Years 1950-1954Brighton, Michigan
9357 Spencer Road
Years 1950-1954From Bowmansville we moved into 9357 Spencer Road in Brighton, Michigan. The house was a big, old, red brick farmhouse. To get to the house you turned from the road onto the drive next to the big oak tree, up the hill with the fence on your right until you got to the side of the house and parked next to the barn. I loved the oak tree. You know oak trees: they have nasty roots. You cannot mow over them as they will break the mower. The trees are beautiful. The acorns make noise when the mower hits them.
Along the driveway on the barn side
was
a wire fence with asparagus growing along the fence. Rhubarb grew
there too. We ate asparagus and had rhubarb pie. I disliked
both of
them. The farm was 40 acres with an
open
field, a barn, and an apple orchard. A big berry patch was in the
field to the west of the house.
I do not remember a phone in Buffalo. The phone in Brighton had a handset but no dial. You picked it up and the operator said, "Number Please". Our number was 2432-W. I do not remember Larry Lee Cook's number but I called him all of the time. The phone was on a little table by the stairs corner. The stairs had a landing. The telephone was a party line. All phones in those days were party lines. It came down to how many parties were on a line. Telephones were not a big part of your life. There were no telephone salespeople. Nobody had heard of area codes or 800 numbers. Not even close.
The dining room and kitchen both had doors to the back yard. The dining room door was like Grandma’s porch: the door had a 3-foot drop to the ground. We did not use it much.
The big red house is not really that big and I do not really remember the entire layout. It was big compared to Bowmansville. There was a standard stairway with a landing and the banister with the standard white wooden posts. I snuck down to the landing once when someone was at the door late at night. They were delivering a package that I should have not seen. It was a Christmas present for Jeanne. My parents explained it away as Santa had too many presents that year and made some deliveries early. From my room it looked like Santa was driving a Montgomery Wards truck.
I was not supposed to go into the barn. But Larry Lee Cook, the boy across the street, and Billy Swatz, a mile down the road, and I knew that barn blindfolded. We snuck in the back door away from the house. My father used the barn for a garage. We had an old Dodge for a car. Well. Not old then. Old now. Probably a 1947. It still had bolt-on sheet metal. I remember my mother getting really angry with my father about the rear fender. I think the car was green. Maybe it was blue. In any case, he came home with the wrong color fender. He was glad to have found one. My mother hated the color. I forget whether the one he got was blue or yellow but it did not match. He went back and got another fender. This was also the wrong color but he thought it was closer. My mother did not.
While we lived in Brighton, things must have gotten better: the Dodge was replaced with a 1950 Black DeSoto.
This yard was humungous. We had a new mower. A
gas-powered one –
with spinning blades, as rotary lawn mowers were not
around yet. If they were, my
father would not hear of having one. He later told me that they
were
not nice to the blades of grass:
rotaries rip the grass instead of shearing it. This makes a
difference? In any case we had a gas-powered, bladed lawn
mower. The
front yard was really large. My father's idea of a good job was
overlapped parallel lines from east to west for the length of the
yard. Mowing was always my job. Blade mowers like this
leave a trail
of cut grass unless you have a bagger on the back. We did not
have a
bagger. This means that the rows going in opposite directions are
quite visible. If you are into geometric shapes and like stripes,
the
straighter the line, the happier you are. Mowing the lawn in
long,
straight stripes is very tiring and very boring. One day, I
decided to
make a variation. I divided the yard into squares and mowed each
square separately. My father was irate. My mother kept me
from
getting a whupping that night.
Once we took the train to Buffalo: just the 4 of us -- my father did not come. It was a long trip. We ate and slept in the same chairs that we rode in. Maybe the train went to Syracuse. My father's family lived in Syracuse. I think that was the last time I saw my Auntie Ella Mae.
Downtown Brighton was the Huron River. It flowed just north of the bank. When my mother went to the bank, I went to the river and played with the ducks. I loved the green-headed mallards. In fact one of the birthday cards my parents got me was of a fuzzy, green-headed duck.
