Three Mile Lake

When I was in junior high school we rented a vacation cottage on Three Mile Lake in Paw Paw, Michigan. It seems like we stayed there two weeks, but it might have just been a week. We did that two summers in a row. Since it was near where we lived, Dad still went to work on weekdays. The cabins were small but clean. There was one bedroom, and another bed in the main room, and there was a 'kitchenette' with a sink, stove, and fridge. And a screened-in front porch. I think there were just about 6 or 8 cottages altogether. 

I remember one family we met there had a little boy named Dominic -- they called him "Dommo" -- who was younger than me. All I remember about him was that he had dark brown hair and I thought he was cute. He was the only person I had ever met with the name Dominic, and for some reason that just stuck in my head all these years.

PHOTO: Me and Dad and Rick

PHOTO: Me, Mom, Rick, Aunt Jackie, cousins Mark and Lori.

PHOTO: John, Mom, and our dog Lady. 

That dress she's wearing was made from large bath towels (or beach towels?) One towel crossways made the top and sleeves, and two towels back and front made the body of the dress. Seems like Mom made several of those for herself and for me.

PHOTO: Raeann Waite, uncle Ron, Mom. 

Ron was dating Raeann at the time, I think. She worked at the same company where my dad worked, Du-Wel. They made die cast metal products.

PHOTO: Me, Mom, John, and Rick.

That's our station wagon behind us. I wish they still made station wagons instead of SUVs. Same purpose, and much less obnoxious.

PHOTO: The lakeshore and the cottages where we stayed.

We have some great home movies from when we stayed at this place, but the quality is not so good because they were projected from an 8mm projector onto a wall, and that projection was recorded on a camcorder while Mom and Dad and John watched and commented. At some point one of the cassettes from the camcorder was converted to a DVD. The other cassette will no longer play.

There was a trampoline behind the cottages and we have some footage of us playing on that -- Dad, me, Jim Harmon (my boyfriend at the time), Uncle Ron and Aunt Maxine. There was also a raft on the lake, and we have some good footage of Dad and Rick and me diving off it. 

Those are all good memories.

Dance Lessons

Dance Lessons

At some point in time I decided I wanted to be a ballerina. So my mother enrolled me in dance lessons. The local dance teacher was Vi Shafer. Her policy was that you had to take a year of acrobatics and a year of tap dancing before you could start ballet lessons. I thought that was a scam -- and I still think so -- so she could make a lot of money off of you for two years before you actually got to learn the kind of dance that you really wanted. Well, anyway. I took the acrobatics and tap, but I don't think I ever did get to the ballet stage of the game. 

There are a few things I remember about dance lessons. First -- I was embarrassed because I didn't have a leotard. I had tights, which I wore with a regular shirt or blouse. Honestly, I'm not sure why my mother never bought me a leotard, but she never did. Then when I took tap, I never got regular tap dancing shoes -- and I REALLY wanted some! According to my mother, we couldn't afford them. So I had taps put on my regular patent leather Mary Jane shoes. I hated that. (In fact, even after I was grown I still craved a pair of tap shoes -- and I actually bought some shoes that were very much like them.)

You can't tell much from this picture, but those shoes are black patent leather and they have ribbons for shoelaces. They look very much like the regular tap dancing shoes I wanted when I was 7 years old.

* * *

These pictures are from the dance recital. I am the one in the center. 

The main thing I remember about this recital is that when our costumes arrived, mine did not have a hat. It was supposed to have a white sort of bonnet like the others. So my teacher decided I would wear a 'special' hat -- some black thing with feathers -- and I would be in the center of the line so it might look like I was the leader, or some such nonsense as that. If she thought she was making me feel better about it, she was dead wrong. So once again I was embarrassed.

I never did get to take ballet lessons. 

The End

Wathada's 23rd birthday

My mother used to sing while she was doing any kind of housework. She had a really nice voice and she knew just about every song in the world. When I was three or four years old she taught me to sing a ‘round.’ (A round is where two people sing the same song, starting at different times, so the melody creates harmony for itself.) The song she taught me was Catch a Falling Star. I think it was recorded by Perry Como, a popular singer at the time. Everyone on my mom’s side of the family sang all the time. Any time any of us got together we usually ended up singing before it was all over. 

