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.

Civic decay

The former Lowell Middle School sits empty on the East Side. Photo via Jeana-Dee Allen/The Flint Journal.

Some of Flint's biggest eyesores — including Whaley Pool and Homedale Elementary School — are owned by city entities. Joe Lawlor of The Flint Journal reports:

"Throughout Flint, there are at least 17 examples in which public entities -- including Hurley, the city and the Flint School District -- have abandoned buildings they own, a Flint Journal analysis found through a review of property records, a visual inspection of the properties and talking to neighbors.

"In many cases, those buildings are now dilapidated shells, only shadows of the structures they once were. All have been abandoned in the past dozen or so years.

"Myron Orfield, president of Ameregis, a Minnesota-based think tank that examines urban and suburban issues, said problems can worsen in city neighborhoods that experience dilapidated, closed schools or vacant homes that are left to decay.

"'When neighborhoods go into general disrepair, it accentuates people's general bad feelings,'Orfield said."

Leadership with conviction

The budget situation in Flint is so dire that Mayor Don Williamson has proposed closing the city jail. That's one plan that City Councilman Ehren Gonzales (left) is likely to endorse; he was arrested and jailed Sunday morning after a domestic dispute.

Williamson knows how Gonzales feels. The mayor was sentenced to a federal penitentiary for operating a stolen car ring in the 1960s.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Calvin J. Sibley, R.I.P.

Flint's third homicide of 2008, reported by The Flint Journal:

"A man was shot about 5:50 p.m. Saturday on King Avenue near North Home Avenue.

"The man, identified as Calvin J. Sibley, 30, Flint, was exiting his car when he was shot several times, Flint police said.

"Sibley was taken to Hurley Medical Center, where he died from his injuries, police said.

"The suspect is a male in his 20s. He was seen getting out of a burgundy full-size pickup shortly before the shooting, police said.

"The suspect last was seen running and firing a gun, police said."

Charlton Heston dies

Actor and gun enthusiast Charlton Heston died at the age of 84 on Saturday. His excruciating interview in Bowling for Columbine caused a hellacious controversy, even by Michael Moore's standards.

Flint fashion, circa 1990

Flint style, circa 1990, possibly exhibited in ads for the Capitol Cafe and The Vogue. If you spot anyone you know, let me know.


UPDATE: Aaron Stengel writes: Looks like the late 80s. I believe I see a some Central H.S. students in there but no Cafe regulars. The owner of the cafe moved out to the Portland or Seattle area (I forget) and got out of the restaurant business.

One interesting thing about those times was that there was still a white middle class IN Flint and the "Preppies" would be seen hanging out downtown with the poor punk malcontents and skinheads. However, those photos definitely look staged at lunchtime.

The only time there were that many people in front of the Capitol was for a show and there were never THAT many preppies at one. Notice the conspicuous absence of skaters or punk types.

Just like old times

The much-heralded Detroit Tigers start the season with four straight losses. Jim Hawkins of the Macomb Daily sums up the season so far:

"The season Tiger fans have been talking and dreaming about for four months, is fast turning into a nightmare. Four games -- and four failures -- into the eagerly awaited new year, the fans' optimism and enthusiasm has turned to boos."

Prep Personae

Lisa Birnbach edited and co-wrote The Official Preppy Handbook in 1980, revealing the then-secretive traditions, mannerisms, etiquette, and dress code of Lacoste-wearing old-money elites who prepped at Choate, summered at the Vineyard, and spent their golden years playing doubles at The Bath and Tennis Club in Palm Beach. The book lounged at number one on The New York Times bestseller list for 38 weeks and launched a fashion craze in the eighties that popularized everything from Sperry Top-Siders in land-locked locales to those persistently unflattering turtleneck dresses from Talbots, even in decidedly un-preppy places like Flint.

Today, the preppy look inexplicably reigns supreme once again. Kanye West favors pink and green argyle sweaters in concert; collar popping is still an embarrassing trend, and J. Crew has apparently become the official outfitter of the entire unimaginative nation.

Here's an interview I conducted with Birnbach for one of my low-paying freelance assignments:

First question...GQ is pairing rep ties with rugby shirts this month, L.L. Bean now stocks an all-black version of their classic boat and tote bag, and Marc Ecko is selling a nice little kelly green sweater with a pink skull and crossbones on it. Did you ever think preppy fashion would come to this?

I’m not surprised. Preppy is a palate cleanser between trends. It’s the true American aesthetic. It all comes from sportswear or athletic gear and that’s what we do best in this country in terms of style. And to throw in a little skull and crossbones, oohhh, that’s kind of tricky and dangerous. Or to wear a black thing instead of a pastel thing, ahhhh, that’s kind of naughty. Preppies need to express themselves, too.

Carol Wallace, one of the co-authors of the preppy handbook, has written that she’s not exactly sure why it was so popular. What do you think?

