At The North Street House
From James Donahue’s Journal
There were a few memorable events that occurred during our short occupancy of the house at 1616 North Street.
When we were closing on the property, the woman who had lived there told us that she believed her husband had hidden valuable jewelry somewhere in the building, but she never could find it. She said that if we found it, that it would be ours. This, of course, prompted some extensive searches that turned up nothing. We did find some strange places where floor boards were loose and when pried up, interesting hiding places were revealed. It looked as if there had once been an alcoholic living in the house that had constructed several places to keep his or her booze well stashed.
One day the girls came screaming down the stairs and said there was a bat hanging from the ceiling in the upstairs hall. I went up with a broom in hand, and sure enough, a large bat was hanging right at the top of the stairs. I quickly had it chased into the front bedroom. Once in there, I closed the door and began to contemplate ways to get the creature out of the house without harming it. I decided to open the windows and then chase it with the broom, in hopes that it would fly out. I forgot that bats don’t like to fly in daylight. That bat and I played games with each other for nearly an hour before it finally exited through a window. Those creatures are extremely quick and it is almost impossible to hit them, even with a broom.
A wild pack of dogs was running at large in the wooded area behind our house. One day our dog, who I suspect was part German shepherd, broke loose and joined the pack. We called the local dog warden asking for help in getting our dog back and ridding the neighborhood of this problem. It turned out that the animal control people were well aware of this wayward dog pack and had been attempting to get it under control for weeks. They solved the problem by tying a bitch dog in heat in a vacant house located on the other side of the woods. Then they left a door open to the house. The entire dog pack rushed into the house and there they were trapped. Our dog was returned to us unharmed.
I think we had an early version of cable television service in that house because there seemed to be a wide variety of programming. Every Saturday night we had a full list of programming that included some horror shows that the kids and I liked to watch. Doris was always working on Saturday night so I made dinner, we loaded up with junk food, and we spent every Saturday evening watching our shows.
One Saturday night we got the bright idea of fixing up the house to scare Doris when she came home from work. We rigged up ghostly figures, stuffed monsters in corners, and spent the whole evening coming up with creative art ideas. We even unscrewed some of the light bulbs so the lighting was especially dim, improving the effect. I don’t think we succeeded in frightening Doris, but she all had a lot of fun.
I began walking to my job at the newspaper, which was something like a two mile trek, early every morning, and then walking home at night. I found that I did not need my car at work, and I reasoned that the four-mile walk each day would be a healthy thing to do. The walk led me down a variety of different streets and I enjoyed studying the fantastic architecture of many of the old homes. I also discovered the house designed by the famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
It was during those walks that I began to meet homeless people, many of them teenagers that had run off, begging for money in the streets. They all said they were hungry but I suspected they needed the money for liquor or drugs. Sometimes I took them into a restaurant and bought them a sandwich and something to drink.
It was while living in that house that I bought a book filled with plans for building boats of all sizes, ranging from small fishing vessels to cabin cruisers. I decided to build a boat and began buying the wood I needed to make the saw horses, and then build a small boat. I had the keel down, some of the frame assembled, and the board that comprised the aft part of the boat in place before events occurred in Kalamazoo that changed our lives once more.
After living in the house for a while we began getting a sense that something sinister was going on in the neighborhood. There was a lot of cars coming and going from a house across the street, raising a suspicion that we had a drug house operating there.
One day while exploring the woods, Aaron came upon the dead carcasses of several animals . . . they appeared to have been dogs . . . that had been completely skinned. It was a gruesome sight, and one that made us wonder just who our neighbors were, and whether some kind of witchcraft or other unholy ritual was going on near us. The children now had orders to never to go into the woods.
One summer day while Doris was home with the children, she decided to take them for an afternoon of fun at Milham Park. While there she noticed a young man handing out pills to the children in the park. She found a public telephone and called the police. She thought it was a crime in progress. But the desk officer told her to come downtown to the police station and file a report. She had no idea where city hall was and could not believe they would not send a car to the scene to investigate. I began to realize that the police department, like the city building department, was corrupt. For some reason the officers were not interested in catching a narcotics trafficker in action.
