Views from a trailer
Duane Brown grew up at Coachville Gardens, Ypsilanti, and with Sharon Gingras knew Jim from the age of two. I’d spken to him briefly a few times in Ann Arbor, but finally managed to get him on the phone last Wednesday. Here’s a extract from the interview, which ran to a couple of hours. It incorporates a couple of clarifications from follow-up emails.
Sharon Gingras told me that her father and uncles helped develop Coachville, with your dad.
“I was very young, they found an investment opportunity because of the university nearby and [they needed] additional student houseing. I believe it was 1948 or 1949, don’t know how exactly it came about but I believe there wee three partners. Her two uncles and my dad were the three partners and her father was the manager. [Sharon’s uncles were Irv and Leo Ralph, her dad, George. My dad was Perry Brown.]”
How would you describe the people who had trailers there?
“There were all kinds of people and a LOT of children. We had a lot of fun. I was under five when I was there but I don’t have vivid recollections – but I remember birthday parties and playing in the playground with lots of people.”
Tell me about the Leveretts - kids would work on the vegetable stand etc?
“I’d forgotten about that, the Leveretts provided lots of summer jobs for kids in school in the area, my brother worked for them picking corn in the summer and work on their stall selling things, but mostly picked corn during the summer. They had a great deal of farmland in the area... [The Leverett family names were Chuck and Dorothy, their children worked the place too - Charlie, who was killed in a farming accident as a teenager, Judy, Mike, and Chrissy.]”
What was your impression of area around, it was very rural compared to AA? Surrounded by rolling fields?
“That’s pretty true, it’s pretty much rolling fields. The closest building around was this old stone school, the old Carpenter school, across the road from the trailer park. Very nearby. The old original Carpeneer school. Then they built the new one and that opened the year we started school, that would have been 1951 or more probably 1952. It was all very rural.”
And when did you first bump into the Osterbergs?
“It seems to me I was either two or three when we moved in, I sort of remember Jim always being around. Don’t have memories in particular of meeting him, just remember being in the trailer park where there were a lot of kids around, and he was one who was always there.”
Sharon thought he wouldn’t be out playing as much as the others.
“Not as much, he mostly just came to birthday parties or if there was an event of some time. His father was very strict, he may have been allowed to be out in the summer for an hour or so, but I guess he was indoors for some time. Don’t know if he want away to a baby sitter. There was an older woman who lived in the trailer park who did baby sit. “
Your impression of Jim as a kid?
“Funny. Enjoyed being around the other kids, particualry at a very young age when we started going to school he had a lot of energy and was a very smart kid. Had a tendency to be a bit of a gangleader, figured out how to get himself and the rest of us in trouble. I remember one time where he got a bunch of us into trouble, it was in the 4th grade and he’d learned a new word and that word was fuck. And he suggested I use that word to the teacher. He he. I can’t remember what he told me it meant but it wasn’t what it meant. So I did and got reprimanded. And I think he may have been the gangleader who started a tomato fight in somebody’s garden at the trailer park. We were all just covered with ripened tomatoes and I’m sure the woman who owned.. chasing us out. I can’t remember if she told our parents or not . The Teacher was Mrs Carter. It would have been 4th grade. In Elementary we had the same teacher throughout the day.”
Do you remember Mrs Schreiber, she used to be something of a disciplinarian?
“She was very good at telling him off, I remember her well, she was our teacher in both 5th and 6th grades, a very strong disciplinarian, and she brooked no nonsense in her class room and Jim often got his knuckles rapped with a a ruler. Literally. I mean she’d slap the back of his hand with a ruler, because he was very vocal, and a little bit of a trouble maker. And I suspect it was because he already knew everything that had been taught and was bored. He was often a target of her (ire).”
His parents?
“His father frightened me. A very tall thin man with the marine haircut and I didn’t like being with him, I don’t know whty, he never did anything that made us not like him, he just came across as a very gruff man. His mother was very sweet, she was very pleasant, other neighborhood mothers always liked her.”
From what I can tell, kids’ obsessions in those days were science fiction stories, the atom bomb, space ships, he used to fantasise he was called The Atomic Brain. Do you remember that kind of atmosphere?
“I do – I remember before Sputnik, I remember Superman was the big television series, we all had our superman capes, I remember Jim suggesting we could fly. He was very into Science Fiction. He always knew about things, very bright, and was always trying to outdo the rest of us. And was pretty good at it.”
Did anyone resent that?
“I don’t THINK so. There was a core group of us, specially that trailer park, though several of us moved away we stayed in the same area and went to the same elementary school, and so I think Jim was just a part of our life. I don’t ever recall during elementary school anyone having any bad or negative thoughts about Jim.