We took a lot of pictures in our family. That may be because my great-grandfather was a professional photographer. One of the things we would do for fun pretty often was to sit down with a box full of pictures (sometimes a photo album, but more often a box) and look at them, to make sure they had the subject matter written on the back of them, and just to enjoy looking at them and talking about them. One of my favorite photographs from my childhood is my mother and me sitting on the couch going through the picture box. I was 4 years old. 

My mom was just 18 when I was born, and she says she doesn’t remember a time when she didn’t have me. As for me, I’m pretty sure I thought she and I were the same age.

PHOTO: Dad looking through the picture box

These pictures were taken on my mother's 23d birthday. My uncle Ron took the pictures.

PHOTO: Ron Burford, age 15

Pammy and Tinker

I have vague memories of a little dog named Pammy. (Seems like there might have been two of them, and the other was named Tammy, but I'm not sure about that.) I think it was Uncle Ron's dog. I don't remember us having a little dog. We had a big boxer named Tinker when we lived in the house in Bangor..

PHOTO: Uncle Ron with Pammy. 

I'm assuming he's sitting on the front steps of our house in Bangor. He would have been 16 years old in this picture. 

* * *

Unfortunately, I don't have any good pictures of our dog Tinker. The only picture I have is this one, which only shows him from the back.

PHOTO: Richard with Tinker

We bought Tinker from our neighbors across the street -- Ashel and Marian Miller. (Their house is in the background of the picture above where I am sitting on the car.) I think Ashel worked in the same company my dad did (Du-Wel), but I'm not sure. Ashel and Marian bred and raised boxers for a while. Tinker was a special part of our family back then. One time when Mom was in the grocery store, she left Ricky and Tinker on the sidewalk outside the store. She told Ricky to hold on to Tinker's leash so he wouldn't run away. Of course, Tinker never would run away -- he was actually there to keep Ricky from wandering off. When Ricky did start toddling toward the street, Tinker got ahold of his diaper and gently pulled him back onto the sidewalk. (You'd have to understand how life was in those little bitty towns in the 1950s. It was not as shocking as it sounds to the modern ear, to leave Ricky and Tinker on the sidewalk in front of the store.) (BTW, for those familiar with Bangor, it was Pete Waite's store. He was also a butcher, and you could also rent a meat locker at his store to keep your meat in after he had butchered it. Yes, just like on the Andy Griffith show -- if you remember the episode about Aunt Bee's freezer. "Call the man!")

Another story I remember about Tinker was that Ricky used to ride on him like a horse. One time Tinker took a peanut out of Ricky's hand and that made Rick mad, so he bit Tinker's ear. I don't remember the details, but in my mind I picture Rick being on Tinker's back and Tinker taking off like a shot through the house when Rick bit his ear. I don't know if he fell off or not... You'd have to hear Rick tell it, to get the full comedic value of the story.

The Register

 The Register

In our house in Bangor, in the living room, there was a register where the heat came up from the furnace. It was about 2 feet by 3 feet large. That's it in the floor behind me and Ricky in these photos.

There was a time when one of us tripped and fell onto the register and got 2nd degree burns over a large portion of our body. The funny thing is, I remember it being Ricky who fell -- but he remembers it being ME. That's so strange, that we each remember it being the other one. I'm just gonna say that he is probably right, because my memory is not always trustworthy. 

I'm pretty sure a big register in the middle of the living room like that would probably be illegal now, as a health hazard -- especially for children and the elderly. Maybe not. I've been living in the South for so many years that we don't have to worry much about heating our houses. My Michigan peeps will have to tell me if houses up North still have them or not. I do remember that my younger brother John when he was a toddler fell forward on a smaller register at someone else's house and burned the palms of his hands before we could grab him up off of it.

Another memory I have of our heat register is one time my mother was standing on it -- just trying to keep warm, I guess. She was wearing high heels and the heel of one of her shoes melted!

In this picture the register is in the bottom right corner of the photo. You can see the grid pattern.

In the picture below, the register is on the lower left.

