About 50 miles south and west of Detroit and about 15 miles east of Ann Arbor is a Greek settlement named Ypsilanti. Only it is not primarily Greek any more. It still was in 1950 when we moved to 206 Elm Street. I do not remember the move itself from Brighton.
Demetrious? I check the encyclopedias in books,
online, CDs. They all describe Ypsilanti
as the Home of Eastern Michigan University. Shoot. The
Greek legends are the more important issue here. While we lived
there,
the college was the Normal School.
It changed names a few times before it became Eastern Michigan.
But the Greeks still settled the city regardless of what they call the
university.
This was a green-trimmed, white house with a separate garage on the right side to the back. The drive way was 2 concrete strips with grass in the middle. The house was a typical 2-story wood-frame house with a screened front porch. I do not remember the phone number. Our house was the second from the corner on the east side of the street.
Our house had imitation crossbeams extending below the roofline around the front porch. The robins, a very popular bird, built nests on these extensions. I would regularly inspect the progress of the nest and its eggs. Not too regularly. One day I went up there and the babies and the mother all flew out. The babies were not really ready and all landed in the front yard. We had a robin riot on the spot. I barely made it onto the porch without serious damage. My mother and sisters were on the porch ready to open and close the screen door. I think a few friends fled. It was exciting. It lasted only a few minutes but it was dangerous for a few weeks for me to leave the house.
I decided I did not like birds attacking me. I built a robin killer. I folded a metal coat hanger bending the hook into the double-V. I took my contraption out into the yard. The concept was that the V would catch the bird over its wings and the hook would stab him in the neck. Instant death. I tried it – it worked the first time. I had a dead robin. I buried it. Robins have little bugs. I showed my contraption to my friends. The bent hanger never worked for me or them ever again. Lucky me and the robins.
The Liebs lived on the left and the pastor of a local church lived on the other. There was a large hedgerow separating our house from the Liebs; maybe lilacs. There was a wire fence on the Pastor's side. The fence was climbable and with the help of a tree we could get to the roof of the garage. Across the street were the Elwels. They had a son named Jack who played with me when there was no one else to play with. 2 houses up from the Liebs, on the corner were the Dawsons. John played with me. His father built a really nice tree house in their back yard. We spent a lot of time in the tree house. The tree was a box elder tree. It was considered a dirty tree although I do not know what that means. The one thing it meant was that there were box elder bugs everywhere. We used both rope ladder and wooden steps on the side of the tree to get in the tree house.
Best Friends: Tino Lambros and John Dawson. Tino was mostly at school. John lived up the block at 212 Elm Street.
Elm Street is a quiet, two-lane street in the middle of a neighborhood of the same genre. Elm ends north just two blocks up and goes further than that to the south but has only neighborhood traffic since the closest thing to an arterial is Pearl two blocks south. We have curbs and sidewalks. First time. There is space between the sidewalk and the street. Trees line both sides all the way along the block. This makes it look peaceful and calm. It is. When I went back a few years ago, it was still very peaceful.
I have no idea if the street was named before or after the trees were planted but they were all Elm trees. Elm trees do not have obtrusive, iron-like roots as do the oak trees. They do not have the pretty red and orange leaves as do the maple trees. Elm tree leaves turn yellow in the Fall. One day my father in the front yard was admiring the green arches shading the street. He told me that this was dangerous: the trees should be more varied. They should not all be the same tree. I asked him why. He told me that some unknown disaster could occur to only one species and then the neighborhood would be barren. I asked him which disaster. He said that, so far, there were no known enemies to the elm tree but there was no way to predict the future. I wonder what his thoughts were when the Dutch Elm Beetle killed off almost all of the elm trees in the whole country. Elm Street must have looked like something out of a science fiction movie. Sad.
The Handy Store was down the street and around the corner: on the way to school. We bought many penny and nickel candies. The other way on that street and up a couple of blocks and turning left, you saw the famous Ypsilanti water tower and the other local store: the Tower store. The tower was the hub of West Cross, Washtenaw, and Summit streets. It was not downtown but it was where the Normal School started.
Catechism class was Saturday morning at 9:00 am. I hated Catechism. Sometimes I would climb the tree in front of the church school to avoid the class. The Baltimore Catechism is the Catholic Church’s alternative to learning about God. A few centuries ago people died to get the Bible translated into English against the Catholic Church’s wishes. I understand now. I did not understand why I could not read the Bible then. Only Catholic school students could be alter boys. Stupid.
