Flint Photos: Interior of House on Dayton Street

The Cats of Dayton Street

BJ has left a new comment on your post "Memories of Civic Park and Sears Kit Houses":

"Rereading this older post reminded me of a cute childhood memory about the Dayton and Dupont St. A&P. They had a great fresh fish counter in 1956 that puts our modern grocery stores to shame. This was before freezing everything was popular so every Saturday afternoon before closing they would reduce that week's leftover Great Lake smelt to 10 cents/pound. By today's cost even the fresh price must have been awesome but I don't remember it. They packaged them in amounts too large for immediate use so my mom allowed me to throw several to a few neighborhood cats along Dayton St. No one had inside cats in 1957, so it didn't take too many Saturday's until the cats caught on and brought all their friends. My mom and I usually led a parade of screaming cats down Dayton St. to our house every Saturday afternoon."

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.

Civic Park and a ball of string

Please excuse my temporary obsession with the Civic Park neighborhood where I grew up, but reader GH has provided an excellent rundown of the small strip of stores on Dayton Place between Delmar Street and Forest Hill Avenue, just across the street from Civic Park School and east of Comers/Double D Market. This is where my family bought countless loaves of Balkan bread, and I got my regular supply of Wacky Packages.

I also remember standing on the corner waiting for the bus one morning with my mom when a guy with long hair and a poncho staggered up to us and asked, "Excuse me, which way is north?" (Always best to start with the basics after a night of heavy drinking.) We both pointed toward Canada; my mom gave him two dollars; and he weaved away in the general direction of the Mackinaw Bridge.

Here is GH's recollection:

"As far as the stores go, there was a constant change of guard in that strip. However, going back to the start of my memory, on the east end, it was Comers Market (before they built the new place), then that spot turned into a storage warehouse for foam cushions and was also subdivided to create the Ski Haus to the west. The foam place died out and the Laundromat moved in. West of the Ski Haus was the barber shop, next was Rickman's drug store, still going west it was Max's Hardware sold to become Lewis Hardware, further west was Stiltz Realty, who took over after the gift shop closed, who took over from Mrs. Friend's small diner, after it closed.

"Going west from Stiltz, it was the Dry Cleaners and finally the Philips gas station on the end facing west. The bakery took over from the dry cleaners when they closed. The guy who ran the dry cleaners was a tough character. Three of my older brothers worked for him on & off.

"In thinking this over, I worked for every business listed above at one time or other with the exception of Stiltz Realty and the dry cleaners. The fellow at the gas station was very large and also created a very large ball of string. The potato chip boxes came tied with string. Over many years he patiently added this string to his ball. I believe it was at least 30" in diameter when his predecessor in the gas station finally set it to the curb. The last time I saw that ball of string, it was rolling down Delmar St in the middle of the night, headed for the small ball diamond at Haskell (pushed by me and a couple of my buddies)."