Judy Shank Cyg's Blog: Fantasy, Books, and Daily Life, page 19

The Heights and Intentional Acts of Kindness

Auburn Hills will always be “the Heights” to me.

Some of us moved away after high school and returned to raise our children in the Heights. Some moved away young and remember the Heights and all the parades, celebrations, and stores with happy nostalgia. Some stayed in the area. Some grew up there, raised children, and moved away with rich memories.

I’m the last.

I’ve been away well over 20 years, and live in Central Florida where weather skips winter altogether, moving from early autumn to late spring, and birds sing year-round. I think of the Heights often, with love, but see it in my mind as it was, not only when I moved away, but especially how it looked when I was a child.

I’ll be visiting for a week in my childhood neighborhood, and although I expect changes (and have been warned), will superimpose “my” Heights onto the current Auburn Hills.

Don’t we all do that in our memory?

For those of us who’ve stayed in the area, changes happen and are incorporated, welcome or not. For returning Heights’ people, the shocks can be devastating. For example, what happened to Adams Road? And the downtown area, which was officially “the Heights” when I was young? We rode our bikes to “the Heights” for a visit to Short's or Thomas Variety at least once a week in the summertime.

My unexpected and welcome visit is an intentional act of kindness. My niece invited me to celebrate her wedding, after years of hard work raising her boys on her own, and I’m delighted to be part of her happiness, their happiness. She paid for my airfare, so I will be able to see my brother (after two years), my aunt (after at least 30 years), stay with my sister-in-law, and set Mom’s ashes to rest in Perry Mount Park cemetery.

Why am I sharing this? It’s not our usual local history, which we all enjoy, but mine, and the Heights are such a major part of me that even the years away can’t dim that.

I’ll try not to dwell on everything that’s gone. The corner store where we took our nickels and bought penny candy in a tiny paper bag, and where my friend’s mom sent her for bread and milk, telling the owner to add the cost to their account. (Imagine that happening anywhere today.) Passing the Auburn Hills Elementary School and the school hills across the street on our way downtown.

Frank’s Nursery for a Christmas tree when I was the parent. The Pontiac State Bank where we had all our accounts. (Wrote Dad a check for a million dollars one year on his birthday. He teased me about that being the reason the bank went under.)

North Adams Road, passing familiar houses until you reached the beautiful wooded areas with curves and a hopeful view of the white deer at Meadowbrook. Neighbors gone decades, friendly, rarely seen, or threatening buckshot to anyone who stole one more bunch of Concord grapes. Bridges’ horse farm. All corner markets.

I intend to make the most of my visit, (although I won’t have access to my computer so next week’s post will be delayed). The offer of a visit for such a special occasion brought to mind other acts of kindness that stick in my memory.

The first time I reached the pickup window to learn that the car before me paid for my lunch. Mom letting us kids ride to the top of the Riker Building downtown Pontiac during a dental or doctor visit. We thought we stood on the top of the world as we peered out of ten-story windows on trees and streets across the city.

The woman at St. Michael’s in Pontiac who kindly pinned a tissue to my head with bobby pins when I showed up for Mass with no hat—you girls remember those straw hats, wound with ribbons that fell from the back, held on by elastic under your chin. The teacher who took us to the Wisner House on a field trip and talked about the underground railroad.

Even Mom hauling me back to the corner store with my stolen tiny plastic doll, and making me admit the theft, give it back, and promise never to steal again. I was so humiliated, I never forgot that and never did steal again. I remember the store owner thanking me and offering me the doll for my honesty, and Mom behind me, shaking her head at him. She was right. It was a necessary and well-learned lesson.

The same Mom who would return to a store if she received too much change. “The clerk is responsible,” she’d say. “Besides, it’s wrong.”

My neighborhood friends, brothers and little sisters, and our freedom to explore our local area. The names I read on this site who were part of my years there.

See? Just thinking about going back for a week triggers many, many happy memories.

No matter how much my Heights has changed—and it has—underneath the image I carry are the bones of our home town.

