The Old-fashioned Way

I saw a family down at the beach yesterday flying kites and it reminded me of a memory I haven't thought of in a long time.

I was very young when my grandpa Thomas taught me how to make a kite from a newspaper page, constructed with a couple little strips of wood he brought in from the barn. And Grandma got some strips of cloth from her sewing room and taught me how to make a tail for the kite.

I also remember Grandma making paste out of flour and water. (It actually worked!) Later on, in high school art classes, we used that same homemade glue to do paper mache.

There was no Mod Podge in the 1950s.

PHOTO: Grandpa Thomas holding my little brother John

PHOTO: Grandma and Grandpa Thomas

Armistice Day

Armistice Day

The photo above is a full-size rendering of the front page of the New York Times 11 November 1918

11 November 1918

Philadelphia PA

Happy birthday to me

 Decades...

1954 to 2025

Life events (just the highlights)

Plus 25 more years, and counting...

Hudson Terraplane

 HUDSON TERRAPLANE

When I was about nine or ten years old.  I remember going to Olds grocery store for our groceries. Mom had a list and would give it to the clerk, usually one of the Olds brothers, and they would get what ever was on the list, bag it and take it to our car.  

For some reason, Aunt Renue and Uncle Erwin were staying with us. They had just purchased a new Hudson Terraplane car, but it came without the front and rear bumpers.  This was right after the war and the car factories were changing back from making war supplies and this was one of the first cars made after the war.  The dealer told them that as soon as the bumpers came in they would put them on for them.  I believe that Hudson came without a spare tire, but I’m not sure.

The Straight Farm

 THE STRAIGHT FARM

When we lived here we only had an outside toilet,  It was OK in the summer time, but in the winter it was not so nice going through the snow, and the wind would sometimes blow through the cracks in the door and make little snow drifts.  I remember when my dad made a small room on the back porch and put in a toilet stool. but no running water so we had to carry water to flush with. This room had no heat but it was better than going out side.  

I took my bath in a wash tub in the kitchen because it was the warmest room in the house and that was not the best sometimes. We had a wood burning stove in the kitchen and a coal burning pot bellied stove in the living room and they would heat the whole house. We would close off any room that was not needed.  

When my mother would build a fire she would put some fuel oil on the kindling and sometimes we would have a small explosion, and sometimes she would get that pot bellied stove red hot getting the house warmed up.  

I got my first shot gun here. It was a 44 caliber rifle bored out to a 410 caliber shot gun (single shot).  I got it from my cousin Ralph Till when he got a new one.  The first time I went hunting I got a pheasant.  I was in the corn field and saw the pheasant running down the corn row ahead of me so I ran after it.  When it took off I shot just as it was at the top of the corn stalks.

One time when my dad and I were getting some corn stalks from the field to the barn to feed the cows, a field mouse ran up my dad’s pant leg. My dad always wore bib overalls, and I remember Dad grabbing his overalls in the chest area catching the mouse and squeezing it until it was dead.  

I remember lots of things about this place. One was the time I almost fell off the wind mill, I was playing with a handkerchief made like a parachute so I thought I would climb to the top of our wind mill and throw it up from there and it would go a long way. Well when  I was in the process of this I almost fell off the windmill. This scares me to tell this now.  

The Great Train Escape

 THE GREAT TRAIN ESCAPE

(This is one of Red's best stories.)

One time when I was about 10 or 12 years old Dale Swinford and I were out at the railroad trestle north of Hartford throwing rocks down at the turtles in the mill pond. For some reason we did not notice that a train was coming and when did see it we started for the end of the trestle but did not have time to get there. At the very last second we swung over the side and were hanging on the railroad ties. It was so close that the train men thought they had hit us and stopped the train.  With the train stopped we could not get back up on the tracks so we hand over handed to the end of the trestle and hid.  The train people told people in town that they hit some kids playing on the trestle and they came looking for us. Later we came out of hiding and acted like we were looking too.  Dale and I vowed never to tell anyone.  Years later, after I was married, one day I told Mom and Dad and Mother remembered that day. 

The Bridge

 THE BRIDGE

While we lived there us kids would go out north of Hartford to the mill pond and go swimming at the bridge.  We would ride our bicycles out to the bridge and ride them off the end of the dock into the water.  After we were through swimming we would dive down to the bottom and get our bicycles.  I could dive off the cross bars of the bridge about 15 feet from the water but some of the older kids (I was about 10 or 11 years old) could dive off the top of the bridge about 30 feet to the water. The current was so strong and I was so small I couldn’t swim up stream so I would swim down stream until got to shore and would walk back up the road to the bridge.

 

House By The Cemetery

 HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY

This house was on the west side of Hartford, Michigan about across from where Galati’s Pizza is now.  This house only had one bedroom so my father closed in the front porch and that’s where Bernarde and I slept. 

I call this place “the house by the cemetery” because it was across from the cemetery.  One night I was walking home from a scary movie and when I got at the cemetery gate opening someone said something and I looked and saw two ghosts! But it was two of the Yeats girls with white blouses cutting through the cemetery on their way to town.

One night I was coming home from a movie in the rain on my bicycle and hit a light pole on the corner by the cemetery and almost fell in front of a semi truck. It was a close call. 

PHOTO: Bernarde, Richard, Bill, with Boots the dog

Dad Would Milk the Cows

 DAD WOULD MILK THE COWS

When dad would milk the cows he would take the milk to the basement and run it though our cream separator so my mother would have cream to churn into butter.  We also raised a big garden and mother canned.

I remember one time around Christmas my father came home from work and started to take off his boots on the back porch and fell down in the process.  It seems that they had a few drinks after work celebrating Christmas.  Well, after he fell down he said to himself, “Well then I will take you off sitting down”.  I never remember seeing my father take a drink.

Old Gray Horse

Okay, back to the memoirs of my dad, Richard Thomas...

Another one of my childhood adventures was when we lived down the road from Mr. & Mrs. Kime, I was five or six years old.  We had an old gray horse back then, so I would go out in the barn yard and get this old horse by the soft spots in his nose and lead him into the barn so I could stand on the manger to bridle him. Then I would lead him out to the wagon and I would walk up the tongue of the wagon, leaning on the horse until I was on the wagon, then I would get on the horse and go up the road to Mrs. Kime's place, about half a mile. I could get off OK but when I got ready to go home Mrs. Kime would help me get back on the horse. The old horse would start for home and sometimes I would lay down on his back and he would take me home.

PHOTO: Ethel Kime

PHOTO: Ethel Kime (left), Christie Thomas (my grandmother), and... I'm not sure who the lady on the right is. Probably Edith Davis.

Both of these photos were taken at my grandparents' house in Bangor, Michigan.

* * *

This is also the place that the bees got us.  We were cultivating the garden using the old gray horse to pull the cultivator.  I was riding the horse when all of a sudden we were in a nest of bees.  Well.... I jumped off the horse and took off running.  Bernarde took off in the other direction and we forgot the old gray horse.  Well, you know the bees didn't seem to bother that horse.  I don't remember if Bernarde or Dad went back for the old gray horse. 

PHOTO: Bernarde, Bill, Christie, Richard in front