Free Press columnist John Carisle* discovers a Detroit mechanic who is making lemonade out lemons in his makeshift repair shop on Detroit's east side.
Catrlisle writes:
Hakeem Muhammad is a brake mechanic, and when there were no jobs to be found, he created his own.
He cleaned out the abandoned garage across the alley from his house and opened his own brake repair shop called Brakes Today. He charges a flat $35, plus the cost of parts, for any job.
There was no point in waiting inside the house for customers on that December morning because there’s no heat in there, either. No electricity. Not even glass in all the windows. He paid $500 at a county auction for the battered former drug house at the corner of Nevada and I-75, and he got what he paid for.
Muhammad lives in a poor and tough neighborhood, and when he leaves, even for a short time, he must hide his tools.
He is a voracious reader, and he has decorated the walls of his bedroom with slogans such as “Every challenge is opportunity,” “Don’t be ordinary, be extraordinary” and “Adaptation is the key to survival.”
*Carlisle is the former Detroitblogger John whose stories appeared in the Metro Times.
