Birth of Our Children

Now that I think about it I've been procrastinating something awful as I'm skipping the most important chapter of my life, the birth of my children and I will call this the phase that cemented a relationship between a man and woman for over (at this date) an electrifying 61 years. My son Dennis was born Feb. 17th 1947 at the old Oaklawn hospital (made over from a house) in Marshall, Mi. At this time, we had just bought a duplex house on Hanover Street in Marshall from a fellow by the name of Leo Beck, we paid him $4000.00 on a land contract, much to his dismay we paid for it in two years at 6%. Then, lo and behold, my daughter a little gal that we named Deanna came into our life making it completely gratifying.

We continued to prosper, both working two jobs Ardis at Schuler’s, me at Sherer during the day and doing service work for Marshall hardware after work and week ends, we had a baby setter by the name of Ms. Salvanger she was a woman of around 60 years of age, very religious and very good to the kids, always rode her bicycle to work. The house was on the corner of Hanover and Michel, we found out that a house on Michel was going to be sold as an estate to the highest bidder, we won the bid for $2500.00 It was really run down, we put another $2000.00 in it, then sold it for $7500.00. It was about this time that

we thought we would like a better place to live and for the kids to have a better neighborhood and school we found that there was an old house for sale on north mulberry in a nice location and close to Sherman School, we bought it and started to repair it to our satisfaction, it took $10.000 to do this. We lived there for seven years and even though it was a nice enough house and lot we wanted something better, we found that a fellow by the name of Doutch Albaugh had a double lot for sale on union street about a block from our house on mulberry, we bought it and started the big job of clearing it off, we cut if I recall correctly 70 some wild cherry trees and many small bushes, Dennis was in middle school at the time, and after school and week ends he did most of the cutting and clearing. We gave a lot of the wood away and burned a lot more. This was in the spring of 1963 a lot happened in this year, we started building a new 2000 sq. ft. home on the new lot and bought a new Mercury, which was car of the year, that year. At this time, also, I was supervising a new installation in Bronson Mi. which took me through Coldwater, Mi. every day for about a week , I would pass a building going up that to me looked like a four car garage , but as it progressed it look different than a garage , my curiosity got the best of me so one day I stopped to find out what the heck it was going to be. It was going to be a do-it-yourself car wash. Now here let it be known that I seldom let my imagination run wild, but I couldn't get it off my mind, thinking Marshall might be a candidate for such a business. Before the day was over I had made up my mind, excitement ran wild I couldn't wait to tell Ardis that we were about to go into the car wash business. Now back to the design of the house that was in the Battle Creek Enquire. Rather than have an Architects expense of designing what we wanted the enquire news at that time would have a different design of a house every week. They finally come up with just what we were looking for, we cut it out of the paper and changed the location of partitions and rooms and added things that we wanted and proceeded to find a builder for estimates, John Bedwell was fresh out of college (MSU) and looking for houses to build, I had heard about him at work so we contacted him first, he really wanted this job and indicated that a lot of extras that we had confronted him with would not be in the contract price, I had plenty of experience with contractors during the years on my job that I knew he was being honest. I took his bid along with the drawing to Michigan National Bank in Marshall, and was immediately turned down by a loan officer named McKay, (Lear Kay was president at the time.} This didn't discourage me in the least, I simply went to Security National Bank in Battle Creek, the loan officer was a Smith, Steve Smith so I was already half way home and that is to say the least because when he looked at the design, the lot and the fact that we both had good jobs we could have gotten much more. Save that for later. This was in 1963 we moved into the new house in the spring of 1964. Now we must go back to my magnifying excitement of telling Ardis about our car wash business, where Steve Smith again enters the picture. Let me say this>>>>>>>>>>>>>>PLEASE.