Not Auburn Hills, but the Heights.

And thank you to all of you and to Joanie Sullivan Todd for this wonderful site which allows us to continue to share our memories, our lives in the Heights, and how it’s become part of who we are.

I’ll wave at you as I ride around next week!

Legend of Chief Pontiac and Apple Island

In the middle of Orchard Lake is the mysterious, forested Apple Island, an emerald jewel with more legends than 35 acres of glacier-created land, 31 feet over the water. I was told that it was also the burial ground of Chief Pontiac.

Even in my childhood experience, Chief Pontiac was famous. He had a city and a car named for him. The Pontiac Trail carried his name since the 1790’s. Early settlers formed a village named for him early 1800’s, which became the City of Pontiac, because of the famous chief’s headquarters.

His commanding portrait (an oil painting by Jerry Farnsworth) hung in every elementary school in Pontiac (including LeBaron Elementary where I went to school through third grade), dealerships, credit unions, and the lobby of Pontiac City Hall. I stared at the majestic figure whenever I rode to the Chief Financial Credit Union with Grandpa in the 1950’s (where he put in or took out money, a magic trick, to me).

Like Tecumseh, Pontiac was a man of peace, strength, and diplomacy who commanded respect, chief of the Ottawa tribe. Like Tecumseh, he united tribes, his from Lake Superior to lower Mississippi, to protect hunting grounds and protest British rule. His plan was for each tribe to overcome the nearest fort and join forces. Tecumseh was born a year before Pontiac died or the two leaders might have realized their goals by working together.

Yes, he eventually lost, but his courage became legend.

Fearless and ruthless, Chief Pontiac believed that the Ottawa gods were displeased by any bonds with the British of the time. “These lakes, these woods and mountains, were left to us by our ancestors,” he said. “They are our inheritance and we will part with them to no one…You ought to know that He, the Great Spirit and Master of Life, has provided food for us in these spacious lakes and on the woody mountains.”

If life was only that simple.

He was tall and eloquent and tattooed, a regal figure whose real name was Obwandiyag, believed by some sources to be son of an Ottawa father and Ojibway mother, born around 1720 in the Great Lakes region, tough as the Ottawa men were, since they went naked, or wore a cloak and leather moccasins, even in winter and battle. (Having lived through more Michigan winters than I care to share, that fact alone amazes me.) He headed the Council of Three Tribes—Ottawa, Potawatomi, and Ojibwa.

French traders and tribes had worked well together in their business of furs for food, guns, ammunition, and tobacco, but in 1760 the British defeated the French and claimed their forts. Trade was limited and the tribes’ dignity dismissed. So began the Pontiac Rebellion, one of the greatest Indian alliances in North America. A failed siege at Fort Detroit in 1763 forced Pontiac to cease fighting and sign a treaty.

That treaty led to resentment from tribes, including his village. He was murdered in Cahokia in 1769, and a friend brought his body to St. Louis where he was buried, according to historians, at Broadway and Walnut, today a parking garage with a plaque in his honor.

So, what about Apple Island?

I was disappointed to learn that a research associate with University of Michigan’s museum of anthropology announced that neither Chief Pontiac’s burial spot nor birthplace is linked to the island, although the Ottawa leader could have visited there.

What a disappointment. I was sure that the presence of this amazing leader could be felt when gazing at the island in Orchard Lake.

I wasn’t the only one who hoped this.

Legends of Chief Pontiac and Apple Island appeared in the late 1800’s, possibly to draw customers, so I’m in good company.

Many innocent settlers were killed during the Pontiac Rebellion. Loss of dignity and trading practices led to resentment and fighting and the union of like-minded tribes, led by an incredible leader. Right? Wrong? Romanticized history?

Hero?

Yes, without question. After all, no matter which side of the legacy you belong to, leadership and courage are qualities that shine through the years.

Pontiac Division, 1926-2009.
Chief Pontiac, 1720-1769.

I salute you both.

