House Of Sorrows
By James Donahue
Not long after settling in South Haven, Michigan, my wife Doris learned that we were expecting our third child. We began looking around for a larger home and our friend Dorothea Logan tipped us off on a lovely home along the shore in her neighborhood that was offered for rent.
It was among the finest houses we lived in. But it became a place of great sorrow during the brief period that we were there. Susan was born. She arrived breach, the birth almost killed Doris, and then Susan was nearly taken from us because of a doctor’s stupidity. Doris’ father came to see us then went back to Cass City where he died a few weeks later of a heart attack. The wife of our landlord, who lived next door to us, was killed when her car stalled in front of a fast moving train. It seemed as if we were dealing with one terrible event after another.
Our landlord was a big, outspoken Irishman who owned and operated one of the bars in South Haven. Because of his nature I usually felt uncomfortable to be around him, although we maintained a good relationship. His wife, on the other hand, was a soft-spoken and lovely person who we liked from the start. Imagine my shock the night I answered a police call to a traffic fatality at a railroad crossing in Allegan County and discovered that she was the victim. She and her daughter had been attending a wedding reception and were on their way home in a Volkswagen Beetle.
The C&O Railroad line between Chicago and Grand Rapids ran straight through the area and the freight trains were always moving at speeds of up to 70 miles an hour. The track where this accident happened was so elevated that the little car this woman drove had to go up and over a rise of several feet. It stalled right on the track and the daughter said she saw the light of an oncoming train. She screamed to warn her mother as the train bore down on them, then jumped out of the car and ran out of harm’s way. Her mother, however, was determined to get the car started and get off the tracks. She didn’t make it. It was one of the rare times I was called to a fatal traffic accident scene and personally knew the victim.
The house was a log cabin styled two-story bungalow built on a hill so there was a single car garage in the basement. The interior was finished in knotty pine. It had an open staircase that led to a master bedroom in an open loft that overlooked a large room that housed a spacious living area with a fireplace, and a furnished kitchen that was separated by a food bar.
A doorway under the loft led to the entrance to two bedrooms, one on the left and the other on the right. The bathroom was located between the two bedrooms. There was a stairway to the basement that led into a large spacious room that also had a fireplace. There was a sliding glass door that opened out into the yard. The concrete floor was not covered, but was so smoothly finished we never felt a need to cover it. We hosted a party for News-Palladium staffers and friends in the area one night. We had music playing on the stereo and people danced on that floor.
We liked that house so much we made an offer to buy it, but the owners were not interested in selling. It was located close enough to the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan that we could lie in bed at night, with the windows open, and fall asleep listing to the waves on the beach below.
Susan was born when we lived there. This time I faced another long and anxious wait in the room for fathers-to-be. What I did not know was that Susan was born breach and that the umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck. The doctor had to turn the baby and free that cord before Susan was born. Thus it was a long and difficult delivery that almost claimed both the lives of Doris and Susan.
After we brought our new baby home we knew something was wrong. Doris attempted breast feeding but the baby constantly vomited up everything. We resorted to formula and Susan couldn’t hold this either. She did not gain any weight. Doris took her into the doctor’s office for an examination. That evening I received a telephone call from the doctor. He wanted to talk to me and said he thought Doris was rejecting the baby and refusing to feed it.
The next day Susan became very ill and developed a fever. We took her to a Doctor Cooper who was practicing in nearby Bangor. This doctor immediately had Susan admitted to Bronson Hospital in Kalamazoo, where she was on the critical list for several hours. The doctors and medial staffers there worked feverishly to figure out what was wrong with Susan and save her life. I remember having to leave that baby, seeing her strapped to a wooden board to keep her still, while receiving liquids intravenously. We went through a dark moment, thinking that this child was going to be lost to us. The next morning, however, the doctors were smiling. They had solved the problem. Susan had a milk allergy. They discovered a different formula, with a banana base, that worked fine.
Doris’ parents, Zebe and Gladys Babcock, came to visit us twice while we lived in South Haven. The first time was when we lived in the little house across from the school. The final visit was at the log cabin on the lake. It was a memorable visit. I got the big Speed Graphic camera out and snapped their portrait. A few weeks later Zebe collapsed on his job at a foundry in Vassar. He was dead on arrival at a Saginaw hospital. They said it was a heart attack. He was just 62.
