Benny and Marian Zayti

Marian - This is August the 24^th, 1988.  I am Marian Shoebridge Zayti.

Int - Marian, what was Northville like or what was your early life like, early on?

Marian -Northville was a very small, little town.  We knew everyone – you know.  I can remember when we lived down on Wing Street on a Sunday I would sit out on the curb and look up at Main Street and watch for my aunt’s car for an hour; and sometimes I’d count twelve cars before their car came out from Detroit and turn down to come to dinner.  We knew everyone in town, and everyone knew about everyone else.  And if anyone needed something, someone else was there to help.  All the children played together.  I remember when we got our first blacktop.  It was so exciting to go roller skating on it.

The Northville Fair was the big time of our life.  The Wayne County Fair in Northville, Michigan.  And I think it cost a quarter to get in, but we used to walk across the tiles and come in through the field, and it didn’t cost anything.  Then you had a quarter to spend on other things.  If you had a dollar, you could go in the afternoon and stay right through till it closed at nine o’clock at night and have enough money to have a real good time.  But the things were interesting then, the farmers brought their things in to display.  It was like our Michigan Fair today, and the animals were always there.  We would have the high school classes doing their typing blindfolded.  We were so impressed with it, and Home Ec classes would bring in the dresses that they made and put them on display.  A lot of small things like that that really intrigued us.  And of course there was the horse races, you know, that Rattenbury Family, one of the ones – I think there is still a Rattenbury racing someplace today because that was our early families in the racing part, and I went to school with Terry Rattenbury.  So I knew all about what was going on.

It was lazy days in Northville.  A big exciting thing was to take a walk.  And on Saturday nights the thing was in the summertime.  Always a band concert up town.  Now I do remember the crow’s nest in the middle of Center Street and Main.  It gives away a lot of information about yourself when you admit to that.  But we used to get our stockings there at Christmas time, and it was very exciting to wait for Santa Claus to hand those out.  But the summertime’s – the band concert were really great, and I always remember that Mr. Altman was very important in starting that.  That first band that we had; and you get a nickel box of popcorn and sit in your cars if you came in from the country like the Zayti’s did.  But we, of course, would just walk up and sit on the street curb and listen to them play on Saturday night, and it was nice.  You knew everyone and said hello to everyone, and the stores would be open to go in and do a little shopping.  We only ate ice cream in the summertime.  I can remember saying to my mother, “Do you think its warm enough to have an ice cream cone?”  And we’d get the nickel and go up to the – was that Horton’s Drug Store on the corner there k- I think Horton was the first one I remember.  Later on that was Gunsell’s, you know, and on and on it goes.  And for a nickel you could get an ice cream cone with vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry – that was it.  But it was nice knowing everyone, and you would- there was no question what you would do for a neighbor.  I remember when we lived on Center Street, the little girl who lived on – we always called it the North side of town, Cabbage Town – was walking home from the fair in pouring – down rain, so my mother brought her in, put dry clothes on her, called her mother up, and the brother came and picked her up.  But, you know, today you’d say, what were you doing in someone’s house?  What are these strange clothes?”  But that was Northville in our days, and it was a nice quiet little town; and we did a lot of things that were fun things.  Everyone went to the basketball games.  The football games were played down at the fairgrounds out in the middle of the race track field – I forgot what that’s called – but the high school would go down there, of course afternoon games – there were no lights on the field, but it seems like everything.  Everyone went to everything that went on when it was going on in town.  It was fun growing up in a small town.  I liked it, now my grandchildren live in Vermont, and they get a little flavor of this small town living, and I’m happy for them.  I think they’ll have nice memories.

Int - Now, what school building did you go to?

Marian - Well the one located that was located in the back of our high school building now.  On the corner of Cady Street; and that later burned down.  We had a couple of fires in town, but that was the one that I started Kindergarten, and when we were in fourth grade, we were too crowded, so our Superintendent lived in a building – a house on Main Street that now where our present Main Street school is – so the fourth grade was in a  room upstairs.  And we had to be very quiet because the principal’s office or the superintendent’s office was downstairs so you couldn’t make any noise.  But then in sixth grade, the grade school was getting small, so we had a room in the old high school that later on was Les Lee’s music room.  That was our sixth grade room.

Int - That’s the one with the arched windows?

Marian -No, that was down on the first floor over at the side now.  The arched window was the study hall, of course, and the desks were in there.  We went -

Int: In the high school?

Marian: Yes, in the high school.  And you went to a school play, and you sat in the desks in the study hall and watched the play up on the stage.  So, it was pretty exciting.

Int: I think you told me that Benny went to Wash Oak School – did you go too?

Benny – I went to Base Line which is the Allen Academy now.

Int: Oh, that’s Allen Academy – Oh.

Yes, that was the Base Line School that Benny and his family attended.  We have pictures when half of the class was made up of Zayti’s that particular year.  Five of them.  I didn’t attend a rural school, but my sisters did.  I never met Benny until I lived in Detroit.  But he’s four years older that I am.   

Int - Oh, one of the big kids.

Marian - He knew my older sisters.  He was out of high school before I got there, so that’s why I didn’t know him in those days.  But I was real glad I met him, you know.

Int - But then you moved from Northville away then for a while?

Marian -Well, I – my parents were divorced when I was in the eighth grade, and so we moved to Plymouth.  So I stayed with a sister and went to high school in Plymouth, so that’s why I don’t tell many people in Northville cause you know how I love Northville Schools; but nevertheless, I did have eight years of school in Northville before I went to Plymouth, graduated from there.  Nancy Soper knew that and threatened to tell everybody that I was a Plymouth graduate.

Int - There was a lot of rivalry.

Marian -Yes, really, really – football games used to kill me.  You know I’d go to them between Northville and Plymouth and say “Oh, how can I be for Plymouth when I love Northville so much?”  But I lived through it.  And then it was after my nephew started to play in Northville, then I could be true to Northville forever and ever and ever.  So that was easy.

Int - So then when did you come back to Northville, when you two were married?

Marian -Yes, Benny left when he went in service was living in Detroit then going to night school at Wayne State, working at Ford Hospital, and living with Margaret Cady, Margaret VanHellemont  Cady, and she was the one…And she introduced Benny and I on a blind date that neither one of us wanted to go on.  So that’s how we met, and I lived in Northville part time, still working in Detroit.  Took the bus out, left home at eight in the morning, got home at eight at night because I was homesick for Northville, so I stayed with my mother and worked for a while, but winter came so we moved back to Detroit.  But that was a short time.  So other than living in South Carolina in World War II, and then a winter in California and a winter in Florida, we’ve been Northville, all the time.  I can remember a church lady looking one time when she found out that both my husband and I were born in Northville, and we were still living here; and they had lived in New York, and Texas, and California, and Florida.  She looked, and I could see that poor child has never been out of this town.  But it’s a great place to come home to.  Even now, when I only know probably one percent of the people who live here, not like thirty years ago when I knew the name of every family in town.

