Sisters On The Dock – Idlewild, MI 1953

sepia saturday
pearlkrisidlewild
Pearl and Kristin

It was the summer of 1953. My sister and I stood on my uncle Louis Cleage’s dock in front of his cottage in Idlewild, Michigan holding our dolls. The summer of 1953 my mother, sister and I stayed with her parents on the East side while my father stayed with his parents on Atkinson. We were between houses as a Church fight had resulted in us having to vacate the parsonage. We moved to the new parsonage at 2254 Chicago at the end of the summer.

I remember riding on the floor of my grandparent’s car on the way there, my grandmother reading to us by kerosene lamp during a storm that put the electricity out, fishing off of the dock, the catfish that lived underneath it and being out of the city for an extended time for the first time in my life.

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For more Sepia Saturday posts, click!

Playing Ball – Old Plank – 1964

Cleages, Photographs, sepia saturday,
oldplankkrisdalejanblaira

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.

three in one
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Click for more Sepia Saturday.

Ground Round and Grocery Shopping – 1962

Biography, Photographs, sepia saturday
grocery shopping
My mother and me coming out of the store.

This store was located some blocks from our house on Oregon on Tireman Ave.  Sometimes my mother called and ordered the food and the delivery guy brought it to the house. This day we went there in person and there is my mother in the glasses and me in a scarf with the grocery bag  coming behind her. Henry must have been there to take the photograph.  There is that strange grassy stuff at the top of the picture. It seems to be on a bunch of photos, maybe they were all taken on the same roll.

My most memorial story concerning this store is the time my mother, my sister and I were on the way to the store.  My sister and I were going in while my mother waited in the car and she was telling us what to get. One item was ground round and she was explaining the difference between hamburger (don’t get it!) and ground round (do get it!) when I heard my voice saying, “ok, ok. We’ll get ground round.”  There was silence for a moment and then she said get out, get the groceries and walk home.  That was about 5 blocks, with heavy paper bags of groceries.  We made it. Probably she had little to say to us when we finally did get home with the ground round and the rest of the groceries.

I was going to put a photo of the store as it is now but that area on goggle maps was vacant lots covered in cracked asphalt or brush. I can’t even tell where it was.  You can read more about the house we lived in during this time and my life there in O is for Oregon.

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To see other Sepia Saturday Offerings, CLICK!

The Black Messiah – Book and Interview 1968

Cleages, Detroit
the black messiah blog
Click to enlarge.

The Black Messiah was published in 1968.  It was taken from sermons that my father made about black power and the black Jesus. I have all of those sermons am thinking about putting them online in the coming year.

I remember taking my copy with me when I went on my cross country bus/train/plane trip after graduating from Wayne State University.  At the train station in San Francisco, as I waited to catch a train to D.C., a young white guy came up and started talking to me. He asked about the book but mainly he wanted to talk about waiting for his girl friend (or a woman he hoped would be his girl friend) coming in on the next train.

I also remember lending my mother-in-law my copy when she was visiting us in Simpson County, Mississippi.  She didn’t finish reading it before she was scheduled to take a flight back to St. Louis. She carefully covered the book with a brown paper bag  cover because she didn’t want anybody to see the cover.

Below, Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr., interviewed by Scott Morrison, Mutual News (New York:   Radio Station WOR-AM, November 1968)

First Sunday in Advent 1966

Advent Calendar, Christmas, Cleages, Detroit
The original stained glass window before the Black Madonna.
The original stained glass window before the Black Madonna mural was added in 1967.  It was a picture of the Pilgrims landing in America. Brewster Pilgrim Congregational Church owned the building before they sold it to us.  At one point, as I remember, they wanted to take the window with them but did not want to pay to remove and replace it.  It is still under the present mural of the Black Madonna.

The Advent sermon below was preached on the first Sunday of Advent, November 27, 1966 by my father, Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr., who was later known as Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman.

First Sermon – Advent November 27, 1966
Second Sermon & notes – Advent December 4, 1966
The Star and The Stable – Sermon & Notes – Dec. 11, 1966
A Christ to Carol – Christmas Sermon & Notes Dec 22 1966

Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy

Advent Calendar, Christmas
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I was reminded by my facebook history that on December 14 of last year, I participated in Blog Caroling. This year there is no official Blog Caroling being organized by footnoteMAVEN. In honor of Blog Caroling past, I offer The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy played on a glass harp.

Since posting this, I found that Blog Caroling is taking place this year!  Those participating are leaving their link on Friends of footnoteMAVEN Facebook Group located here.  In order to post you have to join the group, but everybody who is on facebook can follow the links.

Olga Preobrazhenskaya as the Sugar Plum Fairy and Nikolai Legat as Prince Coqueluche in the Grand pas de deux in the original production of The Nutcracker. Imperial Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg, c. 1900
Olga Preobrazhenskaya as the Sugar Plum Fairy and Nikolai Legat as Prince Coqueluche in the Grand pas de deux in the original production of The Nutcracker. Imperial Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg, c. 1900 (public Domain photograph)

Christmas Candy

Christmas, Grahams
daisyturner
Aunt Daisy Turner

Aunt Daisy took us downtown to the show every summer and to Saunders for ice cream afterward.  And I always ended up with a splitting headache.  Too much high living I guess.  She and Alice would buy us dainty, expensive little dresses from Siegel’s or Himllhoch’s.  They all went to church every Sunday at  Plymouth Congregational. Daisy always gave us beautiful tins of gorgeous Christmas candy, that white kind filled with gooey black walnut stuff, those gooey raspberry kind and those hard, pink kind with a nut inside, also chocolates, of course!

doris_mv_fannie_howard_window
Doris and Mary Virginia Graham. Their mother Fannie and baby brother Howard are looking out of the window.

See Mary Virginia’s Christmas Memories here Mary V. Graham Elkins Remembers Christmas

Santa On The IRT

Advent Calendar, Christmas
santa-IRT

I wrote this on February 8, 1999

It all happened last Christmas Eve. I’d had a long, hard day working at the restaurant and I just wanted to get home and soak my tired dogs. That’s what my father always said when he came home from work. “Whew! My dogs are killin’ me!” he’d say. Then he’d take off his shoes, plop down in his favorite chair and fall asleep reading the paper until dinner time.

But I didn’t start this to tell you about my feet. I wrote this to tell you about meeting Santa on the subway. First I thought it was just some joker on his way to a Xmas party. I looked the other way when he came over and started looking at the IRT map. I didn’t want to get into a big conversation about nothing, but some guy hollers out “Hey, Santa, hope you don’t lose your way when you’re looking for my house.” Course that got a big laugh. Until he turned around and said “Fellows, this is no laughing matter. I’ve lost my map of NYC. The one that marks the houses I’ve got to go to and who’s been naughty and nice.   You could have heard a pin drop in there.

(This first appeared on my other blog Ruff Draft)