I used to like making small places outside. The first one I remember was under the back porch when we lived in a two family flat on Calvert in Detroit. The porch above wasn’t high enough up for me to stand up, but it wasn’t so low I had to crawl in. I found bricks around and built a two or three brick high wall around two sides. I don’t remember doing much out there after I got it together. I was about nine years old at that time. My sister remembers playing marbles there. I did make a nice, smooth dirt floor.
Me beside my quilt tent, held up on the former chicken house with bricks.
In Poppy’s and Nanny’s yard we made tents out of quilts. We would use them for the duration of whatever game we were playing. My Quilt Tent – 1958
Later when we lived on Oregon, I built a snow house against the garage one winter. Again, I don’t remember hanging around in it. After all it was winter in the 1950s when winter was freezing and snowy for months. I also cleaned up the garage and fixed it up as a place I could go. But it was a garage and I remember the smell wasn’t that pleasant. Rats around the garbage cans? I never saw any, but I gave that one up.
Building the stick and leaf hut.
At Old Plank, I made a stick frame and wove large leaves into it. As you can see I even built a campfire circle of stones and had a fire going at least once.
Enjoying a campfire in front of the hut.
Henry holding the long snake found in the hut
One morning I came out and found a snake curled comfortably inside. It was cool and the snake was sluggish. Henry did what he always did when coming upon a snake, he killed it. I don’t remember the particulars, did he beat it to death or did he shoot it? What sort of snake was it? Above he is holding it up for the photographer, probably my mother. I do remember an incident decades later in Idlewild when Henry did kill a snake at my Aunt Barbara’s with a blow as I tried to persuade him it was a harmless snake that ate mice. He paid me no mind.
Taken at Old Plank about 1963. Me with my cousins, Blair, Jan and Dale. They seem to be trying to pose for the photographer while I am about to cause trouble with that ball. I was a senior at Northwestern High School in Detroit. Old Plank was 30 minutes outside of Detroit near Wixom. We had 2 acres with a big house and although there was talk of moving there, we didn’t. We went for weekends to get out of the city until 1967, after the riot when the printing business lost the businesses that burned or left. At the same time, a man bought the barn and let his chickens and hogs run lose. Before he and Henry came to blows, they sold him the house.
There were two more photographs taken that same day. I think they were taken in the order shown below. My uncle Henry took the photos and developed them at the print shop that he and Hugh ran at the time – Cleage Printers.
My sister Pearl as the anthropoid, about 1961 at Old Plank.
My family had a tradition of chasing the children around while acting like a monster. My Uncle Louis was the master and didn’t need any sort of mask or costume to send us screaming into the lake at Idlewild. He just twisted up his face and hands and came towards us and that was it.
My uncle Henry got the mask above from somewhere and incorporated that into the scary chases. You had to holler out “Anthropoid, anthropoid, don’t kill me yet!” when he got too close, in order to escape. Aside from putting on the mask for photo ops, I remember once time we put it on, wrapped in a blanket and sat on the lawn toward the road where we hoped to scare drivers passing the house. I don’t remember any wrecks so I guess no harm was done.
By the time my children came along, my cousin Warren used to take them on a bear hunt. I remember one time that he worked it out with another cousin to be out in the woods where he drove and stopped and told the kids, who as I remember were in the back of a pickup with a camper, that they were waiting there to see the bear. The other cousin starting growling and knocking on the truck and finally my cousin drove off, it was dark or almost dark. He said they had a close escape. Later, when we were all inside, the other cousin came around tapping on the windows. The bear!
My cousin and me playing in the sand on the beach in Idlewild during the visit my uncle Louis chased her into the lake. July 1955.
Nobody was terrified of the bears or monsters, well maybe my cousin Barbara who did run into the lake, but mostly it was the enjoyable kind of being scared while knowing you are safe.
I was going through some old notebooks where I used to write during the 1990s. There are schedules, poems, story parts and sometimes journal entries. I was happy to find my memories of cars in my life.
Betsy
We didn’t own a car until I was 7. My mother went back to school to get her teaching certification when I was 5. When I was 7, she had her degree and was teaching at the school I attended. She brought a gray Ford. She always bought Fords because her father worked at Fords. My father’s family always bought Chevys. Why, I do not know.
