RECOLLECTIONS OF J.D. ROBINSON

I was born April 20, 1908 at Ada, Kent County, Michigan. My father's name was Fred Robinson. My mother's name was Blanche Van Tassel.

I was born at home, and the doctor was late getting there; so a neighbor lady helped deliver me. I was already there when the doctor got there. They had to go clear to Ada to get a doctor; and by the time he got there, it was too late. A lady by the name of Mrs. Turner was the one who helped deliver me.

This is rather odd. I should tell you. My mother was married to two brothers - not at the same time of course.

She married Frank Robinson, and they had three children. She married him when she was about 16 and he was 34. Then he died - she had three children - and then she married my dad who was Fred Robinson. And they had five children. When she married Fred Robinson I would say she was around 21, 22 years old, and he was 17 years older than she was.

I had two brothers and five sisters, and four of those sisters are still living. There was Frank and Fred and Ellen and Nettie and Beatrice and Mildred and Belva. Ellen was the oldest.

My mother was born at Trufant, Michigan in Montcalm County. And my dad was born at Greenville, Michigan. My mother never lived on a farm until she was married, but my dad lived on a farm. He was born on a farm there at Greenville.

My mother always lived in the little town of Trufant. Her father was a Civil War veteran. Her mother died when my mother was young, and she was always being farmed out one place or another. And I think that this is one reason that she married so young. She never really had a home.

She met Frank Robinson when she was working for his sister, my Aunt Callie. Of course being in the family, that's apparently where she met Fred Robinson.

We were of Scottish descent. My mother, of course, being a Van Tassel, was of Holland descent.

I only had one grandfather, and he died when I was five years old. I can remember him. His name was Nelson Robinson.

My Grandpa Robinson, Nelson Robinson, went into the Civil War from Eureka Township in Montcalm County. He was a lieutenant in the 10th Michigan Cavalry.

My dad had, I believe, what would be comparable to an eighth grade education. He went to school in Greenville. I don't know, but imagine my mother just had grade school.

My dad - I wish I had listened to him more closely because it would have been real interesting now. He worked in the woods, and he also worked on the river, floating logs down the river. I heard the stories so much that I just thought to myself, "Well, yes. You worked in the woods, and you worked on the river. So what?" Now I wish I knew more about where he was. I do know that he worked on the Tittabawassee River which is up around Saginaw, but that's about all I know about that. I was too young to be interested in it then.

We came to Clinton County when I was four years old. That would be about 1912. Of course we moved from near Trufant, Michigan. My father and two brothers came with team and wagons, and they chased the cattle through. They slept along the road; they slept in church sheds. And it probably took them two or three days. I remember one incident they were telling about. There was a chicken they brought with them, and the dog got it and ate it. So they lost their chicken that way. My mother and the smaller children came by train.

My father was mainly a farmer. He farmed all of his life except - These are things that happened before I was born. My dad used to run a ferry boat across the Grand River on Knapp Avenue. My dad and my uncle and my granddad ran this ferry boat because it seemed like every year or so the bridge would go out. Then they had to have a ferry boat. And he was really busy because people were hauling fruit to Grand Rapids. He also ran a grist mill there at Ada besides farming. In my memory he was always a farmer.

One of the home remedies I can remember was hen's oil that they gave me when I had the croup. It was from the fat of a hen. And my dad had a favorite remedy. It was cattail root made into a poultice. And one time my sister was very ill with pneumonia - in fact the doctor had almost given her up - and my dad went with this old remedy. He got this cattail root, made a poultice out of it, and put it right on her chest just as hot as she could stand. The next morning when the doctor came he couldn't believe how much better my sister was. He used that some other times too. That was something he had learned from the Indians.

With eight children you can imagine what most of my mother's daily activities were - washing and ironing and canning and cooking on the farm. Of course she always did a lot of canning. She put up a lot of tomatoes. She canned pears... just most everything that could be canned, I guess. She always canned beef too. We would butcher, and she would have to have this canned beef. She washed on the old scrub board that most of us can remember. Water from a well. In fact when she lived at Ada - this is before my memory - they got their water from a spring. She also made butter sold in Grand Rapids. My mother made practically all of our clothing.

We always attended church. I don't think my dad ever had church membership, but my mother was always a Methodist all her life from the time she was a child. Her dad was a strong Methodist, and her mother was United Brethren. It was a second marriage for them. I can remember one time her telling - as I said before she had no mother - she got up one morning and she had a rip in her dress. She probably only had one dress, and she was sewing it up. And Grandpa said to her, "What are you doing?" She said, "I'm sewing up my dress." He said, "You don't sew your dress up on Sunday." She said, "I can't go to church then." He said, "You'll stay home from church then." That's how strong he was on Sundays.

