Grandfather Bower's great home in Detroit, Michigan

by James K. Sayre

My family and I began summer vacation visits to see my grandparents in Detroit, Michigan in the early 1950s. I was only ten in 1952, so I was quite impressed by my grandparent's home. It was quite different from our family house in Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania. They lived at 13409 Hartwell, in Detroit, Michigan. It was located near Grandriver and was off Schoolcraft. There was a large elevated tank with the illuminated sign that said, "Gas is best." Who was I to argue, back then. This was my mother's side of the family, although it was not her childhood home; her parents had moved there while she was attending college at Wayne State University.

The house was two-stories, had a large front lawn, a two-car garage in the back and a small backyard that faced the alley. Beyond the alley was a large vacant field that had beautiful blue chicory flowers in the summer. The upstairs bathroom was amazing to me: it had small white hexagonal-shaped mosaic tiles on the floor and the walls It also had a large white bathtub on claw feet with fat white porcelain handles for hot and cold water and city water that roared out and that had a great smell. Taking a bath there was fun. One of the back bedrooms upstairs had a door that opened on to an upstairs porch. That really impressed me, for I had never seen anything quite like it before. In the back yard, Grandfather had built a two-level cement bird bath, that was fed by a dripping faucet that was at the end of a pipe that ran between two limbs of a weeping willow tree. In a few years, the tree had grown around the water pipe, totally enclosing it. Very cool.

(Also see the M. E. Bowers Electric link: M. E. Bowers Electric .

 

 

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Web page last updated on 30 August 2007.