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
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. Venetian Drive is the street I now live on. When my husband retired in 2007, we decided to move to Atlanta where most of our children and grandchildren lived. We had looked at several houses when the realtor took us to see this one. The solarium told us this was the right house for us. There was also the wild yard that reminded us of the real woods we were leaving behind in Idlewild. Below is an article about the way the house is built. There was a studio with a kitchen and bathroom added later. The plan was to use it for an actual studio for silkscreen, sewing and other projects, but so far it has housed various family members as they settle in Atlanta. The best thing about the house is that we are close to the family. I must admit, I do wish it was on a lake and had a sunny garden spot.
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. Back to Springfield, Massachusetts for 643 Union Street. During the first 4 years of my life, my father, Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr, was pastor of the St. John’s Congregational church in Springfield, Massachusetts. After my father convinced the church to sell the parsonage to pay debts, we lived in the back of the church community house. Rooms upstairs were rented out. The church offices were in the front of the building down a long hall. When I was 22 we went back to visit. Everything seemed so much smaller.
The house as it looks today on Google Maps.
Memories: Laying on a blanket in the yard looking up at the clouds with my mother. Holding my sister, Pearl, on the way home from the hospital. Sitting on the basement steps while my grandmother washed newborn Pearl’s diapers. Making Halloween cupcakes with orange icing. Looking at the clearing evening sky after rain. Going to the ice cream parlor down the street with my sister and parents. Leafless trees against the winter sky. Huge statues going past the house in a religious procession. Yellow leaves on fall trees, a stream and a dog in the park. Watching the milkman and his horse from my bedroom window. Watching my mother being taken to the hospital on a stretcher down the long hall. A friend of my mother cutting her hair. Ribbon candy at Christmas.
Cousins visit – Dee Dee, me, Barbara, Pearl. Is Pearl holding a little book?
Me looking a lot like Pearl in the snow. I remember once the snow came to the top of the porch steps.
Pearl and Kris listening to a little plastic record.
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 I remember living on St. John Road in Simpson County, Mississippi. However, since I already have an “S” street coming up and I needed an “R” street, I am using our mailing address, Route 1, Box 173 1/2, Braxton, MS. I don’t have a photo of our mailbox so I am using a return address from a letter I wrote back then.
We moved to Simpson County, Mississippi in the fall of 1975. I was pregnant with our third daughter who was born April 12, 1976 at the home of our midwife. We had never lived in the real country before this move. Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, outside of Charleston, was the closest we had been. My husband was working as an organizer with the Emergency Land Fund (E.L.F.), a group to help black farmers save their land, which was being lost at an alarming rate. We first lived at Rt. 1 Box 38 where the Emergency Land Fund had a model farm. Maybe I should say we helped setting up a model farm, complete with rabbits in the pen and tomatoes in Green houses and our own milk goats and chickens. When the Emergency Land Fund wanted to move us to the Mississippi Delta to run a soy bean farm we opted to stay in Simpson County and Jim quit working for E.L.F. We had to move from the farm and so bought our first house and 5 acres several miles away. The house was a Jim Walters House that had been built by former volunteers to the Voice of Calvary Church in Mendenhall. You can buy the house in various stages of completion and the more you finish yourself, the cheaper the cost. It was from the plans in this picture. Unfortunately there was not a big lake in the yard and there was no danger of flooding. We were much more likely to have a tornado come through and that caused me many anxious nights as storms rolled through and we were 10 feet off the ground. There was indoor water for the bath and the kitchen sink but there was no indoor toilet. There was an outhouse outback. There was electricity and my husband, Jim, hooked up the washing machine. It wasn’t too hard to run pipes since they were all exposed under the house. That caused problems when we forgot to drip the water when temperatures dropped. Eventually we did get an inside toilet but it was several years coming. Three of my six children were born in Mississippi.
A letter I wrote home from Mississippi not too long after we moved in.
January 19, 1977
Dear Mommy and Henry,
Here’s your late gift box. I’m sending some books – not to keep but to read (smile). The Tatasaday book should be read with the Iks in mind. I hope the hats fit and the cake is o.k. It didn’t come out as god as the last but i figured i’d better send it on.
It snowed here – about 2 1/2 inches and it’s still on the ground! Boy oh boy – first time the temp went to 6 degrees here – ever and most snow since 1958. Jilo’s schools been closed 2 days. We went for a walk in the woods yesterday. it was nice. Jim’s been going out with a neighbor down the road to cut pulpwood. Do you have those big trucks up there? He likes it fine. But it keeps him busy and working nights.
The goats are fine. 1 month until 3 more are due. The chickens are giving us 6>9 eggs daily with 13 hens. Still 4 aren’t laying i think. The midwife’s parents came over and told me to keep them locked up until non and keep food and water there and they’d probably start up – and they did. The garden isn’t started – luckily for it.
