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My dad didn’t believe in raising kids in the city, so every summer, as soon as school was out, over to Canada we went. We went to the family farm first and then my uncle had a stroke, so we were able to move out of the family farm and lived in my aunt and uncle’s house, which was in a town called Ayton. We didn’t realize what a good time we had our whole lives. It was grand, we had a lot of friends. After we proved to my father that we could swim, we would go down to the dam and swim, which was deep water. We would go down the road, over the field, to this creek that ran off the dam. It would kill our feet because it was so rocky, you had to swim. He would come down every two weeks and we’d go down to the creek and show him that we knew how to swim, then he’d come with us to the dam and we’d prove to him that we could swim in deep water. I went there every summer until I was 15 or 16. (laughing) I think it was our mother and father’s way of birth control, because my mother had had 8 pregnancies and 6 live ones. That’s a terrible thing to say.
Anyhow, we had a wonderful summer, a wonderful life with my dad and mother. My mother wasn’t very loving; my father was. I don’t think my mother knew how babies came. She was raised in Toronto at a women’s college. She went to 13th grade. The way they took baths, they left their nightgowns on and washed underneath. I don’t think she knew how babies came, or she’d have never married my father.
We lived the rest of the year in Detroit, 139 Belmont. On the same street as the cathedral is on. We lived between Woodward and John R.
I went to work for Mr. Sanders. Mr. Sanders wrote to the priest at my church asking if there were any honest girls who could work for him. I was an honest girl, so I went to work for him as a candy/bakery girl for about 2 years. The only thing we had in the box was the one pound of fudge, which was $1.15 plus tax. I’d have to figure out how much it would be. I seldom worked the bakery, because they said the other girls weren’t smart enough to figure out how much the fudge was by the pound. They were glad to have me because they could switch me around. So I worked there for a while.
Then my girlfriend and her brother worked for Dittrich Furs, and Mr. Dittrich wanted a secretary, and Doug (her brother) asked me if I could take shorthand, and I said “Yes I can, Doug,” and he asked if I wanted to work for Mr. Dittrich for 50 cents an hour. I was making 35 cents an hour as a candy/bakery girl, which was good pay at that time. So we would go to Mr. Alfred’s house: there were three brothers and we always called them ‘mister’ and he would drive us down to the store. Mr. Alfred had a telephone booth in the store, and nobody could use Mr. Alfred’s; (laughing) I swear he was taking bets. I worked the telephone, they had a 4 line telephone, and I did that for a while. My first job in the store was to vacuum the floor; I think they were doing it just as a precaution just to see what I would do. So for 50 cents an hour, I would vacuum the store. I worked there for a little while, not too long, because it was too degrading. What was nice about it, though, was in the wintertime we could wear the fur coats out that were in layaway that people never picked up.
And then I went to work — I was forever changing jobs — for an insurance company in the Guardian building. My friend Jeannie, she worked there for a while, and she lived around the corner from me. She was home for lunch, and her mother asked her to get a loaf of bread at Joe’s, at the market that was a couple blocks from her. So she went to the market, and this car came up and pinned her against this telephone pole and killed her. It was a big shock, since none of us had any experience with death before this. Anyhow, I told them (the insurance company) I was going to a funeral of the girl who worked with me, and they told me that I had better be back by 3:00. I came back at 3:00, and I wrote out “I cannot work for a company that has these kinds of policies.” I left a note on the table and the key to the locker room, and left. After that, I didn’t work for a while. My mother said, “What’re you going to do, lie around all summer?” I said, “That might be a good idea, but I can’t go back there.”
