Christie's Diary

[box note: over to page 4, then back to this page][should have been here]

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I think I told you about how Christie's diary entries are scattered randomly through the book. There were a few pages where she wrote numbers at the top of the page -- to help clarify any confusion. [Spoiler alert: It didn't.]

Page 190 was number one

Page 189 was number two

Page 188 was number 3

Page 193 was number four

Page 187 was number five

Christie's Diary

7-27 Bill went back to work for Eddie on the tar wagon looking after that for him.

7-25 Madge & Leonard was out Saturday to get the fence post pounder & Bernardes was here to. Bernarde & Eileen went to visit Effie in hospital & she is doing fine. Bill went & visited her a little while Sunday afternoon & she is to come home today if she has no fever 

7-27 she is feeling good & looking good & her voice is good

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Grandpa (Bill) had just retired from the county road commission, but it looks like they called him back in every once in a while to help out.

Madge & Leonard were Grandma's sister and her husband.

PHOTO: Madge and Leonard Till

"Bernardes" were Bill & Christie's oldest son and his wife Eileen and their sons Mick, Greg, and Kim.

PHOTO: Bernarde & Eileen, Mick, Greg, and Kim

Effie was Grandpa's sister. In 1964, when this was written, she was a widow.

PHOTO: Christie, Mick, Effie

If I recall correctly, it turned out that Effie had cancer in her throat. She never smoked, but her husband Harry Wieland smoked cigars, and so she probably developed cancer from second-hand smoke.

Christie's Diary

 1964

7-26 Sunday was our community club picnic but I was sick so we didn’t go. We went and got eggs and went around by Hartford and saw Mrs Schriner about our 500 club dinner at the Midget

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The back of this picture says "The Sunshine Circle taken at Maple Isle Paw Paw 20 August 1952"

I don't remember any of Grandma's clubs being called The Sunshine Circle -- I didn't know any of them had names, but I guess they did. I don't recognize any of the people in this picture except Grandma 

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This is a picture of Hartford, Michigan, in the 1940s. I have marked the "Midget" coffee shop that was next to the movie theater. The sign says GOOD COFFEE. And their coffee really was good. I worked there for 2 weeks (filling in for a friend while she was on vacation) and discovered the secret -- sprinkle a pinch of salt on top of the ground coffee before brewing. 

All the merchants in town went to the Midget for lunch and/or coffee breaks throughout the day. And in the evenings the place served hamburgers and fries to movie-goers. I've eaten at the Midget many times after a movie or a ball game. I went to the Midget for lunch once, even though we were not supposed to leave the school campus. I had to stay an hour after school for punishment. Big deal. It gave me a chance to get my homework done before I went home. That was the extent of my rebellious phase.

The Midget was a fixture in Hartford for many decades, starting in the 1930s, I believe. I have no idea if it's still there or not.

There was also a Midget Lunch Room in Watervliet (5 miles down the road from Hartford). It was owned by the same family that had the Midget in Hartford. I don't know which of these Grandma was referring to in her diary note. That place opened in 1929, and I know is still doing a booming business today. These days it is known as the Sidetrack Cafe.

Christie's Diary

1964

7-20 first they had been here to stay since the __ of March before they moved to the McCurdy place on Hartford Bangor Road cause they got mad at us just 4 months ago. 

The tempture is 80 degrees at 240 PM

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"they got mad at us" means my mother got mad at them. That happened more than once during my parents' marriage. Mom didn't like Grandma. And when my mother was having a feud with someone in the family, the rest of the family had to ostracize them, too. And there was always someone Mom was feuding with at any given time -- it was a revolving door. Usually there was no discernable reason (except in Mom's head) for the feud to start. And no discernable reason when it ended. Mom called the shots. Both of my brothers and I had our turns through the years. There were very few times that all three of us were in favor. Almost everyone in the extended family got a turn at least once.

This is the house Grandma called "the McCurdy place" -- my dad always called it Drake's place, because we rented the house from Curtis Drake, who lived next door and owned the farm on which the house was located. It was surrounded by apple orchards. That was fun, because we could climb the trees and pick and eat as many apples as we wanted. I loved to eat them while they were still green, before they got ripe. They always told me I'd get a stomach ache from them, but I never did. 

We lived in this house for 3 1/2 years, from the middle of my 4th grade year to the end of 7th grade. It was in the Hartford school district, so we switched from Bangor to Hartford schools in the middle of the school year for the 2nd time. (The first time I was in 2nd grade.) We lived in six different houses by the time I graduated from high school -- always in Bangor or Hartford. It took them several years to sell the first house they bought in Bangor, so after that they always rented, and we moved every few years from one house to another.

Christie's Diary

1964

7-19 We had our annual family reunion at Bernardes, all were there but [Madge & Leonard scratched out] Madge & Leonard & Junior & children. Had a good time. Dianne & Ricky come & stayed all nite with us. they half to go home today. Dianne has to take music lesson tomorrow.

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PHOTO: Mary holding Doug, Junior holding Cindy. Junior was the son of Christie's sister Madge and her husband Leonard Till.

This was cropped from a large group photo taken in 1950.

John & Mabel Treat's 25th wedding anniversary 1950

Christie's Diary

7-16 Mick was over all week we took him home & took a ride on their pontoon around the lake.

Beautiful evening. Mick helped Grandpa shingle the barn while here they went to WKZO & got the shingles & lumber for my cupboard

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PHOTO: Lake of the Woods, Decatur, Michigan

I think this is the raft that they floated out onto the lake in the summertime. This would have been the back yard where their new house was going to be built a few years later (1967, I think). In 1964, when this diary entry was written, Bernarde & Eileen lived across the street from this property. The lakefront properties were in the planning/construction phase at that time. If memory serves me correctly, it was Eileen's brother LaVern Rice who developed that lakefront subdivision. 