This picture was taken on my 2nd birthday. I guess the tricycle was one of my birthday presents.

Seventy-two Years Ago Today

 My parents (Red and Wathada Thomas) met and married in 1953. 

Wathada wrote:

I met Red right at the beginning of 1953, just after the Christmas holidays.  We started dating and by that summer we were talking about getting married. 

[NOTE: I can't find where I have it written down, but I remember being told that Dad was on a date with another girl when he met Mom. The first thing he said to her was "Hello Sunshine."

I have it in the back of my mind that this is the girl Dad was with when he met Mom. I wouldn't stake my life on it, though. Anyway, back to the story...]

When Red and I were dating, we had a routine of things we did pretty regularly. Almost every Saturday night in the summertime, we went to dance at Crystal Palace in Coloma.  It was THE place to go.  There was a bar area where you had to be 21 years or older to enter.  But they had most of the tables in other areas and around the outside of the dance floor.  We could go there and that’s where most of the people we knew sat anyway, no matter what their age was.  Those tables were just the best places to sit.  They had the biggest of the “big bands” at Crystal Palace all summer long every summer.  We have danced to the music of all the big bands there at Crystal Palace.  

On summer Friday nights while Red and I were dating we usually went to the Sunset Drive-in Theater between Hartford and Watervliet.  The first movie they showed on Saturday nights was nearly always a western, and very often it was a Roy Rogers movie.  Red loved Roy Rogers and does to this day.  He would watch that movie, and then he would get over in the back seat of his car and go to sleep.  I would sit in the front seat and watch the second movie, which would be a regular movie.  When the movie was over, I would drive myself home in Red’s car and wake him up so he could drive himself home to Bangor.  Red had taught me how to drive, but I didn’t have a driver’s license.  I didn’t get a license until I was 19 years old and we had been married for two years.

Well, Red worked on construction then and was tired after working all day.  And sometimes I think he had to work on Saturday too.  So even though that doesn’t sound like a very exciting date, it worked for Red and me.

PHOTO: Wedding supper, the day after the wedding.

PHOTO: Wedding supper. L-R - Jay Bridges, Annie Hicks, Ulysses Hicks, Bernice Bridges holding Cindy, Cleffie Burford, Bill Thomas, Eileen Thomas.

(Annie and Ulys are my great-grandparents. Cleffie is their daughter, my grandmother, Wathada's mother. Bernice is Cleffie's sister, Jay is her husband, Cindy is their daughter. Bill Thomas is my grandfather, Red's father. Eileen Thomas is Red's sister-in-law, wife of his brother Bernarde Thomas.)

I don't know who took the picture. Probably Christie Thomas (Bill's wife, my grandmother.) I don't know who Annie is staring at across the table. Probably Bernarde.

There aren't any pictures of the wedding itself. Here is a blow-by-blow description of the event, written by my mother:

Red and I got married on Saturday, September 12, 1953 at the Methodist Church in Hartford, Michigan.  We got married inside that church just to satisfy Red’s mother.  She was a member of that church but never attended any services.  She belonged to one of the women’s clubs there.  We had a very small wedding.  We only had our parents there, my brothers and Bernice and Jay.  Red’s brother, Bernarde was his best man and his wife, Eileen was my matron of honor.  I was barely acquainted with Eileen, and I wanted to ask Bernice to be my matron of honor.  But when Red’s mother asked me who was going to “stand up” with me and I told her I was going to have Bernice, she told me I had to have Eileen because Red was having Bernarde.  She said it wouldn’t be right to have anyone but Eileen. Naturally, I kept my mouth shut and had Eileen for my matron of honor.  I felt like it was Red’s mother’s wedding – not mine. 