Mary Alexander, you know Lou Angove’s mother, was so great.  She knew everyone by their home address.  Give her an address she could tell you who lived there because she was our city clerk, and she did all the water bills, you know, and the taxes.  So just throw out an address to her, and she could tell you who lived there.

Int - Well, you’re the same with school people.  Everybody figured that you knew everybody.

Marian -The time, Marnie that I found out that I’d been in school too long – we had a new enrollment in the Amerman School.  So I take a look at the name and say, “This is not a new enrollment – this boy has been in our school before.”  So I turn around, look through my cards, pull out the boy’s name – only it happened to be his father.  So I did remember the name, but it was not at the time period that I thought it was.  And when the third generation came, I thought I didn’t mind having the children of the ones I enrolled in Kindergarten come, but when the children’s children were old enough for Kindergarten, I thought it was time to go.

Int - Well, you moved around a certain amount in school because I encountered you happily in a number of places and positions.

Marian -Yes, as Marge Dodd’s brother, Ed, said, who was in my high school class in Plymouth, said, “What’s the matter, Marion?  Can’t you hold onto a Joe?”  But when I started out, we only had two buildings in Northville – the Main Street elementary and the high school.  And my dear friend, Ruth Parmenter, was secretary to Mr. Amerman in his office in the Main Street School, and there was one secretary in the high school, and that was it.  And Elroy Ellison was elementary principal plus teaching a couple of high school classes.  So it was decided that he needed a part-time secretary.  So I started the job as a half a day, working for Mr. Ellison in the Elementary office, which I loved, absolutely loved coming to work for Northville Schools.  And of course it was learning all the names of the teachers.  Back then, Marnie, we had more unmarried teachers than we had married teachers because at one time, you could not be married and teach school, so that’s familiar to you.  So I had the problem – it was easy enough to know that we had a Keith, and a Fritz, and a Canazavitz (?), and so on, but it was difficult for me to remember the Miss or Mrs., so what I learned to do was call everyone Miss because I discovered that the married ladies really didn’t mind and just corrected me if I said Miss.  But sometimes with the Miss and the others, “I am not married.”  So I had to be very careful.  But I loved working with the children.  I loved doing the old dittos on the gelatin sheets that we would use copy after copy after copy.  Then have to wait to sink to the bottom.  And then we really go so large that I was working full time.  And then Ruthie Parmenter’s husband decided to go back to school, went up to State; and Mr. Amerman asked me to be his secretary.  And I was very frank with him and said, “Mr. Amerman, I’m not smart enough to be your secretary.”  And he said, “Well I think that’s for me to decide.”  And so I said, “Well, I’ll tell you, I’m willing to try it if you will be very honest with me and if it doesn’t work out, you know.”  So we started out, and I loved it because I absolutely loved the bookkeeping.  I absolutely loved keeping the books for the school.  So that’s how I started out.

Int - About what date was that that you were Mr. Amerman’s secretary?

Marian - Oh, let’s see that had to be, let’s see, Judy was born in – Judy was born in ’45, so it must have been ’44.  So it must have been about ’48, ’49, ’50, along in there.  Yes, because then when I was pregnant with Joyce, I stopped working and thought I’d never be back to the school again and whipped through my money from the retirement.  But I paid it back, I paid it back later.  So that was my second job, secretary to the superintendent.  And then I had two babies – I had Joyce, and then Janice, and then Amerman School was about to open, our second elementary, big thrilling time, and the fact that it was named the Russell H. Amerman School was very exciting for me.  And Dick Kaye and Harry Smith were going to be the two elementary principals.  Harry had been a high school teacher; Dick had been an elementary teacher.  And so I got a call from some, I think it was Alice, Dick’s wife, who called me first and said, “Dick’s going to need a secretary, will you come back?”  So anyhow, I went back and started to work at the Amerman School.  (When it opened?)  When it opened.  It was really exciting to be there.  I think I still have the dedication program, when it was dedicated.  It was just so, it was just so clean and so nice, and it was kept that way.  Then pretty soon we needed the addition.  Then we had a new form of bookkeeping for the classes and the groups at the high school, so Mr. Amerman asked me if I’d like to have the high school and take care of that.  It was something new, and it was bookkeeping, and I said, “Yes, I’d like to do that.”  So, I went back to the high school then.  (That was the high school still on Main Street?)  Yes, that was the high school still on Main Street.  And then, besides that I always did pupil accounting.  That seemed to follow me what ever else – when I was Mr. Amerman’s secretary I did pupil accounting; and when I was in elementary, it was for me down there, but I enjoyed doing it, and so that was another part of the job, and then we would – from then on to the high school, and then we were opening the Junior High, you know so that was and Mr. Amerman asked me if – he thought I’d like to take that over, do activity fund accounting and the child accounting; and I said, “Oh, yeah, I thought I’d like to.”  He said, “It’s only a half-time job.”  So I did that for a while, and your son was in Junior High at that time – I loved those kids.  Your oldest son…Chad (Hines) was in Junior High when I worked (Van Ingen) and Terry in that building.  And a lot of our fine young teachers started when I was there – David Longridge came as our Phys. Ed. teacher and how delightful it was.  Ralph Redmond came to teach, to teach art at the time; and his sweet wife was our music teacher that year.  So it was lot of good memories these young kids coming in and watching them grow and be great teachers and then administrators.  Horvath came to coach football in one of those years when I was in the Junior High, it was, you know, good times.  And then they had some changes at the high school, so I could never say no to Mr. Amerman’s job – so he said, “We need you to go up to the high school, and would you go.  We need someone to run the bookstore because the teachers aren’t doing it anymore.”  So, “Well, that sounds interesting I’ll go up there.”  So I was back in the high school for a while.

Then when Earl Busard came, he said, “I think we need you in central office, you’re just wasting your time up there,” which I didn’t believe.  I think he thought I was a bad influence on the kids and wanted to get me out of there.  So I came back to Central Office, and that’s where I ended up my years pretty much doing the same thing pupil accounting and taking care of some of the financing, which I enjoyed, I really enjoyed that part of it.

Int - You were always the expert that took people to the safe where the records were.

