St. Johns

The trip to St. Johns was a long one. All of us kids with the exception of my oldest brother and my oldest sister were in the car along with my Uncle and Dad. My oldest sister had already been taken in by Social Services, but we didn’t know that.

We turned off at the caution light at the intersection of US-27 and Clinton Avenue. Heading south on Clinton the first thing I saw that stuck in my mind was a house on the corner of Gibbs and Clinton with a row of brick chimneys along the sidewalk. I don’t know about it then, but later on it was owned by Harry Bradley.

Looking further down Clinton to the south was downtown St. Johns with this huge building sitting on top of a hill. Our destination was the Clinton County Court House and an appearance in Probate Court.  We thought they were just going to review our case and let us go.

We were okay now I thought. My aunt was taking care of us and giving us a nice home.

We went inside. My dad and uncle went through the huge doors of the court room.   They disappeared as the doors were being closed behind them by court personnel. We waited in the hallway while the proceedings took place. We never knew what was said in the Court Room.

The wait was a long one and finally the doors opened and my dad came out. He knelt down and hugged my brother and me. I ask him if we had to go. He said "Yes".

Despite my best efforts to remain tough as an eleven year old boy should, I couldn’t stop the tears. We were loaded into a Deputy Sheriff’s car and driven north on Clinton Ave. until we came to the street with all the brick chimneys in the front yard. That’s where we turned east on Gibbs St. and one block down to 201.

On the corner sat a big brick two story house with a children’s swing set in the back yard. It didn’t have the fence around it, nor did the windows have bars on them. This was a nicer place for kids than the Home in Lansing.

After we were dropped off, our mother stopped by. She was brought there by friends of my grandparents. We hadn’t seen her in a time, and under the circumstances we welcomed her visit. She didn’t stay very long, only long enough to say "Hi" and "Goodbye."

This was the Children’s Home and not "The Detention Home" as it was sometimes called. The kids in this place had done nothing wrong except to become victims of events over which they had no control.

There were thirteen kids living in the Home, and the five of us made it eighteen. It was a house full.

Mrs. Leah Cook was the matron of Children’s Home, and she had a full time cook and housekeeper named Alta Black. Like the rest of us, Alta came here from a broken home. When she reached eighteen, she stayed on to work for Mrs. Cook.

Given the number of times we changed homes, we settled into this place easier than some of the kids. There were four bedrooms upstairs; one for the younger girls: Rosalyn, Sharyl, Elyse, Colleen, Betty, Mary Lou, Barb, Brenda and Nancy; one for the all the boys: Don, Roger, Dennis, Doug and me; one for the older girls: Beverly, Reva and Sandy and one for Carmen. Carmen was supposedly adopted by Mrs. Cook but didn’t go by the last name of Cook.

Alta slept in the hallway in a single bed; at the head of the bed was her closet. We were awakened some nights to the sound of her crying. She had a huge painful birthmark on her foot. I don’t know whether it hurt her all the time or if it was like gout and flared up on occasion.

There was one bathroom upstairs with a tub for the girls, one bathroom off the kitchen for the girls and one bathroom with a shower in the basement for the boys.

My middle sister was only there for a few days; and then she was gone, taken in and eventually adopted by an older prominent local couple who had no kids of their own.

My dad paid us one more visit a few days later. He wasn’t suppose to be there. I talked to him outside and begged him for some money. He didn’t want to but finally gave me two dollars, probably all the money he had. He left without seeing the rest of his kids because they were kept inside. I didn’t see him again until years later.

There was a vacant lot on the east side of the house, and that’s where the garden was planted. The boys were supervised by an adult and shown how to hoe the weeds. I got mad at them for making us work, so I told Mrs. Cook’s son-in-law, "Wait until my dad hears about this". Of course it didn’t matter what my dad thought. It was just frustration on my part.

The kids all got along pretty well. We had something in common, and that made everybody in the house "kin". The boys spent a lot of their time either down in the basement, outdoors, or on rainy days in the garage.

We didn’t have a lot of toys to play with, so most of our entertainment came in the form of games we made up. We held dances in the garage with some early Elvis Presley 45 records. We had talent contests. We either sang a song or acted out a short play, and for this we might win a secondhand prize.

All of the kids were given a free pass to the Memorial Swimming Pool at the city park, and we took advantage of it. We only had a couple of bicycles. I was lucky enough to be given a used bike by the people who owned Hub Motel located just north of town.

