As I look back I can remember many places I have been that I never took the time to enjoy. My first ventures downtown Detroit were to the JL. Hudson building where my mother worked. The big adventure was just before Christmas on that very crowded floor with all the stuff Santa was supposed to bring me.

The sheer extravagance of some of the movie theater’s never even caught my eye when I was on a date. I only went a couple of times to The Fox and The Michigan and I probably went more often to the Empress and another burlesque house that I can ‘barely’ remember but the time I went to the Fox with Kay Jewell and her parents at the opening of the Birds, stands out in my memory. I literally got scared out of my seat at that showing and had to make an excuse to go to the lobby for a breather.

I came across this old photograph and ironically I was even there during the showing of the movie on the Marquee, Flower Drum Song, sometime in 1961

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Some of my very early years start with the memories I have from Polio which I caught in December 1949. It was a long time later that I managed to walk again with braces and crutches but The Shriners always had something for us Polio Survivors to enjoy, such as a yearly cruise on the Bob-lo Boat as we called it. Then a trip to Belle Isle, then they would throw in a trip to Barnum and Baileys Circus. I met a very close and long time friend on those cruises, Pam Frantz, who also had a little problem getting around like me.

I vividly remember going through the above to learn how to walk in my braces and maneuver with crutches.

When I was able to come home for visits from the hospital, just for a week end. And since it would be well over a year before I could come home and stay, my parents got our first TV. This is just about how I remember it.

 For a long while I became a TV junky, enjoying the test pattern, listening to Milton Berle late at night when I was supposed to be asleep and watching the test pattern the next day until something came on that I could relate to like Milky the Clown, Soupy Sales, Pinky Lee was in there some where, etc. (still looking for a favorite memory of mine, a picture of Gee Whizzer, a puppet on the Willie-Do-It show which was part of the Milky the Clown Show).
http://www.yesterdayland.com

One of my last dates with Kay was at the Edgewater Park where we were trying to get back together after she briefly broke up with me so she could date another. I was Mr. Cool trying hard not to show my hurt.

I can remember looking at some of the rides but tried hard to talk Kay out of going on the rigorous ones since I was a real chicken but I endured them all, swearing never to do that again.

On the way back to Drayton Plains, she took back my ring. Her date didn’t go so well with the new fellow, I assume. It was a little different after that and I could tell it still wasn’t right.

for more photo memories click here....