Tuesday, January 14, 1936 - An Evening with Friends

 

"a family named Dixon moved.  a boy named Billy is their boy.  I don't like him very well.  I change my set to where he sat in school.  Jack and I went to Marie's house to-night.  We played with colored buttons.  We made flower gardens and houses out of them.  Bob & Llye Server went skiing.  Bob stayed and played cards."

How clever to make flower gardens and houses out of colored buttons!  I'm thinking this was something like mosaic pictures.  Also, I learned something about my grandfather, Bob:  that he skied...probably cross-country, as downhill skiing is limited to Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Friday, January 10, 1936 - A Spell Down and Sledding

 

"Today at school we had a spell down. our side won. next week we are going to have a mid-term-test.  Bob, Jack, I and Lyle Server and Marie Server went down the hill.  I took Joyce out doors today.  We went down the hill on Lly's toboggan.  he made it himself.  Billy Bought a toy airplane to make."

This photo of Joyce playing in the snow, Winter of 1935-6,
may well have been photographed on January 10.

Shirley's Friends, Neighbors, and Community Members

There were two families that Shirley mentions frequently in her diary: the Servers and the Taylors.  Marie Server was Shirley's best friend.  In 1930, the Robbins and Server families were enumerated three homes apart, living on East Broadway in Norton Township.  The Server family consisted of the parents, Thomas and Lillian, and two much older siblings, Lyle and Genevieve (b. c. 1915 and 1917, respectively).  Marie was born c. 1926 and was the same age and in the same grade as Shirley.

Lyle and Doris Taylor, 1935
Grant, Michigan
They were probably visiting Bob who was working on farms
 in the area, as there are several photos of them with him.

The Taylor parents seem to have been close friends with Bill and Marie, Shirley's parents, and frequently visited from their home in Ashland Township in neighboring Newaygo County, often staying for a weekend at a time. The parents were Ernest Sr. and Orah, and their children were Lyle (b. c. 1920), Doris (b. c. 1921), Ernest Jr. (b. c. 1923), and Phyllis (b. c. 1925). These children were close in age to Bob, Billy Jr., and Shirley Robbins and were good friends with each other, too.

Mrs. Rosengren and Mrs. Smith were mentioned as Shirley's teachers in elementary school.  Mrs. Rosengren was probably Ora Fern (DeCamp) Rosengren, wife of Alvin.  There were three Mrs. Smiths, all teachers, listed in the 1940 census who had lived in Muskegon Heights in 1935: Mildred M. Smith, an English teacher, divorced; Gladys L. Smith, a Kindergarten teacher, married to Vernard A. Smith; and R. Jessie Smith, enumerated simply as a teacher, married to T. Lynne Smith.  Mrs. Smith, Shirley's teacher, was probably not Mildred, as that Mrs. Smith likely taught high school, given that she was a teacher of a specific subject.  Perhaps we'll be able to learn more through the diary entries.

I will update this post with more information on the above families as I research them.  I'll also post about other friends, neighbors, and community members as we come across them in the diary entries.