Originally Posted by
Hamtragedy
As for stories, I gleaned lots of them from my grandfather. His father was a motorman on the interurban starting in 1915 and would operate the line to Mt. Clemens and later Wyandotte. He called it the Hot Bath Line. They lived on St. Jean, near Kercheval, just down from Fairview Township, and recalls scrambling across the rooftops with his buddies as teenagers. He would ride the streetcars for free to the Concord? yard to take his dad his lunch. The firehouse on Lycaste still had a horse drawn hook and ladder.
Their house had boarders, up to six or eight of them, who lived in shifts, in the attic. They were only allowed to scale the ladder placed on the neighbors first story roof, to enter and exit the house because they all worked at Chrysler/Plymouth and came home filthy, boozed up, or in most cases, both. The commotion of a drunk falling off a ladder was common, everyone else had boarders as well. His mom changed the "pans" daily, and bathing was allowed regularly, which back then was once or twice a week.
One of the biggest complaints in the neighborhood was the "new" giant sign that Chrysler put up in the mid 20's. Apparently it was way brighter than anything else in that neighborhood and kept people up at night.
He and his friends would swim in the canals, over by Connor, or at the foot of Lenox. He said one kid dove in head first one day and they had to rescue him out of the muck, feet flailing. They would walk to Belle Isle, swim at Waterworks, take dates to Electric Park and even walk to the movies downtown. As a teenager, he got a job rowboating to Peche island, in the dark, usually from the foot of Alter. Rowboating back would put him right at about St. Jean with the current. He got paid for this job. He also drove to Peche Island in the wintertime, also in the dark. He claims he never lost a vehicle, but that there were lots of old sunken Model Ts on the western approach. This job also paid well. He graduated from Southeastern in 1928. He found his way to the whorehouses along the tracks in Hamtramck. A cheap cee-gar [[for a dime) gained admission. Dime-a-dance at the Vanity was also a favorite.
One of his first real jobs after high school was to pick up the gate receipts from the ballpark, throw them in the rumble seat, and drive them down to the Guardian Bank. He said they never thought twice about all that cash in the back of the car. He would then go back and hang out on Cherry St. and wait for Greenberg to hit one over the wall. He saw Ruth hit a couple as well. He worked at Packard [[selling bumpers out of the back door!) and at Continental. He said they had to wipe the orange stuff off the windshield every morning from the Budd Wheel plant.
When the Depression set in, he made a couple runs as a passenger in a small plane btw Detroit and Pittsburgh and Detroit and Milwaukee. These runs were also made in the dark. He thought he was done for that night in Pennsylvania when they landed in the fog. He bought a stake-truck and headed down to Arkansas. There was money to be made helping people move and hauling. He played baseball [[catcher) as a youngster in the many organized Detroit leagues, and as a young adult, in cornfields across America. He drank a lot. After losing his stake truck and all his money on booze, he rode the rails. Somewhere along the way, he was Sheriff in Tuscon [[wouldn't believe it but for the pictures).
Wound up back in Detroit after doing cleanup in the South Pacific a changed man, save for his discharge night, in the gutter in Chicago. Still had all his money though. Married and moved in with his first wife in '47 on Lemay, and later Lillibridge. He loved his Nash more than his wife, though, divorced, and married my grandmother at Reformation Lutheran Church on Lakeview & Vernor Hwy in 1955 where they lived on Lenox near Essex. He died, memory in tact, if not embellished, at 93 in 2004. Al Kaline, who won the batting title his rookie year, was his favorite.
