Here is my mom and dad, Joan and Harry in front of our home at 29456 Guy street Southfield Michigan, 1965. I was 14 when this was taken and may have even taken the photo but it was most likely a friend of theirs. They are clearly dressed for church, mom in her veiled hat and dad in his brown jacket. It might be Sept or October before the first snows.
This home was my third home after Berkeley and the Farm. My father was not happy with the level of education in the country and wanted us to have more kids to play with so we moved to Southfield Estates and bought the "model" home that everyone had already looked through. This home served them well, as all the kids could walk to St. Bede's Catholic school which was a mere 2 blocks away and a safe walk at that. The neighborhood was a very large, almost mile of a circle, with all new homes that except for the color of the shutters, looked the same. There were a few one level ranch styles and you knew that those people had either one or no children.
This front yard was only a tiny portion of our play area, as the whole neighborhood blended to play from one lawn to the next. There were kids, kids, and more kids. And then there were forts. We had made the forts from the wood that was"left over" from the new homes in the subdivision.
There were fights with fists, wood and most of all, dirtballs. There was even a term that was used,"dirt ball fights". The girls would play in the house with the barbies and dress up their dolls and talk. The boys and a few of the girls would be out of doors until the parents screamed our names to come in for dinner. This was life in a subdivision. Gone were the days of wandering through nature. Now we were living in a jungle of a different type, a blacktop jungle filled with people with lots of kids who wanted a "better life" for their families. We were only 3 blocks from 12 mi and Southfield, 2 major intersecting streets, and as this subdivision was only 20-30 miles from downtown Detroit there were still plenty of cars that would drag on those streets at night. I didn't know about this until my one older friend Patty Spears had me sneak out at night by climbing out on the roof and walking to the corner and watching them drag up and down the road in their suped up 65 chevys and vettes. These guys were much too old for me but at 14 and 15 I can still remember the thrill of sneaking out at night to watch drag racing. I never really got in trouble as my parents didn't find out for awhile. I think she was the first person I knew that smoked, Salem menthol, and she introduced me to smoking which for me only lasted until I was 18 and then I quit forever, lucky to have only smoked for 3 years, it could have been the death of me.
We had loads of interesting neighbors who had all kinds of unusual jobs but the most interesting family were the Wolbers. The oldest boy was my age Paul, and his father was a nuclear physicist and recently I contacted him and he was quite gracious and wrote back several times.
We had nuns and they were strict, but that is for another post.
Have a wonderful Saturday. And remember your roots!
Posts
1 comment:
Hi Marianne, I really loved this blog entry. i felt like I lived on Guy Street with you. My neighborhood was very similar to yours back in the early 60s, we even played with dirt balls but we called them dirt clods. My brother, David, was hit in the eye with a dirt clod and nearly lost his eye. He had to stay in bed for over a month with a patch over his eye. To this day he is semi blind in the unjured eye. The next craze that hit the neighborhood was making our own skateboards. What a dangerous activity that was. Sandra
Post a Comment