book Shop, where he worked for 32 years, from 1974-2006.

Transcript

• [00:00:09] EMILY MURPHY: Hi, this is Emily.
• [00:00:11] AMY CANTU: This is Amy. In this episode, AADL talks to Steve Adams. Steve is a lifelong resident of Ann Arbor, and was a longtime employee of Borders, tracing back to their first store on State Street. Steve shares some of his memories from his tenure at Borders, and reminisces about growing up in Ann Arbor, from meaningful times at Mac school to Ann Arbor's Jazz and Blues festival.
• [00:00:35] EMILY MURPHY: Well, thanks so much for joining us today. Could you start by telling us where you grew up?
• [00:00:40] STEVE ADAMS: I grew up off a minor on a little court called Elm Crest.
• [00:00:46] EMILY MURPHY: Can you describe Elm Crest, what it was like when you grew up?
• [00:00:49] STEVE ADAMS: What it was like? Tons of kids everywhere. It was the ideal place to play touch football in the street. We played baseball there until we started breaking windows, [LAUGHTER] and then we had a thing that was called the field.
• [00:01:06] EMILY MURPHY: What was the field?
• [00:01:07] STEVE ADAMS: The field was a property in the middle of the block between Fountain and minor bidding that was empty. There was nothing there. A lot of it is still empty but it was landlocked and we could, well, we actually had a baseball diamond there, built a lot of forts, dug a lot of holes.
• [00:01:32] EMILY MURPHY: Yeah.
• [00:01:33] STEVE ADAMS: It was great. Right now, actually on that court, there are 1-3 families still left from when we moved out of there. My parents left there in '71. They moved on to Miller.
• [00:01:54] EMILY MURPHY: What elementary school did you go to?
• [00:01:56] STEVE ADAMS: Mack?
• [00:01:57] AMY CANTU: Yeah, what was it like there?
• [00:02:01] STEVE ADAMS: It was interesting. It was a very interesting school. It had a little bit of everybody. Mack was in the middle of the, technically not segregated neighborhoods, but the red line areas. Basically, Miller was the line, and so, let's see went up to bidding Crestfield area as far north and then as far west as I believe, I believe Huron. I've forgotten how, let's see, it went all the way to Main Street, basically, and then west, I'm not sure how far it went, but I think Newport area.
• [00:02:46] AMY CANTU: Yeah, that sounds about right.
• [00:02:48] STEVE ADAMS: Maybe Pomona.
• [00:02:50] AMY CANTU: You actually still live near there. I know that there's been a lot of talk about Water Hill and the naming and all. Can you tell me your thoughts about all of that?
• [00:03:01] STEVE ADAMS: It has a name. [LAUGHTER] It was the neighborhood. It's where you lived. But apparently, the neighborhood has very much changed. When we moved into that neighborhood, my grandparents bought a house next to my great uncle on Gott Street and then we moved from Gott Street up to Elm Crest, and when we moved in, we were the first black family. By the time my family moved out of there, the whole neighborhood was basically black.
• [00:03:33] EMILY MURPHY: What was it like seeing that change as you were growing up?
• [00:03:37] STEVE ADAMS: It was one of those things where everybody moved. There's a new group of kids to play with. Because the other kids, some of them weren't allowed to play with us, so they very quickly moved. Like right next door there was a house that had basically three families in it. They were all one family and they all moved and another part of the family had a place on Fountain and they all moved out of there as well at the same time.
• [00:04:12] AMY CANTU: Where did they move?
• [00:04:15] STEVE ADAMS: Part of them moved to Dexter, some of them moved to Chelsea. They moved to outlying areas, so they no longer were going to Ann Arbor School, some of them.
• [00:04:28] AMY CANTU: I know that you had family in this area since roughly around the Civil War time. Was it a huge family spread around the whole city or in that neighborhood? You've already mentioned a couple family members, uncles, whatever?
• [00:04:43] STEVE ADAMS: Most lived on the north side, near North Side School in that neighborhood and that was where we lived with my grandparents until I was six. When my grandparents sold the property, what is now on John Woods and Peach that now has three houses on it. They lived there, sold that and bought a house on Gott and then, sold that and moved on to the corner of Spring and Felch.
• [00:05:16] EMILY MURPHY: Has most of your family stayed in Ann Arbor?
• [00:05:19] STEVE ADAMS: Nope. Of my family. I think one cousin has a house out on Keenly, and my dad is out by Myers.
• [00:05:31] EMILY MURPHY: What made you stay?
• [00:05:34] STEVE ADAMS: I like the neighborhood. I like the city. I'm a small-city kid.
