Flint Photos: Chevy in the Hole, 1979

Another dearly departed Flint landmark. Chevrolet Avenue looking southeast in March of 1979. Photo courtesy of Bryan P. Snyder.

A Tale of Two Bars

Rube's near the corner of Chevrolet and Flushing recently closed.

But the nearby Ambassador Bar survives.

Memories of Civic Park and Sears Kit Houses

Flint Expatriate Roadsidedinerlover looks back at the Flint houses she remembers...

My earliest Flint memories were of my loving grandparents, Marguerite and David. Their home [left] was built by my grandfather from a Sears kit in 1920. I think their home was the one called 'The Bandon."

My grandmother was a homemaker who made incredible meals and lemon meringue pies that I still dream about. My grandfather was a tool and die maker for the Buick factory. He came to Flint because they would not hire him as an Irish Catholic man in Boston.

My mother was the first born child and then came my uncle. Both of them grew up in the Civic Park area on Mt. Elliott Avenue and attended Civic Park school. They had aunts and uncles who lived in the area as well. The earliest photos I have of them as children show Civic Park with few trees and only a handful of houses. My mother told me that there used to be a streetcar that ran down Dayton Street and then turned onto Detroit Street to take her and her mother downtown. This would have been in the early 1930s. On the corner of Dayton and Detroit was an A&P store where I would go shopping with my grandmother. I always thought "Ann Page" was a real woman.

I loved sitting on my Grandma's porch. One day she was upset and crying because a little boy from across the street had been hit and killed on Chevrolet Avenue. There was so much love in that house. The first time I saw it again after my uncle sold it, I was dumbstruck by its condition. I did not know it had been repossessed by a local mortgage company. I wish I could win the lottery and buy it and fix it up. This is a just one of many houses in Civic Park that are tattered and torn up. So many emotions come over me...anger and sorrow being the strongest ones. Anger towards General Motors is my primary one.

My great Aunt Emma's house [left] is on Dayton across from Civic Park school. There used to be a large Coca Cola sign on one of the stores across the street. It was a great soda fountain shop and drugstore I believe. I remember going there and having something sugary to eat. This store was right down from the Balkan Bakery. I would love going to see my aunt and seeing all of her old furniture from the past. She had a Hoosier Cabinet in her kitchen and a clawfoot bath tub upstairs. This home was occupied the last time I saw it about 5 years ago.

Milbourne Memories

Sarah Swart's old house on Milbourne Avenue.

Sarah Swart left Flint in 1982. She returned with her husband, Victor, this summer for a reunion of the Flint Academy classes of 1979 through 1988. She sent me notes and photos from her trip, including details of her visit to Hidden Park. I managed to lose the rest of the travelogue somewhere on my computer until today. So here are some more details of Sarah’s trip home.

"I used to live on Milbourne Avenue in the Summerfield Elementary neighborhood. My mother heard that our old house is now boarded up. I wanted to investigate, but I’d been told by a few people, including one at the dinner-dance the night before, that the area is now “rough” and I should be careful: Lock your doors, and don’t stop.

"Victor and I had breakfast kitty-corner from the Genesee Valley. That’s where I had my first job at B. Dalton Bookseller 29 years ago.
"All along Miller Road I was struck by how much has changed—and a few things that are still the same: Kmart, and the building that housed Moy Kong. The restaurant is out of business, but I still remember Moy Kong’s [Left] delicious cubes of pressed duck. After we turned left on Ballenger Highway, I saw Clyde Burtrum Furs, apparently open. It has no significance other than that it tickled an ancient memory — print advertising? Radio? In any case, I was glad that it’s still around. I got shots of McLaren Hospital and King Arthur’s Pasties.

"We turned right onto Flushing — noticing the absence of Paddy McGee’s and Sorrento’s (the latter of which we will see later, out on Pierson Road) and continued east to Chevrolet Avenue. In moments we were driving past the boarded-up Longfellow Middle School, where I spent some miserable time back in the day.
"I was in a history class there once and had a near-breakdown, standing up and screaming at all my classmates that I didn’t know what they were doing there if they were going to make it impossible for teachers to teach or anyone to learn. Whew.

"A left on Mackin and a right on Milbourne, and I am walking home from school again, nine-years old.

"Milbourne is still a lovely street, with trees arching overhead and nice houses, each well-designed and well-proportioned. Some are less well-maintained than others, but I get no sense of danger. Grant you, this perspective could be foolish, and it is about nine in the morning. I point out where the Haases used to live on Clement Street, and where the little girl who pulled out her own eyelashes would stay sometimes with her dad near Begole.
"Turning onto Copeman from Chevrolet, the first two houses on the left were boarded up, one on the inside [Left]. A few other homes were empty or seriously bedraggled. I tried without success to identify the house of a girl named Dawn, who used to play The Carpenters Greatest Hits over and over.

"Then we were at my old house. Although the porch roof was sad, with greenery growing from its sloped eaves, it was still the same house, somewhat funereal in atmosphere (always was) but also attractive in a quiet, stately way."

Hidden Park Revisited

Flint Expatriate Sarah Swart recently returned to The Vehicle City and paid a visit to the elusive Hidden Park. Here are the pictures to prove it:

The well-disguised entrance on Chevrolet Avenue.

An abandoned house next to the Chevrolet Avenue entrance. Sara estimates the abandoned houses outnumber the inhabited ones on that block.

The southern end of the park, complete with piles of abandoned magazines.

A look north from from the Chevrolet Avenue entrance, including a little stray garbage.