Mom & Ernie

Edna on the left & Morna Collins.

 Mom had many stories about growing up and she wrote them all down in her collection, My Life. But one I've always remembered was about Ernie falling out of the car and no one noticing. Even back in the fifties and sixties when the only thing holding you in the car was a door, it was hard to visualize. As time has passed and children are now carefully ensconced in car seats, it's unfathomable.

I'm not challenging the veracity of the story, I'm just illustrating it with these pictures. The following is Mom's description: 

As I was growing up my parents were good friends of the minister and his family.  Their name was Collins. . . My mother liked his wife very much and they did things together a lot.  They had four children like my parents. 

The Collins-Burkhardt families--Mary on the right and Ernie the left.

The youngest one was named Ernie and we were not in school so we would be with the two women.  One day my mother was driving down the river road that ran beside the Kaw River on a dirt road going to my Uncle Percy’s cabin.  The door flew open and Ernie fell out.  They didn’t notice and it took awhile before I get their attention that Ernie was no longer in the car.  I did not push him.  I liked Ernie.  

Collins' Summer home on Crystal Lake, MI- 1928

The Kaw River from Percy's Camp in 1927.

The Collins & Burkhardt children. Mary & Ernie are the little ones in front.

Burkhardts and Collins' on the shores of Crystal Lake-1928.

 Her description continues:
We spent one summer vacation with them on Crystal Lake in Michigan.  At that time Women sometimes wore knickers while on vacation.  Evidently my mother didn’t like the way the pictures came out as she cut the bottom off all the pictures that she was in. The Collins owned a cabin on the lake.  Everything was very sandy.

One other detail she has in her memoir is that Edna allowed Dr. Collins to keep his beer in their refrigerator, because he couldn't in his at home. One has to remember that the twenties were a time of Prohibition so it would have been highly improper for a man of the cloth to have illegal substances in his home.

I've heard these stories multiple times, but it's nice to see the people involved.

The Shop

                    The Shop - That's what everyone called it, but I see from this 1924 picture that it did have a formal name, Burkhardt Battery Co. It clearly was a serious business matter for EA, but for his grandchildren it was freedom.Gussie, Edna, would gather us older grandchildren, probably on a Saturday night when she was babysitting us and say she needed to go to the Shop and finish some work in the office. We five older ones, Chris, Steve, Sally, Kerry and I were then turned loose in the other half of the Shop. By the time we were old enough to do this, EA had died and Allan was running the business. Looking back I'm sure Allan didn't know we ran rampant through the Shop, through the aisles of auto parts, bolts, nuts, etc.
                                      
                                                                              

Burkhardt Battery in 1924.

 I usually got asthma, but never has asthma been more fun. Steve and Chris usually had to start by checking out the girlie calendars the guys had up behind the counter and then things took off from there. The specifics are lost, but it was great. (I still feel a sense of security when I smell auto parts.) Eventually Gussie would come out and give us a nickel each so we could have a pop from the machine.

                               

Pictured from left are EA, holding Mary Grace, Ethel, Allan and Helen.

Once again while scanning in the pictures Mom had collected, I found these two. I came across the one at left and if you look closely the rear tire is painted with the words, Burkhardt Battery and Willard Battery. The Willard lettering was exciting because EA was a salesman for them when he and Edna were married in 1913. The story I remember hearing is that he made less money than she did as a teacher, but she wasn't allowed to teach after she was married. Another story I remember is that when he started the shop he was helped by his various brothers-in-law, An article from the Topeka paper describes a Christmas dinner, the 5th annual in 1924, they gave for their 20 employees.

The Shop was a focal point for Burkhardts for decades, but I guess I should get to my point. As we five Morgans and our spouses and our children are getting ready to sell the family homestead in Shawnee, I wanted to comment on memories and their relationships to specific places. As you can tell if you fall this link the Shop has seen better days. But as I realized when I looked at this Google link my memories are not related to its condition or the fact that I probably haven't been there in nearly 50 years. We Morgans should be fine regardless if we visit Flint anymore. Our memories are all with us and thanks to Mom's scrapbooks, we can refresh our memories regularly.
4th & Jackson