Nothing much dangerous happened in Ypsilanti. It was three years of trying to find out who I was and not being very successful. I was in Cub Scouts. My mother was the den mother. We had meetings in the basement. I had a room with a train table. Inherited. One day I took a bobby pin and plugged it into the wall when my mother was ironing in the next room. The pin turned white hot after exuding a shower of sparks. I went and told my mother: she told me to take it out. I did, just as she came running onto the room regretting her statement. I had a nice U-shaped hole in my right index finger joint. It smelled like bacon. We put Unguentine on it. I had a scar there for many years.
Mostly we kids used the side door, which went straight down to the basement, or to the right into the kitchen. I do not remember the kitchen. Maybe we had kitchen set in it. You know those atrocious chrome-legged tables with the formica top surrounded by matching chairs with cotton-filled vinyl seats and backs. I remember one of those but I do not remember it there.
I do not remember a back door. Inside the front door was the stairs on the right. There was a landing? Here I get confused: I may confuse the stair with the Brighton house. In any case I do not remember the downstairs at all and I only remember that my room upstairs was in the back facing the garage. I know this because I had a walky-talky. In those days walky-talkies had wires. This spaceman unit was gray and black and had an antenna that was non-functional but looked good. My father was really angry about the hole I punched in the screen for the wire. It was a small hole. I also kept jars of water and a few other things on the garage roof so that I could hide for a long time. They probably knew I was up there but the garage roof was my sanctum sanctorum.
We lived here long enough that my chronology is confused so I shall just rattle off things in the best order I can.
Our school was on West Cross about a mile from the house. I started second grade there and we left after fourth grade. Three years. The school was new and was named Estabrook (Estebrook?). I checked and it is still there only bigger. Tino lived on West Cross so that we often walked this road together to get to school. Tino later became a teacher -- I ran into him (intentionally) in 1967 while working at Chrysler.
When I started second, Jeanne started kindergarten. I had a
problem we started talking about
before. I could not even print my
name. My arithmetic was wrong. I
still had my name on a card in front
of me so that I got the letters straight.
There were 3 levels of second grade in Estabrook. I went from the
highest to the lowest
and they were threatening to move me back to first. Some
fast talking on my parents part
kept me in second.
I had a speech defect: I had a serious lisp. Nobody had ever told me this until I was called out in third grade for speech class. I mean, someone came into the class room and called a series of names of students to leave with her. I asked why and was told that this was for speech therapy. I said there must be a mistake as my speech was fine. The class broke out laughing. I left quite embarrassed. The therapy soon cleared up the lisp.
More I wonder about me. I mean several names were called
out. No explanation was given. The other kids just got up
to leave. I asked why. This leaves me thinking as I write
this what was going on. Did the other kids know what was
going on and I was just left out of the information loop? Or
maybe they knew as little as I did and I was the only one who wanted to
know why I was being differentiated. Probably both.
At Estabrook, each student was
required to buy a dictionary. They
had preferred dictionaries: Winston
Dictionary For Schools. These were purchased because you kept
them all the way through grade school.
I remember the teacher explaining to my mother that the book was bought
because it became ours whereas all other school supplies were free but
belonged to the school and were returned at the end of the year.
One of our daily classes was to learn how to use the dictionary. This was really great and I still keep a dictionary within arms length. Later in sixth grade my class prophesy was that I would grow up and sell dictionaries. In my sixth grade school, students did not have their own dictionaries.
I was the class dummy. My father made sure I knew this. In those days, at the end of the school year, the teacher returned all of your year’s papers in a folder. So on the last day of school in fourth grade, my mother picked up all three of us in the car and we left to pick up my father in Ann Arbor. Just as we crossed US 23, I grabbed Jeanne’s folder and threw it out the window. Not a chance it could be recovered. Jeanne was upset. My mother was upset. My father whupped me. I knew he would but no whupping was as bad as the alternative. You see, after dinner that night my father would have sat me down with Jeanne’s folder. One page at a time, he would tell me that I should do work like she did. A whupping was far preferable than being told 1,000 times in one evening how much dumber I was than my sister. And Kathie was coming up fast -- I could see having to go through 2 folder next year.
