This is the 19th post in the February Photo Collage Festival and the Family History Writing Challenge. This week I am doing four posts describing some of the places I have lived that I didn’t cover in the Alphabet Challenge last year. Today I am remembering 3203 Glendale Avenue, Detroit.
Me, tired revolutionary librarian.
In the spring of 1970 the Black Conscience Library was evicted from 12019 Linwood so that the League of Revolutionary Black Workers could have the space. We temporarily moved into the basement of friends, Stu and Gloria House. They had been members of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and worked for voter registration in Lowndes County, Alabama.
Two views from Google Maps of the house on Glendale. Back in 1970 none of those little trees and shrubs were there. Neither was the chain link fence.
That summer, we had high school students working with us. One of their tasks was to sell the Malcolm X posters you can see on the wall behind me in the photo above. Sometimes on Saturdays there was an organized trip to the rifle range so people could learn to shoot. I never went due to being in the last months of pregnancy. I remember all those steps from the basement to the attic and how many times I climbed them. We had received a grant from somebody and that summer two of us got paid.
Our living quarters were in the attic. I was about seven and a half months pregnant with my first child. My bedroom was in the cedar closet up on the third floor. It was large enough for a bed and the baby’s little crib later. I remember the light from the streetlight on the trees below my window those warm summer nights. There was another bedroom towards the front of the house. Phil had that room. Phil was a former Black Panther who worked with the library. He kept playing “Bitches Brew” by Miles Davis all summer long.
Not the actual fridge, but this is what it looked like. Except it was painted in maroon with patches of other colors. I don’t know who painted it.
There was a claw foot bathtub and a window that looked into the neighbors attic. We had globe top refrigerator and a hotplate in the hall that the two bedrooms and bathroom opened out to. I babysat the 2.5 year old when his parents were at work or school. There wasn’t a lot of library work to do aside from running off flyers and newsletters because we weren’t really open to the public. I remember lots of meetings. Meetings between the people that shared the house. Meetings between members of the library staff. Meetings about meetings.
Usually the house was full of people but the night that I went into labor, nobody was home. Jim was teaching a “Survival and Defense” class somewhere else. I don’t know where the other 5 adults and the 2 year old that lived in the house were. I waited and walked around and waited. Finally I called my doctor to say the contractions were 5 minutes apart and he said to come to the hospital. It was 10 PM. I called my mother and she came and drove me down and waited with me until Jim arrived. Baby Jilo wasn’t born until noon the next day so I could have waited a bit longer.
One night soon after I came home with Jilo and everybody had gone to bed, neither Jim or Phil were there, but the downstairs people were. A woman started to scream for help from the alley behind the house. Stu came upstairs looking for one of the rifles from the trips to the range. As I remember they had been broken down and cleaned but not put back together. He went back down and hollered out of the back door that he was going to come out there with a “30 aught 6” and shoot somebody if the woman wasn’t released. She was and she came into the house and the police were called. I learned this later because I was upstairs in the bed with my new baby girl thinking about the dangerous world and glad that Stu had been there to shout out the door.
Part of the cast of characters. Jim was taking the photos so he was not in the pictures, unfortunately.
“I was happy to hear that Jim and Chris (sic) were well. In the times when I question my own dedication to the struggle i remember them up in that loft, with the child, cooking dinner on a hot plate. It is something i can never forget and it brings me back home when i begin to trip too hard. It is a constant source of inspiration.
We were there about six or seven months before a new location was found for the library. By that time everybody was happy to get their own space again.
No photos of me in the blizzard but this one of my sister and me was taken before I left. I’m the tall one with the blue scarf. Nanny is peeking out the window behind us.
This weeks prompt is fittingly snow. Forty four years ago today I was in the middle of the New York snowstorm of February 9, 1969. I was nearing the end of my cross country after college trip during which I was looking for somewhere to be besides “home”. I had just about figured out that I could be in Detroit without moving back home. As soon as the planes were flying again, I caught one back to Detroit. As I was riding the bus in from the airport I thought Detroit was the dirtiest city I had seen during the whole trip. Within a month I was out and on my own. Here is a letter I wrote home while the snow fell.
