This is my ninth year of blogging the A to Z Challenge. Everyday I will share something about my family’s life during 1950. This was a year that the USA federal census was taken and the first one that I appear in. At the end of each post I will share a book from my childhood collection. Click all images to enlarge.

My Cousin Dee Dee Elkins McNeil Remembers 1950

I was born in 1943 and we lived on the corner of McDougall and Hunt Street on the East Side of Detroit, just South of Charlevoix. It was a 4-family flat. We lived upstairs. Mom worked at the County Building as a secretary. Daddy was an independent Electrician with a truck that had Elkins Electric Company painted on the side.

Elaine & Eleanor Millben were twins who lived in the same four-family flat. We lived upstairs on the left-hand side and they lived downstairs on the right-hand side.They used to baby-sit me. We called their mom Aunt Cecil and their dad Uncle Lorn. They had an older brother “Larry” and a younger sister “Janet” who was my best friend for many years. We were born just months apart and rolled in the same baby buggy that Aunt Cecil used for the twins. We’ve all remained friends over the years to present.

I also witnessed a big plane crash that happened in Detroit when we lived on McDougall. Three small planes came down just a few blocks from our house. I watched them crash to the ground. Mary V. was hollering at me to get up on the porch, cuz it looked like one of those planes was coming down right on our house. It was a scary moment. A flying instructor and his students ran into each other. As I recall, one plane crashed into a commercial building on Charlevoix, one crashed into a house and another one crashed into a school yard. (Note: I remember hearing about that crash. I was not quite three, but remember looking up at planes when they passed overhead for a long time afterwards.)

Daddy also was in business with Aunt Maude and co-owner of MMM Shrimp Hut (Triple M short for Maude Mazique Miller). They opened later on and I used to be a waitress at that restaurant in the summer. I think I was twelve at the time, so that had to be in the mid-fifties. The MMM Shrimp Hut was on Warren Avenue on the East side. I think we moved from McDougall to 2034 Calvert Street around 1950, going to the West side of Detroit (between 12th and 14th Streets). I think one of those streets was renamed for Martin Luther King Jr many years later. Daddy had a storefront business for Elkins Electric Co on the East Side. I think it was on Warren Avenue also near John R.

I drove back to the McDougall residence the last time I was in town. It looks a lot different now. It used to have a black, wrought-iron fence around it.

Looking in the Census

The family lived at 2644 McDougall in Detroit, Michigan, where they had also lived the previous year. Frank L. Elkins was listed as head. He was 30 years old and married. He and everybody in the household was Negro and had been born in Michigan. Frank worked 60 hours a week as the proprietor or his electrical contracting company. He earned about $2,000 in the past year.

Mary V. was listed as the wife of Frank. She was also 30 years old. She had been a housewife during the past year and not worked outside of the house. Her hours were unrecorded. She answered the extra questions given to certain numbers on the census roll. We find she had attended two years of business college and that her parents were born in the United States.

Doris D. was six years old and Barbara was two.

I really wanted to find a book about the tooth fairy that I remember looking at when we visited Dee Dee and Barbara. Unfortunately, I don’t know the title of the book and so can’t find it online. Maybe Dee Dee will read this and remember!