Ypsilanti was a Greek community. My third grade teacher was Greek: Constance Driscol. She and I had serious disagreements on arithmetic. My father tutored me after dinner every night so that I would not fail. I learned the multiplication tables through 25 x 25. I learned how to extract square roots in fourth grade with Mrs. Baker but that was later. Miss Driscol was not a good teacher but that does not matter. One day she taught us that 3x4 and 4x3 were the same. I insisted that they were not the same other than they both resolved to 12. She would not back down. I went home rather than be taught things wrong. The principal called and my mother drove me back or walked me back or whatever. They shamed me back into class. This was wrong. I taught my kids very early that 3 boys with 4 apples is not the same as 4 boys with 3 apples. You have 12 apples but a different number of boys. The mother of the fourth boy would be upset if a teacher math’ed her boy into oblivion.
Here I had my first girl friend: Donna Rae. This did not last long. She got tired of me. A really cute girl was Susan O. I had a crush on her by fourth grade. We had something in common. In 1952 the national political party conventions were televised. We were dismissed from school if we could spend the afternoon listening to the conventions on TV. In the entire class only Susan and I had TVs -- ours did not work. Most of the class spent the afternoon at Susan’s. I do not remember but her mother put up with at least a dozen kids trying to figure out what a political convention was. And this on a 4-inch TV. I told you our 12-inch was a luxury. In those days, some people bought magnifying glasses to put in front of their TV to reduce eyestrain. To simulate color, they shaded the glass with a slide with green on the bottom and blue on the top.
My parents bought me a 24-inch Montgomery Wards red cruiser bicycle for my birthday. They got me training wheels because I could not balance myself. I kept the training wheels for a long time. In fact my sister Jeanne got a bike a couple years later and had her wheels off in a few days. I had to remove mine or be compared again to my sister. I hated being compared to my sister. She was smart. I was dumb.
One of the families had 6 daughters all named with ‘J’. I went to their house after school one day. Their German shepherd bit me. I did not go there much after that. I did not show my mother as I remembered the Bowmansville incident. Beside that, the family was poor. My father hated poor families.
I rode my bike everywhere. In the empty lot down the street, the kids played softball. I was not good enough to play. Across the block on another lot, the boys played football. I liked playing football. I was not too good at this but they let me play. I would ride my bike downtown or to school or around the Normal School.
There was a store down the block and around the corner. It was called the Handy Store. This is what we used for a 7-11 in those days. They had a gum ball machine but I rarely bought gum. My father told us that we could eat candy but if we chewed gum we would have to pay our own dental bills. The gum ball machine had some yellow balls with red stripes. If you got one of these, you exchanged it for a nickel candy bar. Gum balls cost a penny. My favorite candy bar was Three Musketeers because it was big.
While we lived here, my Uncle Bill got married. We drove like mad from home to Hudson to attend the wedding. We were late. My father was very unhappy. He really did not like my mother’s family much. We did not stay long. I remember cake in the church hall afterwards. Normally the seating arrangement in the car was my father driving, my mother next to him, and me on the right. My sisters got the back seat. On this trip, my mother sat in the back with the girls. All of the way home my father told me that what Bill did that made him marry Jean, I had better never ever do. It took another ten years for me to figure out what it was that Bill did. I was terrified that my Uncle Bill was a very bad person and he seemed such a nice person to me. This was the first third of my sex education.
On most years, we went on a vacation out west. I cannot say which years. I guess I could look at my mother’s pictures and see which car and know. We had 3 DeSoto cars: 1950-Black. 1952-Green. 1954-Brown and White. My mother had a blue box (Brownie?) Camera. It had a little peephole in one corner and a shiny metal tab to take the picture and a key to wind to the next picture with another little window with the picture counter. The box was about 6 by 9 by 3 if I remember correctly. It did not resemble anything that you see today as a camera. All of the pictures were black and white and you had to pose because it took a while to expose the film.
I do not remember the travel on these trips. If we camped, I do not know where we got the gear. We never owned camping gear. We rented it. These days you go down to the store and buy what you need. If you are poor or inexperienced or a good shopper, you go to Wal-Mart or Sears. If you are richer and more experienced, you find the local REI or Iron Mountain. If you are strange, you go to Camping World. This is an RV store that has decided to live up to its name rather than its reputation. If you can wait, you wait until January and buy camping gear at Costco.