Our wedding day was very strange.  Red and I had got our blood tests done just before the Labor Day weekend.  Somebody made a mistake and Red’s blood didn’t get refrigerated so it spoiled.  So we had to do that again at the last minute and they were trying to rush it through.  We couldn’t get our marriage license without the results of those blood tests, so it got to be our wedding day and we still didn’t even know if we could get married that evening or not.  The florist was a friend of Red’s family and she was waiting to hear whether or not to make our corsages.  The minister of the Methodist Church was waiting to know if the wedding was on or off. We finally did get the blood test paperwork that day, and Red and I drove to the Van Buren County Courthouse in Paw Paw to get our marriage license that afternoon.  At that time, you had to get your marriage license five days before you got married unless you could get a judge to waive that five-day waiting period.  When we got there they said the judge was out fishing somewhere.  One clerk said she knew which lake he was fishing at and she volunteered to go find him and bring him to the courthouse.  Or maybe she just went to the lake and got him to sign something to waive that five-day waiting period – I don’t remember which.  But we finally did get our marriage license that day, and the five-day waiting period was waived.  When we finally left the courthouse, it had started raining.  We ran out to the car with our marriage license in hand, and the car wouldn’t start.  So Red got out of the car and pushed it while I popped the clutch and got it started.  Then Red took me home to Watervliet so I could get ready for our wedding, and he went to let the minister and the florist know we would have the wedding.  Then he went home to Bangor to get ready for the wedding. 

Nobody was at home at my house in Watervliet.  It was the day of the annual Whirlpool picnic somewhere around South Bend, Indiana and Daddy, Mama and my brothers had all gone to that.  I got myself ready to go to my wedding but didn’t have any way to get there.  By chance, Bernice and Jay stopped by on their way to my wedding and they gave me a ride to my own wedding.  I left a note for my family that I was getting married at the Methodist Church in Hartford at 7:00 p.m., and to come if they could.

When we got to the church, and it was time for the wedding, my family still were not there.  I didn’t care and wanted to start without them, but everybody said we should wait for a little while and see if they didn’t get there.  I didn’t feel like we needed to wait for them at all since they hadn’t felt any necessity to skip the picnic on their daughter’s wedding day – even if the whole thing was a bit ‘iffy”.  But as usual, I didn’t voice my opinion about that.  Eventually my family came rushing in, still in their picnic clothes, and we were able to proceed with the festivities about 7:30. 

This little fiasco is generally considered to be quite an amusing and entertaining bit of our history – lots of laughs about this story over the years.  But I’m still mad about it and I don’t think it’s funny! 

Wooden Shoes and cousin Mick

 

Wooden Shoes and cousin Mick

I don't have any specific memories of this, but I wanted to post this picture of me and my cousin Mick Thomas wearing wooden shoes. I don't know where we got them -- Holland, Michigan, probably. This picture was taken in Uncle Morris' trailer, so the shoes probably belonged to him.

Here is another picture of Mick, with me and my brother Ricky. This was taken at our house in Bangor. These pictures are dated June 1958, so I would have been 3 years old, Ricky 1y 8m, and Mick was 8 years old.

These two pictures appear to have been taken the same day. 

That's me and my favorite guy -- my dad (Richard 'Red' Thomas)

Mick Thomas is the son of my dad's brother Bernarde.

PHOTO: Bernarde and Eileen Thomas (Mick's parents)

Two Doll Christmas

Two Doll Christmas

The year was 1960. The baby boomers were enjoying the blessings of world peace and a robust economy, unlike the generations before us. We were living in a bubble of time -- the very best time to be a child in this country. Television was just coming into its own, along with TV commercials. I love watching old TV commercials. They were SO different from the frenetic pace and cacophony of modern advertising. That year (1960) there were two dolls competing for attention from two different toy companies. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybWzkwsgVXQ

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhAyxbtKh48

Now you know I got a doll every Christmas, right? Well, what happened was...

My parents had already bought a Patty Play Pal for me. She was a "life size" doll who could stand on her own. She was hiding in a closet waiting for Santa's arrival. And then the competition hit the airwaves -- in the form of Chatty Cathy. She was the first talking doll. Well, of course I just HAD to have one!!! And I just KNEW Santa would bring me one, because I had been such a good girl all year...

I wish I could have been a fly on the wall to hear the conversations that took place between my parents as Christmas season approached. But the result was:

PHOTO: Unboxing Patty Play Pal.

PHOTO: And, oh look!! Patty has a new little sister!

PHOTO: Me with my TWO new Christmas dolls.