My mother and sister with Betsy.
We called our light gray car Betsy. Every Saturday we would pick up my mother’s sister and her daughters. The 5 of us would ride across town, usually taking the Blvd, from the West Side to Theodore on the East side to spend the day at my grandparent’s house.
I remember getting a flat tire once on the way home. My mother changed the tire while we ran up and down the sidewalk. I liked the drive down through the exotic crowded flats and houses. All those people outside grilling or sitting on porches. The neighborhoods looked lots more exciting than where we lived in a flat on Calvert. More people, older houses. We passed through areas full of white people up from the south and black bottom, full of black people up from the same south.
Before the car we would catch the bus on Saturdays. Often having to get off and walk because I got bus sick. There was a big bridge over an industrial area, junkyards, railroad tracks… that we had to walk across. My sister Pearl and I ran across, looked over the railing, having a great time. I later learned my mother was scared to death of heights, but she hid it so we wouldn’t be.
My father’s car
Anyway, back to cars. My father didn’t buy a car until after my parents were divorced. How did we get to church on Sunday or over to his mother’s? I can’t believe we walked… I’ll have to ask ( later note: unfortunately I didn’t and now it’s too late.) My father always bought a car with no extras, no clock, no radio. They must have been new.
More Betsy
My mother always got a used car. Her father, who we called Poppy, went with my mother when she decided to trade in Betsy for a newer used car. As we drove into the used car lot, the door flew open. We left with a newer black Ford.
I recall my cousin Barbara getting her thumb or finger closed in the car door. She very calmly said “Aunt Doris, my finger is in the door.” Nobody paid her any attention. She didn’t sound like she had her finger in the door. Then she started crying and Mommy opened the door.
Lizzie in the background. My great grandmother, Great Aunt Daisy, Grandmother Fannie, Aunt Mary V. and my mother Doris.
Lizzie
The first car in my life was Lizzie, Poppy’s old Ford. It was black with a running board and awning-striped shades on the windows. We pulled them down when using the car to change when we went swimming at Belle Isle. Poppy didn’t have a garage. The back of his yard was taken up in a large vegetable and flower garden with a winding path and bird feeder. It’s all torn down now and cement block/razor wire surround the whole block now an industrial storage area.
Poppy rented garage space from a neighbor across the alley. Was it the family with all the kids? I don’t remember. I do remember my mother telling me one of their sons mentioned to Poppy something about his pretty granddaughter and I figured she was going to say Dee Dee, my older, beautiful cousin. At the time I was skinny with glasses and hair in two braids. I was truly surprised when she said he was talking about me. Come to think of it, he was skinny with glasses too. Anyway, I don’t remember ever talking or playing with him or any of my grandparent’s neighbors. We stayed in the house or yard making up plays, building fairy castles, playing imaginary land and swinging.
Back to Lizzie. After we took the bus over to visit, Poppy would drive us home. Maybe while we were there the mothers went grocery shopping. I remember how we grocery shopped in Springfield, Massachusetts pre-car … we walked.
Crowded cars
We all squeezed into Lizzie for our yearly visit to the zoo. We granddaughter all spent the night before the trip – 4 girls smashed into a double wide cot in my grandfather’s room. If I woke up at night I was doomed to lay there and listen to his loud snoring.
Let’s see, Poppy, my mother, her sister and 4 or 5 kids in one car?! Maybe we were in Betsy by this time – three adults in front and 5 girls squeezed into the back seat. Singing “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” and other camp classics that Dee Dee taught us.
I remember going up to Idlewild in my other grandfather’s big green buick in the 1950s. The car was full and some of us (including me) were sitting on the floor. This doesn’t make sense, but I remember it.
Pink Cadillac
Flash forward. Oh, wait, I used to have to go to bed at 8 o’clock or maybe earlier. Way before I was sleepy. I’d watch the girls next door playing up in their attic playroom. They were our age. They had an awful, mean dog named Dutchess that tried to bite me once, so we never went over there. My father had a big stick he carried to knock the dog silly when she ran out at him. One night I saw a pink Cadillac parked on the street in front of my house. A pink Cadillac. It wasn’t full dark yet, dusk. I was kneeling at the open window and there it was. This was in the days of black and dark colored cars. I was amazed.
