Roses

We moved to Detroit when I was 7 years old. I didn't know anyone. I didn't have any friends yet.
The first house on the block belonged to an elderly Greek man named Mr. Pappas. He was widowed and lived by himself in this huge house. In the backyard Mr. Pappas grew prize-winning roses. His backyard was absolutely beautiful. Colors were everywhere. The air always smelled so good.
Being all by myself, I would wander through the block - I wasn't allowed to cross the street yet. The alley behind our house was always interesting. I left our backyard and went to Mr. Pappas's yard through the alley. I stood there and was enthralled by the beautiful flowers. So I picked some. However, I had been taught that if it wasn't mine I couldn't keep it. So I gathered a lovely bouquet (probably without much stem to them because of the thorns) and went to Mr. Pappas's front door. I rang the doorbell and waited for the door to be opened.
Mr. Pappas was quite short with little hair on his head. He opened the door and smiled at me. I said, "I picked these flowers for you."
He thanked me and told me what a beautiful bouquet I had picked for him. I went home.
You know that old saying, "Loose lips sink ships"? My ship was sunk by my mom when I came home and boasted about giving Mr. Pappas some flowers. I couldn't believe she was mad at me for picking some flowers when he had hundreds of them.
We were new in the neighborhood and I had stolen this sweet man's flowers that he had worked very hard to get just right. He was always in his garden weeding, tweaking and doing whatever else he needed to do to get such beautiful roses. In one fell swoop the new kid on the block obliterated a hand full of his roses.
In my own defense, I had to work hard reaching through the gate - hanging onto the iron gate with one hand so I wouldn't fall through while reaching with the other hand, risking my skin against thorns, just to gather the pretty flowers for Mr. Pappas.
I never did it again.

Cooley High 2

I made a mistake on my last blog. It was 1968, not 1969 that I entered Cooley High. It had been an exciting year because I had a summer job that gave me all kinds of perks and the Detroit Tigers had won the pennant. They were extreme underdogs but won anyway. I grew up with Ernie Harwell's voice coming out of the little red transistor radio.
There was a beautiful church across Hubbell from Cooley. Kids would gather there and smoke cigarettes before and after school. In a study hour class I had, a young man invited me to come there with him. When I told him I didn't smoke, he moved away from my desk and never spoke to me again! I'm fairly certain there was more than regular cigarettes being smoked over there.
I took two art classes that year. My art teacher entered one of my paintings into an art contest, but I never won anything. Competition was fierce with the city of Detroit schools all competing. It was a water color of a Mexican peasant couple. I have no idea whatever happened to that painting.
When the weather was nice I walked to school and saved my bus money. There was a young man who would walk to meet me almost every morning. He was very nice. The problem was that he was black. My parents are old-school with definite ideas about races mixing. Finally the boy asked me out on a date. I wasn't old enough to date (family rule was 16), so I had that excuse, but he asked me if there was anything else. I felt the need to be honest with him, so I told him my parents would flip out if I dated a black boy. He knew I wasn't being mean, but I knew I had hurt his feelings. He still met me a couple of times, but the weather got bad and I took the bus.
Cooley was a closed campus, which meant that once you were in school, you couldn't leave then come back again. We weren't allowed to eat lunch any other place than the lunch room. However, once a year we were allowed outside (it was in the spring) for lunch hour. I went out with two friends, a girl and a boy. I don't remember the girl's name, but the boy's name was Tim. He was tall and very blond. He was kind of goofy, too. We were outside enjoying the weather when all of a sudden Tim grabbed the top of his head. The other girl and I stopped talking and stared at Tim. Then he looked at his hand, said something about a bird then turned and ran into the school. We laughed so hard we had to hold each other up. Tim came out a few minutes later with wet hair.

