CHAPTER 6

Birthday Dinner

Cousin Diane (left) with the Flinn family, 1967

When I started dating, Mom said, “If a boy says, ‘Trust me, you won’t get pregnant,’ then you tell him, ‘I was a trust me.’”

In the sticky heat of August 1966, my parents got ready for a wedding an hour away in Detroit. Dad looked snazzy in his best jacket. Mom appeared from their bedroom and posed for a moment in a body-hugging jade green dress. She’d found it new with tags still attached at the thrift store. Dad let out a wolf whistle.

“Wow, isn’t your mother a knockout?” Dad said to the kids gathered around the living room to witness the excitement of the evening. My parents were going out! On a date! “Wow, that dress looks like it was made for her!”

Mom and Dad kissed the kids good-bye and left final instructions for our cousin Diane, then fourteen. She’d recently moved in with our family after her father had died. She was a quiet girl, mature for her age.

“Okay, kids, all of you are going to mind Diane and Miltie, right?” Dad said. The others nodded. “Good. We’ll be home late, so go to bed when they tell you to.”

At the reception, after the roast beef buffet, the lights dimmed as the band started to play. Couples drifted to the dance floor. Candles flickered on the tables. Mom and Dad swayed with her head on his shoulder as the band played covers of Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night” and “Pretty Woman” by Roy Orbison. Over the evening, Dad had a couple of beers, Mom drank sparkling wine. It was the first night they’d gone out by themselves in years.

“You look just the same as the day I married you,” Dad told her as he twirled her around at the start of “My Girl” by The Temptations and softly sang along into her ear for a moment. Then he said, “Hey, I’ve got an idea.”

When the song ended, Mom giddily fished a dime from her purse as they stood at the pay phone in the hallway.

“We’re going to spend the night in Detroit,” Dad told Diane. “Are you okay with keeping an eye on the kids?” She said no problem. Sandy and Mike were already in bed.

When they reached a roadside motel, Mom warned that she wasn’t prepared for, well, what was going to happen. “Trust me,” he said. At age thirty-two, he suggested that Mom was probably too old to get pregnant anyway. They rose early the following morning and were home in time to make the kids breakfast.

A month later, my mother called Dad at his office.

“TRUST YOU!” she yelled into the phone. “You said I wouldn’t get pregnant!”

The news was greeted by Diane and my siblings as if they were all getting new bikes and kittens. They cheered, hollered, and danced around the room.

My sister, then nine, had started Sunday school at the First Baptist Church in Davison. She took church seriously. Sandy would pray several times a day. Even though we were Baptist, she somehow got her hands on a rosary and would work it fervently between her small fingers. One night, Mom overheard Sandy as she kneeled for her bedtime prayer: “. . . and God, please tell my baby sister that I love her and that I’m here waiting for her. Amen.”

Mom helped little Sandy into her covers. In the late 1960s, there remained some mystery to childbirth. Ultrasound machines existed but weren’t yet sophisticated enough to detect the gender of a fetus. Mom said tactfully, “You know, God might not give you a baby sister. He might give you another brother.”

Sandy shook her head, appalled. “Oh, no, God would NEVER give me another brother.” Whenever Mom would try to introduce the subject of a possible brother, Sandy wouldn’t hear of it. She insisted that she’d worked it out with God. She was getting a sister.

Mom worried less about the gender and more about how they would manage with a new baby. After all, they were completely broke.

Century Products started as a producer of faux bricks made of concrete with a weatherproof brick exterior. Around the time Dad came back from California in 1964, the company had just added an aluminum siding option using subcontractors to tap into the booming 1960s siding craze. They also built custom windows, aluminum screen enclosures, and window awnings of all sizes and shapes.

Not long after they returned to Michigan, Dad’s brothers offered him a partnership. He had to come up with $25,000 to own a third of the company, about $180,000 in today’s currency, equivalent to about five years of his San Bruno police salary. They organized bank loans and approached relatives and friends to raise the rest of the money. My parents had never been in debt before. They knew it was a risky move. But Century Products was growing so fast that they felt certain it was a good investment, the kind of business that could develop into something substantial, a share in a solid company that Dad might be able to leave to his kids someday.

Besides, Dad’s hero was William C. Durant. Better known as Billy Durant, he founded the Coldwater Road Cart Company in 1885. The business morphed into the Durant-Dort Carriage Company, and by the turn of the 1900s it was the largest manufacturer of horse-drawn carriages in the world. In 1904, Durant took a risky move and shifted all of his focus into the infant automobile industry by joining a small horseless-carriage company called Buick. Within a few years, Durant would pull several companies together and rechristen the endeavor General Motors. All of that started just a few miles down the very road from us.

If Billy Durant could find success starting an endeavor on Coldwater Road, Dad figured he could, too. He didn’t expect Century Products to grow into the equivalent of GM, but he felt he was on the ground floor of something big.