When we went to Grandma’s house, it seemed a long way. There was the hilly-willy road and the curvy-wurvy road. For the life of me when I drive there today I do not know which roads were which. And the distance is not that far. It was in those days. Same roads. My uncle Ernie drove a police, 3-wheel motorcycle and let us ride on top sometimes. My uncle Ernie had a bunch of kids, was a police officer, and worked as a Butcher at the Kroger store. Now the city of Adrian has a flock of Rupleys. Ernie died of kidney failure and my aunt Marie lives in a little apartment on the south side.
Christmas at the Kelly’s was a standard Christmas. We kids were sent to bed early and expected to sleep. Fat chance. Santa came during the night and left presents. We pestered our parents in the morning until they said we could go down and see what we got. We had the standard tree with lead tinsels and ornaments and lights and a red plastic Santa on top. The lights were the standard pointy series lamps that when one went out, you cycled through until you found it. Finding two out was very difficult. Maybe you were lucky and the turned out lamp was darker. In any case, we treasured the red Santa. Megan now has the red Santa. It is cracked and taped and is more than 50 years old and is still treasured. This year, Megan is going to Arizona for Christmas and there will be no tree. Maybe next year Megan will have her own Christmas.
There was a problem though. One day in class. I think it was fourth grade. A boy made a joke about kids that still believed in Santa Claus. The teacher reprimanded the kid because some kids still did. I was one of them. That afternoon I got my sisters together and informed them that there was no Santa Claus and that we should begin a serious investigation of the Easter Bunny. I got my whupping that evening. At least my sisters never had to be embarrassed in class.
Left over from Brighton was our dog, Skippy. We had a couple of Skips so that this would have been a different one. I think so. One day walking home from school and just down the block from home, Skippy saw us and ran to get us. We were across the street. This is the day I learned what the word ‘mean’ meant. A car coming the same way went into the oncoming lane and intentionally ran our dog over. He was very dead. I think this was the second Skippy and was still a puppy. Our dogs learned at a young age to be street smart. Back in those days people were not so litigious and did not keep their dogs on a 5-foot leash all of the time. We also did not have fences on all of the yards. I went past our Wauwatosa house the other day (Later) and saw the neighborhood still did not have fences. I was relieved that some part of the world has not changed. In any case Skippy was dead.
My parents decided that a dog might be too much of a problem in the city. We found a nice black kitten from a neighboring farm. Neighboring? Well. We now had a cat. I was in third grade, Jeanne in first, and Kathie not yet in school. I came home one day to an empty house except for the kitten, with which I played. It had a milky substance in its fur. I answered the phone and was told to not touch the kitten. Too late. The kitten had ringworm. All three of us kids had ringworm. These days you go to the store and get Tanactin or something like it and it kills the ringworm before it is a problem. In those days ringworm was serious. We had it all over our arms and faces and heads. Heads is a problem as it spreads in hair very rapidly. My father took his razor and shaved all of our heads. The hair that is. The whupping I got for telling Kathie that her head was bleeding was not too bad. Jeanne’s and my head were bleeding too. Safety Razor is a misnomer. So now we all were bald and had red rings all over us. We got a salve to put on the infections. Again my mother did a great job here. There were repercussions. To keep the sores from being touched, my mother took old nylons and made little hats for us to wear around the house. For school she made cotton caps with tie strings. These were necessary for the school would not permit anything less. The kids teased me incessantly until one kid stole the cap and saw the scars. There was no teasing after that.
The barber would not give me a haircut until there was a written letter from the doctor stating they were no longer contagious. I had a worse problem than my sisters. The standard antibiotic in those days was Sulfa. I turned out to be allergic to Sulfa and my scars became seriously infected. I had never better grow bald because the scars are still there. There is one about the size of a quarter on the left top of my head above my ear. There was another problem. I was a sandy blond. The rings grew back brown. I looked like a palomino pony. As my hair grew back in the spots were not as obvious. As I grew older and my hair grew darker, the spots went away. Now that my hair is growing gray I wonder if the spots will again be visible. I don’t think so. Come to think of it, I think Catholic First Communion is second grade. Jeanne had a brush cut for her First Communion. This means that I was in fourth and not third grade and that Kathie was in Kindergarten. I am sure they will tell me. Of course, the kitten did not survive the day.