Henry’s red and white car. The photo was taken from the house porch.
Henry’s Car
After Henry and my mother married they spent many weekends driving around looking for a place in the country. Pearl often chose to stay with my father and so it would be the three of us. We drove around Canada, but the houses on the lake – What lake? – On the beach, the beaches in Canada were public beaches and there seemed to be lots of teenagers racing cars up and down them. I always liked trips. Sitting in the back seat looking at all the stories going by.
Henry’s car was a red and white Chevrolet. It always struck me as chunky. That was on Oregon and there was no driveway so the cars (Chevy and Ford) were parked out front. When we went to Nanny’s and Poppy’s we drove via the highway. We passed over an area of junk piles, We’d gotten into the habit of saying “If this bridge broke, we’d land right in the junk yard where we belong.” Henry took this (for some reason) as a personal insult and we had to stop that.
Back to the repair shop
Once we gave my Uncle Hugh a ride way out Grand River somewhere to pick up his car from where it had been in the shop. The drive was long. On the way home, he stopped suddenly for a red light. We were right behind him. Blam! Back to the shop he went.
A big light blue car that must have been Henry’s right after the white and red car, at Old Plank. When this car was worn out they said they would have given it to me but since I couldn’t drive they gave it to my cousin Warren. I don’t think it ever moved out of his driveway until it was towed away.
Driving to Old Plank Road
We used to drive to Old Plank Road, near Wixom and Milford, our two country acres with a big, old farm house on it. We’d drive out Grand River or take the Freeway. My mother and Henry would sing songs like “Indian Love Call.” We drove passed a Square Dance clothing shop. I would have loved to have one of those dresses.
Learning to Drive
I started learning how to drive when I was 16 or 17. Henry was teaching me out at Old Plank. I wasn’t all that interested in learning to drive but I learned to drive to Wixom and even went 40 mph down the black top. The end of my early driving career came when I had turned into a driveway and was supposed to back out but instead I went into a ditch. Just as my cousins drove up.
I tried learning to drive again in Detroit when Jilo, my first child, was a baby. My husband Jim was teaching me but there was too much traffic. It rattled me and I gave it up and continued to ride the bus or catch a ride. This worked when we moved to Atlanta where my second daughter Ife was born, but not after we moved out of the city. I finally had to learn to drive. I started learning in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina and ended up getting my license while pregnant with third daughter Ayanna, in Simpson County, Mississippi in 1976. Our car at that time came with the job and was a little gray Volkswagen.
Our cars from then to now
After the Volkswagon we bought our first car. It was at an auction – a light green post office jeep. The only seat was the drivers seat. My husband Jim bolted an old kitchen chair onto the passenger side and the kids just sat in the back. There were no seat belt laws in those days. After that, we had an old car with a hole rusted in the backseat floor. My daughter Jilo put her foot through that hole once to see what would happen. Luckily, nothing. There was a blue car of some type and there was a Datsun truck – red, with a camper. We sat in the front and the kids rode in the back.
After leaving Mississippi we moved to Excelsior Springs Missouri. My brother-in-law left us his black rabbit Volkswagen. It was a bit small for two adults and five children. The back shelf came out and several of the children would ride back there, sort of in the trunk but with their heads coming up where the shelf was supposed to be. Eventually we bought our first new car – a much needed station wagon. It died of a fire years later. Nobody was in the car or hurt. The Idlewild fire department came and hosed the car well and that was the end of it. There followed a series of used cars, a blue van, and as Jim retired and we moved to the big city, we bought a newish used car that I hope will last us another 20 years. Or however long we keep driving.
I’m reading the paper with my mother. 1962, Old Plank Road. Near Wixom, MI.
This is a small undated Polaroid snap shot. I dated it by looking at other photos from that year that were dated. It was probably taken in the summer or early fall. I was 16 and would be a high school sophomore in the fall of that year.
