Life On Fulton Street
From James Donahue’s Journal
In addition to constantly working on the dilapidated Fulton Street house, there were several incidents that stand out. The property, located in the middle of the block, had a deep rear yard that tempted me to begin gardening again. The first year I spaded a small garden patch and grew a few vegetables. The garden was so successful, and we found the soil so rich, that I began making my garden larger and larger until it took up most of the back yard. I started ordering raspberry and blueberry plants and experimenting with melons and various bean and corn varieties. Eventually I had a fine garden and no more space for expansion.
Our dog, who rarely had any attention from our children or my wife and me, lived a tormented life chained to a dog house in that rear yard. City ordinance made it illegal for him to run at large. He broke loose at least twice. The first time it happened was when a female dog in heat came into the yard. It was late in the afternoon when I heard a terrible commotion in the yard. I stepped out the side door to find our dog and the bitch locked together, as apparently happens sometimes when dogs have sex, and unable to separate. Our kids and some of the neighbor children were standing by watching. I approached the animals but backed away when they began growing and snarling. I ordered the children to stay away and went inside to call the police. I did not want to risk getting bitten. Moments before the Sandusky police chief arrived, Doris drove in. She took one look at those dogs, walked up to them and began whacking them with her purse. They separated immediately and the stray dog ran off. We all had a big laugh about that.
The second time our dog broke free he took the chain with him. We searched all over town but found no trace of him. Later the police told me of a large brown dog that was struck and killed by a car on one of the side streets in town. The dog was dragging its chain. The animal was probably better off. He had never been house trained so was committed to a life of being chained to a dog house. And to a dog in the city, that is no life at all.
Aaron started carrying newspapers on a route for the Times Herald. I walked the route with him to learn it so that I could do his job if he got sick. I also helped him do his book work and make his collections at the end of each week. He never made any money on the route because some people were not home or refused to pay when he came to collect. I established a get-tough policy and we stopped delivery to the homes of the people that did not pay. The paper’s circulation carrier got upset with Aaron for dropping customers and that got to be a big problem. I tried to defend him, but it did little good. The circulation agent in the area proved to be a real bully when dealing with the carriers. Eventually Aaron gave up the route. It was a lot of work and he could not make money.
On one occasion some larger boys a block down the street from us ganged up on Aaron while he was doing his paper route. They pushed him down into the snow, beat on him, and got the papers in his bag wet. I visited the boy’s parents but got little satisfaction. The next summer Doris and I bought a small plastic inflatable wading pool, placed it in our back yard and filed it with water. Our children and some of the neighbor children had a lot of fun in that wader. One day one of the bullies from that house came in the yard, pulled out a jack knife, and punctured the wading pool. Aaron and I both saw him do it. Aaron started to go after the kid but saw me standing by the house watching, and he stopped. I was so angry I gave Aaron the OK signal and he tore into that boy. The kid was older and much larger than Aaron, but Aaron literally beat him to the ground right there in our yard. The kid went home crying. It was not long before his mother was at our door and I gave her a piece of my mind. I reminded her how she had ignored me when her boys ganged up on Aaron the previous winter, and that this boy was much larger than Aaron. I also asked her to pay for the wading pool her son destroyed. That was the end of that. I made a point of praising Aaron for what he did that afternoon.
Doris was working almost every weekend and I think some evenings. She chose her hours so that I could be home with the children when she was working, and visa-versa. We tried to avoid hiring baby sitters as much as possible. Consequently, Doris worked on most of the holidays that came along. When she was away I began cooking. I even started learning to bake and made cookies, cakes and other fun stuff. One year at Christmas I decided to go all out and cook a duck. It turned out to be a very greasy meat and was mostly dark, strong meat. The meal was a disaster but it was a meal. After that we could always say that we once had duck for our Christmas dinner. Then we laugh.
I believe we bought our first color television set when we lived in that house. We had good reception and I think we might have been buying an early version of cable television service by then, because I remember watching stations from as far away as Detroit and Windsor, Canada. But we had a man living two doors away who was a ham radio operator. He went on the air with his ham radio friends every evening after getting home from work, and at about the time I was sitting down to watch the evening news. As soon as his radio equipment went on, our television reception scrambled. His broadcasts came in clearly on our television. I did some investigating to find out first, who was doing it, and secondly, whether what he was doing was legal. I learned that under the FCC rules, ham radio transmissions could not legally interfere with television and radio reception around them. I knocked on the man’s door, informed him of the problem, but nothing was done. We had to live with that problem as long as we lived there.
One night the fire whistle blew and I awoke to see a large structure fire occurring about a block away. At first I thought it involved my office. But after jumping in my clothes and running down the street to get my camera, located in my office, I realized it was a large building that was being used as some kind of manufacturing facility just down the street from my office. It was a huge fire that leveled that plant. I got as much information as I could from the fire chief, Tony Doerr, and shot a roll of film, then hit the road for Port Huron to make sure the story made that day’s edition.
Another morning as I was leaving the house to go to work, I caught something out of the corner of my eye that didn’t look right. I looked again and saw that there appeared to be a fire burning in an upstairs room in a house about a half a block away. I walked closer to the house, not believing my eyes to get a closer look. Sure enough, it looked like fire. In fact by then, the window was getting black. I knocked on the door and found the family in the kitchen having breakfast, and completely unaware that the house was on fire. They called the fire department from within their burning house while I helped the family move things they wanted to save out of the house. By the time the volunteer fire department arrived the upstairs window was broken and flames were spreading through the upstairs and into the attic. Soon other people in the neighborhood joined in and together we had furniture and household goods stacked all over the yard by the time they got the fire out. I thought later that we hadn’t really done that family much of a favor, since the entire downstairs was saved and all of their belongings were now stacked in the yard.