Here are a couple better pictures of the lake. These were taken from the deck of Bernarde & Eileen's lakefront house.

Christie's Diary

1964

7-13 Alta took Effie back to WKZO to the Dr again. Its cool cloudy today rained early this AM.

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Here is a picture of the page in the book where Grandma wrote this diary entry

Christie's Diary

1964 

7-13 Bill & Micky went to WKZO to get roofing shingles & plywood make me a corner cupboard on porch

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I think what she's calling "porch" is the room she had Grandpa build toward the back of the house that served as an extension of the kitchen. It had a door that went out into the side yard by the well. 

Their house also had an outdoor cellar door -- just like in the old song... "Playmate, come out and play with me, and bring your dollies three, climb up my apple tree, look down my rain barrel, slide down my cellar door..." You can't see it very well in this picture.

Here is a stock photo of a typical cellar door -- slanted, hence the idea of sliding down it. I don't know if houses still have these or not. I'm guessing most houses don't have root cellars any more. If you open the doors, there are stair steps leading down into the root cellar.

Christie's Diary

7-12 bernarde & family was over this evening had supper. we had ate waffles with effie, they got supper here. we plaid cards dirty eight had fun

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I miss the old days when people got together to play cards. I'm not familiar with Dirty Eight, but I remember folks playing Canasta, Rummy, and a few other card games. My parents played Pinochle a lot. I never did like to play that game because it seemed too much like work, trying to remember what cards had been played. I never could understand how they could just carry on a lively conversation and still keep track of the cards. Sometimes they played with 2 decks of cards. I specifically remember them playing Pinochle many times with Uncle Bob and Aunt Jackie. 

Mom and Dad used to play Cribbage. It is a game that can be played by just two people. One of Dad's aunts gave them a Cribbage board for a wedding gift, and my mother always said it was that Cribbage board that held their marriage together through the years. I don't remember how the game is played, but it is a card game played with regular cards and a wooden box with holes in the top and pegs that moved from hole to hole for score keeping.

 (The keys are for perspective.)

These are pictures of a Cribbage board that was among my mother's things after she died. It is most likely the same board that they used through the 57 years of their marriage. The side of the box has a little compartment that slides open, and that's where the pegs were stored. (This one, unfortunately, did not have any pegs when my brother found it.)

Christie's Diary

7-12 bill went to the county garage to heat & pump tare [tar] for 2 hrs. we had breakfast at 9am after he got home. it rained hard this AM to

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Grandpa Thomas (Bill) worked for the Van Buren County road commission. In the winter he drove a snow plow, and in the summer he drove a tar truck. He had just retired a few days earlier, on July 2, 1964, but apparently was called back in on this day to help out for a couple hours.

A lot of my memories of Grandma and Grandpa revolve around breakfast. In the wintertime, Grandma would get up about 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning and cook a big breakfast of eggs, bacon or sausage, toast, oatmeal, sometimes pancakes, orange juice and coffee -- enough coffee to fill a thermos for him to take with him to work. And then after seeing him off to go drive the snow plow, Grandma would go back to bed for a couple hours. When I was at their house sometimes I would get up and eat with them, and sometimes I would stay in bed and wait for Grandma to come back to bed. 

These are pictures of Grandma and Grandpa's house on CR 681 about 3 miles south of Bangor, Michigan. They were taken in 1992, after Grandma and Grandpa had both passed away and the farm had been sold.

As far as I know, Grandpa built the whole house from the ground up. The original house was just the center part that you can see facing the road, with a mud-room entryway, living room, kitchen, two bedrooms and a bathroom. Every once in a while Grandma would decide she needed another room, so Grandpa would build one for her. Grandpa built another bedroom on the left side of the house,  and later an extended kitchen on the right toward the back of the house. Those were added on during the years I was growing up. There was a basement under the back of the house where the furnace was, and the washer and dryer, and also a root cellar (dirt floor and walls) where they kept jars of home-canned fruits and vegetables on the shelves. 

One time a car careened off the road, through the yard, and crashed right through the living room. Grandma and Grandpa had just left the room to get ready for bed, or they would have been sitting right where the car came in. The front window you see in these pictures (above) is not the original windows that were there before.

Here is a picture of Grandma standing in front of the house with the original windows before the car crashed into them. This is how the house looked when I was growing up.

The property was 16 acres -- 2 acres wide and 8 acres deep (I think). There was a driveway to the left of the house that circled around behind the house and came back out to the road on the right side. The driveway also went straight back from the road to the back of the property where Grandpa had a corn field. The little building on the right was the garage/workshop. Beyond the garage was the barn. On the left side of the barn was a pig sty, and a muddy area outside fenced in for the pigs. Next to that used to be a corn crib (like an open-air silo) that held feed corn for the pigs. These pictures were taken in 1992, after Grandma and Grandpa had both passed away and the farm had been sold, so the corn crib is not there any more. You can still see the giant weeping willow tree, though, behind the house to the left of where the driveway passed beyond the barn toward the back of the property. There were a couple of rolling hills between the front and the back, perfect for sledding and skiing in the winter. There was also a little "pond" somewhere back there (less than a foot deep) that would freeze solid and we could skate on it. Whenever we knew a blizzard was coming, we would go to Grandma and Grandpa's house to be snowed in there, where all our sleds and skis and skates were kept in the garage. Snow is lots of fun when you're a kid. (Not so much when you grow up and have to shovel it and drive in it.)