Eliot Hopes to Buy a House

7571 Mount Hope Road

Eliot's found a house he's keen to buy and I have to admit that it's a very well kept older home. The inspectors who've gone over it have pegged the age somewhere between 1864 and 1900. In fact this is an interior wall of the original cabin around which the house grew.

It's on Mt. Hope Road in Waterloo Township, Jackson county, but the mailing address is Grass Lake. Mt. Hope is paved and the house sits 3.8 miles north of I-94, which conveniently has off and on ramps. It continues south to Grass Lake.
It comes with nearly 5 acres of land with about half of it unused and unmowed.

That's Eliot speaking with the seller, Mary Spaan. Her husband and she bought the house in the late 1970's from the Crates family and have used it as a rental. The Crates were dairy farmers and had about 90 acres back then.
Their barn still stands. The inspector went through it with Eliot and said that the barn didn't need a ton of work to stabilize it if Eliot wanted to keep it.

I know that seems pretty optimistic but the inspector really liked it. There's a second story hay loft and he thought that should probably come down and use that wood for the repairs.

There's a small pump house near the barn for watering the animals. When Mary, the seller, heard us talking about filling the well with cement she said, "My husband always said that was the best water on the property." During the septic and well inspection, a largish black snake was coiled up in the corner of the pump house.We didn't spend a lot of time checking it out.
The building directly behind the house was the milk house with racks still in place over solid tubs that had cold water flowing through them to keep the milk cool.

There's a 2 car garage that extends well past where cars would park. At one time it was heated with a wood stove. There's an upstairs to the garage, Mr. Crates wood working shop.

The elephant in the room has been the presnce of a buried gas tank beside the garage. Michigan law says that a buried tank that hasn't been used in a year has to be removed, It took awhile to work out the details (ie, $$$) but the tank's due to come out early next week (June 22 or 23) if the weather holds.

 The basement is a Michigan type but with a cement floor. Originally the walls were just stone but when they built the house above it they poured concrete into forms to make it a cement wall.

 
There's an enclosed front porch that faces the road.

And a deck off the back.

That's Suzy Lewis, Eliot's realtor, taking a break during an inspection.

The living room is large and has stairs to the second story.

The kitchen is really big so you don't need a dining room.

You can see where the wood cook stove was.

There are 2 bedrooms upstairs. Their ceilings are angled like the roof so the windows on the sides are nearly floor level but there are sky lights in both of them. The end windows are really old.

The doors have an unusual shape too.

It needs a lot of detailing but the inspector pronounced it extremely sturdy. A lot of the quibbles can be taken care of in a day (rewiring 2 cfgi outlets, adjusting an under sink pipe to run downhill, etc.) but the house inspector was very positive about the house and stressed that not everything needed to happen at once. The well and septic inspector pointed out some long term upgrades but said it's all working the way it's supposed to.
There's a real cellar door outside, the beams in the basement that support the floor above are trees...with bark on them, and there's an outbuilding that no one knows why it was built, but there's six inches of black walnut shells on the floor so Cathy's named it the squirrel house.

The Forgotten Joy of Riding a Trolley

We were in New Orleans  last week and stayed in a hotel a block from the St. Charles Street trolley. It's a great deal: $3.00 for a day pass, $1.25 per ride or $.40 per ride for seniors.

 
I can't remember riding on a real trolley since the days my mom would take us down to the Fairgrounds where we'd catch a trolley that brought us all the way to downtown Detroit and Hudsons, Crowley and a huge Kresge.
This trolley ride was our first and it was a beautiful day, high 70's and low 80's so all the side windows were open and the driver's window opened by sliding down into the framework.
From what I could tell, turning his controller clockwise added speed and counter clockwise would let the trolley coast, and pushing it further, made it stop. The bell was used to alert pedestrians and cars that they needed to be aware that a trolley was coming and they needed to get out of the way.
What a great way to travel. We took it to both ends of the line: past the Garden District and universities in one direction and down to Canal Street and the French Quarter in the other.
Late in the day it becomes quite crowded.

Too bad nobody likes to use mass transit according to the fiscal scolds.

The Detroit I Knew

I only lived in Detroit for a few years I guess, maybe 1950 - 1953 at 156 East Margaret Street near John R and 7 Mile. It was a dead end street with railroad tracks shortening it to two blocks.  It looked like this in 2013.
Our family celebrated often back then and this house was fairly large for its time and held a number of the get-togethers. The pictures below may have been for Carolyn's first birthday, October 27, 1951.

 Left to right, Front row: Wayne Johnson, aunt Delilah Davidson, grandmother Impi Davidson holding Carolyn Johnson, grandpa Emil Davidson. Back row: My mother Eleanore Davidson Johnson, aunt Arlene Davidson, and uncle Edwin Davidson.

