Saturday, June 19, 2010

Flint Photos: Farmer's Market on Saturday
















23 comments:

  1. No d'Vine wine shop or Flint Crepe Company? The produce is starting to look good!

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  2. I love the Farmer's Market- I'll be there next month!

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  3. The fam and I usually hit up the Farmer's Market at least once a week. We actually have a 'cheese guy' there, though every booth there is staffed by someone that's super welcoming. What a great jewel for the city.

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  4. I was there on saturday picking up some bacon from Knob Hill meats inside the farmers market...does anybody remembers when they used to have there cozy grocery store/meat market on Flushing Rd?

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  5. I wonder if they still sell the old National Geographic magazines upstairs?

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  6. I grew up half a block down Norbert Street from Flushing. Knob Hill Market was on my way home from Longfellow every day.

    One of the burning unanswered questions of my youth was why a grocery store located in a slight valley, near no hill of any kind, in a city with no hill named Knob, would be called Knob Hill.

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  7. My father worked at Knob Hill (in fact, now lives in the house across the street from it's old location, that he grew up in). I believe that is where my parents met, while he was working.

    Isn't there a neighborhood in Flint called Knob Hill, which is nowhere remotely close to where the original store was?

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  8. I always wondered about the Knob Hill name too. Some older people in the neighborhood used to call it by it's previous name the Mott Park Superette.

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  9. I love the term "superette". It's so jumbo-shrimpish.

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  10. To JWilly, Brian, Becky, and others near Mott Park, Knob Hill, and Norbert St.

    Do the names Shaw (Flushing Rd.) Letts, Feurt, Ketrow, Geiger, and Manderfield (Norbert St.) ring any bells?

    Feurts moved to Westgate, where we met up again. I was confused when they knew who I was. I had thought their name was spelled Fort like it was pronounced, adding to the confusion.

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  11. Arthur Shaw was my age, and in school classes with me. We sat next to each other in Mr. Foo's chemistry class. I was precocious in chemistry, and Mr. Foo favored me...I recall an instance where I was whispering to Art in class, and Mr. Foo called out Art instead of me. Sorry, Art, my bad, next life I'll try not to get you in trouble.

    I didn't know the Letts family, but they lived up the street from me. They were Catholic. A lot of the families in Mott Park were Roman Catholic and sent their kids to St. John Vianney. Many of those families I knew only slightly or not at all.

    The Letts boy--David?--roughly my age, had minor-superhero status among us 12 year olds because he was reputed to have peed out his bedroom window once.

    "Ketrow" seems familiar, but I don't recall how.

    Beth Manderfield was my age and lived up the street from me. I didn't actually know her, though. I recall an attitude from my parents regarding my little-kid disinterest in Beth and another girl that lived up the street, that I now would understand to have been "someday, kid, you're going to be really interested in knowing girls who are as attractive and intelligent as they're going to be." Oops.

    Feurt and Geiger...nada. My parents may have known them, though. Their circle of acquaintances was much broader than mine, which was pretty much defined by who I played with and then who I went to school with.

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  12. I have been to a lot of farmers markets.. All over the country.. I still think Flint's is the best. Except for the hours.. They are still very ODD hours.. What market isn't open on FRIDAY? It's PAY DAY!!!

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  13. JWilly, I don't want to reveal too much personal information here, but did you have an Uncle who lived in Ann Arbor? If so, I might know who you are. That seems an obtuse enough question to not reveal too much. You might have lived close to Wilkinsons and Harpers? Mr. Ketrow had a big amateur radio tower.

    Many of the people I mentioned may have lived there later or not very long.

    It's hard to believe I used to walk sometimes twice back and forth to Longfellow. Like so many people say, "in the winter in waist high snow".

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  14. Uphill both ways.

    Anyway...no, no uncles in Ann Arbor, at least since one lived there while in med school.

    "Wilkinson" might ring a bell...did they live next to the Burdens on the west side of the uppermost block of Norbert?

    "Harper"...nope, no recollections.

