In Memory of Patricia McFarlane Young

Pat Young during her days as a department store model.

Patricia McFarlane Young, who lived an adventurous, unconventional life guided by her generous spirit and sense of humor, died on December 8, 2017 in Tacoma, Washington. She was 87. 

Pat was born and raised in Flint, Michigan when it was a thriving hub of the automotive industry. “I grew up on the Eastside and recall the unexplained pride I felt when the 3:30 Buick factory whistle blew and the roughly dressed workers poured out of the General Motors’ labyrinth swinging their lunch pails,” she wrote in an essay about her early life. “Some were headed for home and some for the corner bar, but all with the determined step of an army after a battle won. I somehow felt as if I were a part of this giant assembly line and the city it fed.”

But she also knew there was a bigger world beyond Flint, and she was eager to explore it. “Nostalgia, I’m sure, is the opiate of old age,” she wrote. “Memories over ten years old automatically become the ‘good ol’ days. We remember only the happy things and leave the shaded areas behind. And yet, faintly sifting through the sands of time, I seem to recall saying, ‘The day I’m 18, I’m leaving this town.’"

After graduating from Central High School in 1948, she lived in Detroit in the early fifties, where she fell in love with jazz and a jazz musician or two. She moved to New York and became a department store model at Bergdorff Goodman’s and a regular at clubs like Minton’s Playhouse when Bebop was exploding. She had great stories about seeing legends like Charlie Parker and Dizzie Gillespie perform. She remembered loaning saxophonist Gerry Mulligan money to buy coffee and a newspaper early one morning in Harlem. “He still owes me a dollar,” she said.

Pat eventually worked for National Airlines as a stewardess — she wasn’t fond of the term “flight attendant” and refused to use it — and regularly flew out of Miami, Havana, and New Orleans. 

Later, as a Navy wife, she set up houses all over the country — San Diego, San Francisco, Jacksonville, Florida, and Olathe, Kansas, to name a few — but she eventually returned to Flint. There was a part of her that was disappointed to be back, but she wasn’t the type of person to mope. As a single mother, she worked hard to create a stable, happy life for her four children. She was an admitting clerk at McLaren Hospital for many years, earning money to send her kids to college. 

As a devout Catholic, she attended Mass at St. Michael’s and St. Mary’s. Her love of football was intertwined with her faith. She was a regular at Powers Catholic High School games when her kids were students. (The hot rum cider she brought to Friday night games in a thermos was legendary in the parents’ section of the bleachers.) And she energetically watched Notre Dame football after dutifully placing a small statue of the Virgin Mary on top of the television before kickoff. That didn’t stop her from berating the refs when calls went against the Fighting Irish. Expletives were not always deleted.

She loved her parents, who moved to Flint from the cornfields of Iowa in the 1920s. She described her father, Verne McFarlane, as “my gentle hero all my life,” and credited her mother, Leone, with giving her the determination to deal with life’s setbacks. “Their love, and growing up in Flint, made me into a person who could handle tough times and appreciate what really matters,” she wrote.

Pat worked at Jacksonville University, organizing performances for the School of Fine Arts, after moving to Florida in 1986. It was the perfect situation for someone who, by her own count, had around 50 different jobs during her life. She enjoyed talking to agents in New York and getting updates on the places she remembered. Many were long gone, but not all of them. And she had an easy rapport with the performers, making them feel welcome in a way that the college professors could not.

Cooking down on the farm.

After retiring, Pat put a lot of miles on a red pickup truck she called Bubba. She had taken more road trips in the last 20 years than most college kids, often driving from her home in Jacksonville to the family farm in Maple Leaf, Iowa. She slowly but surely restored the century-old farmhouse where her mother grew up. Pat had visited the farm for long stretches every summer as a child, so in many ways this was also home to her. She liked the solitude, and she looked forward to seeing old friends and relatives, people who had known her folks. She certainly wasn’t a farmer, but she understood the rhythms of life in small-town Iowa and liked being a part of it. 

When she visited her kids on the West Coast, she drove cross country, lately with her 90-pound dog, Rob Roy, by her side. (He was a lovable guy, even though he looked fairly menacing.) She listened to unlikely musical combinations on her cassette deck. Frank Sinatra might share time with country singer Dwight Yoakam and Rod Stewart on a stretch of highway. She relied on a dog-eared atlas with handwritten notes detailing where to get blueberry pie in Montana or a good burger in Missouri. She knew where obscure Frank Lloyd Wright houses were located on her northern route. And she knew how to find the Palm Court Jazz Cafe when her travels took her to New Orleans.

Pat made these trips so often she had friends along the way, people she had quickly bonded with over lunch at a diner or during conversations in hotel lobbies. She even exchanged letters with some of them over the years. She could easily turn strangers into confidants. She was someone people liked to be around, an open, unpretentious woman who had a way of understanding what you were going through, whether it was good, bad, or in between. 

She spent the last few years living in Tacoma, Washington, where she could be close to her son, Matt, and daughter, Martha, who lived on the same street. She often talked about how much she loved her daughter, Catie, who lives in North Carolina. She got to see her grandkids and great grandkids regularly. This summer, she got to hold her newest grandchild, Larkin, when her son Gordie visited from San Francisco.

Pat often described herself as a dreamer. She admitted that she was always searching for something in life, even though she wasn’t quite sure what it was. (That’s probably the case for most people, if they are brave enough to admit it.) But she never stopped trying, and she never let the search overwhelm her. She maintained her independence, her intense love of her family, and her kindness for those who were struggling until the end.