February 11, 1969 Sunday 3:30PM During a Blizzard
Dear Mommy and Henry,
I’m staying at the YWCA. It’s O.K. The room here is smaller then the one in San Francisco. The address is
YMCA Morgan Hall 132 E. 45th Street NYC, New York
Right now there’s a blizzard going on outside. I was out earlier to wash and I got soaked.
You can’t hardly see a block and it’s already at least 5 inches (maybe 3) and giving no sign of stopping. I talked to Pearl and she’s sending me a letter from you. She’s o.k. in case she hasn’t written. My job is o.k. dull though. I’m thinking of returning to Detroit in about a month but I’m not sure, I’ll let you know more about that as it happens. I discovered I’m spending all my time figuring how to meet people like those I already know at home and that didn’t make sense.
I think housing here is worse than anywhere else and so expensive for a condemned bldg. Even if I do come back to Detroit I’m glad I left and went all those places because now I know what they’re like and can quit wishing I was there and spend my time where I am. It’s like getting my ears pierced. For about 7 years I spent half my time wishing I could get them done then when I did, I didn’t have to think about it any more. How’s school? Write soon. Don’t worry about me. I’m not crazy or depressed.
Love, Kris
For other photos and stories of blizzards, snow storms and other interesting topics…
In November of 1975 the Emergency Land Fund closed the South Carolina office and moved Jim, along with us, to their model farm 30 miles south of Jackson, Mississippi. We left Mt. Pleasant, SC and moved to Simpson County. The farm was to serve as a testing ground and example of ways to make money on a small acreage. There were rabbits and green house tomatoes with plans for raising potatoes and running a grading shed for cucumbers and potatoes.
Ife and me pregnant with Ayanna 1976
We lived in the house on the 5 acres. Two workers were to have trailers behind the house later. We added goats, chickens and a garden. Jilo started school at Piney Woods School. We started going to Voice of Calvary in Mendenhall. I learned how to can, freeze and pickle. Jim and I learned how to milk the goat. The chickens lived and we had eggs. We met a couple from Maine, she was a nurse midwife and he raised goats. He taught us all we needed to know about raising goats and rabbits. She delivered our third daughter, Ayanna at a friends house. Our oldest daughter Jilo was awake and watched Ayanna born. Ife slept through it all.
Tanya, Feline and Bambi – our first goats
I remember our first litter of rabbits and checking the goat, Tanya, a thousand times to see if she’d gone into labor yet. Finally finding the two kids, already up and around the morning after the night we didn’t check. I remember picking black berries outside the back door and making pies and finally getting some milk from the goat. Putting up 10 quarts of yellow squash and finding it mushy and inedible. Making cheese.
Before Ayanna – Kris, Ife & Jilo
I remember the smell of pine trees on a hot summer day. Tornadoes touching down nearby. Jilo as a rock in the school play. Jim’s 16 year old sister spending the summer with us. All the visitors and work and milking and new baby and being tired. Going to Michigan and St. Louis for visits, Learning to drive a jeep and a pickup truck.
November 17, 1975 Dear ma and Henry, Here’s our new address. The new house is fine. Kitchen, living room and dining room are a large room with ceiling to roof, has three bedrooms, 3 baths, utility and former garage converted to den (very big. It’s clean, wall to wall carpets and paneled throughout. It’s brick. There are three green houses, one in use for tomatoes and 8 rabbits. There are near neighbors. Four different houses about the distance at Old Plank, maybe a bit closer, not much – all white. Black people are near though. Jilo won’t be going to school until next year, but they’re doing fine. Jim likes the work. Today they planted more tomatoes and there’s one man who comes to work with him, more on that later. Will write more soon – did you all decide on the move yet? Love, Kris
Jilo and newborn Ayanna
February 11, 1976 Dear Henry and Mommy I was really surprised to go out this morning and find 2 baby goats walking around. She’d been giving us so many false signs, we didn’t keep checking last night and she delivered alone. I figured she could do all right, she looks pretty rugged. This weekend we’ll start getting our own goat milk. by fall we should be doing eggs, milk, vegetables and maybe honey. Ta Tum. We had to rush out there this morning and build the milk stand. we got the wood a month ago, but as usual waited ‘til the last minute was passed to do the job. Did I tell you I single handedly planted green house 1 with prunings #2. all the seedlings just about died so, since some of the prunings in #2 were taking root where they were thrown, I decided to try transplanting them and now I just need to do about 10 more and it’ll be done. They look better than the originals!