What were we reading about? I decided to look up what happened during 1962. It was an eventful year. Lot’s of above ground nuclear tests; countries in Africa and the West Indies gaining their freedom; Civil Rights demonstrations in Albany, GA; the Berlin wall; Thalidomide; the Cuban missile crisis and George Wallace winning the governorship of Alabama are a few stories we could have been reading.
In February of 2013 I did post about reading the newspaper on a Sunday morning Reading The Newspaper – 1962. Appears my mother and I did a lot of tandem newspaper reading.
Eddie Evans, Gladys Cleage Evans, Pearl Cleage, Henry Cleage.
I found these photographs today while looking for another. Gladys and Pearl are eating watermelon while Eddie and Henry are not. This was at the house on Old Plank near Milford, MI, in 1960.
While looking for summer photographs, I came across this photograph of my grandfather Graham and this poem by Edgar A. Guest that my my grandmother Graham saved in her scrapbook.
Mershell “Shell” Graham.Taken in 1962, Milford, MI. on Old Plank Road.
From my grandmother Fannie’s scrapbook. “That’s my Shell” 1-25-59.
I was 16 and my mother was 39 in this photograph. We were getting ready to go bike down Old Plank Road. I was bare footed. We used to bike past the neighbors on the hill and down to a pond that was small and weedy. Sometimes we skated there in the winter. The neighbors had two big dogs that were often outside and we would peddle fast to get past before the dogs got to the road. We’d take enough time riding to the pond and looking at the water for them to go back up and then we’d repeat the ride back to the house. The dogs never got to us.
Barefoot biking.
I got my first bike on my 8th birthday. It was a basic, blue bike. I didn’t know how to ride and it took me so long to learn that my mother finally threatened to give the bike to my cousin Barbara if I didn’t learn how to ride. I don’t remember anybody holding the bike and running with me. I do remember practicing in the driveway of the house on Chicago until I learned to ride. At that point I only rode around the block.
When I was older, I remember going bike riding all around the neighborhood with my cousins, Dee Dee and Barbara. We rode in the street, which I wasn’t supposed to do. My sister and I used to go bike riding too but we usually had a destination – the library or my grandmother’s house. I lost that bike when I left it unchained outside of a store on W. Grand Blvd. We were on the way home from the Main Library. Later it was replaced by a three speed bike. I had that one up at Old Plank until we sold the place and then I had it in the Detroit. It too was stolen when my husband left it unchained on a porch one night.
When we lived in Idlewild, from 1986 to 2007, I used to ride my Uncle Hugh’s old bike. It had a bigger than average seat which made it more comfortable for me to ride, however it was old and had been through a lot and the tires were sort of crooked. I enjoyed riding it the 4 miles around the lake and for one memorable 5 mile ride into town with my daughter, Ife. She was going to work so she had 6 hours between her rides. I had to turn around and ride 5 miles back. If the streets around my house here were flat and I didn’t see rottweilers trotting down the street alone, I would get a bike and ride now. I know I am not going to take a bike to a park to ride.
Doris Graham Cleage picking green beans at Old Plank 1963
I’ve been thinking about my mother these last few days. My mother, Doris Graham Cleage, was picking vegetables in the garden at Old Plank. I wrote about the farm in my post Playing Poker. What else was my mother doing in 1963, aside from maintaining a large, organic garden? She turned 40 February 12 that year and lived on the west side of Detroit at 5397 Oregon with her second husband, Henry Cleage and her two daughters Kris, 17 and my sister Pearl, 14. Both of us were students at Northwestern High School. Henry was printing in those days and putting out the Illustrated News.
She was in her 5th year of teaching Social Studies at Roosevelt Elementary School. She took two post masters degree classes at Wayne State University that year, Urban Geography in the winter quarter and Constitutional Law in the fall quarter.
There was a lot going on in those days and my family was involved in a lot of it. To see what was going on in the news in 1963 click here –> Politics
To read about the March To Freedom in Detroit, when over 100,000 people walked down Woodward Avenue to protest the violence in Birmingham, Alabama, in July 1963 click here –> Walk to Freedom.
To see Henry and the press at Cleage Printers click here –> Henry printing