It’s hard for her children to imagine life without her. But she taught them that sometimes the hardest things in life can be the most meaningful, and that our memories of those we love can continue to guide us and comfort us. 

We love you, Big Mama.

Pat is survived by her daughters, Catherine and Martha (Patrick), and her sons, Matthew and Gordon (Traci). She is also survived by her grandchildren Claire, Grace (Michael), Hannah, Dylan, and Larkin, as well as her great-grandchildren, Violet and Cash. She was preceded in death by her parents, Verne and Leone McFarlane.

In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to Luke M. Powers Catholic High School in Flint, Michigan.

Pat Young with her dog, Rob Roy, on the family farm she restored in Maple Leaf, Iowa.

The Golden Leaf

I was at a wedding party for my friends Keith and Kim at the Potrero Neighborhood Center, known as The NABE, last weekend in San Francisco. I spotted a guy in a Red Wings jacket who turned out to be Albert Johnson, a NABE employee who was born at Hurley Hospital and went to Clark Elementary (left) in Flint. His parents, Jerry and Jimmie, still live on Providence Street.

We ended up talking about The Golden Leaf, one of Michigan's legendary black clubs. It’s still in business at 1522 Harrison Street, just across the school yard from Clark Elementary. It’s a membership-only club, just as it was when it opened in 1921.

“My dad liked to play cards there,” Albert remembered, before our conversation turned to how glad we both were that Matt Millen is finally out as the Lions GM.

The Golden Leaf is a well-known Flint landmark in my family. One of my mom’s best friends from the old days in Flint is Adrienne (Wilson) Oliver, who is the mother of Notre Dame assistant coach Jappy Oliver (left). Although it wasn’t unheard of for a black girl and white girl to be such close friends at that time in Flint, it was rare. And it was even rarer for a white girl to visit The Golden Leaf. But Ardrienne took my mom, Pat (McFarlane) Young, on several occasions.

“We never looked at Pat as being white or black. Pat was just Pat,” Adrienne told me during a recent conversation. “She was with me and she was my friend, so nobody thought anything of her going to the Golden Leaf.”

Except, perhaps, the girls' parents. Sometimes a little subterfuge was needed.

“We did some of the craziest things,” Adrienne remembers. “Pat would say she was spending the night at my house, then we’d tell my parents we were both going to spend that night at another girl's house, then we’d sneak out.”

Adrienne and my mom both remember Central High, where they graduated in 1948, as having good racial relations. Blacks and whites interacted and formed friendships.

“I remember there being more economic prejudice than racial prejudice at Central,” my mom says. “Students seem to divide over their neighborhoods and how much money their parents had.”

Ardienne adds: “At Central, everybody was wonderful, but there was a lot of prejudice hidden in Flint. Nobody came right out and said it, but it was there.”

And there was prejudice built in to the structure of Flint life. When performers like Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole or Lionel Hampton came to the I.M.A., whites went to a separate early performance, while blacks were only allowed at a second midnight to 4 a.m. show.

“That was terrible,” Adrienne says. “It’s sick to even think about, especially when most of the performers were black.”

The Golden Leaf was a popular destination before the midnight dances at the I.M.A. “You know, it’s just a hole in the wall, but we thought it was the greatest joint in the world,” Adrienne remembers.

Today, the look of the Golden Leaf is relatively unchanged. It’s owned and managed by Lottie Reid, who told me on the phone that it’s still the same long, narrow brick building with a dirt basement, a bar, and several tables, much like it was when Adrienne and my mom went there, not to mention more famous visitors like Sammy Davis, Jr., Dinah Washington, and Malcolm X. The age of the members ranges from 21 to around 80.

But the neighborhood has changed, starting with the massive I-69 — I-475 interchange that obliterated much of the community that once surrounded The Golden Leaf . And like many Flint schools, Clark Elementary is boarded up.

“There’s really nothing around us now,” Lottie Reid said. “There’s nothing but us on this block.”

The Golden Leaf Revisited

In October, I interviewed the manager of the venerable Golden Leaf Club, as well as talk to my mom and her good friend Adrienne Oliver about one of Michigan's oldest black-owned nightclubs. A few days ago I ran across some recent photos of the Golden Leaf, along with some dispiriting shots of nearby Clark School, on the Welcome to Beautiful Flint blog. Here are the photos, along with the original post.







I was at a wedding party for my friends Keith and Kim at the Potrero Neighborhood Center, known as The NABE, last weekend in San Francisco. I spotted a guy in a Red Wings jacket who turned out to be Albert Johnson, a NABE employee who was born at Hurley Hospital and went to Clark Elementary (left) in Flint. His parents, Jerry and Jimmie, still live on Providence Street.

We ended up talking about The Golden Leaf, one of Michigan's legendary black clubs. It’s still in business at 1522 Harrison Street, just across the school yard from Clark Elementary. It’s a membership-only club, just as it was when it opened in 1921.

“My dad liked to play cards there,” Albert remembered, before our conversation turned to how glad we both were that Matt Millen is finally out as the Lions GM.The Golden Leaf is a well-known Flint landmark in my family. One of my mom’s best friends from the old days in Flint is Adrienne (Wilson) Oliver, who is the mother of Notre Dame assistant coach Jappy Oliver (left). Although it wasn’t unheard of for a black girl and white girl to be such close friends at that time in Flint, it was rare. And it was even rarer for a white girl to visit The Golden Leaf. But Ardrienne took my mom, Pat (McFarlane) Young, on several occasions.

“We never looked at Pat as being white or black. Pat was just Pat,” Adrienne told me during a recent conversation. “She was with me and she was my friend, so nobody thought anything of her going to the Golden Leaf.”

