RA – When we talked previously,
you said you came to Northville in 1956 or 1957?
Richard – 1957. Actually it was just after I got out of my
eighth grade in Flushing, so it must have been June of 1957.
RA – So you came to
Northville after Flushing?
Richard – Exactly. My grandparents had a farm in Flushing
and we had races horses. We had an eighty acre farm up there, and in order to
be closer to the racetrack instead of shipping the horses back and forth from
Flushing-Flint area to here, my father and mother and I decided to move down
here and live in Northville. It was close to the racetrack.
RA – So that would put
you in ninth grade here?
Richard – I started my freshman year in Northville.
RA – What school
building were you in?
Richard – We were in the old high school right on Main
Street--right next to the Community Center where I now work—The Senior Center.
RA – Old Main. Did you
participate in any activities of note in high school?
Richard – Well, I played football, basketball and baseball
for Northville High School. I wasn’t real good, but I played all three sports.
It kept me occupied most of the time in the evening.
RA – It kept you out
of trouble?
Richard – It kept me out of trouble somewhat but not
completely. During the evening hours when we worked at practice for one of the
school sports, we would associate in a few places in downtown Northville. There
was old Joe’s Pool Hall, which is right where the new Long’s Plumbing building
is. There were four or five bowling lanes in the back too. Across from what is
now Poole’s bar, there used to be Paul’s Sweet Shop. A guy named Paul Folino
opened it up in the mid 50’s and we used to hang out there. Down at the corner
of 7 Mile and S. Main, we used to hang out at the Belnor Drive In. In fact my
mother worked down there for a while.
JC – That’s where the
car dealership was?
Richard – Exactly, that’s where the MacDonald Ford’s used
car lot used to be, right on the corner, right next to the gas station.
RA – What did you do
after high school?
Richard – I went into the Marine Corp and served for four
years, a couple years at Camp Pendleton, California, and a couple years in the
Far East and all through Southeast Asia.
JC – Did you get into
the Korean War?
Richard – Oh no, this was after the Korean War. I was in from
1961 – 1965. I went in right after high school and I saw quite a bit of the Far
East and Southeast Asia. I hitchhiked across the country a couple times when I
was stationed in Camp Pendleton. I said, “After the last four years, the best
place for me was right back in Northville, because it was the best place I
found.” I ran into my old high school girlfriend and we got married in 1965,
and have been married ever since.
RA – Very good. After
you got out of the Marine Corp, what did you do?
Richard – I worked for a little factory over in Plymouth
called Evans Products on Eckles Road. I took up welding. I worked there for a
while, and after that I worked in a little conveyor plant in Plymouth Township
called R. T. Sheehan Company. In 1970 I went to work for Foundry Flask and
Equipment Company on Cady Street right in downtown Northville. I worked there
for 35 years until the place closed down in 2005.
RA – What did you do
there?
Richard – I was a maintenance welder. I’m probably getting
ahead of myself. During that time in 1979, I joined the Northville City Police
Department as a Reserve Officer and worked at the racetrack five or six years.
In 1986 I transferred to Northville Township and was a Reserve Officer and
still serve as a reserve officer.
RA – What are your
duties?
Richard – My duties currently are as a Reserve Police
Captain. I’m in charge of our Reserve Unit. I chair the Hiring Board. I make
all the schedules out for the duty reserves. We work one duty reserve 365. I
make out schedules for any details, like parade details, things like that. I
also work at Township Hall three to four nights a week when we have open
meetings. I stay busy.
JC – Let’s get back to
how Northville and the area was when you first moved here. I can tell you from
my own experience that Haggerty and Beck were dirt roads.
Richard – Haggerty and Beck, definitely. Napier still is and
so is Ridge. My wife lived in Novi on Nine Mile between Taft and Beck. That was
all gravel too. Practically all the roads were gravel. We moved here in ’57 and
that first fall, I had a buddy that lived on Gerald Avenue. He had access to a
lot of property and we used to go hunting all the time. I used to hunt all that
area behind there, which is Highland Lakes now. We used to hunt across the
street on the old Northville Psychiatric Hospital grounds. I know we weren’t
supposed to be over there. I marked it out for you guys where we used to hunt
in ’57, ‘58. We tried to avoid the state property. We hunted all through here
which is all subdivisions now between Six and Seven Miles.