Then I went up to Chrysler’s and I was involved in workman’s compensation. When I went to Chrysler, I wrote down the insurance company I had worked for in workman’s compensation. Well, you’d think I was the Queen of Sheba. They leaped on me because I had experience in workman’s compensation. So I got seated in this office, with my hat on, and my gloves. Anyhow, Mr. Hotchkiss was supposed to interview me, but he was tied up in a legal case and couldn’t get away, so he had Mr. Norman interview me. Mr. Norman told me that I sounded like a good girl to work there, even though I told him that I didn’t have much experience in workman’s compensation, I just knew how to fill out the forms. “Well, that’s all we need,” Mr. Norman said. Mr. Norman wasn’t Mr. Hotchkiss’ favorite man. Mr. Hotchkiss had me go into the office the next day and talked to me.
It was a very quiet office. (laughing) Nobody talked but me! It was a good job, I liked it very much. Then Hotchkiss decided that he was going to put all the girls into the factories they were working with, and mine was Dodge Main. So I went to Dodge Main, which was very good. Well, I wasn’t very good at keeping quiet, as you know. So there I was, taking histories. Guys would come in that had hernias, that didn’t know they had hernias. Anyhow, I worked there until I got married.
Dodge Main Plant, 1955. (from allpar.com)
I met my husband at a Catholic dance. Marianne, my girlfriend, said she had met a really nice guy there the week before who was really good-looking. This guy had called her and said that they were going to go to this dance, so they dragged my husband out of bed to come with them. I thought “Oh good, a dancer!” — he can’t dance a step. So the three guys came, and I’d given my locker key to one of the guys from Catholic Central, and I went up to him and said, “I want my key back because Mary’s friend brought a couple guys with him.” Well, this Catholic Central guy was going to take me out to Bill’s Hideout in Royal Oak, which was the place. We went over instead to Marianne’s house and looked in her refrigerator, and she didn’t have anything. Her family didn’t keep much food, I don’t think they could afford it, to tell you the truth. Her father had died and left her penniless. I told them that I knew where there was food — over at my house — and Lou (my husband) said that he would come with me. I said, “Well, don’t you open your mouth because if my mother and father hear you, that’ll be the end of that.” My mother and father didn’t expect me home anyways since I was going to sleep over at Mariannes’ house. Lou told me, he saw the typewriter on the dining room table and the ten foot refrigerator filled with food, and he said, “This is the girl for me!” So that’s how I met my husband — and he doesn’t dance!
My girlfriend was going to give us dance lessons, she was an Arthur Murray instructor before she moved to Michigan, but my husband wouldn’t go. I said to him, “Well, I’m just going to find my own dance partner then.” He was fine with that, because all the guys at church knew he didn’t like to dance, and they all danced with me because I’m a good dancer. He was in college at Wayne (State) University, in his last year in college, so two days after he graduated from college, we got married. He didn’t even have a job yet! So in the mornings, I’d get up and go to work and Lou would get up and have breakfast. My mother told me, “How can you have a husband and you work, and he doesn’t work?” I told her he was looking for a job, and she said, “Well he should’ve found a job before he got married!” I said, “Never mind, mother, it’s okay.” She just couldn’t understand how I could go to work and leave him in bed.
One of the nurses at Dodge Main said (before I got married) to come up in the factory with her, and we had to wear white uniforms, which was easy on my income because I didn’t have to buy any clothes. She said that one of the gentlemen had an apartment on the boulevard, and he might have an apartment for me. At that time, homes were hard to rent, so we went up and talked to the General Manager (Mr. Thurman), and I asked if they had anything available in February, since we were getting married February 2. It was $32 a month for rent, which was a good deal back then because they had rent control. We always paid them more, though, because we had the money at that time. It was a living room, dining room, small kitchen, and two bedrooms. We were very happy there.
Then we bought a house, and the Thurmans came out to see it. Mrs. Thurman went into the bathroom and you could hear her opening the medicine cabinet. Mr. Thurman said, “Libby, what are you doing in there?” and she said she was just checking to see how much room we had in the medicine cabinet.
That’s about it. We had Cathy, then we had Peggy, then we had Matthew, and here I am. We’re still very happy and love each other dearly after 61 years.
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