When I was growing up in the 1950’s lights were rare in my neighborhood. I remember the first lights I saw. My family moved into the huge house above in 1952 after a church fight in which my father, a pastor, and 300 parishioners left St. Marks Presbyterian church to organize Central Congregational Church. During the time before a new church building was found and purchased the church met at Crosman School on Sundays while all other activities were held at the house above. We lived on the second floor, church activities were on the first floor and in the very large recreation room in the basement. My sister and I shared the bedroom marked with the red X. On the side was a window (marked Z) that we could look out of at night and see a house in the next block outlined in multicolored lights. We called it the gingerbread house and thought it was beautiful and unique.
I don’t remember ever riding by when the lights were on. We lived on the west side of Detroit while one set of grandparents lived on the east side. Driving from one house to the other we would be coming home after dark and I remember looking at people’s lit Christmas trees through the windows, I don’t remember any outdoor lights. In later years that changed. I think my west side grandparents eventually had lights and some plastic lit up carolers out in front. My youngest son always wanted to put lights outside our house but since we lived at the end of a dead end road in the middle of the Manistee National Forest at the time, it never happened. Thinking back, I should have let him do it.
My family did not send out Christmas cards when I was growing up. Probably because all the relatives lived in Detroit and we saw them during the holidays. We usually had a good number of cards to display across the mantle though because my mother was a teacher and she brought home all the cards her students gave her. I did make some cards in elementary school that I found in my mother’s things. My grandparents aka Nanny and Poppy received cards from friends they kept in touch with from the days they lived in Montgomery. Often these were photograph cards. Because they kept the past years cards in a brass Chinese bowl on a table in the front room, under the table actually, I watched some stranger kids grow up from year to year.
When I grew up and moved out of Detroit I started sending and receiving cards. When we didn’t have a mantle we displayed them across the top of the bookcase that ran across one side of the living room. The years two of my daughters had paper routes we had lots of cards. For some reason I’ve saved these along with the family and friend cards. Every year when I go through them I think I should glean these but I don’t.
Cards in brass bowl
Ruff Draft Nov/Dec 1994
For five or six years when we were homeschooling our family put out a monthly newsletter. It gave the kids a chance to use their writing skills and gave the family and friends a chance to see that they weren’t growing up illiterate. We would add a Christmas message on the back page. That is about as close to a Christmas letter as I got.
The most meaningful card I’ve saved over the years is the last one my mother-in-law, Theola Davenport Williams, sent me the Christmas before she died. It included a letter on the inside. I re-read it every holiday season. I wish we had traveled to St. Louis that season to visit but we didn’t.
This photo is from a small black album I got from my uncle Henry. It had a lot of small photographs that look like they were cut from a contact sheet. They were pasted on themed pages, a page for my father, a page for each of his siblings, a page for several close family friends, etc. The pages and pictures aren’t labeled. I hope my aunts can shed some light on who the people in the picture are and if it was taken at the Meadows near Detroit. Judging by the ages of the people I know in the album I think the photos were taken in the early 1940’s.
When I was growing up we had the ornaments that my mother bought over the years. I don’t remember making decorations in school. Maybe because the elementary school I attended was mostly Jewish or maybe in the 1950’s we didn’t make decorations. I don’t know. We didn’t string popcorn or cranberries. Wait! I think i remember a construction paper chain my sister and/or I made. It was short in length and in use.
Daughter and granddaughters hard at work
In 2008 my sister and I decided to get our children and grandchildren together and decorate ornaments for the Christmas tree. I ordered clear plastic bulbs and craft paint and brushes. My sister offered her house. On the appointed day we gathered for pizza, eggnog and decorating. The table in the dining room was covered, another table was set up, t-shirts and aprons went on over clothes and the fun began. Everybody, including interested adults, painted several ornaments. They popped open and the insides were painted then the ornament was popped back together. You can see in the photo that they were bright, clear, colorful. Unfortunately what you don’t see is that the paint never dried. It puddled on the bottom of the ornament and if there were multiple colors, which there often were, the puddle turned a muddy brownish/gray. We hung them on the trees anyway and packed them away hoping they’d look better the next year. They didn’t, although I think they were dry. I wonder what the grandchildren remember about it. I’ll have to check this year.
Our tree was always real. My sister, my mother and I would go to a tree lot to pick it about a week before Christmas. This was Detroit and in my memory it is cold and there is snow on the ground. We picked short needled trees of medium height and (of course) well shaped. We used a mix of glass balls my mother had collected over the years. When we were old enough, I can’t remember when that was, we helped decorate the tree – after my mother put on the beads, the tinsel and the multicolored lights. We had the big lights but they were pointy. My grandparents had round lights. The icicles went on last and there was no tossing. It was put on a few pieces at a time up and down all the branches. I remember one year that my mother did not want to trim the tree and was pretty unpleasant about my sister and me doing it and doing it NOW, but usually it was a pleasant evening, either Christmas eve or close to it. My mother usually had on the CBC, the Canadian station and by that time they would be playing Christmas music. The tree was always beautiful.
