"Nikki's Window" CCC 45-52

What is Herron arguing in this essay? What does he mean by the terms pastness, nostalgia, and humiliation?

Herron is trying to convey to the reader that Detroit is now a place where people go to get a false sense of the past. It is no longer the old Detroit, no matter how hard some people try to remodel it. This sign at Nikki's has been there through it all-seen it all. From the 1800s when two men used the place as an engine workshop, to the early 1900s where Henry Ford found the men and conceived the idea for the Model A with their help, to the present where Nikki's restaurant now sits. The term pastness literally means from before the time of now, for example when Ford and others were here. The history of Detroit is the pastness of now. Times were different then and we can never have them back. Nostalgia is feelings for another time. When Detroit was a better place; the businesses and shops that lined the streets bring back memories of happier safer times. Humiliation is of Detroit because of all that it has gone through. With the businesses and people and change of culture and general feelings evoked when in the city. They went from pleasant cheerfulness to down right terrified. Detroit has changed over the years, and not for the better.