Our transportation was mostly horse and buggy although when we moved over south of Ovid, we did have a Buick car that was probably about a 1916 or '18. The roads were usually a couple of wagon tracks and that was about it. There was no pavement of course. I can remember when they built the pavement from St. Johns to Lansing, and we thought that was quite a thing to have that pavement.

As kids we had to make our own entertainment. We'd get up a bunch of fellows and go somewhere and play ball. Of course we didn't go so far from home as kids do nowadays because it was harder to get anywhere. Even when we had cars, they were model T's and like that. Bad roads.

I remember the interurban very well. About the only times I ever used it, it used to run from downtown to the fairgrounds when they had the county fair. Quite often we would ride it out there. Also I can remember before we moved to town when we used to come with the team and wagon from Ovid to the county fair. Everybody would pile into the team and wagon.

The fairgrounds were out here at the end of Lansing Street. The schools used to give a day off for the kids to come to the fair. The school children had a free fair. I used to try to take in practically everything that was there. They always had their rides and their side shows - the fat woman and the thin man. I remember my folks telling about one time they wanted to know if I was ready to go home. There was one thing that I hadn't been in yet to see, so they tarried long enough for me to see this one thing. The farmers exhibited, but it wasn't so much the kids as it is now. And I think this 4-H thing has been a very good thing.

Our vacations usually were to get in the car and go up to Montcalm County to visit my uncle, my father's brother. I had some cousins who lived there too. We would usually stay two or three or four days. My cousin who was about my age, we used to sleep together and talk way into the night.

I started going to school at what they call the Bogus School. Later on it was the Service School. And then we moved over south of Ovid, and I went to the Dennison School. This school is located as a part of the Sleepy Hollow State Park and is being restored. Then we moved back on the same farm, and I finished school at the Bogus.

I can remember being in school plays, and I can still recite most of the poems that we had when I was a kid. I seem to have a good memory for poems. I can remember one school play that I was in. I was a hired man; my name was Jake, and I carried that name Jake for several years even after I moved to St. Johns.

We had spelling bees - and it sounds like bragging, but I was always a very good speller. Spelling was always one of my strong points. I used to spell down the whole school.

I can remember one time when the snow was quite deep, and we kids were putting blocks of snow in the doorway. When the teacher came to the doorway to ring the bell, it all piled in on her. She wasn't too happy about that.

I always was a mile and a quarter from school both places I lived. We always walked to school and back. Very seldom did we ride to school. My folks might come and get us if it was a downpour.

I was real surprised to run into one of my schoolteachers two years ago down in Florida at what they call the Ovid picnic. This lady got up and said her name was Irene Cook, and I couldn't believe it. I went over and asked her, and she was one of my schoolteachers when I was in the Dennison School. I would have been in probably about the fifth, sixth grade. She said that she went to County Normal, and she was about 18 years old when she started teaching. So you see she wouldn't have to be an awful lot older than we were.

It makes me sound like Methuselah, but I can remember when Woodrow Wilson was elected. My dad was a strong Democrat, and I can remember when Charles Evans Hughes was running against him and Wilson was elected. My dad was quite a reader, and they talked quite a lot of politics around home.

I remember hearing them tell about Armistice Day and the big celebration they had. They were telling about two of the businessmen who were celebrating so much. They drank just a little bit too much, and they got up and tried to make a speech and could hardly stand up to make the speech.

On the 4th of July we always had little firecrackers. There was nothing very dangerous. Sometimes we would have skyrockets which my older brothers would set off. After I got a little older, we would come into St. Johns where they had the fireworks. I can remember one incident over where the park is now - they called it Emmons Woods. They were putting on a fireworks display, and the fireworks all caught fire. They were shooting every which way, and it was quite scary. I remember I fell in kind of a hole trying to get out of there. They had a place where they had rubbish, and I fell in that and scrambled out. One of my friends, Eddie Van Sickle - he was so scared that he ran the other way; and when he found out where he was, he was out in the middle of the woods somewhere.

I think the Christmas I remember the best was the year that I got my air rifle. We were very hard up, which we always were when I was a kid anyhow. Of course I was old enough to know where the presents were coming from. I hinted very strongly for an air rifle, and my folks had said, "Well, you remember there are the younger children who still believe in Santa Claus. We have to get for them first because we don't want them to lose their faith in Santa Claus." We always hung our stockings up. We had them on a chair. And when we came down in the morning, on my chair was that air rifle. I don't think there was ever a kid in the world any happier than I was with that air rifle because I was just positive I wasn't going to get it.