(And a mink stole to boot!!)

When I Grow Big

When I Grow Big

One day I asked my mother - "When I grow big and you grow little, will I be your mommy?"

She explained to me that people don't grow smaller, they just grow taller. I guess I must have been under the impression that at some point you reach a peak height and then start heading back toward childhood. I don't know how old I was at the time. Too young to grasp the concept of death, I guess.  

It was some time after this that I looked up at my great aunt Evalee, who was tall, and said in wonderment - "How OLD are you?"

PHOTO L-R: Evalee and her sisters Ruby, Cleffie (my grandmother), Bernice, and Irene

That Time I Decided to Skip School

 That Time I Decided to Skip School

When I was in 2nd grade, for the first and only time in my life I did not like school. One day when I was home for lunch -- we had an hour for lunch, time enough to walk home, eat, and walk back to school -- I decided I was going to skip the afternoon. My plan was to take baby-steps (heel-to-toe, just like a field sobriety test, which I probably should have had that day) all the way back to school. The school was six blocks from our house. I figured I would probably get there just about the time school would be letting out, and then I would walk home and no one would be the wiser, right? 

Well, when I got to the school, I didn't see anybody outside on the playground or anywhere around, and I didn't have any idea what time it was. I don't know exactly what kind of reasoning went through my mind, but I didn't know what else to do but just go on in the door like usual. My classroom was near the door at the end of the hallway where I went in. Just as I was going in the door, I saw my teacher coming out of the classroom. She saw me, too. And she was not happy. Seems she was on her way to the office to call my house and find out why I had not come back to school after lunch. I can't even begin to imagine what I told her when she questioned me (loudly) about why I was so late. I probably just told her the truth. Anyway, she did go to the office, and she did call my mother and told her about it (loudly). 

To my recollection, my mother wasn't all that bothered by what I had done. She let me know that she didn't approve of it, of course. But she had met my teacher before. She was a high-strung person, to begin with, and she was going through a divorce right at that time, so she probably shouldn't have been teaching little children. Her method of discipline was to have a misbehaving child come to the front of the classroom and sit on the floor until the next break (recess or lunch). What I remember is that most of the class would wind up sitting on the floor every day (This was the same teacher who once put masking tape over my mouth because I was talking too much.) So Mom understood why I didn't like going to school that year. Fortunately, we moved from Bangor to Hartford in the middle of the school year. So then I had a nice teacher and I liked school again.

Kindergarten

 Kindergarten

I remember those shoes. They were called "pixie boots" and I think they were suede. I loved them! Most of the time, though, I wore saddle oxfords.

Kindergarten was half-day. I don't remember if I was in the morning or afternoon class. The main thing I remember about kindergarten was that halfway through the session we had a little snack of cookies or graham crackers and milk, and then we took a short nap on little rag rugs on the floor of the classroom. 

(Don't tell me the "good old days" weren't better than the modern world. I feel sorry for children in the rat race of daycare nowadays. Well, that's a rant that probably should be nipped in the bud...)

My brother was in the afternoon class when he started kindergarten. His teacher told my mother that Ricky was very sleepy all afternoon in class. Mom told her that they would have to put him in the morning class because he was used to taking a nap in the afternoons. In fact, no matter where he was or what was going on, at 1:00 he went to sleep. One time mom found him asleep standing up, leaning on a chair. Another time they couldn't find him and were frantically searching the house. When they found him he was in the toybox, fast asleep.

The Perm

I've told you about my desire to have Shirley Temple hair. There was a point in time when my mother tried to make my wish come true by giving me a home perm.

(That mark on my cheek was a bite mark from my brother. Biting was his weapon of choice.)

Ta da !!!

Curly in the back

Straight in the front

* * *

I'm guessing this picture was some months after that perm. You can see that my hair has barely a little bit of wave near the bottom. The grown-out part is stick straight, my natural hair. Definitely NOT Shirley Temple!  That's my brother Rick and my cousin Cindy in the picture with me.

* * *

That must not have been my first perm, because there's this picture, in which my hair was curly all over, even in the front. I look younger here.

With my cousins Donna Kay Hawley and Cindy Bridges.