“J” is for Joy Road

Family History Through the Alphabet

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.

Some Joy Road memories

My first elementary school, Brady, was on Joy Road and Lawton.  I remember walking  past Sacred Heart Seminary for a deserted Joy Road block to get there.

When I was in college I worked on several of my father’s political campaigns. I remember passing out campaign literature across from Brady Elementary school, where the voting was taking place. I was wearing a white shirtwaist dress I only wore as a freshman and it was hot so it must have been the 1965 election when my father ran for Detroit Common Council. He never won any of the offices he ran for and did it for educational purposes. There were no other people passing out campaign material.  I don’t even remember any voters. I do remember one man in a suit who tried to convince me that I could earn a lot of money as a prostitute. I told him I wasn’t interested and eventually he left. When my ride picked me up later I told them I was through for the day. I wasn’t afraid, but it was very weird and unpleasant.

Also in 1965 while a student at Wayne State University I attended a few Kiswahili classes that were held in a building on Joy Road at Grand River. My mother came to pick me up and said it was no place for me to be. That is why I speak no Swahili today. Robert Higgins was the only other student. The teacher was from Kenya and a very nice, soft spoken man.  I can’t remember his name.

Me in 1965.

Sometimes I took the Joy Road bus instead of walking home from the Dexter bus stop. The bus stop was right across the street from the Grand River-Dexter bus stop on Tireman. The bus turned down Beechwood and dropped me off two blocks from home.

I found this description in my journal from June 25, 1969. It is  the only piece I’ve ever written about a bus. I don’t know why I found the ride funny instead of being terrified.

June 25, 1969

Yesterday, on the way to a photo show, I was on the Clairmont bus on Joy Road.  the driver was crazy, he acted like he was taking a somebody to the hospital,  weaving the bus in and out between cars.  that was bad enough – old ladies rocking, weaving and falling, when suddenly a red light backs up traffic. He pulled belligerently into the lane of oncoming traffic, which lucky for us was empty at the time, and raced 2 blocks in the wrong lane to bully his way in front of some poor car when the light changed. I was cracking up. Other people weren’t, just me.  I couldn’t control myself laughing, mouth open, gasping for breath. they probably thought I had lost my mind. So ridiculous, can’t even imagine a regular car doing that. I just don’t know, I really don’t.


Idlewild 1953

Cleages, Photographs, , , ,
Front – Pearl and me. Back – my grandmother, Pearl Cleage, uncle Henry and grandfather Albert B. Cleage sr.

We were at my uncle Louis’ cottage in Idlewild.  I remember my grandmother reading to us from  the book “Told Under the Red Umbrella” that summer. The electricity went off during a storm once and she read to us by the kerosene lamps until the lights came back on.

Marilyn Makes a Trunk – 1956

Grahams, sepia saturday
Marilyn making a trunk being held by our grandfather, Poppy.

When I was growing up my sister, my cousins and I always made a yearly trip to the Detroit zoo with our mothers and grandfather, Poppy.  My youngest cousin Marilyn was impressed by the elephants trunk this year and went around making her arm into a trunk afterwards.

Marilyn making a trunk. Her sister Barbara and me back there in the background.
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“I” is for Inglewood Court

Family History Through the Alphabet, Williams

This post continues the 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 is the first street so far that has not been in Detroit. Inglewood Court is in Rockhill Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. My in-laws moved there about 1969 from Cabanne St. in the city.  The youngest 4 of the 12 children were still living at home.  We first visited in 1971 when our oldest daughter was 9 months old. Linda was 16 and passed her driving test. Micheal was 12 and getting some jokes ready for April Fools day. Monette was 10 and Debbie was 8. Mr. Williams had not started any of the major renovation projects that were ongoing, such as raising the roof and adding a bedroom, adding stairs and then moving them from one place to another, adding an eat in kitchen across the back of the house. Amazing projects that rarely were completed as he would think of a better way to do it before he finished.