When I was a kid I presume I would have described a successful person, I would have thought of what they had, what they owned. That would probably have been my idea of a success in those days.

The Depression probably didn't have as much effect on our family as on some people because we were always so hard up - my dad on a rented farm and raising eight children - that we never had very much even before the Depression. So it probably didn't hit us as hard. I can remember one winter, though, we had a pretty good crop of beans. And I never got so sick of beans in my life as I did having beans for breakfast, beans for dinner, beans for supper.

Then the Depression was still on when I more or less grew up. I had to quit school and go to work. That's when I was on the delivery wagon. I remember later on that I went out and worked in the peppermint for a dollar a day, 10 hours a day. If you lost an hour, you were docked ten cents. So at the end of the week you had six dollars if you worked right on through. So that's how I can remember the Depression.

I never helped too much around the house, but I was always busy around the farm from the time I was probably six or seven years old, old enough to drive a team on a hay loader. Then my father's health failed, and they had some financial reverses on the farm.

After we moved to St. Johns, he fired the boilers at the Steel Hotel while my mother cooked there. And later on he went to work for Caudy at the steam laundry. It was hand-fired in those days. There was no stoker. My dad almost lived at the hotel in the winter time because he had to get up about 3 o'clock in the morning to get that boiler going, so he wasn't home very much. He'd get home for a while in the day. In fact he slept there of course.

I don't think we ever had electricity or indoor plumbing until we moved into town. They never did have it when we were in the country. In fact one house we lived in in St. Johns had the outside plumbing, but it did have electricity.

My parents shopped mostly in Ovid when we lived over there until we moved over to this area. Of course they got there by horse and buggy. I can remember coming to town and stopping at the Byerly Store. Hap Ahern was in the Byerly Store. They would always come out and blanket the horse for us.

It's rather amusing what I always thought I would like to do. I always thought I would like to work for the post office. And I think I more or less got the idea from rural carriers because that's about all we saw. I remember Lysle Steves who worked here at the post office and he was our mail carrier. He was quite a young man when he started. I used to look at Lysle, and I'd think what a wonderful job that would be. Of course there's a little more work to it than what I had assumed at the time. We used to have the hucksters who came through from different towns, Shepardsville and Price; and they would have their grocery wagons with a team of horses on it. When I was a kid, my brother-in-law built me a thing to go on my little express wagon for a grocery wagon. I used to get some empty cans and go around and sell those groceries. Later on it turned out that I was delivering groceries.

I remember the Spaulding Store there in Ovid. That's where we did our grocery shopping. Then I remember the Burk's Store where I later on worked. I can remember practically all of the home-owned stores in St. Johns because I drove a delivery wagon. We delivered groceries for all of the home-owned stores. There weren't very many chain stores at that time. I was about 15 years old when I started working at that. We had a horse and wagon. I wish I'd saved a picture of it because it was a regular old horse and wagon. You stood on the side and drove the horse. We had three wagons. A man by the name of John Ennis owned the business, and my brother and I worked for him. After I started working for Burk's Store, I drove a truck for them for a while. We did sometimes go maybe out on the pavement three or four miles if we had a big order of barrels of flour or a hundred pounds of sugar or something like that.

Later on I went to work for Burk's grocery for eleven dollars a week, and I thought that was a pretty good job. I was still helping support my folks, helping send my two sisters through school. Then I studied my sisters' school books. I always liked to read. I more or less educated myself in that way.

Then Andy Anderson came in and bought out Burk's grocery, and he raised me to 18 dollars a week. Before that I was getting about $12 and running a Sunday paper route. This would be about 1931-32. I was still running a Sunday paper route when I got married in 1936, and I paid my rent by the running the paper route. My brother, Fred, and I took our cars, and we delivered the Times, News, and Free Press. Each one of us took half of the town, and we made two cents a paper on the Free Press and News and a cent and a half on the Times. But of course the papers sold for a dime then. Fred was about ten years older, but it was still hard times. He was married and had a family.

I started in the post office as a sub. I was working for Andy Anderson; and I took the civil service examination hoping, of course, to get into the post office. In about one year I got a letter wanting to know if I would sub during vacation time. And I took this letter to Andy, showed it to him; and he said, "Well, what are you going to do?" And I said, "What can I do?" I said, "I can't quit my job here to go to work in the post office just part time." Andy was one of the best friends I ever had, a very generous man. And he said, "Listen, I would like to see you get in the post office." He said, "You can do better there than I can ever do for you here." So he said, "You tell 'em you'll come. You work here when you're not working there."

