Growing Up on the West Side

It is exciting to see Ann Arborites reinvigorating the old neighborhoods on the West side of the city.  My formative years from Grade School through Twelfth Grade were spent in a house my grandfather built on Miner Street.  I can’t imagine that there could have been a better place for me to get started in life.

Let me take you back to 1957 and tell you what it was like to live in that great neighborhood. 

My dad worked for Michigan Bell and my mom had her hands full organizing the household for two “grown ups” and four kids.  My two older sisters plowed the way.  They led mom and dad through the initial perils of parenting.  Being five years younger I mostly cruised under child rearing radar.  My parents thought “Mikey is a breeze compared to Jo and Barb.” 

How could two sweet young ladies be a parenting challenge?  When I was seven years old Lucretia and Mad Madam Mim warned me not to disturb their paper dolls.  “You will regret it!”  Naturally, I ran amok with all of the dolls and associated paper clothing options.  For some reason my grandfather had a fetish for laundry chutes.  The house on Miner Street had a three foot square laundry chute that was a straight drop, three stories into the basement.  Virtually kicking and screaming they tossed me into the chute on the top floor.  It was a very quick trip to the basement.  Fortunately, the incident occurred one day before laundry day and I landed pretty softly.  My mother plucked me out of the bin and the siblings were grounded for a month. 

So, being third in the birth order, I was given a lot of latitude.  On a summer day I would pop out of bed and make my own breakfast.  For me that was either a bowl of cereal or cocoa and toast.  I was now free to pursue all of the entertainment opportunities the West Side offered. This morning it would be baseball.  Every morning, a group of kids would meet up at Hunt Park and organize a marathon baseball game.  I put on my Tigers Cap, stuffed a baseball in my pocket and retrieved the Al Kaline signature Louisville Slugger from the corner of my bedroom.  It was amazing that Al and I had the same taste in bats.  We liked a thin handle for a better wrist snap and large barrel that was a little more forgiving when you made contact with the ball.  Al’s bat was 34 inches long.  Mine was 29.  Other than that, they were identical.  I dragged my bike off the front porch.  I threaded my glove on the handle bars and straddled the bat across the handle bar between the grips.  Off to Hunt Park. 

Hunt Park offered two backstops facing each other from opposite corners of the park and a pitcher’s mound for each diamond.  There was no precut infield but the base paths were heavily grooved by hours of play from the sandlot teams. Anyone was welcome to play.  Girls, boys, anyone between seven and eleven years old.  We named two captains and went through a ritual with a bat, slightly more complex than the theory of relativity, to determine who would get the first pick from the dozen players.  Sides chosen, we played ball.

We had formal rules and informal rules. 

Formal rules were: “Pitcher’s Box is out. No Walking. No catcher (we did not have the requisite equipment). If we had less than five players a side, right field is closed.  Anything hit to right was an automatic strike.” 

Informal rules were you did not take advantage of the weaker players.  Everyone was allowed to play and the skilled players would not over power the neophytes.  When a seven year old came to bat you pitched the ball softly and underhanded.  You might throw a cross body block on an eleven year old when you were trying to score but no one ran over a seven year old. Nothing I ever did later in life emphasized a sense of fair play more than sand lot baseball at Hunt Park.   

The games lasted for hours.  Twenty or thirty innings.  All of us developed and honed our baseball skills much more on the sandlot than we did in official little league play.

After baseball we had lunch.  We randomly raided different households in the neighborhood.  Standard fare was PB&J’s or bologna sandwiches.  Occasionally, I would feast on a fried bologna sandwich.  Usually one of the mom’s organized lunch for the horde.

Following lunch we might decide to race our dirt bag soap box derby cars down Daniel Street.  Five or six of us made race cars out of spare wagon parts, two by four axles, and two by six chassis.  We steered with ropes tied to the front axles. No brakes. Daniel Street was perfect.  There was a very steep hill starting at Sunset Street but toward the end of Hunt Park there was an upslope so we all coasted to a stop.  Clear vision, no side streets, little traffic.  Spring Street on the other hand was totally down hill, three stop streets, heavy traffic, lots of trees.  Our test run down Spring resulted in one broken arm and lots of scrapes and bruises.  After five or six runs on the Daniel Track, someone was awarded the Barney Oldfield trophy and we moved on.

The Westside was a working class neighborhood and dinner time was pretty standard.  I had to be home at five and cleaned up for dinner forty five minutes later.  Dinner was served to the whole family at 6:00 every weekday.  We took turns at the dishes and then we went out to play with kids on the block.  Could be anything.  Touch football in the street.  Frisbee tag.  Hide and seek.  Whiffle ball.  Maybe a low profile card game on the front porch.  The old adage that we had to be home when the street lights came on is a little misdirected.  The real rule was we don’t want you home until the street lights come on.    

