Category Archives: Biography

Burning Wood

September 2, 2012Biography, sepia saturdayKristin

My drawing of our first wood burning stove.

We used this to heat our small house in Simpson County, Mississippi. We used a pickup or two of wood for the entire winter. Sometimes I cooked on it if the bottled gas ran out. It was also great for drying diapers hung on lines across the room.

For those who haven’t used a wood burning stove like the Atlanta Stove Works we used, here is a diagram of safety measures. When we first started, my husband didn’t realize why the stove was set out so far from the wall and moved it closer. Luckily we just ended up with a scorched piece of paneling and not a house fire.

Wood/coal burning furnace we used in Idlewild, Michigan.

This was not a very efficient furnace. It took enormous amounts of wood. My husband spent much time cutting, hauling and splitting wood all winter long. Because he worked long hours from spring through fall it wasn’t possible to get all the wood needed during the snow free months. Luckily we lived in the Manistee National forest and there was plenty of wood around. A few times we burned coal. It burned hot but it was so dirty. Soot everywhere. Up and down the stairs all winter long to keep the fire going.

Combination wood and electric stove on the deck on it’s way to the garage.

The cook stove we used for several years in the Idlewild Lake house was a combination of wood burning on one side and electric on the other. The only photo in my collection and the one above. The stove was on it’s way from the kitchen to the garage after the insurance inspector said it didn’t meet guidelines for safe use.

When we moved to the house on Water Mill Lake we had a wood furnace like this one. It was very efficient and could burn one load almost all day. That meant a bit less wood (by now we also had a wood splitter) and a few less steps up and down the stairs to keep it going. Wonderful!

Stove we now use to supplement the furnace and heat the house.

When we moved to the house we now live in in Atlanta, Ga we found this stove already in place. The house is passive solar and has a berm against the north wall and a wall of windows on the south side. We burn wood to take the chill off in the winter if there is no sun out. If the sun is out it heats all by itself. We also have an gas furnace we use only rarely when we don’t feel like building the fire. We are back to a couple of pick up loads a winter and with all the trees that topple over in Atlanta we have no lack of wood available. If only we’d brought the wood splitter.

Jim adding wood to the heater at the end of the solarium. Maybe one day we will change it for one that will let us see the flames dancing.

To see more Sepia Saturday offerings, click.

“P” is for South Payne Drive

August 28, 2012Biography, Family History Through the Alphabet, HousesKristin

This post continues a series using the Alphabet to go through streets that were significant in my life as part of the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge. This week we go to S. Payne Drive in Idlewild, Michigan. We moved there in August of 1986 when I was 39 and lived there until January of 2006. Almost 20 years. The longest I have lived anywhere.

When I was growing up we used to go to my Uncle Louis’ cottage in Idlewild. My cousin Barbara and I fantasized about riding our bikes from Detroit to Idlewild and living in a vacant cottage. Our plan fell through because we never came up with the agreed upon $10.00 each. This is still my favorite house of all I have lived in. If only the children and grandchildren had been closer, we would still be there.

Some of the things I remember about living on S. Payne Drive are – the lake in summer for swimming and in the winter for skating. The stone fireplace. The wood burning/electric stove we cooked on for several years before the electric side went out. Cabral joining the family the year after we moved in. The unacceptable local schools and our journey into homeschooling. The years the uncles, aunts and cousins were at their own places in the summer and sometimes the winter. Story rounds and the AOL homeschooling area and my addiction to the computer. Years without television. Dollhouse Doll Ville. Delving deeper and deeper into my family history. Track and basketball and Interlochen. Tulani’s dog sledding. The children growing up and moving out. When you have 6 spaced out 2 to 4 years apart it seems an endless process but end it did.

