Willard Wilson - 2007

This is February 9, 2007 and we are at the home of Willard Wilson, 10385 Seven Mile Road in Salem Township. He had a lot of experience with the western part of Northville Township. John Colling (JC) and I (RA - Richard Allen) are here to interview him today to discuss his memories of primarily up and down Napier road and the western part of the Township.

RA. Thayer School…How many years did you go there?

WW. I went from 1927 to 1934.

RA. How many classes were in there?

WW. All eight. From first grade right through the eighth grade.

RA. How many students were in your class?

WW. It averaged from one, two, or three. Some classes had one, some classes had two, and if there was nobody in one, there was no class for that grade.

JC. How did they run it? Did teachers take time out for the early grade, and then the next and the next grades?

WW. She took each grade accordingly. Each grade had so much time, and she taught each one.

JC. While you’re not being taught, what are you doing? Did you have homework?

WW. Yes, we had homework to do during the school or we could read. We had a library at that time. Some classes had one, some had two, and some had three, but no more than three students.

RA. The worst rank you could ever have in your class was third, right?

WW. Yes.

RA. We interviewed a man the other day who was second in his class. His twin sister was first.

JC. What topics did they cover? Did they vary?

WW. Reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and so forth. We were taught basic material we could use when we got out of school. Not what they are teaching today, I’ll tell you.

RA. Do you recall any of your teachers’ names? Let’s hear them.

WW. Yes. The 7^th-8^th grade was taught by Gladys Oliver. The 6^th grade was taught by Edith Skiver, 4^th-5^th was Louella Miller Kehrl, Don Phelps and Olive Eldon.

JC. What was your routine? What time did you start?

WW. We started at 9:00 and went to school full time. We had our lunch hour and then went on until 4:00.

JC. Was there any running water in the building at that time?

WW. No running water. We had to go to the neighboring farm. We had a two-wheel cart with cans we would fill with water, and that would carry us through the day. We had a drinking fountain, and you probably have seen them. There was a stone crock, and you would push a button and the water would come out into a container; the excess would go into another container.

JC. Bathroom facilities – Did you have a privy or an outhouse?

WW. We had two outhouses, the boys’ john was right back of the school and the girls’ was in the northeast corner. In between the two of them was the old woodshed, which the school board would order so many cords of wood that would carry us through the winter. We burned wood in an old wood stove.

JC. Who put in the wood? You boys?

WW. The fellows carried it in, yes. It was up to the older kids to carry in the wood.

RA. So every morning you had to start the fire, fresh?

WW. No. The teacher took care of the fire. We had nothing to do with that. In later years every Halloween, they would tip the johns over. The school board would have to come back the following day and put the toilets upright. When I left they still had outside johns—that was 1934. It got to the point when the johns got too rickety, and the school board added a room on the back of the school, and they had inside johns.

RA. They opened it up for us a while back, and I noticed there was a furnace room in there, but it was used as a home for a few years.

WW. Yes it was. I was talking to the lady at Mill Race and told her that Thayer donated the land for the school. It was understood when there was no more school it would revert back to the heirs, which it did.

RA. You were talking to my wife down there and she was the one who brought the note home.

WW. That’s how we got water. The older fellows got the water. The younger kids had nothing to do with it. The family we went to for water had diphtheria and that ended it and we had to go up to the following farm to get water. It took a little time to go to the Ben Shoebridge farm. It’s where the dump is on Six Mile,

JC. What about lunch? Did you carry your lunch there?

WW. We carried our lunches, yes. I’m a depression kid. The kids would bring milk, some would bring potatoes and onions, and some would bring soap to make liquid soap for the children to wash with. The teacher would make soup. She would start it and by lunchtime we had soup for our lunch. We had the old-fashioned lunch pails. We didn’t brown bag it. On the weekdays, she’d stoke the stove with wood, and during the weekend, the fire would go out and when we went to school on Monday morning, it was colder than Hades. With 10-foot ceilings, it took time to heat that schoolhouse, and it was cold. She would bank it every night and there was somewhat of a fire in the morning and she would get it going again.

JC. Did you just have the one stove?

WW. An old-fashioned round oak stove.

JC. Was it in the middle?

WW. Have you every seen pictures of the old school? There was kind of a vestibule just into the school and there was the round oak stove, and that had to heat the whole school. I spoke about the old fashioned johns. You didn’t tarry. You did what you had to do and get the heck back into the schoolroom where it was warm. (Laughter)

JC. Did you have, like the kids today, playground time?