RA – That area was
Farm Crest Farms in those days.
Richard – There was nothing out there.
RA – It was Farm Crest
Farms until the barn burned.
Richard – Exactly. And back where Highland Lakes is was all
gravel pit.
JC - Were there any
gravel operations going on there?
Richard – No, back in those days, if I remember correctly,
they were almost suspended. It was great rabbit hunting back in there—back in
’57 and ’58. Then we lived on Fairbrook, and I used to see my buddy off of
Gerald. Then in 1959 we moved out on Napier Road right across from what used to
be Greenridge Nursery. We used to hunt all back in through there.
JC – And you had more
gravel quarries. Thompson Sand and Gravel was operating.
Richard – Right. The Thompson family used to let us hunt
there. I had a buddy who lived on Six Mile and Napier where the dump is now.
There was no dump there then. He lived in a house there, and we used to hunt
all in that area. To answer your
question, “Yes, Haggerty was dirt road, Beck was dirt road.”
JC – Six Mile was
gravel.
Richard – Six mile was dirt from Sheldon Road west. Five
Mile was paved.
JC – Five Mile was
probably paved because of the prison there. DeHoco.
Richard - Right there at Napier Road it turned into gravel.
I think it’s still gravel.
RA – Was DeHoco still
in operation?
Richard – Yes it was still in operation. Matter of fact that
was in operation even in 1965, I believe. The wife and I rented a little place
on Ridge Road between Five and Six Mile and right across the street was the
prison property. They kept all their cows over there. I remember the prisoners
used to walk the cows up and down Ridge Road. The prison was definitely in
operation.
JC – How about the
county home on Sheldon?
Richard – Ok, that’s another good one. The Wayne County
Training School was on Sheldon Road between Five and Six Mile. In my freshman
year of high school, 1958, to this day I don’t know what happened; I wasn’t
keeping my grades up properly. I wasn’t allowed to play basketball that year. There
was a local coach at the high school named Stan Johnson, and he formed a
basketball team with the Northville Rec. League, I believe it was, to go out to
the Wayne County Training School and play basketball against the kids out
there. They had about three teams out there. I was a pretty decent ball player
so Mr. Johnson asked me to play on that team. We formed a team and played
numerous games against them. They were very competitive, very competitive.
RA – Is that saying
they beat you?
Richard – No, no, we also were very competitive. As a matter
of fact, before we moved to Flushing, I actually grew up on the north end of
Flint, so I was pretty used to playing against people of that caliber. Yeah,
that was all in operation. I remember across the street from the Training
School they had a big baseball field, and we used to play baseball against
those kids too. On the corner of Five Mile and Sheldon was the Plymouth State
Home, which was for the retarded children, the handicapped children. But the
Training School, they weren’t all bad kids, they were very competitive, and we
seemed to get along good with them.
RA – Basically, I’ve
learned that the Wayne County Training School kids were disadvantaged children,
abandoned by their parents and what not. Where the Plymouth State Home kids
were mentally challenged.
JC – What else did we
have going on in those days? The State Hospital was going.
Richard – Here’s a little story. I told you I had some
friends that lived on Gerald, and we used to hunt behind the State Hospital.
Once in a while we’d get mischievous, and we’d go on the property back in the
dump area at night. We used to take our flashlights with us and shine them on
rats and shoot them with 22’s. We did that a few times until we finally got run
out of there. There was an old dump back there right by the old power plant, I
believe. Good Lord knows what’s in there. I’m sure we’ll find out when we start
cleaning it up. No telling what we’ll find out there.
JC – It seems to me if
you were shooting rats there, they’d like you to do that.
Richard – They frowned on it. Actually what they frowned on
was us bringing a gun on the property. Now that I’m older I can understand
completely. At the time I thought they were being picky about it.
