Ecorse -- REMEMBER WHEN ....

Fourth of July was always a BIG DEAL in Ecorse in the '50s. A huge parade went down Jefferson from Rooge to the park, with lots of floats and bands and we all decorated our bikes with crepe paper and playing cards in the spokes for engine sounds and rode along. There was a pretty good carney behind Carters and on Jeff. by the park were bleachers to listen to the governor talk and watch all the near-by fire depts. do a water ball tourney. There were rowing races on the river, inboard and outboard races all day long. Good food vendors and just a lot of fun with no hassles or dumb-asses ruining things. At dark they anchored a barge in the river and fired a great fireworks show. A kid could be gone from home all day and part of the night,(a rare time when the "street-light rule" didn't apply) come home tired, sun-burnt, smelling of riverwater, fish, gun powder and cotton candy, dunk into the tub and sleep the contented sleep of a kid growing up in a great town. I an so glad I was there and then, and I truely feel sorry that all of you were not, but then you would be an old fart like me now. To this day, July 4th is my super best holiday, and living in the boonies we do a great fireworks show every year. Bless y'all and good night.

Bonzano Bohunk wrote:

Fourth of July was always a BIG DEAL in Ecorse in the '50s. A huge parade went down Jefferson from Rooge to the park, with lots of floats and bands and we all decorated our bikes with crepe paper and playing cards in the spokes for engine sounds and rode along. There was a pretty good carney behind Carters and on Jeff. by the park were bleachers to listen to the governor talk and watch all the near-by fire depts. do a water ball tourney. There were rowing races on the river, inboard and outboard races all day long. Good food vendors and just a lot of fun with no hassles or dumb-asses ruining things. At dark they anchored a barge in the river and fired a great fireworks show. A kid could be gone from home all day and part of the night,(a rare time when the "street-light rule" didn't apply) come home tired, sun-burnt, smelling of riverwater, fish, gun powder and cotton candy, dunk into the tub and sleep the contented sleep of a kid growing up in a great town. I an so glad I was there and then, and I truely feel sorry that all of you were not, but then you would be an old fart like me now. To this day, July 4th is my super best holiday, and living in the boonies we do a great fireworks show every year. Bless y'all and good night.

bonzano you brought back some real good memories , were you there at the park on the forth when a tornado went over the park ? man that was one noisey tornado, people were panicing .we were lucky that we didn't get trampled to death . the 4th of july and the carnival's were a big deal back then,i am like you I wouldn't take nothing for my memories of that little city back in the 50's and 60's .I also did the playing card's in the spokes of my bike and tied balloons in the spokes also made a terrific motor sound i'm sure you did that too. It was so cool stay out as long as you wanted no cerfew as long as we were home by about 10 pm ,no worries about getting muged or kid napped either . That was a great time to grow up there ,unlike the world we live in today . a lot of the kid's delivered paper's I SHINED SHOES AND MADE GOOD MONEY ,BETTER THAN I DID AT THE OLD BAR /BOWLING ALLEY IN THE BASEMENT THAT BURNED DOWN. sweet memories sigh --I would love to relive those day's/year's once more .

Wouldn't it be so wonderful if Ecorse could once again be as it was back in the day , Iknow i'm dreaming but what a good dream !!! I am so thankful for the memories though, my dad moved us to Ecorse when I was 11 yrs old and I left when I was 27 but my memories haven't faded too much.

Bonzano Bohunk wrote:

Which tracks were these? Man pheasants are SOOOO good and you hardly see or hear them any more. My dad used to hunt them and I remember ring necks flying in front of the car all the time. I live out in the country now and for a while P. U. used to plant them near here and you heard them a lot. Havn't seen one in a long time...sad.

Mill st tracks and White st,and people smoking weed and drinking beer and wine on the tracks.

I remember people coming from all over Ecorse , to a place called the tackel field, at school #3 on southfield rd in 60's and 70's, that was the place to party!!! good friends, good times. later, Smoke.

smokey wrote:

I remember people coming from all over Ecorse , to a place called the tackel field, at school #3 on southfield rd in 60's and 70's, that was the place to party!!! good friends, good times. later, Smoke.

Yep and eating sandwhiches.

Hey Lee. As I remember, we were all at home when that tornado hit, I think, Allen Park, Lincoln Park, skipped over Ecorse and hit south of Windsor. We were hunkered down and when we looked out, a small tree in our back yard was twisted off at the ground and the Rev. Ducket's garage was about a foot off the foundation.
If you put two baloons on each wheel, it sounded like a Hell's Angels convention.
That bar with the lanes in the basememt was the Brass or Silver Rail.
If you smoke, ya gotta eat, right? Weed used to be called railroad gin, wasn't it. Make a sandwich taste like a banquet.

Yep wrote:

<quoted text>Yep and eating sandwhiches.

No Butthead they were brownies,[YEP] HAHAHA.