I remember times when family came from far and wide to be together. The grandchildren being born. My husband Jim traveling hours to work for the Michigan Dept. of Transportation in Ludington, Traverse City and points north. Winter layoffs. His years on the Idlewild volunteer fire department. The short periods of time I worked at the Baldwin and Idlewild Libraries. Our yearly Community Kwanzaa Celebrations. Icicles hanging from the roof. Keeping the wood burning furnace going and realizing the meaning of the saying “Keep the home fires burning.” My most wonderful garden. Henry’s Status Theory. Endless discussions. Walking 4 miles around the lake most days. Developing chronic tendonitis and no longer walking around the lake fast enough to keep the weight off. Deer season and the deer Ayanna, Tulani, James and Cabral skinned and cut up. Relatives selling their places. Louis, Henry and my father dying. Moving to Water Way Drive.

Here is a page from our family newsletter, Ruff Draft, from those years.

Others posts about life at S. Payne Drive

Thanksgiving 1991, Idlewild, Skating Champions, Kwanzaa

“O” is for Oregon Street

August 18, 2012Biography, Family History Through the Alphabet, Houses, memoriesKristin

This post continues a series using the Alphabet to go through streets that were significant in my life as part of the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge. This post takes us back to the time when I was still living at home.

My mother bought the house at 5397 Oregon in 1959 for $8,000. It was the first house we owned. Before that we lived in houses owned by the church my father pastored or, after my parents divorced, in a rented flat on Calvert. I was 13 and in the 8th grade when we moved in and a 21 years old senior in college when we moved to the flat on Fairfield. Nine years was the longest I lived in any house when I was at home.

Sitting on the porch with my mother. 1962.

Photographs from the downstairs, various years.

There are no photographs of the upstairs. There was a hall, three bedrooms and the only bathroom in the house. My room looked out on the backyard. The other two bedrooms looked out the front of the house. The bathroom was right across from my room and the stairs were right next to it. The hall ended in a door that went out on the upper back porch. These two drawings are of my bedroom, looking out on the hall and the stairs and the bathroom. They are ballpoint pen and then I sprayed them with perfume. I had to come up with an experimental project for this advanced drawing class and that is what I came up with. I ruined many drawings with that perfume.

Some memories from those years:

Discovering world wide revolution as I started high school. Getting magazines from Cuba, China and Mexico. Listening to radio Habana on the short wave band of our radio. Spending hours in my room reading, clipping photos and articles, looking at maps, filling in maps.

The Christmas we got several of Miriam Mekeba’s records and they became the sound track for that Christmas.

The neighbor’s house being so close that in the summer I could hear them talking through my open bedroom window.

The summer my cousins came to visit from Athens Tennessee and slept in my sister’s room while she moved in with me. The visit was half over when we discovered they had not set up the cot and were crowding into one twin bed. We set it up for them.

My cousin, Greta, cutting my hair so that I could wear an afro during this same 1967 visit.

Almost getting to Cuba and Mexico, but not quite. Did make it to Santa Barbara, CA.

Coming down with the flu one fall day while playing chess with my uncle Henry and being sicker then I remembered being since having pneumonia.

Dried peppers hanging on the kitchen door. Tomato wine/vinegar brewing in a big vat in the kitchen. My mother’s garden under the mulberry tree where she grew green beans. The moldy mulberries under the tree later in the year.

Building an igloo in the backyard one winter.

Pearl walking around the living room on the furniture without touching the floor when my mother wasn’t home.

Nikki Giovanni staying at our house during the 1967 Black Arts Conference.

From my journal:

12/22/67 the winds blowing dry seed on the tree of heaven outside.

1/4/1967 gray, rustle, wind, snow makes more gray. Creaks and roar, grey, grey sky.Everything is quiet. the wind sounds cold. Even the drip of the faucet is cold. Creaks and breath of wind.snow like cover of cold. pale blue summer sky over grey cold.

2/6/1968 i don’t know what’s wrong. every so often i sink into one of these things. deep down loneliness. loneliness fills you empty. Apart in a separateness or a separateness is in me. it’s felt inside my stomach. a lump of muscus won’t digest. sits inside me. floats inside my emptiness… apartness is inside me – is me. me is separate. apart. alone. it’s dark. cold/hot. Still. i stand in a vacant field, large clear area of land off Warren Avenue. The moon is out. i stand in center and watch the moon.