JC – The railroad had
a spur running in there.
Richard – They sure did. Matter of fact, my dog and I used
to walk that track all the time. If I’m not mistaken there is a little trestle
back there somewhere. We always crossed that when we were heading for Waterford
Pond, because we used to hunt in there too.
JC – That’s right
behind the pond.
RA – The trestle
burned if I recall. If you had to cross the Johnson Creek, there is quite a
ravine by the pond. The railroad bed was pretty elevated.
Richard – Yes. There was all kinds of wildlife back there.
Good Lord, yeah.
JC – We had somebody
tell us that was a good place to hunt deer.
Richard – For deer? Oh yeah, there’s lots of deer back
there. But I was strictly a rabbit and pheasant hunter.
RA – That’s something you
don’t see anymore, is pheasants.
Richard – You got that right. Not around here especially.
Matter of fact, now you have to go to farms that stock them. Anyway, that’s
basically the area where I used to hunt in the late 50’s. In 1965, we moved to
Ridge Road. In ’69 we bought a place on Neeson Street off Clement. That’s where
the wife and I lived until 1980 and we bought a house in the city. From ’69
until ‘80 we lived on Neeson. The kids grew up there. It was a nice play to
live. Nice and quiet back there.
JC – How about the
hospital and the TB San–Maybury?
Richard - Maybury was in operation in the 50’s. They used to
treat TB patients. A buddy of mine, Butch Mitchell, who lived on Seven Mile
between Ridge and Napier on the north side, his property backed up to Maybury
Sanatorium, now Maybury State Park. If I remember correctly, we went on the
back of his property and fished on a big pond back there. That was where
Foreman’s Orchards was. Butch is the grandson of the Foreman’s, which is why
they lived there. Right behind his property was Maybury.
JC – The entrance was
on Seven Mile, wasn’t it?
Richard – Yes, if I’m not mistaken, right on the corner at
Seven Mile and Beck area.
RA – There was an
entrance there and one down off the end of Ridge. In fact, a couple of the
stone pillars are still there on the side of the road.
Richard – As you’re going north. I never really trespassed
on that property. I never wanted to catch TB. There were places we went and
places we were told not to go. I didn’t associate too much with that area.
JC – You didn’t think
you would catch anything from the mental hospital?
Richard – We used to call that place, “fantasy island.” I don’t know if you’ve ever heard that
comment before, but that’s what we used to call it.
RA – Did you have any
humorous incidents you can relate when you were a Reserve Officer without
getting anyone in trouble? One of our previous interviews, we heard about
someone ripping the car doors off so they could go after somebody.
Richard – No, I’m not going into that. Let’s put it like
this. There are reasons why I was taken off the road. The laws have changed,
and the way people do things has changed. Rather than fully retire from the
police department, they asked me to work at Township Hall. I figured that’s a
good job for an old man. I can’t do things like I used to. Put it like that.
RA – Let’s face it,
you’re no longer a Marine.
Richard – No, I’m always a Marine. Once a Marine, always a
Marine, that’s for sure.
RA – Not from the
police standpoint, you’re not. No, they’d frown on that somewhat.
JC – In the Marines,
what did you do there?
Richard – In the Marine Corp my first year I was just a
regular rifleman. In those days I carried the old M1 Grands and the BAR’s ,
Browning automatic weapons, WWII and Korean issue. In 1961, right after boot
camp I went to Camp Pendleton and to Okinawa and then to Southeast Asia to
Udorn, Thailand. We were a security outfit for an organization called Air
America. We found out later it is the air wing of the CIA. They were in
Thailand getting everything prepared for Southeast Asia for the upcoming
Vietnam War. Our job was security for their helicopters and their airships and
stuff like that.
RA – Wasn’t Air
America also a propaganda broadcast system from the US Government to other
countries?
Richard – Yeah, they had different factions to it. They used
most of that in the European theatre broadcasting into Communist countries.
