In a 138-square-mile city, some strange things can happen.
Men huddle around oil cans for warmth as smoke fills the air. They burn oil-soaked wood for warmth.

The power for the once-productive factory has been turned off, despite the harsh Detroit winter.

A writer had to use pencils because it became so cold in the factory, ink would freeze.

This is Detroit — in the 21st century.

This is Paul Clemens’ “Punching Out: One Year in a Closing Auto Plant.”

Clemens, a Detroit native who works as the Assistant to the Dean of Wayne State’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, watched Budd Detroit be torn of its presses from June 2007 to April 2008. The plant — which was once responsible for producing parts for the Big Three, including the iconic body of the Thunderbird, as well as producing shells during World War II — shut down.

Clemens discovered its closure while reading Plant Closing News.
When factories close, many could be led to believe that the story ends there. Clemens, through patience and research, shows the reader what happens behind the locked doors, which consisted of some of the dirtiest work imaginable.

“At the end of the day, some guys would strip down to their underwear in the lot, removing their work clothes so as not to get their car’s interior dirty or dirtier,” Clemens wrote.

He went on to describe “the goop” from their boots “like little boys with sticks scraping shit from their shoes.”

The people dismantling Budd range from men who once worked for the facility, a former bouncer for a strip club, a Bosnian immigrant and the “Arkansas Boys,” a group of riggers.

Piece by piece, they load them on trucks.

The presses were bought at an auction and sent around the world including to India, Brazil and Mexico — the latter of which Clemens visited.

Other external factories become part of Clemens’ narrative; scraping companies, Budd’s old UAW post and the aforementioned Gestamp Mexican facility.

It took 100 trucks to ship the 16-line press from Detroit to Mexico, pressing parts for Chrysler.

The sour irony was Budd Detroit is located between two Chrysler plants.

The rich prose of Clemens mixes elements of literature, journalism, history and a bit of jargon.

The list of presses can be overwhelming, the same with tracking the cast of Budd’s riggers, security personnel and truck drivers.
They can be distinguished by their quotes, as Clemens captures the gruff idiom and mixes it into his own prose, and the reader hears the language through his lens.

“I liked listening to the Arkansas Boys talk. Even if — and this was most often the case — I didn’t have a clue what they were talking about,” Clemens wrote about what he presumed to be safety tips.

The book lacks a proper thesis statement, something Clemens acknowledged on his recent appearance on “The Daily Show,” but it does not hinder the book.

The political reasons behind the dismantling of the arsenal of democracy are unclear.

Whether it was greedy unions and companies or globalization, however, all sides get time, albeit not equal but each story is compelling.

Whatever the reason, this is what is happening in Detroit, and this is what it looks like on paper.