Here are the stories tucked inside the right side pocket....
The House on
Prospect Street…
The house at
704 Prospect Street in East Jordan, Michigan, has brought some youthful
memories. It was painted white back in
1960 when my grandmother, Mary Shepperly Dolezel, lived there with my Uncle Cy.
Her
other children were scattered throughout Michigan in Flint, Royal Oak and Bay
City so the summer visits were special.
She must
have looked forward to our visits and filled the house with wonderful aromas of
baking bread, fried cakes, and molasses cookies. Her meals were simple and based on her German
heritage.
The
grandchildren slept upstairs but never complained if it was too hot up
there. One granddaughter was even able
to play the old pump organ in the hall.
Such wonderful sounds come from that musical instrument. I can’t remember exactly what it looked like
but I can still hear the melodious chords.
A typical
day at Grandma’s house usually included a trip to the Tourist Park just outside
of the town. We’d spend hours digging in
the sand and swimming in the southern arm of beautiful Lake Charlevoix. On occasion, the children were treated to a
visit to the caged deer to give the animals a bit of dried corn.
We all knew
that Grandma needed a break when she handed you a banana, told you to take it
outside and eat it slowly. So then we would patter off to the Pray’s
house to play with their girls and dig in their giant sand pile.
We were
creative, inventive, and playful. Our
grandma did not have to entertain us – she had the perfect environment to
conjure up our own entertainment.
My grandma
passed away in 1960 – I was only 9 so a lot of these memories are from stories
retold by older siblings. Her funeral
was near Halloween so after the ceremonies, when the sky turned dark, family
friends helped us create some costumes to play trick-or-treat right in East
Jordan.
I don’t
remember going back to East Jordan as a child after her passing. I did return years later to see the house on
Prospect Street and reminisce about times gone by.
Every time I
have a banana, I think of Grandma Dolezel and “eat it slowly”.
Constance
Dolezel Bolander
June 27,
2013
... and another written by my sister....
June
28, 2010
Gladiolas.
Grandma
Dolezel had a garden in her back yard, pretty far back from the wood shed,
where I suppose she grew some vegetables, and where I know she grew rows of
gladiolas. For the life of me, I have
not been able to remember what color they were.
It seems to me there were white ones, and some red ones, and for some
reason I think some of them were variegated. But truthfully I don’t remember
for sure what colors they REALLY were, only that there were quite a few, and
she really loved them. Now whenever I
see gladiolas I think of Grandma Dolezel and that patch of land behind her
house.
From
back there, you could see the hill we climbed one time to have picnic somewhere
overlooking East Jordan. It seemed at
the time to be very far off from where we “lived” with Grandma, but it was
probably no more than half a mile away.
If you walked off in the other direction from the garden, you would end
up at the very wonderful sand pile! There we could play for hours at a time
with any number of kitchen implements donated from Grandma’s well stocked
kitchen. And some time during the day,
Ellen Pray’s Grandma would come over and, if it was cold tell us we were
dressed too warmly and, if it was hot tell us we needed to put a sweater
on.
Over
in front of the wood shed was a huge chestnut tree, on which Uncle Cy hung a
rope swing. We have a picture of Christy on the swing as a tow-headed toddler.
It stayed there for us to swing on until Grandma died. That and the martin house were the quiet places
to which we were banished when our grandmother needed some quiet time; she’d
send us outside with a banana, admonishing us to “eat it slowly”. I was a teenager before I figured out that
there was no physiological reason why
bananas had to be eaten slowly… the reason was that Grandma Dolezel wanted her
grandchildren out of her hair for a while.
Written
by Marjorie Dolezel Timmer