Except, perhaps, the girls' parents. Sometimes a little subterfuge was needed.

“We did some of the craziest things,” Adrienne remembers. “Pat would say she was spending the night at my house, then we’d tell my parents we were both going to spend that night at another girl's house, then we’d sneak out.”

Adrienne and my mom both remember Central High, where they graduated in 1948, as having good racial relations. Blacks and whites interacted and formed friendships.

“I remember there being more economic prejudice than racial prejudice at Central,” my mom says. “Students seem to divide over their neighborhoods and how much money their parents had.”

Ardienne adds: “At Central, everybody was wonderful, but there was a lot of prejudice hidden in Flint. Nobody came right out and said it, but it was there.”

And there was prejudice built in to the structure of Flint life. When performers like Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole or Lionel Hampton came to the I.M.A., whites went to a separate early performance, while blacks were only allowed at a second midnight to 4 a.m. show.

“That was terrible,” Adrienne says. “It’s sick to even think about, especially when most of the performers were black.”

The Golden Leaf was a popular destination before the midnight dances at the I.M.A. “You know, it’s just a hole in the wall, but we thought it was the greatest joint in the world,” Adrienne remembers.

Today, the look of the Golden Leaf is relatively unchanged. It’s owned and managed by Lottie Reid, who told me on the phone that it’s still the same long, narrow brick building with a dirt basement, a bar, and several tables, much like it was when Adrienne and my mom went there, not to mention more famous visitors like Sammy Davis, Jr., Dinah Washington, and Malcolm X. The age of the members ranges from 21 to around 80.

But the neighborhood has changed, starting with the massive I-69 — I-475 interchange that obliterated much of the community that once surrounded The Golden Leaf . And like many Flint schools, Clark Elementary is boarded up.

“There’s really nothing around us now,” Lottie Reid said. “There’s nothing but us on this block.”

Gainful Employment

My parents, Patricia and David Young, at a party in the sixties. Aside from raising four kids by herself while my dad was flying jets for the Navy, this might have been one of the few times when she wasn't "officially" employed.

My mom, who is 77, has had roughly 50 jobs during her life. Probably more, but it’s hard for her to remember them all. “Does it count if you got the job and left after the first day?” she asks.

This peripatetic approach has rubbed off on her children. My sister, who is 46, has racked up at least 36 different jobs. My brother and my other sister declined to even guess, placing them in the too-many-to-count category. And at 42, I’ve shown admirable stability by only logging 22. (And yes, I’m counting two jobs I agreed to take and then never showed up for. Why? Hangover on both occasions. Excuse? I was a college student.)

The family can list carnival ring toss hawker, stewardess, golf caddy, gun seller, model, track coach, high school guidance counselor, horse groomer, professional cheerleader, mural painter, journalist, college professor, snow shoveler, movie extra, plastic factory worker, realtor, and bartender at the airport lounge in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on our collective resume. This cavalcade of gainful employment has taken at least one of us to New York, Detroit, Miami, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Little Rock, New Orleans, Havana, Puerto Rico, Paris, Seattle and various other far-flung locales. Oh, and one of us ended up in San Jose, California, for a two year hitch, which is not recommended.

Focused? Hardly. But I’m proud of our track record. Mom always emphasized the importance of hard work. And for a family that spent decades living in Flint, Michigan —a bastion of unemployment and industrial decay showcased in Michael Moore’s Roger & Me — we’ve shown a remarkable facility for just that. And we’ve managed to keep our jobs as long as we could stand them. Out of more than 120 places of employ, a family member has been canned just four times.
I’ve never lost a job, despite actively trying to get fired on more than one occasion. My sister’s dismissals are fairly prosaic. She was once 86’d as a cocktail waitress at Jimmy Lum’s Aloha Lounge (left) on Dort Highway in Flint when Jimmy discovered she was only 16. He found out because my mom called him up and demanded to know what the hell he was doing hiring underage high school girls to serve Mai Tai’s to autoworkers, affectionately referred to as “shop rats” in Flint.

But this is my mom’s story, and her hirings and firings tend to have long backstories, interwoven with convoluted plots that lead up to the numerous jobs she eventually gets and the few that she ultimately loses. Technically, her first job could be considered her first firing, although it’s more of a you-can’t-fire-me-I-quit situation. It’s 1946 and Flint is a far cry from what it would become when the General Motors plants started closing in the eighties.

“Flint was wonderful,” mom remembers. “The factories were going. If you went downtown it was like New York — there were people on the streets all the time. It was a big deal to go downtown to the Capital Theater on a date. There were good restaurants. There were beautiful dress shops. There were great little bars in the alleys. You could go downtown at night and you were safe.”

She was 16 and took a job behind the counter of a local drugstore on St. John’s Avenue in a predominantly African-American section of town. It was rumored that the white-owned drugstore sold “abortion pills” and overcharged its black customers. It would have been considered a wildly inappropriate job for a white girl in a very segregated factory town, so mom didn’t tell her parents about it.

“They wouldn’t have let me work there," she says. "You just didn’t do that then. I would have been allowed to have a job at the YWCA being a lifeguard or something like that. But you don’t think about consequences at that age. You just want to do what you want to do. I wanted money and I wanted to get a job.”

At the end of her first day working behind the counter, the husky, middle-aged pharmacist counted out the cash register. He shook his head and announced there was $5 missing.

“I knew that wasn’t right,” mom says. “I’d been careful. There was no way money was missing.”

He had a suggestion to clear the whole mess up: “Look, we’ll forget about the $5. Just stick around until we close. We’ll have a little fun, and I won’t have to call the police.”