There was a television in the living room, and we could watch Mickey Mouse Club. The exception was that the boys had to watch it from the dining room looking through a slightly opened door while the girls got to sit in the room and watch it. The girls brushed Mrs. Cook’s hair or rub her feet for this privilege. I think on special occasions the boys were allowed to sit on the floor and watch TV.

Fixing meals in this house was a job in itself. All the older girls helped do the cooking and the cleaning up of the the kitchen afterward. On the kitchen counter sat an arched top Philco radio, and the hottest song that summer was "The Yellow Rose of Texas." The older girls loved to listen to it.

The summer went by fast, and we finally had to go back to school. I was enrolled in the sixth grade at Perrin Palmer. Mrs. Geraldine Whyman was my teacher and principal of the school. She had reddish hair; and if I had to guess, I would say her favorite color was green. Although you couldn’t tell it from the black and white class photo, Mrs. Whyman wore a green outfit; and she and her husband owned a green Buick. Because I missed so much time and changed schools at the end of the year, I was surprised they promoted me.

They let me ride my bike to school; and because I had one, I was sometimes asked by Mrs. Whyman to run daily paper work from Perrin Palmer to Rodney B. Wilson. I also joined the safety patrol. Doing these things made me feel important.

When the tomatoes we planted earlier started ripening, Don and I used to sneak a salt shaker out of the house, lie down in the garden next to the tomato plants, and pig out.

Winter shoved fall aside, and Christmas was coming. It is my favorite time of the year. The older kids were asked to pick out a present for the younger ones. We all went through the Christmas catalog trying to give out hints as to what we wanted. We had a Christmas tree in the archway between the living room and the front parlor. It was a pretty tree; and whenever we walked by the doorway, we looked in to see if there were any more gifts under it.

The presents were coming in, some given by our grandparents and others from local organizations. We got free passes to the Clinton Theater and watched "White Christmas" with Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney, and afterward they handed out boxes of candy.

On Christmas Eve we opened our presents. I got a farm set as my present from the Home. My grandparents gave me a Canadian Mounties gun and holster set complete with a badge. My mother gave my younger brother and me pocket watches. A few days after Christmas the crystals popped out of the watches, so we took them down to Lester Lake. But even a jeweler couldn’t get them to stay in. The watches were junk.

They let us stay up late that night so we could play with our toys; and just like every other kid in America, we slept with our stuff. We had a big Christmas dinner the next day, and it was one of the few times we all ate in the dining room. Some of us spent the day after Christmas at a young couple’s apartment for a holiday dinner. We had a nice dinner and were given gifts of pencils, tablets and books.

It was common for people who wanted to adopt kids to shop around, but at the same time it was awkward for the kids. We were suppose to be on our best behavior. That might mean we were very quiet, but I don’t imagine very entertaining. Some of the kids were taken back to the home by couples who hadn’t found what they were looking for. Of the four adoptions that took place in my family, two of them turned out great and two of them didn’t. It’s not a perfect process.

I only saw Mrs. Cook get physical with a kid once. A girl named Barb was a discipline problem and wouldn’t do what she was told. Barb sat on the floor between the file cabinet and the wall, crying and screaming; and she wouldn’t come out. Mrs. Cook hit her a few times with a yard stick, and eventually she came out. Barb wasn’t at the Home long after that. She was boarded out at Thelma Hathaway’s. Later on she ended up in an institution in Coldwater.

The kids at the home required services from some of the downtown businesses such as haircuts, clothing, new shoes, etc. The boys went uptown in a group to the Hayhoe Barber sShop every four to six weeks and got a haircut. We went to Kohl’s Shoe Store and were fitted for some shoes, and afterward we got to pick out a prize from the "Pirate Chest".

The stores uptown were familiar with the kids from the Home so they guided them as to what they could or couldn’t buy. When we were done shopping, they just sent the bill to the county.

Richard’s Dairy used to empty their freezers of all the outdated ice cream and bring it to the Home. We had a big freezer in the garage, and they put as much of the ice cream in it as they could. Don and I tried to help them out with the overflow by grabbing a half-gallon carton from time to time and sneaking it down to the basement through the outside basement doors. After the carton was emptied, we threw it in the crawl space underneath the front porch. If anybody looked in the crawl space, all they would see were empty ice cream cartons.

