More Moving #14

We were lucky to have rented a house before we moved to Grand Haven, Wayne s teacher knew the people. What happened is the woman that owned the house passed away and left the home to her son. He did not want it because he lived and worked in the upper part of Michigan, about two hundred miles away. Derk was the son, he wanted us to take all the furniture, which was better than mine, so I told him yes.

Wayne s new job was with Gardner-Denver Corporation, it had two other companies in the United States. I went to work at Michigan Plastic Company, I also worked for them for awhile when we lived in Muskegon on Glade Street. I quit because I could not keep a sitter, they did not like the hours or wanted more hours. I took second shift, the boys would only be by themselves two hours, Doug was 12 and Ron 9 years old, thank goodness nothing ever happened, the year was 1972.

Outside of my husband having back surgery, nothing eventful happened at this house but we did have a lot of fun. In 1973 we bought a house on Robbins Road, the kids liked it a lot, Doug was going into Jr. High, so the school was by us and Ron did not like to change schools, until he found out he could have his friends over anytime. The house had a big woods out back and they explored to their hearts content. Ron climbed pretty high up in a tree and a branch broke, he cut his lip on the way down and broke his left arm, I will put a photo of this on my photos. We had a lot of parties, actually the girls at the shop decided to have a party every Friday, taking turns at each of our homes, this idea only lasted about a year, we were not heavy drinkers like them.

We lived here about three years and had many a fond memories. We had purchased a camper that slept six, we went camping almost every weekend, our favorite camp site was Whiskey Creek, no the creek was not flowing with whiskey, there use to be a distillery up around those parts years ago, there was a 1800 home on the property, the only building still left of the homestead, it still had the old brass bed upstairs, still in good shape. I started a new hobby, it was looking for old antique bottles, the ones you find in old dump sites, we did alright and accumulated a lot. We would pack a big lunch on weekends and all of us would go look for a dump to dig, the boy's took their BB guns and shot the bottles we did not want. We always did a lot with the kids, they remember the trips we took and we set around to this day reminiscing about those times. Doug always tells us how thankful he was for all the memories we made for them while they were growing up., he said that was the best time we ever had.

Gardner Denver sent out a notice they were moving to New Jersey and the employees that wanted to go with the company would still have a job, only a certain percent went, because you had to find your own place and move yourself. Wayne started looking for a job immediately, even though he really liked to work for this company, we could not afford this move. Once again we lost the house and found a two bedroom duplex. One day Doug had left for work, when all of a sudden he came back, he found a newborn baby squirrel lying in the road, he brought it home. He said he almost ran over it with his car (my car), it looked so helpless and blood was coming out of its nose, probably when it hit the road.

We raised that baby squirrel, at first in a bird cage, on a heating pad with towels on top. Feeding him was a real problem, I thought I would choke him on milk, I made up the same milk formula that I nursed my kids on. When he got bigger my husband built a big cage for him, we put a small piece of fire wood in the cage so he could climb on it and some med. size branches to crawl up. I wanted him to know the smell of the outside, this is for when we released him, because outside does not smell of rugs. I kept fresh dirt in the pan every day and you won't believe this he went to the bathroom in it, every time we let him run the house he would head for that pan to do his business, tell me squirrels are dumb, he was a grey squirrel, with white belly.