Lakewood Lore

Newly published diary shows city in its early years

What was it like to live in Lakewood 75 years ago?

A diary that recently surfaced gives us a warm, homespun insight into the rhythm of life here at that time.

A historical find, it was written by a teen-age girl, the daughter of a prominent businessman. She lived with her family in a beautiful Lakewood home from 1910, the year it was built, until 1922.

Her daily jottings centered about this house, which still stands on the northwest corner of Detroit and Nicholson, behind Bobson's Hardware Store.

The diarist's name was Agnes Jeannette Stranahan, a graduate of Lakewood High School (Class of '22) who was called Jeannette by family and friends.

She started keeping her Lakewood diary in 1918 when she was 14 and continued it till she left the city with her parents in 1922 to live all her adult life on the West Coast. She died last Feb. 15 in Redlands, Calif., at age 90 after a long illness.

Jeannette's daughter, Joan Snider of Grant's Pass, Ore., impressed by her mother's diligence, sensitivity, humor and foresight, had the diary published in a limited-edition book, a copy of which she presented to the Lakewood Public Library.

World War I was the big news three-quarters of a century ago. Jeannette volunteered at the Red Cross House (old Wallace Home), which was located on present-day St. Edward High School property on Detroit, and where she knitted socks and made bandages for the soldiers.

She watched the troop trains, sometimes as many as six a day, pass through Lakewood along the Nickel Plate on their way to shipping-out ports on the eastern seaboard.

"All the boys were leaning out the windows and waving," she penned.

She picked up a slip of paper that one of the doughboys threw out. It had a name and address and said, "Please answer." After a few days she retrieved three more addresses. She wrote to the first writer.

Later, Jeannette went to see a German tank on Public Square. "It was the first one we captured," she chronicled.

Then came the armistice. Her entry for Monday, Nov. 11, 1918, told how the newspapers were "out in dark of morning and newsmen were yelling, 'The war is over!' "

"Everyone was up and shouting at 4 a.m. We tied tin cans on our new car and drove all over Lakewood. There were people pounding on the back of dishpans and yelling all day long."

Though the war had gone its way, a new calamitous upheaval -- the influenza epidemic -- swept in during the fall of 1918. On Oct. 18 of that year, Jeannette recorded that 101 people died of the flu in Cleveland during a 24-hour period. Then, during the next eight days, she noted 470 more deaths.

Lakewood schools and churches were closed. "Children under 6 have to stay at home," she scribbled. "They are not allowed on the street or in picture shows."

Silent films were becoming the rage during this period of history. Jeannette and her friends often went to the early movie houses, including the Lakewood Theater, a 600-seat cinema, which once stood on the southwest corner of Detroit and Victoria. Admission there was five cents.

They saw Constance Talmadge in "Scandal," Wallace Reid in "Excuse My Dust," Douglas Fairbanks in "The Mark of Zorro," and many other vintage stars and films.

What else did they do during evenings before radio and television? Well, they often stayed home and played parcheesi, or 500 (a form of euchre), or checkers.

Sometimes they crocheted and knitted, played ragtime music on the piano, told each other ghost stories, or monkeyed around with the then-popular Ouija Board, which gave messages and answered questions.

Frequently they went out to buy sundaes, which were known then as "dips," or they danced at Gilbert's, a public ballroom on Detroit and Marlowe. In the winter, there was always sledding and ice skating.

Because Lakewood was a city of orchards, Jeannette picked apples and once confessed to hiding some in her bloomers.

When she was 15, she drove the family's electric car all the way downtown. On Nov. 25, 1918, the streetcar conductors went on strike. She was forced to take the auto, but then lamented that "It ran out of electricity and wouldn't go."

The streetcar then was just about everyone's most important avenue for getting to any from work daily. The fair was one cent per mile.

Jeannette had a bicycle, but it was mostly for fun. In the glossary of the day, bikes were known as "wheels." Streetcars were called "cars," and automobiles, "machines."

This article by Dan Chabek appeared in the Lakewood Sun Post July 8, 1993. Reprinted with permission.

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