Jim holding Ayanna, Ife kissing her and Jilo
Jim rototilled the garden area and yesterday he and Mr. Reuben cut down some trees near the spot for firewood and to clear it out. There were only 2 so I hope for no root interference. What else? Jim and I both had milking lessons and finally got little streams coming out. Luckily we met the goat people. When we tried milking this morning we got not one drop. The poor goat we so full. Her udder and nipples are so large and low the kids could find them and had to be shown where they are. They look like those at Belle Isle with the droopy ears, like their mother. I hope we have dry weather for awhile so we can plant soon. Everyone and all the animals are doing fine. I take my driving test tomorrow. If I can start on a hill I’m ok. I went to take it last week, but had to get a Mississippi permit first. Write soon. Love and Happy Birthday – Kris PS As i was going to the house this morning for iodine for the kids navel – i found 2 cattle on our driveway one went to the front of the house-about 20 min. later both were gone. Some day! On envelope: Ta Tum- i finally got my drivers license. and guess who called last night – Daddy! Jim and I finally caught on to milking. We got about 1 1/4 qts of milk and the goat kicked it over. Better next time.
Eventually the Emergency Land Fund wanted us to move to the Mississippi Delta to manage a soy bean farm. We decided to stay in Simpson county and moved to 173 1/2 St. John Road.
I thought of this card when I saw the prompt for this weeks Sepia Saturday. There is no kiss but there is water and a boat. Reading the card made me remember that I had written up my trip to Norway years ago, I didn’t have to write it from scratch. Hence this post.
This article first appeared in Catalyst Magazine in the Summer of 1990.
In June of 1981 I was 34 years old, three months pregnant and on my way to spend seven weeks in Norway with my then ten-year-old daughter Jilo. I left behind my husband Jim and three younger daughters, Ife 8, Ayanna 5 and Tulani 2. There were also several milk goats and a flock of laying hens on our 5 acres in rural Simpson County, Mississippi. It was my first time outside of North America.
I had been corresponding with Sister Peg Dunn, a nun, about our mutual interest in Sigrid Undset, Nobel Prize winning Norwegian author of “Kristin Lavrensdatter.” I had become intrigued after reading that she wrote her novels while raising six children. Sister Peg arranged for me to attend the International Summer School at the University of Oslo. Jilo and I traveled to Norway with her.
It is now 1990, nine years later. I’m 43, the yet-to-be-born-baby is 8 and Jilo will be 20 in June. We now live in Michigan. The goats and chickens are gone, but we’ve got rabbits and the garden grows larger every year. When I think about that trip these are my memories, excerpts from my journal and from letters I wrote home.
I remember wondering if those men wearing fatigues waiting to board my plane were hijackers. The pain in my ears as the plane descended. Hearing Danish spoken over the airport loud speaker.
June 16, 1981, Airport in Denmark Dear folks, We are drinking orange juice in Denmark and waiting for the plane to Oslo. Ten hours is a long ride! Only two more hours of dark and I am sleepy. More soon. Love, Kris
I remember the marigolds and petunias in the window boxes of the apartments and houses everywhere we went. Walking up0 five flights, seventy steps to the apartment we stayed in. Looking out of the kitchen window at the grass, women hanging out wash and children playing in the yard below. Walking, walking and more walking.
June 17, 1981 Wednesday, Oslo, Norway Dear Jim, We are staying with the lady poet that I met in Chicago. She gave me 2,000 koner ($400) in the bank here. Jilo and I walked all over and never got lost. Everyone does speak English so far. Women wear backpacks instead of carrying purses. Tomorrow the three of us will take a train to Trondjem – a seven hour ride, where we’ll stay in a youth hostel until Monday. I miss you. Love, Kris.
I remember taking the train to Trondjem. How at one point, everybody (except us) got up and turned their seats around to face the opposite direction. How tired we got of the bread and salami and bread and salami and bread and salami, we had packed to eat. Mistakenly jumping off of the train before it pulled all the way into the station and then having to jump over the wires and cables to get to the station.