• [00:05:37] EMILY MURPHY: Yeah.
• [00:05:38] STEVE ADAMS: I was used to doing things like being able to walk to a football game, to be able to walk or ride my bike all over the place. This is the type of city I was always looking for. I left for two years and came back and went, this is what I was looking for. [LAUGHTER] Looking for a place where there are lots of things to do, lots of people, you don't have to spend a lot of money to go do something to read, because at that time, you were allowed into any library. When I grew up, I used to go into the university libraries and sit and read. You couldn't check anything out, but I could sit there and read.
• [00:06:16] EMILY MURPHY: Did you have something in particular that interest you? What would you look for books about?
• [00:06:21] STEVE ADAMS: A little bit of everything.
• [00:06:22] EMILY MURPHY: Yeah.
• [00:06:23] STEVE ADAMS: Lots of science books, was interested in animals, lots of lots of literature, lots of science fiction that I didn't want to pay for that I could sit and read. I got so much stuff. I spent a ton of time here, actually, in this library, in fact here and at the old Y?
• [00:06:43] AMY CANTU: Yeah. Right across the street.
• [00:06:44] STEVE ADAMS: Yeah. Every summer, I was involved in the summer reading program, and with the idea if you had so many books to read.
• [00:06:56] AMY CANTU: I'm curious about what you know about your earliest ancestors that came here. What did they do for a living? Did they come to the north side or do you know where they originally settled when they came here?
• [00:07:09] STEVE ADAMS: Northside, Wall Street area, Fourth Ave, as my mom describes, the very first house she lived in, being on Fourth Ave near some of the families that were there until just recently. But one of the families is still there. But the house has been torn down and has a big mansion on it now on the property. My grandmother was a practical nurse. My aunt, she became a nurse's aide, but she was one of the first black elevator operators in the city.
• [00:07:48] EMILY MURPHY: Do you know where she worked?
• [00:07:50] STEVE ADAMS: Actually, I take that back that was my grandmother who was. God, was it? I think there's still a bank there, but it's the corner of Maine and Huron would be the.
• [00:08:03] AMY CANTU: Is that the Key Bank?
• [00:08:04] STEVE ADAMS: Southwest corner? Let's see. A lot of the men worked in car factories, their car industry, somehow. Uncle drove a cab. My dad worked in a factory and ended up, in fact, managing that factory later on.
• [00:08:25] AMY CANTU: What was the name of the factory?
• [00:08:27] STEVE ADAMS: It's out of Whitmore. It was Hoover Chemical. I don't know what it is now. I don't remember. It's been through several names.
• [00:08:37] EMILY MURPHY: Jumping back to you, so you went to Mac and then what was your next schooling step?
• [00:08:41] STEVE ADAMS: Forsythe.
• [00:08:42] EMILY MURPHY: Then?
• [00:08:44] STEVE ADAMS: Pioneer.
• [00:08:45] STEVE ADAMS: My sophomore year is the year that Huron and Pioneer split.
• [00:08:49] AMY CANTU: Right.
• [00:08:51] EMILY MURPHY: What was it like before then? Was the school pretty crowded? How did that work?
• [00:08:58] STEVE ADAMS: Well, my sophomore year, the building for Huron was not ready yet because of a steelworkers strike. So we went split shifts. School started, if I remember correctly, at 10:00-7:00.
• [00:09:09] EMILY MURPHY: Oh, boy.
• [00:09:11] STEVE ADAMS: Yeah, it was pure torture. I was lucky my first period was study hall.
• [00:09:18] AMY CANTU: Sleep hall, you mean? [LAUGHTER]
• [00:09:20] STEVE ADAMS: No, [LAUGHTER] it was I'll be in time for the second period.
• [00:09:25] AMY CANTU: There you go. Right.
• [00:09:26] STEVE ADAMS: My parents were fine with that, as long as my grades didn't drop. But there were portable classrooms everywhere. That open area that used to be used for parking on the front, on the stadium had probably eight portables. There were portable classrooms in the middle because the school is shaped like a C. So there were portable classrooms there. There were portable classrooms at the southwest end.
• [00:09:58] EMILY MURPHY: That's funny. I've never seen a photo of the portable classrooms there. I would have thought we would have one in our collection, but I've not seen one.
• [00:10:06] STEVE ADAMS: They just look like a trailer.
• [00:10:07] EMILY MURPHY: Little trailer sitting out there.
• [00:10:09] STEVE ADAMS: Not a little trailer.
• [00:10:10] EMILY MURPHY: A big trailer.