Mom is not stupid. “Well, I knew what that meant. I waited until he turned his back and I just ran out the door and ran all the way home. I never went back and that was it.”

Welcome to the working world. But this introduction to the joys of low-wage labor didn’t seem to faze her. “Oh, it didn’t bother me. I just thought, ‘Well, I got out of that one.’ I was fearless at that time, as most young people are.”

A few years later, mom dropped out of Wayne State University in Detroit and returned to Flint.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I ran around with the musicians in Flint and the big thing was always, ‘We’re going to New York; we gotta get enough money to go to New York.’”
Finding a job was not a problem in Flint. She landed a spot on the assembly line at AC Spark Plug. It lasted three days.

The AC Spark Plug factory from the air.

“I just didn’t go back,” she says. “My favorite method — just disappear. I was too afraid underneath to be an adult and say, ‘I’m sorry but this is just not for me, and I apologize but I’m quitting.’ That thought terrified me.

“I wouldn’t have liked anything because I had this thing inside of me that just wanted to be a big band singer or go to New York or be a model. I can’t really describe it but I wanted something exciting. There was just no way I could work in a factory.”
The next few years are a blur. I can’t vouch for the order of things at this point. Mom and I sat down in the living room and tried to chart it all out, but it was too complicated, the scattered trajectory of a beautiful young woman looking for …something…in the 1950s. She made it to New York and went to Barbizon Modeling School, then worked as a model in the wholesale district, modeling clothes for buyers. She posed for art students, once as a gypsy, she remembers. And because many of her friends were black jazz musicians from Detroit, she immersed herself in Bebop. She hung out at Birdland and Minton’s Playhouse. Once, she hitched a ride with Charlie Parker to a gig in Philadelphia.

But New York was a sporadic experience. She went back and forth to Michigan, often when she wearied of a city that sometimes left her broke and depressed. She remembers sitting in her apartment one night, looking out at the lights of all the other apartments, and feeling as lonely as you could possibly feel. And there was the time she asked a roommate, who was a tough girl from Brooklyn, if she could borrow her radio when she was bedridden with the flu.

“Why?” the roommate asked.

“Because I’m sick, and I’m stuck in bed all day,” mom answered.

“That I should care if you live or die,” the roommate informed her with melodramatic finality. (It's still used as a funny line in our family on occasion.)

On one trip back to Flint, she met a guy named Ted, managed his beauty shop in the Patterson Building, moved to Miami with him and worked as a department store model at Burdines. Then it was back to New York, again, and modeling at Bergdorff Goodman’s. Then she got married to Ted, and ended up back in Flint. Again, she needed a job, and suddenly AC Spark Plug didn’t seem so bad after all.

“I was married and it was kind of a good thing, and I’d decided I really wanted a job. I was happy and Ted had a job and everything was better. So I was sincerely trying to make it work. I thought I’d gotten rid of the feeling that made me leave AC the first time, but it was really just submerged.”

She figured she could go back to making spark plugs because she was married now and had a new last name. They wouldn’t know she was the same person who walked off the line years earlier. She claimed she’d never worked there before on the application.

“My first day on the job, after I’d worked on the line a few hours, a supervisor came over and said, ‘We know you lied on your application. Please pick up your purse and come with me.’”

Mom was escorted to the factory gate, where she surrendered her badge. She remembered that Ted was going to the movies that day, so she went to the theater and wandered the darkened aisles looking for him. “I found him and just started crying. I was humiliated. He told me not to worry.”
The timeline continues to blur after that. The next time mom got fired, she’d been married and divorced three times. She had four children, including me, the youngest. In the interim, she’d been a stewardess (not a “flight attendant”) for National Airlines, shuttling between Miami, Havana and New Orleans. She’d worked for two car rental agencies and had a one-day stint as a “hostess” in what turned out to be a Mafia bar. She quit when she discovered the hostesses were expected to go to after-hours parties with the patrons. She’d taught modeling at the Barbizon branch in Jacksonville, Florida. Then she was back in Flint, working as an admitting clerk at McLaren Hospital, when she saw a want ad in a travel magazine for the manager of a hotel in Cloudcroft, New Mexico. She called the number and found out the owner dreamed of transforming an old hotel for miners into a ski lodge. This would be the first of many cross-country trips with my mom.

“It was a bad thing I did,” she says. “I packed up the car and just went off. I left the house for my parents to sell. Very bad. Very selfish.

“We got to Cloudcroft and it was beautiful; you drive up through the pine trees and everything. We drove up to the hotel and there was a pot-bellied wood stove in there. It was hanging off the side of the mountain and it had this big old rickety porch. I knew we couldn’t stay. One of the kids could have rolled off the porch down the hill. I was panicked, wondering what I was going to do. I’ve got my little kids out here.”

She turned to my 16 year-old brother, Matt. “He was older and he was my buddy, so I said, ‘Well, what are we going to do?’”
Matt had liked the white buffalo statue in the courthouse square in Snyder, Texas, when we’d passed through town on the way out.

“So we went back to Snyder,” she explains.

It was as good a plan as any.

Luckily, mom has an uncanny ability to bond with strangers. She’s just somebody that everybody likes. She met a woman in a restaurant, who called a friend, and we soon had a little house to rent. We were now officially residents of Snyder, Texas, then known as “The Star City.” Our neighbor had a steer, an oil well and an okra patch in her backyard.

And the next day, mom secured a job as a dental assistant.

“The dentist had been in the Navy, and I told him I’d been married to a Navy pilot, which was a mistake because everybody else in the Navy hates the pilots, probably because they get all the girls.”

