The Beginning: The First Road Trip

“ROADS” Scholarship Funds (Trip #1) Still in High School

Detroit 1:

This trip took place in the late spring and summer of 1953. I had just finished my junior year of high school and took the opportunity to accompany my grandfather to Detroit to visit his daughter- my Aunt Eleanor. Both she and her husband liked me. She had helped my grandmother- her mother- raise me for the first 10 years of my life, after my mother died. So, we had a life long connection and were comfortable with each other. In fact, this was more like home away from home than a wild ramble. But I made money!

Shortly after arriving in Detroit Aunt Eleanor’s husband, Lou, helped me find a summer job as a “carry-out” and stock boy at one of the big grocery store chains in Detroit. I wound up about 100% carry out- that was where the money was. Those Detroit customers were big tippers. In fact, I made so much money in tips that I was able to bank my total salary. Each time I loaded a buggy with groceries and rolled it out to the car I got a dollar and sometimes more for the service. Of course I didn’t let the grass grow under my feet. As soon as I completed one run I dashed back into the store to bag more groceries.

Something I still get a chuckle over is the way people there laughed at me for using the word, “poke”. I just could not understand that everyone didn’t know what a poke was. Growing up in East Tennessee I had always used poke as a synonym for a paper bag. That didn’t go over well in Detroit. In fact, it elicited a great deal of laughter at my expense. To those people in that time and place, “poke” meant to hit or strike something or someone. Needless to say, I quickly dropped “poke” from my vocabulary and replaced it with “bag”.

Never the less, this was a far better situation than what I had as a carry-out at the local supermarket back home. In those days I was lucky to make a couple of bucks per day in tips, and was glad to get it. In Detroit I probably made 15-20 bucks per day, and this was 1953.

This trip was not a wild ramble, but I did fall in love with Detroit. I loved everything about this city. The downtown section was especially exciting. It was clean, filled with interesting shops, huge high-rise buildings, and electric street cars. This trip didn’t last long enough for me to satiate my excitement and desire to see more of Detroit. I knew I would have to come back. I still see the Christmas scenes and hear the Christmas music. So beautiful to recall, indeed, the streets were alive with music. Thank you, Aunt Eleanor, Uncle Gene.

Another feature of life in Detroit this first summer was the fact that Eleanor and Lou (Gene) had two very sweet little girls. As a teenage boy raised alone– by much older grandparents who had grown up in what was virtually pioneer society–I didn’t pay enough attention to the girls, for I too was more of an old man than a teenage boy, but in spite of that they were very attentive to me. Phyllis, the older cousin, took out her total savings ($2– a considerable sum in those days for a first-grader) and gave it to me. That act has always stayed uppermost in my mind–one of my fondest memories. If I allowed myself to think about it very long it would bring tears to my eyes. That was a true act of love and still brings me joy.

Well, it was a busy summer, consumed mainly by work and a few trips around the area–all in all a great experience.