Happy Thanksgiving from Flint Expatriates

Thanksgiving at 1515 Illinois Avenue in 1974.

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.

Home Away From Home

With all the decay and destruction on the East Side, I always prepare myself for the worst whenever I drive by my grandparent's old house, where my mom was raised and I spent a lot of time, on Illinois Avenue. And I continue to be amazed when I see how good it still looks on each visit. The current owners are always nice to me when I knock on the door, and I'm hoping they never move. Having been back to Flint half a dozen times over the last three years, I'm past the point of getting upset when my memories collide with Flint's current reality, but it's still great to run across a house or building that means something to you and discover that it's still close to the way you remember it.

Flint T-Shirts

Flint Expatriates has official t-shirts, thanks to artist extraordinaire Jessica Lynch at Slow Loris Designs.

They feature the infamous Genesee Towers, the Mott Foundation Building, the historic Vehicle City arch, the Citizens Bank Weather Ball, and my Grandma McFarlane's Buick Electra 225 all lovingly rendered on a slate gray American Apparel shirt in deep blue ink. There are also extra small sizes available in blue ink on white shirts. The original art for the shirt is hand drawn by Jessica.

Click here to be redirected to the Slow Loris homepage. Once you are there, just click on the "For the Love of Flint" shirt and complete your order.

Flint Photos: 1501 Detroit Street

This is a shot my mom recently unearthed of the building my grandparents owned at 1501 Detroit Street in 1945. It was few blocks from Welch Blvd. on what is now Martin Luther King Ave.

The building was just a few blocks north of the intersection in this postcard.

View Larger Map

This is the general area today on Google Maps.

Flint Photos: E. 2nd Street

The house on E. 2nd St. bet between Stevens and Wallenberg where my grandparents lived when my mom was born in 1930. It appears to be a parking lot now.

Kearsley Park on the 4th of July

I usually spent the 4th of July in Kearsley Park when I lived in Flint. My grandparents' house was around the corner on Illinois Avenue, and we'd all head over to the park with blankets and sparklers. I took these photos a couple weeks back just after a torrential downpour that temporarily turned Kearsley Park Blvd. into Lakefront property.

If you look hard enough, you can almost see Safetyville.

The steps down to the park near the intersection of Kearsley Park Blvd. and Olive Street. Gypsy Jack lived just a few blocks north.

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.)

Gypsy Jack: A Flint Legend

As this photo reveals, you just never know what you'll run into on the East Side of Flint.

The Flint Journal has discovered that Gypsy Jack's house is for sale on eBay, which is old news to Flint Expatriates readers. The Journal story includes two fantastic file photos, so we finally have a nice shot of the house and Roy "Gypsy Jack" Steffenson Jr. in all his glory. (Thanks to Slick for passing this one along.)

Bassett Place

Jim Holbel's recent visit to Flint brought back a lot of memories of the old neighborhood. I wondered if I had any photos of my house at 2402 Bassett Place. I did a little digging and found this shot from June 1972, taken the day my older brother, Matt, graduated from Powers.

Whose idea was the orange graduation gown? Rumor has it there was a rigged election at the high school that led to the color selection. Can you say "voter fraud"? My brother asked me not to name any names. The good news is that the gowns could also be worn for deer hunting, highway construction work or Denver Broncos games.

That's me in the left corner, acting up in the looming shadow of my 6' 5" brother, and sporting a classic seventies outfit — red pants and a purple shirt. My grandpa, Verne McFarlane, is in one of the suits he wore every day except Saturday. My mom is in front with my grandma, Leone, in one of her many stylish sweater ensembles. And the house itself features the green aluminum siding that I've heard it still has today.

You might also notice the lawn chair in the lower left corner. This was back in the days when you could sit on the front lawn in the shade and watch the baseball games across the street.

Homedale Elementary and the Wild West

UPDATE: Readers have written in to the comment section with more information on the Wild West house. It was owned by Roy "Gypsy Jack" Steffenson Jr., a local legend who lived in the cowboy shrine on Davison Road near Olive Avenue for more than two decades. He clearly was not a hippie, but when I met him as a kid I was prone to throw anyone with a beard into that category. He inspired a song by The Travelin' Bluesman, "a track in which the Bluesman describes his relationship with Flint legend Gypsy Jack, a person he credits talking him out of doing something that would have ruined his life forever." (And it's not about taking a job at GM.) The album cover just might be a photo of Gypsy Jack's house, but I'm not sure. NBC's "Real People" show may have profiled him as well. Gypsy Jack reportedly died on September 8, 2003. Sadly, his house appears to have been abandoned and picked over by looters.