She’d been training to be the dentist’s chair-side assistant a few days when he said he’d like her to attend a Wednesday night meeting. Mom asked if it was a meeting related to dentistry. He said no, it was a gathering at the local Church of Christ.

“I told him I was Catholic, and he just said ‘Oh’ and he let it go. The next day I came to work and he called me in and said, ‘I’m sorry but I just don’t think you’re dentally oriented.’

“I was crushed because I wasn’t used to being rejected. I always did a good job and I didn’t like being treated like that. I was walking out, and I was almost in tears and the receptionist said, ‘I don’t know why he did that. You learned faster than anybody.’”

Getting fired for being Catholic wasn’t surprising in west Texas. The Catholic church in town regularly had dances, and the local Baptist teenagers would secretly attend, begging the people at the door not to stamp their hand so their parents wouldn’t find out they had been fraternizing with the Papists.

But losing the dentist gig wasn’t all bad. It allowed mom to learn about firearms at her next job as a gun “sales lady” at Star Discount. And it led to her brief stint working with the carnival before she sold ads for The Snyder Daily News.

The family eventually made it back to Flint in 1971, give or take a few years. Mom quickly got her old job back at the hospital — remember, everyone likes her, even her old boss — and she worked there for 15 years.

As the youngest kid, I spent the bulk of my childhood watching her dutifully head off to work in a white uniform, dealing with demanding doctors, confused patients and petty admitting office intrigues. This was in the days when divorced women got the kids and little, if any, child support. (And despite taking a hit in Texas for the Catholic church, she wasn’t even allowed to receive communion at Mass.) There wasn’t much money, but we did have a huge jazz record collection. I’m sure I was the only 10-year-old in Flint who regularly listened to “Salt Peanuts” by Dizzy Gillespie. And while mom didn’t exactly find contentment with a steady job, she did achieve something admirable.

“I had kids and I decided I had to settle down and take care of them. And I did.” she says. “I’m proud of myself. I’ve had a lot of bad circumstances, and I’ve always found a job.”
She took an early retirement package in 1985, when Flint was in its economic death spiral, and moved to Jacksonville, Florida, of all places. My older brother had landed a teaching job in Jax, as the locals call it, a few months earlier, but there were deeper motivations for her migration. She had met my dad there when he was flying jets out of the naval air station in the early sixties; they had always loved each other, although cohabitation was out of the question. She remembered it as a “wild Navy town,” a fun, sunny place where she was young and happy, not the charmless Baptist enclave demarcated by strip malls that it had become. Or, perhaps, always was.

After a series of sales jobs, she ended up working as the fine arts manager at Jacksonville University, booking various acts into the school’s performing arts center. She got to talk to musicians and agents in New York — who loved her stories, especially the ones about Charlie Parker — and generally organized everything related to a performance. She could also talk to the talent in a way the Ph.D. types could not. At 70, she’d finally found a job she loved.

“I think that might have been the right job for me in the beginning,” she says “But I’m not sure any job would have been right when I was young, when I was chasing that dream. I’m still not sure exactly what the dream was.”

Pat Young working on dinner this summer at the family farm she's restoring in Iowa.

My Mom’s Jobs ( give or take a few dozen)

Babysitter — Various, Flint, Michigan
Cashier —Drugstore, Flint, Michigan
Usher — The Strand Theatre, Flint, Michigan
Record Store Clerk — Smith Bridgeman’s Department Store, Flint, Michigan
Scarf Saleswoman — Smith Bridgeman’s Department Store, Flint, Michigan
Record Store Clerk — Al’s Record Mart, Detroit, Michigan
Factory Worker — AC Spark Plug, Flint Michigan
Factory Worker — Unknown, New York City
Art Model — Art Students League and Columbia University, New York City
Model — Wholesale District, New York City
Factory Worker — AC Spark Plug, Flint, Michigan
Manager/Receptionist — The Coiffure Shop, Flint, Michigan
Department Store Model — Burdines, Miami
Department Store Model — Bergdorff Goodmans, New York City
Stewardess — National Airlines, Miami, Key West, Havana
Saleswoman — Avis Car Rental, Jacksonville, Florida
Saleswoman — Hertz Car Rental, Jacksonville, Florida
Instructor — Barbizon Modeling School, Jacksonville, Florida
Admitting Clerk — McLaren Hospital, Flint, Michigan
Hotel Manager — Cloudcroft, New Mexico
Dental Assistant — Snyder, Texas
Gun Sales Lady — Star Discount, Snyder, Texas
Ring Toss Hawker — Carnival, Snyder, Texas
Advertising Representative — Snyder Daily News, Snyder, Texas
Admitting Clerk — McLaren Hospital, Flint, Michigan
Admitting Clerk — St. Vincent’s Hospital, Jacksonville, Florida
Manager — Blue Cross Gift Shop, Jacksonville, Florida
Babysitter — Jacksonville, Florida
Saleswoman — Dilliard’s Department Store, Jacksonville, Florida
Saleswoman — Steinmart, Jacksonville, Florida
Fine Arts Manager — Jacksonville University, Jacksonville, Florida

Vehicle City Bands

Anyone remember a Flint band from the late '40s called The Rhythmers, or perhaps it was The Rhythmaires?