And I Thought History Was Boring

Yes, I learned in school that Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin and when the War of 1812 began, but I did not inhale history in class. Once the fascination of Native American daily life moved to the Colonial Era, industry, and war, the subject was a blend of dates and inventions, politics and battles.

I was an oddball who preferred writing poetry (not analyzing it), literature, and yes, even grammar.

Until now.

Turns out, any history can tell a story when it concerns family lives—how they lived, how and why they settled, why names of towns and streets changed, how the landscape around them was slowly altered.

In other words, our history, fellow residents of the Heights.

In these posts, we’ve been collecting facts and names and settlements like Petoskey stones or autumn leaves for our annual elementary school collections. Questions are endless.

The Old Dutch Mill, once located at 3211 Auburn Road between Churchill Road and the Clinton River (another source of fascination), for example. The current empty lot can’t erase the tavern that was part of my childhood, even if I never stepped foot inside.

The Old German Mill, original name, never ground grain, although Virginia told me that a house across the river did at one time. Tyson Brown, President of the Auburn Hills Historical Society, did some digging on this tavern in response to my questions, and I learned that “mill” was another name for tavern or drinking establishment. WWII and our war with Germany changed the name to “Old Dutch Mill” because the Dutch weren’t antagonists then and had a reputation for “good liquor.”

As a child, I was told that the Old Dutch Mill was no place to go on Saturday nights, but looking at Tyson’s photos of the little wooden horses that patrons rode around inside, it seemed like a good time. Until it burned down in the 1970’s.

Early history of the Heights does include my favorite part of history class, since the book Pontiac Township 1827-1983 The End of an Era tells us, “Indians once inhabited the marshy area now known as Pontiac Township. It was the home of the Ottawa, Chippewa, Wyandot and the Potawatomi tribes. The township was named after the great Ottawa chief, Pontiac.” Tyson gave me the name of the Oakland History Center for more information, since they have “a collection of arrow heads which were found near Auburn Heights and records of the trails, tribes, and burial locations used by the Indians in and around the Heights” (Tyson), and suggested we might learn more from them.

He did find an 1838 map of the Heights area that showed a passage along what is Grey Road, one of the oldest roads in the area, with Auburn Road and “Webster Road” (South Squirrel Road). So, Linda, Grey Road could have been a stagecoach route, with stops, in the 1800’s.

Yes, it would be fun to learn more, and to investigate a bridge from the Clinton River to the Dodge Estate (Meadowbrook Hall), LeRoy.

Many or most of us share a thirst for our own history. I realize that this can’t be taught in generic classes, but wouldn’t an Avondale history class about the Heights have been full and lively?

I’d remember far more about those names and efforts, farms and businesses than I do how long the 1812 War lasted. (Nearly three years.)

Many of you are descendants of early settlers, inventors, farmers, merchants, and town leaders. We’d love to hear more about your family background and memories.

Now, that’s real history.

Powered by the Clinton River

Crayfish or crawdads? Depends on where you live. For us in the Heights, crayfish could be caught in the Clinton River, over the railroad tracks, an excursion Mom frowned on and my brothers ignored.

A lovely river. It bubbled and twisted its way through Rochester and the Heights and into Pontiac, where it dove underground. Dangerous, too, in spots, but alluring and singing a bubbly song of catfish, bluegill, crayfish, trout, and in other areas, fish to boast about. For us, it was part of the Heights, along the railroad tracks past the junior high, around downtown, and off to Rochester where it powered the Yates Cider Mill.

My limited memories don’t come close to the reality of that river.

Native Americans camped beside it overnight before crossing, near Saginaw and Water Streets. In the late 17th century, French explorers called it Nottawasippee, Ojibwe for “like rattlesnakes.” British fur traders called it the Huron River. On July 17, 1824 it was named after DeWitt Clinton, governor of New York from 1817 to 1823.

It’s part of the Clinton River Watershed, an area 760 square miles and 83 miles long, covering most of Macomb County and much of Oakland County. Pretty ambitious for a meandering river with woods and parks along its banks.

