We’ve been talking about attending Education Week. We also took vacations in the other direction. About twice a year, we would all head for Michigan. Usually in the spring and then again for Thanksgiving, we would make the trek to Battle Creek and Quincy. We would normally spend 6 days in Michigan, three with my mother and three at the farm with Karen’s mother. Karen’s Dad died just a few years after we got married, so most of my memories of the farm do not include him. I do remember the first time I ever met her family. I think it was a Thanksgiving, then, also. We had had our first date in September and I had left to go south in January, so it makes sense that I would have attended Thanksgiving with her family.
I can remember going up to the door of the house and being let in and introduced to everyone. I think they were watching a football game that day (they always did on Thanksgiving), If I’m not mistaken, Gene was the first brother I saw that day. At least I remember him the most. The day went well. At least, they didn’t kick me out and tell me to never see their daughter again. I think it took them awhile to accept me as a member of the family, but they did eventually.
So, every year we would travel to Michigan to see the grandparents. We usually stayed the first three days of the week with my mother. She had moved to a trailer by this time and we crowded in. I don’t remember where we slept. I have memories of us using a fold-out bed and the kids sleeping on the floor. Not sure how accurate that is. I don’t think we could afford a motel, so we must have stayed with grandma.
There were times in the early days when Marty and Laura lived with Mom, but I think they had pretty much moved out by the time we visited. So Mom was alone much of the time. She was always glad to see us. She had lots of medical problems and wasn’t shy about telling us about them. I used the time we spent in Battle Creek to run around and see old friends and go to the library to try to do geneaology. We took some trips to surrounding towns like Eaton Rapids to see if we could find records of our ancestors. And, we did find a lot.
More on Michigan tomorrow…
Dad