Sugttarbear72w wrote:

Honey I loved. The city. I lived there for 55 yrs. And Ian 59
But I can't
Break the habait

. Sugarbear- I saw one of the Mendoza girls recently during my Ecorse visit and she said she saw you recently. Hope you're doing okay!

just want to say how much I enjoy reading this topix and all the memories that you people of
Ecorse share and wanted to say I hope you all will
continue to post your memories of back in the day's when Ecorse was such a diffrent place to live . keep up the good posting and let's not let
our memories fade away ..

happy fathers day to all the dad's .

Bonzano happy fathers day--i was thinking about your 55 ford I believe you said it was --I had a
55 ford that I traded to a gentleman in WYANDOTTE IN ABOUT 1966 ,I traded the 55 ford to a 1957 ford
the body was perfect but the front end was bad on it, I told the man it was bad and he still wanted to trade ,so I was wondering if it might've been you I traded with . the 57 was a real good car but I never raced it. that would've been my 52 ford my first car ,I sure draged raced with it a lot and only got beat once so that was pretty good score I guess .

Thanks a lot Lee. I had the '55 around 1961 or 62. As bad as we bent the frame bouncing up and down Porter st. it was probably melted down and back on the street as a new ford by 1966. I'll drag out my old yearbooks and look through them. That helps me remember all the crazy stuff we did. Take care friend.

THE DUMMY, WICH ONE OF US?
I don’t remember why, but I decided to make a wax hand on a stick. I put on a big rubber glove and pushed it into a bucket of wet sand and pulled my hand out carefully. Then I melted a big pan of wax and poured it into the glove, and before it hardened, I put a wooden dowel in it. After it cooled, I pulled it out, removed the glove and had a very life-like hand on a stick. It was great to reach over and stick a wax finger in some ones ear, or pull it into your coat sleeve and shake with somebody, or leave it sticking out from the trunk or grill of your car. There was no limit with a bunch of nuts like us.
After a while, we decided the hand was the start of a pretty convincing dummy, so we built one and, from a distance, especially at night, it looked pretty damned real. Welllll, we put him in the passenger seat, and drove around, when we went into a store, he sat in the driver seat, he hung out the window at 70 miles an hour, and one day on Jefferson at the Rooge River Bridge, with the bridge up, and we were the closest car to the bridge, we dragged him out of the car, kicked the sh!t out of him and threw him in the trunk. We then burned a “U” turn and headed back to the big “E”, laughing our asses off. I can just imagine the faces of the people in the cars waiting behind us.
Eventually we devised a fitting Viking funeral for the dummy. Behind all the stores in L. P. facing Fort St. west side, north of Southfield…Wheew!…was an alley and a blocks long parking lot. Late one evening, we procured a nice grocery cart and put the dummy in it. We lined it up next to the car on a cross street that had a stop light for Fort. We sat through several light cycles to get the timing perfect. Finally, we roared up the street with the cart and dummy alongside, and while the cars waited for the green, we screeched to a stop and let go of the package. We watched as the cart bounced through the intersection with the dummy’s arms waving up and down with every tar line. We heard that beautiful song “TSSSH…TSSSH…TSSSH… Fort Street was a big divided boulevard there and when the cart passed in front of the audience, it hit the curb on the other side, flipped over forward and the dummy went flying. We took off and laughed till our faces hurt. Yesterday’s mischief is today’s felony. It was good being a nut.

That's for you, Lee. It's all true, I swear. I hope you enjoy it.

saw Bob Orman (not sure of his correct spelling of his Last name) and my God he looked bad.....told me he had a kidney removed......

Bonzano Bohunk wrote:

That's for you, Lee. It's all true, I swear. I hope you enjoy it.

OH MY Bozano ha ha ha - you guy's sure had an active imagination
sound's like you had a lot of fun :).I guess my prank's were mild in comparison to your's .

I don't know how Lee, but all these crazy stunts would start out with something simple and dumb, and everyone contributed more dumbness and it got crazier and crazier and it almost always wound up with us laughing so hard our faces hurt and we would literaly roll on the floor. Yes no matter where I was, school, army, college, the factory or where ever, I seemed to attract nut cases and we always had a blast. The draft era Army was a breeding ground for nuts and crazy stunts. "Whaddia gonna do, send me to Nam?" was the question to the answer.
I may be running short of EHS crazynesses, but i havn't consulted with most of my fellow nuts, and there is a good chance they can help me recall some more. Good night all.

Jeeeeez, peeeeeeple, nobody has had a memory in over a week? C'mon folks, tappidy tap those keys and give us a chuckle. I know it's hot. How about remembering hot times of the olden days on the 'cose? Or how about snow storm memories, or how about what you were doing during the storm of Jan. 1978? Pleeeeeeez!

ARRRRRRGGGG! Am I all alone, like the guy on "Twilght Zone" who works all day in a bank vault, and comes out and everyone else in the world is gone, and all he ever wanted to do is read books, and on his way to the library, he drops his glasses and they break and he falls down and cries "Not fair. Not fair." Huh? Am I?.