June 19, 1981, Dombas Norway Dear Jim, We are staying in a valley surrounded by snow capped mountains tonight. We walked a mile or more from the train station to the hostel with our backpacks. Was I glad not to have a suitcase! Love Kris.
I remember not being afraid to walk around at any time of the day or night. The long days. At midnight it was dusk. Riding the train through glacial mountains. How low the clouds were. Seeing a waterfall in the mountains. Gudbrunsdal Valley. How hard it is to strain to catch a work you understand in a new language. How it is even harder to come up with one and say it. My discomfort at entering the World War II Museum of Resistance and being greeted in, surprise, Norwegian by the welcomers. How they saw my expression and tried French then, to my relief, English.
June 21, 1981, Monday, Dombas, Norway – journal entry.
Jilo and I walked around Dombas in the morning. There was a field full of the biggest, bright yellow dandelions I have ever seen. Someone was growing tomatoes under plastic covers…there were bus loads of middle-aged German tourists. Can’t help wonder what they were doing during WWII.
June 23, 1981. Wednesday. Oslo, Norway – journal entry.
A warm sunny day. Today we went out to Blinern University on the trikk (subway). Took a tour of the campus. Met a friend of Sister Peg’s for lunch in the cafeteria, Liv. She has a research fellowship here. Is married and has an almost two year old son, Mangus. She had taught a few years in Chicago. Had read and seen “The Women’s Room” on TV recently. Especially remembered the part where the woman is trying to quiet the two children and put them to sleep and the husband staggers out going to his mother’s where he can “get some sleep.” She said the wife should have thrown one of the babies at him.
We walked home, a half-hour, pleasant walk through a camomile covered field. At dinner preparation time (Jilo cooked) we blew the stove fuse and couldn’t figure out how to change it so had to eat cold leftovers.
Then we caught the trikk to another friend of Sister Peg’s. She lived in an apartment made from the second floor of her parents’ house. She taught English to adults and Norwegian emigrant children. She also had seen “Women’s Room” and liked it, although she said, it didn’t deal with the problems of her generation. She told us about the social discrimination against emigrants, poor people on the east side of Oslo (where the tour buses never go) and different dialects in Oslo and having her passport stolen from a basket she carried in the store. Those things didn’t used to happen, she said. She had been going to Poland. There was a candle on her table and along with wine, coffee, chocolates, nuts, coffee cake, Christmas cake, butter and goat cheese. Jilo drank solo (grape pop) She gave Jilo a snowflake pin and showed her a bunch of English books. One poetry book included the poem “Give you son forty licks, beat him when he sneezes.” She told us how she used to drag her younger sisters around by their feet when she was left in charge and they would act up.
I remember watching Ethiopians playing soccer in the field of camomile. Celebrating Jilo’s birthday in the mountains with whipped cream topped apple cake. The Folk Museums with old, old houses, stave churches and guides dressed in national costume. The festival day at school with the fiddler father, singing mother and dancing daughter. How they seemed to really be enjoying themselves. Eating lefse, roumergroten, flat brod and brown goat cheese, Jilo walking and riding the trikk all over Oslo, by herself, not speaking Norwegian and never getting lost or having any trouble.
June 29, 1981, Monday, Oslo – journal entry.
Today began cloudy and rainy but ended up nice and sunny. Met a Californian in the laundry room. A student from last year passing through, doing her clothes and reading Don Juan. Trying to lose her past. She asked if I’d found rules to live by. I told her my sister had. She also mentioned the fox in “The Little prince” and being responsible for what you love.
I remember the children’s party. Organized by a Mexican married to a Norwegian and a Bulgarian. The kids tossing balloons around. The Bulgarian complaining about her young chuildren catching colds so often at day care and balancing the children, her ex-husband and job. The Mexican singing “Las Mañanitas” for the son of a Norwegian woman who worked in the kitchen. Hearing the Royal British Wedding on television in another room while I washed clothes.
July 3, 1981, Friday. Oslo – journal entry.
Started out a very sunny, warm day until after lunch, ended up being cold and rainy. Jilo and I went with some students to the theatre. Before the play started a tall man came up and said that he should have written a synopsis and did I know the story? Then he started telling it to me. A fairy tale about a princess, a would be prince who had to get three feathers of a dragon to win her. Very good…I even understood a few words. The theater was old and big. We had to to to a small room up in the top or the play. Afterwards we went in the cold rain to a kiosk and got sausages, french fries and ice cream. We had agreed to talk only in Norwegian. Whew! I was cold with a dress, bare legs and sandals. But a good evening and it’s nice to be back in the room and warm!
