About Woodstock and Vicksburg
From James Donahue’s Journal
The young couple that bought our house was Catholic, and planned to send any future children to a parochial school, so the busing issue was not a problem for them. Doris and I had located another house to purchase, a former school that had been converted as a large, two-story house south of Kalamazoo. Our kids would be attending school in Vicksburg, which we also found to be a well run school district.
While all of this was going on plans were underway for the big Woodstock Festival in New York State. I was driving a red van at the time and the young people buying our house expressed an interest in buying it. They said they planned to go to Woodstock and could use the van as a place to sleep and hang out during the three-day festival. They had a station wagon to offer in trade as part of the deal. I sold them the van.
When the weekend of the festival approached, it seemed that all of the youth of Kalamazoo was moving on out in various vans, many of them painted in bright rainbow colors popular among the hippy crowd. We sensed that something important was happening all around us and that we were missing out on it.
We not only succeeded in selling the house on North Street but also sold the Prairie Avenue house on a land contract. That was the first and last land contract deal I ever made. The buyer apparently looked at the property in the same light that I had, planned to convert it for use as an apartment building for college students, but then got blocked by the city building department. The house payments began to arrive irregularly, and then stopped altogether. We had to threaten the buyer with legal action. I think I even had a lawyer involved before the matter was resolved. Eventually the buyer sold the house and cashed out the contract. We paid off the mortgage and walked away from it.
The Vicksburg house looked like a perfect place to raise the family. We were out of the city. I had room for a garden. There was a nice two-car garage constructed next to the living quarters. Even though it still looked like a school building, the interior of the home was well finished and comfortable.
The drive to and from our jobs in Kalamazoo was an easy one. We had well-kept blacktopped side roads to use that allowed us to dodge all of the heavy traffic on the main roads leading in and out of the city. There were only a few blocks of city driving to deal with.
We were just getting used to our new digs, and had the kids enrolled in the Vicksburg Schools, when something happened that changed our lives again. I got a job offer at my old haunt in Port Huron and took it.
From James Donahue’s Journal
The young couple that bought our house was Catholic, and planned to send any future children to a parochial school, so the busing issue was not a problem for them. Doris and I had located another house to purchase, a former school that had been converted as a large, two-story house south of Kalamazoo. Our kids would be attending school in Vicksburg, which we also found to be a well run school district.
While all of this was going on plans were underway for the big Woodstock Festival in New York State. I was driving a red van at the time and the young people buying our house expressed an interest in buying it. They said they planned to go to Woodstock and could use the van as a place to sleep and hang out during the three-day festival. They had a station wagon to offer in trade as part of the deal. I sold them the van.
When the weekend of the festival approached, it seemed that all of the youth of Kalamazoo was moving on out in various vans, many of them painted in bright rainbow colors popular among the hippy crowd. We sensed that something important was happening all around us and that we were missing out on it.
We not only succeeded in selling the house on North Street but also sold the Prairie Avenue house on a land contract. That was the first and last land contract deal I ever made. The buyer apparently looked at the property in the same light that I had, planned to convert it for use as an apartment building for college students, but then got blocked by the city building department. The house payments began to arrive irregularly, and then stopped altogether. We had to threaten the buyer with legal action. I think I even had a lawyer involved before the matter was resolved. Eventually the buyer sold the house and cashed out the contract. We paid off the mortgage and walked away from it.
The Vicksburg house looked like a perfect place to raise the family. We were out of the city. I had room for a garden. There was a nice two-car garage constructed next to the living quarters. Even though it still looked like a school building, the interior of the home was well finished and comfortable.
The drive to and from our jobs in Kalamazoo was an easy one. We had well-kept blacktopped side roads to use that allowed us to dodge all of the heavy traffic on the main roads leading in and out of the city. There were only a few blocks of city driving to deal with.
We were just getting used to our new digs, and had the kids enrolled in the Vicksburg Schools, when something happened that changed our lives again. I got a job offer at my old haunt in Port Huron and took it.