There were a lot of secrets revealed in that book. Nobody had codified a whole worldview like that before. But to be glib, it was a very cheap laugh. It was $3.95. It looked yummy because it had a cover with all these different elements on it rather than one central graphic. It was easy to read; the chapters averaged two hundred words. And if you read the book and found it funny you were in on the joke. And if you read the book and took it seriously you were becoming a self-help reader.

I grew up in Flint, Michigan, in a house with aluminum siding, yet I'm ashamed to say I wore pink button-downs and ridiculous patchwork pants to high school in the eighties. How do you think true preppies feel about having their look usurped by the masses?

Some hereditary preppies were probably offended, but I think it also validated people who had been out of the loop sartorially. Preppy was never fashionable until the handbook came out. Suddenly, because you were sloppy and had tape on your shoes, you were actually being looked up to by people who never really thought you had any sex appeal.

One of the “Basic Body Types” in the preppy handbook is The Aesthete. (“Tortoise-shell glasses; absence of body hair; abundance of freckles.”) It seems like a precursor to the geek chic that emerged during the nineties in places like Silicon Valley.

Absolutely. Preppies are the forbearers of the dot.com people and the indie rock people. There would be no bands like The Eels without the preppy handbook.

I’ve read that Generation X by Douglas Copeland was pitched as a preppy handbook-style guide, but the publishers made him novelize it. What was the original vision for the preppy handbook?

The publishers wanted an illustration and photograph-heavy catalog of preppy stuff. It wasn’t going to unveil the life and philosophy behind it. But it didn’t seem feasible to just display preppy items like gifts at a wedding without explaining why they were important in the context. So it grew and became a more ambitious project.

Do you have copies laying around the house in Manhattan, sharing space with antique duck decoys and Brown University yearbooks?

I think there’s a few in a storage bin somewhere, but I didn’t have any at home for a long time. I finally had to go out and get a few copies. I bought them used on the internet.

You and your husband have three children. What do they make of The Official Preppy Handbook?

My kids are very proud of it because all their friends are very impressed that I wrote it. One girl even told my daughter that I was her idol.

The preppy handbook has numerous imitators profiling everyone from evangelicals to hipsters. If you were going to write another one today, what type of person would you cover?

I haven’t ruled it out, so I don’t think I want to talk about it.

This is a little awkward, but what are you wearing?

Right this minute? Why I’m wearing nothing.

Really? That doesn’t sound very preppy.

OK, I’m wearing a pair of blue jeans from Seven for All Mankind. And I’m wearing the darkest, purplist cotton piquet polo shirt that you have ever seen that I got in Europe.

What about shoes? Weejuns? Espadrilles? Tretorns?

I happen to be barefoot at the moment.

Alright, Last question: Do you...

And cotton underwear.

OK, I was trying to move on before we reached that point.

And no tattoos.

Got it. Now do you care to make a few predictions on what’s next in the world of fashion?

I’d like to pose a question rather than make a prediction. If the “It” bag every season is at the $1000 threshold, how high are they going to go in the next couple of years? Who really should be spending $1000 a season on a handbag? I look at all these young women carrying them and I think they’re not eating to afford this thing, or they’re going on heavy credit card debt, or it’s a copy. It seems like a bad use of resources if you’re in your twenties to spend that kind of dough on a purse.

Is this the notorious frugal gene of preppies coming out?

Oh, you got me.

Flint gets tanked

American automakers can't seem to build a small car that people will buy, but a Kettering frat boy named Will Foster has managed to build a mini Panzer tank.

"Roughly the size of a small car, Foster's tank can reach speeds of around 20 mph with its three-cylinder diesel engine. Just like the real thing, the tank runs on treads and has a 360-degree cannon powered by compressed air from a scuba tank.

"Its camouflaged plywood exterior has become a curious fixture at Foster's Theta Xi fraternity house, where it is often parked next to a shed with a sign that reads 'Panzer parking. Violators will be totaled.'

Perhaps GM should bring this thing to market, treads and all. It wouldn't be a big seller in Poland, but it could probably do better than the Cadillac XLR, the worst selling car of 2007.

Flint Portraits: Tracy Murphy

Flint Powers graduate Tracy "T-Money" Murphy can satisfy your electropop/rap needs — assuming you have any — through her New York-based band Opti-Grab.

The New York music press seems to approve:

"Local trio Opti-Grab make funny, kitschy and ultra-danceable electropop without becoming dated. They remind me of what Fannypack could be and what the retro-electro movement could have been-with catchy hooks, and beats that recall a little bit of Shannon and a little bit of Madonna."
—The Village Voice

"Opti-Grab could be your number-one block-rocking party option in the city—if sultry three-way vocals and old-school hip-hop beats are your flavor. And if the authorities could harness the raw power in that scrawny guy's vocals, America could be nuclear free."
—Time Out New York

Downloads available at the Opti-Grab myspace page.