The black and white photos (except the one on the bottom row, 4th from the right of my brother-in-law Chester) were taken on my first visit in 1971. The other were taken over the years at family reunions. Babies were born. We lost my in-laws and three of their sons. The grandchildren – my generations children – grew up and started another generation. We who were in our twenties and thirties when the reunions started are now older then my husband’s parents were. My children are older than I was then.

My husband crossing the lawn in 2004. Soon after, the house, along with all the others in the cul-de-sac were condemned so that a shopping mall and parking lot could be built.

Here is how the block looks now.  Very sad as there was nothing wrong with the houses. And there were already many stores and shops in the area.

“H” is for Linwood and HOGARTH

Biography, Cleages, Family History Through the Alphabet, ,

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.

The church still stands on the corner of Linwood and Hogarth in Detroit.  It has gone through several names through the years, beginning as Central Congregational Church in 1953. It became Central United Church of Christ after the merger of the Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational Churches in 1957. In 1967, after a large mural of the Black Madonna was painted for the Sanctuary, it became the Shrine of the Black Madonna.  My father was the minister.  I am going to write about my memories from the 1960s as I was growing up.

The Shrine of the Black Madonna on Linwood at Hogarth. Detroit, Michigan.

I remember many hours spent at church.   There were church suppers and political meetings. There were Christmas Eve services, Christmas caroling and my father’s annual “Little Patricia” Christmas sermon. He gave these for several years. They featured a little girl living in a cave with her family following a nuclear war. I think the last time he gave this sermon she had two heads. I remember a bazaar with booths of handmade items to buy as gifts and game booths with a shooting gallery. The year I remember best was 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis of late October.  A nuclear war seemed all too possible. I was 16.

The Youth Fellowship early 1960s. That is me 4th from the right in the middle row. My sister Pearl is in the middle of the back row.

I remember Youth Fellowship meetings, where we talked about what was happening in the city, and around the country.  Afterwards there was a social hour. Standing next to the coke machine and not being asked to dance, while at the same time, dreading being asked to dance, is not one of my happier memories. Social hour became less stressful once a ping pong table was added for those of us who didn’t dance much. I remember Workdays for Christ where we spent the day doing yard work to raise money for international service projects. And the “Friendship Circle” where we held hands and sang camp song like “Tell Me Why The Stars Do Shine” and “A Friend on Your Left and a Friend on Your Right”.

The Sunday crowd was not usually this big. I don’t know what the occasion was but my sister and I are in the balcony, left side, front row, sitting with the Youth Fellowship.  here must have been something special going on.

The Choir.

I remember the choir director, Oscar Hand (far right above) singing  and the time he held the door open for someone stealing a typewriter because he thought it was the repair man. There was a wonderful production of “South Pacific” one year. There was the tragic and shocking murder/suicide of two married choir members.  They had been having a clandestine affair.  Mostly though I remember the good singing Sunday after Sunday.

A church dinner. My cousin Dale is third up on the left side of the table with his eyes closed. Cousin Ernie, Uncles Winslow and Henry at the end. On the other side is Aunt Anna and I can barely see little Cousin Maria.

There were lots of church dinners. All members were organized into Area Groups that raised money and sponsored events for socializing. Sometimes Area Groups  sold dinners  to take out.  I remember one such sale.  Nobody was coming in to buy the dinners until one of the women suggested burning onion skins. They laughed about it, but someone burned some onion skins and people actually started to come.

The Church was fully involved in the movement for equal rights and black power. There were always speakers and rallies and seminars.

The sanctuary before the Black Madonna painting was installed.

My parents divorced when I was 8. We lived with my mother but often spend the weekends with my father. He would start writing his sermons Saturday night.  He wrote at the kitchen table.  There were piles of old mail, old sermon notes and who knows what, piled up at one end of the table. There was enough space for the three of us to eat and for him to write. He wrote late into the night, sometimes taking breaks to come in and comment about what we were watching on TV or to order some shrimp from Jags up on 12th street. He never finished the sermon on Saturday. Sunday morning he would get up early and continue writing until the last minute when we would get in the car and drive down Linwood to church.  Sometimes there were slow drivers in our way or people had already parked in his usual spot so he had to park farther away.  At that time, he always parked on Lamothe, which was what Hogarth was called on the other side of Linwood. Service started at 11.   Sunday morning excitement – would we make it!? We always did.