It begins northwest of Pontiac in Springfield Township and ends at Lake St Clair. That’s a lot of crayfish. “You get a line and I’ll get a pole, honey…”

We never ate any of the fish and crayfish that my brothers caught since we were warned that the pretty river was polluted. In 1972, The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement focused on the Clinton River, and in 1995, the entire watershed was included in a clean-up project. Once known as the most polluted river in the U.S., by 2020 the project gave the clean-up results bragging rights.

The Clinton River watershed formed over 20,000 years ago from the glaciers, the same that gave us our marvelous rocks and boulders. Eventually, rivers were created from the melting ice.

The Clinton River made early Pontiac successful with mills that produced timber, flour, and women’s hats. Lumber and mills made Pontiac a national leader of carriages, which led to cars, trucks, and buses. No wonder Pontiac has a Mill Street and a Water Street.

Played its part in the Heights, as well, with grist mills and sawmills.

An excerpt from Pontiac Township 1827-1983 The End of an Era says:

“Auburn in 1830 was a very pretty little village. There was the village green surrounded by very attractive houses. One street, the only one of any length, passed through the middle of it. The Clinton River water power sparked Auburn’s growth to 300 residents by 1830 with 50 buildings, including two smith shops, a wheelwright enterprise, a tannery and cabinet and chairmaker’s shop.”

From a “pretty little village” in the 1830’s to the growing city that it is now, my childhood Heights is the best of both worlds, in my opinion.

I spent happy hours walking along banks of the Clinton River in the Heights and in Rochester parks, with no conception of its true length or impact on wildlife and wetlands, ponds and lakes, and cold, clear tributaries with herons, trout, mink, smallmouth bass, walleye, bluegill, perch, pike, carp, catfish…and of course, crayfish.

“You get a line and I’ll get a pole, we’ll go down to the crawdad hole, honey, baby mine.”

We could probably eat those little crustaceans now, boiled with potatoes and corn on the cob, or lots of butter.

You get a line and I’ll get a pole.

Saturday Matinees and Popcorn

For a time, my brothers and I spent Saturday afternoons with the Amazing Colossal Man and the fifty-foot woman, plus more movies than I remember now.

If the Heights didn’t offer it, either Pontiac or Rochester did, and we spent many happy hours at the Hills Theater in Rochester on Saturdays to watch (awful) movies and eat enough popcorn to ruin dinner.

The Hills Theater was a staple, from around 1942 (before the Colossal Man) to sometime in the 80’s. Wouldn’t be able to find any sign of it now since it became the Main Street Plaza, but it was a draw for kids in the 50’s or 60’s.

I’m sure that my brothers didn’t join in the horrendous sport of pouring water into popcorn boxes, hanging over the edge of the balcony, and making loud urping sounds as they poured the glop onto unsuspecting heads. Fortunate that we were able to enjoy the Saturday matinees as long as we did.

I remember The Amazing Colossal Man (1957) about the army lieutenant colonel who grew to sixty feet from a plutonium explosion. (Careful, Marty! Doc didn’t warn you about that, did he?) The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) who got smaller because of a fog until he lived in a dollhouse, fought the family cat, and disappeared into the basement, smaller than a bug.

I think we saw The Fly, too (1958)— “Help me! Help me!”—about the scientist who entered his molecular transporter with a housefly and is killed before being eaten by a spider. The Cyclops (1957) was created by radioactivity from radium deposits in the Mexican jungles. The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958), about a wealthy heiress and a giant alien (!!), was another I remember.

The late 50’s produced a wealth of these “harrible” movies, as Dad called them, since he was a fan of at-home Saturday afternoon sci-fi / horror films. The worse, the better, as he said, and entertained himself looking for zippers on the monster costumes, poor acting from the usually-blond actresses, and the lesson printed at the end as a warning to us. What? To avoid colossal men or plutonium explosions?

