Playing poker – my aunt Gladys with cigarette, me, my uncle Hugh, cousins Jan and Dale, my mother.Still playing poker – my mother with glasses, cousin Warren, cousin Ernie, aunt Gladys, cousin Jan and cousin Dale.The house on Old Plank Road. Between Milford and Wixom Michigan.
My mother and Henry bought this house about half an hour from Detroit about 1961. There was talk of moving there year around, but it never happened. We had a large garden and went up on weekends and for longer periods during the summer. We only owned 2 acres of the 40 acre farm, not including the barn. In 1967 someone bought the barn and started keeping chickens and pigs there, though they didn’t live on or near the property. The animals regularly escaped. The pigs dug up our garden and the chickens roosted on the porch. Before Henry and the man came to blows, they finally sold the house to the man with the animals.
These are my feet in my work boots. I wore them to milk the goats and work in the garden when it was muddy. It must have been muddy because I have my jeans tucked into my socks. I don’t remember any stripped socks but there I am wearing some. The rocking chair used to rock on Nanny and Poppy’s back porch.
In 1978 we lived in rural Simpson County, Mississippi with our 4 children, some chickens and some goats. While looking for a photograph of my feet in my work shoes I came across this batch of negatives which included a photo of my shoes.
Click to enlarge
In row one, we have my friend Teresa’s son, Palo, holding his baby sister. The baby’s father is holding her in the next. I cannot remember their names right now. Picture three is my family plus Palo. Last are baby and father again.
In row two, I’m outside with my three oldest daughters, Jilo, Ife and Ayanna. Next two photos are of our friend Robert with his and Ruth’s two children. Robert got us started with milk goats and rabbits. He had a very good herd of milk goats himself. Last is the photo of my shoes.
In row three, we start with Robert and children again. The ghost photo has their two and our three oldest. Next, my midwife, Ruth, is reading to my daughter, Ayanna, who she helped to deliver. Last, I’m reading while holding baby Tulani.
The three older girls are in the side strip with the baby crib my mother and her siblings used and all of my children used. Except for Ife who slept in a dresser drawer. You can see baby Tulani best in the bottom row dribbling milk. The house was built on stilts and was about 10 feet up in the air. I do not know why they built it like that because it was in tornado country with no water to flood anywhere nearby.
For more photographs click below. Some will be shoe related and some will not.
When I saw the theme for this weeks Sepia Saturday was film, I wanted to post a photo from a movie I remember wandering into one evening when I was about 4. We lived in St. John’s Congregational Church parsonage/community house in Springfield, Massachusetts where my father was pastor. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the name of the movie. I remember waking up from my nap and going down the hall to a big room where the movie was being shown. There I saw a larger then life, green genie coming horrifyingly out of a bottle. Perhaps it was “The Thief of Bagdad“, released in 1940. By 1950 it could have been available for showing in darkened rooms full of folding chairs to community groups. I did not stick around after the Genie started coming out of the bottle.
However, this movie is not sepia and it’s not from my family photo stash, so I kept looking. Finally I remembered finding an envelope of negatives (film) of me, my bear, Beatrice, and my grandfather, Dr. Albert B. Cleage Sr. They were taken in the Summer of 1948 in our backyard.
Click to enlarge
For more Sepia Saturday film related (or not) posts, click.
Photographer DeeDee behind worried Barbara, Poppy with Pearl & me (Kristin) laughing.
My cousin Dee Dee is the seven year old who took the photograph for Three in a Wagon. This photo was taken the same day in my grandparents backyard. Barbara still has her pistol and Pearl is still holding her pad and pencil plus Barbara’s boot which is hanging open by her right side. I seem to have traded the doll for a tin of powder?
On the back of the photograph my grandmother, Fannie (aka Nanny), wrote “Barbara Lynne 3, Pearl Michelle 2, Kristin Graham 4. May 30 – 1951. This was snapped by DeeDee.”
This photo was taken in my grandparents backyard. We spent most Saturdays back then at Nanny’s and Poppy’s playing with our cousins. On the left end of the wagon is my cousin Barbara holding a cowboy boot and a toy gun. In the middle is my sister Pearl who is writing madly. I am on the right end holding a doll and looking worried. My sister grew up to be a writer. I grew up to have 6 children. If only cousin Barbara had grown up to ride bucking broncos or live on a ranch or rob banks, the mirroring of the future would have been complete. This photograph was taken by Barbara’s older sister, Dee Dee who was 7 years old at the time.
Front: Barbara, Pearl. Back: Dee Dee the photographer, Poppy, Kristin
For more old photos, with or without dolls, click on the picture below.
I was born in Springfield, Massachusetts and lived there until I was almost 5. We moved in April of 1951 when my father got a church in Detroit, Michigan. Here we are on moving day, my sister and I, with two little girls I knew then but I don’t remember their names. I have a photo of the oldest girl, my sister and myself, standing on the parsonage porch. I also have a memory of the oldest girl pouring milk in my dinner, which I wasn’t going to eat anyway, but still… we were sitting at the little table in our room eating. My mother said if I’d eaten it in a timely fashion it wouldn’t have happened. No sympathy there. I remember another time when this little girl hit me and my mother told me if I didn’t hit her back, my mother was going to hit me. I hit her back. Don’t remember that she ever hit me again.