Marian - Oh yes, down in the I tried to teach that way to open that safe to everyone I knew and gave them the combination, and no one ever wanted to go down there.  But we had beautiful records, and one time we had a request when Larry Nichols was here from Wayne State wanted to send a couple of grad students out who were looking into old historical records.  So he asked me would I mind seeing to them.  “Oh, be delighted.”  And they were so excited on some of the beautiful, old records that we kept in that old vault; and they said, “Please see to it that nothing ever happens to these.  Don’t let anyone throw them into the rubbish like they do in some places.”  So when I left, I just said to Marge Stobbs, “Now, you’re in charge – you see to it that nothing happens to those old records.”  Big thrill for me would be – it doesn’t happen anymore, but in the old days – would be when someone was trying to get their Social Security – no birth certificate.  They needed three proofs of birth, and the school was one contact.  So I’d go through there and look up old records.  And I know several times I’d found them in attendance records where a teacher, back in ’17, ’18, and ’19, but those records were so good that I was able to get that information from there, and they could use it to help them establish their birth date so they could, would, be eligible for Social Security.  So it was – I didn’t mind looking through those old records and besides mine was down there, and Benny’s record was down there, so could look up and see what grades we got.   

Int - Were you surprised?

Marian - No…I’ve always just loved school, and I can remember in elementary school in Northville I always thought that on Friday nights I should kiss the teacher goodbye because I couldn’t see her until Monday.   

Int - And how about in August – really looking forward to school?

Marian - Oh yes, couldn’t wait for school to begin.  I used to go to school when I was sick because I didn’t want to miss a day and miss out on something.

And working for the school – the opening day was always so exciting.  You know what that’s like, Marnie, see the new kids, to see them come in, to see the teachers come back and greet them.  It was just exciting times to open the school year.

Int - I was interested in how accurate you were on children count for so many years.

Marian -  Oh yes.   

Int - Then I guess the procedure changed a little and they were not as tight as they were.

Marian - Yes, but it used to be very important to us – you know, in the beginning we used to get primary money, you know, from the State besides State Aid.  Now, that came from children from birth – for want of something – but it had to do with our school census.  So those records had to be very accurate and that we sent in.  But then, I can’t remember exactly when, but when they did away with the primary money, then it basic State Aid only and that was on attendance in school, when you enrolled in school.  But the other money, some of it was paid simply for children in the community.  So it was important that we kept good records on census, and again, record keeping was my daily best thing – I loved it – it’s just…you know, a balance sheet can be such an exciting thing ‘cause it’s right or it’s wrong.  There is no in-between.  So that’s how I always felt about keeping records on children.  We’ve had different ones come in and want to know – some from government offices who would want to know when a child enrolled in our school and when that child left.  We had those records and could tell them that information.  And I always thought it was very important to know that.

And it was an exciting thing for me was always making up the new Kindergarten cards for all the Kindergarten kids coming in to school and seeing them – it was good days.  And this was, you know before we had buses, you know, it was….we had walkers to school or…now Benny living in the country.  The District would pay tuition, but the families were responsible for transportation.   

Int - Oh, the Districts paid the tuition for the kids in the rural schools….

Marian - But no transportation, so they had to work that out….

Benny – I walked two miles from here to our place many times.  It was more than two miles – wouldn’t that be?  Yeah, I think closer to three, at least to get home from high school and out Eight Mile.   

Int - Was the road paved then?

Benny – They didn’t pave Eight Mile until 1937.

Int -  Oh, so you were out of school in ’35.   

Benny - And few cars would go by you know.  People were milling to give you a ride, but the car had to come by first to stop and pick you up.  So, if you stayed after school for an activity because mom made one trip in the morning, one trip in the afternoon – those who had activities walked home after that.  That was difficult, but of course in town – walking was a great thing.  I remember when we lived on Carpenter, north of Eight Mile.  I used to walk home for lunch and back.  I mean that was just, just a nice little jaunt home and back again.   

Int - You walked home and back again?

Benny -  But I think walking is going out of style….we like to ride and now we have gym classes to get our exercise and fun.  It’s alright, whatever comes along you know…….

Benny – You know I was just thinking when I was about five or six years old, Northville used to park – they used to on – with angle parking -
Int - Oh, yes.
Benny – And it was always an old car like Model T’s, but then there were always about five, or six, or seven horse and buggies parked here.   
Int - What did they tie them to?
Benny –Oh, they had little posts and you’d wrap your reins around them.

Marian – A few old pictures have that on – once in a while you can see it.

Benny – And our mail used to be delivered with a horse and buggy.  Mr. Cook (?), old Mr. Cook used to leave the Northville Post Office, bring it out to Eight Mile Road.

Marian – Oh, they didn’t deliver it out on Garfield so they had to go to Eight Mile to pick it up.

Benny – And my mother ……..wanted it brought in……..Garfield

Marian – The mail delivered down the road – it was difficult living out in the country in those days.  In fact, I think mother was one who went to Edison time and time again and finally got electricity down Garfield Road.  So, you know, this is rural living out there until the electricity came, then it meant a lot of things – the water pump, you know, no more pumping water by hand; and the kerosene lamps were out. 
Int - The wash machine?

Marian – Yes, oh yes, the exciting things……

Benny – My mother used to wash on a board…….

Int - So, those were the days - OK, Benny, tell us about downtown.

Benny –Well, this was next to where the parking lot is today, where they have handicapped parking and the bandstand.  It was houses in there.  It was next to the Drug Store, and it was a little house, but it had a nice little porch.   
Marian – I think it was called Merritt House.
Benny – Merritt House…and there was an old man with a white long beard and a cane and he’d sit out there.  He had his uniform on, his hat – Civil War hat – and every time we’d go by he’d wanna stop and talk to us – to a did you know, it was quite interesting.  I can remember – some things come back in spurts.

Int - Oh, we’ve got a mystery – the Young Men’s Hall.  Do you have any idea what the Young Men’s Hall was?  Somebody said they thought it was that Hair Salon, near there, you know….

Marian – I can tell you who can tell you that, about it would be Don Ware.  Now you see is there’s anything I can’t figure out about Northville.  I have to go see Don Ware, and together we talk and talk till we get this thing settled; and he is another good resource that helps on this really old stuff.  And we heard about the Young Girls’ Club…now where did I read about that recently – in the – it must have been a historical meeting that we talked about it.  Maybe, Fran Gazlay told me about it, talking to us.  But that was another thing that the high school young ladies went to.

Benny – I’m sure you heard about Eddie Stinson building airplanes in Northville.   
Int - Yes, but let’s go over that because I don’t know where exactly his field was or his plant.  The two were not the same….

Benny – There was a big old foundry building – but it was converted into foundry and battery.  Before that I can’t really remember.  But it was about where that photo show is where you go around the bend.

Marian – You know those new stores……South Main…

Benny – It’s quite a big building.  I can remember walking by there as kids and looking in the window of the little factory windows and watching these guys build these plywood airplanes.  And they would ship their engines in crates somewhere……….

Marian – Great big – in every household in Northville about had one of those big wooden crates for a playhouse in our backyard.  We had one – they made wonderful playhouses – the dads would cut out windows and a door in it.  And that, it was a playhouse.  Every yard had one – they were great.