Radio Free Europe. In my era in ’61 when we were in Thailand, they were running
troops across the Thai-Laotian border. It was very interesting duty, believe
me. Then I went back to Okinawa. The last 2 1/2 years of my Marine Corp career,
I was a squad leader. In fact on my 19th birthday I made Corporal
E4, and they made me a squad leader. I probably would have stayed in if it
hadn’t been for that stupid war. I had been overseas already and seen enough of
Southeast Asia, as I wanted to see. I just figured the best spot for me was
right back in Northville.
JC – I was in the
service as well and I wouldn’t take a million dollars for my experience, and I
wouldn’t pay ten cents to do it again.
Richard – Yeah, that was when I was kind of young and dumb.
That was good enough.
RA – That gives you a
good chance to grow up too.
Richard – It did that. Matter of fact, that’s another whole
story, but after high school it was highly recommended that I go into the
Marine Corp.
RA – I can relate to
that.
JC – When you first
moved here and I first moved here, there wasn’t anything like I-275. That has
changed the whole community out here tremendously. Can you give me your reading
or opinion on how it grew from when you were first a boy?
Richard – Every time we went east or west we always used the
mile roads. When we wanted to go south we took Ford Road, Canton Center or
Sheldon. Or Hines Park. I didn’t really drive too much in those days. I didn’t
get my first car until I was 16—a ’51 Chevy. When I did get my car we did all
traveling out toward the South Lyon area because we used to go to the Lakes
Drive-In in Brighton, and we’d go to Kent Lake. Most, not all, the guys back in
those days, all our girl friends were in the South Lyon area. So we’d go pick
our girlfriends up and go out to Kent Lake for the day and the Lakes Drive-In
and then drive back.
JC – Did Kensington
Park have the same kind of beaches they have now?
Richard – Yeah, just about the same. It hasn’t changed much
at all.
JC – You can go
through Island Lake to get to the bottom part of Kent Lake as well.
Richard – Right. Also we’d go out to South Lyon to all the
lakes out there off Nine Mile. In ‘58 or ‘59 when we moved to Napier Road, I
started working for Tom Heslip, at the Northville Veterinary Clinic, usually on
the weekends. If I wasn’t participating during the weeknights in football or
basketball, I worked for Tom. I cleaned out the dog kennels, washing dogs, or
stuff like that. As I continued on, I started going out on calls with him. We
would do autopsies on animals that had died like horses, dogs, and pigs, like
that.
JC – I imagine there
were more horses and cows at that time.
Richard – There were a lot of cows and horses. The first
time I ever watched a pig get castrated, it scared the hell out of me. They
used to take them and put their legs behind them and “zip, zip”. I said, Whoa!
I had never seen anything like that.
RA – In your Reserve
Officer capacity, did you ever work at the racetrack?
Richard – Yes I did from 1979 - 1986. The main reason I
worked there and became a Reserve Officer is that I was playing softball at
that time. We were playing against a team of officers from Northville City. I
got to be friends with them. One time they said they saw me at the racetrack
all the time, and wanted to know how come I was always down there. Well,
because my dad’s a driver, my brother’s a driver, and my grandfather’s a driver
and I was always down there seeing them. They said, “Why don’t you just join
the city police department and work there and get paid for being down
there?” It seemed like a pretty sensible
idea to me. So at the age of 37 I applied for the Northville City Police
Department and was hired as a Reserve Officer. They sent me to Schoolcraft
College for the Reserve Academy and I graduated from there. Then I worked at
the racetrack and got paid for it to see my family. That worked out well for
the five or six years I was there.
JC – Do you remember
when the fairs were held at the racetrack?
Richard – Not the fairs, but I do remember specifically in
the 50’s when all the harness racing was done in the summer. It was absolutely
a fantastic place to be.
JC – Did they have
all-weather tracks back then?
Richard – No they did not. They discontinued racing in
October, I believe. They did not race in the winter back in those days.
Northville was always racing in the summer. We used to stable our horses up on
what’s called the hill, which is now St. Lawrence Estates. Back in those days
it was all a barn area up there.
JC – Do you remember
the sulkies coming down from there?