• [00:10:11] STEVE ADAMS: Look more like a park trailer.
• [00:10:15] EMILY MURPHY: What are some of your memories of Pioneer High?
• [00:10:19] STEVE ADAMS: I had a blast.
• [00:10:21] EMILY MURPHY: Did you play any sports? Did you join any clubs?
• [00:10:24] STEVE ADAMS: I used any excuse I could to not go home. My sophomore year, I played football, baseball, and basketball. My junior year, I played football, didn't get picked for the basketball team, so I stayed there and wrestled, and then I ran track, but I ended up on the basketball team later. Senior year was football and track, but it was great. In my sophomore year, I didn't go home because school was ordered over at 1:50 and it didn't make sense to go home and turn around and have to come back for practice. I just stayed there and studied. So I very rarely took books home.
• [00:11:10] EMILY MURPHY: That's a long day. Starting at, you said 7:10 in the morning and going.
• [00:11:16] STEVE ADAMS: No, 6:50.
• [00:11:18] AMY CANTU: 6:50. Oh, gee. What did you do after school?
• [00:11:23] STEVE ADAMS: After school?
• [00:11:24] EMILY MURPHY: When you graduated?
• [00:11:26] STEVE ADAMS: When I graduated, I went to U of M eventually.
• [00:11:28] EMILY MURPHY: What did you study?
• [00:11:28] STEVE ADAMS: A little bit of everything, I did not finish, ended up at Eastern after I came back because I left and went to California for two years. Came back because I couldn't afford to live out there.
• [00:11:42] AMY CANTU: Who could?
• [00:11:44] STEVE ADAMS: When you've got three jobs and you're barely paying your bills.
• [00:11:48] AMY CANTU: Tell us the path from there, and how did you eventually make it to Borders?
• [00:11:54] STEVE ADAMS: I ended up working at the very first street level Borders, which was where the Red Hawk is located now. Then I started in September when I came back from California. Then in November, we opened across the street where most people know of us, they're a couple doors down from the theater.
• [00:12:20] EMILY MURPHY: What were those early days like in Borders? What were you doing?
• [00:12:23] STEVE ADAMS: You did whatever was necessary. Whatever the manager told you or needed you to do. You ran downstairs to get books, you shelved books, you cleaned up, you swept, you vacuumed, you swept the sidewalk, washed windows, whatever was necessary.
• [00:12:42] EMILY MURPHY: Did you have a favorite job?
• [00:12:44] STEVE ADAMS: My favorite job was to work the floor and help people find the books they were looking for, make recommendations. Basically, as I do now, I like to talk to people, I like to move around, I like to be able to see what's going on.
• [00:13:00] AMY CANTU: I'm curious, what was the atmosphere like? First of all, did you have any inkling that Borders was going to explode into the big corporation that it became?
• [00:13:09] STEVE ADAMS: The owners basically were extremely lucky. They had employees who pushed them to go in the direction that worked. But at the same time, they were willing to take care of their employees. That was one of the things that they did. They believed that happy employees made for happy clients and eventually made for happy investors. It was one of the first places that had healthcare. We're talking '70s. Healthcare in a retail environment was unheard of. They did profit sharing, which again unheard of. But at the same time, they wanted to take care of their employees. But when I said that they had employees who pushed them, it's like their idea was they wanted to be basically a Barnes and Nobles, a Walden's and people fought them on that. Fought them to carry a wider variety of books rather than carrying a six book series and Book 5 only, to carry all six. To not just sell the books that everybody is looking for, because you could get that at Walden's, you could get that at Barnes and Nobles. How about the other books? The literature that people couldn't find. Back then, there was no going online to get that stuff. You had to find it. At the same time the idea was, if you were someplace and you saw this book that the customer is looking for, we don't have it, tell them, share that, help them, because they'll remember the owner thought it was a great idea because the customers loved it. They loved it. Somebody was helping them do that and they would come back for that.
• [00:15:06] EMILY MURPHY: What first drew you to apply for the job at Borders?
• [00:15:10] STEVE ADAMS: Besides needing a job?
• [00:15:11] EMILY MURPHY: Yeah.
• [00:15:12] STEVE ADAMS: When I came back to town, it was going to be either I was going to try and get a job in a bookstore or a record store because I love music. The bookstore came through first. In fact, I was one of those folks not hired by the manager that everybody knows. I was hired before he became the manager.
• [00:15:33] AMY CANTU: It sounds like that you knew that they had a good policy, obviously they had benefits, they listened to their employees. You saw a lot of changes over time there. Talk a little bit about those transitions and what you as an employee who saw it go from a small successful business to a much bigger business, and then later what happened to Borders. Tell us what you saw.
