We got very lucky and found a house. It happened quite by accident and not in area I had thought to look. My friend, Mary in Riverton, had grown up in Birmingham, just north of Detroit, and I drove by to see where she had lived. Birmingham had huge old houses, tree lined streets, sidewalks and an amazing little shopping area. It also was one of the most expensive zip codes in the area.
Mary had told Wally and I about growing up in Birmingham and going all through school at Cranbrook. It is a private school on a 300 acre campus. Both a college prep day and boarding school it is one of the county's leading schools for education in science and art. Hearing Mary talk about it and some of the great artists who taught there of course I would have liked to see Wally go. The only problem was the $10,000 a year tuition. Maybe the Birmingham schools would be okay.
The house was a 30's or 40's bungalow with two bedrooms, one bath, kitchen, living and dining rooms. Of course there was a basement and the real bonus was the finished attic. Wally claimed the attic as all his.
But the best part was that it was spotless which was far and above the other rental places we had looked at. It was the perfect size in what turned out to be the perfect place.
There were a lot of reasons why I was so happy about moving. Of course number one had to be that this house was my choice. It was the first time in my life I had gotten to choose where I wanted to live even though it did not have a white picket fence. Wally and I loved it. The other reason I was so happy to move was that I was really tired of most of the people I had met in the world of "big houses". There was another "Ford" family in Farmington Hills but the wife was not interested in making friends as she knew she would be moving in a year or so. Then there was the family who moved in across the street that informed me when I took cookies over that they had moved "up" from Southfield. You know, no matter how I turned a map of the area around I could not make Southfield lie below Farmington Hills.
The best one was the mother of one of Wally's friends. She thought it might be fun to help me wallpaper. I never could figure out if she was bored at home or needed extra money. She started helping me and it was nice to have someone paste the paper while I hung it especially on the two story entryways or the curved staircases. One job I had taken was in Dearborn. Six grown children had decided to totally redo the house where they grew up and their parents lived. It was a little house with three bedrooms - two of which were shared by three kids each.
I adored this family. The Dad had been a security guard at the main gate of one the Ford plants for thirty-five years. Mom had stayed home and raised the six children. They wanted paint, wallpaper, blinds, new bedding and throw pillows so we planned everything out. I started by doing the paint and every time I showed up to work there was something wonderful that came out of the oven. When it got to the wallpaper I had my helper come along. She got treated to lunch and anything else she wanted but I noticed that she was not her usual talkative self. One might have thought she was being snooty.
When we got done and were loading the ladder into the Bronco she said to me "I thought we only did work in the big houses". Now the ladder had to go over the top of the seats at a very particular angle in order to fit. When she said that my whole body flashed with anger and I slammed the back door of the Bronco. Oops! I had not double checked the angle of the ladder and I managed to break the window shield. That unset me a bit more and we drove home rather quickly in silence. I dropped her off without saying a word and went to the bank to get some cash. I went back to her house, gave her the money and told her she was fired. Best part of it was that she said I couldn't fire her. That sort of stymied me for a minute and I just walked of the porch and said "I just did".
There may have been people who wondered how I could go from the big flashy new house to the little white bungalow and be excited about it. I think my Mother was a little surprised. Guess I just got very tired of living in a new big house that always seemed to be hard to make it feel like a home. Or perhaps not being very happy was the reason it had been so hard. I often wondered why so many people seemed so unhappy in their big expensive houses. The interesting thing was that it never took much time being in a house to feel how happy or sad the owners were. The little house in Dearborn will always stand out as one that you could feel the love and happiness the moment you walked in the door.
It had been around two years since I had seen or heard from Barney. Both of us moving at the same time created the situation where neither of us knew exactly where the other one was. I thought about him a lot and hoped he was doing well, but it was really okay that we were not in touch with each other. It had been a really been a tough two years but it was important that I do the divorce and all that went with it by myself. I also needed time to get used to making my own decisions.
We got moved into the house and Wally started school in Birmingham. Lots of funny stories about the neighbors. Most were older with grown children and definitely not crazy about renters living close by. Going to have to be good, keep the leaves raked and the grass mowed. Did I know how to throw a wild party?
The one thing left that Wally and I needed to do was to find a forever dog. Wally wanted big while I wanted fluffy. I had loved Doris Day movies when I was pre-teen. Somehow I remembered her always driving a station wagon and having an Old English Sheepdog. Hmm...
that would be big and fluffy.
Most Old English Sheepdogs are priced at $500.00 and up which I was not going to pay for a dog. Just by chance one afternoon we found an ad for a part Old English Sheepdog puppies for $25.00. Needless to say we called the people up in a flash. They gave us the address which was in far east Detroit where I did not venture too often but there was no way to pass this one up. It ended up being one of those areas that even I was reluctant to get out of the car in.
Drive all over any city and you will come upon neighborhoods with big old two story frame houses that look like they may fall down any moment. Sofas that have been rejected from the house sit on the porches so in the heat of the summer all thirty residents of the house can sit on the front porch. Of course it was a rather warm spring evening and the porches were sagging under the weight of the residents. We braved it and got out of the car to stares from all the porches on the block.
The homeowner or renter or squatter was black with a hispanic lady but both were friendly and led us to the backyard where there were two grown female Sheepdogs and puppies running everywhere. The puppies may have been mixed breed but the grown dogs were certainly not. Did you ever go to look at a puppy or a kitten and not come home with one?
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