saturday evenings with mr t...

another week gone by already? sheesh ! this edition is long but well worth it. i'm also posting it a bit earlier this week for my east coast and midwest readers (both of you )...



"Another Saturday night, and I ain't got nobody, I've got some money cause I just got paid....." (A Saturday song anyway).

Another Saturday at Grandma Allen in the early 60's was typically like this for me:

With no cousins around, the best we could do is arrive, play around outside (think summer), push each other in the GO Cart up to the white barn (Paul noss's Sunnybrooke Farm), explore the barn, come back, play soldiers or sci fi or something. Dad might go golfing or work on a project for grandma's house

Mom would yak and Grandma would yak.

We would eat dinner, then there were options. Sometimes we would go visit Aunt Prene, Aunt Louis, Olive and Delmer, Dorothy and Jim, all now known as the Dover crowd. Sometimes we would visit Paul Noss with Dad and come back smelling like manuer. this did not sit well with mom.

Then come back home by 8:30 or 9 and go to bed. This is when Dad would go drink a beer in the garage and then watch television with Mom and grandma, who would Yak, thus annoying Dad who was trying to watch TV, which is why he would drink beer in the garage, to numb the effect of the yakking.

Of course there was the basement, jumping off the stairs onto to the camel saddle like we were parachuting or something. Good thing the folks didn't know what we were doing! The basement was a playground in itself.you could play old 78's on the old phono with the AM, FM, Shortwave radio built in it. electric. Don't get me started on how someone hoodwinked grandma into to selling that thing and later a cookoo clock she used to have. Obviously for the antique value. I love to have those damn things back - in working order.

Or sometimes we would go to town with Dad to pick up milk and stuff since we were hogging all of grandma's stuff in the fridge. We would buy stuff to prepare for Sunday dinner too. Occaisionally we would get ice cream at one of the two Tasty Freeze joints at either end of Clare. Recently my kids and I stopped on the way back from Traverse City, MI at the "Dairy Phil" which I believe has been there forever on the north side of town next to the old "Benchly Brothers" building (now something else).

One time I remember coming back in the dark and Dad slammed on the brakes hard because some idiot turned off Beaverton Rd. in front of us to go south and we were coming north. We ended up at the edge of the ditch, just inches from a watery death (1 foot deep but we didn't wear seat belts back then) and thousands of cat o' nine tails slashing us up. We backed away safe and sound and went home. I was probably 8 years old. Or was I driving and we were older? I'm confused.

Other times we would stay home, have popcorn, watch "Hootenanny," or "Jackie Gleason," "Secret Agent Man," or a movie. Lots of comedies or Elvis movies. also i think there was a show like "hollywood palace" or "hullabuloo" or some such nonsence.

Then there were the cousins: Pat Mickle trying to scare us half to death hiding in the hedge, suddenly bursting out of the dark. Dad driving us through the park across Old 27 in the dark with the lights off, playing tag or "hide and shriek"with Steve and Cindy in the dark. Once in 1963 we had a rented trailer for vacation and slept in it because the Mickles were living there or visiting at the time. Once in '67 (the "Summer of Love") the Hoovers had a trailer and we had a camper trailer, and went to Lake City County Park and camped there at Lake Missaukee. I remember finding dead fish on the beach the next morning, and the folks playing cards til late at night. I wonder what the heck the kids did?

The deal at night when we went to bed was we would go to the guest room until 11 or 12, then the folks would carry us or walk us to the couch and the floor mattress.

The next morning grandma would be up before us, clinking around in the kitchen, with that noisy coffee pot of hers screeching, and she would clang pots and pans around. I think she did it on purpose to wake us up. She would often cook us eggs and toast and sometimes bacon, and orange juice. Gee, I think I'll have those tomorrow morning!

The folks would drag us to church so we could sleep some more, during the sermon, and then the same old lady would follow us wherever we sat, sitting behind us, and sing off key to drive us crazy. she even showed upp at our regular church. she sounded like Mrs. Miller, the terrible singer seen on the Ed Sullivan Show a few times. (Although I don't know why ed would stoop to such "Gong Show" tactics! Ugh!)

Afterward we might go to the drug store so the folks could get a newspaper like the Detroit Free Press, and we might get a comic book to read. Then 11a.m. or so would roll around and time for Bullwinkel. Later in the early seventies it was old comedy movies: Laurel and Hardy, Marx Brothers, others. That is where I gained a greater appreciation for old movie stars, particulary the comics. One time around 1973 they even showed "A Hard Days' Night (the Beatles)." If Vane Mickle and Theo were there, Dad and Vane would go golfing, probably to aviod the women, who would yak, and yak, and Yak. the men would even have a beer at the club house after a game, for the same reason. once i joined them in 1977, Pat Mickle was there and went with us, and whacked a golf ball on a dog leg hole, way above the trees, over the woods, and on to the green, three feet from the hole. he made the putt, got the birdie. Holy smokes, wish I could hit a golf ball like that!

Around 4 or 4:30 p.m., it was time for us to go home.

After the 60's, when I started a paper route, we went to Mass on Saturday night, I would deliver the Sunday morning paper, and go to grandma's just for the day. Toward the end, (when I was playing in a band up north on the weekends instead of furthering my life with career!) I would stay at grandma's on saturday night and go home around noon or so. those last days of grandma's were special because I got to see her every weekend and take of anything around the house, keep her company. Didn't know how lucky I was at the time. Without sounding egotistical, or too "special," I'd like to think maybe by design, accident or convenience I got chosen to represent all her grandchildren at the end. Or maybe I just never grew up, which is okay with me .................being an adult sucks anyway when you think of all this great but simple, quiet stuff going on at Old 27.

and that's the news from Old 27, where all the women are strong, the men are god looking, and all the children are above average.........hey, where have I heard that before?