These are not to be compared with the terrific The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) movie with Michael Rennie and Patricia Neal, and no, I haven’t seen the sequel since I’m suspicious of redoing a true classic. We all memorized the famous phrase, “Gort, Klaatu barada nikto.” (An amazingly effective order to the frightening robot Gort, since Klaatu is the alien, so “barada nikto” means to find Klaatu, carry him to the ship, and temporarily revive him.) I just know that faced with that scary metal giant, I’d go blank after his name, and burble out something inane. Za-a-a-p! I’m fried. Of course, even this film ended with the warning to humanity from Klaatu: “Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer.” Since Gort was really the one in charge, lucky for us they haven’t returned for that answer.

Anybody else remember those Saturday matinees? They were inexpensive enough that Mom could give us ticket and treat money, and drop us off to wallow for hours in real popcorn, made from a real machine, with butter, of course, and “harrible” movies that thrilled us at the time.

And let’s not forget Them! (1954) about giant ants with squeaking noises that warned of their approach, antennae wiggling. The sounds were a mixture of tree frogs, wood thrush, hooded warbler, and red-bellied woodpecker, but sounded to me like a loose fan belt. This meant that later, at any time, I’d hear the sounds of giant ants heading our way. This movie also had its concluding warning: “When Man entered the Atomic Age, he opened the door to a new world. What we may eventually find in that new world, nobody can predict.”

They sure didn’t predict micro-processors and lasers, but again, every sci-fi hero had a laser gun of some kind.

One thing we did learn from those movies was to avoid the following scenario in real life:

“What’s that (sound)?”

“I don’t know, let’s check it out!”

Thank you, management of the Hills Theater, for letting us kids have our hours of horror and delight and popcorn. (I never wasted mine on disgusting tricks, but ate until my eyes bulged.)

“Oh, no, it wasn’t the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast.” (King Kong, 1933)

Did It Rain in the Summertime?

It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring…

Rain, rain, go away, come again some other day…

Of course, it rained during the summer in the Heights. I know it did. I remember thunderstorms and tornado warnings, but I can’t remember what we did as kids on rainy days during school vacation.

Occasionally, when there was no chance of lightning, we might go outside and splash in puddles, but when I was older, probably not. So, what did I do? On my own, read. That happened in any weather, any day. But with friends, before those teen years?

We didn’t watch TV during the day, except Saturday morning cartoons with a plethora of cold cereal. We kids believed that we were the first to have a color TV on our street, and happily watched our favorite shows in the evenings—Huckleberry Hound, The Flintstones, Wonderful World of Disney, My Favorite Martian, Mr. Ed, My Three Sons, Donna Reed, Red Skelton—except for a brief time when Soupy Sales aired right after school. My brother and I raced home to watch Pookie, White Fang, Black Tooth, and hear Soupy’s Words of Wisdom.

My best friend Kay, who moved from the end of the street to next door, pulled out her playing cards and board games, and we played in her room. We found a Hoyle’s book of rules (Edmond Hoyle, 1672-1769, a British writer who recorded game rules) and taught ourselves games, when we weren’t quarreling, of course.

Mainly we rode our bikes downtown to go to Shorts’ dime store or Thomas Variety (for her embroidery thread and hoops) or around the neighborhood streets. We picked hickory nuts under an old tree between the First and Second Woods, wild strawberries in the fields that became the junior high football field, chewed mitten-shaped sassafras leaves for the sharp, unique flavor. Yes, I’ve read that they’re poisonous, but we never ate more than one leaf at a time, nor did I ever find another patch than the one in the middle of the woods at the end of our street.

But not in the rain.

The Heights averages 32 inches of rain a year (and 34 inches of snow), and it couldn’t have happened only in the spring and fall.

Anytime I went camping with Kay’s family, at Holly or farther north, it was sure to rain the entire time. I can’t recall sunny days, then. They had a vacation rain curse which was unfortunate, since the family camping trips had to be planned in advance around a work schedule.

I can easily remember the smell of earthworms after a rain in the summer. That was a pungent and unpleasant scent of mud and compost, which made us careful where we put our feet, since squishing worms were worse than smelling them. (Those were the days before fishing, when earthworms and night crawlers were useful to collect.)