July 2, 1981, Oslo Dear Ayanna, This morning the Norwegian woman who cleans my room, washed the floor and was speaking Norwegian to me about my flower, but I couldn’t understand what she meant. I guess I have to study harder. Love, Mom.
I remember realizing that the woman had put a saucer under the plant for me. Walking to the park past a mental hospital. The man people told me had been brilliant who stepped from one square to another square for hours at a time all day long when they let him out of the hospital. Seeing topless sun bathers. Vigelandsparken Sculpture Park with nude statues of all stages of life but, strangely I thought, no pregnant woman. The garden section, blocks and blocks of tiny houses for drinking coffee and eating cakes, surrounded by flower and vegetable gardens of those who lived in apartments. The strange feeling of living where Nazi soldiers had lived when they occupied Norway. Hearing my mother’s laugh coming from a group of students gathered on the steps below my window. Watching day by day as a young man worked on repairing the stairs…the girl that came and watched him, talked to him. just wanted to be with him.
July 19, 1981 Lillehammer, Norway Dear Jim, We did get out alive from Sigrid Undset’s bed and house. It was very strange. Reminded me of one of those Public TV mysteries where suspecting travelers are taken in and treated kindly by weird folk who later murder them in their beds. I discovered how Sigrid Undset wrote a Nobel Prizewinning novel “while raising six children.” She left the two step-daughters in Oslo and moved to Lillehammer with her two young sons and a nursemaid. There she wrote the first book of “Kristin Lavernsdatter.” She was tired after this because she had to keep interrupting her work to cook, clean, etc., so she brought tow more old houses. One small one for her husband (an artist) to paint in when he came out from Oslo and one for herself to work in. It is this one that we slept in and it is connected to the original house by an added on corridor. She also hired several maids and a cook., in addition to the nursemaid. She then left the kids and the servants in the original house and proceeded to write her masterpieces. She later had a third child and for many years later served as a foster mother to two Finnish war orphans…Her daughter-in-law, Christianna, was odd but very talkative and nice to us. She gave me two children’s books by Sigrid Undset (in Norwegian) and she got her young neighbor to drive us out to Undset’s grave about 15 miles away. There was a weird little man, about her age who she referred to as “the young man.” He tried to be pleasant, spoke no English and was always leaping around smiling. One time he was supposed to open a bottle of wine and he couldn’t find the corkscrew. He kept popping into the room and finally she sailed out after him. I expected to hear a loud smack as she boxed his ears, but she found the corkscrew and opened it. I could understand a lot of the Norwegian they spoke and that was encouraging. I had given up hope. Love, Kris
I remember how awful it felt to be back in school studying Norwegian and how much I felt I was missing by sitting in the classroom when real Norwegians were all about talking real Norwegian and wonder still why I kept going to class.
July 22, 1981 – journal entry.
Homework very hard. Feel overwhelmed by busy work. Decided to skip class tomorrow and go on field trip with another class. Miss Jim. Interviewed by the newspaper, Aftenposten. Very poor English by reporter, better by photographer, nonexistent Norwegian by moi. Rather embarrassing. Jilo got us some Norwegian deodorant. It doesn’t work a bit.
I remember the lady from Denmark who sat next to us on the plane ride home and talked about how bad things were getting, she had to lock her doors now when she left her house, not like the old days. How dirty everything looked when we got back to Chicago and how good it was to see my family and eat home-cooked food again.
I was named Kristin at my Uncle Henry’s suggestion, after the heroine of Norwegian author, Sigrid Undset’s trilogy, “Kristin Lavransdatter“. My mother had considered naming me after her mother, Fannie, but my grandmother said that was an awful name to inflict on a child, so she didn’t. My other grandmother, Pearl Reed Cleage, thought everybody should have a family name. In the case of my name she made an exception because it came from, she said, the best book in the world.
The name Kristin reached it’s height of popularity in the 1940s, however my health care professionals seem to be continual startled to find such an old woman with the name of Kristin. They think that only younger people have received that name.