He died in the winter. We drove to the homestead on Deckerville Road to mourn with the family. It was a strange time. We were struck by a terrible snowstorm that closed all of the roads and left us stranded for several days. The funeral had to be delayed. I had to call my editor and get extra time off from work. Zebe was so well liked and known in the area it was a big funeral. The line of cars following the hearse to the graveyard seemed to stretch for miles. They took Deckerville Road past the Babcock home, where Zebe had lived nearly all of his life, then turned down Herds Corner Road, then an unfinished and twisting country road, to the township cemetery. A special snowplow was sent to open up the way.
There were some other distinct memories connected with that South Haven house. One morning in the spring a downing woodpecker landed on the television antenna mounted on the roof directly over our bedroom. It spent the next ten minutes drumming on the antenna. The noise resounded like a snare drum throughout the house, jarring us all awake at about five o’clock in the morning . . . right at dawn. Because my job required me to work nights, I rarely got to bed before midnight. We went through the day feeling very tired from lack of enough sleep.
The next morning the woodpecker was back. It happened again the third day. Doris and I were getting so tired we decided that something had to be done about this bird. By now I had recorded the exact time it landed on our antenna. I drove to the local hardware store and purchased a B-B gun and some B-Bs. That morning I set an alarm clock for five minutes before the bird was due to land on the antenna. When it arrived, I was waiting on a pile of dirt in the yard, the gun loaded and cocked.
Sure enough, this beautiful downy woodpecker flew down from a nearby tree, landed on the metal antenna, and began to drum. I hated to kill this bird. I think this variety may even have been a protected species at the time. But I decided there probably was going to be no other way to stop the terrible noise that was rattling our home each morning. How to you reason with a bird? I took aim and shot. I watched the B-B fly slightly to the left. I re-cocked the gun and adjusted my aim. The second shot hit the bird. It dropped to the roof and slid to the ground. I dug a little hole and buried it. I have never enjoyed hunting and have always loved the birds. It was a sad thing that I had done. I don’t think that B-B gun was ever fired again, at least at our house.
It was while we lived there that I went on a successful high protein diet and dropped about forty pounds. I enhanced the diet by starting a hobby of model railroading. Soon I devoted my spare time to hobby crafting instead of watching television and lunching on snack foods. My scheme worked very well. I built a table for my layout in the basement. While involved in the hobby I discovered that other model railroad enthusiasts existed all round us, including at least one of the other reporters at the News Palladium. That opened up some interesting social contacts. My layout was in HO Gauge, but one of my contacts was working in something very small called TT Gauge. I became engrossed in that hobby until we moved out of the house.
By James Donahue
Not long after settling in South Haven, Michigan, my wife Doris learned that we were expecting our third child. We began looking around for a larger home and our friend Dorothea Logan tipped us off on a lovely home along the shore in her neighborhood that was offered for rent.
It was among the finest houses we lived in. But it became a place of great sorrow during the brief period that we were there. Susan was born. She arrived breach, the birth almost killed Doris, and then Susan was nearly taken from us because of a doctor’s stupidity. Doris’ father came to see us then went back to Cass City where he died a few weeks later of a heart attack. The wife of our landlord, who lived next door to us, was killed when her car stalled in front of a fast moving train. It seemed as if we were dealing with one terrible event after another.
Our landlord was a big, outspoken Irishman who owned and operated one of the bars in South Haven. Because of his nature I usually felt uncomfortable to be around him, although we maintained a good relationship. His wife, on the other hand, was a soft-spoken and lovely person who we liked from the start. Imagine my shock the night I answered a police call to a traffic fatality at a railroad crossing in Allegan County and discovered that she was the victim. She and her daughter had been attending a wedding reception and were on their way home in a Volkswagen Beetle.
The C&O Railroad line between Chicago and Grand Rapids ran straight through the area and the freight trains were always moving at speeds of up to 70 miles an hour. The track where this accident happened was so elevated that the little car this woman drove had to go up and over a rise of several feet. It stalled right on the track and the daughter said she saw the light of an oncoming train. She screamed to warn her mother as the train bore down on them, then jumped out of the car and ran out of harm’s way. Her mother, however, was determined to get the car started and get off the tracks. She didn’t make it. It was one of the rare times I was called to a fatal traffic accident scene and personally knew the victim.
The house was a log cabin styled two-story bungalow built on a hill so there was a single car garage in the basement. The interior was finished in knotty pine. It had an open staircase that led to a master bedroom in an open loft that overlooked a large room that housed a spacious living area with a fireplace, and a furnished kitchen that was separated by a food bar.
A doorway under the loft led to the entrance to two bedrooms, one on the left and the other on the right. The bathroom was located between the two bedrooms. There was a stairway to the basement that led into a large spacious room that also had a fireplace. There was a sliding glass door that opened out into the yard. The concrete floor was not covered, but was so smoothly finished we never felt a need to cover it. We hosted a party for News-Palladium staffers and friends in the area one night. We had music playing on the stereo and people danced on that floor.