• [00:15:58] STEVE ADAMS: First off, I didn't know that that was how the owners were. My very first day was me working, trying to figure things out. Then being taken out to lunch by one of the Borders brothers and him just letting me know that, hey, my employees are family. I did not know that. I did not know that that's how he felt. Then when we moved across the street where we quadrupled in size, because the first floor was all books, the Messenine was all remainders and then the second floor was artwork, prints, framing, that thing.
• [00:16:44] STEVE ADAMS: People just said, you're crazy, there's no way you're going to sell enough books to be able to afford that space, and we did. The major change was the inventory system because the inventory system is what allowed Borders, I think, to become what they became, because you knew what was in the store, you knew what you needed, you knew what was selling. There were no surprises.
• [00:17:13] EMILY MURPHY: How did you maintain that, whether it was you specifically or the Borders you?
• [00:17:18] STEVE ADAMS: Well, it was computer system every week. Initially, every week they took all those cards and ran them through a computer that they rented time on, time-sharing, and they would get a printout of what it sold, and they could put that together and make your orders and get the bigger discount. Then eventually they started selling that and helping people set up other stores. Then that allowed them to make their orders larger. There was a group of purchasers.
• [00:17:58] AMY CANTU: This is in the early '70s, then?
• [00:18:00] STEVE ADAMS: That would be late '70s.
• [00:18:01] AMY CANTU: Late '70s.
• [00:18:03] STEVE ADAMS: Moved in '74. That's when I started was in '74.
• [00:18:06] AMY CANTU: I need to know more about this computer, so they shared time?
• [00:18:11] STEVE ADAMS: Yes. [OVERLAPPING]
• [00:18:12] EMILY MURPHY: Where was the computer. Where did it live?
• [00:18:16] STEVE ADAMS: I don't remember the company that they bought time on.
• [00:18:19] EMILY MURPHY: But they would take the cards, like to the computer wherever it was on campus or whatever, and run them?
• [00:18:26] STEVE ADAMS: Yeah.
• [00:18:26] EMILY MURPHY: That's really interesting. [LAUGHTER] It's very old school, isn't it?
• [00:18:29] STEVE ADAMS: Well, you have to remember that back then computers were huge. I mean, that laptop that you have there on the desk would have been something that maybe took up this entire room and needs to be cooled, because it was really good at heating things.
• [00:18:50] AMY CANTU: That's really interesting because I think, I'm not entirely sure on my library history, but the automations in that environment happened faster than here, for the library. Wow. Talk a little bit more about some of the changes that you saw, and what you thought about them before you left.
• [00:19:08] STEVE ADAMS: The initial changes I saw, I didn't mind. I mean, the idea of opening other borders stores made sense. I mean, you have to remember, the University of Michigan has a huge alumni base, to the point that when we opened a store in Singapore in the '80s, what was that '90s? That would have been '90s. When that store was opened, there were people walking in, apparently, from what I hear saying, hey, I remember Borders when I was at the University of Michigan. [LAUGHTER] When they opened that first store in Dearborn, they were absolutely shocked at how popular it was. They opened that third store in Atlanta, they couldn't believe the number of people who were there and knew and didn't understand the name recognition that came with it. I mean, people were in and out of the city for conferences for all the university things that they come here for. Plus, the parents who were here, they would go into Borders, because a Borders-type bookstore was not the rule. It was the exception.
• [00:20:26] AMY CANTU: Here's a question for you. Shaman Drum opened at some point in there, and then you also had, Ul Ricks and the campus stores that were selling the text. What did Borders do differently, I mean, you've already talked about the inventory system, but they didn't fill the same niche that obviously Ulrich's and Shaman Drum did. Can you talk a little bit about the rivalry or the various different students that they attracted and customers that they attracted?
• [00:20:57] STEVE ADAMS: First off, the Borders was the place you went to get the stuff you wanted to read on your free time. Although we carried some things that were used in classes, and eventually, I mean, our computer book section became huge and had a bunch of things that were textbooks.
• [00:21:15] AMY CANTU: Didn't try it.
• [00:21:16] STEVE ADAMS: It wasn't to compete with. That was just a market we weren't in. That market was unbelievably cutthroat.
• [00:21:25] EMILY MURPHY: How did your job change as Borders got bigger and expanded or did it not?
• [00:21:31] STEVE ADAMS: It changed in that I was given more responsibility. I built sections.
• [00:21:41] EMILY MURPHY: Tell me more.