Don and I did that a lot, sneak food and go someplace to eat it. In the basement they had shelves holding quart jars of canned food. We especially liked the canned peaches although sometimes we grabbed a can of government beef which was also very good.

We never got filled up on food. We were afraid the days of hunger were going to return, but of course they didn’t. We were fed very well at the Home.

When we woke up at night and needed to use the bathroom, we had to go down two flights of stairs to get to our bathroom. On the way down and next to the basement stairs was the kitchen. We’d grab cookies or cupcakes on our way back to bed and eat them before going to sleep. They found out about it and decided we couldn’t go down stairs to the bathroom anymore. We had to use a pot in our room. Don and I weren’t going to use the pot, so we came up with a better idea. Whenever we had to urinate, we went over to the bedroom window and relieved ourselves right through the screen and onto the side porch roof. They finally caught "wind" of what we were doing and took the pot away. We won.

I knew of attempts at sex between the older kids in the Home, but I was never aware it actually happened. There was an older boy living there for a short time, and one night he tried to talk one of the girls into crawling in bed with him. Going against him was the fact that Don and I weren’t asleep yet, and she knew it. He tried to bribe us with money, which we took. But we didn’t go to sleep, so he lost out twice. We laughed about that for a long time afterward.

There was a door between Carmen’s bedroom and the boy’s bedroom. Don and I weren’t above peeking through the keyhole, but we never saw anything but young girls in pajamas. They found out about it just the way they found out about everything else Don and I did, and they plugged up the keyhole. It was one of the reasons why the county shipped the older kids out to boarding homes.

As summer approached and we were outside playing a lot, Mrs. Cook noticed I limped after running around. Alta took me to a clinic at the Congregational Church to see a doctor. I had to put on something that looked every bit like a baby diaper. Alta had a big grin on her face but didn’t say anything. After Alta and I got back home, she told the older girls I had to wear a diaper. they had a lot of fun with me for a couple of days.

The doctor sent me to see another doctor in Lansing, and he decided I needed surgery. I did something stupid when I was six and severed a tendon in my ankle. My folks didn’t take me to a doctor. Dr. Harris was going to try and fix it.

I slept in a bed out in the hallway my first night at Sparrow Hospital because they were overcrowded. The next morning after surgery, they moved me into a room with another boy who had gone through a manure spreader. I didn’t have any visitors while I was there, and finally I went home. I had a cast on my foot and walked with crutches. I had the cast all summer.

When the hot weather came, the kids talked about how they used to go to Crystal Lake for a vacation. We didn’t do that in 1955, but in the summer of 1956 we packed up some clothes and things into a couple of cars and a truck and headed out. We went up and stayed at the Maxwell House cabins up on the hill for two weeks. It wasn’t too far from my grandparent’s cottage. I saw them go by a couple of times, but I didn’t dare go down and see them. I was afraid I’d get into trouble.

Just down the road was the famous Crystal Lake Merry-Go-Round. I rode it so much one night and got too dizzy to walk on my crutches, so my sister and Carmen had to carry me back to our cabin. We had a TV at the cabin, but the only thing on was the political conventions that summer. The guy who owned the cabins [Maxwell Smith] gave Don and me a couple of old golf clubs.  It was my first experience with the game. I couldn’t go swimming because of my cast, but I could beat the whiffle ball around standing on one leg. The two weeks went fast, and the kids had a great time at the lake. But we had to get back to the Home.

Don and I used to go shoplifting. It was something I didn’t teach him and he didn’t teach me; we did this even before coming to the home. He went out to Andy’s IGA and took bags of peanuts, and downtown he stole pocket knives for himself and me. I stole padlocks at one place and a pair of cutter pliers from Dean’s Hardware. When they found out about it at the Home, I ratted on Don. He wasn’t going to fess up to it until Mrs. Cook made him get in the car. She said she was going to take him to a boarding home. A little while later they both came back, and Don finally confessed.

Mrs. Cook called Alan Dean and told him I was coming to return stolen goods. It was tough to go down to the store and look Mr. Dean in the eyes and tell him I stole something that belonged to him. He wanted to know one thing, was it my idea to bring the tool back. I told him yes. He wanted the apology to come from me and not because somebody was forcing me to say those things. I felt bad for a long time about ratting on Don, but he forgave me.