The racial tension in Kalamazoo was building. One night on her way to work, Doris was stopped by a red light at a corner and a large crowd of blacks surrounded her car. They began banging on the windows and trying to lift one side of the vehicle to tip it over. She managed to force her way out of the crowd by driving right into it. When she got to the hospital she called the police to report the incident. The desk officer laughed at her. After that she took a long route to work, never going through that neighborhood again.
A few weeks later, while driving down one of Kalamazoo’s steep hills on her way to work, Doris was ticketed by a Kalamazoo police officer for driving ten miles over the limit. The car sped up while going down-hill. We were slapped with a pretty steep fine in the local traffic court. I was beginning to really dislike living in Kalamazoo.
The final straw was when the Kalamazoo School Board voted to approve a plan to integrate the schools throughout the city. The plan was a complex one involving the busing of children to and from elementary, middle and high school facilities all over the city. Our children, all in the elementary grades, were going to have to walk to three different locations to get on buses going to three different elementary schools. None would attend classes in the school in our neighborhood.
Parents all over town were outraged. The next board meeting was so heavily attended it had to be moved to Western Michigan University’s auditorium that seated 3,000 people. It was a heated meeting. But what was learned was that Michigan legislators had created an anti-segregation law making it impossible for school districts to vote to change an integration plan once it was in place. We were legally stuck with a very unpopular decision.
What made our situation even more troublesome was that the teachers in the local school had decided to try Aaron out in an experimental new program for “gifted” students. It was the first program of its kind in the nation and proved to be very successful. They thought that the reason Aaron was doing so poorly in school was because he was very smart and consequently bored with conventional school. It was hoped that he would find his place among the gifted children. Thus staying in our house and accepting the extreme busing of our children, at a time of high racial tension and drug trafficking, might have been an advantage for Aaron. We were not sure about the impact it would have on the girls.
After weighing all of the factors, the decision was made that summer to put both of the houses we owned in Kalamazoo up for sale.
From James Donahue’s Journal
There were a few memorable events that occurred during our short occupancy of the house at 1616 North Street.
When we were closing on the property, the woman who had lived there told us that she believed her husband had hidden valuable jewelry somewhere in the building, but she never could find it. She said that if we found it, that it would be ours. This, of course, prompted some extensive searches that turned up nothing. We did find some strange places where floor boards were loose and when pried up, interesting hiding places were revealed. It looked as if there had once been an alcoholic living in the house that had constructed several places to keep his or her booze well stashed.
One day the girls came screaming down the stairs and said there was a bat hanging from the ceiling in the upstairs hall. I went up with a broom in hand, and sure enough, a large bat was hanging right at the top of the stairs. I quickly had it chased into the front bedroom. Once in there, I closed the door and began to contemplate ways to get the creature out of the house without harming it. I decided to open the windows and then chase it with the broom, in hopes that it would fly out. I forgot that bats don’t like to fly in daylight. That bat and I played games with each other for nearly an hour before it finally exited through a window. Those creatures are extremely quick and it is almost impossible to hit them, even with a broom.
A wild pack of dogs was running at large in the wooded area behind our house. One day our dog, who I suspect was part German shepherd, broke loose and joined the pack. We called the local dog warden asking for help in getting our dog back and ridding the neighborhood of this problem. It turned out that the animal control people were well aware of this wayward dog pack and had been attempting to get it under control for weeks. They solved the problem by tying a bitch dog in heat in a vacant house located on the other side of the woods. Then they left a door open to the house. The entire dog pack rushed into the house and there they were trapped. Our dog was returned to us unharmed.
I think we had an early version of cable television service in that house because there seemed to be a wide variety of programming. Every Saturday night we had a full list of programming that included some horror shows that the kids and I liked to watch. Doris was always working on Saturday night so I made dinner, we loaded up with junk food, and we spent every Saturday evening watching our shows.