WW. Yes, we had two recesses. We would have so much school and then we would have recess, and some school, then have lunch, then afternoon recess and then school.

RA. Did they play equipment on the property?

WW. In the early years, the school board broke down and bought a swing set and teeter-totter. After the 8^th grade, the school board drilled a well. There was one kid who was a little smart. We had just nicely filled the crock with water for the day and he spit in it. So she had to dump it and wash it out the best she could and refill it. That’s when we were still carrying water from the farms. She could have killed him. We had a flagpole and as far as I know the well is gone. Weather permitting we would raise the flag, and at night before school was out, we would take it down and bring it into the school.

JC. At that time Six Mile and Napier were both dirt roads?

WW. At that time, definitely dirt roads. Just like Beck. Beck used to be a gravel road years ago. Now a speedway.

JC. And Haggerty.

WW. Usually we had PTA meetings one night of the month, which the parents would attend. It was up to the teacher to get the Christmas program together. The Halloween program, but it was mostly Christmas. The school board would buy the Christmas tree. Then a family in the district would get the Christmas tree up. After the Christmas program, a family would get the tree.

JC. Were there any siblings going to the school at the same time?

WW. My brother Wilford, and I went there and he is younger than I. We graduated from the old high school up on Main Street in town. We would get ponies from Palmer Park to board through the winter, and then ride the ponies to school. We would ride them by the cemetery; there used to be a farm there. We used to keep the ponies in that barn. My folks knew the people who had the farm. We’d put them in the barn and before we left for school, we’d take a bag and stuff it with hay and tie it to the saddle. When we got to school we’d take them down and tie them in the barn and at noon we’d go down and feed them. We used to walk to school, yes.

JC. I think this is a good question for people who aren’t really aware of one-room schoolhouses. When you went to high school, did you feel pretty well prepared for that?

WW. No. When you are used to one room and you go into high school and you have all these kids, there are more kids than when you were associated with in the country school.

JC.  Academically, did the classes you took prepare you for high school?

WW. To a certain extent, yes. We had kids who moved out from the city who did not have some subjects we had.

JC. So you could read and write with everybody?

WW. Yes, we were taught multiplication tables. We knew them backwards and forwards in grade school. We could add, subtract, multiply and divide and all that.

JC. Did you use McGuffy Readers by any chance?

WW. We used Beacon Readers, which I still have today.

JC. Those get progressively more difficult as you go through the grades. You start out with the easy ones.

WW. When Thayer School and Northville combined schools, The Northville School got all the furnishings out of the Thayer School. I can’t tell you when they discontinued school. They took everything out of the Thayer School and took it into Northville. I can’t tell you what happened to it all.

RA. I could guess.

WW. So could I. I have my Beacon Readers, First, Second and Third Grade. I have a couple books that belonged to Thayer School. If and when the school is ever restored, I

will gladly donate. I have a neighbor who gave me her history book. It must be over 100 years old now. Because to me, that stuff doesn’t matter much anymore.

RA. That’s what we are trying to do, create some history. If you want to hang on to them now, maybe even someone in your family would like them.

WW.        No, these books, one is on the Revolutionary War, one is on reading material. They’re educational.

RA. You mentioned these Readers. You don’t happen to have those?

WW. I have my three Beacon Readers, yes.

RA. That would certainly be worthwhile to display. Right now, we are a new group and we are trying to get things together, and we’re growing slowly acquiring a display case..

WW. It takes money. If you want to have a display, yes, I’ll let you take them. Eventually, if the school is ever restored, you can have those two books.

RA. I think the school will be restored, but I’m not sure it will be in my lifetime.  Right now the school is well mothballed, except it needs a new roof. If the roof gets replaced, it can sit mothballed for a long time because it is very secure the way it is.

WW. The school has been neglected. After it was converted into a home, it sat idle, the kids have gotten into it, and today it is a mess. There’s no rhyme or reason for it but the kids have had a good time destroying it. There was only one house on Napier road between Seven and Six. The family of Reeds lived there. I went to school with Helen, that was her name. We went through all eight grades together. The kids were from all around there that went to school there. One winter I can distinctly remember. Napier drifted just like the devil. We got up to the woods and we couldn’t get beyond the woods up to Six Mile. We had to go into the fields up to Six Mile up to the school.