Memorial Day and Fourth of July parades would go on regardless of weather. Do you remember marching or watching in the rain?

Funny that I can’t recall too many rainy summer days. What about you? What did you do in gloomy, wet weather? Of course, this was before cell phones, internet, video games, and social media. We played outside (or indoors) with neighborhood friends. Rode bikes. Played baseball without the full number of players. My girlfriends pulled out their Barbies and clothes and accessories. I never owned one. My only cherished doll was my Zippy, a chimp toy as old as my sisters (who still has a place of honor in my room). Zippy didn’t play well with Barbie.

With an average of 178 sunny days a year in the Heights, they couldn’t all have occurred during school vacation, but it sure feels that way.

Libraries Are a Family Affair

Mrs. (Louise) Eddy was the sweetest woman on this planet after Mom. Children’s librarian at the Pontiac Public Library, she read to my sisters, helped us find books, retired from the library, and lived to be 92. She was our introduction to one of humanity’s finest inventions—the public library and the world of books.

Let’s take another field trip from the Heights. In this case, to the first Pontiac Public Library I remember, (built in 1894) where only adults were allowed upstairs with the books. My brothers and I didn’t mind. We spent our time looking through the mounted stereoscope at 3D pictures. (View-Masters were a second best after that.)

When I was nine, Pontiac constructed a more modern building, at least, to us, complete with basement bomb shelter, (a more innocent, if uninformed time) and a large, sunny children’s room with paper mache dinosaurs that I dreamed of owning, and enough books to keep all ages happy. Oh, the joy of signing your name in cursive for your own library card (approved by parents), and watching your books stamped before you carried them home.

Those were the days of card catalogues and the Dewey Decimal System, so we learned to find any book, fiction or non-fiction, by the location and author or number. The children’s room had it’s own set of card drawers, which trained us for the real thing in the adult section.

I checked out “Goomer” (Dorothy Waldman ©1952 about a Siamese cat) so many times, I was given the book years later. Another favorite was “Plow Boy” about a draft horse who could win races when his rider whispered, “Oats, Plow Boy, oats.” Unfortunately, no matter how much research I’ve done, I can’t even find a mention of this book. Why was it so fascinating, anyway? Because for her day at the county fair, the hero packed a sandwich and a clean pair of socks in her pocket. Socks? Made no sense to me then or now.

Libraries. Magical places. We went as a family every Saturday, browsed, and stocked up enough books to get us through the week. I remember my first ventures into the adult sections after I discovered Agatha Christie.

I carried that love of libraries into adulthood. When Auburn Hills set up the public library in the Seymour house (husband of John Dodge’s oldest daughter, house built in 1920, renovated in 1939, moved and renovated again in 1990), my sister and I spent happy hours in the lovely rooms, taking picnics to the grounds, and enjoying the view from the (at that time) wooden dock overlooking the pond and woods.

Moved to Florida and sought the local county libraries. As Albert Einstein said, “The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.”

Instead of combining counties, in Florida each county is a standalone, although you can order a book from anywhere in the State online. And I do. What writer is not a voracious reader?

Did you visit libraries? With your family? From the schools? Any library was a second home to me, including Avondale High School’s.

And now?

I’ve memorized my thirteen-digit library card number, and am recognized by name at my Ridge Manor branch.

My parents would be so proud.

No Rocks or Boulders in Florida

I grew up in Pontiac and the next-door town, Auburn Heights. Michigan is the land of glacier rocks, carried down from continental glaciers 200 million acres wide, burying our state 10,000 years ago in ice a mile deep.

The glaciers left our next-door neighbors with an enormous sedimentary boulder at the end of their driveway, a temptation every winter to be licked and see if tongues stuck. (It was done, and yes, that tongue did. Mom saw and heard the victim from our kitchen windows and hurried out with a pan of warm water. The perpetrators had already fled the scene of their crime.)

Rocks, stones, pebbles, gems, minerals, all abundant in Michigan, and so, in our neighborhood. Along with the fall leaf collection expected by our teachers, we had to produce a rock collection at some point in the school year, a task my brothers loved.