There's more information in the Comment section for this post, including some memories on the East Side's infamous Adolf Moses.

Anyone with more details or a photo of Gypsy Jack should feel free to pass it along.

Homedale Elementary School Class of 1973

Homedale Elementary School Class of 1974

I guess I shouldn't be surprised anymore when I hear about another place that means something to me in Flint getting shut down and left to rot, but I was still depressed to learn that Homedale Elementary School is closed.

My grandparents lived nearby on Illinois Avenue. My mom attended Homedale before moving on to Whittier and then Central. I went to pre-kindergarten at Homedale for a few months when we were all living at my grandparents' place before moving to a house near Bassett Park.

I remember there was a big house near the school — perhaps on Olive Avenue near Davison Road — that had been transformed into a sort of Wild West museum by two hippies who owned the place. Now were they actually hippies? All I know is that they had huge beards and long hair, which was not a look my Grandmother McFarlane — who grew up on a 40-acre farm in Maple Leaf, Iowa, during the depression — would take a liking to.

One day grandma and I were walking past the house after a visit to the Homedale playground, and one of the hippie dudes was out in the yard, near the covered wagon they'd installed. My grandma struck up a conversation, complimenting him on the house. When he invited us inside, I was stunned when she said yes.

It seemed like the weirdest place in the world to me. There were wagon wheels and all kinds of other cowboy/wild west paraphernalia everywhere. These guys didn't just have a few things scattered around; the house looked like the prop room for a Sam Peckinpah picture. The hippie took us down to the basement and, as I clutched grandma's hand, revealed a built-in replica of a frontier jail, complete with a mannequin dressed as a sheriff and outlaw dummy in a small cell. (Of course, I now realize there must have been a lot of pot smoked down in that basement.)

Very strange, and mildly terrifying...but amazingly cool! And we made it out alive. On the way home grandma remarked, "Those fellows have too much time on their hands."

I hunted around for some material on Homedale, and I came across a website by a Flintoid now living in Arkansas named Kevin Watkins. He attended Homedale from 1970-1976, and his mother, Wanda Watkins, was one of the playground teachers there for several years. He posted the class photos above and the shot of the auditorium below. (Click on the class photos to enlarge them; several names are handwritten on the photos.) He asks for more information on Homedale, but my email to him got bounced back.

No idea what happened to Kevin Watkins or the Wild West boys of Olive Avenue.

Homedale Elementary School Auditorium

Homedale Faculty in the early '70s

• Mr. Walter Behm, Principal
• Mr. Gary Sullenger, Community School Director
• Mrs. Finch, Secretary
• 6th Grade - Mrs. Carpenter, Mr Field, Miss Porter, Mrs. Patten
• 5th Grade - Mr. Bonno, Mr. Ervin, Mrs. Graham
• 4th Grade - Mrs. Cleveland, Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Princing
• 3rd Grade - Mrs. Converso, Mrs. Harrington, Mrs. Robart, Mrs. Leflore
• 2nd Grade - Miss Green, Mrs. Pagel, Mrs. Tucker, Mrs. Ghattas
• 1st Grade - Mrs. Bader, Mrs. Hanley, Mrs. Weatherhead
• Kindergarten - Mrs. Helber, Mrs. Keedle, Mrs. Hans, Mrs. Geiger
  Other faculty: Miss Berden, Mrs. Guerin, Mrs.Katzenberger, Mr. Langley, Mrs. MacKinnon, Mrs. Ray, Mrs. Riggs, Mrs Ryan, Mrs. Benjamin, Mrs. Jarvis, Mrs. Taylor, Mr. Bill Hubbard, Mrs. Linda Munoz, Mr. joe Munoz, Mr. David Dobin.

Deuce and a Quarter

Speaking of Buick Electras, this is the two-door convertible version of my first car, courtesy of my Grandma McFarlane. It's a fantastic Flint ride from a time when aerodynamics and gas mileage took a backseat to style. The paint color? Bamboo Cream. Sounds like a drink that would give you a bad hangover. And I guess this car is emblematic of bad times for GM. The lovable land yacht was rolling off the line when the energy crisis hit in the seventies. But at least GM learned their lesson and didn't repeat the mistake of making huge vehicles in an era of rising fuel prices. Oh, wait, strike that last sentence.