Benny – And the field was at Six Mile and Beck, where the recreation is trying to buy the property now from the Lapham family.  And that’s where they had the airfield.  And when I was about ten or eleven years old, we used to ride our bicycles, four or five of us kids, down there on a Sunday morning.  And one Sunday morning old Eddie would come out there, and I think he did a lot of drinking, but he’d a lot of times he’d ask us, you know, “Who wants to go for a ride?”  Well I went for a ride with him – first airplane ride I had was with Eddie Stinson.  And we flew out, you know, just tree top high in those days.  He said, “Where do you live?” And I pointed in the direction.  It’s just like, practically living up on the top floor – you’re not much higher than that.  So he flew out there, and my dad was out feeding the cattle, and he buzzed my dad a couple of times.  Then we flew back to the airport.  And when we got home, I was so proud that I went for an airplane ride, I told my dad, and dad gave me a whipping – he says, “If I ever catch you in an airplane again, I’ll kill yah.”

Marian – He wasn’t too happy about.......Benny was so thrilled he could hardly stand it.

Int - An open cockpit?

Benny – Oh sure, the airplane was canvas and plywood.

Int - Now you said, they shipped in engines to him?

Benny – Yeah, for the planes.

Int - Yeah, where did they come from?

Benny – I really don’t know.

Marian – I guess we were too young to be interested in that part of it.  But we knew they came in those big boxes, and if your father went down and asked, you could get one.

Benny – The engines weren’t really that big in those days – surprising how small they were.

Int - Was the furniture company still in business then, the Globe Furniture?

Marian – Yeah, Globe Furniture right down there too.  You know they put that big curve in there, you know, we used to walk across the creek on the old bridge to get across there.  The water flowed through.  I don’t know how they got rid of the water, it’s gone.  But there was the bridge to walk across when you went south Main Street, which we always called Plymouth Avenue which … 
Int - Oh did you, Plymouth Avenue?
Marian – Yes, that was Plymouth Avenue.

Benny – They tore down a lot of those, there was a lot more buildings back in there.  That was what they called, actually in those days, the industrial area of Northville because even Ford Motor Company wasn’t there I don’t think.

Marian – Well, not originally no because that was where the mill was.

Benny – The sawmill.

Marian – But Ambler’s Furnace Factory was down there too.   
Int - Where the valve plant is now?
Marian –Down where Belanger’s is now.  That was Ambler, and all the furnace stores had their name on.  Kirk Ambler’s grandfather, great grandfather.

Benny – If you drove down, If you went back Cady Street by Belanger’s today and went by that Long Building on the left as you come around the corner there, well, that was a foundry.  And I can remember back when my grandmother lived on Cady Street, we used to stay with her.  We’d walk down there and see these guys pouring, making sand molds, and pouring the lead or the iron into it to get in the sand mold.

Marian – I think that’s where they did the furnaces in there.

Int - Was it the furnaces, we also have bells here too?

Marian – Oh, yes, the Bell Foundry.

Benny – I don’t remember the Bell too much or what they …

Marian – I can remember Ambler Furnace down there.

Benny – That was the only industrial area north of Ambler’s, right in that little area.  They did a lot of different things through the years.

Marian – We were a farming town, and if you talked to people in Detroit, they knew Northville for three things; Maybury Sanitarium, the Wayne County Fair, and Silver Springs Water. Northville was famous for these.   

Int - And that’s the spring in the same place it is here?
Marian –Yes, but it just came out of the bank.  It was a pipe coming out of the bank.  We used to cross over the railroad track and pick pussy willows there in the spring time, it had beautiful pussy willows.

Benny – And Silver Springs was a company in Detroit that used to come out and take water in by the big jugs, and they’d purify it or something.  Then they’d sell it. 
Marian – They bottled it.    
Int - Oh, so they were bottling it in Detroit?

Marian – Yeah, then they finally moved the Silver Springs Bottling Company out here, they made the pop, you know, right behind the railroad track.  The Interurban was a child’s big thrill.  I can remember my first ride to Plymouth, you know, on the Interurban.  It took forever to get there, but it was... 

Int - How would you go?
Marian – It was…it came up Main Street, the same as the one that went Eight Mile.  And then you went down, along side of, the East side of the boulevard, you know.  That was only a single road there in my day, when we were kids.  It would be on the west side of South Main.  Then the other side even had houses across there.  The Interurban went down in front of some of the houses, and that went all the way to Plymouth along there.   
Int - Oh, it went on Main Street or cut through?
Marian – Right on Main Street, which we called Plymouth Avenue back then.  Then it went Northville Road, you know.

Benny – But then it turned up Griswold.

Marian – But that was the other one, dear.  There were two.  This one went to Plymouth.  Now the Interurban that went to Detroit went up Griswold to Eight Mile.

Benny – Right.  I can remember my uncle used to live on Eight Mile Road where they’re building those condos now.  And that house has been moved back.  Who lived in that just recently?

Marian – Oh…the Madigans lived there.

Benny – Madigans – the house was right next to the road in those days, and that Interurban… we used to stay with my uncle… that Interurban would by about two foot beside, next to the house.  The house would shake. 

Int - So it would go Eight Mile then?

Marian – Yeah, Eight Mile and then it would come in where the Wine Factory was at - 

Benny – Grand River and Orchard Lake.

Marian -  Orchard Lake Road, it would get on to Grand River after Eight Mile.  Take Grand River, and then that connection would come down from Pontiac there.  A little waiting room there by the big chimney and then you’d go on to Detroit.  Now Lila (?) used to ride that into college when she went to college in Detroit.  She became a school teacher.  So she rode the Interurban into Detroit to go to Teachers’ College.

Benny – I used to ride that, living out in the country out here, we’d work in the summer time you know, boys who are fourteen or fifteen years old.  We’d work picking cherries, or apples or whatever we done, and we’d save up a few dollars and then we’d go – I would get on the – I would walk into Northville or I would get a ride in.  Then I would get on the little jitney (bus).  It was a jitney they called it, the big old car and four seats in it or something. 

Marian – Oh, about six or eight.

Benny –And I would, for a dime I would ride to West Point, which would be – no, Seven Point, Five Points, which is Grand River and Seven Mile Road.  Then I’d get on a streetcar, and I think that was only a dime.

Marian – Six cents -

Benny – Something like that to go downtown.   

Marian – And you could get a transfer?

Benny – I’d go downtown to Hudson’s or Crowley’s and buy my shoes or my trousers, whatever I needed for school.  Then I’d probably get lost.  When I walked around there, I’d get lost to find the right streetcar, but I finally got home.  It took me all day.

Marian – That was another exciting thing to do was, when we got older, was to take that…

Benny – That was simple to do that in those days, a kid that old, fifteen or sixteen years old, you couldn’t do it today.

Marian – In those old streetcars.  I loved riding on them.  I just can’t believe why they ever did away with streetcars.  There was so much room; there was always a place to sit down.  If you had to stand up, you’d hold on to a strap.