Our vacation that year was to Seattle via the Dakotas. My father had a job interview in Seattle. Maybe other places too. In any case vacation that year is the first I really remember. Before we moved to Wisconsin, I think there was no camping. Only motels. On the beach south of Seattle, we had a little cabin and each morning we got up early and shot clams. The clams would burrow into the sand when the tide went out. Each left a small hole that bubbled if you were quick enough. There were lots of clammers. So you took your long, narrow shovel called a clam gun and marked holes that you found. This kept others from clam claim jumping. When you had marked as many as you thought you could dig, you started digging. If after about 18 inches you found nothing, you went to the next hole. My mother learned how to cook clams. Sort of. I did not like them. Maybe it was the time in my life. When I go to Mexico and pick up clams, I just steam them, put some sauce on them, and eat them. Easy. The cooking requires no spices, sauces, or anything special.
Swimming was a problem. The Seattle water was so very cold. The cold stung the back of my knees so badly that I could not tolerate it and went back out. Remember that I said that my father’s sister Janice had died of Polio. Salk and Sabin had not discovered the vaccine yet so we could not do anything that our father thought would expose us to Polio. Probably a good thing. We were not permitted to swim in any lake that you could see across. Public swimming pools were absolutely forbidden. We swam only in the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River, and the ocean. The river was not so polluted in those days. Neither was Lake Erie. If you try, you can see across Erie at night. We kids swam in Lake Superior with chunks of ice. There was no choice. If you wanted to swim, temperature was not an issue. It took until I was an adult and had a house in Phoenix to stop thinking that I would have to endure cold to swim. More on swimming later.
The problem here in Seattle was that one morning my father decided we kids were making too much noise while he wanted to sleep. We were sent out to the front porch and made to stay there until he got up. I have grown up in cold climates. We move to Wisconsin later this same year. I was never this cold. We three kids held onto each other and shivered for a long time until my mother let us back in.
I discovered many years later that my father needed a new job and was interviewing for a job there. I think Boeing must have been big even in the 1950’s. I guess if I were more perceptive, I would have figured it out. We moved to Wisconsin that year.
I do not think it was this trip but on at least one of the trips we went to Yellowstone. Chrysler was the company that claimed superior engineering. It had many progressive inventions: separate dual brake lines and safety door handles. That is, nothing on the door to snag a passing pedestrian. You pushed the rear side of the lever, exposing the front side and then you pulled that to open the door. It took both actions to open the door – you could do it with one hand after practice.
Yellowstone was where people went to see the bears. My father correctly feared the bears. Unlike everyone else, when the cars stopped indicating a bear ahead, we locked our doors, closed our windows, and waited until we got to look at them through the glass. Other people had varying degrees of fearlessness. Some rolled their windows down and fed the bears. Some got out and fed the bears. Some opened their doors and treated the bears. Some even got out and rode the bears. Mostly this riding happened at picnic areas and not on he main road. Putting your little girl on a bear cub in front of its mother while taking a picture seemed a great and dangerous sport. Mostly dangerous for the little girl but then stupid is stupid.
You can imagine my father’s surprise when, while waiting in line for the bears to pass, a big black bear walked up and opened his car door. My father frantically shoved the bear back outside and locked his door. After that we had door lock checks whenever we encountered bears. We hit on this again later.
I got these from my old friend Tino who emailed me the other day after finding his name on my web site. Thanks, Tino. Since the last line suggests to forward the test, I presume that no one claims ownership strongly enough to object to it published here.
More signs that I am a dinosaur. When we had music class in grade school, we learned the military songs. You know, “When the caissons go rolling along.” “Off we go into the wild blue yonder” ”We learned the Air Corps song as “nothing can beat the Army Air Corps” and it has since changed to “Nothing can beat the US Air Force”. I guess it is not significant but I mentally still sing it the old way.
The Air Corps change to the Air Force was later. I do not know when the Air Force separated from the Army. It must have been about that time but we never changed how we sang the song. We moved to Wauwatosa in 1954 -- we did not sing the patriotic songs in Wauwatosa.
When I was in about the third grade, they made another change. They added “, under God,” to the Pledge of Allegiance. I have had a problem saying the Pledge since. Maybe I was born perverse but like the multiplication problem, some things are just wrong and you know they are wrong but you are too young to understand why. On the other hand, if you reread the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln clearly states “under God” when describing the nation. The Pledge is just as good of a pledge without religious contamination.
We also went to Boulder Dam on one vacation and now Boulder Dam is someplace else and the original Boulder Dam is now called Hoover Dam and nobody knows what you are talking about when in Arizona and you want to go to Nevada and you say Boulder Dam. That is, unless you are talking to someone my age and then they do not correct you – they just smile.