• [00:21:43] STEVE ADAMS: Well, let's start with the computer section. Well, it's not. Let's start with science fiction. Science fiction has always been a pet thing to read. I love science fiction, especially true hardcore science fiction, not fantasy, not the sword and sorcery stuff. But I built that section to where it, if I ran across a review of something or was talking to somebody and found out about it, I'd make sure it was there. I recommended things and it became the person to come talk to about science fiction. Then one day all these computer books showed up. [LAUGHTER] They were ordered. It was like all these new publishers came into being. Well, let's put it this way. You've seen a computer software manual, it's written by the programmer who basically can't write it. It opened up market for books that were actually easier to read, it's more straightforward, and had all the little tricks and things that you needed to know. That was the next thing I ended up working on was building that. I also built our magazine section up into something that was a little bit bigger than what it was. With the idea being, you could get on the street and get all the time magazines in the world, but you couldn't get the village voice everywhere, and so the concentration was selling the magazines that other people didn't have; The Architectural Digest, those things that other stores didn't have, most magazine shops didn't have. That was the way Borders built itself in all sections to have the things that other people didn't have.
• [00:23:49] EMILY MURPHY: How did you decide what things. If other people didn't have them, how did you find out about them?
• [00:23:56] STEVE ADAMS: I'm a reader. [LAUGHTER] I read magazines. I read reviews. I talked to people. I talked to customers. You find out what customers are looking for. I knew people who were book reviewers because Ann Arbor is loaded with them. They're everywhere, and so I got a chance to talk to them. There was a couple guys who I knew who wrote science fiction reviews for the New York Times, for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, for, oh, God, the LA Times. They're just people who I knew who lived in Ann Arbor, and we'd end up talking about books.
• [00:24:41] EMILY MURPHY: Well, I'm wondering, so you sci fi to the computer books which it sounds like fell in your lap, but then did you enjoy continuing to build that? Did you find yourself having to answer not just recommendations but tech support?
• [00:24:59] STEVE ADAMS: Well, I ended up doing tech support for the store. Well, I was also taking classes and there were computer science classes at Huston, so it also was my interest. It was my new interest. Something I've been playing with since high school. I wrote my first computer program, I believe, my sophomore or junior year of high school. Had a friend whose dad was an engineering professor here, and we got a chance to play with some of the games on the old teletype machines where you would choose whether you [LAUGHTER] put in a number, and it would take the number of the play for football game. You're an offense. Let's run this, and they would end up somehow taking that input and giving you, "Oh, you gained four yards or gain touchdown, blah, blah, blah. That stuff was great thing, and we got in trouble because we somehow found our way into the actual program.
• [00:26:22] EMILY MURPHY: That's great.
• [00:26:23] STEVE ADAMS: Dad had to fix it because we had really screwed it up so that we could win. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:26:32] AMY CANTU: It sounds like you had the perfect job. I think Emily would agree with me here, this feels like a perfect job. You get to read books and you get to also think about books. It sounds like you got to do what you wanted to do, you got to pursue what you wanted. And so eventually you became part of the IT staff. Can you talk a little bit about how the computer and the IT system changed over the years?
• [00:26:59] STEVE ADAMS: Well, that was the big thing we used to get a printout every two weeks of what was in the store, what we carried that went from this big printout of our inventory to a computer system where you could actually look up online. This thing I remember them putting the network in and me standing and going, they hired these guys to put in the network because they were running network lines over electrical lines and which meant that there was interference and other things? Everything was of course, it was hard wired there was no wireless. Then went from that computer system evolved with computers everywhere rather than in the old store they were on the main floor three computers. And then in the new store when we moved to Liberty and Maynard. Oh, God, there were computers everywhere.
• [00:28:06] AMY CANTU: I remember.
• [00:28:06] STEVE ADAMS: There's a desk everywhere. The registers ended up being computerized. It was great, it was wild. But then again, they needed somebody to be able to support that and understand how to fix some of this stuff or to make a call into store support to work with them to fix stuff and eventually what happened is I got hired by them.
