 
Tponetom
Member
Username: Tponetom
Post Number: 253
Registered: 06-2007
| | Posted on Friday, February 29, 2008 - 5:12 pm: |    |
Just for the fun of it!
Detroit Emanations, Tponetom.
I am in a favorable position of invulnerability. I cannot be accused or imprisoned or otherwise punished for any of my posts or opinions.
My defense being, I am either too aged, senile, suffering from Alzheimer’s and CRS, or just plain hopelessly addled. ! And if anyone challenges those peculiarities, who really cares? In addition to that attitude, I can only say that ‘sticks and stones may break my bones’ as long as they do not get stuck in my urinary tract.
That being said, I just love this forum and, especially, the people I have encountered.
So, back to the title of this essay. In our kitchen in Detroit, during the Thirties, there was an embroidery hanging on the wall. It said, “Everything I am or ever hope to be, I will owe to my darling mother.” I have to think about that for a minute or two, because:
Ma smoked cigarettes. She played poker. She went to the Hazel Park Race Track to bet on the horses with her sisters. She hosted a coffee clutch every morning in her bath robe and her hair in curlers, for the National Bank’s field agents. They were the people who gave my Dad the work that let us survive. (Their only option was to go some where else and PAY for the coffee.) But, most important, Ma was always home on every school day of the year, waiting for me, to teach me how to play poker, pinochle, euchre, cribbage and ‘goodness’ will not reveal the other things.
I almost forgot. Ma played the Numbers Racket Game, just like a million other Detroiters. Nearly every neighborhood store owner was an agent or ‘bag man’ for the game.
Just pick 3 numbers from 0 to 9. (Like 467 or 359.) The payoff was 600 to 1. Most of the bets placed were for one penny, which would win you 6 dollars. If you bet one dollar, the prize would be 600 dollars. That would buy you a new automobile in the Thirties!.
The odds against you were 1000 to one. (The State Lotto’s do not pay anywhere near that much, percentage wise.)
Those are my first adolescent remembrances, emanating from Detroit.
P. S. I have a story about the Detroit Race Course, circa 1965. It is heartbreaking from the standpoint of 'greed.' |
Bigb23
Member
Username: Bigb23
Post Number: 627
Registered: 11-2007
| | Posted on Friday, February 29, 2008 - 5:23 pm: | |
Great Tponetom.
You had to do, what you had to do, back then - and now!
Explain what a "pork barrel" was, to our younger viewers.
It had a different connotation then, than it does now on the evening news.
This emanation is a keeper, THANKS! |
Eriedearie
Member
Username: Eriedearie
Post Number: 935
Registered: 08-2007
| | Posted on Friday, February 29, 2008 - 8:22 pm: | |
Tp your Ma sounds like my Grandma in Pennsylvania! She smoked, played poker, and canasta. Always had a pot of percolated coffee at the ready for anyone that dropped in and might want a cup.
Weekends the house was usually full with her brothers and sisters and there was a poker game going. Grandpa would try to bluff Aunt Mary out of pot and she'd study her cards and hem and haw but would always end up calling him. He'd show his cards and she'd show hers...he'd throw his cards in the middle of the table and say "Well, Queen Mary WINS AGAIN!"
All us kids would be on the enclosed back porch where the Victrola stood. There was a stack of those thick 78's that me and my cousins would take turns playing on that old wind up phonograph.
When Uncle Jim and his family (Grandma's brother) would come in from Cleveland he would bring his "one armed bandit." It took nickels and us kids got a kick out of playing with that thing. Uncle Jim supplied the nickels for us and if we won any, we got to keep them! I don't know of any casino that would do that, do you? HA!
We had such a good time together. Gosh I miss those times.
I just know Grandma & Grandpa, all her brothers and sisters, (including Queen Mary), have a poker game going on upstairs as often as they can! And when I get there I hope there's a spot saved around the table for me! |
Caldogven
Member
Username: Caldogven
Post Number: 161
Registered: 05-2006
| | Posted on Saturday, March 01, 2008 - 12:09 am: | |
Tponetom
My sister in Warren called me in California earlier this week to have me play the daily three numbers on the lottery for her because she didn't want to go out in the snow. She is eighty three years old and worked at Dodge main for years. Of course she played the numbers every day. Apparently the night before she had a dream that she was in a house that was full of dog shit! She said play 369 for a couple of days. Sad to say it did not come in. |
Tponetom
Member
Username: Tponetom
Post Number: 255
Registered: 06-2007
| | Posted on Saturday, March 01, 2008 - 12:02 pm: | |
Caldogven:
In one of your recent replies to a post you said you and/or your family lived on Pennsylvania, between Warren and Forest???
In the winter of 1942, guess who delivered the Detroit News on that stretch of Pennsylvania?
It's a no-brainer. I had 50 customers and seldom made the $ 4.50 a week I should have made. When I stopped delivery to one customer, Foster, the District Supervisor raised hell with me. He did not care that I was not being paid, he was only concerned with keeping the 'circulation' numbers up. that's life! |
Tponetom
Member
Username: Tponetom
Post Number: 256
Registered: 06-2007
| | Posted on Saturday, March 01, 2008 - 12:06 pm: | |
Cal: I just re-read your post.
I forgot all about those "dream" books. In those days the Dream Book was more popular than the Bible |
Caldogven
Member
Username: Caldogven
Post Number: 162
Registered: 05-2006
| | Posted on Monday, March 03, 2008 - 3:08 pm: | |
Tponetom:
I remember a paper station in the alley between Pennsylvania and Cooper just off of Warren. Was that yours?
My parents were buying our house from a guy who may have been a relative of Angelo's. He had a small office in the store. The payments were fifty five dollars a month. |
Tponetom
Member
Username: Tponetom
Post Number: 258
Registered: 06-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 04, 2008 - 4:53 pm: | |
Cal: Yes, the Detroit News station was in a garage right next to 'Jims' Hi-Speed gas station.
Ralph Bush, 18, was the station manager. The last I heard of Ralph was that he did not return from the War. KIA. I often thought of him.
Now take a deep breath and read the following:
On second thought, I will page you on DC and give you the whole story regarding:
Your Quote:
"My parents were buying our house from a guy who may have been a relative of Angelo's. He had a small office in the store. The payments were fifty five dollars a month." |
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