Benny – You see where they still got them in Louisiana where the convention was.

Marian – Yes, they had probably like the ones in ‘Frisco though, they’re just show-off cars.

Benny – I used to swim across the road, where all those condos are.  That was a big gravel pit, and that’s where we learned to swim between seven and eight years old.

Marian – And only the boys went there because … 

Benny – Oh, the girls …

Marian – We were told they didn’t wear suits.

Benny – We didn’t, and they used to have these piles of gravel or sand piled up real high, and the water was down, and we’d always know the girls were up there on that peak looking down at us.

Marian – Those were the older girls.  I never knew about that.  I did know where the swimming – we used to swim at the Northville Fish Hatchery, you know, out on – every summer they would leave one pond without fish in it that the children of Northville could go swimming.  It was real … having a place to go swimming.  That was our lake, besides swimming in the creek.  And where the Richey’s (?) live on Fairbrook in that block just off of Center Street is the house that we lived in at one time.  And I tell this to people who are probably just ten years younger than I am and they can’t believe this.  But on Sundays you dressed up for church, and we wore our white dresses and our long white cotton stockings, and you stayed dressed up all day long.  You were not allowed to play ball.  You were not allowed to do a lot of things.  You could take walks.  You could read books.  So when we lived there, we were only a good block from the creek where we used to go swimming because the boy’s put in a dam so it was deep enough.  So it was a very, very hot Sunday afternoon and we didn’t have company that day, so my two older sisters and I were dressed in our white dresses and white stockings, and we said, “It’s so hot, why can’t we go swimming?”  So we went upstairs and we undressed and put our wool bathing suits on under our dresses, got all dressed back up again and said, “Oh Ma, we thought we’d go for a walk.”  And she said, “Alright.”  So we walked all the way up Center Street to Cady, Cady Street to Wing Street, right back down to where we practically lived, and zipped down the hill to the creek, took of the clothes, went swimming, had a great time, dried real fast in our wool suits, got dressed back up, walked back home again, and sat down, and my mother said to my sister Florine, “What’s that on your stocking?”  She said, “I don’t know.”  She said, “Well, it looks like blood.  Come here, you must have hurt yourself.”  So she took her long white stocking down, and there was a blood sucker on her leg.  So we got caught.  And people won’t believe this … that was a day to be nice and sit and talk and read and walk.

Int - And were church services certain hours only on Sunday in those days?

Marian – Well in Northville we had, even back then, I think we had two masses, and we always went to 8:00 – the early one, and I think the other one was at … 

Int - Where was the church?

Marian - The location where the Catholic Church is today up on Thayer Boulevard, which was never a boulevard, and Orchard Drive.  But it was a white wooden church that we dearly loved, and when the people started moving out to Northville and the church was getting crowded, they called it the saltbox – that we had to get rid of.  But we loved that church.  It was getting too small, of course.  And every pew was assigned to a family – a pew book, and your name was on that pew and you sat in that same pew every time you went to church, but sometimes there were two names because there were the 8:00 people and then the 10:00 people.

Benny – One thing I miss back in those days.  Every Sunday morning you could hear about six or seven church bells.   

Marian – Oh, the church bells were so beautiful.

Benny -  It seemed like they were – one would ring and it would be all through ringing, and another one would start, and sometime three of them would be ringing at one time.  You don’t hear that no more.

Marian – No, not the church bells.  When Benny’s cousin – when he was working – a lot of people would come in from England and sometimes he’d say, “Well, these two gentlemen have been living at the Holiday Inn, you know – could I bring them for dinner?”  I’d say, “Sure, bring them out with you, glad to have them.”  And one of them said, “don’t you miss the church bells on Sunday?”  He said, “That’s what I miss hearing them – it’s all Sunday morning long.   

Benny – They still do it in Europe…

Marian - You would hear church bells ringing.”  And I said, “Well, I think the Baptists ring their bell and the Presbyterians, but you have to be in the vicinity to hear it ring.  You know.”   

Benny – You could hear the train whistle today blowing from here…but it’s not the same as the old steam engine.  When this town was small, most trains would go by here, a lot more trains used to go through here -

Marian – Oh yes.   

Benny - It seemed like all night long all day long, all you could hear was that train whistle.

Int - And the depot was up above where the well is?

Marian – Right, right.

Benny – I left from there at one time 

Marian – When you went in service - 

Benny - No, I didn’t go there from the service, but I was home on furlough or something.   

Marian – Oh, I know when we came, we always came into Detroit at either Michigan Central or the other one – I forget the name -

Benny – Union, Union Station.   

(End of side 1)

Marian – Oh, what’s her name bought Boring’s house.  She does beautiful bus tours.  But in an emergency, I will take a bus tour for – when the senior citizens come in to spend a day, afternoon in Northville, have lunch at Genitti’s, and go home again.  So the first things I always ask them if they’ve ever been to Northville before.  And if no one ever has I say, “That’s wonderful, so then you won’t know if I’m telling you the truth or not.’  And so we start out and Bruce lays out the schedule, we go down by the race track and we tell them that was the Wayne County Fairgrounds and we take a swing around by Silver Springs, and we talk about that, and that Northville was mentioned in the comics, you know, because of the Silver Springs, and so that was the comics in the Detroit papers – the Nefs, I think was the name of it.   So that’s always an exciting thing.  Then we go up by Griswold past the Historical Village and stop for just a minute, mention that and up around the hairpin turn so we go down by the Cider Mill.  That’s always another exciting thing to do, is to see the Cider Mill.  But it doesn’t look like the beautiful old building that we used to have there.  Now it’s too modern for me.  And then out to Maybury Sanitarium to see what used to be the Sanitarium, which is now the park, you know.  The Maybury Sanitarium was such a busy place, and some people today hardly know what tuberculosis is.  But I had a brother and a sister and a father die of tuberculosis so that was a really big thing in our life, Maybury Sanitarium.   

Benny – That was a city in itself.

Marian -  Yes, it truly was.   

Benny – It must have had forty or fifty big cement buildings.

Marian - Beautiful brick.  And they did farming there. You know, and an uncle of mine from Salem was the baker.  He lived out there.  His son would take him in on Sunday night so he could bake the bread for Monday.  He had Sunday off, and then he’d start in and bake all the breads and desserts that they had at Maybury.  It was a great place for high school kids to get a job in the summer time when vacations would come up.  I think your brother Mickey worked there a short time, didn’t he?   

Int - Would they be working on someone else’s holiday or …?

Marian - Yes, vacation time would come, and did you know Katherine Kline, McKenna Kline that taught in Northville? 

Int - No.