From James Donahue’s Journal
In addition to constantly working on the dilapidated Fulton Street house, there were several incidents that stand out. The property, located in the middle of the block, had a deep rear yard that tempted me to begin gardening again. The first year I spaded a small garden patch and grew a few vegetables. The garden was so successful, and we found the soil so rich, that I began making my garden larger and larger until it took up most of the back yard. I started ordering raspberry and blueberry plants and experimenting with melons and various bean and corn varieties. Eventually I had a fine garden and no more space for expansion.
Our dog, who rarely had any attention from our children or my wife and me, lived a tormented life chained to a dog house in that rear yard. City ordinance made it illegal for him to run at large. He broke loose at least twice. The first time it happened was when a female dog in heat came into the yard. It was late in the afternoon when I heard a terrible commotion in the yard. I stepped out the side door to find our dog and the bitch locked together, as apparently happens sometimes when dogs have sex, and unable to separate. Our kids and some of the neighbor children were standing by watching. I approached the animals but backed away when they began growing and snarling. I ordered the children to stay away and went inside to call the police. I did not want to risk getting bitten. Moments before the Sandusky police chief arrived, Doris drove in. She took one look at those dogs, walked up to them and began whacking them with her purse. They separated immediately and the stray dog ran off. We all had a big laugh about that.
The second time our dog broke free he took the chain with him. We searched all over town but found no trace of him. Later the police told me of a large brown dog that was struck and killed by a car on one of the side streets in town. The dog was dragging its chain. The animal was probably better off. He had never been house trained so was committed to a life of being chained to a dog house. And to a dog in the city, that is no life at all.
Aaron started carrying newspapers on a route for the Times Herald. I walked the route with him to learn it so that I could do his job if he got sick. I also helped him do his book work and make his collections at the end of each week. He never made any money on the route because some people were not home or refused to pay when he came to collect. I established a get-tough policy and we stopped delivery to the homes of the people that did not pay. The paper’s circulation carrier got upset with Aaron for dropping customers and that got to be a big problem. I tried to defend him, but it did little good. The circulation agent in the area proved to be a real bully when dealing with the carriers. Eventually Aaron gave up the route. It was a lot of work and he could not make money.
On one occasion some larger boys a block down the street from us ganged up on Aaron while he was doing his paper route. They pushed him down into the snow, beat on him, and got the papers in his bag wet. I visited the boy’s parents but got little satisfaction. The next summer Doris and I bought a small plastic inflatable wading pool, placed it in our back yard and filed it with water. Our children and some of the neighbor children had a lot of fun in that wader. One day one of the bullies from that house came in the yard, pulled out a jack knife, and punctured the wading pool. Aaron and I both saw him do it. Aaron started to go after the kid but saw me standing by the house watching, and he stopped. I was so angry I gave Aaron the OK signal and he tore into that boy. The kid was older and much larger than Aaron, but Aaron literally beat him to the ground right there in our yard. The kid went home crying. It was not long before his mother was at our door and I gave her a piece of my mind. I reminded her how she had ignored me when her boys ganged up on Aaron the previous winter, and that this boy was much larger than Aaron. I also asked her to pay for the wading pool her son destroyed. That was the end of that. I made a point of praising Aaron for what he did that afternoon.
Doris was working almost every weekend and I think some evenings. She chose her hours so that I could be home with the children when she was working, and visa-versa. We tried to avoid hiring baby sitters as much as possible. Consequently, Doris worked on most of the holidays that came along. When she was away I began cooking. I even started learning to bake and made cookies, cakes and other fun stuff. One year at Christmas I decided to go all out and cook a duck. It turned out to be a very greasy meat and was mostly dark, strong meat. The meal was a disaster but it was a meal. After that we could always say that we once had duck for our Christmas dinner. Then we laugh.
I believe we bought our first color television set when we lived in that house. We had good reception and I think we might have been buying an early version of cable television service by then, because I remember watching stations from as far away as Detroit and Windsor, Canada. But we had a man living two doors away who was a ham radio operator. He went on the air with his ham radio friends every evening after getting home from work, and at about the time I was sitting down to watch the evening news. As soon as his radio equipment went on, our television reception scrambled. His broadcasts came in clearly on our television. I did some investigating to find out first, who was doing it, and secondly, whether what he was doing was legal. I learned that under the FCC rules, ham radio transmissions could not legally interfere with television and radio reception around them. I knocked on the man’s door, informed him of the problem, but nothing was done. We had to live with that problem as long as we lived there.
One night the fire whistle blew and I awoke to see a large structure fire occurring about a block away. At first I thought it involved my office. But after jumping in my clothes and running down the street to get my camera, located in my office, I realized it was a large building that was being used as some kind of manufacturing facility just down the street from my office. It was a huge fire that leveled that plant. I got as much information as I could from the fire chief, Tony Doerr, and shot a roll of film, then hit the road for Port Huron to make sure the story made that day’s edition.
Another morning as I was leaving the house to go to work, I caught something out of the corner of my eye that didn’t look right. I looked again and saw that there appeared to be a fire burning in an upstairs room in a house about a half a block away. I walked closer to the house, not believing my eyes to get a closer look. Sure enough, it looked like fire. In fact by then, the window was getting black. I knocked on the door and found the family in the kitchen having breakfast, and completely unaware that the house was on fire. They called the fire department from within their burning house while I helped the family move things they wanted to save out of the house. By the time the volunteer fire department arrived the upstairs window was broken and flames were spreading through the upstairs and into the attic. Soon other people in the neighborhood joined in and together we had furniture and household goods stacked all over the yard by the time they got the fire out. I thought later that we hadn’t really done that family much of a favor, since the entire downstairs was saved and all of their belongings were now stacked in the yard.