We liked that house so much we made an offer to buy it, but the owners were not interested in selling. It was located close enough to the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan that we could lie in bed at night, with the windows open, and fall asleep listing to the waves on the beach below.
Susan was born when we lived there. This time I faced another long and anxious wait in the room for fathers-to-be. What I did not know was that Susan was born breach and that the umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck. The doctor had to turn the baby and free that cord before Susan was born. Thus it was a long and difficult delivery that almost claimed both the lives of Doris and Susan.
After we brought our new baby home we knew something was wrong. Doris attempted breast feeding but the baby constantly vomited up everything. We resorted to formula and Susan couldn’t hold this either. She did not gain any weight. Doris took her into the doctor’s office for an examination. That evening I received a telephone call from the doctor. He wanted to talk to me and said he thought Doris was rejecting the baby and refusing to feed it.
The next day Susan became very ill and developed a fever. We took her to a Doctor Cooper who was practicing in nearby Bangor. This doctor immediately had Susan admitted to Bronson Hospital in Kalamazoo, where she was on the critical list for several hours. The doctors and medial staffers there worked feverishly to figure out what was wrong with Susan and save her life. I remember having to leave that baby, seeing her strapped to a wooden board to keep her still, while receiving liquids intravenously. We went through a dark moment, thinking that this child was going to be lost to us. The next morning, however, the doctors were smiling. They had solved the problem. Susan had a milk allergy. They discovered a different formula, with a banana base, that worked fine.
Doris’ parents, Zebe and Gladys Babcock, came to visit us twice while we lived in South Haven. The first time was when we lived in the little house across from the school. The final visit was at the log cabin on the lake. It was a memorable visit. I got the big Speed Graphic camera out and snapped their portrait. A few weeks later Zebe collapsed on his job at a foundry in Vassar. He was dead on arrival at a Saginaw hospital. They said it was a heart attack. He was just 62.
He died in the winter. We drove to the homestead on Deckerville Road to mourn with the family. It was a strange time. We were struck by a terrible snowstorm that closed all of the roads and left us stranded for several days. The funeral had to be delayed. I had to call my editor and get extra time off from work. Zebe was so well liked and known in the area it was a big funeral. The line of cars following the hearse to the graveyard seemed to stretch for miles. They took Deckerville Road past the Babcock home, where Zebe had lived nearly all of his life, then turned down Herds Corner Road, then an unfinished and twisting country road, to the township cemetery. A special snowplow was sent to open up the way.
There were some other distinct memories connected with that South Haven house. One morning in the spring a downing woodpecker landed on the television antenna mounted on the roof directly over our bedroom. It spent the next ten minutes drumming on the antenna. The noise resounded like a snare drum throughout the house, jarring us all awake at about five o’clock in the morning . . . right at dawn. Because my job required me to work nights, I rarely got to bed before midnight. We went through the day feeling very tired from lack of enough sleep.
The next morning the woodpecker was back. It happened again the third day. Doris and I were getting so tired we decided that something had to be done about this bird. By now I had recorded the exact time it landed on our antenna. I drove to the local hardware store and purchased a B-B gun and some B-Bs. That morning I set an alarm clock for five minutes before the bird was due to land on the antenna. When it arrived, I was waiting on a pile of dirt in the yard, the gun loaded and cocked.
Sure enough, this beautiful downy woodpecker flew down from a nearby tree, landed on the metal antenna, and began to drum. I hated to kill this bird. I think this variety may even have been a protected species at the time. But I decided there probably was going to be no other way to stop the terrible noise that was rattling our home each morning. How to you reason with a bird? I took aim and shot. I watched the B-B fly slightly to the left. I re-cocked the gun and adjusted my aim. The second shot hit the bird. It dropped to the roof and slid to the ground. I dug a little hole and buried it. I have never enjoyed hunting and have always loved the birds. It was a sad thing that I had done. I don’t think that B-B gun was ever fired again, at least at our house.
It was while we lived there that I went on a successful high protein diet and dropped about forty pounds. I enhanced the diet by starting a hobby of model railroading. Soon I devoted my spare time to hobby crafting instead of watching television and lunching on snack foods. My scheme worked very well. I built a table for my layout in the basement. While involved in the hobby I discovered that other model railroad enthusiasts existed all round us, including at least one of the other reporters at the News Palladium. That opened up some interesting social contacts. My layout was in HO Gauge, but one of my contacts was working in something very small called TT Gauge. I became engrossed in that hobby until we moved out of the house.