AnnArbor.com is LIVE and Has New Stories of Mine For Your Perusal

Yessirree, she's live! All my stuff over there is different from blog content, so you can enjoy (I hope) new stories over yonder. Here are some links you might find useful:

Link to my bio describing when I'll be publishing what 3 times a week.

When I post new stories, they pop up here in this list.

Link to my story "Locavores in 1930s Ypsilanti"

Link to my story "Tidbits: A History of Ypsi Chickenry."

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Enjoy!

Ypsilanti's Very First Fourth of July Celebration Featured Log Cannon Firing, Oceans of Whiskey, Dainty Loaf Sugar

A discussion of the first Fourth of July celebration in Washtenaw County with DDH centered not on the nation, or the oration, but the libation.

DD: "They had half a barrel of whiskey!"
DDH: "How much is half a barrel?"
DD: "I think it's a small barrel...you wouldn't just fill a big barrel half way. I think 'barrel' was a unit of measurement as well as a container."

DDH: "So...I'm guessing there was at least a gallon in there." [activate geek mode] "There are 128 ounces in one gallon."
DD: "A shot is one ounce."
DDH: "Yeah."
DD: "There were fewer than 100 people there...so everyone got at least one shot. Except, wait, probably not the women. So all the guys got at least TWO shots. And, there might have been as few as 29 people there! And there might be more than one gallon in a 'barrel'!"
DDH: "That might be enough to get me through an oration."

They ate well, too, with a cartload of goodies trucked in from Detroit that included expensive loaf sugar and raisins. The peas and beets suggest that there were some early local gardens contributing to the feast.

Note too that there were multiple nummy chickens--so we can see the history of poultry-keeping in the city goes back to the very first patriotic celebration. You could call it a venerable history. You could also call it historically accurate--people kept chickens in town well into the Depression and beyond, as DD's fat "poultry" file reveals.

DD's takeaway mental image from this 1907 Ypsilanti Daily Press story is of the blue and white Greek flag by the water tower rippling in slow motion, with a nice fat chicken in front, holding aloft, in one wing, a sip of golden beverage. Happy 4th!

During the Depression, Ypsilanti Bloomed

Anticipating by decades the exemplary efforts of Ypsilanti's Growing Hope and the community gardens in Recreation Park and Frog Island, during the Depression, Ypsilanti bloomed.

Led by indefatigable local social worker Inez Graves, Ypsilantians who owned vacant lots donated over 100 parcels to a citywide gardening effort. Families in need tended plots of tomatoes, peas, peppers, beans, lettuce, and took home healthy fresh food for the table that they otherwise could not afford to buy. Lots in the center of town were particularly desirable. "Few of the families in need of home gardens have means of transportation," notes this 1932 Ypsilanti Daily Press article, "and accordingly lots within the city limits, or at least close in, are greatly in demand."

That's right--the poor families in town had not even a means of transportation to get around. What they did have is the grit and persistence to coax from vacant property, kindly donated by owners, crops of healthy fresh food for their otherwise straitened families. "Families lived for months during the summer mainly from their gardens," notes the Press. "The food they canned served to augment their otherwise limited diet."

Dusty Diary admires the gumption and resourcefulness of these Depression-era gardeners, whose hard work provided for their families, and made our vacant lots bloom.