Richard – I remember that very well because I used to ride
one of the sulkies across Seven Mile to go onto the track because I used to
help my parents train the horses. Low and behold when I worked for the city
police department, I found myself working on Seven Mile and Sheldon, directing
traffic allowing the horses to go back and forth.
RA - I always remember
seeing the horses on a winter night and watching the steam coming off them. It
was amazing.
Richard – I’ve seen them racing on a winter night at 0
degrees. They still raced. Northville was a wonderful place to grow up. When
you think back now I never realized how innocent things were back in the ‘50s
and even in the late ‘60s. Things really changed in the late ‘60s when I got
out of the Marine Corp. What a nice, nice place I was fortunate enough to grow
up in.
JC – Did the amusement
park still exist up in Walled Lake?
Richard – Exactly. Right on the corner. You take Novi Road all
the way straight ‘til it dead ends at the lake. The amusement park was on the
right-hand side.
JC – And you never
went there?
Richard – I used to go up there quite a bit. There was also
a place called the Walled Lake Casino. My wife used to go there quite a bit.
They had all the oldies dances, all the popular musicians playing there. I
wasn’t too interested in dancing. I used to go to Groomes’ Beach out there too.
RA – Groomes’ Beach
was at Whitmore Lake, wasn’t it?
Richard – Yes. Groomes’ Beach—you take Seven Mile all the
way west.
JC – Now they’ve moved
the beach down a little farther out. But it used to be right there at the
southwest corner.
Richard – Other places we used to hang out in the ‘50s, I
think I mentioned Joe’s Pool Hall, Paul’s Sweet Shop, the bowling alley was
right there.
JC – Was the sweet
shop kind of a soda fountain?
Richard – Yeah, exactly. They had cherry cokes, and all that
stuff. Angie’s was the bowling alley, and that was right at the corner of Cady
and Center Street—down in the hole there. Now it’s Main Centre.
RA – When we came here
the bowling alley was at Cady and Center. There was a beauty parlor on one side
of it.
Richard – Yes, and right across the street was Guernsey’s
Dairy that is now right on Novi Road.
JC – The type of
businesses have changed as well, haven’t they?
Richard – Oh yeah, big time. I remember the dime store,
Brader’s Department Store, Lapham’s, Freydl’s—they were all there on Main
Street.
JC – There was a
sporting goods store there too.
Richard – That was later on. The post office used to be
right on Center Street. Ramsey’s Bar was on Center Street. There was an old
used car lot on the corner of Dunlap and Center.
RA – It was Allen and
somebody else’s used cars in front of the Methodist Church.
Richard – Yeah, and I remember across from city hall (W.
Main) there was Cal’s Gas Station and Phil’s 76, right on the corner there.
RA – Another interview
we put together with Bill Asher, his son put together a map, and in the ‘60s
there were thirteen gas stations in Northville and how many car dealers. Bill
told us the city passed an ordinance that you couldn’t have a gas station open
on Sunday. He was the first one to violate it because his contract with the oil
company said he had to be open on Sunday.
Richard – Asher’s has been there forever. Even where the
Pizza Cutter is (S. Center), that used to be a gas station.
RA – There was another
gas station just north of Asher’s. There is a house in there on S. Rogers that
was an old gas station that still has the look of it, about three or four
houses north.
Richard – That was before my time.
RA – I remember as a
kid virtually every car on the road had a dealership in town.
Richard – Miller’s had a Dodge dealership right where Bank
of America is. Rathburn Chevrolet was on the corner of Seven Mile and S. Main.
RA – The Ford dealer
was where the Northville Square is today. (W. Main)
Richard – There was another dealership, too, right across
from the well too. It was a foreign car dealership next to the Wagon Wheel Bar.
RA – Anything else,
John?
JC – No, we’ve covered
quite a bit.
Richard – I hoped I helped out. Thank you very much. It was
a pleasure to be here and talk to you guys.
Approved by Richard O’Hare
Date: June
22, 2010
Transcribed by Patricia Allen on June 19, 2010.
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