...“[Then when] we got into Jr High and High school I began to think, He thinks he’s too good for us, and I don’t know quite why. He still lives in a trailer park and is the same guy but he just seemed a little stuck up, I thought, as he got older, as he became an older child.
Sharon was saying he had a thing about the trailer park. He told some people he lived at Ann Arbor Hills. And he’d dress in a preppy kinda way.
“Yes he did. And it might very well be that for that very same reason he didn’t want any of the people he was associating with at the time to know any of the rest of us from the trailer park because we might blow his cover! But he had very little to do with any of us from elementary school after we got to high school.”
Who was in your group of friends at Carpenter?
“Sharon, Jim, Kay Deller, Sandra Sell, Joan Hogan, Sylvia Shippey, Steve Briggs. Others were Carl Exelby, Carol Keeton, Jim Rutherford, Bill Brooks, John Beard.”
And was Brad [Jones] one?
“Brad joined us I think moved in at 4th grade and had come from San Diego although his mother had grown up in AA and went to High School with my mother, so yes Brad was part of that group when he arrived.”
What games might you play, what places might you go?
“Don’t particularly remember anything organised, just hanging out, telling stories, wandering around. In the summer, although Jim wasn’t part, there would be a baseball game though I don’t recall Jim participating in that… he may have gone to camp or something.”
You had games about Superman and things like that. Other kinds of games?
“During school days and recess, clmbing monkey bars, play dodge ball, and typical American kids’ games. The games were Red Rover - two teams are chosen from everyone participating. One team calls a name from the other team by saying Red Rover, Red Rover send "johnny" right over. Johnny then runs over to the other team – something happens to try to prevent "johnny" from making it over, but the game ends when there is nobody left on one side. Mother may I: again two teams - one side tells someone from the other team to do something. If they do it without first asking "mother may I" they are eliminated.
It sounds from what you said that Jim was a very confident child.
He was yes, no doubt about it.
And confident with adults?
I don’t remember being around adults. [With teachers] he would be quite mouthy with them so I guess so. He was very social.
Did it seem unusual he was an only child?
I guess so. I felt like an only child ‘cos my brother wasn’t born until I was 9 years old, so it didn’t seem strange to me, but it might have been to others, it probably was pretty unusual.
What was the social mix at Carpenter. Blue Collar?
The whole Carpenter neighborhood was pretty much blue collar. It wasn’t until Jr High School where we started mixing with the AA Hills kinda people, University Professors, doctors and lawyers and those people.
When you moved to Tappan, was it a shock mixing with the kids from AA Hills?
The thing I found shocking was that some of the kids were so much more monied than us. They didn’t seem much different, they just... there was a different air about them, they were mre well-off.
I want to ask about his social ambitions, because he used to hang out with the AA Hills Kids stuff. Did he still seem academically bright at Tappan?
I think without having to work very hard he maintained good grades. And seemed to hang out with the kids who were academically bright too. He was on the debate team. At that point I began to lose track of what he did but he was very involved socially and politically.. he was always running for office and involved in lots of those extra curricular things.
Popular and well-liked?
Very much so. Everybody knew who he was.
We mentioned briefly he seemed to change his social circle, from hanging around with Carpenter Kids to LOOKING as if he was one of the AA Hills set. Would that be fair?
Yes I think it would. Yeah. Very much so. I certainly had.. the only thing that we had in common any more was that we’d both gone to Carpenter, and we both rode the bus to school. Hahaha. I had no social contact with him after that, after elementary school.
One thing he does, is to make out the school was very middle class, and that he was regarded as a dork because he came from a trailer park. That seems to me to be as much about his insecurity as much as other kids reaction.
He may believe that but I don’t believe it’s true. I think he fit in very well with just about anybody he came in contact with. I’m sure it was in high school he started the band, playing drums in the High School or Junior High School band, He was.. [part of a kind of] bad boy drummer group. Can’t put names to them, think most of them stopped playing band and started doing their own thing in high school.
Do you remember Kenny Miller?
I don’t remember him I tried to find him cos I remember him and Jim were quite close. I don’t remember him well, but Nancy McArtor remembered him quite well. His godfather was Robert McNamara who was Secretary of Defence.
In terms of Jim suddenly having more a complex about coming from the Trailer park, what do you think of that?
I didn’t know he did that. Those were the people he tried to hang out with. It’s kinda funny, cos people really didn’t seem to be that interested (worrIed ) about that. Everybody knew wherever you lived... as long as you maintained good academic status, and were involved socially, people weren’t too bothered about what your parents did.
People were much more likely to be snooty about how clever you where, than how rich your family was.
Exactly. And of course the other thing I recall was if you dressed well too. There wasn’t per se a school uniform... girls wore short skirts, knee socks and good blouses, guys wore good slacks and oxford button down shirts and in winter a sweater. And loafers.
Friday, 26 August 2005