The partners drew small salaries so they could pump the rest of the profits back into the company. They had thirty-five employees, a dozen vehicles, plus a number of subcontractors, and developed a great reputation for solid work and expanded their service area. They started to routinely beat competitors out of sought-after contracts.

In the midst of this growth, the partners were approached by a local investor. He outlined a strategy that involved an infusion of his capital and a small business loan so they could expand even more quickly and then go after major commercial accounts. They agreed to make him a nonworking capital partner.

Counting on the coming infusion of cash, the company ordered new equipment after it was approved for a $100,000 loan, equivalent to $750,000 today. All that was needed was to finalize the documents.

But the investor didn’t return his paperwork for weeks. Then he returned the documents unsigned. The guy never explained why. The new equipment arrived the day they learned he backed out.

The dominoes fell. The partners scrambled to save the company. They sold off the newly ordered equipment at a loss to a competitor. They laid off workers. Their two largest clients decided it would take too long to get their orders and took their business to another company—the same one that bought the equipment they couldn’t afford to keep. Then came the day they didn’t have enough cash to pay the subcontractors or the payroll. They were forced to liquidate the assets, selling even the desks in the office. Within a few weeks, the once thriving Century Products folded.

Mom and Dad were stunned.

Rumor had it that the investor was a silent partner in the competitor that bought their equipment and took over the contracts. It might have been a shrewd but cut-throat move to run them out of business. Or he might simply have changed his mind with unfortunate timing.

People told Dad that he should declare bankruptcy. But Dad knew the individuals who had lent him money on little more than his word would not be repaid. If they defaulted on their bank loans, they would lose the farm and their credit rating would be shattered.

Dad, a U.S. Marine, was not about to lose the most valuable thing of all: his honor.

They developed a repayment plan with the banks and each of the individuals who had lent them money. It would take at least six years to pay it all back, with interest, as promised.

Dad’s hero Billy Durant had his own setbacks. In 1910, Durant became overextended and lost control of GM to banking interests. His response was to start a new motor company with Louis Chevrolet, an American racing champion of French descent. The company was so successful that Durant was able to buy enough General Motors stock to own a controlling interest. He took his young wife, Catherine, out for hamburgers one evening and casually told her, “I took back GM today.”

Her response: “Well, then, you could have taken me to dinner at the Plaza.”

If Durant could stage a comeback, Dad could, too.

Given Dad’s fascination with its founder, perhaps fate led both my parents to work for GM. Mom got a job as a secretary in the personnel department at the AC Spark Plug plant in Flint. Dad knew someone at Chevrolet and got hired on the assembly line.

Mom’s position in personnel turned out to be a blessing for the extended family. General Motors received thousands of applications every week. Since most of the jobs were blue-collar positions that didn’t require much experience, a résumé meant little in terms of getting hired for jobs on the line, or even in middle management. In “the shop,” as it was called, getting hired often depended on who you knew.

When Mom started to work, GM was testing a program at AC Spark Plug to train foremen who oversaw workers on the line. Foremen had historically been hired from the ranks, but this didn’t always work out. Someone might be good at assembly, but it didn’t necessarily translate into being an effective manager. The head of the training program was impressed by Dad’s entrepreneurial spirit and his background in the marines. Plus he had a college degree in business. They had never hired a foreman from “the outside” before. Dad was the first.

Thanks to Mom, other relatives got into the shop, too. Aunt Mary Jo was hired into a coveted position as a stock chaser, a kind of higher-level go-fer who would watch the line and warn when supplies got low. Aunt Mel’s new husband, Rich Fridline, joined as a plant security guard. Potential line workers had to pass a dexterity test. Aunt Lillian got one of the highest scores in the history of the testing. Her manual prowess earned her a place as a winder, rapidly wrapping wire around spark plugs, a job she held for thirty-three years.

At first, both my parents worked days. All the children were in school. Diane monitored the kids for a couple of hours after the bus dropped them off.

Every cent of Mom’s paychecks went toward their debts. As they were children of the Depression who believed firmly that the economy could always go wrong, a portion of my dad’s income went into savings. This left them little cash after they paid the sixty-three-dollars-a-month mortgage on the farm. But they had the garden and orchard, chickens producing eggs, and a basement filled with canned goods. The most important thing was that they wouldn’t go hungry.

When Mom went on maternity leave in late April 1967, Dad was unexpectedly laid off. Although the rest of the U.S. economy remained steady, auto sales plummeted in February and March. Some economists blamed the year-long news reports swarming around GM in relation to political activist Ralph Nader and his ongoing crusade for improved safety measures such as mandatory seat belts in American cars and design issues with specific models, notably the Chevrolet Corvair. Others pointed to an increased appetite by urban dwellers for smaller vehicles from foreign manufacturers such as Volkswagen. Whatever the reasons, GM scrambled to lay off workers throughout the ranks.