My maternal grandparents, Nanny and Poppy, waited until Christmas eve to buy the tree and set it up. The tree was always scrawny and thin but that was how their tree was supposed to be. Their ornaments were very old. I wonder what happened to them. What I remember are some little Santas that went on the tree and a jolly Father Christmas looking Santa that stood in the window with his removable pipe.
My paternal grandparents had a bigger house and a big, full, long needled tree that was in the corner of the living room next to the stairs. My uncles Louis and Hugh plus my aunt Barbara and cousin Ernie lived there in addition to my grandparents so there were always a lot of presents under the tree.
Christmas tree at Grandmother Cleages.
The black and white photographs are all from the same Christmas. I think it was 1962. I was still in high school, about 15. My sister was two years younger. Unfortunately these were all taken with a polaroid and they show it. The colored photo is from 1968. We had moved into the flat we shared with my grandparents. They were downstairs and we were upstairs. I had just graduated from Wayne State University and was about to head out into the world to seek my fortune. But that’s another story.
My Aunt Gladys Cleage Evans drew this pencil sketch of me after dinner at my grandmother Cleage’s dining room table. I did a sketch of her at the same time. It has been (thankfully) lost. At some point I tore the picture out of my journal notebook and glued it into a scrapbook. This was before I knew what glue can do. I’ve cleaned it up some. Many lively political discussions took place around that table. Click for other Sepia Saturday offerings.
This isn’t Thanksgiving. I don’t see a turkey. Most of the cousins are missing. But it’s the only family dinner I could find that wasn’t in the summer for this side of the family. My grandmother at the end of the table in photo one and my grandfather at the end in the other. My father chewing next to my grandfather.
Edward Cleage was my grandfather, Albert Cleage’s brother. This post is a chapter of a memoir written by his daughter, Beatrice in 1990.
Memories To Memoirs Written in 1990 By Beatrice Cleage Johnson Chapter 2 – Early Years of Life
Edward Cleage’s wife, Mattie (Dotson) Cleage with four of their five daughters. The baby is Juanita, The three older girls are Beatrice, Ola and Helen. Photograph in McMinn County, TN, about 1922.
1926 – I remember the early years of my life living at 216 Ridge Street. We used wood and coal stoves for heating and cooking. I will never forget the range stove that my mother cooked on. She made biscuits every morning for breakfast. There was a warmer at the top of the stove for left overs. I would always search the warmer for snacks. We had an outside toilet. Everyone that we knew had these, so we thought this was it. We never dreamed of ever having inside plumbing.
Alberta, Ola and Beatrice Cleage. Juanita’s older sisters. 1919 Athens, TN.
We had a water hydrant in the front yard and every night it was my job to fill the water buckets which had stainless steel dippers in them. My sister also helped with the chores. My other job was to clean the lamp chimneys. We used oil lamps. Momma always inspected them to see if they were clean. I decided then, if I ever made any money I would have electricity put in our house. And I did. I would babysit during the summers and save my money.
Charles Edward Cleage
I have always loved poetry. I learned many poems and stories from my mother and sisters, such as “Little Boy Blue” and “Little Red Riding Hood”. I think my favorite food was any kind of fruit. I was always happy to see Summer, when the apples and peaches were plentiful. I always looked forward to Christmas. We never saw any oranges until then. I remember my first doll. It had a china head and straw body. I loved it so much. Momma always made a special white coconut cake for Christmas, which I looked forward to. She made other pies and cakes, but the coconut was my favorite. We didn’t get too many toys for Christmas, but my sisters and I enjoyed everything we got for Christmas.
My father became ill and my mother was to be the sole support of the five girls. I was six years of age when my father passed away in 1926. My youngest sister, Juanita, was three years of age and she didn’t remember him, but I did. After he died my uncles took the two older sisters, Helen and Alberta, to Detroit to live with them. Alberta stayed and finished high school there, but Helen came back home and helped Momma care for the three of us. Ola, Juanita and myself went to high school here.
We always celebrated the holidays. Thanksgiving was very special as my birthday would sometimes come on Thanksgiving Day. We always had special food on these days. Pies, cakes, chicken, rabbit. On Halloween we always dressed in our older sister’s and mother’s clothes. One of the main pranks the boys would do was to push the outside toilets over. We used to beg them not to push ours over. In those days, there was no trick or treat. It was all tricks. Easter was also special. Momma would make us a new dress for Easter, and Helen always bought me black patent leather slipper.
Edward Cleage’s wife, Mattie (Dotson) Cleage with four of their five daughters. The baby is Juanita, The three older girls are Beatrice, Ola and Helen. Photograph in McMinn County, TN, about 1922.
Edward and Mattie Cleage are buried in Hammond Cemetery in Athens Tennessee. I took this photograph during a Cleage Family Reunion in 2004. It was my first and so far only visit to my Ancestral town. I hope to get back one day.
