The House at Kearsley Park Blvd

There isn’t much to recommend this house as a memory maker. With a cape cod design it looks weathered and neglected. Maybe the owners are unable to justify the cost of renovation because of the deteriorating neighborhood so it’s only a temporary place to live. Until something better comes along.

But oh, how this home looked in the 1940’s and ‘50’s.

Then the home was an oasis of dreams and bubbling life. The everyday surprise of life and the hopes and dreams of the family. The woman of the house was friendly with her neighbors and made peach cobbler from the fruit tree in the back yard.

One next door neighbor was named Mansour. From the Middle East somewhere, Iran perhaps. Dark skinned, they were fascinated by the young boy with the red hair and the fair skin who lived with the old couple from time to time. The Mansour family had the knack for hard work and made their mark in grocery stores spread about the city.

On the other side was a family named Farrah, driven from their land when Castro took over Cuba. Mrs. Farah would welcome the young boy for a visit often and give him snacks and talk with him. Only years later would the full story be told of a panic escape from the island, leaving everything behind. Everything. Home, clothes, money and position. In the middle of the night after a telephone warning, a boat and a trip to Miami. 1958, never to return. People and family missing, never to be heard of again.

The city was waiting to charm the young boy and the old woman loved showing it to him. Downtown sparkled and was filled with places to eat and shop. A burger at the Kewpie or the A & W, and shopping at Smith-Bridgmans department store. The city bustled all day and much of the night. Clothing shops, a cafe or two and the usual dentist and doctor's offices lined Division street and then there was the IMA building, where each winter the circus would perform. Wide eyed and filled with awe the young boy would squeal with delight as the impossible number of clowns would exit the tiny car and then the elephants would perform. The lion tamer and the ponies were sure to thrill. And then the trapeze  would swing with the muscled catcher and the exotic and beautiful girl who would hang suspended over the net at the apex of her improbable flight before being caught just when it seemed she would fall. 

A nightly ritual was for the old man to come home from work and the young boy to play hide and seek, usually by squeezing under the sink, with its smells of cleaners and soap. The game played out for a few minutes until the boy was found and everyone laughed.

In the basement was a furnace and a coal cellar with that particular smell of coal dust. A big shovel stood by the wall and the old man would shovel the coal and stoke the fire in cold weather. Gravity feed warmed the home top to bottom.

Someone had put a new toilet in the basement to supplement the only other one on the second floor. Next to that a stationary tub, divided into two parts stood. Made of cement it would play a part in the weekly laundry, holding the soapy water so it could be used for another load. A washer and dryer and a folding table with an iron and board with a Pepsi bottle with that peculiar top that sprinkled water on shirts and such before the iron did its job.The water pipes were wrapped in asbestos, something that didn’t concern the old couple until they no longer lived there.

There was a small kitchen with an old stove and refrigerator and a table that worked for two, maybe three but was a stretch for five or six. Along the back wall of the home and kitchen, there was a white enameled counter and sink where babies were bathed and changed and dishes were washed. A window looked into the back yard at the big shade tree and the garage. Milk was delivered by a horse-drawn wagon. They horse knew exactly where to stop along the street so the delivery man could jump out with the order without waiting for the horse to stop.

And the old woman could really cook, able to create a hearty meal out of what was still in the fridge. She made bread every so often and put a few half sized loaves in the freezer. She would make grape jelly every year and can tomatoes and peaches. The old woman wore a house dress and added an apron when in the kitchen. She made sure she always looked good for the old man, the young boy and anyone else that stopped by.

The living room had as it focus point a fire-place with an ornate carved wood mantle. A sofa was against the inside wall of the steps to the second floor and stuffed chairs finished the room. There was a round table that held the Christmas tree with the bubbling glass tubes and the Angel hair and the shiny ornaments every December. Over toward the front door stood the radio in the fine polished cabinet with the record player that used 78 rpm lacquered discs with names like Crosby, Goodman and Dorsey. The radio was a wonder with rich deep sound and buttons that tuned the set to romantic sounding places. Brazil, Calcutta, Rio and even dots and dashes of short wave. The powerful radio could receive "Don McNeills Breakfast club" from Chicago, the first program of its kind. In the morning the old man would listen to the songs, comedy and news as he sipped his coffee and ate his fried egg and toast and smoked the first cigarette of the day. 