Still heavily in debt with a baby on the way, Mom and Dad made the best of it. They took the kids on all-day fishing adventures at nearby Holloway Reservoir and for picnics in the woods. They would make a big bonfire behind the farmhouse and cook dinner over the fire. It was like camping without having to pack up the car.

Mom’s original due date was May 16—the same day Dad’s sister Hazel died four years earlier. Nothing happened. After a week passed, the kids got impatient.

“Come out, baby!” eight-year-old Mike would implore loudly at my mom’s stomach. “We’re all waiting! Are you always going to be late?”

With time on his hands in good weather, Dad decided to cover up the old farmhouse with some of the white siding he’d bought wholesale from Century Products. “Might as well do it now,” he told Mom. “We’re just waiting on this baby.”

Installing siding is hard work; it normally takes at least a couple of strong, skilled men. The boys liked it. They spent days fetching siding as Dad perched perilously atop ladders. Dad had enough left over that he even put siding on part of the barn, which didn’t really match its rustic wood exterior.

He finished around midnight the last day of May aided by work lights. At one A.M., he fell into bed exhausted. As soon as he drifted off, Mom poked him awake. “I think this is it,” she said. Dad wearily got up and rushed her to St. Joseph’s Hospital.

They weren’t too surprised by the onset of labor. She’d felt a lot of movement on the days Dad had been installing the siding. When the nurse went to listen for the heartbeat, she couldn’t find it right away. After checking Mom over, she stood back. “This baby is breech,” she said grimly. “We’ll have to get it turned around.”

Apparently, I was a tiny baby luxuriating in a relative lap pool of amniotic fluid. The attending nurse was a hulk of a woman. She massaged the exterior of Mom’s belly, pushing and kneading until she thought the baby’s head was down, not a particularly comfortable experience for my mother. “All right,” she declared. “I think we’re set.”

Within minutes, I flopped back into breech position, as if pushing off a wall at a swim meet. The nurse tried her maneuver again, this time trying to tie off a possible retreat route by securing towels around Mom’s stomach. At seven A.M., I flipped back into breech again. The nurse put her hands on her hips, exasperated.

“I feel like I have to push,” Mom said. She’d been trying to fight her involuntary contractions. “But I know that I shouldn’t.” After all, her baby was in a potentially dangerous position and the doctor wasn’t yet in the room.

The nurse, a veteran of hundreds of deliveries, told her to go ahead. “If I can’t deliver this baby, I shouldn’t be here,” she assured Mom. After a single mighty push, she heard the nurse say quickly, “It’s a girl.” With a second push two minutes later, she heard a timid cry. I had come out feet first, one arm casually flung over my head, the other arm down at my side. My shoulders never squared, so I slid right out. Minutes later, the doctor arrived, a mask held in place over his mouth. “Well, well! What have we here?” he exclaimed. He picked me up from the weighing table, to assure he got his fee.

At 6.2 pounds, I was the smallest of my parents’ offspring and, after the initial scare, by far the easiest birth. Dad called the house with the news. The kids had been up since nearly three A.M., and screamed in celebration. Then Miltie, ever practical, asked when Mom was coming home to make them breakfast.

“Your mother is very tired,” Dad explained. “She and your sister won’t be home for a few days.” In the late 1960s, women remained in the hospital for up to a week following delivery. Mom basked in the quiet luxury of the hospital. She slept late every morning. Someone brought her bland meals on a tray and changed her baby. A few days without five kids and laundry felt like a trip to a spa.

On the sixth of June, she took me home in a tiny newborn outfit sprinkled with roses, a gift from my aunt Mary Jo. The novelty of a new baby gripped the household. My brothers and sister fought to hold me and to give me a bottle. The older kids couldn’t wait to change my diaper. Mom had spent years washing cloth diapers, a complicated and messy process. I was the first child born after the common availability of disposable ones. To her, tossing a diaper in the trash was nothing short of a miracle.

Sandy, proven correct in her divination that she’d get a sister, took on secondary-mother status. At nine, she became a sudden expert in all things infant. “Don’t hold her like that, it will make her throw up,” she’d scold one of the boys. Or, overseeing a diaper change: “No, that’s not how you do it. Give her to me.” If a brother or cousin Diane heated up a bottle, she’d check it against her wrist and nod her approval.

A week later, Mom got a call from AC Spark Plug. She thought it might be someone confirming she’d be back after her maternity leave in September. Instead, the caller informed her that she was being laid off, too.

Despite their debts, my parents were thrilled. On maternity leave, she had no pay. With a layoff, she would be eligible for a small unemployment check and be able to stay home with the baby and the kids while they were on summer break. “Rocking chair money,” she called it. Mom couldn’t believe her good luck.