Marian - Probably not, I think she was probably before your time.  I have a great problem associating people and teachers at the same time, and her mother was the head dietician out there.  So there’s a lot of history of Northville mixed in with Maybury Sanitarium.  In fact, I was born in the Maybury Sanitarium house on Eight Mile Road because my father worked on the farm for Maybury at the time, and took care of the horses, and the plowing, and the working.  And that was before they – he went to Wayne County Training School.

My grandfather and four of his sons helped build the Wayne County Training School.  And two of my uncles and my father stayed on to work there.  My uncle George, that’s Clifford’s father, was the plumber.  My father and Uncle Chancey were firemen in the power house so…   

Int - The Shoebridge boys?

Marian - Yes, the Shoebridge boys.  It was a great part of our life.  You know when that was built, Mernie, it’s hard to believe that there were no blueprints.  Now, my Uncle George knew where every pipe went into every building, and after he retired, Bob Kuhlman took over the thing, and he would have to call Uncle George up to find out where these pipes were, and I think finally they had blueprints made so they could find all the sewers.  But that’s how building were put up back then.  That was a huge place scattered all over, but that…he helped put them in and he knew where those pipes went into the buildings.

Benny – When I attended old Baseline School back – I started school there – what I must have been five, seven years old, we had a well.  We had to pump our water.  We had an outside john.  And I don’t know what year it was after, it was probably three or four years later, Mr. Maybury had bought, they had city water into Maybury which was just …

Marian – Detroit brought it way out to here.

Benny -  Behind us, so they…piped water in a faucet for the school.  I can remember that, and he was out there, he was a white haired old man – kind of a crabby old man – dedicated it to the kids in school, you know.

Marian – And of course Mr. Whipple worked for him, you know, for years … Mr. Maybury, used to drive him around.  So those were big exciting times for Northville kids.  And Edna Huff was Benny’s teacher in the Baseline School when he was in eighth grade.

Int - I was going to ask you who your teacher was.

Benny – She was one of them. 

Marian – and Martha Eggy, you didn’t have Martha Eggy?

Benny -  I was already out of there.   

Marian – Martha taught up there, you know, and who out here at Napier and Eight Mile?

Benny - Ray Straub (?) 

Marian – Ray Straub, she taught there.

Int - And it wasn’t a one room school then, was it?

Benny/Marian – Yes, yes.   

Benny – It’s about the size of the one we got down at the Historical Society.

Marian -  Yes, it’s very similar when you go in.  So when it came time the Academy wanted to establish that as a historical building, someone told her to call me, so we got into this thing.  So I said, “Well, my husband knows a little bit because we attended school there, but I know people who will be able to help us.  So, of course, I called Mrs. Richmond (?) who taught there, and who was a Lyke in the Lyke Family, and her two brothers, and everyone got in on this, and they were able to piece enough information together that they were able to establish that as a historical building.  It was so interesting in helping them, and they we were all invited to their open house and their dedication.   

Benny – They used to farm that land behind the school, you know well the whole Maybury, the two miles, and they used to farm a lot of it.  And the two Lite brothers used to drive those old model – old Fordson tractors.  Plowing in the Spring when it just warmed up, and we were still in school, and I could – you could hear those things right behind us, back and forth, back and forth.  And those old things used to make a grinding noise, a howling noise, and how I wished I was old enough to get a job and drive that tractor.   

Int - Were they gasoline powered?

Benny -  Oh yeah, we still see some around.   

Marian – yes one of his favorite trips is to the museum at Greenfield Village, you know.  He spends… and now me, if you’ve seen one steam engine, you’ve seen the steam engine.  But he has to look at every one of them, and every old tractor that ever was in the farm – so it brings back a lot of memories.  So I go and look at the doll houses or something else at that time.  But he enjoys that, you know, and to understand how they worked.

Int - What’s the Ford connection here in Northville?  Like where have the plants been?

Benny – Well, the only plant we had is where the same location that this one is.  But when I started there in ’35, this was an old building – grey, two-story, used to be a sawmill run by Mr. Dubuar.   

Marian – Yes, that’s what it looked like.

Benny - And it was closer to the corner of Main and Griswold – closer to the corner.   

Marian – Yeah, the big factory.

Benny - And in 1937, I worked there a couple of years, it was a sweatshop, that’s what it was – then in ’37 they built the one they got there now.  But not as big as it is now.  They’ve added on to it since.  Old Mr. Ford used to come out there, maybe once or twice a year with a couple of his men.  And I was working on a machine – the first one as he walked into the new building, he and Jack (?), and what’s his name, your classmate?   

Marian – Not Marburger?

Benny - No, I can’t think of his name, but anyway, Mr. Ford would come, and I was the first machine, and he’d stop and he’d say – he’d stand there for a minutes – here I’m scared, I’m working, he’d say, “Well how you doing son?"  I say, “Fine.”  And he said, “You like your job?”  I said, “Oh yeah,” and I hated it like poison.   

Marian - $5.00 a day.

Benny - $5.00 a day.  He says, “Have you got a girlfriend?”  I say, “I got two of em.”  He laughed and says, “Keep up the good work.”  He’d go down a little ways, he stopped in just about every time he’d come by.

Marian – See Ray Marburger’s father-in-law was the plant manager – would he have been foreman – Mr. Marburger?   

Benny - Superintendent.

Marian -  Superintendent.  And it’s who you know, that’s how you got a job in Depression time.  And of course he knew the families, and Benny’s father worked there plus the farm in the Depression.  Then Benny got a job there when he got out of high school.  And didn’t Eddie Bender work there?   

Benny – Oh, yeah – Irv Marburger.

Marian - Irv Marburger worked there, that was the flush job of Northville.   

Benny – Well, it worked, if you graduated from high school, and if you went to college, you worked there the summer months.  And if you didn’t go to college, you worked there year around.  A lot of local boys worked there one way or the other.

Marian - It was about, you know by that time … 

Benny - $5.00 a day was a big thing.

Marian – And then of course, there was the Waterford Plant – not too far away, you know.  Just below where our Meads Mill School is.  On the old Six Mile that came down that sharp hill.  That was a tough one to go up.  It was so steep.   

Benny – One at Phoenix Lake – the County Building.

Marian - And then there was one at Phoenix Lake, see.   

Int - And these were all Ford Plants?

Marian - Ford Plants, and then one at Wilcox Lake in Plymouth.  That’s how close they were together.   

Benny – What’s the other one there by Farmington, by the park?

Marian -  Newburgh.   

Benny – No.

Marian -  Oh well, I don’t know – the Newburgh Plant, so I don’t know which one you’re thinking of.   

Benny – he had one in Milford.