4/4/2968 it’s beautiful weather out. warm. windy. you should be in the country. Tonight i a. type 2 stories, one for Billy Thomas, b. do drawing, guess i’d best do the drawing first, correct – part of armor, maybe college type thing. yeah. that’ll be interesting. go to museum at 4 or 4:30. Eat when? ¿Quien sabe? i have the terrible feeling none of this is going to come out.

4/21/1968 tell him i cried. sat on porch wanting him to come back. look out the window wanting him to take me with him. i didn’t just not want to go home, i wanted to go with him.

“When you are singing
Daily alone
a bird comes
and joins you”

Drawing Bones

August 16, 2012Biography, sepia saturdayKristin

In 1968 I was a senior art student at Wayne State University in Detroit. Don’t remember why I did this drawing combining a skeleton and a coat of armor from the Detroit Institute of Art. The other two sketches are of a student posing with the skeleton.

My Swimming Career – 1962

August 8, 2012Biography, memoriesKristin

Photo from the Northwestern Colt, the school newspaper.

Both the Olympic swimming events and the insane hoopla about Champion Gabby Douglas’ hair took me back to my own swimming experience. I first joined the Swim Club as a freshman so that I could spend more time swimming. I took a regular swim class every semester and we swam everyday, except Friday, when we went across the street to the Lucky Strike Bowling Alley and bowled so that the regular gym class could use the pool. We also stayed after school for an hour doing more focused swimming. I didn’t enjoy competing, but I did like swimming so I stayed after the club became a team. I usually swam only in the relay but sometimes all the best swimmers would be ineligible due to bad grades and I would have to swim in a race. One time I came in second place. There were only two in that race. There was one girl in my class who made negative comments about my hair during the three and a half years I swam. I wish that I had known more ways to wear my natural hair instead of just pulled back in a little bun, which she kept telling me, looked like a shredded wheat biscuit. During my senior year our regular coach left to have a baby and the new coach turned the team into a synchronized swimming club. I didn’t much like her and I did not like synchronized swimming at all, so for that last semester of high school, I did no swimming.

N is for North Martindale

August 7, 2012Biography, Family History Through the Alphabet, HousesKristin

This post continues a series using the Alphabet to go through streets that were significant in my life as part of the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge. It takes us back to North Martindale, kitty corner from my first apartment.

As soon as I reach a letter for which I have no street, I am going to post a chart of where I lived and for how long. From the time I left home until Jilo was a bit over 1 year old I must have been getting ready for this series by moving every 3 to 8 months.

Today I will write about living at Brother John’s. Brother John and my husband, Jim, were both members of the Republic of New Africa and they all called each other “brother” and “sister”. We were there from October 1970 to March 1971, about 6 months. Bro. John lived in the downstairs flat, we lived in the upstairs flat. We didn’t have the whole flat though. He had his office in what would have been the front room. The dining area was empty, sort of a buffer zone. We had the kitchen, bathroom and three bedrooms. I made one of the bedrooms into a living room. The other two were bedrooms. At one point Jim, and I cleaned out the basement in hopes that Bro. John would move his office down there. He didn’t. Even cleaned out the basement was not very inviting.

Back in 1970 the upstairs flat had a porch where that door walks out into air. Next door where the vacant lot is now there was a small, single family house where 5 very wild children and their parents lived.

Some of the things that I remember… the wild kids next door who shot a BB gun into the house. Because we were living a charmed life, nobody was in the room. I remember the pear tree outside of the back porch and that I never picked any pears.

I remember once when Jim was out of town somebody, a community organizer, was shot to death when he answered his door. This disturbed me so much that I put Jilo in her stroller and walked from my house to Miriam’s house on Lee Place. I just didn’t want to be home alone. It was 2.8 miles. It was night and the only part of the walk I remember is that I didn’t walk down 12th but went down the next street over because there were so many people out on 12th.

Approximate route I took from N. Martindale to Lee Place on foot – 2.8 miles.

I remember when three friends and I started a food and baby co-op. We went to Eastern Market, a farmer’s market, early Saturday morning, babies on our backs. We bought cases of greens and sweet potatoes and eggs. We divided them up. We also took turns watching each others babies for a few hours a week so we could get a bit of free time. I can’t remember what I did with my free hours. The co-op eventually fell apart but Martha started a co-op with a La Leche League chapter and I started one at my father’s church.