Off the living room, near the front door with a bedroom used by the old couple. Next to the door was an iron door stop made to resemble a fine sailing vessel. In the front window were two silhouettes, one showing a small girl and the other showing a dog.

A bathroom at the top of the stairs held the music box the old man kept from his mother and a hand mirror and brush from the old woman’s mother. A hamper for laundry completed the room.

The bedroom on the driveway side had two nice twin beds but when the young boy was new he slept in a crib in the alcove of the dormer window looking at the street. It was there that he overcame bedwetting fostered by the patience of the old woman.

Across the small hall was another bedroom with a double bed. The room also had a dresser and a closet. The most amazing thing at the back of the closet was a door, and beyond the door was the attic. A real blunderbuss was kept there. The young boy would dream about pirates and ships and ask repeated questions of the old man about the gun. That room would be the last place the old woman’s father would sleep in this life.

In was in this home that the young boy would recover from having his tonsils and adenoids removed at eight and overcome the flu during another winter. The ice cream calmed his scratchy throat and the old woman nursed him to health after the fever from the flu abated. The old woman would take the young boy swimming and teach him to play rummy and canasta.  Since the old woman didn't drive they traveled by bus or walk everywhere. As the young boy grew a

The house was alive with laughter and love, patience and kindness.

Across the street in front of the house was a large park. A land filled with steep hills for climbing and a small stream for watching fish. At the bowl end of the park the hills were longer and just right for sledding. The young boy would scream in mock terror going down the hill and then the old man would pull him up the hill. That didn’t last very long until the boy was assigned the job of sled recovery. Next to the hills was a marvel of summer. A giant swimming pool with an area above that would hold people for dancing and musicians that would play the songs of the day. Perry Como, Sinatra and Basie. In the 1950’s there were teen dances at the pool with nascent rock and roll blasting and the young dancers whirling.

So life was good for the young boy. He could swim in the summer and sled in the winter. There were kids in the neighborhood, one of them a girl he was sweet on named Megan.

Not everything was roses, as people said then. The old man had his health issues. A bad back required surgery and there was the sadness for his mothers sudden death in 1955. The old man came from a big Irish family. There were always parties and weddings and even at funerals there was celebrating of someone well lived life to the fullest. He lost a brother in 1954 to a drunk driver and his father at sixty-six, probably from a life of drink that caused a peptic ulcer. Two sisters preceded him in death. Eileen at age seven from pernicious anemia and Grace from the Spanish flu.

The old woman lived through the divorce of her parents at the beginning of the 20th century. Her father moved his four children to Cadillac and put them into school there. Her father would marry again to a woman who never was “mother” to the old woman. Her mother married again and she would not be close to the old woman except in later years.

The old woman nursed the young boy through polio in 1950 and saw him unaffected by the illness. When the young boy was first diagnosed,  the old man bargained with God that he would take the young boy with him to church if the young boy survived.

The old man was well liked by friends and loved by his family. The old woman volunteered at the hospital as a Grey Lady one day a week so the young boy traveled with the old man through several counties to meetings with customers. Later in life those two lane country roads would be the classroom where the young boy would learn how to drive and how to safely pass on the narrow roads.

The old couple grew older and moved from the park to a home close to their family. They always stayed attached to friends and family and from their bounty of love, were encouraging and patient with the young boy. Winters in Florida helped eased the struggle of the harsh winters and it was there that the old man died one evening.

A funeral mass and a gathering of the clan sent the old man off. It was a large Irish wake and the drinks were strong as they toasted the old man.

They had lived in the home from 1945 to 1961. They had lived simply and fully. They did not have the luxuries of the day except for a television and a car with an automatic transmission. They vacationed with friends and traveled simply, using rental cabins and eating lunch carefully packed that morning, stopping by the roadside picnic areas. They lived for the most part without interstate highways. The relied on their savings to supplement social security. 401K plans were a long way off. The last home they bought cost about $14,000.

The young boy learned that love could be unconditional and that family was more important than anything else. The young boy is now an old man. He knows now that life is but a hiccup in time. That the years go quickly and are filled with both laughter and sorrow.  Cherishing each day and the people in your life is the secret of contentment and happiness. Sometimes only the old know this for certain.