    It's entirely possible that I'm forgetting things, of course, given my advanced age. 8^)

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  15. I was wrong, JWilly. But I figured it out from another post of yours! Don't worry, I won't reveal it. I was confused by your definition of half a block. I had assumed a regular city block. There was quite an age difference between us, so I really didn't know you well. However, your mom and dad used to give me a ride to school occasionally when I got stuck in the snow! Thanks for the rides!

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  16. JWilly, actually I did meet the Uncle you referred to once, but not the other Uncle I had referred to in the other post (who was someone else's Uncle from up the street). All assuming I now have the right person (the Uncle in Med School kind of confirms it also). I think Harpers were in between Burdens and Wilkinsons.

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  17. > Thanks for the rides!

    I'll pass that on to my parents, and I'm sure you're welcome. (??)

    And on the subject of Knob Hill...

    The proprietors, my Mom recalls, were Tommy Alex and his wife...what was the correct spelling of their last name?

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  18. Don't know the spelling on that, JWilly. There were kids at Longfellow named Alick. I only remember going to Knob Hill once or twice. Hamady's near Flushing Rd. and Ballenger Hwy. was the store of choice. Then there was Mudge's Market on Chevrolet on the way to and from Longfellow. Remember that?

    Speaking of Hamady's, remember Larry Hamady's in Fenton? Casey Kasem worked there when he was young.

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  19. Speaking of Casey Kasem, he was interviewed by Dave Barber a few times on his show. He had some vivid memories of living or visiting with a relative who lived right by Chevrolet Flint Manufacturing. Casey's childhood memories of Flint, where he lived briefly or visited frequently, would be a good topic for this site.

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  20. Hey JWilly I think that was some kind of a compliment for Beth Manderfield. Thanks.

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  21. Well, yeah, it was more of a wry observation that too soon we grow old and too late we grow smart, but it was an almost-fifty-years-after-the-fact compliment, too.

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  22. Names seem to beget fun memories, so here's a partial list of names from the uppermost block of Norbert in the 1950s. Spelling is a bit uncertain after all this time. Mea culpa.

    Top of the hill, no particular order:
    Bernie Parks; older brother Dave and parents Neil and Kathryn. Nice black lab named Blaze.
    Bob Legetko; older sister Ronnie. I think the dad worked for Consumers.
    Danny Staiton. Only knew him a little bit, when we were around high school age. Nice guy, though.
    Beth Manderfield and parents.
    Devra Hagerty and parents.
    The Hollands, uphill from the Burdens, west side of the street.
    Keith and Dorothy Burden. Denny (my friend), Beth, Nancy (my sister's friend).
    The Webricks, other side of the Burdens.
    The Burkes, next down the hill, next to our house. Bent grass lawn, very exact gardens. I learned early on that they put a lot of money and effort into creating and maintaining that particular beauty/precision, and it would be inappropriate to mess it up. The Webricks had a bent grass lawn, too, but theirs was more happy-go-lucky.
    Downhill from us: the Hammonds (Laurel, Ted), then the Franklins (Craig and a younger sister).
    An off-white house with a younger kid named Toby. Another kid and I pushed him off a low elevation we were standing on once--just normal horseplay among little males--but he cried and I still recall feeling bad about it. It's funny how memory space is prioritized. Later Toby's family moved, and a stockbroker and his wife lived there. Sold me my first stock...four shares of GM.
    The Sterners. (Martha) I didn't know her when we respectively were little, but I dated her once when we were in high school. She's a staff mainstay at Juilliard now.
    The Wilkinsons. My younger sister Nan was friends with Jay. Later they moved, and it was an Italian family whose name escapes me.

    East side of the street:
    Berniece and Bob Filler
    Rob Rhodes and parents Walker and Roseann (?).
    Bill Powrie and parents.
    The Sheltons, with daughter Kathy who was a friend of my sister.
    The Shaheens.
    The Millhouses.

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  23. Oh, and to get back onto topic: my favorite when I was a little kid was the rich, spicy and subtly different smells of the different types of green and yellow peppers. Vegetables in grocery stores...at least then...didn't have smells, and by comparison might as well have been plastic for all the gustatory impact they had. Walking through Farmers' Market OTOH you experienced this constantly shifting, blending pallette of smell-colors...especially the peppers.

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Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.