This picture is presumably from the same day. From left to right, Front row: Eleanor Davidson Johnson with my sister Carolyn on her lap, aunt Delilah Davidson, grandmother Impi Davidson, (soon-to-be) aunt Helen Rose, and Wayne "Kuits". Back row Norman Johnson, aunt Arlene Davidson,  uncle Edwin Davidson, Wayne Johnson on his lap.

My memories from this house are very random. Most are based on pictures that "remind" me of certain of its features. I'll post some of the pictures as I find them.

At one point Uncle Ed lived across the street. He and my dad fixed up cars together, then sold them. I just heard a story about them driving a Chevy to show a potential buyer, but as they pulled up in front of the buyer, a front wheel fell off. Such is life.

There was a small neighborhood grocer on the corner of Margaret and 7 Mile and I remember my mom pushing Carolyn in a baby buggy, with me tagging along, to the grocers. Many years later (~1980) I was doing a book for a Detroit artist whose name escapes me. He was renting the old grocer's store and using it as his studio.

  

A Little Jazz

When I was enrolled at UM my first year (1966/1967) I may not have been a stellar student but I did take advantage of some of the concerts available to the community. Not all were as impressive as Dave Brubeck, although I also saw Dick Gregory whose humor came on a saber and the Ann Arbor crowd loved it. Both concerts were at Hill Auditorium if memory serves. 
Anyway, seeing this in black and white perfectly captures the event.

 

Gardening, Turbines and Test Drives

When I was fifteen years old I worked part time as a gardener for a very nice couple, Tom and Mary Marker. They had a great house on a few acres and a Basset Hound named Morgan. Their house was actually built as a carriage house, but eventually the estate was split and the carriage house was on its own.
But what a carriage house. Slate floors and floor to ceiling windows overlooking the yard.
Mr. Marker worked for Jam Handy or Ross Roy or another of the companies that made industrial and promotional films back then. 
Like most people living in Bloomfield Hills, the Markers had a broad collection of friends from the upper levels of the automotive industry, not least of which was George Huebner, the man who headed Chrysler's venture into turbine powered cars in the mid 1960's.  
It so happened that my first car was a 1948 Plymouth Special Deluxe which was built by Chrysler. Although the car was only 18 years old, cars didn't last very long back then so the old Plymouth turned a lot of heads in Oakland County (and on Woodward Avenue).

One day  Mr. Huebner stopped by driving a Chrysler Turbine car. Mr. Marker and he spoke for awhile and as I was mowing the lawn I couldn't stop staring at the Turbine car (probably much to the detriment of the lawn). Eventually Mr. Marker waved me over and introduced me to Mr. Huebner. We shook hands even though I'd been working in the yard all morning. He smiled and complimented me on my Plymouth and asked if I'd like to join them for a ride.
Dear God, yes!
I sure can't remember all the details, but I remember him telling us that the turbine developed peak torque at stall; essentially at 0 rpm. He demonstrated it a few times with rapid starts from a dead stop. It was quick and didn't make any of the noises I associated with fast cars. In fact it made very little noise at all.
After maybe ten minutes we returned. Before I went back to restart the old green LawnBoy Mr. Huebner opened the hood. It The engine area was wedged in so tightly I don't think you could see the ground under it. That's pretty common now, but back then I could have probably stood next to the engine in my Plymouth's engine compartment.
 It was a lovely car, a deep red/orange with a soft white leather (vinyl?) interior. The instrumentation was different from other cars and I remember he took the time to explain their functions on our drive.
Most of the Turbines were destroyed when their "testing period" was over. Two remained in private hands and Jay Leno has one of them.

 

Time for Popeye

When I'd get home from school I'd jam through as much homework as I could so I could watch Poopdeck Paul, Captain Jolly, and Popeye cartons. This is the 1st Popeye short and has Betty Boop in it as well as Olive Oyl and Bluto.
And of course, a can of Spinach saves the day.

I'm From Detroit...

...and this is how we prospered and grew.Believe me, it wasn't pretty and you'll see it wasn't easy.



Making Chevies in 1936.

The opening pictures of the Chevrolet Power Plant are similar to the Power Plant from the Ford Highland Park Plant which is on display in The Ford Museum. Actually it was the first exhibit on site there as it was moved to Dearborn and they built the museum around it. The Ford Power Plant made 6,000 HP at 60 rpm. 
About half way through the film you'll see a worker sizing the engine cylinders with a dial gauge. I performed the same work at Pontiac Motors 31 years later working in Engine Plant 9. The dial gauge was divided into sections, each section being assigned a letter of the alphabet. We had a set of dies in front of us, one for each letter, and with a hammer we'd stamp whatever letter the gauge read in the steel right below the cylinder.
While the plant closed for model "change-over" to ready the plants capabilities for the subsequent model year in July, the 326 engine was phased out and when we returned at the end of July we were inspecting Pontiac's new 350 cubic inch V-8.