I am not sure exactly when we moved to Ann Arbor from Toronto, but it was definitely before August of 1970 because that is when my sister Carol was born. I can remember a woman from across the street coming over and watching me and John while my mom was in the hospital having Carol. She had a daughter my age named Kimmy, and I think we were friends, or as close to friends as you can be at 3 years old. I don't remember much about this except that we were sitting in the backyard playing. The backyard was totally different from what it looks like today. There was no addition on the back, there wasn't even a deck. I think it was just a sliding door with a step down to the grass. Our yard had a chain link fence. We were the only family in the neighborhood to have a fence back then because it was against the subdivision rules to have one. My parents got a variance allowing them to have one because John had Downs Syndrome.
I do remember my parents bringing Carol home from the hospital, but I have very few memories of her until she was older. I don't think she really registered in my life until she was around three or so.
I have a few memories of Kimmy because I think we went to Nursery School together at the schoolhouse in front of the Dixboro Church. I can remember my dad taking me to school there in the SAAB he had when I was little. I can kind of recall doing art projects. I think that is all you really do in nursery school, crafts, story, snack, nap. Those were the good old days. There was also a marathon gas station just down the street where he would get gas. This was back in the days of full service stations. We got a nice set of breakfast bowls from the gas station. I think you got a bowl with each fill up. They had the stone age cartoon characters with the stone wheels on them. I can still remember eating cereal out of those bowls for years. I remember singing American Pie along with the radio while driving to school. It seems like it was on everyday when we went there. I also have a memory of sitting in the bathtub with my brother singing the refrain not understanding what whiskey and rye were, but thinking the words sounded cool anyway.
One of the other memories from that time was John getting on the school bus and going to school. High Point hadn't been built yet, so he was going to Sullivan School. Of course it was the stereotypical short bus, and my mom would take him out to the bus every morning. I remember she had some kind of portable seat belt that she would take with her and fasten him into the bus seat. I am not sure if it was for his safety in case of an accident or more to prevent him from wandering around while the bus was moving. My guess is that it was more of the latter.
I mentioned the Wagon problem from my dads book in my goodbye letter to my dad. I am not exactly sure when that happened, but it was prior to 1974, probably when I was around 5 years old or so. I had been playing in the woods behind my house and I found this pile of galvanized pipe. The wooded areas around my house used to be a farm and they processed maple syrup, so there was a lot of old farm equipment rusting back there. The pipes I found were in pretty good shape, so I hauled them back to the house, cleaned them up and put them in my red wagon. We had a bunch of extra squash in our garden, so I packed them in my wagon and went off into the neighborhood yelling squash and pipe for sale. I'm not sure if I sold all the Squash, but I did sell all the pipe to one of our neighbors, Bill Houtman.
Big Wheels were our main mode of transportation in those early years. John and I both had one, and so did most of the neighbor kids. Taking our Big Wheels down to the Court was the highlight of our day in the summer. One of the houses in the middle of the court had a really nice steep driveway, so we were able to start at the top and race as fast as we could into the court.
Mike, Scott, and Wendy Chisholm lived on one side of the court and we played with them all the time. I remember their neighbor had a really cool dune buggy that he had built himself. I don't remember what his sons name was, but he was part of our early group. The court played a huge part of our early childhood. It gave us a nice paved area to play in that wasn't quite in the road. We played games like kick the can in the evenings.
From as far back as I can remember we went to the community pool in the summer. I remember having swimming lessons there when I was very young. My dad loved to swim, and he would always swim laps during adult swim. I think a lot of the kids kind of resented my dad sometimes because he would be the only adult in the pool swimming for the 15 minute period. If he hadn't been there, they might have let the kids back in sooner. My mom didn't swim at all and rarely got in the pool even in the shallow end. John loved the pool, and he learned to swim a little. At the pool, you had to pass your test to be allowed to swim in the deep end and go down the big slide. To pass your test, you had to swim two lengths of the pool with out stopping, and you couldn't flounder too much. I passed my test at a very young age, and I loved going down the big slide.
I remember my dad going to work everyday. He always dressed in slacks and a button down shirt. Sometimes he would wear a sport jacket. He always had his brief case though. It was an iconic image of him and his briefcase. He had several of them throughout his career, but they were always the same color and style. They opened from the top and had a single latch on the middle to keep it closed. He really looked and acted like a professor in every way.
I really thought my dad was cool back then. He had all these cool drafting tools in his office and a manual typewriter that he used to write his book. He had shelves full of press on letters and symbols that he used for his book and everything he made. I loved playing in his office while he would work on grading papers or writing. I loved it when he would let me use his drafting table to draw on. I was never good at drawing, but I enjoyed being there with him.
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