This was not a difficult chore since Michigan has more varieties of stones than anywhere else in the world.

We added coal to our collections because many basements had recent coal furnaces and deliveries. Quartz and rose quartz were my favorite minerals, also common enough to be part of most collections. (In fact, quartz is the second most common mineral in the Earth’s crust, after feldspar. Don’t recall adding any feldspar.) Granite, sandstone, limestone, and slate could also be found in our immediately neighborhood.

My brother asked his teacher if he could include a Petoskey stone, brought home from an up-north vacation. She told him that since it was from Michigan, he could if he could also explain the formations on the rock. He could, and identified them as limestone, sedimentary rocks, prehistoric coral fossils of trapped coral polyp skeletons from the Lake Michigan shorelines. He always got a perfect “A.”

Another treasure to boast about was the pudding stone, which looked like a concrete ball of smaller rocks or minerals, another glacier gift from ancient Canadian river channels.

We were taught about the three types of rock—igneous (formed from melted rock inside the Earth), sedimentary (layers of sand, silt, fossils), and metamorphic (rocks changed by heat and pressure), but those lessons fled my memory like draining water from spaghetti noodles, and I’ve had to look them up any time the question surfaces. (No pun intended.)

What we really wanted to find were precious gems, even diamonds. After all, Superman could squeeze coal into diamonds, which we knew were formed by time and pressure. Just maybe, a diamond could be found at the bottom of some coal pile delivered, at least the first winter, to our basement.

No such luck. Not that I’d recognize an unpolished diamond, but I knew my brother would.

We weren’t allowed to add mercury to our rock collection, even after accidently breaking a thermometer. Yes, we knew that mercury was a liquid metal, but it was silver and fun to play with. I’m surprised that we don’t all glow green by now after a childhood of playing with the mercury that spilled out of any broken thermometer bulb. We’d separate it to see tiny balls and roll them together again, fascinated by the feel of cool, dry liquid.

Why am I sharing these rock collection memories with you?

Because I live in Central Florida, a state with land over a million years old in spots, ancient islands not far above sea level. No rocks. No boulders. No rock collections in the classroom. Limestone and sand. You can’t dare a friend to lick a tall boulder mid-winter and see if their tongue will stick. Flip-flops all year long, regardless of temperature, which is funny to me when parkas are worn at the same time on cold nights.

A funny thing to miss…Michigan boulders and rocks, but in the summertime, when we’d search for pudding stones and Petoskey rocks and copper, I thought about those long-ago rock collections.

Memories. More precious than diamonds.

Apple Crisp and Hot Beef Sandwiches

The days of lunch boxes, especially printed with your favorite character, and matching thermos. When my brothers and I attended Sacred Heart School (me, for one year) we carried our lunch by necessity, and breakfast, too. Mom would either pack hard-boiled eggs and milk and toast for breakfast, or cereal and milk.

Graduate later to lunch bags, with names written on them to differentiate them from the ocean of paper bags in a classroom.

We weren’t exactly poor, but neither we were able to afford luxuries like lunch every day in the school cafeterias, so when we outgrew lunch boxes, we carried brown lunch bags to school.

Except on the days that the Avondale Junior High cafeteria offered hot beef sandwiches and apple crisp. Since we could see the lunch schedule in advance, that gave us time to badger Mom for lunch money to inhale such delights. I can still see and taste that lunch. The gravy over potatoes over roast beef sandwich was well peppered, and every bite savored. Ah, but then, the crown of the meal, dessert. The best apple crisp I ever tasted, including Mom’s (which was close).

I had a voracious appetite growing up, yet was the pickiest eater I know, outside of our youngest brother. (Sorry, Philip, but it’s true!) My other brothers would eat and enjoy almost anything (except circus peanuts…does anyone really like those?), but we all liked chocolate chip cookies, berry cobbler, and apple crisp. Avondale Junior High won the blue ribbon for the last.

