This was the first home/condo that I have owned. I purchased it as a single mother and have since been married and have had 2 additional children while living in this home. When my daughter was 2 she started complaining of "the man upstairs." She said there was an older man that she would "see" at night time and he would stand in the hallway or dorrway of her room (smaller upstairs bedroom). Now my almost 3 year old son wakes up in the night complaining of the "scary man in my room." Other than these "sightings," nothing out of the ordinary has ever came about. It always made me wonder if the husband of the lady I purchased the home from by chance passed away in the home and his spirit still remains there.

There's so many memories, good and bad, unfortunately. I remember playing on the front brick wall that stands in front of the living room window, which was a sliding glass door when we lived in this house. My brother and several neighborhood kids and I used to jump from this wall, and we would also hide behind it and throw things at cars as they passed our house (I know, we were BAD!) But, there is justice....one day a driver stopped and told my Mom what we had done. I'll never forget it. It was an early-1970's Cadillac Fleetwood (biggest car I had ever seen!) and the man was furious. I hid under the bed in the master bedroom, but my Mother found me and I got the spanking of my life. I remember being home with a babysitter one night and someone threw a brick through the front living room window (the one behind the brick wall) and scared us all. I remember playing in the basement and finding my Father's old Army Surplus food....cans of ravioli and spaghetti, etc., and opening them and eating them. They were terrible! I remember we had mice at one point, and hearing them in the walls and attic scared me. But the most vivid memory I have is starting the bedroom on fire that I shared with my younger brother. My mother was away and a relative was home with us kids, and I needed to use the bathroom, but was afraid to walk down the hall to the bathroom in tha dark. I was no more than 6 or 7 years old. I urinated behind my brother's bed, and accidentally into an electrical outlet. There were sparks, and then the curtains were on fire. I still wonder if this was a dream or if it really happened, but my Mother says she doesn't remember, and my brother would've been too young to remember.

The house had a full, unfinished basement with cement floor. There was a storm cellar door from the backyard as well as stairs going down to the basement from the kitchen. The furnace used to be coal burning. (We found little bits of coal by the basement windows when building a snowman in the winter.) But by the time we lived there it was natural gas. My sisters and I used to ride our bikes/tricycles around and around the basement in the winter time. All that was down there were the washer, dryer, cat litter box, screens and storm windows.

The original white-painted wood (as depicted in an old photo in the Montague Museum) was covered by brown faux brick siding probably in the 1930s. The front porch roof was whole back when we rented the house and several maple trees graced the front yard, with an old oak on the Oak St. side, appropriately. (This was our climbing tree with a sandbox under one limb in the early 1960s.)

The main floor housed the kitchen in the back, a hallway, with the only bathroom off the hallway. The dining room and living room were at the front of the house and my parents' small bedroom and closet were off the living room.

The upstairs had just two large rooms: the unfinished and very draft attic which we just used for storage or for a hiding place, and our bedroom. Five girls shared the upstairs bedroom! It was rather cool in the winter and very warm on the rare hot summer night.

The yard was large (about half and acre) and not fenced and there was no garage -- just a gravel driveway. Up near the corner of Meade and Oak there was a yucca plant that somehow survived our West Michigan winters. Along the street in front of the house there were lilacs at one time, along with a large purple lilac bush in the backyard, and a smaller white lilac near the back door.

A sidewalk led from the front porch to the back cellar door. In the backyard we had a swingset and monkey bars at one time, which backed up to the alley that is no longer navigable. We had a trash can near the neighbor's fence and alley closest to Cook Street.

While we were living there my grandmother helped my mom put in a little rock garden with a statue of Mary in it. There was also a clothesline that ran from near the back corner of the house out toward the lilac bush.

In the early 1970s my sisters brought home little evergreen trees (blue spruce?) from grade school and these were planted in the side yard along Oak Street. (Three of them are still there last time I drove by.) In the corner of the yard near the alley and Oak there was an overgrown cedar that often got trampled by heavy snow or children playing in it.

The only other building on the lot was an old shed (with the same type of siding as the house) that at one time must've been a chicken coop. My dad and our landlord used it as a tool shed in the 1960s and 70s. Dad bought a large round thermometer to place on the side of the shed so it could be read from the kitchen window. After a couple of years it was stolen.

Our neighbors behind us were Mr. Winters and Mrs. Schwartz who were siblings. (I believe both were widowed and quite up there in years.) Their yard still had a summer kitchen, large garage (two story) and an outhouse when they lived there. Then Fred and Pauline Wied (his daughter and son-in-law) moved in. After that the Witzkes bought the place. Across the street from us were the Schultzes, the Yeagers, the Mahoneys, and the Lohmans. Next door, on the Cook St. corner were the Schneiders.

Somehow seven people shared a two bedroom, one bath house for 17 years. We were still on a septic tank until the early 1970s when the city extended the sewer line. I also remember my parents paying $60 a month rent. Later this was raised to $100. We had a 4-party phone line when I was very young. We had no coat closet near the front door until my uncle helped my dad build a wooden closet in the corner of the dining room.