Cooley High School

In the fall of 1969 I entered Thomas Cooley High School. The school held three grades - 10th, 11th, and 12th. There were over 1,000 students per grade.
That morning I had taken a city bus on 6 Mile Rd. from the end of my street, Lesure St., to Hubbell. From there I had a transfer and rode about a mile when I was dropped off at the front of Cooley High School. I had seen the school many, many times (my older brothers had attended there), but it seemed bigger that day.
The design of the school is a Gothic style. It was built in 1929 out of yellow brick. I still remember looking up, up, up as I walked to the entrance.
I knew only a few kids there. My best friend, Debbie Wedes, had gone to Cass Tech because she wanted to be an actress more than anything and Cass Tech is a school for the performing arts. There were 2 other LDS kids there. Among 3,000. I was a little more than intimidated.
That first year I had been publicly honored for an essay I had written and later that year I was publicly humiliated for an essay I had written.
The next year things changed. I had made friends and knew my way around the school. However, there was a new problem. Civil rights had been put in the spotlight. The inner-city schools were almost all black and the schools in the outer-city were mostly white. Politicians in their usual clumsy fashion decided to bus kids from inner-city to outer-city and from the outer-city to inner-city schools to insure integration of the races.
I believe it wasn't the integration that was the problem, I think it was taking children out of their neighborhoods, friends and family - randomly - and thrusting them into an alien element.
At first it seemed to be working, but there had been riots that tore our city apart just a few years earlier. Feelings were still raw. And remember, it was 1970. It was taking a while for earlier generations to accept equality. The races still did not trust each other.
Riots broke out at Cooley High that fall. They were small, isolated incidents, but they were real and they were frightening. I was one of two white kids on the city bus. I saw a group of black kids beating up a white boy. I was so scared that when I got home I was shaking.
My oldest brother, Dan and his wife, Kathy, started taking me to school and picking me up. However, during school I was on my own. Under the window of my algebra class, kids were being beaten up by other kids. Going from the portable classroom to the main school we had to go through lines of kids challenging us to fights.
It wasn't too long into the second year at Cooley High that my father removed me from school. The principle of the school had sent around a memo to the classes telling us to stop the rumors of riots. They weren't rumors.
On my last day of school at Cooley, Dan and Kathy picked me up. We went around the block and saw a huge group of white kids walking to Cooley with clubs and sticks.
The next day school had been cancelled. It remained closed for three days. However, I never went back.
My parents had made the decision to move the family to Eckford and build houses.

SNAKES!!!

At our first house, we had a huge garden. We grew corn, tomatoes, green beans, zucchini, potatoes, squash, onions, cabbage, lettuce, peas and whatever else we could fit in. We froze and canned everything we could. Bruce took care of the garden most of the time and I took care of the canning and freezing. We had a rototiller that we had gotten used from Bruce's dad. That was a lifesaver because the garden was so big.
In our garden we had a pet. It's name was Sylvester. I only saw him once or twice, but he was more afraid of me than I was of him. He was a garden snake. He kept the insects down so if he stayed in his part of the property I was o.k. with him. I was very aware of Sylvester Snake.
In our third summer there I was very pregnant with Brian. This must have been in late May or very early June. I looked out my kitchen window and saw Bruce walking toward the house - with Sylvester dangling from his hand. I could not believe he was bringing a snake into my house!
As Bruce entered the back door, I ran out the front. I ran down the front lawn to the street and up the hill to the corner. Fear can make pregnant women do miraculous things. I looked back to the house and saw Bruce standing on the porch laughing his butt off.
He called to me to come home, but I wouldn't until he had promised me that the snake was back in the garden. He said he wasn't going to bring it in the house, he was just going to show him to me.
Didn't matter. Snakes and I will never occupy the same space on purpose.

Birthday

I can't believe that I'm this old!!! 56 years old. And if one more person says 56 years YOUNG, I'm going to scream. My body definitely says old.
This birthday has been a very good one. Steve knows how much I love to read (we share that love) so he gave me a very expensive gift card to a bookstore. Bruce and I are struggling financially, so instead of buying me a gift, he made me shelves for the dining room. I love them. He does such a wonderful job when he makes things. Another heirloom for the grandkids when I pass.
Then I got a call from Rob's family and they sang Happy Birthday to me. It was a sound much like angels make, I'm sure. Those sweet, sweet voices. I wish I could hug them all.
And Steve's little girl, Kati, called today and sang Happy Birthday in English and German. A multi-language song. I told her in English that her song was beautiful, but she didn't understand, so I had to say "Das was schon". When I said that, she was happy.
June sent me a birthday card with two bare butts on the front. It said that I expected someone to make a few 'cracks' on my birthday. And my mom sent a card.
All in all, it was a wonderful day.
I forgot, Bruce and I went to lunch at the Olive Garden. They have fried zucchini! To die for!