UPDATE: The Rhythmers (?) had musicians from all over Flint. I knew of them as I played in Central High's band and Jerry Sawdon, the drummer, was a good friend of my family. His stepfather, George Domm, was a real estate agent and acquaintance of my dad. His brother was discharged from the Navy and came home and formed the band. His name was Dick Sawdon and he played sax. I often went to the Sawdons house with Jerry as he lived two blocks from Central off Second Street. His mother owned and ran Maria's Cleaners on Second near their house. The band rehearsed at Jerry's house and I became friends with one of the girlfriends of the bass player. She was Lois Scotton who in later life owned the Scotton Shop on Third Ave. in what's now called Carriage Town. She introduced me to her friend the bass player Earl Prahl, brother of Marie Prahl, who later became Dean of Women at Flint Community College. Earl and Lois went to Northern and brought another Northern alumni, Jack Thomas. I think he played the piano. He later went on to teach at Boston Conservatory of Music. There was another member I liked very much but can't remember his name. He was Polish and lots of fun. The band ended in tragedy when returning from a gig in Saginaw they were involved in a car crash and Dick Sawdon was killed. I moved to Detroit after that and aside from my life long friendship with Earl Prahl I lost contact with them and didn't return to Flint for many years.
— Pat Young

Happy Birthday from Flint Expatriates

It's time to wish Pat Young — our most loyal reader and contributor — a happy birthday. She was born at Hurley Hospital in 1930. She stays in great shape by restraining her highly trained attack dog, Rob Roy, and writing about old Flint, the Sill Building, and etiquette lessons. Happy birthday, Mom!

Happy Birthday, Big Mama!

It's time to wish Pat Young — our most loyal reader and contributor — a happy birthday. She was born at Hurley Hospital in 1930 and graduated from Flint Central in 1947. She stays in great shape by restraining her highly trained attack dog, Rob Roy, and writing about old Flint, the Sill Building, and etiquette lessons. Happy birthday, Mom!

A Flint Expatriate Christmas

Gordie Young (Flint Powers Class of 1984) and Pat McFarlane Young (Flint Central Class of 1948)

Etiquette Lessons

The Durant Hotel ballroom in its glory years.

A conversation about etiquette lessons offered by Mrs. Church and Mrs. Patterson in Flint brought back these memories for Pat McFarlane Young...

In my quest to be "one of the bunch" or, as it was known in the forties, one of the "400" crowd at Flint Central, my typical screwed up teenage mind felt my life would be transformed if only I could attend Mrs. Church's etiquette classes. The culmination of the classes was a dance party in the Durant Hotel ballroom, which all the peons had to hear about in school the next day.

At the time, this quest rated right up there with bleaching a streak in my hair like Nancy Jacks, having an arm full of turquoise and silver bracelets from The China Closet, or a collection of angora ankle bobby socks. I knew my parents would never understand this desire and consider it a total waste of money. But somehow I got the money and enrolled with Mrs. Church. I believe the classes were held at her house in the Civic Park area, meeting once a week for a little more than a month.

After telling my parents some bogus story I would run to the bus stop on Lewis and Kearsley Park Blvd. and catch the bus. It was dark when class ended. The other kids’ parents would pick them up but I had to run like hell to catch the buss. If I missed it, I would have had a hard time explaining to my folks.

Somehow I made it through the classes and even finagled a dress for the dance party. My parents did drive me to the Durant, but I can't remember how I managed to arrange it. I do remember the thrill I felt standing on the balcony overlooking the Durant lobby and going in to the party. The big thrill of the night was that Don Cronin asked me to dance. He later became the mayor and worked with my dad at Darby & Son Real Estate. He turned out to be a very nice, kind man and I always remembered that dance.

Looking back I realize that high school is the hardest time in a young person’s life because they are trying to decide who they really are. It took me many years to figure it out, and I now realize old age is as hard as high school. I'm still searching.

A recent shot of the ballroom before renovations began on the hotel. (Photo by Mellowedee via Flickr.)

Why Can't I Be Like Alberta Whaley?

More memories of Flint from Pat McFarlane, born at Hurley Hospital in 1930.


Why can’t I be like Alberta Whaley? As far back as I can remember that question would pop into my consciousness like a Hindu mantra.

Alberta was my best friend. She lived in the next block on Illinois Avenue at a time when blocks were cities unto themselves and you knew everyone. Some families were considered undesirable, like the Bach’s who lived a few doors down from our house. My every outdoor excursion was prefaced by my parents with “Don’t play with the Bach kids.” Of course, my rebellious nature made me devise clever schemes to do just that.
Now I realize that the Bach’s were poor. Although we were working class, my parents had high standards that had nothing to do with money. When discussing the Bach’s my dad would say, “You don’t need money to mow your lawn.”

Alberta’s parents were Southerners who had migrated to Michigan looking for work and a better life. In the thirties, Flint was a Mecca for the unemployed looking for jobs in the booming auto plants. “Go West Young Man” had turned into “ Go North.” Her dad worked the night shift at Buick and her mother was a telephone operator for Michigan Bell in the days when you dialed zero a real person answered. Alberta’s mom was a true, soft-spoken Southern lady. I had my suspicions that her dad was a quiet drinker but this was never discussed. Alberta and I knew that some things are best left unsaid.

Our friendship was an unlikely one as she always did what her parents told her and I was always asking “Why not?” Perhaps that’s why we were such good friends, each fascinated by our respective differences.

I spent most Saturday afternoons at the Roxy, a small neighborhood theater a few blocks from my house. I loved the darkness and the roar of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lion heralding an afternoon of previews, world news, serials and finally the main feature. It was usually a western or film noir, allowing me to escape into the Wild West or the shadows of a mysterious city. Alberta could never go with me as I think her parents considered movies sinful.