My father preaching.  The Black Madonna mural painted by Glanton Dowdell is behind him.

The bulletin and sermon notes below are from Sunday, July 3, 1966.

My father’s sermon notes.

His sermons always spoke to what people needed to understand about their lives in the present day. And they were always timely. Someone once asked me if he planned and wrote them maybe weeks or months ahead of time. He didn’t. And you could tell because of the current issues he always included.

Me with three of my children and four of my grandchildren on the steps of the church, 2005.  Those little children are now just about as tall as I am. How quickly time passes.

 

Swimming Through the Years

Carnival of Genealogy, Photographs

Four generations of swimming. CLICK TO MAKE BIGGER!

My family enjoyed seeing themselves reading and cooking so much that they asked me to do another. What better topic for a monster collage than swim suits?  Here we have my mother, my sister, several cousins, my husband, children and grandchildren swimming in lakes, pools and the Ocean.

Click for more Carnival of Genealogy posts.

For other collage extravaganza’s you might try these:

We Read, We Write, We Print and We Publish

In The Kitchen – Sepia Saturday

100 Years – 100 Photos – 100 Sepia Saturdays

Belle Isle Pony Rides, 1953

Biography, sepia saturday

Belle Isle is an island park in the Detroit River. There used to be a ferry that ran from Detroit to Belle Isle but it hasn’t run for years, decades. You can drive, bike or walk across on the Belle Isle Bridge.. From one side of the island you can see Canada, and from the other, Detroit.  There are, or use to be, a Conservatory, a petting zoo, a herd of  Fallow Deer (I believe disease got them), an aquarium, an exclusive yacht club (Did it ever integrate?), a casino, riding horses, horse drawn buggies, ponies, ice skating, a wonderful fountain that had colored water in the summer (It was done with lights), fishing, picnicking and swimming.  We spent a lot of time on Belle Isle when I was growing up. My mother told us that when she was growing up, people slept there during heat waves. In the last few years Belle Isle has been made into a State Park and there is a charge for visiting.

From Google Maps

My mother, sister and I seem to have spent the day at Belle Isle with some family friends.  Harold and his family are the only family I remember my parents taking us over to their house to visit, as a family.Harold was about Pearl’s age and there was a sister, Andre, and a brother, Edward, who were older than we were.  Andre’s mother made her get rid of her Betsy McCall paper dolls at some point because she was “too old to play paper dolls.”  Many years later there was a younger daughter, Michelle.

“Kris, Pearl, Harold. Belle Isle 1953”  Harold Keanau holding Pearl’s horse, I am bringing up the rear.

This carousel horse was sent to Disney World
according to the Belle Isle Conservancy page.

It says “Belle Isle” on the back of the photos.  I don’t remember so many houses or buildings as you can see in the background.  Corrections or confirmation from other Detroiters welcome.

The picture of the horse to the left looks much fancier than the ones we are riding above.

“Kris and Pearl. Belle Isle 1953.”  Cigarette smoking man belts Pearl in while I appear ready to ride.

“Dodie, Connie, Kris, Pearl, Harold, Belle Isle 1953”  Dodie was Harold’s mother.

 Connie was my mother’s best friend from Eastern High School. She and her husband, Warren, lived on the East side in one of the new little houses built after WW2. We lived on the West side and we only went to visit once or twice a year. It wasn’t in another city though and I don’t quite know why the visits were so infrequent. Perhaps my mother was too busy to go during the school year and Connie didn’t drive because I never remember her visiting us.

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Other posts with photographs taken on Belle Isle  Skating Champions and  Mershell Cunningham Graham, Jr   From a different blog, a post about outtings at Belle Isle back in the 50s and 60s. With photos of various places around the island – Detroit Chinatown: Blast from the past Belle Isle.