Ife cut her hair in places so i just gave her an afro. She looks so grown up! It looks nice though. Ayanna has 4 teeth and crawls funny but gets wher she’s going and is still happy. I braided her hair last week in the front where it was long enough. it rounds her head up so she looks more like the other two round heads at that age. The sun just went down and it sure droped the temp in here. We have solar heat benefit of those 2 south facing double doors.
Jim’s fine and we both read and liked the book. We had his other one – Welcome to Hard Times – have you read it? I’m ok too. Not keeping a Betty Crocker house but at least keeping up with the dishes. Jilo’s fine too, has had a sub(stitute teacher) since Christmas vacation and seems to make them work a bit harder – the teacher who had that grade before.
Write soon – Love Kris
P.S. Ife did the farm picture. She did it by looking as at a picture in Jilo’s cook book. Isn’t that good perspective and stuff. I told her we’ll start doing from life soon.
Also, the pigs still alive in this cold. it’s a wonder.
Going to milk the goats.
For more about living in Mississippi, including goats, killing chickens, heating with a wood stove, midwives, friends and work shoes read these posts.
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. Amazing I know, but Q is a letter I do not have a street for. Someone suggested I do “A quiet street” for Q so this post will be about the house on Water Mill Lake, the quietest place I ever lived. Except for that one night something was killing something out in the forest. And there were those duck feathers strewn around the pathways as the ducks down the road disappeared, one by one.
Photos from 1976 to 2007 taken on Watermill Lake, Lake County, MI.
In 1976, soon after the birth of my third daughter, my mother and Henry moved from the house on Fairfield in Detroit to the house on Water Mill Lake in Lake county. Water Mill is a much smaller lake than Idlewild and is less than a 5 minute drive away. Lake county is a 4 hours drive from Detroit. The house was separated from it’s lake front by a dirt road. In the back, through trees and underbrush, was the Pere Marquette River. This house was in the Manistee National Forest. Houses were few and far between. My mother and Henry planted a wonderful organic garden, fished and froze the bluegills they caught for winter eating and installed a wood furnace to cut down on the heating bill. I would go up for several weeks in the summer during June, with my children after the Williams Reunion in St. Louis. We lived in Simpson County Mississippi at that time.
In 1978, shortly after the birth of my fourth daughter, my mother was diagnosed with uterine cancer. She had noticed bleeding but ignored it for too long and after several years of treatments that took them to Detroit far too often, she died in 1982. Just after the birth of my son. Henry continued to live there by himself, seeing his brothers, sisters and friends who came up to Idlewild in the summer. In the winter there weren’t too many visitors.
In 1986 we moved to the house on Idlewild Lake. Of course Henry became part of our life, eating dinner with us often, us visiting him and him visiting us. He contributed lively discussion, the same kind I remembered from my growing up years, to my children’s growing up. In 1996, shortly after being diagnosed with liver cancer, Henry died. He left us his house. We rented it out for several years. Our oldest daughter lived there when she returned to Lake County as Assistant principal of the local high school.
In January of 2005, with only one of the children left at home and serious foundation problems with the house on Idlewild Lake, we decided to move to Henry’s. We added a few windows and had the attic turned into another bedroom. We had to replace the septic system which took out a few trees behind the garage so we put a garden in back there. We bought the lot next door at an auction. There were deer in the yard, racoons trying to get into the garbage cans. Racoons are so much bigger then they look in children’s picture books. At one time there had been a lot of people who came to that road to fish but the owner of the property had posted it so there was not much traffic on the road and not many people coming to fish. The lake was too small for jet skis and speed boats, that was nice. We had to walk up to the corner to get the mail because the mail man didn’t come down that road to deliver. There were only 4 houses on the road and only ours and one at the corner were occupied all the time.
Our third daughter moved home after graduating from University of Michigan while searching for a job. The spring of 2005 another of our daughters and her family moved to Idlewild on the way from Seattle to wherever she found a job, which turned out to be Atlanta. During that summer we had visits from the other children. They stayed between our house and the old house on Idlewld Lake. It was good to have everybody close by again. In the fall of 2005, our youngest son moved to Atlanta to work with AmeriCorps, then the second daughter moved to Atlanta. Somewhere in there the third daughter moved to Indianapolis for her new job. Our two elderly dogs died. We were down to one cat. My husband and I were alone for the first time in forever. It was wonderful. It was peaceful.
In 2006 our daughter who lived in Detroit moved to Atlanta. In the summer of 2007 we helped our third daughter move from Indianapolis to Atlanta and decided to look around and see what we could find because it seemed to make sense that we all settle in one place to be both support and company for each other. We found the house with the solarium (which is on Venetian so I will be writing about it in a few more posts) and that decided us. Just as the Michigan housing market went downhill, we sold the Water Mill house and bought the one Atlanta just before that market went downhill. We sometimes talk about how we could have done it differently and held on to that house in Idlewild while spending some of the winter months in Atlanta. Moving made sense but I really miss being on the water and being out of the city.
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.
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.
My bedroom.
The bathroom.
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”
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.
Eastern Market today.
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.
