Houghton Lake and Back

Occupants of the Children's Home when the writer left in 1957.
On the left are Ed and Irene Nobis and their youngest daughter. In front were three new kids who
just arrived, and on the right are two girls who were there when we arrived in 1955.

They sent me to live with my Uncle Ernie and Aunt Helen. They owned a resort on the North Shore of Houghton Lake. Moving there helped me go through the next surgery I was about to have.

After I finished school, Uncle Ernie came to pick me up. We packed all my bags into the car, put my bike in the trunk and my radio in the back seat. I was on my way to a new home.

A few days later they had to take me to Sparrow Hospital in Lansing to have my second operation. While I was there my dad’s oldest brother, Alvin, came and visited me every evening. He brought me a milk shake every night and left me with lots of change to put in the coin operated radio. We didn’t have TV’s in our rooms then. My oldest sister came up to visit me, and she was able to see our uncle. I think he had a tear in his eye when he saw her.

After a week in the hospital, Uncle Ernie and Aunt Helen came to pick me up. I had over five dollars in radio change left over, so Uncle Alvin told me to take it home and buy something with it.

I spent another summer on crutches, but I’d learned to move around on them pretty good. There was one exception. The boat dock was wet from the high waves with a storm coming in. For whatever reason I was out on the dock ,and my crutches slipped. The top half of me fell in the water.  I managed to keep my cast from getting wet, and without the help of one of the renters I might not have. He pulled me out and saved us another trip to Lansing to have the cast replaced. When that guy and his family came back the next year he reminded me of how mad I was for having slipped and fallen.

I call the years at Houghton Lake High School my "Jerk Years." To understand that you would have to know me at that time. For unknown reasons I had a chip on my shoulder, and I did some things and said some things I always regretted. This was the toughest school I’ve ever went to. If you had a chip on your shoulder, somebody was more than willing to knock it off.

I rode the bus from the North Shore to the South Shore to go to school. It was while I was on this bus that I heard Buddy Holly had died.

The four years went by fast, and during this time I was to have one more surgery in 1959.

Relations with my aunt and uncle were getting bad, especially between my uncle and me. Uncle Ernie wanted me to wear my pants up high; he didn’t understand the reason why I wanted to wear them low. He also wanted me to part my hair toward the middle of my head and comb my hair straight down. He said my waves looked like wings on my head, and he didn’t like it.

My uncle didn’t have any tolerance for the teenager living in his home, and some of it may have come from things that happened years ago. My uncle was drafted in the Second World War when he was in his thirties. They always felt my dad should have been drafted instead of him because he was much younger; but because my dad had kids, he wasn’t. They always talked about that and the fact that my dad was sent to school by my grandparents to study banking, but he never followed up on the education.

I think there were hard feelings between my dad and his brothers for a long time. Uncle Ernie never had any kids of his own, but Aunt Helen had a boy by a previous marriage. When her son was born he weighed over thirteen pounds, and in an article by the Clinton County News they called him the next Jack Dempsey.

Uncle Ernie was in a tank destroyer unit and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. My aunt never wanted him to talk about it in front of her. I always wished I had asked him more about his experiences.

In the summer of 1961 we all agreed that joining the Navy would be the best thing for me. They took me over to Cadillac to catch a bus to Detroit and then to Fort Wayne for the physical. I made friends with a guy on the trip down. He was also joining the Navy, so we shared a hotel room that night and went to our physicals together the next morning. He passed, but I did not. My foot didn’t pass the tests.

I spent another night in Detroit and then caught a bus back to Cadillac. My aunt and uncle didn’t know I was coming back. I didn’t call them for a ride. I just hitchhiked. When I got there, I saw in my uncle’s face how disappointed he was that I came back.

A week later he came home from work, and I didn’t have dinner started. My aunt was working at her beauty salon. He was mad at me' and while he started dinner, he yelled about why I didn’t help them. I didn’t want to hear it, so I went to my bedroom. He said as long as I was living in his house I had to do what he told me to do. I opened my big mouth and said "It’s not going to be for long".