RA. Yeah, north and south roads would drift heavily.

WW. During the depression, the roads were so bad; they got men from the WPA to dig them out.

RA. During your time in the area, do you have any recollections about Maybury Sanatorium?

WW. Yes, I do. I had a cousin who was in there who had TB. She was cured and released. She grew to be an old lady. My father hauled gravel for the road. He had to do it with a team of horses, wagon and team. My dad helped haul gravel for the road back to Maybury.

RA. What was the source of gravel?

WW. That I can’t tell you. I don’t think it was Thomson.

RA. There were three gravel pits down there, so it could be any of them.

JC. This is the homestead that we’re in right now?

WW. The house right down there. This is the property where my brother and I were raised, and my dad gave us each 2/3 of an acre to build our homes when we were married.

JC. This was basically a farm in a farming community?

WW. Yes, strictly a farming community whereas it is suburbia today.

JC. Do you have any recollection of Seven Mile being called a different name, like Five Mile used to be Phoenix?

WW. No, it’s always been Seven Mile Road as far as I can remember. A bachelor up the road—when he thrashed, he would need help from the community to do it.  So my mother and a neighbor lady went out and made a thrashers’ dinner. Now if you can feature this, my brother and I sat beside the road and played in the sand. Old Mr. Schroder came by with his milk and his wooden horse wagon. He stopped so my brother and I would get out of the road so he could go down the road. Don’t try it today or you would be past history. This was strictly a farming community. Everybody who needed help, the neighbors were there to help. When the farmers thrashed, they would trade help or help each other.

RA. Do you know the names of anybody on the school board?

WW. Yes, I do. Marion Angel, Roy Terrill, Mr. Tousey, my dad (Ralph Wilson), who was the treasurer, and that’s all I can think of. My dad was elected to take Mr. Tousey’s place when he died.

RA. I know there are quite a few Touseys buried in the Thayer Cemetery.

WW. When he died, the teacher asked the kids to bring a little bit of money. The kids bought a funeral piece to take to Mr. Tousey’s funeral. And I do remember that.  I can tell you another incident. The teacher, one year, had a Halloween program. She needed sheets as they were used as draw curtains for the stage for a portion of the program. So mothers donated sheets—fine and dandy. Someone got a brain wave. One of the windows was left unlocked so a couple of kids took the sheets after it got dark and went and laid in the cemetery. Here they were dancing around in the cemetery in white sheets. You can imagine the reaction of the kids, they went crazy. It would have been all right, but one of the sheets was torn. The mother was very, very out of sorts about it as any mother would be.

JC. When you were at school, the hamlet or village of Salem was down the road a little. Did they have a store at that time?

WW. They had two stores, a barbershop, train depot, a grist mill, a milk factory, and the coal yard where they sold coal and grain.

JC. Was the airport in at that time?

WW. No, it came in much, much later. There were two churches—one church was recently bulldozed over. The other one changed names three times:  Salem Federated Church, Salem Bible Church, and I can’t remember the other one.

RA. I remember seeing a sign for Salem Bible Church. In fact our kids went to summer camp with them one year.

WW. The church that was bulldozed was the Congregational Church.

JC. The city of Northville was there, but that was smaller than it is now.

WW. Yes, it was a town where everybody knew everybody.

RA. Do you have any recollections of the Stinson Aircraft Company?

WW. Yes, I do.

RA. We’d love to hear about them.

WW. That’s all I can tell you, I just remember it. I do remember the DUR that went out to Northville. When it got to the Four Corners you would take it turn around and go back and go into Detroit.  How I happen to remember is that my mother’s brother came out from Detroit and we had to take him to the DUR back into Detroit. That’s the only way I remember that. Where there used to be Shafer’s Electric Shop (now American Spoon on N.Center), the DUR had a waiting room and a shoe repair shop.

RA. Do you have any recollections of the Detroit House of Correction or the Women’s Correctional facility that were both down there?

WW. Yes I do. I can give you a good example. Every once in a while the prisoners would escape. They would jump the trains and get out. The trains going north were all upgrade, and the train wasn’t traveling a fast speed. The prisoners would jump the train. As a rule a car would be waiting for them a mile up.

