Last Edited 18 Feb 2013
My Grandmother Crawford wasn't very tall and she had a large mole beside her neck on the side of the front. I remember standing up next to her and measuring to see if I came up to that mole yet. After I got that tall, then I would measure up to her chin. I eventually grew taller than my grandmother and my mother.
My mother played our old pump organ. She played mostly hymns. When I now hear some of the songs she played, it reminds me of when she played them. I had a song book of children's songs that my mother added the notes to and I learned to play them with just one finger. I never did learn to play with both hands.
Charles bought his first car, a Whippet. Sometimes in the evening after playing softball, he would take several of the kids up to a restaurant on M52 that had a walk up window. We would each buy a pint of ice cream and bring it home. We would sit on the hill in our front yard beside the steps and eat the ice cream. It tasted so good.
One time when I was in grade school, we received this big box from Clara, Aunt Lucy's step daughter. She had 2 girls older that I was. Upon opening the box we found it full of girl's clothes. What a treat! I hadn't had clothes like that before.
One time I remember standing out in our backyard and looking up to see the northern lights. We watched them for some time. It seemed like they were all over the sky , not just in the north. They were very colorful and so pretty.
I have memories of going to Aunt Minnie and Uncle Charlie Jackman's house for holiday meals. They lived on Locust Street in Adrian, the second house south of Church Street. She was Grandpa Crawford's sister. They would decorate their house and the dining room table according to the holiday. One decoration Aunt Minnie used on her dining room table for Christmas was a mirror with cotton for snow and skaters and/or snowmen on it. The house had a very small kitchen. There were toys in the bottom drawer of the bookcase in the front parlor that we played with. One of the toys was tiles with designs on them and they could be arranged to make all different designs out of them. After entering the front door, there was a hallway that had a place for coats and this big stairway that had a landing in the middle, that turned and went the rest of the way up to the second floor. I always remembered it as being big until I went there after I grew up and it didn't look near so big. They sometimes came to our house for holidays dinners. One Thanksgiving, it had snowed and when they got ready to go home, they had trouble getting up the hill on Valley Road at M52.
Other relatives were Aunt Edith and Uncle Fred and their daughter Eva. Uncle Fred was my Grandpa Comfort's brother. They lived on Park Street, then on Maple Avenue in Adrian. We went there to eat also. I remember Aunt Edith used to make jello with sweet cherries in it. Eva worked at Cutler-Dickerson Mill in the office for a lot of years.
Charles liked waltz music and played it in his bedroom, which was across the hall from mine. So I was able to enjoy it also and developed a liking for that kind of music.
George made balsa airplanes and hung them from his ceiling in his bedroom. Micah asked him while visiting him in the nursing home, if he had any balsa airplanes. He did and told him about a special plane that he had made and was carrying it up the stairs to his room, tripped and crushed his plane.