Some random memories. going away one day and leaving the little washing machine I had earned by babysitting, running. It over flowed and dripped down to Bro. John’s kitchen below. Having the flu while Jim was out of town. Getting Jilo to sleep through the night only to have that go for naught when we visited my sister in Atlanta and she started waking up through the night to nurse again. And last, Bro John finding the dynamite in the attic and being incredulous that anybody would be so dumb as to store dynamite in a house that was being watched by the police and the FBI because it belonged to a member of the Republic of New Africa. I could not fault his logic. At that point we moved to the horrible house on Monterey . Luckily Jilo had no idea what was going on during these times. She probably still doesn’t, unless she is reading these posts.

M is for Monterey

August 3, 2012Biography, Family History Through the Alphabet, Houses#black conscience libraryKristin

This post continues a series using the Alphabet to go through streets that were significant in my life as part of the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge. I can’t believe we are half way through the alphabet already and that I have found a street for every letter so far.

______________

Today I’m going to write about living on Monterey Street on the west side of Detroit. The house was between LaSalle Blvd and 14th street and in the same area as the Black Conscience Library’s Linwood location. Unfortunately by the time I lived here the library had moved to Grand River which was a bus ride away. Living here is one of those situations where I am thankful we made it out of there unscathed. It included living with supposedly reformed junkies who turned out not to be, a wandering wife, explosives in the basement and finally a beating of the wife. That was the day I left that house never to return.

The house as it looks today on Google maps. It wasn’t in quite that bad shape in 1971.

I’m holding Jilo on the way to my sister’s graduation from Spellman College during the time we lived on Monterey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIdIqbv7SPo#action=share

This song always reminds me of that couple and the spring of 1971.

“L” is for Linwood

July 29, 2012Biography, Family History Through the Alphabet, Houses#black conscience library, #me, Calvert, LinwoodKristin

This post continues a series using the Alphabet to go through streets that were significant in my life as part of the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge.

Linwood was woven through my life from the time we moved on Calvert, between Linwood and Lawton, 1954 until I moved from Detroit in 1972. If I have done blog posts on the spot already, I will provide a link to the earlier post.

To view Linwood, Detroit in a larger map, click on the blue link.

13211 Linwood – Toni’s School of Dance Arts
I was about 9 when we started taking Saturday ballet classes at Toni’s School of Dance Arts. They went on for several years. We wore blue tutus, black ballet slippers shoes and white ankle socks. There was a bar and a wall of mirrors. I learned the five ballet positions and to point my toe. Each year culminated in a big recital at the Detroit Institute of Arts. On the Saturday before the recital all the students spent the day at Toni’s so that the entire program could be gone through. Those not performing would wait outside in the walled in yard of the studio. It was crowded and hot. For the performance one year we wore white calf length dresses, net over satin fabric. The next year we wore net tutus. I had bright blue. My sister’s was bright green. My mother thought the costumes were getting too expensive. I don’t remember minding when we stopped going about the time we moved off of Calvert. Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of myself wearing a dance outfit but I picture the me in this photograph wearing a black leotard and blue tutu, white anklets and black ballet slippers.

The Black Conscience Library building with photos. From L to R. My dog Big, Phil, Dewy (later Chimba Omari), Malik, Miriam, Jim, Me, Longworth. Downstairs was the deserted bakery that took up two spaces. I put our sign over one and a very small, poorly stocked grocery store owned and run by a Jordanian. He was robbed numerous times while we were there.

12019 Linwood – Black Conscience Library
The Black Conscience Library was located here from the winter of 1969 to the spring 1970. In addtion to a small collection of books there were classes and movies related to black history, culture and freedom struggles in various parts of the world. For more read – Once I Worked In A Sewing Factory.

Roosevelt Elementary School
I attended 2nd through 6th grade here. My mother taught Social Studies there from 1954 through 1965. We also cut across the athletic field from Linwood to get to and from Roosevelt. The building is no longer there.

