north to toledo

Such a lovely family!

There's Ed in his natty glen plaid suit and sheer socks -- worn in those days with garters -- his blonde hair neatly combed including a little spit curl. Those intellectual horn rim glasses hinted at the writer's fire that burned beneath his daily work as a G-man: a U.S Treasury Dept. employee who was Savings Bond Representative for Northwest Ohio's 17 counties.
Already he was turning his scriptwriting gift and love of theater into memorable TV spots advertising the bonds. He hung out with bankers and corporate execs.

There's Dodie with her warm smile, her lovely dark hair carefully coifed to make the most of her natural curl. If she looks a little tired, well, there was the latest family member, Marilyn Hill, born Sept. 11, 1951, plus lively Ted, a darling boy here wearing a handmade-by-Mommy short suit and not doubt wondering how he could get his hands on the photographer's equipment.

And of course there was Sally, looking focused, red hair in pigtails, plaid school dress, and those darned orthopedic shoes -- brown oxfords -- which her mother made her wear because she had inherited her Dad's flat feet.

The sofa barely visible was a three-cushion number covered in brown chintz with golden apples and green leaves. At the time of this show, we all lived in Kenwood Gardens, a new apartment complex in Old Orchard, where the Gravetts resided while they planned and had built their new home in Perrysburg. I can still recall the new-cement smell of the hallways.

Sally walked to Old Orchard School. We all walked to Sanger Branch Library. The family attended St. Paul's Methodist Church downtown. And Ed drove downtown in a Ford -- always a Ford -- to a wonderful Romanesque-style building that had been the post office before it was converted to offices. It sat, as I recall, at the corner of Madison Avenue and St. Clair Street, today the site of Levis Square Park.

Throughout her long life, Dodie maintained a trim and shapely body, seemingly without effort. She worked hard to prepare healthy meals with lots of veggies and fruits, made the usual 50s meals -- pot roasts and stews, chicken, some fish. A big treat was Rike's Fudge Cake, an unbelievably dense cake loaded with chopped walnuts. Rike's was the big department store in downtown Dayton where Mom and her family loved to shop.

We kept in touch with the huge clan of Pickrels and Gravetts, still mostly based in Dayton, by spending holidays there. The Pickrels had a truly legendary family Christmas party to which children under 18 were not welcome. Stories about the annual event blossomed. We played with our cousins -- at one time there were over 50 -- in their homes. By virtue of age, I was most social, spending time with Julie and Janet Ward, Jackie Pickrel, Gay Pickrel, and dear Aunt Betty and Uncle Bud Stickel and their kids, Susie and Tommie. I had a crush on Dickie Pickrel.
Summers we still made the long drive in the car down to Fort Lauderdale, cramming into the family Ford and listening to Dad grumble about lines of trucks in the mountains on the two-lane road and hearing Mom gasp as Dad gunned the engine to pass some of the behemoths. It took three days to get there. We only stopped for necessities. I remember the thrill of finally spotting the Atlantic Ocean as we drove along Highway 1 south of Jacksonville.

All through these years, the tension of Dad's drinking and Mom's anger and fear related to it became a deep and sustained note in the family dynamic. Dad was a mean drunk who turned on the woman who tried hardest to please him when he was in his cups. I began to be aware of angry words behind closed doors late on Saturday night and red eyes on Sunday morning.
But such tensions were not befitting a successful middle class family preparing to move to a high class suburb, so they were dutifully ignored by those in charge.

Meanwhile, the house at 123 East Seventh Street was beginning to take shape on a tidy lot. Dodie and Ed agreed on what they called a Colonial style -- not sure why it was called that -- but it was to be two-story with a used-brick front facade on the first floor and wide clapboard everywhere else.

There were squabbles about arrangements of inside space -- where would the fireplace go? Would the dining room and living room be separate spaces or the new L-shape flowing into each other?
Usually Ed won these, by hook or by crook. The fireplace went midway down the long west wall, forcing the layout into the L-shape he preferred. French doors at the end of the dining wing opened onto a screened in porch.

We all moved into the new house in Spring, 1952.