Me, sisters I cannot remember the names of, my sister Pearl
I saw them one more time, after we moved to Detroit. In the winter of 1967 my father returned to Springfield to preach for the Men’s Club. I went with him. We also went to New York on this trip where I bought my first pair of bell bottom jeans. My grandmother was so disappointed that I didn’t get a nice dress. But that isn’t this story. I remember the living quarters in the parsonage seemed so small on this trip. Nobody was living in them at the time. I’m sure the next minister got the congregation to move him back into separate quarters. We stayed with the family of these two girls. I was 20 so they were probably 20 and 18. The oldest one was going to a party. Well, actually she wasn’t going to the party, she was going to meet her boyfriend there and they were going elsewhere. Her father had forbidden her to see this boy. I was never a big party person and I sure didn’t want to be left at a strange party with a bunch of strangers. Needless to say, I didn’t go. The adults tried to persuade me that it would be “fun”. Ha. I didn’t give away her plan but I didn’t go. Wish I could remember her name, I’d look her up on facebook and see what she remembers about any of this.
Yesterday I received a very important hint in the comment section from Angella Lister of 37 Paddington. She suggested that I post my photographs larger. I responded that I had tried but they would overlap the other column if I made them x-large. She pointed out that I could make the columns wider by going to design/columns. Voila, bigger columns and bigger photos! I’ve spent today going back to older posts and enlarging the photographs. I love it!
Me at age 3, 1949. Photograph taken by Henry Cleage.
Week 46. Politics. What are your childhood memories of politics? Were your parents active in politics? What political events and elections do you remember from your youth?
My sister and I – 1952
My first memory of politics is the 1952 presidential campaign. My parents supported Adlai Stevenson and I remember waking up the day after the election and asking who won. I was quite disappointed when I found it was not Stevenson.
"On our back porch 1959. Kris 13 & Nannie. She's just turned 13."
I look so comfortable leaning into my grandmother. Nannie was 71. It was almost back to school time. One more year ahead at McMicheal Junior High for me. Right now I’m wishing I could go back there again, even for just one of those Saturdays in my grandparents backyard.
I remember being three years old. My parents and I ate dinner together while my younger sister, Pearl, played in her playpen, wearing her favorite fuzzy blue hat. The dinner table was in the living room/dining room of the parsonage of St. John’s Congregational Church in Springfield, Massachusetts where my father was the minister. I used to hide my food under my chicken wing bones because I was never very hungry. I thought nobody noticed.
Pearl in her tam. 1949, Springfield, Mass.
When my sister was older, the four of us ate meals together. We moved to Detroit when I was 4 and lived in two other parsonages. The first was on Atkinson we had a small dining room and ate there for all meals. My father’s parents lived down the street and he was often there for dinner leaving my mother, my sister and me eating alone.
The dining room on Atkinson. My mother is standing. You can see the back of my father’s head. His brother Louis is on the left. His brother Hugh is on the right and you can just see his sister Anna’s curl and chin. I guess Henry took the photo because he isn’t in it. I wonder why they are all at our table and where Pearl and I are. I remember those little fat turquoise salt and pepper shakers and the glass sugar and creamer. About 1952.
The next house, which was on Chicago Blvd, was huge and shared with the church. We always ate in the kitchen. My father teased me about being so skinny and told me I needed to eat more before I went down the bathtub drain or stuck in the chair because my bottom was so thin. When I was 8 years old I had my tonsils removed. I told my mother my fork wasn’t heavy any more. I started eating. There was roast beef and sliced tomatoes, chicken pot pies and oatmeal. I only remember eating one meal in the dining room. It was the Thanksgiving dinner right before my parents separated and we moved. My mother started teaching at the same elementary school I attended.
My mother, my sister and I moved to an upper flat on Calvert. What was supposed to be the dining room, was made into the television room and we ate our meals in the breakfast room while watching the pigeons nesting near the roof next door. We named one of them Bridie Murphy. We ate family style with bowls of food on the table that we served ourselves from. There was no free for all. “Please.” and “Thank you.” and “You’re welcome.” were expected and used. My mother cooked but my sister and I set the table and took turns washing the dishes and clearing the rack and table, usually with much whispering about who’s turn it was to do what. We whispered because my mother said she didn’t want to hear any arguing about it. I took cooking in junior high school and learned to make pineapple muffins which I made often. I remember fried chicken, mashed potatoes, jello salad and green beans.
When I was in 7th grade we moved to our own house on Oregon St. The kitchen was too small to eat in and we ate in the dining room which was pretty crowded with a piano, the dining room table and chairs and my mother’s desk (See photo below). My sister and I soon added cooking one meal a week to our dinner chores. I don’t remember what I cooked, aside from biscuits. I remember Pearl cooked a lot of hot dogs and corn bread.
My mother remarried when I was in high school and we all ate dinner together unless Henry was working late. He and my uncle Hugh had a printing shop at that time and often worked through the night. I remember Henry saying how important it was for a family to sit down to dinner together because it might be the only time of the day they spent together. As we got older there were interesting dinner table conversations about politics, what happened that day and more politics. Dinner continued to be a meal shared by all who were home as long as I lived there.
Not dinner, but this is the dining room of the house on Oregon Street about 1962. From left, my mother with the braid, sister Pearl, aunt Gladys, Me, my father.
When I was raising my own 6 children we ate together, although my husband was often working and did not get to eat with us. We continued to have meal time discussions and to serve family style. Now that my children are grown with their own families and dinner tables, my husband and I eat still eat our meals together at the table. Television has never been a part of our mealtimes.
My husband Jim eating at our present table in the dining/kitchen/living room. 2010.
The prompt: Week 32: Dinner Time. On a typical childhood evening, who was around the dinner table? Was the meal served by one person, or was it a free-for-all? What is dinner time like in your family today?
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