Inside the house was big. High ceilings. Helium balloons went up and we could not reach the string without the ladder. My room faced the front towards the barn. There was a big oak tree outside the window. Its branches would screech on my windows during heavy winds and terrify me: I thought it was rats. I had this old green steel spring bed with a thin mattress on it. The house had mice. It had mice everywhere. They would play on my bed at night. I was terrified of mice. I learned to sleep under the covers.
Another thing that happened that I did not understand until I was in college and will not give a ‘later’ this time. I have 2 nightmares that occur under very different circumstances. This nightmare was that I believed that a killer was in the room with me and I was too scared to scream. And I would not know if I dreamed the killer came in or it really happened. I would eventually wake up sweating something awful. Sometimes with very choking screams. When I was in college the nightmares had gone away. I loved this. But then I rented a room from Mrs. Scobie (1963) and the nightmares came back. It turned out that Mrs. Scobie would stick her head in my door while I was sleeping and then go back out. It also turned out that my mother had been doing this since I was a baby. Problem solved although it still happens when someone does it to me. Now I do not wake up screaming since I know what happened. These nightmares really frightened me. We hear about the other nightmare later.
We had our own well at this house and it had problems. One day one of my mother’s brothers visited us and we uncovered the well to fix it. There was a concrete slab over the well top. There were salamanders everywhere. I loved small animals and these were great. Salamanders are black, spotted, slippery, lizards with square heads. Great.
I kept treasured animals in the basement. My mother hated this and told me not to let them run loose. I fixed that. We had a washing machine. Not like today’s washing machines. One like you see in the museums. It had a hose, a tank with an agitator, and a wringer. You washed and rinsed the clothes in the tank and ran them through the wringer to get the soap and water out. The washer tank had a cover with a hole in it for the hose. Perfect for keeping animals. I think by the time I had rounded up all my animals there were multiple lizards, frogs, and snakes to be discovered. I thought we were past this but she screamed very loudly. Maybe it was not fear; maybe it was just to get my attention. My animals were not only not permitted to run loose; they were not to be stored in the washer. Mothers must really have strong hearts.
We got a dog. He was named Skippy. We had this big, old, tar-papered doghouse in the back yard. I mean big. We could play in it. Everything in this house was big. You could get lost in the back 40. Larry Lee and I would go out in the orchard and climb the apple trees. From there we would have apple fights. We never ran out of apples. I think there were cherries but I do not remember where they came from. My mother had a garden. I remember being told that we had a dog (Teddy?) in East Ann Arbor but then I have only the one memory of East Ann Arbor.
My mother also seemed to have infinite patience and took the blame for many things that were not her fault. In those days there was little in the way of city services. We burned our trash in the barrel out back. Once the fire got out of control and burned the back forty. The fire department was not too upset but they were not happy. The following Fourth of July, I burned some sparklers out in back. Away from the house where I could not be seen. I burned the back forty. The fire department found the paper and matches I had started the fire with and were very angry. I denied everything and my mother still takes the blame for the second fire. The firemen were not buying but in any case the next time we would pay.
We had mice. I
said we had mice. My sister
Jeannie and I would fight over catching the mice. Whoever got the
mouse won. My mother did require that the mouse go outside when
caught. The problem was when there
was a tie. We both got the
mouse. This was a sad day for the
mouse. The resolution of the tie
was simple: whoever got the head
won. But we knew we both lost. Who wants half of a
mouse? We should have had cats. I always wondered why we
had a dog and never a cat. A cat would have solved the mouse
problem very easily and they do not need anywhere near as much care as
a dog.