This one time we had to go into the woods to get the cows to be milked. My brother was just starting to get out of bed when my dad called. He found fresh footprints in the wet grass. A prisoner had slept in our barn all night. Kind of hairy. My brother said, “Dad, who was walking down the lane in the wet grass?” That’s what it was—a person who had escaped and he apparently left at daybreak.  He was long gone.  One time it was Terrill’s woods and there were sugar pails where they tapped all the maple trees.

RA. Terrill’s wood is where?

WW. Where Terrill’s woods is today—Napier, just south of Six Mile Road pretty much.

RA. Township property, where they restored the barn?

WW. Yes. You probably knew it. It is suspicious. They were supposed to take the house by the old German Church (north side of Seven Mile east of Napier) and move it—Frogner’s lived there at one time—and move it down where the barn is. It was torched. But nobody, it can’t be verified it was torched, but there are very strong suspicions.

RA. The old German Church (NE corner of Seven Mile and Napier) was where the residence is today?

WW. Yes, at one given time this used to be a German settlement years ago. Our neighbors went there until they phased the church out.

RA. Do you have some idea what the time frame would be?

WW. I don’t know, I just know they phased it out. The building stood idle and German scriptures were on the ceiling. Anyway, they had a smoker and men of the Northville area had a stag party. There were several women there at the party and one of them was killed. It stood idle for many years. People by the name of Johnson bought it and converted it into a home.

RA. The Historical Society recently came into a batch of real estate listing cards, the old cards that had a picture and a description of the house and what have you. Thayer School was in there twice when it was for sale. It was in there two different times back in the mid-70s. Picture showed a garage there and some other stuff that isn’t there today.

WW. The woodshed would be there. The johns wouldn’t be there. The heating and the johns were additions that the school board put on at the back of the school.

RA. This would be about 1978. I think they were asking $35,000 at that time.

WW. I don’t know if one or two families who lived there. I can’t tell you.

RA. I found it interesting to find these pictures on the real estate market.

WW. At that time it was big money. What else can I tell you about the school? To the west of the school on Napier, Roy Terrill had planted his orchard. That’s all gone. That’s a gravel pit.

RA. We have some old maps that show that as being orchard in there.

WW. Roy Terrill planted that orchard during depression time.

RA. Now when you went to school, was the Thayer family pretty much gone at that time?

WW. There was a daughter. My dad rented land from the Thayer family, and I think the daughter had charge of renting that land out.  It got to the point where he didn’t farm it so much and nothing was put back into it, and it lost its ability to produce.

JC. With the school, did they have a district where the children came from that went like current school districts have? Who went there? People from within a couple miles or what?

WW. Everybody was in the boundary of Thayer School. When you got by what used to be the old Porath Farm, then you got into the Salem School District. The other side where my brother lives up here, that would be Salem District.

JC. There was a Wash-Oak School which is now in Mill Race Village.

WW. Yes, that was up on Curry road, south of Eight Mile.

JC. I would assume that district and the Thayer district would have a common boundary line.

WW. Yes, there was a boundary line there.

JC. Everybody on that side went one way and everybody on the other side went the other.

WW. It was so mixed. The kids went into Salem and the kids went to Wash Oak. On Eight Mile district they all went to Wash Oak. Now you take my dad, he went to the school on Eight Mile next to Maybury State Park and today it is a nursery school.

RA. You’re talking about the state park entrance? It was a nursery school, and then a private school. It went out of business and it is now a nursery school again.

WW. When my dad was in school he used some colorful language. The teacher said, “Ralph, hold your hands up.” My dad held them up. She hit his hands with a  ruler which cracked with a snap. What did my dad do? He laughed at her because his hands were callused being a farm boy and very hard. I don’t know what happened after that, but it was sad. The teacher’s name was Mrs. Larkings.

JC. In your days at Thayer, right now if the teacher were to take a switch or stick to a student, he’d be in trouble. But back then that was acceptable.

WW. Now you would be in a lawsuit up to your ears. Back in those days, you respected your teacher. You didn’t backtalk or sass your teacher. You had respect. Today things are different. They don’t have respect for teachers or anything else. My mother was a schoolteacher too. She was a school marm.

RA. Where did she teach?

WW. Out around Whitmore Lake and Salem.

RA. I’m about out of questions. Do you have anything?

JC. We’ve covered a lot of territory. It’s been very interesting.

RA. Is there anything you’d like to bring up?

WW. No, not that I know of.

RA. Thank you very much.

Approved by Willard Wilson on:  May 21, 2007

Transcribed by Patricia Allen on:  April 18, 2007