RETROKIMMER'S HOMES IN THE 1960S

This is 202 N Summit St in Ypsilanti Michigan. My grandmother (Nanna) bought this home and turned it into a convalescence home. Nanna kept patients in many of the downstairs bedrooms and rented the upstairs rooms to female EMU students. This house had a huge basement with a dirt floor and a greenhouse with windows that were visible on south side.

See the weird trellis stuff on the south side now? That used to be the glass windows in the ceiling of the greenhouse. This lovely old home was converted to students apartments back in the 70's and appears to be fairly maintained. We used to try not to step on those glass windows as we were terrified we'd fall through to the creepy basement.

202 had a big front porch and we hung out on it a lot. My mother told me we watched a tornada go by from that porch in the early 60's. In the 1980's a former worker of Nanna's told my sister that as a little child I came in the kitchen with a shoe box and left it on the table and went back outside. She heard a noise then noticed the box moving on the table. Opening the lid (big mistake) 5 pigeons flew into the room. Guess I must have baited them with crackers and then stuck them in the shoe box. About age 3 I think...

Here is 617 Emmett St on Eastern Michigan University's Campus. We lived here briefly and gratefully before the notorious John Norman Collins movied into 619 Emmett St. JR and Kimmer went here and noticing the door was off the hinges RK had to go inside and see this old haunt. Going in there were a ton of kids inside cleaning the place. Asked them if they minded me taking a peek at my personal "retro" history. They obliged me and I took a little tour of it. Didn't feel confortable shooting inside the house.

Here is 306 N Normal St we hung out with right behind the famous Ted's Campus Drugs. We loved Ted and he was so sweet to us kids that loved buying the cool stuff he had in the store. I loved bvuying Peanuts (Snoopy) paperback books and Mad Magazines here. He has a soda fountain lunch counter in the back with a couple of wooden booths I think. Ted's faces West Cross St. which in the 60's had the coolest business to hang out in. The Clothes Horse, Ding's Pizza, and the College Pharmacu were all haunts of ours. Ding's had these little pizza's for 5o cents my cousin Leslie and I used to love going down there. We also bought penny candy from Abbey's market.