Packing lunches.

Once, when I was a teen, Mom went into the hospital and left me with meal instructions, including packing Dad’s bag lunch. As line supervisor at Pontiac Motors on the afternoon shift, he rarely took the time to head for the cafeteria, so was satisfied with sandwich and apple. I may be creative with a pen, but every day, I sent him off with peanut-butter-and-jelly, apple, cookie. After a few days, he mildly commented that a change would be nice.

That night, I added a linen napkin, candle, and matches to his lunch bag. Waited for him to mention it the next day, and finally asked him what he did with the extras.

“Why, I lit my candle and set out my lunch on linen,” he said.

It was during this time that I learned, too, to wait until a cake was cooled before frosting it. The more I tried to spread chocolate icing, the faster the double-layer cake fell apart. Finally, in frustration, with my father and two brothers watching around the kitchen table, I took out the carving knife and hacked that baby into chunks. When I returned to the kitchen to apologize for losing my temper, all three were sitting around the cake dish with spoons, eating cake and frosting casserole.

In response to my post about apple cider and local cider mills, my brother added a comment that the best cider comes from the Rochester Cider Mill on Rochester Road, north of town. Says that it’s the last non-pasteurized cider, which does make the difference between apple juice and real cider, crisp and tart. “They also sell little pans of the best apple crisp in the world. As good as the old Avondale Junior High cafeteria apple crisp!”

Now, that’s praise.

Let George Do It

Newcomers. That’s what we were when we moved to the Heights.

I was nine, the oldest of five (at the time) children. We moved from our house in Pontiac to Caroline Street on July 11, 1959. I remember the date because it was Steve’s fifth birthday, and he had the flu with a high fever. Mom juggled five children in the move, including twin infants, three months old. Dad worked the afternoon shift, so did what he could before he had to leave for work.

A thunderstorm blew through that night.

“Run for pans,” Mom hollered.

My brother and I helped her locate the plink-plinks to set pans and large bowls underneath the leaking roof.

I learned later that Mom called Dad at work, in tears. No wonder. She was 27 years old.

It didn’t take long for us newcomers to become such a part of the Heights, it lives in me still.

Most of the neighbors had been settled and knew each other. In our small Oak Grove Subdivision, gossip and interest flew back and forth like birds feeding their young. That meant, though, when hardship came, or illness, or broken bones, everyone shared it.

When one of our neighbors fell into any of those categories, homemade hot dishes, pies, and cakes were delivered, and a collection was taken up to help. Everyone gave something toward the collection, no matter how small. After all, we were neighbors.

Of course, someone had to volunteer, or be volunteered, to walk up and down the streets with the envelope.

Mom knew that she was accepted when she was asked for donations, and later, to help collect.

Collecting for charities was a different matter. Though the need was as great, it wasn’t as local, and nobody enjoyed knocking on doors with those envelopes, even wearing the badge that identified the charity. Mom had taken more than a few turns with the money-gathering game, and was called more and more often because she was friendly and willing.

The next time money was needed for a neighbor’s funeral, Mom was suggested.

“I really can’t go door-to-door this time," Mom said, truthfully, to the requester. "I have sick babies."

The two women agreed that it was difficult to find volunteers, and that giving money was easier than asking for it.

“Well, you know what they say," Mom told her. "It's always, let George do it."

They parted, and Mom told Dad she was confident that someone would be willing to go door-to-door.

The next day there was a knock at the door.

“Why, George,” Mom said, “what are you doing?"

He held up a big envelope. "I'm collecting for the funeral." He threw his shoulders back and smiled. "Ma came home and said that everyone told her that I should be the one to do it, and here I am."

His pride was so obvious, Mom didn’t bother to explain about expressions common in other areas.

When my children were young, I did my share of collecting, but by then, many of the old regulars were gone, and young families moving in didn’t yet know each other.

Sad to say, I can’t imagine any of that happening in the area where I now live, even though this is a small community.

Maybe the Heights wasn’t Andy Griffith’s Mayberry, but it sure came close.