52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 17 "Favorite Place"

THE PORCH SWING

My earliest memories of visiting my maternal grandparents include their porch swing.  Though I was born in St. Joseph, Michigan where they lived, my parents and I moved to the Detroit suburbs when I was a toddler and only visited St. Joseph in the summer and on Easter week-end.  I was always excited to visit my grandparents because their home and the town were happy places to be.

My grandparents had a two-story home on Pleasant Street in St. Joseph.  Kitty corner from their home was the local Catholic church and school and directly across the street was the Catholic convent where the nuns lived.  The street wasn't very long, perhaps containing 10 homes at the most, between Court Street and Church Street.  Being in the downtown district everything of enjoyment was within walking distance.  

There were the stores to shop or browse in, the dime store with the wooden floors (which still exists today) where my mother had worked right after high school, the drug store with the soda fountain where we would get an ice cream sundae, the band stand where Sunday performances were held by the St. Joseph Municipal Band and the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan.  We could walk down the staircase from the bluff to the railroad tracks and a little further we would be on the sand by the Lake.  There was also Silver Beach with the famous Carousel (which has now been restored).  Visiting St. Joe was a happy and fun time.

But the thing that gave me the most pleasure was the porch swing that hung on my grandparent's front porch.  It provided a place to sit in peace and quiet, a place for reflection and calm.  It resembled this swing:

There were other chairs on the porch and my grandparents would graciously allow me to sit on the swing while they would take the chairs.  We would talk and they would always be interested in what was going on in my life.  After my grandfather passed away when I was 12, whenever we would visit, my grandmother and mother would sit on the porch with me and we would just relax and enjoy the flowers my grandmother had around the house.  I spent countless hours on the swing myself reading and relaxing.  

The years have gone by, my grandmother and my mother are also gone and the house on Pleasant Street is gone as well.  That side of the street was demolished and a banking complex was built in it's place. (The Catholic church, school and convent building still exist on the opposite side of the street.)  I have walked the street many times trying to picture just where the house was and have determined it had sat where the drive-up lane of Fifth Third Bank sits today:

But in my mind's eye I can still see the house as it was when I was growing up and I can picture the porch swing that I spent many hours relaxing on.  Unfortunately the porch swing is not shown in this portrait but I can see it in my memory:

Good memories of happy and peaceful times!

Copyright 2021, Cheryl J. Schulte

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 14 "Great"

EASTER MEMORIES ARE THE GREATEST

Today is Easter Monday and a perfect time to write about my favorite yearly holiday - Easter.  While other holidays were special in their own way, Easter was the holiday that I have the most intense memories of.

I was born in St. Joseph, Michigan.  My mother was from St. Joseph as well where she grew up while my father was from Detroit.  When I was a young girl we moved to the Detroit suburbs where I grew up and where my brother was born.  We took summer vacations back to St. Joseph to visit my grandparents and all my mother's many relatives and they were fun times.

Easter was the special holiday every year where we always went back to St. Joseph to celebrate.  Two of my mother's brothers and their families also came from the Chicago area to spend the holiday as well.

We had traditions that never failed to excite me even as the years went by.  We always dressed up and went to church as a family group and my grandparents were so proud to have their family together.  Even after my grandfather died in 1960 we continued to gather as a family with my grandmother and church was a special occasion.  The church was always crowded on Easter and one year the uncles were dragging their feet about leaving the house and when we arrived at the church there were no pews left.  The service was also being played through the speakers into the basement and we had to sit in the basement fellowship hall for the service.  The uncles never made that mistake again!

My grandmother always had Easter decorations around the house.  A glass hen candy dish was always filled with chocolate covered eggs and it sat on the buffet in her dining room.  I have this candy dish now and continue to fill it with Hershey's chocolate eggs each Easter:

There was always a lamb cake as the centerpiece of the dining room table; a white frosted cake my grandmother made from a lamb mold and which was covered with coconut.  I have this mold today and my mother and I have made the cake a few times over the years.  It is not the easiest to maneuver when removing the lamb.  Those little ears don't seem to want to stay on and we have been known to use toothpicks under the frosting to keep them in place; we just need to remember not to bite into the toothpick:

The centerpiece on the buffet, however, was my grandmother's home made Easter egg tree.  In the 1940's she boiled eggs and colored them, poked holes in the ends and blew out the insides, cut a small opening in each egg, filled with artificial flowers, etc and with the insertion of pipe cleaners hung them on the tree using branches she collected from the grounds around Lake Michigan.  This was displayed in a large vase every year without fail.

Today the eggs are down to 23 which is amazing given they are over 80 years old.  I treasure these eggs and wrap them carefully.  A few years ago I had them on my buffet in my living room and the windows were open with a nice breeze blowing in.  Suddenly I heard a big crash and when going into the living room I was horrified to see the Easter egg tree had fallen onto the carpet.  Amazingly not one egg was broken!  I know that was my grandmother in heaven making sure that her decoration was still safe:

This Easter I again had my grandmother's Easter decorations on display and though Easter is much different now I still have the greatest memories of this holiday as well as great memories of my special grandmother.  

This is Easter, 1961, the first Easter after the death of my grandfather when my family and the families of my two uncles gathered again in St. Joseph with my grandmother. 

This picture shows my Uncle Leslie Kijak, my grandmother Ella Kolberg Kijak, my mother, Eloris Kijak Schulte and my Uncle Harris Kijak:

All are gone now but the memories remain!

Copyright 2021, Cheryl J. Schulte