• [00:28:31] AMY CANTU: Well, that's handy. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:28:34] STEVE ADAMS: Well, it turned out to be a good thing because the Borders Brothers sold to Kmart. They sold to Kmart, Kmart eventually, a few years later, was in really dire straits and the investors wanted them to sell off, as I remember, wanted them to sell off the specialty division. Specialty division included Walden's, one of either Office Depot, it was Office Depot and a few other things that are still in existence that they've since sold off. Well, they went, oh, Borders, Walden's, you both sell books, you're now one company go forth, make cash. We became an independent company with them. Problem, of course, is Walden's and Borders had two very different corporate cultures. Walden's was all about the numbers. If you couldn't quantify it in a number, it didn't exist. Borders was about customer service, it was about helping the customer get what they needed. When Borders moved into an area, opened the store, the object was to become part of the actual community. We get our coffee from local roasters, if available, get your pastries from a local baker, so on and so forth. Walden's was not there about that big national contract, and I think that was the beginning, at the end when it just didn't feel right. I think one of the final straws is them not wanting to go online. That was wanting to go online before Amazon existed would have blown Amazon out of the water because Borders had name recognition and brick-and-mortar stores. In brick-and-mortar stores, I know everybody says that, you're tying up inventory and so on and so forth but you have customers, you have a place that customers could touch the merchandise and look at it. If we had offered the same discounts online that Amazon offered originally, it wouldn't have been a problem. I don't think, I think that it would have been a great thing and borders would still be in existence.
• [00:31:13] EMILY MURPHY: At that point in time when it was becoming clear that perhaps there should be a web presence, were you still working at Borders or were you doing tech support elsewhere? I think I'm a little unclear, did you get hired by Borders to run their tech support or were you hired by an external company?
• [00:31:32] STEVE ADAMS: Borders. [OVERLAPPING] I moved from the store on Liberty to the corporate office we're off of Ellsworth at that time, and I moved into store support. I was bribed to do that. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:31:52] AMY CANTU: How quickly did you see that things were going to maybe take a turn for the worse? How quickly did others see it? Was it universally people saw it coming or?
• [00:32:05] STEVE ADAMS: I don't think so I think there was the fight. It was a big fight between Walden's and Borders. The Walden systems were all vast base, old systems and the Borders systems were Windows NT based. Moving right along and the two systems couldn't talk, they had to create a third system to take the Walden's and the Borders orders combined them to send them off to get the big discount. Because you got discounts according to how much you purchased from a publisher in each order.
• [00:32:44] EMILY MURPHY: So were you working in helping to develop things or helping to make sure that they actually did the job or a bit of each?
• [00:32:51] STEVE ADAMS: My job was more so to help make sure things worked.
• [00:32:56] EMILY MURPHY: Did you like it?
• [00:32:58] STEVE ADAMS: Oh, sure. I had a blast. I had fun until they decided that, I think the thing they told me really that things were going the wrong way is when they decided Walden, Borders Corporate. Oh, because there were basically three supports. There was the Corporate Office support, which was very different than the stores because everything was locked down in the stores. There was the Walden Support and Walden's systems, like I said, were very different than the Borders Store systems so there were basically three support and then they looked one day and somebody decided, hey, you all deal with computers, we'll combine it all together and call it support [LAUGHTER] and that failed miserably. That was when I basically saw that things were headed the wrong direction.
• [00:33:59] EMILY MURPHY: At that point how many years roughly, had you been working for Borders?
• [00:34:04] STEVE ADAMS: I started '74, I moved into store support in '98, and in 2006 I was let go.
• [00:34:13] EMILY MURPHY: That's a long...
• [00:34:14] STEVE ADAMS: That was what, 32 years I believe.
• [00:34:17] EMILY MURPHY: That is a long time. When you're in that place where you're starting to see, like you said, the combining all to one support and you start to feel that, ooh, maybe this isn't the right path. How does your longevity, the changes you had seen before clearly this felt different.
• [00:34:38] STEVE ADAMS: Felt very different. There was also the changes in the store for basically Borders had for years been hiring people according to their book knowledge. What do you know about books, are you a reader? It was decided, oh, we have a computer system, it doesn't matter anybody can sell books which didn't help because that meant that people came into the store and there was nobody there who really could help make recommendations or very few people.
• [00:35:07] AMY CANTU: But now, at this point, you also had DVDs and you had CDs and so did you have special.
• [00:35:14] STEVE ADAMS: We had VHS. [LAUGHTER] [OVERLAPPING] and we had a coffee shop as well. The Ann Arbor store was the flagship store, so it had to have everything that any store might have. At one point they added cards.
• [00:35:35] AMY CANTU: All the little things you buy at those service desks.
• [00:35:39] STEVE ADAMS: All the things that were available everywhere else.
• [00:35:44] EMILY MURPHY: How does your many years of working in a bookstore impact how you interact with bookstores today or books in general?
• [00:35:55] STEVE ADAMS: Books in general? I was always a reader, will always be a reader. I'm constantly reading about books finding out a book about books. Not reading as much as I did, but I do read. I continue to maybe go into the bookstore like, oh God, Schuler Books. Schuler Books is an old Borders client store. The two owners, the owner I worked with at the store, I go out there occasionally and just walk through and run into people out there who used to work at Borders. I don't go downtown much. There is a bookstore down there. I can't remember its name now.
