On Lake Idlewild

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Kris, Doris and Pearl. Lake Idlewild, Michigan. 1956.
Kris, Doris and Pearl. Lake Idlewild, Michigan. 1956.

The summer of 1956, my mother would sometimes row over to the “island”, which was downtown Idlewild, not a real island, although you did have to go over a bridge or a drainage pipe to get there. At that time, Idlewild was booming, a place for Idlewild_signsblack people to go in segregated America and forget about all that for awhile. Big name acts preformed at the Flamingo Club and there was a skating rink in the club house. But when we rowed over in the morning, we were going to get the paper or milk or something else mundane.

Sometimes my sister Pearl and I would take our savings and shop at Lee-Jon’s or at Ma Riddle’s Log Cabin.  At Lee-John’s we bought tiny bears with movable limbs, about 3 inches tall. At Ma Riddle’s, we mainly looked while she tried to sell us salt and pepper

Picture 2
Idlewild is located at the red A

shakers that looked like picnic tables. Her store was a real log cabin.  I don’t remember going inside because it was so small that the front was a shutter she raised and lowered and you looked at the merchandise right there.

I wonder why we weren’t wearing life jackets in the photo above. We certainly couldn’t swim at the time. There were life jackets because I remember playing in the water and wearing them. The lake was 4 miles around and there were spots, my Uncle Henry used to say, where the bottom had never been found.

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I Am

Biography, The Book of Me

header_krisI am the first daughter, born during a thunderstorm in the middle of the night.
I am the one walking to school whistling when the woman turns around and says “A whistling girl and a crowing hen always come to a no good end.”
I am one of the cousins squashed into the back seat singing on the way to and from our grandparents.
I am the six year old sick with pneumonia, upstairs in bed for months.
I’m the 12 year old elementary school graduate, out of school early and throwing snowballs with my friends.
I’m the double promoted 7th grader without friends who knows how many minutes left in each school day.
I’m the high school student longing for escape.
I’m the girl standing on the sidelines at Youth Fellowship dances.
I’m 19 and hopelessly in love.
I am 20 with a broken heart.
I’m the printmaker using found zinc scraps for my pieces.
I’m 23, alone and in labor with my first child, in a large dark house, waiting.
I’m a woman, carrying, laboring, birthing and nursing.
I’m the city girl milking goats, chopping wood and plucking chickens.
I’m the 35 year old mother of 5 dancing around the kitchen with my young son.
I’m the 45 year old mother of 6 walking four fast miles around the lake, ignoring my aching achilles tendons.
I’m the granma with bad feet making my way around the track.
I’m the child and the woman moving from place to place.
I’m a woman who has been with this man forty eight years.
I’m a gardener without a garden, a water woman without water and a sewer who rarely sews.
I’m an artist and a writer and a teacher.
I’m a feeler trying to be invisible.
I’m the one the ancestors come through.

Reading the Paper

Biography, Grahams, sepia saturday
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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.

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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.

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A Man and Two Women

sepia saturday
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Connie Stowers, my uncle Hugh Cleage and my mother Doris Graham Detroit, 1940.

My uncle Hugh is sitting on my mother’s parent’s couch being hugged by my mother and her best friend, Connie.  I remember that ash tray.  It was red.  The couch was dark green and over it hung a tapestry with a garden scene that included… wait, here is a photograph that includes the bottom of the tapestry.  I wonder where it came from and where it went.

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My aunt Mary V, holding her grandson Frank with my grandfather Mershell Graham aka Poppy.

By 1966, we had the old couch at our house and my grandparents were using my great grandmother Jennie’s furniture. At the time I thought it was strange they changed to that hard wooden furniture but as my knees give out, I appreciate that it was higher, easier to sit down on and get up from. Plus there must have been a lot of memories for my grandmother.  My mother sold it to an antique store after her parents died.

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Cleage Cookout – August 1958

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My uncle Hugh by the gate.
My uncle Hugh by the gate.

I remember several cookouts in my grandmother Cleage’s backyard. There was the one where the tables were set up right in front of the gate that looked out on the street. There was some sort of minor argument about this. Afterwards, my sister and I called any sort of family argument a “cookout.” On that occasion Grace Lee Boggs dropped by, not for the cookout, but for some political reason, dating it in the 1960s.

tables
You can just see Hugh’s head behind Louis, my mother, Henry.

The cookout pictured below took place during the summer of 1958. My uncle Louis bought a big blue plastic swimming pool that took up most of the cement part of the yard. I don’t remember it being there any other summer. Once, my sister Pearl was drowning when my uncle Henry noticed her on the bottom of the pool, reached down and pulled her out. I don’t know why she didn’t stand up.  She was 9 and I turned 12 that August.  The bushes on the fence were full of tiny, pink roses during the season. Those are still my favorite roses.

Pearl remembers: I am still mystified as to why I didn’t just put my feet down. I don’t remember being at the bottom of the pool. I remember going down and splashing my way back up to the top and not being able to stay with my head above water. and then Henry came over and grabbed me and pulled me up and out. who knows what was going on? and we had those little plastic life preservers, too. how deep was the damn thing anyway?