At that time, my parents didn’t attend a church, believing that God knew they were good people simply because they were Scots and had arrived in Michigan from Iowa. But I was drawn to religion. I made pilgrimages to various churches and Sunday schools. I even had myself baptized. Twice! Sometimes I would go with Alberta and her mother to their evangelical church. It was nice until the call to march up to the altar and “accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior.” In spite of the gentle hand of Alberta’s mother urging me on, my instinct was to run, so my evangelical experience was short lived. I eventually became a Catholic, where you were not coerced into marching down the aisle to communion, but it was understood that if you didn’t you would bypass purgatory and go directly to Hell. I could identify with that doctrine.

Occasionally, we would get to spend the night at each other’s house. Unlike today’s “sleepovers,” it was a special occasion and done only between families who knew each other well. It was always a quiet event at my house because my bedroom was right across the hall from my parents. But Alberta’s house had one bedroom downstairs where we slept. We giggled, told secrets, read Nancy Drew books and best of all, raided the icebox for our favorites — left over fried pork chops and banana peppers, which were an exotic food to me. I don’t think they existed in the Scottish food chain.

But like many youthful friendships, Alberta and I drifted apart. By the time we reached Central High School, we’d simply say hi in the hallway, talk occasionally, but that was it. I was reminded of Alberta when her name appeared on the honor roll every semester, while mine was often on the tardy list.

I loved history, social studies and band. I played alto sax and being in the band meant being classified as a nerd. I preferred to think of the band members as artistic intellectuals. Some of us played in jazz bands after school and a few went on to become professional musicians. The male drum major in later years became the mayor of Flint. And many, like most Flint high-school graduates, went to work for General Motors.

I still remember the thrill I felt when our band marched onto the football field playing the fight song and I knew whatever I did in life it had to be exciting. I didn’t realize exciting can sometimes be a lonely road to travel.

I became friends with a drummer in the band named Jerry. He lived a block from Central and we sometimes ate at his house. His mother had painted nails, wore red lipstick and was divorced! She was remarried to a real estate salesman that Jerry hated. Just after VE day, Jerry’s older brother, Richard, returned home from the Navy. Suddenly, lunch at Jerry’s became very inviting. Dick was going to college and playing saxophone in jazz band, and we all know the low moan of an alto Sax in a smoke filled room is the Pied Piper of love.

Forget high school! I spent all my time taking my fake ID and trying to get into bars and clubs where the band was playing. I may have invented the catch phrase “I’m With The Band.”

The bass player, Earl, was my first exposure to a brooding intellectual. He was tall, dark, handsome and involved in the socialist movement. He soon had me passing out the Daily Worker and going to Detroit to see Russian propaganda movies in secret mysterious places. I was flattered that someone so intelligent could like me. He eventually earned his Ph. D. and became an archeologist, widely published and well known for his projects everywhere from Northern Michigan to Mexico. We always remained friends. I knew he loved me and I often wonder how my life would have played out with him.

I lost track of Alberta after we graduated from high school and I left Flint. My mother sent me the newspaper announcement of her wedding to a policeman. Some years later I heard she had a son who was severely disabled. I understand she and her husband were devoted to caring for him. God knew what he was doing when he sent that baby to Alberta. She was full of goodness and love.

Now, even though many years have passed she is still a part of my life. In my darkest moments of despair, misjudgment and just plain selfishness, it crosses my mind like a banner behind a small plane. Why can’t I be like Alberta Whaley?

Is she somewhere pondering, Why can’t I be like Pat McFarlane?

A Sense of Place: The Sill Building

The demolition of the Sill Building in downtown Flint, Michigan. (Photo courtesy of Amy Peterson)

A postcard of the Flint P. Smith Building, later renamed the Sill Building.

Downtown Flint during flooding in the 1940s.

Memories of another Flint landmark that is no more by Pat McFarlane Young, who has written about Flint bands, the I.M.A., old friends, and etiquette lessons.

I was puzzled by the recent photo of downtown Flint shot from the sixth floor of the Durant Hotel. The skyline didn’t quite look right. Then I realized the tall, narrow building that stood like a sentinel overlooking Saginaw Street near the river was missing. The Sill Building was gone.

The northern end of downtown always seemed more exciting to me than the rest, home to Thompson’s restaurant, the penny arcade and the Greyhound Bus station crowded with interesting characters, most of whom were not waiting for a bus. Across the street were the forbidden Rialto Theatre and an upstairs pool hall where boxer Jock Leslie hung out.

But my most vivid memories are of the Sill Building because my father’s office was on the third floor overlooking Saginaw Street. As a child my mother and I got to “visit” the office and view every parade from the windows of Darby & Son Realtors. Another not so pleasant memory was watching the historic Flint flood waters flow through downtown.

As a teenager I felt important going into the Sill Building. It was like I was marching to the Cheers theme song, headed “where everybody knows your name.” The elevator operator sitting on her little pull down stool greeted me with “Hello Patty, going to see your Dad?” I’m sure she probably guessed I was planning to ask him for a few bucks to go to the Honey Dell for a parfait and then catch the Lewis St. bus home so my mother would think I had walked straight from Central High School. Dad always came through with the parting words, “You don’t need to mention this to Mama.”

He never had to worry about that as Dad was my gentle hero all my life. I didn’t appreciate what my sometimes dour Scottish mother instilled in me until many years later. Their love, and growing up in Flint, made me into a person that could handle tough times and appreciate what really matters. I have faith that my hometown will now do the same.

Verne McFarlane hard at work in the Sill Building.

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday to Flint Expatriate and Central High grad Patricia McFarlane Young. She's 79 today. Have a great day, Mama.

Go here for some of Pat's reflections on Flint. And here for her memories of etiquette lessons at the Durant. And here for a story of what works means for a Flint native.