There were adventures on the farm. My mother survived them. Just barely. I think Buffalo was good training for her. Now she had three kids. One day. Oh. I refused to wear short sleeve shirts or short pants. My sisters were not bound by such inhibitions. Jeannie and I went out in the orchard. Jeannie with a little yellow sun suit. We discovered something I had never seen: a gray basketball made of paper attached to a strong weed. Wow. Something new. I had a good arm from the apple fights. My first throw put the rock right through the middle of the yellow jacket nest. Do you know how many yellow jackets fit in one nest? More than you can imagine -- but you can imagine how angry these guys are. They started stinging us all over. Jeannie got it bad: she had all of her skin exposed. I was covered with cloth and bees. We both went screaming back to the house. Covered with yellow jackets. Kathie came out and wanted to have fun too. So she joined us. She was not stung much but she got some. My poor mother, who hates bees, got out the tweezers and pulled them off Jeannie one by one. Then she covered us with calamine or baking soda or something similar to stop the sting. Right next to the house this brave woman on her knees picked them off Jeannie one by one.
Across the street were the Cooks. They lived in a basement
house. That is, the upstairs had not been built. Next to
the Cooks was a hill with
a
house on the top. These people
also had a long, country, driveway. This was our sledding
hill. So one day, Larry and I are sledding down the driveway/hill
and the
owner decides he needs to go up. This is a problem. Sort of
a game of chicken except I know I shall lose so I turn towards Cook’s
house. This increases the problem:
I slide face first into the barb wire fence. A barb punctures my
left eyeball. I have Larry look at it because I know if it is
bleeding,
and do not go home, my father will kill me. It is not bleeding
but something is coming out. He thinks we should keep
sledding. I know that if something, anything, is
coming out of my eyeball, that my father will be angrier than if it is
bleeding. I go home. A trip to a new hospital -- or at
least
not the one we went to in Buffalo. They do not know what to
do. They clean it up, put some ointment on it, and put a gauze
patch over
it. In 1949 this is how you deal
with a punctured eyeball. I
probably had a tetanus shot. A
couple weeks later they took off the patch and I could see just
fine. Lucky. All that remains today is a little scar near
the cornea. I had my eyes examined
by an ophthalmologist last week: he says there is no trace of the
original
puncture.
Wait about 15 more years before you find out about my real eye problems.
We moved to Brighton in the middle of the school year. I went in the morning to half-day kindergarten in the church basement (not the Catholic Church). The playground was around back up the dirt hill. Since we lived way out in the country, I got to ride the school bus. Nothing happened that I remember in Kindergarten in Brighton.
The real adventure in Brighton came on a school day. In first grade I went to the Little School. This contained only first and second grades and was next to the Catholic Church. I remember next to because there were Easter egg hunts at the church and we walked in front of the school to get there. A few years back I drove to Brighton. All of these little towns with nothing better to do have museums of their own history. I guess the Little School was insignificant since they had nothing in their museum about it. But I remember it. The bus driver was named Lyle. He was really a nice guy. The walk to the bus stop at the end of drive was a long one and my sister Jeanne would sometimes go with me to wait under the oak tree for the bus. She always wanted to know where I went and what I did there. So one day, I told Lyle that she was coming with me for Show and Tell. The other kids thought this was neat. The teacher went along with it and I got to show off my sister to the class. This was great until my mother showed. I think she had the police. I am sure she had a neighbor since there was still the one car problem. From what I remember checking out the school was not the first thing that my mother tried when Jeanne did not return from the bus stop. This did not happen twice.
I do not remember the names of my kindergarten or first grade teachers. They were women. I do remember that I had trouble writing, that is printing, my own name. I am somewhat dyslexic. In those days dyslexia and anything else that hampered learning were ignored. If you could not do it right, keep trying until you do -- no matter how many years it takes. The teacher and other kids made fun of me because I had my name tag in front me all the way into second grade. The positive aspect of dyslexia is that I can still read upside down or backwards. To rest my eyes when I was young (and had that yet-to-be-disclosed vision problem), I would hold the book upside down. I did this up until I was in college when my roommates would laugh claiming that I was just pretending to read. Later I had a boss who would cover his desk when I came in the room -- after I had read from memos a couple of times. But then Lawson was just plain paranoid anyway.