Marian - OK – and this is how interesting this man was.  I think Henry Ford is a fascinating man, just fascinating.  He brought these factories out to the small towns to give the people the jobs.  Then I went to his Home Arts School at Henry Ford Hospital and with my friends in Plymouth.  Now when he started that school, he picked – there would be two girls from the Northville High school, two girls from Plymouth, two girls from Milford, another place he had plants, Dexter – any place he had plants.  And we went to a school at Henry Ford Hospital; we had one whole wing of the Nursing Home with two full time teachers who taught us how to be good homemakers.  And out job was to go back home and be good mothers and wives for these – in these small towns.  So we had Home Arts training, how to take care of babies and we had jobs in the hospital.  He gave us dancing lessons – Lovett, Mr. Lovett would come in for those dancing lessons, bring the boys from the Ford Trade School to dance with us.  Teach us square dancing, but early American dancing, not the way we like to do it later.  And take us to the ballet and Orchestra Hall to hear the symphony orchestra.  And you know, to make us well rounded individuals and to come back home then and be leaders in our communities.  Now, that was his idea.

Int - How long a class was this?

Marian – This was a semester.  There would be two.  My girlfriend in Plymouth was in the first class – Helen Hunt.  I went the second semester with someone else from Plymouth.  There were two.  Besides getting the chance to earn money, and then we did, we had Home Economics, sewing and cooking.  We cooked our own meals, planned the menus with the help of this teacher, and there would be different groups in the kitchen...had to cook the meals, do the shopping, and learn how to do all those things, and then earn a little money so we could have spending money.

Benny – It’s a funny thing when I married her, she couldn’t boil water.

Marian -  I knew how to make white sauce.  That was my best thing – making white sauce.   

Benny - She knew how to go to the ballet.

Marian - Yes, the buses would come and take us to these places.  It was really exciting.  But that man, so many people don’t know these things about old Henry.  They thought he was just interested in making money.  But he wanted to take care of the whole world, I think… it was fun.  I learned a lot about and how to raise the baby by the book because when I had Judy, Benny was overseas, and that’s exactly how I raised that baby was what the page said to do; and she was the easiest baby in the world to take care of.

Benny – I still remember going into that… on Center, Main, no Center Street near Dunlap, no it was Randolph, Dunlap where the old Opera House used to be. 

Marian – Yes, oh yes.

Benny - And they had all these – it was a big high building and they had all these scenery rolls so they could pull down – change the scenery.  I don’t know whatever happened to some of that stuff.

Marian – Well, they tore it down.  But you know, my friend Bob Secord, his family had the bakery right down below in that building.

Int - In the lower floor?

Marian - Yes, so after school we would go over and his father always let us fill our own jelly buns because we’d put more jelly in it than most – it would run down your chin.  Then somehow, there was a way of getting upstairs, and we used to go up to the old Opera House and swing on the rope that they had hanging across the stage.  I always hoped that his father and mother knew we were up there, but that’s how we used to play on the stage in the old Opera House.  It was so exciting, and the scenery was there rolled up – all that stuff.   

Int - Do you know who owned the Opera House at that time?

Marian - Oh, let’s see – now I know that Secords never owned it, but who owned it – was it Pickard that owned the Meat Market?   

Benny – Oh no, he was here later.

Marian - I can’t remember who owned that building.   

Int - Was he the last owner – Pickard?

Marian -  No, he had the Meat Market so that… But S. L. Brader, you know our Brader’s Department Store, first started in one of those little stores on that, on Center Street there.   

Int - We’re there several stores then?

Marian - Yes, little small stores in those buildings.  The Meat Market was on the corner, and the Bakery Shop was in there at one time.  The Bakery Shop may have become Brader’s, I don’t know because the Bakery moved around to Main Street when it was Wadsworth Bakery.  I think the Secords went to Plymouth, and then the Wadsworth Bakery, a Scottish bakery, came to town.  And she belonged to the Ladies Aide Society – I forgot the name of it but they had a picnic during the summer, and I used to – I think I was only ten or eleven years old, and I used to watch the bakery for her while she went to her luncheon and then, of course, I always got this great big bag of day-old stuff to take home.  That was my pay.  I loved to ring up the cash register, and it was OK if somebody only bought a half dozen or what, but if they bought two of these things, they had to help me figure out the price.  I couldn’t tell what to charge them if they only bought two fry cakes.

Int - There’s been some question – were the sidewalks higher then they are now, in those days?

Benny/Marian – Oh, yeah.

Marian – Especially on the north side of Main Street.  You always walked up a step to get to that side, and I’ve seen pictures that show that.   

Benny – I think it was about that high.

Marian -  Yeah, they were up off the ground, but because the cars used to drive on that angle parking.  You would drive in there and you’re kind of – your bumper would be against the cement.  I had my first ‘Sunday’ in Spagnuolo’s.  That used to be – used to have the fruit and the candy in some, few groceries, and the Sweet Shop was in the back, in the booth.  And I had a Tin Roof and it cost fifteen cents, and old Jim Spagnuolo made it for me.

Benny – My dad used to – we used to have an orchard – you pick the apples in the fall.  You know, and we’d take them down to the Cider Mill, fifteen, twenty, thirty bushels, I don’t know – but we’d dump them in the chute, they’d go in and they’d make the cider.  Then they would keep so much of it, and he would give us so many barrels - however much we had, and we’d take it home.   

Marian – Of cider.  Then he would raise wheat and take the wheat down to the mill right across.  Practically across, and they’d grind the flour for us.  They’d keep a percentage of it and get the rest in bags – fifteen, twenty-five, thirty pound bags.   

Marian – Cloth bags.

Benny -  No, they were … bags, and that would be enough for six months or eight months or a year, I guess, for my mother to bake.  Because my mother baked all the bread, she never bought bread.  She always baked.

Marian – They’d take their sandwiches to the Baseline School, you know, one with the homemade bread and trade it for Tasty (bread) and a pieces of bologna.   

Benny – We never had it.

Marian -  Mother would always send the roast meat and the chicken you know, or whatever was homemade and they’d trade it for Tasty.  

Benny – Homemade butter on it. Great days, great days.  Well, Mern, you gotta be tired of …oh, the Hotel fire – I’m trying to remember what year was that.  I must have been about six or seven years old – it’d be ’27 or ’28, right in there, and it was during the night, you know.  We lived on Wing Street in this house next to where the church used to be, our old Library and Board of Education office.  We lived next door.  We could see the flames shoot up, and my older sisters got to go down and watch the fire.   

Int – That was the one at the southwest corner of Main and Center?

Marian - Yes, yes.  That was a hotel, the Ambler Hotel.  It was an exciting place to go in – was their name Walker, Raymond, the Manager?  Anyhow, he had this daughter that was a friend of mine, so I always got to go and play in the hotel.  It was so exciting to go in there.  In the lobby they had candy bars behind the glass places in there, and it was a very popular place for the salesmen to come.   

Benny – It had this long veranda along Main Street.

Marian - No veranda.   

Benny – It was a porch.