So I went to work for the post office, and I would go three times a day up to the post office. I'd go in in the morning about 6 o'clock and sort mail until about 9. Then I would go down and work for Andy until noon. Then I'd come back after dinner and I'd help tie up the mail for the train. I'd go down then and work for Andy until about 5 or 6 o'clock. Then I would go home and get my supper. Then I would come back and work in the evenings about two or three hours to tie up mail for the night train. This went on for some time. I did this until 1943. That's the same year my daughter was born; I was drafted into the service.

I was drafted July 1, 1943. I was in 1-A, and I had a child coming. So I went down to the draft board and asked them if I could have time until the child was born, and they allotted me that time. She was born on March 16 of '43. We went in to Fort Custer for just three days; and my wife and mother and sisters came down to see me. Jeannie stayed with Mrs. Lance because she was so small at that time. About three or four days later I was sent to Kiesler Field, Mississippi.

We were quite happy on the train when we found we were going into the Air Force because we had an infantry captain who was in charge of our group, and we all thought we were heading for the infantry. So we went into Mississippi right in July, and I'll tell you it was hot. Contrary to what you expect here, when it rained it just got hotter. And we would be out drilling and a rain would come up. Finally when we got good and wet, why they'd send us back to the barracks. Then that old steam would come up from the ground.

Then in November of that year I was sent to Denver, Colorado at Buckley Field. I was made an instructor on gun turrets. Then I was supposed to go overseas after that. Instead of that they sent me over to Lowry Field as an instructor on the B-29 gun turrets. After I got to be an instructor, I was allowed to live off post, separate rations. My wife and daughter came out to live with me. Then in 1945 they were going to make the returnees, those who returned from overseas, make them instructors; and everyone else was going to have to go over. Then the war ended, and I was still supposed to go overseas.

Then they came out with a directive that anyone over 35 years old with two years service would be discharged, so I was discharged right at a Lowry Field. I never went overseas. I was at those two bases. Then I came home and went right back to my former job at the post office.

When I came back from the service - I was in 27 months - I went back to the post office again, and I was getting 65 cents an hour. That seemed so good to me because it was so much more than I had ever earned before working by the week. Finally enough people had retired so that I was made a regular. When I was a sub, I did everything. I did carrying mail. I did sorting mail, some clerk work, and even did some sub janitor work. I can remember one of the jobs I disliked the most was emptying the old spittoons. I don't know whatever became of them, but I'm glad they're gone anyhow. Then I made regular which was regular hours although you might not make as much as you did as a sub.

Then George Osgood was ready to retire and I was asked if I would like to have the job as postmaster. My first thought was that I didn't want it - too much responsibility. It kind of scared me because I had no more idea then that I'd ever be postmaster. So I went home and told my wife, Mariam, about it. She kind of talked to me a little bit. She said, "I always thought you wanted to get as far ahead as you could." And I said, "Yes, I guess probably that's true."

Of course first I had to be acting postmaster which meant that somebody else might get the job. So I had to write in and find out what would my fate be if I didn't get to be postmaster, whether I would be out or whether I could still have my former job. This man Peterson, who at one time had been inspector here - he was the head of the postmaster and rural carrier division in Washington, D.C. I knew him slightly, and I wrote to him. And he said, "You'll be a clerk on leave without pay until such time as you are appointed or not appointed. If you are not appointed, you will go right back to your clerk job." So I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. I decided I would take it, and I did. I was appointed acting postmaster December 1, 1958; and I was appointed regular postmaster on August 15, 1959 - which would have been less than a year.

I was in the postal service for 29 years, and the last 11 years I was postmaster. I retired the last day of October, 1969.

They used to have parties around the neighborhoods where you'd go for dancing parties. I always remember those when I was a kid and then later on after I grew up.

I met my first wife, Mariam, when she was teaching school out near the Colony. My sister's children were going to school there. I met her at a party out in that neighborhood. We went together for about three or four years before we were married. We were married in 1936. She passed away after we were married for 25 years. I had one daughter, Jean - Jean Martin now. And four grandchildren.

Of course when I lost my first wife I just thought that my life was ended. Having met Erma, I found out it wasn't. I've been very fortunate having been married to two such wonderful women.

J.D. Robinson - November 1, 1978