After writing about my grandparent’s house the other day, I came across this poem my cousin Dee Dee wrote. She said I could post it, so here it is.
In the collards - Pearl, Barbara, Poppy, me 1952.
POPPY’S HOUSE
By Dee Dee McNeil
Snow ice cream
from the window sill.
A kerosene stove
for the bathroom chill.
A tub with feet
like lion paws
clung to the floor
with porcelain claws.
A house that smelled
of sachet bags,
of moth cakes, greens,
and fresh bleached rags.
A house that rang
of happy things
with warmth that only love can bring.
Poppy’s house.
Here I am starting my one and only knitting project. When it was done the edges curled up. It was light blue, very long and wrapped around my head and face during the cold Detroit winters. I added fringe to the ends and wore it all through college. I’m wearing it below in 1969. To see other SepiaSaturday offerings click HERE.
Christmas 1968. L to R My sister Pearl, me, Nanny in the window.
I can’t find a picture from Christmas 1967 but I think we looked pretty much the same. I bought that pea jacket at the army surplus in Santa Barbara when I was there for a student conference, summer of 1967. I cut my hair that summer too, right after the Detroit riot. Not sure if Pearl had cut hers yet in 1967. I have looked at this photo many times but this was the first time I noticed my grandmother looking out of the window at us. We had moved to the flat with my grandparents that fall, so it’s a different house, but it’s Christmas time and I look the same. I had just graduated from Wayne State University with a major in Drawing and Printmaking and a minor in English. On January 2, I caught the Greyhound to San Fransisco. But that’s not today’s memory. Here is something I wrote in 1967.
Christmas 1967
It was Christmas and cold. Snow blew wet, sticking to my coat and hair. We went to the shortest corner, down Northfield, past three Junior High girls laughing and cars sliding slow on the ice. The sky was gray behind bare branches. Snow fell quiet, without any wind. My sister and I talked some about…I can’t even remember. We crossed to Pattengill Elementary, went down past the school and stopped outside the empty play field.
I got out my new movie camera and told her to walk away, down toward Colfax, and not to act silly. She started and I turned on the camera, feeling silly myself, taking pictures like a country bumpkin in the city. She started lunging to one side, sort of a half skip with some serious drag to it. I told her to be serious. She did, then walked back. I tried to keep the camera from moving. It stuck and I turned it off twice with a heavy click, jarring, blurring the picture.
We went inside the playground. I shot some more of her walking up and away. A little boy was sledging down a driveway into the street. She said, come on take some behind the trash cans. It’ll be good. I shot some more. Discovered while she was behind the garbage cans I was out of film.
Both of us bent over the camera and tried to shut it off, but we couldn’t. My hands were cold. Red, wet and cold. I put on my gloves and we unscrewed the battery door with her suitcase key to shut it off.
We walked back toward the far corner. I wrote BLACK POWER in the snow, and then PATRIA O MUERTE and VENCEREMOS. Pearl asked what else can we write but I didn’t know. We went on out of the playground and down Epworth talking about how bad somebody can be to you and you still love them. We went on down Allendale. There was a dog sleeping on a porch. Pearl said, loud, keep on sleeping! And he did.
It was getting dark and still snowing. Cold, wet, quiet snow. Grey like the inside of a shell and quiet like when your ears are stuffed up from a cold. Some girls went by across the street, talking loud. We turned back down Ironwood and went home.
Christmas 1968 at my Grandmother Cleage’s house in Detroit. Gladys far left. My father’s head front left, Maria, Blair and Anna front and enter. Henry on the couch. Winslow laughing and Louis smoking in the back.
I remember Santa from my childhood but it wasn’t an important part and I don’t have any memorable memories. My cousin Anna did though and here is one of hers from our family newsletter, the Ruff Draft 1991. In the photograph above Maria is the child on the left and Anna is the child on the right. Their father, Winslow is behind them at the door smiling in profile.
Christmas Memory
Anna writes, My memories aren’t all that clear, but there is one that shines bright in my mind. It was one Christmas Eve, when Maria and I were about six and eight years old. We had just tucked ourselves into bed for the night. Suddenly we heard a tinkling, jingling sound. We both looked at each other with mouths open wide and eyes sparkling with excitement. We knew it was Santa for sure. We scrambled out of bed and raced for the steps. We got to the landing, almost tumbling down the stairs in our haste, and there he was…NOT Santa Claus, but DADDY! There he was, grinning from ear to ear, holding a glass, hitting it gently with a silver spoon. If we had had our pillows we would have pelted Dad right there, but instead we just laughed hilariously. It was and still is a great memory.