I was in the seventh grade at Central School that fall and still on crutches, so Mrs. Cook arranged with the Sheriff department to have a Deputy take me to school. By now my youngest sister and brother were gone. She was adopted by an older couple who had no kids, and he was adopted by a younger couple with one son.

Mrs. Cook was having health problems and was in and out of the hospital. She didn’t make it and died that fall. The funeral took place at Hoag’s Funeral Home on Walker Street. It was the first time I ever saw a dead person. They took us up to see her. All we could do was stand there and stare at her body in the casket.

Alta stayed on as a temporary matron. She did a good job. The rules were loosened up. All of the kids had a little more run of the house, and we were very comfortable with that.

After Mrs. Cook’s death, Carmen went to live with a local minister and later on was adopted by them, I never saw Carmen again.

Not long after that my best friend, Denny, was killed in a car accident up north. The family was on a holiday trip when his dad lost control of the car. They told me later that Denny was trapped under the car and was crying out for his dad to help him, but his father couldn’t. I walked up to Osgood’s to see him. Denny wasn’t a very big guy, so they had him in a smaller casket with a one piece lid. They put a lot of make-up on him, and I don’t remember if he was wearing his glasses or not.

Denny's mom called me at the Home to see if I would be a pallbearer. I told her that I didn’t have a suit, but the truth is that I was scared. In a matter of a month or two I had experienced two deaths, one a close friend and the other, a caretaker. I did not have parents to explain death to me, nor did I have any sense that those who died were in a good place. I was worried that other people close to me would start dying. I never went to Denny’s funeral, and to this day I’ve always regretted that.

Christmas rolled around again, and I had become the lone member of my family here. My oldest sister went to stay with an older couple whose kids were almost all grown up.

Somebody who was a member of the VFW picked me up and took me to a Christmas party they held at the hall. There were a lot of kids there, and they put on a play. Afterwards gifts from under the Christmas tree were handed out. I got a model airplane kit.

My oldest sister came to visit me on Christmas Eve, and we all sat around in the living room and opened our presents. I got a snow saucer from my grandparents, a book with religious stories, some paper and notebook for school.

I spent Christmas day with Mrs. George. She was my seventh grade teacher. She was fixing dinner when I got there. She gave me some homemade caramel candy she made, and it was delicious. I met her family, and we had a nice dinner. Afterwards there was a wallet under the tree for me. This was my last Christmas at the Home.

I went up north that winter with a couple named Spousta. They had a cabin there, and we spent the weekend. I had imagined that I would go and live with them, but it never happened.

After the first of the year, we learned somebody new was coming in to take over the Home. An older couple named Ed and Irene Nobis decided to become the new caretakers. They had two daughters, one married and one still in school. Alta moved out, and I think she got a job at the hospital. Later on I was told she was married and had a baby. I never heard from her again.

Ed and Irene were great people. They followed up on what Alta had started and opened up the Children’s Home to the children. There were a few kids left over from Mrs. Cook’s time, but most of them had moved on and a new generation of kids was coming in. After Ed and Irene Nobis came, they brought a different radio with them, so I asked for and received the old arch top radio that used to be in the kitchen. Instead of the "Yellow Rose of Texas, this radio now played "A White Sports Coat" by Marty Robbins. I loved that song.

That winter I went up to Houghton Lake to spend a week-end with my Aunt Helen and Uncle Ernie. Uncle Ernie was my dad’s older brother, and we had spent some time with them in the summer of 1955. I went ice fishing for the first time in my life, and I really enjoyed it. Aunt Helen borrowed some warm clothes from the family next door so I wouldn’t freeze my butt off while fishing. They had an ice shanty way out on the lake, but with the ice being so thick that time of year we could drive out to it. Aunt Helen put a pot of Sloppy Joes on the shanty stove, and we ate well while we were fishing. When they took me back to the Home, I had a mess of fresh fish for everybody to eat. Aunt Helen wrote me every week, and I wrote back. Almost every Saturday while we were watching the morning shows on TV in the living room, the mailman would come; and I would get another letter. I could always count on it.

I went back to the doctor for a check up on my foot, and he said I needed more surgery. When Mrs. Canfield came to the Home to tell Mrs. Nobis of the news I told them, "Over my dead body." and went upstairs to my room. Mrs. Nobis came up later and tried to explain to me the need for the surgery, but I wouldn’t listen. I presented them with a problem, and they came up with a solution.

Next week: Houghton Lake and Back

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