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    Grace Street
    Grace Street
    Grace Street
    Ebook142 pages2 hours

    Grace Street

    By Diane Jacks Saunders

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Grace Street is about children growing up in a Lebanese neighborhood in Michigan City, Indiana, during the 1950s. Children in that era were safe to walk city streets and explore parks and wooded areas. Racial prejudice was rampant, and most families had stay-at-home mothers. The South Shore Railroad was in its heyday and Washington Park was a popular recreation area. With a healthy dose of humor tempered with a pinch of pathos and a sprinkling of irony, Grace Street touches on old-world beliefs and customs while telling the story of siblings and cousins who grew up in a sometimes confusing ethnic environment. This close-knit family had a few secrets, including an alcoholic uncle and a grandmother who was nearly deported, but the parents rarely spoke of these matters, especially to the children.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse
    Release dateJan 20, 2011
    ISBN9781452097756
    Grace Street
    Author

    Diane Jacks Saunders

    Diane Jacks Saunders, a Lebanese-American, is an award-winning journalist who has worked more than three decades for community newspapers. With no formal training in journalism, she carved out a career as a writer, editor and photographer while raising three children as a single parent in Indiana. Diane believes lessons learned as a child in an ethnic family prepared her for a career as a journalist. After raising her children, Diane relocated to southeast Arizona to escape the harsh Indiana winters. As a resident of the Southwest, Diane was introduced to "cowboy poetry" and self-published a limited-edition cowboy poetry book. Diane and her husband Charles "Chuck" Saunders live in the mountains on a small ranch with horses, dogs, cats, a burro and a pot-bellied pig named Pork Chop.

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      Book preview

      Grace Street - Diane Jacks Saunders

      © 2011 Diane Jacks Saunders. All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

      First published by AuthorHouse 1/17/2011

      ISBN: 978-1-4520-9774-9 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4520-9775-6 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2010918649

      Printed in the United States of America

      This book is printed on acid-free paper.

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      This book is dedicated to the memory of my brother, Darrell James Jacks, who grew up with me on Grace Street.

      And it is for my children, Ken, Sandra and Jill,

      who never had a chance to grow up on Grace Street.

      Acknowledgements

      A special thanks to Phil Davis for providing the cover picture and sharing many of his insights and memories. Also, thanks to Rodney Guehn for his contribution; to Mike Fleming for providing several Michigan City pictures; to Todd Haynie and Dillon McGaughey for their help in preparing the cover photo; to Aimee Staten for proofreading my copy, and to my dear friend Carol Hatchett who was always there for me.

      A Street Called Grace

      James and Mary had a family with hopes and dreams,

      Under stormy skies and brilliant sunbeams.

      Three daughters are mothers at a special place,

      The big white house on a street called Grace.

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      Chapter One

      Ya-allah! Ya-allah!

      Chapter Two

      Ahma! Ahma!

      Chapter Three

      The Little Orange Train

      Chapter Four

      Home on the Range and Fun at the Park

      Chapter Five

      Uncle Eddie

      Chapter Six

      The Middle East in the Midwest: Religion and Bunko

      Chapter 7

      Fired-up Over Politics and Other Hot Topics

      Chapter Eight

      School Days and Summer Daze

      Chapter 9

      Animals, Bikes and Liberty Rocks

      Chapter 10

      Tanber’s, Store, the X Club, House Calls and Tenants

      Epilogue

      The James NahjeebTadros Family

      Introduction

      Grace Street is more than a street or a location. It is place in my heart and mind, frozen in time, but burnt into my soul forever. Kids were safe to wander their neighborhoods, explore ponds and woods and ride their bikes to the library or take the city bus to the movie theater. Mothers sent their children to buy bread and milk at Tanber’s store, and Uncle Eddie owned part of the street. Adults laughed and talked about Nazita, yelled at each other in frustration, gossiped in Lebanese and cooked stuffed grape leaves for a treat.

      Grace Street was in an ethnic neighborhood on the east side of Michigan City, Indiana. Adults spoke broken English and held onto many old-world beliefs. We kids were caught up between the customs of the old country and the growing Americanization of our parents and grandparents.

      My guess is that most adults have their own Grace Street – a place they look back to when they’re afraid of the future; a place that is comfortable when they are uncertain; a foundation that’s always there when their world starts to unravel or crumble.

      Grace Street. Who named the street? Was it named for someone? Other streets on the east side bore people names, such as Edward or Helen. Or was the name a reference to religious beliefs? The main structure on the street was the St. George Syrian Greek Orthodox Church, built in 1911 on land donated by my grandfather, James NahjeebTadros.

      My grandparents certainly possessed grace, strength and other attributes just to survive the deaths of four children, the Great Depression, World War I and World War II and who knows how many other challenges and tragedies. This was after immigrating to the United States from their native Beirut, Syria, now known as Beirut, Lebanon.