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Pearl, my aunt Gladys, Kris, cousin Ernie in the pool. It was blue plastic with a metal frame.
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My mother sitting beside the pool.
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My aunt Barbara standing by the fence between my grandmother’s and the Smith’s.
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A Mouse Machine & Mrs. Topp

Grahams, sepia saturday

I forgot that I had this picture and article about Mouse (Move Only Under Spring Energy) competition that my daughter, Ife (smiling in the middle of photo 1) participated in as a middle school student. Unfortunately I can’t put my hands on a photo of her contraption but you can see one of them created by Mr. Bigford.

Article from The Lake County Star, about 1988.
Article from The Lake County Star, 1986.
mrstrop
Mrs. Topp reminded me of the woman in the prompt in this photo. Unfortunately she’s not riding in any sort of contraption.

Mrs. Emma Davis Topp roomed with Moses and Jean Walker, after her husband died in 1912. Her husband, John W. Topp was twenty years older than she was. He was an engineer, a black Canadian who arrived in Detroit at age 17 in 1875. My grandparents, Mershell and Fannie Graham were also roomers after their marriage in 1919. Mrs. Topp was born in Mississippi and attended school through the 8th grade.  She was working as a dressmaker in 1920.  By 1930 she had moved to Los Angeles, CA and was living with her cousin and aunt. She was no longer working and lived the with her cousin until she died in 1948.

My grandfather Mershell Graham and Emma Topp in the Walkers yard. 1919.
My grandfather Mershell Graham and Emma Topp in the Walkers yard. 1919.
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The Ludington Lighthouse, 1956

Biography, memories, sepia saturday

 My grandfather, mother, sister and I were spending several weeks at my Uncle Louis Cleage’s cottage in Idlewild.  We made a day trip to Ludington, on Lake Michigan, about 30 miles from Idlewild. We had walked out to the light house, which was no longer in use. 1956 was the year I wore glasses.

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Pearl, Poppy and me. Ludington, Michigan 1956.
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My mother, Pearl, me.

In this picture, taken facing land but on the same pier, you can see how the cement walk slopes down toward the lake.  There was a flat part down by the water where fish had washed up and they were flopping around trying to get back to the water.  My sister Pearl and I climbed down and were throwing the fish back in the water until our grandfather noticed and told us to come up and stop it before we fell in the water.  We did it but we were not happy about it.

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Poppy rowing on Lake Idlewild.
Patio. My mother, Pearl and me. Notice the face in the trees to the left. It looks like my grandmother in her younger days. It doesn't look like it belongs there.
Patio in front of the 2 cottages. My mother, Pearl and me. Notice the face in the trees to the left. It looks like my grandmother in her younger days.  Is it really there?
Close up of face in the trees.
Close up of face in the trees.
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Fannie Mae Turner Graham’s Bible

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My grandmother Fannie with my mother Doris, Howard and Mary V. 1931 In their Detroit East side backyard.
bible cover
Howard Alexander Turner Graham. Born Sept 7, 1928 in Detroit.
died – 3-2-1932. Scarlet Fever

Nanny's_Bible

Between some pages my grandmother’s Bible are little snippets of hair.  It is a well used Bible. The covers are missing. Part of the front cover remains, tucked between pages. On this and on the back pages, corners worn away, she wrote about the births of her children and deaths of her two sons. I don’t know who the hair came from, but I would guess from her children. They were all blond as babies.

nannybiblentries

Mershell and Doris with their father. 1925.Belle Isle, Detroit.
Mershell and Doris with their father. 1925.Belle Isle, Detroit.

“Our darling little Mershell Jr. was run over by a truck on Tuesday Nov. 1st – ’27 at 12:45 PM. on his way to school from lunch. skull crushed etc. – Neck broken – shoulder fractured- rushed to St. Joseph’s Mercy Hospital – never regained consciousness – died – same night at 2:10 – Dr Turner at his sid(e) (Fun)eral-Nov 4th … (Lavi)scount offic(iated)  sang….”

Mary Virginia born April 3rd 1920 at 5:10 AM on Saturday.  Detroit Mich at 1031 St. Jean Ave, 7 #. Dr. Ames & …
2nd baby – Mershell C. Graham, Jr. born June 10th – 1921 at 7:45 PM.  On Friday.  Detroit, Michigan. Dunbar Hospital. 8 1/2#  Dr. Turner.  Died 11/1/27 killed by auto.
3rd baby – Doris J. Graham born February – 12th – 1923. 5:10 A.M. – on Monday at Women’s Hospital Beaubien and For(est) Detroit, Michigan  7#

nannybirths4th baby – Howard Alexander G(raham) born at Woman’s Hospi(tal) Sept 7th ’28 at 5 P.M.  7#10 oz. Dr. Turner

__________________

Our baby Howard was taken ill Nov. 17th 1931 – Dr. turner came + pronounced it Diabetes … cured — Jan 1932… On Feb 20- 1932, he developed Scarlet Fever – was sent to Herman Kiefer Hospital an(d) on acct of his condition died March 4th 1932 and was buried Sat. March 5…Private funeral at Memorial Park Cemetery 3 1/2 years old born 9/7/…

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Our loss is truest g… God fills the pla… by our 2 ba…