Marian - No. The porch ran in the back down Center Street.  No, the building was almost flush to the sidewalk, right up there next to the sidewalk with the entrance almost diagonal at Center and Main Street.   

Benny – And you’re thinking why they couldn’t save that building because the fire hall was well where in between where the M Building is and where the old restaurant, the (?) restaurant used to be – right in there was a little wooden building.  And they had a little old fire engine in there – It was only a door away, but they couldn’t save it because…

Marian - Well, it was a total wooden building… 

Int – But it did run from Main Street all the way to Cady?

Marian - No, it ran just up to where it meets the – we always called it the Greek Restaurant there.  And then the back of it – it went in a little bit – and then the back ran where there were rooms down, about halfway down the street – about halfway, but not way out to Center Street.  But the back veranda went there, and the kitchen was back there… 

Int – Oh, it had a restaurant?

Marian - Yes, they served meals in the dining room, but we never got to eat in the dining room.  There was a little family dining room that I ate in with my girlfriend, but just to be served a meal was exciting.  No one ever went to a restaurant back in those days.  And now I think ninety percent of the people in Northville eat out at least six days a week from the amount of people in the restaurants.  In those days the two men, and they were always called the Greeks – the restaurant; and two brothers, George and I forget the other one’s name, ran it.  My father used to go in there to have coffee and I remember the thrill after going to the Fair with him one afternoon, we went in and I had a piece of cherry pie and a glass of milk in the Greek’s Restaurant sitting on a stool.  It was the love of my life to be in there.  But again they were people, strangers to town, but Northville accepted them and were very close to them.  They ran that restaurant for a long time.

Benny – The Crow’s Nest used to be the most – the center of town where everything was taking place.  Any of your activity was around the Crow’s Nest. 

Marian – The street car came right up to it, you know. 

Int – The band concerts were there?  The interurban, I’ve heard had a little trouble with the track close to the Crow’s Nest.  That they sometimes would be coated with soap or something slippery.

Marian – Yes, I was too young to remember about that, that was those mischievous boys, you know, that would do that.  I think that’s how the Crow’s Nest got wrecked was that the streetcar … 

Int – When did it go?

Benny – I don’t think it was wrecked.  I mean they tore it down.   

Marian – Oh, did they?  But I thought the street car …

Benny – I would say in ’28, ’29, or ’30 maybe – somewhere in there.   

Marian – Yes, it would have been close to ’29 or ’30, I think it was in the late ‘20’s.

Benny - …across where the Ford Field is – they used to dump, that used to be a city dump.  Don Ware will tell you that.  I can barely remember that … 

Marian – Well I know at the end of the wheelbarrow avenue, and that’s what Hutton was called, you know, where the Wares live.  From the drive-in bank on the corner on down to – that’s not Lake Street – Rayson – that was wheelbarrow avenue, and it was called that because everyone in town put their trash in the wheelbarrow and wheeled it down – there was nothing down there, you know…

Benny – If they would go in there today and dig into that bank, they would be surprised what they’d find there.

Int – The Ford Field Bank, and now you’re saying then too that the Blacksmith Shop was at the corner … Benny – The corner of Main Street and Hutton.  Right where they’re putting that new building in, and the last person that was in there was Mr. Wick (?).  He ran a gas station out of part of it, and I can remember going there with my parents to gas up and the old cars.  My dad and mother, we used to pull in there and gas up.  They know Mr. Wick because he used to be a mailman before then.

Marian – Was it still part of the stone building?

Benny – Oh yeah.  In the north end of it is where the – they still had the blacksmith shop and there was a few horses and buggies there yet when he first started selling gas out of there.

Marian – Benny, you have to remember is four years older than I am so … 

Benny – I don’t have as good a memory.

Marian –  But I don’t remember the blacksmith shop.  That was out of my territory evidently.

Benny – And then across the street on Hutton, where the bank is now, was a great big wooden building, a long building, and Al Zimmer had a garage there.  He used to sell Hudsons and Essexs in there.  He had a showroom.  It was all wood, nothing fancy about it, you know.  It had a great big plate glass – for the showroom.   

Int –  Did that face Hutton or Main?

Benny – It faced Hutton.  I remember he had quit being the dealership and my uncle – this was back, I was in high school, ’32 – he rented some of that building and was repairing cars, and I used to go down there after school, after high school, and help him repair … 

Marian – Well eventually Miller took over that garage, didn’t he?

Benny -  Yeah, Miller bought the property.  He built a new building, then they tore that down.

Int – Who built the Marquis Theater?

Marian – Well the same ones that built in Plymouth – (Penniman?)  Wasn’t Allen the name?  Yes, but you know – right.  I went to the movie once in the old theater when I was five years old that was located just where the theater is now.  But you sat on bleachers and watched the movie.  Mary Curling (?) took me to the movies, and sat on the bleachers.  Then that burned down, and then they built this new theater.  It was so beautiful, it was so gorgeous that when kids walked in when the lights were on before the movie started, you sat down and you would not think of eating in that theater or putting anything on the floor.  And the organ would play to entertain you before the movie started.  It was so beautiful, and during the Depression, they’d get so few people going, that once a week I think it was, or maybe just on certain occasions, you could get in by taking a can of food.  It could be home-canned peaches or anything, and that would be your admission into the theater to help the people who didn’t have anything to eat in the Depression.  But when you went in, you sat down and you never talked.  If you did talk, you whispered even before the movie began.  But to hear the organ play – it was so beautiful – to hear that music.

Int – What movies would there be?

Marian – My first movie was “Whispering Wires”, “Whispering Wires” and every time someone picked up the telephone – zap, they were dead.  So that’s all I remember about that early movie: and then “Wings”.  Wasn’t that the name of it?  It was one of the first movies 

Benny – There was a lot of cowboy movies.

Marian – About World War I.  Oh yes, Tom Hix was my very favorite… but those were great movies in those days.  That theater was just so beautiful, and we were so proud to have it.

Benny – Schraders had a, I don’t know… I think they had the store then too.  But they also had the funeral parlor.

 

Marian – Oh yes, we’ve already covered that now.

Benny – They had that where they’re working on now.  I remember going into town one winter with my folks, and my folks went shopping or something; and my two brothers and I were bumming around town, and we walked by there and the curtain was up like that -
Marian – It was a velvet curtain
Benny –and there was a little light in there, and we peeked in.  And there we saw a guy in a coffin.  It scared us half to death. That was the first time I ever saw a dead man. Man, I dreamt about that for months.  I never looked in the window again.

Int – There seemed to be a connection between, reasonable enough, furniture makers and funeral homes.

Marian – Yes, they seemed, and of course, the Schraders – his brother in Plymouth had the furniture store there plus the Schrader Funeral Home, which is still in existence today; and a grandson is in charge.  It is so fascinating to see that the family is still in business in the same spot, you know, all these years.