      My look back at Grace Street covers only a few years – from the time I was probably 3 or 4 years old until I was about 11 or 12, or from about 1950 to about 1959. This book is based on my memories and my impressions of growing up in an ethnic neighborhood in the 1950s. I didn’t know then if times were good or times were bad for the adults. For us kids, Grace Street was all we knew. It was our world, and now I realize it was a good one.

      Chapter One

      Ya-allah! Ya-allah!

      We were blonde-haired kids living in a dark-haired neighborhood; Roman Catholics living next door to the Greek Orthodox Church on Grace Street in Michigan City, Indiana. The South Shore Railroad tracks were a half-block from our house, and the rumbling orange trains were noisy. Playing on the tracks was dangerous and potentially deadly, but the little orange train was the lifeblood of our existence.

      Our mother, June Rose (Tadros) Jacks, and our grandmother spoke Lebanese, an Arabic dialect, to each other. Grandma spoke some English and mostly Lebanese to my brother Darrell and me, and Mom spoke mostly English when she talked to us. When Mom was excited about something she would speak shrilly and yell Lebanese to my dad, and he would calmly remind her that he only spoke English.

      Most adults we knew spoke Lebanese, and we thought this was normal. Several Lebanese families lived on Grace Street or on nearby Holiday, Edward and Helen streets and other streets I cannot name. They had surnames like Tadros, Tanber, Muckway, Faroh, Gibron or Shikany. We didn’t know many people with typically American last names, like Johnson or Smith. Occasionally, Grandma and my mother would take me to a home on one of those streets. I can’t say I hated going, I just didn’t enjoy those visits very much. Everyone spoke Lebanese or broken English.

      I remember asking kids in my kindergarten class what country their grandparents were from, and they would give me blank stares or ask, What do you mean?

      I thought everyone had grandparents who came from another country. My grandparents, James and Mary (Kicanas) Tadros, were from Beirut, Syria, now known as Beirut, Lebanon. Although Lebanon was split from Syria in 1926, the Lebanese people we knew said they were Syrian. In fact, my grandfather’s immigration papers said he was from Beirut, Syria. I never knew my grandfather because he died more than a year before I was born. Based on the pictures I’ve seen, he was slender and had light brown hair and blue eyes – not a typical Arab. Grandma was more stereotypical. She had black hair and brown eyes and was short and stocky. She was 15 when her brother married her off to my grandfather in 1904. This happened after she was sent to the United States by her father to escape political strife in Syria. My grandmother and her sister were put on a ship for the United States, but Grandma’s sister left the boat in Italy and ended up living in a convent. My mother said she wasn’t a nun but lived the life of a nun.

      My grandparents had eight children – four of whom lived to adulthood. My mother was the youngest. Aunt Jo (Josephine) was the oldest and between her and my mother were Aunt Marge (Marguerite) and Uncle Eddie (Edward). A son, George, died as an infant, and another son, Philip, died at age 9. A set of twins were stillborn, according to my mother.

      My first memories of Grace Street are of the kitchen of our small, upstairs apartment in the house my grandfather built in the early 1900s. The cabinets were a light, celery green, the counter was black. And my dad, Vernon Jacks, who was not Lebanese, sat at the round kitchen table in the corner and made his own cigarettes. He kept his tobacco and cigarette papers in a brown, leather zippered pouch. He had a black lighter that he would take apart to clean and put in a new flint before he refilled it with lighter fluid.

      Dad never called Grandma by her name nor did he call her Ma as my mother and her sisters did. He called her Emma. This was a derivative of the Lebanese word emmet, which means mother. I think he was uncomfortable calling her Mary and couldn’t quite bring himself to call her Mom, which was reserved only for his mother. So he compromised by calling her Emma.

      Grandma, on the other hand, called Dad Bernon, not Vernon. This was a Lebanese thing because there is no letter V in the Lebanese language.

      My mother always wanted me to be a typical little girl. I think she would have been thrilled if I sat around all day and played with dolls or embroidered hankies. Instead, I was a total tomboy. I did not like to sew or embroider, and I had little interest in girlie things, although I had a couple of dolls I liked and I would occasionally play with them. Mom and Grandma wouldn’t allow me to even try playing with one of Darrell’s trucks.

      I loved rough-and-tumble play and longed to play football with my brother and my cousins, Rodney and Phil. I wasn’t allowed to play football because I was a girl. I didn’t like wearing dresses or playing house, and I loved to change into jeans after wearing a dress to school all day.

      My mother just didn’t get it. She was always trying to make me into an adorable girlie-girl, and all I wanted to do was play rough games and climb trees. I was fairly lonely most of the time, and it seemed that my mother and I were always butting heads.

      She tried to connect with me, though, by sewing or buying mother and daughter dresses. These outfits were nearly identical with the child’s dress made of the same fabric but of a more juvenile design. I liked dressing like my mother, but I wished my dress was exactly like hers. I never voiced my disappointment.

      We had a black cat named Blackie, and I did play dress-up with him. Mom and Dad said I would drape the cat around my neck

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