I’ve always liked my name, even though people like to spell it with an “e” instead of an “i”. During the late 1970s, Penguin Books came out with a new edition of the trilogy. I was stunned to read that Sigrid Undset wrote the series while raising 6 children. I was raising 4 and hardly had time to read, much less write Nobel Prize winning literature. I started trying to find out more about her life. I wrote letters to Undset experts at various universities and made connections that resulted in a 7 week trip to Norway in the summer of 1981. I found out how she did it and I will write more about that experience in another post.
An interview with me in the Norwegian paper “Aftenposten” starts with mention of me being named after the heroine of “Kristin Lavransdatter”. I did not do the interview in Norweigian.
I got the idea for this post from Randy Sever’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, although I didn’t do it exactly the way he described.
Today was Mr. Mullins birthday and I thought I would share some information about him.
James Mullins was born about 1863 in Shilo, Harris County, Georgia. He was the third child of the 14 children of Isaac and Sallie (Jarrett) Mullins. He worked on the family farm until some time after 1880. On 27 April, 1898 he married my grandmother Pearl’s sister, Minnie Averitte Reed, in Indianapolis, Indiana. In the 1900 Census he was listed as a fireman and the first of their 12 children, Helen, was a year old. The family lived next door to Minnie’s mother and siblings on Willard. In 1910 they were still in Indianapolis and he was still a fireman. There were 8 children.
The family moved to Benton Harbor, Berrien County, Michigan about 1916. In the 1920 Census they were living in Detroit and Mr. Mullins is listed as a carpenter at an auto factory. In 1930 the family was in Benton Harbor, living on Broadway with various family members living up and down the same street. Mr. Mullins was listed as a common laborer in this census.
By 1940 the family was back in Detroit and you can read about them in this post – 1940, Minnie and James Mullins. Throughout the years the family members were variously identified as mulatto, black, Negro, white and Indian in the Census. Mr. Mullins died in Detroit on July 10, 1944. He was 80 years old and unemployed. The cause of death is listed as “terminal uremia”. His wife, Minnie was the informant. He is buried in Detroit Memorial Cemetery.
Click to enlarge. Mr. Mullins, Aunt Minnie, their children, some of the children’s spouses and some of the grandchildren.
My uncle Henry shared some of his memoried of Mr. Mullins in the 1990s. “Mullins was always referred to that way. He was a very stern, hardy type. Admired the Irish. Had the long Irish upper lip himself. A very ‘Indian’ looking fellow. They lived in Benton Harbor and later moved to Detroit. ‘Sir Walter Lipton’, that’s the only kind of tea he’d drink. Rather, whatever kind he drank was that. He’d be talking about only drinking ‘Sir Walter Lipton’, and when he finished, Minnie would tell him, “Oh, Mullin, hush up! You know that’s Salada Tea.” When he moved to Detroit with his family the last time they figured he was 90 something years old. He died one day walking from Tireman all the way downtown. I think he just fell out. Like the old one horse shay, he just give out.“
Henry continued, “Aunt Minnie would talk a lot of trash. She said he’d sit down with a bottle of wine and eat all the food, talking a lot of trash about he was a working man, he needed his strength and the rest of them were all starving to death. All that was Aunt Minnie’s talk. We never heard his side of it. They lied on him and he never defended himself. They never made fun of him because he’d a beat everybody’s brains out. He never found it necessary to say anything. I think Aunt Minnie embellished the truth because I know we went there and tore up his lawn, his pride and joy, and he didn’t say anything much. He had a grape arbor. We (Me, Hugh, Bill and Harold), had a tent out there. We’d get to wrestling and tear up the tent and the grapes and he didn’t say anything. Probably crippled Bill and Harold after we left because they should have known better, we were just kids.”
My last post in the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge. I am really scraping here. I never lived on or in Zamzeewillie. I’m not even sure that’s how you spell it. My daughter Ayanna was the only one who knew the particulars and she can’t remember. She made it up when we she was about 8 years old. It was around the same time that my then 3 or 4 year old son James became friends with the people only he could see. I was never sure if Nice Helmut, Mean Helmut, Nice Tommy and Mean Tommy lived in Zamzeewillie. They always seemed to be just out of sight in the other room. Since there are no known photos of this town and none of the Nice and Mean boys I will have to make do with a photo of Ayanna and James with siblings, in our living room in Excelsior Springs.