The next day, her boss at AC called personally. “Great news!” he started. “We’ve created a job just for you! It’s a new classification so that we could bring you back from the layoff. But this means you’ll have to come back on Monday, not after your maternity leave.”

So Mom went back to work. In mid-August, when Dad got “called back in,” the nomenclature used by auto workers to signal the end of a layoff, he asked to be moved to second shift. For the first months of my life, my parents rarely saw each other so that one of them could always be home with me.

The next June, Dad got transferred to days. Their differing-shift child-care strategy wouldn’t work anymore. Cousin Diane had moved in with her older sister in Saginaw, so they’d have to hire someone to watch me. Even though Mom’s salary was helping them pay off their debts, they decided it didn’t make financial sense to spend so much on child care. She quit working at AC.

People were shocked. No one “quit” working at GM. If you got lucky enough to get in—especially at a desk job like Mom’s—you stayed until you got your pension. But her four kids were ready to break for summer. She had already missed so much of her baby’s first moments. She wasn’t home for my first steps, nor did she hear my first word. In the two years she worked at AC, they’d paid off a big chunk of their debt. Quitting meant they would have to live off a small portion of my dad’s paychecks.

“Some things are worth more than money,” Mom says.

As young parents, they were always financially strapped. They couldn’t afford to get each kid an expensive toy for his or her birthday. Instead, we would get a small token gift. The real present was we could “order” whatever we wanted for breakfast, dinner, and dessert.

This evolved into an annual event of immense proportions. Extraordinary amounts of time went into discussing and developing birthday menus. Mom served the whole family whatever the child ordered, so deals were made to assure that the selected menu didn’t contain any yucky items, such as peas.

Despite the hours of consideration, in the end, we tended to order the same thing each year. Sandy always wanted spaghetti and meatballs, corn on the cob, and “sweet salad,” a simple cabbage slaw made with bananas and apples in a mayonnaise and sugar dressing. Her dessert was always angel food cake; she considered it the most extravagant food in the world since it required twelve to fourteen egg whites. Mom would collect the eggs for days to get enough and then carefully save the yolks for French toast or homemade noodles. Sandy would watch as Mom whipped the egg whites into stiff peaks and folded them into a frothy batter. Angel food cake was so special it even had its own pan.

Miltie preferred bone-in chicken to the stewed variety Mom served routinely with biscuits. For his birthday dinner, he ordered fried chicken with blanched green beans and cornbread, and a chocolate cake for dessert. Doug wanted hamburgers with real buns, not slices of bread, and chocolate chip cookies for dessert. (Otherwise, Mom never made chocolate chip cookies; the morsels were too expensive.) Mike usually wanted steak, a delicacy rare on the farm, with off-the-ear corn and mashed potatoes, and a banana cream pie for dessert. Diane stayed with us until I was about a year old, but when she lived on the farm, she ordered fried chicken, mashed potatoes, biscuits, and strawberry shortcake. When I got old enough, I ordered roast chicken with mashed potatoes, herb dressing with thick sage gravy, and lemon meringue pie.

But all of us ordered the same thing for breakfast: cinnamon rolls.

Mom regularly made pancakes and French toast. They both allowed her to use up her many eggs. Cinnamon rolls were reserved for special occasions. My grandmother’s recipe required two stages of letting the dough rise, so they took a couple of hours to make from start to finish. They couldn’t be prepped the night before, either. In order to have them in time for the kids’ breakfast before school, Mom had to get them started by 5:30 A.M.

Mom didn’t mind. She and Dad rose early anyway. She’d pad to the kitchen on each of our birthdays and start to mix the dough before she had her coffee. During the years they paid off their debts, the kids never had new clothes, fancy bikes, or enough money for hot lunch at school. My mother’s heart sank as the children would spend dinnertime telling stories of their friends’ trips to Disneyland or summer camp. Once, Sandy needed shorts for gym class. In a thrifty move, Mom made her a pair from Mike’s old Cub Scout trousers, which were threadbare hand-me-downs worn first by Milt and then by Doug. Mom cut off the legs and hemmed them to fit Sandy’s tiny frame. The girls in school noticed the trademark dark blue color with the bright yellow piping. A group cornered her at gym and taunted her.

“Are those Boy Scout pants?” a tall girl asked, mocking her.

Another piped in, “You can’t afford real shorts, can you?” Sandy gritted her teeth and endured the shame, her face hot and ready for tears, but she held them back. The taunting continued on the bus ride home. She jumped off the bus at the farm, ran into the house, buried her head in a pillow, and cried for hours.

The next morning, Mom got up and made Sandy cinnamon rolls even though it wasn’t her birthday. She knew that her children were paying the price of a risk that didn’t pan out and the cost of keeping promises. As she left the dough to start its first rising in her quiet predawn kitchen, my mother figured it was the least she could do.