In the Closet

I was 17 when the house my dad was building was almost done. I had been given the choice of bedrooms, the one at the front of the house next to my parents, or the one at the back across the hall from my parents room. I chose the one across the hall because there was a window that allowed the rising sun in. It faced the east.
My parents had rented an electric sander to finish the floors, but the floors needed to be sealed then varnished. Since this was to be my room, my job was to seal the floor. It was in the fall, so in the daytime it was warm, but towards evening it was cool. I had gone over to the house in the middle of the day to work. It was nasty work, so I dressed accordingly - blue jeans, flannel shirt, bare foot ( I preferred bare feet) and hair in pigtails.
By the time I was halfway through the room, the sun was going down. It was getting quite cool in the house. Then someone was knocking at the door. I couldn't believe we were having visitors! My dad and I were the only ones in the house. I had hoped they would talk then the visitor would leave. Oh, no! Daddy invited the neighbor in for a tour.
I could hear their voices, so I could judge where they were in the house. I decided that I looked too horrible to meet the neighbors, so I hid in my closet. I forgot to mention that my dad put lights in the closet that would come on when the door opened, didn't I?
As I sat in the dark closet, I was getting colder and colder. My feet, in particular were cold. I had gloves to wear while sealing the floor, so I got this brilliant idea of putting the gloves on my feet to help warm them up.
I could hear the footsteps and voices coming down the hall to my bedroom. my dad was explaining all that we were doing. They walked into my room (?!?). My dad was telling this neighbor, whom I had never met, about the sealing process. THEN he decided to brag about the light in the closet.
They were both standing in front of the closet when my father proudly opened the door. The light came on and shone right down on me as I sat on the floor of the closet with gloves on my feet.
There was a moment of silence. We were all just kind of staring at each other, too stunned to speak. Then my dad closed the door. The light went out and the two of them left the room. Soon our visitor left. My dad came to the closet and opened the door again. I was still sitting there with the gloves on my cold feet.
"He's gone.", he said. "You can come out now." He was actually smirking!

09/11/2001

I was at work at CVS. I was the shift supervisor of the store, but I had to cashier because my one employee was running late. The man from the store next to us came in and said that someone had flown a plane into the World Trade Towers. How horrible! My employee came in and I took a television off the shelf and put it in the pharmacy. When we turned it on, there was another plane flying into the towers. We were all stunned. Shocked. Who? Why? Our first impression had been that it was an accident. Now it was plane that it was a planned attack. The day was a blur after that except for the times I stopped at the pharmacy to see if anything had developed. We later learned about the plane that the passengers took over and flew into a field and the plane that flew into the pentagon.
In OUR country! Terrorists had the gall to attack us in our own country! We all watched in horror as New York City went mad. The 'collateral damage' of the buildings in close proximity, the poisonous air. The chaos of trying to find loved ones. Pictures of those not found were posted on erected bulletin boards. The brave fireman and police who were called to deal with a tragedy no one ever thought could happen here.
I guess what surprised Americans was the thought that we were in a war. What war? Who were we fighting? Who could hate us so badly that innocent people had been annihilated? Families had been destroyed. And our sense of security was shattered.
The assistant manager of my store was a devout muslim from Pakistan. He said that he had read the Koran many, many times and not once did he read any passages where it spoke of martyring yourself so you could go to paradise and have 70 virgins waiting for you.
The great divide this action caused by so few has grown to hatred between millions of muslims and millions of christians. This act of hatred has caused a great divide in our own country.
And still the question has begged, why?