L to R Tulani, James, Ayanna and in the back Jilo and Ife.
I can’t believe it’s really over! And that I found streets and places for all the letters of the alphabet. Mostly 😉 I really appreciate Gould Genealogy.com for hosting the challenge. I don’t think I would have ever written so much about almost every street I ever lived on without it. You can find a list of the 39 blogs that participated here – Family History Through the Alphabet – the Finale.
We are up to Y on the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge. I have run out of streets that match the letters of the alphabet but I still have places that match. This week I chose Yates Township. I have already done Idlewild, which is in Yates Township but, there is more to Yates Township then Idlewild and so here we are.
I was the librarian of the Yates Township library for a short time. My husband ran for Yates township trustee. Unfortunately he lost. He served on the Yates Township Fire Department for a number of years. He ran a recreation program out of Yates Middle School gym for several years. My youngest son graduated from the alternative education program that ran out of the former Yates Middle school after several months of classes as a grand finale to his home schooling. Two of my daughters attended Yates Middle School before we began homeschooling and before the middle school moved to Baldwin. We had our own policeman for awhile. I could tell you stories of politics and intrigue about the Yates Township government, but I just don’t have the heart. I did include a photo from the distant past of Lottie the Body, exotic dancer who entertained the crowds back in the heyday of entertainment.
James, Ife and Tulani on swings at the playground down the street from our house.
The Minact Job Corps is located in the old Veteran’s Hospital.
Recent photo of downtown.
Me, James, my husband Jim. next row: Ayanna, Tulani, Ife. Very back: Jilo.
We are up to X on the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge. I continue my trek through streets in my life. I admit that I had to cheat for this letter. I have never lived on a street or in a place or even visited one that started with an X. I did live for three years in eXcelsior Springs, Missouri though. Today I will remember my time there. By happy coincidence, the theme for Sepia Saturday #149 is healing waters, which is what eXcelsior Springs was once famous for. It is still home to the longest water bar in the world.
In the fall of 1983 we moved to Excelsior Springs, Missouri from St. John Road, rural Mississippi. My husband Jim had heard from a friend about an opening at a new Job Corps Center opening in eXcelsior Springs. He had several siblings in nearby Kansas City and even more relatives in St. Louis, 4 hours away. He was hired as weekend residential supervisor and began work during the summer of 1983. Several more months passed before he found a house for us to move into. It was on the side of one of the many hills that made up the town and in the towns very small black community. Down the street was the empty former black school from back when schools were segregated in Missouri. There was no segregation in 1983.
The population of eXcelsior Springs was 10,000. Our house was within walking distance of the children’s schools, my husband’s job and downtown. Unfortunately downtown was moving store by store out to the edge of town to a strip mall across from the new Walmart store, which was not within walking distance. Still, there was a department store, a small grocery store, a drugstore and a florist that we could walk to. Our only transportation, aside from our feet, was a pickup truck with a camper on it and a stick shift that we drove from Mississippi. Later my brother-in-law left us his Rabbit while he was overseas in the service. There was also a van that fell to pieces almost as soon as we bought it, very cheaply I must say.
Tulani and Ayanna sliding in front of the house.
Living on the side of a hill gave us a great view of the trees and houses during the changing seasons. In the winter, though, the roads were snowy and icy. I had learned to drive in the south and was not used to winter driving. When the first heavy snow fell, I went out in the yard with the kids and played in it. We couldn’t understand why none of the neighbors were out there. After several more years, snow didn’t seem so glorious. Still nice though.
Sewing a soft sculpture doll.
I had learned to make soft sculptured dolls that were called “Adoption Dolls” in Mississippi. When these type of dolls began to be mass produced they became the “Cabbage Patch Dolls.” The original dolls were 36 inches tall but I made a smaller pattern that turned out to be the same size as the “Cabbage Patch Dolls”. I also designed a small, 6 inch doll, that I soft sculptured using the same technique. This was very lucky because Christmas of 1983 was the year that there were not enough of the manufactured dolls to go around. I sold dolls through several gift stores both in eXcelsior Springs and in Kansas City. I sold to individuals too. I was sewing dolls day and night. There were boxes of doll heads and arms and legs in the living room. The children helped stuff parts. My husband helped stuff. A sister-in-law came and helped stuff. I put an ad in the local paper and more people came to me through that. There were so many orders I was up all night Christmas eve finishing up my own children’s dolls. The money came in very handy to winterize our wardrobes – “Moon” boots, winter coats, scarves, cloves – we needed all of that.