Flint Portraits: Peter C. Cavanaugh

A WTAC live remote broadcast of the Peter C. Morning Show at Eastland Mall in 1970 draws a crowd.

Peter C. Cavanaugh, a Flint radio icon at WTAC from the sixties to the early eighties and the man who organized the Sherwood Forest concert series in Davison, is often credited with introducing Michigan and the rest of the country to the likes of The Who, Ted Nugent, Bob Seger, Alice Cooper, and The MC5. Michael Moore credits him with "saving a generation of Flint kids from the likes of Pat Boone."

If you want the full story, he has a book out that manages to capture the spirit of both Flint and rock 'n' roll. Here's an excerpt from Local DJ: A Rock "N" Roll History:

"Atwood Stadium is an old high-school athletic facility in Flint. In August, Herman's Hermits were scheduled to headline a major show. Among the opening acts were several young British musicians who had banded together in 1965, and had been introduced to U.S. airwaves over WTAC later that year with their first Decca single. It was called, "I Can't Explain." It is well known and acknowledged in Rock `n Roll history books that WTAC was the first radio station in America to ever play The WHO. By cosmic convergence, August 23, 1967, was also Keith Moon's twenty-first birthday. At least according to his testimony at the time. Subsequent investigation would later indicate that honoring an exact score of years would have been more precise, yet, conferring 'underage status' in many states, '20' might have presented certain geographic inconveniences. It matters not. Keith and the group brought a birthday cake to our WTAC studios in celebration of the momentous event and in appreciation of our earlier efforts on their behalf. We thought it was pretty wild. It was his birthday and we got the cake. 'Far out!'

"We interviewed the group and pushed the show. Ticket sales had been slow. Nobody knew who the WHO were. This was their first major tour of The States with little attention being yet paid by the trades or in "teeny-bop" magazines which now flourished seemingly everywhere. The promoter had been counting on Herman's Hermits for drawing power, but they were on a bit of a fade. "Mrs. Brown, You Have a Lovely Daughter" only sounded good under the influence of bubble-gum. I arranged to get the night off in honor of Keith's birthday. We had been promised an extraordinary treat. The promise was understated.

"Under cloudy skies, and with only several thousand in attendance, the sponsors didn't break-even. The Blues Magoos were introduced and did a nice thirty-minute set, closing with their biggest hit, 'You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet.' How prophetic. After 20 minutes of equipment changes, the WHO took charge and exploded.

"Take no prisoners. Balls to the walls. It can't get any louder. Yes, it can. He's setting fire to his guitar. Shit. He's breaking everything up. There go the amps. He's kicking-in the bass-drum. What? Everything's blowing-up! Feedback's screaming!! They left the stage completely destroyed!!! The show's over!!!! ROCK `N ROLL!!!!! The crowd reacted with proportionate appreciation. Hope I die before I get old. Backstage, every member of Herman's Hermits was ashen-faced. They had to go on after that and sing twinky little tunes about some fat king with eight wives? Fuuuuuuuck."

You can order copies of the book from Peter C.'s website, which is also a great source for photos, including all the shots featured here.

Bob Seger rocks Mt. Holly in July, 1970. And if you're wondering about the pants, I'm guessing they're some ski pants he swiped from the pro shop.

Sentimental Journey

The stage of the Capitol Theater in better days.

A reflection on Flint from Pat McFarlane Young, born at Hurley Hospital on November 2, 1930. It was originally posted on November 7, 2007, and it's one of my favorites on Flint Expatriates.

A stranger traveling through Flint today would, in all probability, view it as a rather dreary, gray, nondescript city filled with abandoned factories, boarded up buildings, and streets in need of repair. It certainly doesn’t have the charm of San Francisco or the excitement of New York, but I still see Flint through the eyes of my youth.

I often have an acute attack of melancholy thinking of my school days at Central High. My thoughts drift to 1945 and the school grounds teeming with students on their lunch hour, sitting on the lawn or hanging around Lloyd’s Drug Store, hiding their cigarettes in cupped hands. If I hurried I could run downtown for a coke at Pinecrest, a tiny lunch counter in the Capitol Theater Building. It was a hangout for the so called “400,” a faction everyone wanted desperately to belong to. I felt that my presence there would somehow make me belong as if by osmosis — a theory soon disproved by the chosen few.

After school I studied in the old Public Library, standing like a fortress at Kearsley and Clifford Streets. It was full of enchanting nooks and crannies with mysterious, narrow stairways where I sat and hid for hours in the world of books. I’m sure the new library offers many more advantages, but never again will I be able to escape in such a belletristic atmosphere.

I grew up on the Eastside and recall the unexplained pride I felt when the 3:30 Buick factory whistle blew and the roughly dressed workers poured out of the General Motors labyrinth swinging their lunch pails. Some were headed for home and some for the corner bar, but all with the determined step of an army after a battle won. I somehow felt as if I were a part of this giant assembly line and the city it fed.

Saturday night was an exciting climax to the week. I sometimes spent the evening surrounded by rainbows of shimmering colored light bouncing off the ceiling and walls like ping pong balls as couples swayed gently to the music. A psychedelic happening? No, only Saturday night at the IMA during the big band era. The World War II melodies of “Moonlight Cocktail” and “Sentimental Journey” were perfect accompaniments for the mood of the times.

Nostalgia, I’m sure, is the opiate of old age. Memories over ten years old automatically become the “good ol’ days." We remember only the happy things and leave the shaded areas behind. And yet, faintly sifting through the sands of time, I seem to recall saying, "The day I’m eighteen, I’m leaving this town."