Durfee Junior High School
I attended half of the 7th grade at Durfee. I learned to swim in the pool. The school address is not on Linwood but, the back of the school is.

Athletic Field
We walked across here to get to school when we lived on Calvert between Linwood and Lawton. I remember a neighbor lost her boot in the snow cutting across this field in 2 feet of snow. Once my sister and I went with our mother to fly kites here.

We lived in the upstairs flat. This is how the house looked in 2004.

2705 Calvert between Linwood and Lawton. I lived here, from 1954 to 1959. We bought penny candy and fudgesicles (ice cream on a stick), from a store on the corner of Linwood and Calvert, walked to school down linwood and at times walked blocks and blocks to activities at church. Read more here – “C” Is For Calvert.

christ_black_linwood — Black Christ at Sacred Heart Seminary

Linwood and Chicago Blvd. – Detroit Rebellion Journal – 1967. During the 1967 riot, this statue belonging to Sacred Heart Seminary was painted black. It was repainted white and then repainted black. It has stayed black right through to the present. You can also find more photographs of the statue here.

Street crossing
I crossed the street here at Linwood and Joy Road when I attended Brady Elementary School for kindergarden and part of 1st grade. There was also a block with the bank my mother used and the dime store we spent our pennies, one block down. The photo is looking across Linwood to Joy Road. Read more here “A” Is For Atkinson.

Shrine of the Black Madonna. Formerly Central Congregational Church. The church I grew up in, pastored by my father Rev. Albert B. Cleage,Jr/Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman Read more here – “H” is for Linwood and Hogarth.

“K” is for King Street

July 20, 2012Biography, Cleages, Family History Through the Alphabet, Houses#Albert B. Cleage Jr, #Doris Graham Cleage, #me, #Springfield, #St John's Congregational ChurchKristin

This post continues a series using the Alphabet to go through streets that were significant in my life as part of the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge. Click on the link to see links to posts by other participants in this challenge. It’s too bad the streets in my life weren’t alphabetically and chronologically coordinated because the years are all out of order. Here we go back to the beginning and my first home – 210 King Street.

Past over present. My mother, Doris Graham Cleage, is standing on the proch.

My father became pastor of St. John’s Congregational Church in Springfield Massachusetts in the fall of 1945. The parsonage at 210 King Street is pictured above. This is the house I came home to when I was born in 1946. I was the first child of Rev. Albert B. Cleage and Doris Graham Cleage. We moved from King street before my sister Pearl was born in December of 1948. I was 2 years old and I don’t have clear memories of the house. I found the description below online.

I was born around 10 PM during a thunderstorm. That’s what I heard.

1947 – on the steps with my mother. What is she holding that I am so excited about?

1948 – I spent a lot of time cooking. This is from the crumpling pages of an album my father kept. He wrote captions on most of the photographs. I have scanned the pages that are left. The photographs are fine but the pages are not.

My father and his congregation were involved in a church fight at this point. A former Minister had separated most of the churches property from the control of the church when he retired. My father and members of the church were trying to get it back or get the church compensated. Before my sister was born, they did sell the Parsonage and we moved into the Parish house. It was right next to the church and we lived in 4 room (plus bathroom) on the first floor, along with church offices, a big meeting room and I don’t know what else. There were roomers on the second floor. In 1948 they were trying to get $7,500 for the house. Today it is selling for $47,000. From reviews the neighborhood is crime ridden and drug infested so I don’t know if they will get that or if that is a low price for a 100+ year old house in that neighborhood of Springfield.

My parents spent $8 a week for ice before they, with help from my grandparents, were able to purchase a refrigerator.

My mother describes the purchase of the new GE refrigerator in a letter to her in-laws below. She says that I am completely recovered. In an earlier letter she described my bout with roseola.

I don’t know if these are the refrigerators my mother and I saw that day in 1948 but they were both 1948 models. The one I remember had one door, like the Philco.

The refrigerator was still working fine in 1962. My mother standing in front of it 14 years later.

“H” is for Linwood and HOGARTH

July 3, 2012Biography, Cleages, Family History Through the Alphabet#Bulletin, Central Congregational Church, Shrine of the Black MadonnaKristin

This post continues a series using the Alphabet to go through streets that were significant in my life as part of the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge.

