December 09

 

I don't know who these people are, but apparently it was Christmas...

I think this photo came from my dad's side of the family. I wonder if the woman on the left and the man on the right could be Aunt Renue and Uncle Erwin. But honestly, I haven't a clue who the other people could be. 

307 Union Street Bangor Michigan

 The house I lived in when I was a small child was at 307 Union Street -- at the intersection of Union and Division -- Bangor, Michigan. 

We moved out of the house at the end of 1961 and, and it took my parents 10 years to sell it. Consequently, we always lived in rented houses after that, and my parents never bought another house until they retired.

I made a trip to Michigan in 1992 and took pictures of all the houses I had lived in growing up, in Bangor and Hartford. The house on Union street had been torn down and there was just an empty lot there. That was 30 years ago, and the lot is STILL empty. I wonder why. I wonder who owns it. I wonder if the fact that the house was haunted has anything to do with why there has never been another house built on that lot...

If it weren't for the awful Michigan winter weather, I'd be tempted to buy the lot myself and build a house there and live there...

(Btw, the house across the street is for sale. It belonged to Ashel and Marian Miller when we lived there. The house that's there now is apparently the same house, with just a few cosmetic changes.

Photo: The house at 310 Union street, now (for sale) and 60 years ago when we lived across the street. (That's my dad, leaning against the reason I won't live in Michigan now.)

December 8

 

Christmas 1960. (Remember when cameras had film, and the date on the picture might be months after the picture was actually taken? You had to finish the roll of film before you could get the pictures developed.) Jeff and Nancy Thomas. Jeff and Nancy were the children of my dad's cousin Roger Thomas. Roger's father Mel was a brother to my grandfather Bill Thomas. (The stocking says Vicki. She was Jeff and Nancy's half-sister.)

And speaking of dolls

 Here is a picture of my great-grandmother Annie Arnold Hicks and a doll that she had. 

Here is what she wrote about it:

Some of my aunts, I never saw. I never saw Aunt Beckie or Aunt Tilda or Aunt Mary or Aunt Sarah. I remember Aunt Margaret made me a doll when I was about 3 years old. She made it while I was asleep and put it in front of me so I would see it when I awoke. I was prouder of it than kids would be now of a nice big bought doll for money was scarce then, if a man could get a day’s work at all it wouldn’t pay more than 40 cents a day. There wasn’t any such thing as buying toys. I doubt if they even had them in stores. 

Here is a picture of her aunt, Margaret Carter, who made the doll:

Margaret Emaline Carter Rhoades

December 7

 

1960. The year Santa Claus brought me TWO dolls!

The tall doll was called Patty Play Pal (I think), and the smaller one was Chatty Cathy. When Chatty Cathy commercials hit the TV airwaves. I was so insistent on wanting a Chatty Cathy for Christmas (not knowing that "Santa" had already bought Patty Play Pal) that my dear Santa just couldn't turn me down. Well, that's the way I remember it, anyway.

I got a new doll for Christmas every year of my life until I was grown (and a few times even after that!) I still love baby dolls.

Christmas 1964

 

This picture was taken at our house in 1964. We lived a couple miles outside of Hartford in a house surrounded by apple orchards. (Dad called it "Drake's place" because we rented it from Curtis Drake.) 

This picture of the house was taken in the 1990s. You can't see the apple orchards, and I don't even know if they were still there or not by then. The house looks just the same, though, as it did when we lived in it -- except for the big tree stump a couple yards in front of the front steps, which my uncle Ron once painted purple. But that's another story for another day...

Xmas on the farm, 1950

 

Here is what my great-grandmother, Annie Hicks, wrote:

When we came to Michigan, we worked on a farm in 1941 and 1942. In the fall of ’42 we got jobs in the shops and the children went to school at Bridgman, and we drove to Benton Harbor to work. In the summer of 1943, we rented an apartment at 120 Sixth Street in Benton Harbor and stayed there six years. In the meantime, in 1945 we bought a 20 acre farm about 20 miles south of Benton Harbor. We rented the farm out for three years, then we moved on it and Ulys quit working in the shop but I kept working till 1953. Ulys worked in the shop till 1948. He got so disabled that we sold the farm and bought a house in Benton Harbor at 602 Empire. He didn’t work any more, but I worked about two years more. We bought the house in Benton Harbor the fall of 1951.

Photo: Annie (center) and 5 of her 6 daughters (L-R): Ruby, Cleffie, Evalee, Vernell, Bernice. 

Here is the house in Benton Harbor at 602 Empire. This is where Grandma and Papa Hicks lived when I was growing up:

December 03

 

I think this would have been 1958. L-R: Grandpa Thomas, Wathada, me, Grandma Thomas, Ricky. Looks like Ricky got Tinkertoys. I got a vanity. I think it was made of cardboard, but it had drawers and a real mirror, and I think a little stool to sit on, too. As I recall, there was a set of play make-up to go with it.

This might have been Xmas Eve. (Looks like it's dark outside the window.) We always spent Xmas Eve with Dad's family, either at our house or at Grandma & Grandpa's or Bernarde & Eileen's. This picture was taken at our house. 

Cardboard fireplace

 

Remember cardboard fireplaces? I have labeled this picture 1964, but the more I think about it, it was probably 1963. We moved from Bangor school district (house out in the country by Van Auken Lake) to Hartford school district in the middle of the school year -- either just before or just after Christmas. I only have pictures of one Xmas in the Van Auken Lake house, and that would have been 1962. This cardboard fireplace is in the dining room of the house we moved into on county road 687 ("Drake's place" my dad called it -- we rented the house from Curtis Drake). We lived in that house for 3 1/2 years, and we had a dining room table and chairs right in the spot where this cardboard fireplace is standing. So I'm thinking we had just moved into the house when this picture was taken and we didn't have the table and chairs yet.

This is the same spot where the cardboard fireplace was in the other photo. L-R: Me, mom, dad, Ron and Maxine. I don't know who the person out of frame on the left might be, nor who took the picture. My dad did the two paintings hanging on the wall -- the covered bridge and the portrait of me. He and mom were taking art classes at the time from Mrs. Disbrow (the art teacher at Hartford High School).

Remember Xmas cards?

 Remember when people sent real Christmas cards? 

These are pictures of the house I lived in when I was a small child. 307 Union Street, Bangor, Michigan. 

We lived in this house from June 1956 until the end of 1961. (And then we lived in it again for a few months in 1963.) My dad built the room divider between the living room and dining room The enclosed parts have doors and shelves on the dining room side. This house had a living room on one side of the front and a 'parlor' on the other side. It had one bedroom downstairs (behind the parlor) and two bedrooms and an attic upstairs. The house was haunted. The old man who lived in the house before us had died in one of the upstairs bedrooms and apparently still lived there with us after he died. We could hear him walking around upstairs and see a misty patch of light in the middle of the stairway sometimes. We lived in this house longer than any other house when I was growing up. In fact, it's the longest I ever lived in one house my whole life, until the house I am living in now, where we have been for almost 20 years.