• [00:36:45] AMY CANTU: Literati.
• [00:36:46] STEVE ADAMS: Literati has a ton of the old Borders employees.
• [00:36:52] AMY CANTU: You eventually, you stayed with IT, and tell us your journey after being let go at Borders, where did you end up?
• [00:37:00] STEVE ADAMS: I ended up at UNM hospital doing the same thing for the hospital. I basically got let go in May, I believe and then we were employees for a month, I think, till the end of June. Borders paid us with the understanding that we had to be available of something was needed from us. In mid August, started at the hospital. I applied for one job and got an interview right away [LAUGHTER] and found out that, well I knew people, I actually knew lots of people. My resume ended up on the manager's desk from many different sources.
• [00:37:50] EMILY MURPHY: Nice. Let's take a step back from Borders and just look at Ann Arbor as a whole. In your practically lifetime here, minus those two years, Ann Arbor has changed quite a bit.
• [00:38:03] STEVE ADAMS: Just a little [LAUGHTER]
• [00:38:06] EMILY MURPHY: What are some of those changes that stick out to you for better or worse?
• [00:38:12] STEVE ADAMS: I used to live on North Main. Thursday night basically the traffic was like a football Saturday, backed up trying to get into Downtown to party. Ann Arbor's become the place that everybody comes to go out to dinner, to go to a bar, to get a cup of coffee. The Downtown has become basically bars, restaurants, and coffee shops. There's very little that is not, which is sad because that's one of the reasons I live where I live is because I can walk Downtown.
• [00:38:56] EMILY MURPHY: What is a place you used to go to Downtown that you miss?
• [00:39:03] STEVE ADAMS: The Del Rio.
• [00:39:04] EMILY MURPHY: Tell me more.
• [00:39:05] STEVE ADAMS: The Del Rio was the ultimate bar. Basically was a coop.
• [00:39:10] EMILY MURPHY: Really?
• [00:39:11] STEVE ADAMS: Yeah. It was run by the employees. Things were voted on. They had the best burritos and whole wheat crust pizza. It was amazing. It was just one of those places. Sunday nights they had music. The story supposedly of how it got started was the guy got a grant to do a PhD or some study and he had this idea that a coop business could survive. He ended up starting this business with that money and he happened to also be a piano player.
• [00:40:01] AMY CANTU: Rick Burgess?
• [00:40:02] STEVE ADAMS: Yeah, I think that. Rick was his first name. I can't remember what the last name is. God, I missed that place. I used to actually sneak in there before I could drink legally [LAUGHTER] listen to music. I also used to stand outside the bars that used to be on N street and listen to blues there. I got in trouble for that one.
• [00:40:25] EMILY MURPHY: What happened?
• [00:40:27] STEVE ADAMS: Well, I'd wait until my parents went out, and so I was standing in the alley listening to music and figuring if I knew when my parents would get home, I got home and my dad was there waiting because he had seen me. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:40:44] EMILY MURPHY: No.
• [00:40:45] STEVE ADAMS: Yeah. The first thing it is, you don't smell like smoke, so you weren't smoking? I don't smell alcohol in your breath. What were you doing? Listening to the music? You know that you're not supposed to be out that time of night. It's past your curfew and I got grounded.
• [00:41:02] AMY CANTU: What were the names of some of those clubs? I'm trying to remember.
• [00:41:05] STEVE ADAMS: Clints? Or something. I don't remember now. I just don't remember.
• [00:41:09] AMY CANTU: There were a couple of them though, and then weren't there shows at the armory there too at times or?
• [00:41:14] STEVE ADAMS: Yeah, there were shows there. There was also the Blind pig which was a blind pig I believe at one point. I used to stand outside there. The Del Rio used to have music like I said. The old town which is still there. Floods.
• [00:41:35] AMY CANTU: Were you around for, shoot, what's the name of? The Golden Falcon?
• [00:41:39] STEVE ADAMS: Yeah.
• [00:41:39] AMY CANTU: That was that short-lived?
• [00:41:42] STEVE ADAMS: No, that had been there a long time.
• [00:41:43] AMY CANTU: Really. Tell me about that.
• [00:41:47] STEVE ADAMS: What is it Ruth's something or other steakhouse.
• [00:41:51] AMY CANTU: That was there?
• [00:41:52] STEVE ADAMS: Yeah. It was down there. In the area became a little seedy with massage parlors, and a few other things that are now gone and it got closed down, but it was a great place.