The church still stands on the corner of Linwood and Hogarth in Detroit. It has gone through several names through the years, beginning as Central Congregational Church in 1953. It became Central United Church of Christ after the merger of the Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational Churches in 1957. In 1967, after a large mural of the Black Madonna was painted for the Sanctuary, it became the Shrine of the Black Madonna. My father was the minister. I am going to write about my memories from the 1960s as I was growing up.

I remember many hours spent at church. There were church suppers and political meetings. There were Christmas Eve services, Christmas caroling and my father’s annual “Little Patricia” Christmas sermon. He gave these for several years. They featured a little girl living in a cave with her family following a nuclear war. I think the last time he gave this sermon she had two heads. I remember a bazaar with booths of handmade items to buy as gifts and game booths with a shooting gallery. The year I remember best was 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis of late October. A nuclear war seemed all too possible. I was 16.

YouthFellowshipa — The Youth Fellowship early 1960s. That is me 4th from the right in the middle row. My sister Pearl is in the middle of the back row.

I remember Youth Fellowship meetings, where we talked about what was happening in the city, and around the country. Afterwards there was a social hour. Standing next to the coke machine and not being asked to dance, while at the same time, dreading being asked to dance, is not one of my happier memories. Social hour became less stressful once a ping pong table was added for those of us who didn’t dance much. I remember Workdays for Christ where we spent the day doing yard work to raise money for international service projects. And the “Friendship Circle” where we held hands and sang camp song like “Tell Me Why The Stars Do Shine” and “A Friend on Your Left and a Friend on Your Right”.

shrinecrowd_2 — The Sunday crowd was not usually this big. I don’t know what the occasion was but my sister and I are in the balcony, left side, front row, sitting with the Youth Fellowship. here must have been something special going on.

I remember the choir director, Oscar Hand (far right above) singing and the time he held the door open for someone stealing a typewriter because he thought it was the repair man. There was a wonderful production of “South Pacific” one year. There was the tragic and shocking murder/suicide of two married choir members. They had been having a clandestine affair. Mostly though I remember the good singing Sunday after Sunday.

dinner2 — A church dinner. My cousin Dale is third up on the left side of the table with his eyes closed. Cousin Ernie, Uncles Winslow and Henry at the end. On the other side is Aunt Anna and I can barely see little Cousin Maria.

There were lots of church dinners. All members were organized into Area Groups that raised money and sponsored events for socializing. Sometimes Area Groups sold dinners to take out. I remember one such sale. Nobody was coming in to buy the dinners until one of the women suggested burning onion skins. They laughed about it, but someone burned some onion skins and people actually started to come.

The Church was fully involved in the movement for equal rights and black power. There were always speakers and rallies and seminars.

shrinepilgrimwindow — The sanctuary before the Black Madonna painting was installed.

My parents divorced when I was 8. We lived with my mother but often spend the weekends with my father. He would start writing his sermons Saturday night. He wrote at the kitchen table. There were piles of old mail, old sermon notes and who knows what, piled up at one end of the table. There was enough space for the three of us to eat and for him to write. He wrote late into the night, sometimes taking breaks to come in and comment about what we were watching on TV or to order some shrimp from Jags up on 12th street. He never finished the sermon on Saturday. Sunday morning he would get up early and continue writing until the last minute when we would get in the car and drive down Linwood to church. Sometimes there were slow drivers in our way or people had already parked in his usual spot so he had to park farther away. At that time, he always parked on Lamothe, which was what Hogarth was called on the other side of Linwood. Service started at 11. Sunday morning excitement – would we make it!? We always did.

combinedcleage_2 — My father preaching. The Black Madonna mural painted by Glanton Dowdell is behind him.

The bulletin and sermon notes below are from Sunday, July 3, 1966.

church_1966 2 — My father’s sermon notes.

His sermons always spoke to what people needed to understand about their lives in the present day. And they were always timely. Someone once asked me if he planned and wrote them maybe weeks or months ahead of time. He didn’t. And you could tell because of the current issues he always included.

Finding Eliza