The West Side was rife with parks.  Hunt Park offered excellent sandlot, football, and basketball facilities.  In the winter, there was a great open hill that was ideal for sledding.  West Park was only three blocks from my house and it provided even greater recreational opportunities.  West had a fully maintained little league baseball field and a spectacular full size baseball diamond complete with dugouts.  Ann Arbor sported a semi pro baseball team, the Ann Arbor Travelers.  They played every weekend during the summer.  All the home games were at West Park. For four years, I was their batboy. West Park offered a wading pool to cool off on 90 degree days.  In a corner of the park there is a band shell for community music performances of all types.  In the winter, the baseball diamond was flooded and served as a public ice skating rink.  This was a big outdoor skating rink.  No hockey allowed.  My sister Barb had visions of becoming the next Sonya Henning so she spent many days and nights perfecting her figure eights at West Park.  The rink was lighted and there was a heated portable shed to warm you up on cold windy days.  We played “crack the whip”.  The person at the end of the whip achieved speeds near the sound barrier.  He or she was usually launched completely off the rink and over the surrounding snow bank.

Another great feature of the Old West Side was the proliferation of mom and pop stores. There were three stores within three blocks of our house and four more within six blocks. They were really needed for the mid fifties lifestyles.  Most families only had one automobile.  That vehicle went to work with the working parent.  At our house, when mom needed sugar, noodles, a can of soup or even a pack of Camels, she sent me a block and half south to Tom’s Miner Street Grocery.  This was always a great opportunity for me.  There was a two cent deposit on long neck bottles in Michigan.  Doesn’t sound like much.  But in 1957 a full size Snickers candy bar was a nickel.  A Faygo Crème Soda was a dime.  So for three pop bottles, I could get a Snickers and a piece of Double Bubble chewing gum.    For some reason we could always find a few beer bottles or pop bottles laying around the neighborhood.  If I had two salted away, I just needed to find one more on my way to Tom’s and the Snickers was mine.

Out of necessity, we all became capitalists.  The family budgets were tight.  Very rarely did discretionary income trickle down to the kids.  No problem.  With a little creativity we could be feasting on Snickers and Rock and Rye for a week.  I had a few lawn mowing and snow shoveling customers.  We all had our eyes open for long neck beer and pop bottles. 

Two of my more creative enterprises were in the recycling industry and the wholesale bait and tackle business.  Every month or so, I would drag the wagon out of the basement and tour the neighborhood asking for old newspapers and magazines.  Most of our neighbors saved these.  In fact they saved almost everything.  These people had survived the depression and you never knew when you might need to wrap fish or line the bottom of the birdcage.  When the piles got really big, they were happy to have me carry off the excess. I would take the papers home and bale them up with twine.  When I had stowed enough to fill the trunk and back seat of our 55 Mercury, my dad and I would load up the car and drive them to Lansky’s junkyard on Main Street.  Lansky paid me bulk pound prices for the paper.  I raked in three or four dollars a carload.  I bought my first Argus camera with paper proceeds. 

One of my friend’s father was an avid fisherman.  He determined that the perfect bait for big Bluegills was wild black crickets.  He offered to pay us the exorbitant sum of a penny per cricket for as many as we could deliver. During the day the crickets would hide under boards and rocks in the fields around the West Side.  Jimmy and I would hunt crickets alone but it was better to team up.  These guys were actually pretty fast and when you flipped the boards they started to move.  So one guy flipped and the other pounced.  More than once we flipped a board and were about to pounce when we found the den was occupied by a large spider, a snake or field mice.  Occupational hazards.  Jimmy and I always split the proceeds and we netted at least a dollar a month during the summer.                         

Growing up on the Westside, at an early age, we learned that you could always make money.  You could find a need, satisfy the need and support your lifestyle (usually Snickers and Faygo).  We never worried about having the opportunity to make enough money.  That perspective stayed with me my entire life and I learned it at age nine on Miner Street. 

I was very fortunate to grow up on the Old West Side of Ann Arbor.  We had a lot of fun.  My parents instilled solid values in their four children.  The need for equal opportunity and fair competition.  The benefits of self reliance and acquiring skills that were needed in the community.  These values were reinforced by our peers on the Old West Side.  I remember these lessons as I pass through life.  Most importantly, I never touch anyone’s paper dolls.