My mother's father started the first TV store in Hudson, Michigan. My grandpa gave us a 12-inch black-and-white (all there was in 1949) Emerson console TV as a present. And the antenna. Grandpa Rupley was the nicest, orneriest, old man you ever want to meet. He had a heart of gold.
I already told you that this was a tall, red brick house on the top of a hill. Then, unlike my grandpa Rupley, we did not need a big tower for the TV antenna. But we did need an antenna. We were very privileged. In those days there were few TV channels. There was Channel 2, WJBK. And WXYZ and WABC and that was it. There was no FOX. There was no UHF. There were just channels 1 through 13. Somebody since decided that channel 1 had to go but the TV still had it in 1948. The antenna had to go onto the roof. The roof was entered from the attic, which was entered through a trap door on the second floor. The attic was filled with hornets. This was a major problem as there were many of them and they had not been bothered for several years. We rented this house and had no idea how long the hornets considered the attic eminent domain. In any case a lot of DDT took care of most. Smoke doped up the remainder and my father killed them one by one with a pair of pliers. Hornets are hard to kill.
With the hornets eradicated, now the challenge was to get to the roof. Again a trap door. The roof of a square house is interesting. This roof had a little white rail fence around the center. The center was flat. This was the ideal sun porch if you did not mind the climb to get there or the distance down. My father was fastening the antenna with strapping and clamps to a corner of the fence. I was enjoying the sights and the fence when I fell over the top and down to the gutter. This was not a smart thing to do since I am afraid of heights and this was a very tall 2-story fall if the gutter gave in. My father scrambled over the fence and came down and rescued me. I was no longer permitted on the roof. Maybe he understood what my mother had gone through for the last 5 years.
Television in those days was different. I loved the
Westerns. I did not know that The Lone Ranger was
a local show to Detroit until I was an adult. Other kids did not
watch it in 1948. They watched it in the early
1950’s. Hopalong Cassidy, Red
Ryder, Roy Rogers, The Cisco Kid, Gene Autry, Sky King and Penny.
Lots of them. Then there was My Little Margie and Cosmo Topper
(and his
ghosts). And cartoons. I liked Felix the Cat. You
have to understand; a 12-inch TV in
those days was a luxury beyond compare. We always had to break
for my mother to watch Kate Smith sing ‘The moon
comes over the mountain’. I think
it was at the same time as Margie. The name 'Gale Storm' has
always intrigued me.
It is strange what we remember and what we forget. We used to go to Silver Lake for picnics. Which Silver Lake? I don’t know. The one closest to Brighton. I remember that we went there. I do not remember being there.
There is another thing. In those days you knew people. I knew the bus driver by name. I knew the neighbors and they were more than 100 yards apart. I knew the man at the drive in who took care of the playground. Playground? You have to remember things were different then. The drive-in was where everyone went on Friday or Saturday night. Before the show started we all went to the playground below the screen. It was sort of like a small park. Parents got to talk. Kids got to play. There was a man, I do not remember his name, who tended the playground.
Fourth of July was special. Have you seen the canisters that they use to hold the firework rockets? They are about 2 feet long and made out of heavy steel. Maybe not in those days but at least now. In any case, do you know what a firework rocket is? It is a fuse-delayed, slow-release, chemical-laden, bomb. Make no mistake. It is a bomb. A real bomb. In those days, the Fourth of July fireworks were at the local drive-in theatre. This Fourth of July one of the rockets did not go off as it should have. After waiting a few minutes, our friend, the playground caretaker, who was setting off the fireworks, went to investigate. The bomb blew up. We were far enough back that we did not see it happen but our friend was dead. I always remember this at the Fourth of July. It is my least favorite holiday. Not for this but I hate the noise when I am trying to sleep because then I remember the one that did not go up. This was my first experience with death. The man simply was gone. He was no more. Even at that age the concept is not lost.
Our house is still there. I went past it last week. The difference is that where the road used to go and where the Cook’s and Swatz’es lived is now Interstate 96. You can see our old house from the freeway. US 23 goes up the side behind the barn -- almost as close.