The three oldest had jobs. Jilo baby sat the neighbor’s kids after school until their mother got home from work. Ife and Ayanna had paper routes. I still remember the icy time when I helped Ife deliver her papers and we were practically crawling down the icy slope to the house when a boy came up and offered to take it and just hopped down there like a young mountain goat. I remember the food co-op I belonged to and selling dolls at the Fishing River Festival. I remember the wonderful Community Theater. Jilo and Ife were both in several of their productions. I remember walking to the evening elementary school Christmas Program with my kids and the neighbor kids. Jim was working 40 hours weekends so he missed it. The audience sang Christmas carols at the end and we walked home in the dark. I remember walking for exercise on the path down by the Fishing River, sometimes with my friend Roberta. I remember our first Christmas when we waited until Christmas Eve to buy our tree and there were no trees to be had. I remember usually having several extra kids at the house and discovering “Prairie Home Companion” and Mercedes Sosa on NPR. I remember James imaginary friends “Nice” Tommy and “Mean” Tommy, “Nice” Helmut and “Mean” Helmut and Ayanna’s town of Zamziwillie. I remember Ayanna losing one of her boots on the way home from school. The kids were sicker in this town than anywhere else we lived. Tulani had pneumonia, Ayanna had vomiting that wouldn’t stop, there were warts and ear aches. Doctors and hospitals. One thing I don’t remember is the taste of the various waters from the healing springs because I never drank any. What a wasted opportunity.
Dolls waiting for delivery.
Ayanna and Ife are front row, numbers 4 and 5 from the right.
We are up to W on the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge. This week we go back to Detroit to 556 Wilkins in Brewster Projects and the apartment I lived in during 1971/1972.
The Brewster – Douglas projects were the first government housing for black people built, not just in Detroit, but in the United States. According to Wikipedia, they were built between 1935 – 1955 and housed between 8,000 and 10,000 people. I lived there for a little over a year in 1971 – 1972 after moving from the house on Monterey. The apartment was large, bright with a view of the playground from my 5th floor window. There were 6 apartments on my floor, one elevator and two stairwells. The stairs were filthy and seldom (never by me) used.
The Brewster/Douglass projects in the 1950s.
Google satellite picture of the projects as they stand today.
Notice how there are now only three high rises and multiple attached houses missing today, the surrounding community is practically empty of houses. Highways cut off two sides and much vacant land on the other two sides.
The building as it looked in 2006. It was still occupied.
Memories: Walking to Eastern Market to collect food the farmers left at the end of the day rather than haul home. The old folks who sat outside on the stoop during nice weather. They were probably younger than I am now. Sweets, my sixty year old neighbor telling me she had six children but would have had none if she could have figured out how to stop. Listening to a woman curse a purse snatcher out down on the street. Seeing one man shoot another on the playground below. Watching the police running down the street, guns drawn, looking up at the windows, until they told us all to get back. The disoriented man wandering around my hall one night. Coming home to find someone had tried to break into my apartment. Only the safety chain stopped them. Pushing the desk in front of the door after that when I was home alone at night. The bunch of rough looking dudes hanging around the door when I came home with Jilo one evening asking if Rev. Cleage was my father. Phil moving in with us and running up my phone bill calling the Black Panther party in Algiers. My sister coming to visit once and my mother being so angry I was living in the projects that she dropped her off in the parking lot and sped off. How good it was to have my own place after living in various shared/borrowed spaces for over a year. Moving out and the old folks on the stoop asking if I was going back south. I said yes because I was moving to Atlanta but it wasn’t really “back south” because this was going to be my first time living there.
My apartment was between the lines on the right, 5th floor in this Google satellite photograph. From L to R the windows are for the Living room, Kitchen/dining area, bathroom (tiny window), small bedroom, large bedroom. There was another window for the living and bedroom on each end.
And finally, they tore it all down. Video by Paul Lee, 2014