One Saturday night we got the bright idea of fixing up the house to scare Doris when she came home from work. We rigged up ghostly figures, stuffed monsters in corners, and spent the whole evening coming up with creative art ideas. We even unscrewed some of the light bulbs so the lighting was especially dim, improving the effect. I don’t think we succeeded in frightening Doris, but she all had a lot of fun.
I began walking to my job at the newspaper, which was something like a two mile trek, early every morning, and then walking home at night. I found that I did not need my car at work, and I reasoned that the four-mile walk each day would be a healthy thing to do. The walk led me down a variety of different streets and I enjoyed studying the fantastic architecture of many of the old homes. I also discovered the house designed by the famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
It was during those walks that I began to meet homeless people, many of them teenagers that had run off, begging for money in the streets. They all said they were hungry but I suspected they needed the money for liquor or drugs. Sometimes I took them into a restaurant and bought them a sandwich and something to drink.
It was while living in that house that I bought a book filled with plans for building boats of all sizes, ranging from small fishing vessels to cabin cruisers. I decided to build a boat and began buying the wood I needed to make the saw horses, and then build a small boat. I had the keel down, some of the frame assembled, and the board that comprised the aft part of the boat in place before events occurred in Kalamazoo that changed our lives once more.
After living in the house for a while we began getting a sense that something sinister was going on in the neighborhood. There was a lot of cars coming and going from a house across the street, raising a suspicion that we had a drug house operating there.
One day while exploring the woods, Aaron came upon the dead carcasses of several animals . . . they appeared to have been dogs . . . that had been completely skinned. It was a gruesome sight, and one that made us wonder just who our neighbors were, and whether some kind of witchcraft or other unholy ritual was going on near us. The children now had orders to never to go into the woods.
One summer day while Doris was home with the children, she decided to take them for an afternoon of fun at Milham Park. While there she noticed a young man handing out pills to the children in the park. She found a public telephone and called the police. She thought it was a crime in progress. But the desk officer told her to come downtown to the police station and file a report. She had no idea where city hall was and could not believe they would not send a car to the scene to investigate. I began to realize that the police department, like the city building department, was corrupt. For some reason the officers were not interested in catching a narcotics trafficker in action.
The racial tension in Kalamazoo was building. One night on her way to work, Doris was stopped by a red light at a corner and a large crowd of blacks surrounded her car. They began banging on the windows and trying to lift one side of the vehicle to tip it over. She managed to force her way out of the crowd by driving right into it. When she got to the hospital she called the police to report the incident. The desk officer laughed at her. After that she took a long route to work, never going through that neighborhood again.
A few weeks later, while driving down one of Kalamazoo’s steep hills on her way to work, Doris was ticketed by a Kalamazoo police officer for driving ten miles over the limit. The car sped up while going down-hill. We were slapped with a pretty steep fine in the local traffic court. I was beginning to really dislike living in Kalamazoo.
The final straw was when the Kalamazoo School Board voted to approve a plan to integrate the schools throughout the city. The plan was a complex one involving the busing of children to and from elementary, middle and high school facilities all over the city. Our children, all in the elementary grades, were going to have to walk to three different locations to get on buses going to three different elementary schools. None would attend classes in the school in our neighborhood.
Parents all over town were outraged. The next board meeting was so heavily attended it had to be moved to Western Michigan University’s auditorium that seated 3,000 people. It was a heated meeting. But what was learned was that Michigan legislators had created an anti-segregation law making it impossible for school districts to vote to change an integration plan once it was in place. We were legally stuck with a very unpopular decision.
What made our situation even more troublesome was that the teachers in the local school had decided to try Aaron out in an experimental new program for “gifted” students. It was the first program of its kind in the nation and proved to be very successful. They thought that the reason Aaron was doing so poorly in school was because he was very smart and consequently bored with conventional school. It was hoped that he would find his place among the gifted children. Thus staying in our house and accepting the extreme busing of our children, at a time of high racial tension and drug trafficking, might have been an advantage for Aaron. We were not sure about the impact it would have on the girls.
After weighing all of the factors, the decision was made that summer to put both of the houses we owned in Kalamazoo up for sale.