My uncle came into the bedroom; and forgetting about the paring knife in his hand, he swung at me. I threw up my arms and deflected his fist. That was the first time I ever blocked a punch with something besides my face.

I wasn’t there very long after that. I decided the best thing for all of us was for me to leave. I ran away one night and hitchhiked all night long until I got to Alma. I originally thought I would go to Chicago; but after a lonely night on the road, I changed my mind.

I ended up at my oldest brother’s house which was small and only big enough for him and my sister-in-law. Toward the end of the day my brother drove me back to the Home. He wanted to keep me, but they didn’t have the room or money. I understood.

They were expecting me at the Home. My aunt had called and told them I ran away.

I talked to Mrs. Volbrach. I think she was the County Child Welfare Agent. She told me how disappointed they were in me. Of course I felt bad, but I knew I done the right thing. When she read the letter I wrote to my aunt and uncle explaining why I left, she apologized to me.

I talked to my aunt the next day on the phone and told her I was okay. She said they would bring my things down to me, and I thanked her for that. When they came with my stuff, they told me that my uncle wasn’t threatening me with the knife; but I already knew that. He was worried about being charged with assault.

I told Mrs. Volbrach he didn’t mean it. I got along well with my aunt and uncle after that and saw them several times. It’s like the old saying: some people aren’t meant to live together.

A short time after that they boarded me out to Thelma Hathaway’s. Thelma was a good woman and had taken care of several of the kids from the Home. My arrival was timed well because her husband, Bob, was in the process of painting their house; so I was a lot of help to him.

I entered the twelfth grade that fall and graduated in the summer of 1962. I didn’t have a senior picture taken or a graduation party. I couldn’t afford either one. I was laid off from my job for most of that summer, but Thelma "carried me on the books".

Several memories stuck in my mind while I stayed at Thelma’s. One was the night a pickle truck crashed into their front yard. Thelma remembered sitting up in bed when she heard the noise and seeing bright lights coming in her bedroom windows. She thought it was the end of the world.

Another time Bob was down in the basement firing up the wood burning hot water heater when it exploded.  Luckily he was in another room when it blew. Thelma and I woke up and ran downstairs to see if he was all right, he was.

And finally there was Bob’s tales about being in the army and his friend nick-named "Pickles". He got the name because he was a cucumber farmer, and in the middle of basic training he told his sergeant he had to go home and pick them. Of course the army cared a lot about his cucumbers. They had boxing matches at the army camp. Pickles and another soldier with a Hungarian accent would fight often. The other guy would tell Pickles "Pickles, tonight I’m going to knock you cuckoo". I always loved to hear Bob tell that story.

I finally got a good job, and in the summer of 1965 I moved to St. Johns into an apartment of my own.

In the mid-sixties my mother was stricken with cancer. She was only fifty three. My oldest brother and I went down to a Detroit hospital to visit her. I can remember her telling my brother "Feel my stomach, it’s so hard." She was in the advanced stages of the disease. She died shortly after that; and when we went to the funeral, we saw her in the casket wearing a wig with ringlets. She looked like something out of Gone With The Wind and not at all like our mother.

My dad died in 1970 at the age of fifty nine from peritonitis caused by a perforated ulcer. We had to take up a collection among his kids to pay for the funeral.

I have no hard feelings toward anyone for the life I’ve lived. I try to find the good in all of it and forget the rest. I now think that my mother got too much of the blame for what happened to us  and that my father didn’t get enough.

The house still stands at 201 E. Gibbs Street, but that side porch roof is gone. The land where we planted our garden and enjoyed the taste of fresh tomatoes is now grass and occupied by a new house.

Today when I look back on those years at the Children’s Home I think of the words from the poet Tennyson who wrote:

"Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

Back