• [00:42:08] AMY CANTU: With music and?
• [00:42:09] STEVE ADAMS: Yeah, Bob James played there when he was in college.
• [00:42:14] AMY CANTU: Wow.
• [00:42:16] STEVE ADAMS: Bunches of people. But yeah, I used to go stand near there too and listen to music. The thing that comes to mind, since we were just talking about music, was the very first Ann Arbor blues and jazz festival.
• [00:42:29] AMY CANTU: Tell us about that.
• [00:42:30] STEVE ADAMS: There was a festival the year before that was I believe inside that I wasn't aware of. But that would have been 70, 71, that summer before my senior year of high school, because it was next here on high, the number of musicians who were there, Miles Davis, Bonnie Raitt, Howlin' Wolf. God, I just go on and on. The first night I was there, I jumped the fence. [LAUGHTER] Just jumped the fence and just stood there in a complete awe of music and the quality and the people and was just amazing. Came back and ended up working security. Very pleasant memory. Several of those, basically, they got run out of Ann Arbor because basically, it was too many of those hippies in one place.
• [00:43:24] AMY CANTU: Yeah. Scared [OVERLAPPING]
• [00:43:27] STEVE ADAMS: Loud music. Because despite the reputation Ann Arbor has, it is not the liberal place that everybody says it is. It has that patina and liberalism. As long as it's not in my backyard, not next door to me, not my neighborhood, it's a very subtly racist place. In fact, it wasn't settled because I remember some of the things that happened to my parents, I remember some of the things that happened to family members, like my sisters and my two brothers basically riding their brand new bikes and getting pulled over because, you don't have a receipt for those. My parents having to go get them and the bikes because that was their Christmas. Some of the other things like myself getting stopped basically for running. I got stopped and the question was, what are you doing? I have running shoes on, sweats, and I'm sweating, I'm running and the next question was, from what?
• [00:44:45] AMY CANTU: You were just exercising?
• [00:44:46] STEVE ADAMS: I used to work as a bouncer, and so I'd come home so awake that I'd just go for a run or a bike ride. I was also noted for being seen around town on my bike at 2, 3, 4 in the morning.
• [00:45:05] AMY CANTU: Yeah. You're an avid biker, right or?
• [00:45:08] STEVE ADAMS: I will be again.
• [00:45:09] AMY CANTU: You will be again? [LAUGHTER]
• [00:45:12] STEVE ADAMS: Yeah. It just went through a hip replacement.
• [00:45:14] STEVE ADAMS: Basically my experience in Ann Arbor is, shall we say, it's very different?
• [00:45:21] STEVE ADAMS: Having dealt with some of the things that happened, Elementary school, one of my most pleasant memories is a woman by the name of Miss Green, Ellen Greene was my 4th, 5th, 6th grade teacher. As it turns out, my understanding is that we were her dissertation, putting a group of kids of all types together and keeping them together for three years. Many of us are still friends to this day. Or if we see each other, it's like seeing an old friend and we're talking some very rich kids, all ethnicities from immigrant Spanish to black kids. Just a little bit of everybody. In fact, there was just a max school celebration of its 100 year anniversary and a lot of us ended up there meeting, talking together. We got split up amongst basically two junior highs, because back then it was junior high was 7th, 8th and 9th and high school started as a sophomore. A lot of us didn't really see each other again until high school and were friends again.
• [00:46:55] AMY CANTU: Miss Green, you said her name was?
• [00:46:56] STEVE ADAMS: Yeah.
• [00:46:57] AMY CANTU: What was the class like? What did she do in the class? What was her teaching style like?
• [00:47:04] STEVE ADAMS: I remember it as she would put us together, some according to skill level, where you were, and some she would put together all types of kids and want the other, those that were very good at something to help others out.
• [00:47:28] EMILY MURPHY: Nice. Sounds like you really built connection.
• [00:47:31] STEVE ADAMS: We did. I credit her basically was turning me around and I was getting in trouble. Basically, I was not a happy kid. She kept us out of trouble. She used to take us to plays in Detroit, to museums. She would take the class to museums. Went to the DIA in Detroit. God, I had been in the Fox Theater several times with her. She used to take us to see movies, got a chance to see a lot of things because of her, and some introductions and I think that's what finalized my love for reading, it was through her.
• [00:48:25] AMY CANTU: Well, thank you so much, Steve.
• [00:48:26] STEVE ADAMS: You're welcome. It was fun. [MUSIC]
• [00:48:34] EMILY MURPHY: AADL Talks To is a production of the Ann Arbor District Library.