Humanize the Earth!

An excerpt from recollections written by Maurice J. Nash in 1965. [Written for me by Grandpa.] Unfortunately, he didn’t write more about what was entailed in finishing the house. It’s always amazed me what Grandpa and Grandma accomplished.   

There’s always a beginning and our life together, Laura and I, seems to have had a guiding hand above and beyond ours alone. For the things we did to grow and prosper and bring up our children (our future citizens) surely were not of a minor order of effort and accomplishment. Right from the beginning we had our eyes on a goal that was of self-help in building a house. As I had grown up to perform daily chores – work in fields, work here, work there, I was inspired to do just that as I made our way, life in a big city. 

Right from the first I began by breaking into several good trades. There were no schools for learning trades except in the big factories, which had student training. Tool design was my #1. I got a brief go at tool making by running a lathe in the Hudson Motors tool room. Then when we went through our first depression, 1921 and 1922, I had an opportunity to learn sheet metal finishing and quickly became enough adept to earn $1 an hour, the top rate for the times. I was finishing back and window quarter panels for the Ford Coupe. They were to be nailed to the wooden frame of the coupe, which made it a very stylish car for the times, which now seem so far away. One’s livelihood was of the utmost importance to our little family. In the year 1922 the family consisted of Marjorie, Elizabeth, Evelyn, and that same year our first boy, little Junior as we called him, was born. Maurice J. Nash as we called him.

The next year (1923) on Labor Day, I hired a farmer from not far away to bring his team and we got started digging the basement to our home of the future, our dream house [at 4545 Guilford Avenue, Detroit]. It seemed we never got more than a few dollars ahead all the time we were engaged in building that dream house (my pile of bricks I have on occasion called it).

The year 1924 was a great year for our little family for we were all engaged in building the walls. Even little Junior tried to and did carry one brick at a time. I had gotten 3 kinds of brick and had to clean 2 of them of mortar as they were used – from a building in Grosse Pointe. I had ordered several truckloads of each kind. It seemed all through the winter I was cleaning and stacking bricks in some order on what is now the front lawn. I had laid up the basement walls the previous fall. Had covered it over with the lumber of the first floor and [put on] a sloping roof and [covered it with] tarpaper so it would be dry inside. Down there in our basement during the winter I had fashioned the 5 window frames of our lower floor. They were quite special being made for hinged windows, as the house design called for that type of casement, which I had seen in Grosse Point on my numerous trips past the big and fashionable houses in that area.

When spring came we were all set to begin laying up the walls of our home. Saturdays and Sundays I could accomplish the most as I must keep working at my regular job our system was very practicable. Laura mixed the mortar, that is after I had filled a large box (about 3 feet by 6 feet and 10 inches deep, with several ingredients: sand, lime and cement, all ready to be moistened up in small batches by her. I was to lay up the brick and the girls were to carry them, the 3 kinds, in quantities such as they could well do without getting tired. Evelyn, the third of the girls and but four years old, carried 25, 2 in her arms at a stint. Elizabeth and Marjorie were then 6 and 7, carried 50 each. As the laying progressed the 125 bricks they carried laid up a nice area of all. And our little man, although he was just past 2 years, carried a quota of 1 brick at a trip from the piles in front. It should be recorded here that it took a considerable amount of lungpower to call the girls home from the neighbors to where they always vanished as soon as they had finished their stints. And it might be added also that they never played at home where the work was. We never saw the neighbors’ girls either. So once each hour or some such interval I gave forth a hew and cry to get my workers back home.

With mamma making batches of mortar, the little workers toting up the brick and me laying same, it seemed no time at all before we had the walls of our home to be, up and ready for the second floor. After we were up to that height I put on the joists and rough floor, then some more brick were needed. At this stage it became necessary to build a ladder from the first to the second floor. I can still see the tiny tots struggle up that ladder with their brick.