Me at Old Plank in 1962. I was 15, the year after the memory.
Another memory from Ruff Draft 1990, this time mine.
I remember the first year I was old enough to try and buy presents for all my relatives. I must have been about 13 or 14. I just had my allowance. I saved up and got presents for several great aunts, seven or eight cousins, parents, a sister, numerous aunts and uncles and my grandparents. There was a dime store in Milford, Michigan where we used to go when we spent time up at the farm on Old Plank Road. There I bought several perfume atomizers for the great aunts and a set of wooden alphabet blocks for little Blair and a cast iron trivet with a country snow scene for my mother. I bought something for everybody. I don’t know why I didn’t make cookies or something. I don’t remember how anybody liked their gifts but I worried a lot about if they would or not.
This is another memory from the December 1990 Ruff Draft, a family newsletter we put out for 5 years. My daughter Ayanna interviewed my Uncle Henry and wrote this from the interview. The photo was probably taken several years earlier than the memory. It was taken by the house on Scotten on the old west side of Detroit about 1925.
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Henry Cleage remembers when his Aunt Gertrude won a nice new shiny bike. He just knew she would give it to him for Christmas. On Christmas Eve he was sitting in the living room with his father after the younger kids had gone to bed. His father said, “Henry, go over to your Aunt’s and get that bike … for Hugh.” Henry thought he would never enjoy Christmas again, but that after seeing Hugh so happy with the bike he decided it was all worth it. Even so he said that Christmas was never the same for him. It had lost some of the magic.
From 1990 until 1996 we put out a family newsletter called the Ruff Draft. In December of 1990 we solicited Christmas Memories from our readers, who were mostly relatives. On the days of the Advent Calendar series when I don’t have anything to say I’ve decided to run one of these memories. Here is the first one from my mother’s older sister. In the photo is my little mother Doris (1923-1982) and her sister Mary V. (1921-2009). It was taken in their backyard on Detroit’s east side.
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I can remember Poppy waiting till Xmas Eve to go and get our tree. We (Doris and I) usually went with him…and bringing it home to decorate. He had a stand that he made himself. We went up to the attic to haul down boxes of decorations that had been carefully put away. Some very old. I can remember one little fat Santa that Mom always put in the window, he had a pipe in his mouth. Doris and I shared a bedroom which had the door to the attic in it. When we were at the “believe in Santa Claus stage” we thought that once we went to sleep he would tip down the attic stairs and put our toys, etc, under said tree. I think I laid awake waiting for the old boy to show up. Of course I never saw him ’cause I went to sleep, but the stuff was always under the tree. Mom was always busy in the kitchen getting stuff together for Xmas dinner and the house would be full of wonderful odors. If Xmas fell on a Sunday, we would go to church. And we used to have lots of snow. Although we came up during the depression, we always had something to eat and something under the ole tree even if it wasn’t what we asked for. It was a tradition that Xmas dinner was at our house and Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma Turner’s. Daddy cooked the ole turkey and made the most delicious stuffing. He could cook. Mom learned from him. She couldn’t boil water when they got married. Dad taught her cause he had worked in restaurants as a young man.
My Aunts both identified the woman in this photo as Mary Agnes Miller and the man as George Payne. He appeared in this blog earlier with his brother Paul and my uncle Hugh here. One of my aunts says that Mary Agnes was very striking, and a nice person. The guys fell over each other over her. She had beautiful skin and although Mary didn’t act like a diva, people treated her like one. My aunt attended Wayne State University with both Mary Agnes and George.
My other cousin wrote “Mom said that Mary Agnes married Ed Davis. He was the first black owner of a car dealership, Studabakers. So, you might be able to google some information on him. Mom also said that Mary was very active in the Delta sorority. Hope that lets you dig further. :).” You can see the type of reputation I have among family members – I ask questions and then google people. I did google him and came up with quite a few articles and photographs. His life was very interesting. The link under the photo will take you to one article as well as being the source of the photo.
George Payne was Paul’s brother. He was not cool, my aunt said, but was goofy and very nice. I tried googling George with no luck, but I did find his wedding photograph in the family photo box. I really need to scan the rest of those photos and mount them in an album. I remember his wife Velma who was a librarian at the Oakman branch library where I used to go as a child. The book I remember best from that library is “Bed knob and Broomstick: or How to be a Witch in 10 Easy Lessons.” Velma Payne died this year I found when I googled “Velma Payne Detroit Public Library” (without the quotes) and a Detroit Retired City Employees newsletter with deaths by month came up.
Both aunts agreed that the original photograph was not taken at the Meadows but do not recognize where it was taken.
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.
