18619 Birwood Street
Detroit, MI, USA

1949-1972

My family was the first to live in this house. My parents, Maurice "Ruby" and Freda Glassman Rubenstein, along with their daughter Susan "Suzy" moved in at the beginning of Feb. 1949. Mom was probably pregnant with me but likely didn't even know it yet! They paid $9,000 for it. The house was the smallest on the block, due to a builder's error. My parents had little money and could JUST afford it as it was with my dad's VA loan. They couldn't afford to finish the unfinished attic, basement, or complete the back porch and they NEVER got finished while we owned the house. For me, the most beautiful part of the house was the fireplace with its black tile surround. We had a gorgeous antique mirror over it, a wedding gift to my parents from my dad's sister and her doctor husband (see photo below). I was born in October 1949 and lived in the house until I left for the Peace Corps (Ecuador) after graduating from the University of Michigan in 1971 (lived on campus, but came home often). The most important room of the house was the kitchen. My mom was a good cook and a GREAT baker, and all of the kids in the neighborhood knew where to come for something FRESH and home-baked. We had wonderful neighbors on all sides of us -- most of whom stayed in their same home, just as we did, until the late 1960s or early 1970s. It was a real post-WWII baby-boomer neighborhood with TONS of kids who grew up together. The house had few "luxury" appointments. The hardwood floors were covered with wall-to-wall carpeting in the livingroom and hallway, as was the fashion back then. In the room my sister and I shared, a large piece of linoleum covered the hardwood, while my parents had rugs in their room. The houses were so close together that my sister and I could have long conversations with the girls next door through our open bedroom windows in the summer. Also, in the summer, just about everyone sat out on their front porches in the evenings, chatting with neighbors next door or across the street. My sister and I attended MacDowell Elementary School and Mumford High School, both of which were within easy walking distance. When we were small, we had a swing set in the back yard which was a big magnet for the younger set on the block. When the swingset was not used anymore, Dad sold it and planted two trees in the middle of the yard. The back yard, in the early days, had lots of different flowers along the fence: spirea, roses, irises, peonies. Neither Mom nor Dad were very interested in gardening and they pretty much died or got mowed over as the years passed. When we first moved in and until I was eight or so, we had a working alley where the garbage trucks would collect our trash. The City of Detroit closed the alley and for many years, Dad and our "alley neighbor" Dr. Herbert Raskin cultivated a vegetable garden. After they had a falling out, I maintained the garden for several years. We had a MAGNIFICENT elm in the front yard. Dad loved that tree and always said, "When that tree goes, so do I." The tree was diagnosed with Dutch Elm Disease in 1970 and was ailing badly when Dad died of kidney failure at the end of 1971. By the time Mom sold the house in 1972, the tree had been cut down.