Lawrence Struble Murphy

Dad moved to Fairgrove as a teen and lived at 2106 Main St., the house he and Mom bought as we children were growing up.

He and Mom- who lived across the street at her grandparents house, (actually behind the house in the barn/garage.), would play toss the ball across Main Street.

Dad lived in Gladstone for some years and then moved and went to Arthur Hill High, in Saginaw, graduating in 1942 or 1943 from Flint Central.

Dad wanted to work on the ore boats on the Great Lakes. He got as far as Detroit and a man on board, who didn't like him, tried to kill him and Dad jumped overboard to save his life. Good thing he was a good swimmer, or we all wouldn't be here!!!!

Dad and Mom were married in Flint MI on December 11, 1943.

They didn't have a car in the beginning. That must have been inconvienent. One of the fun memories I have, is of Dad driving us in the Model A on the one lane, grass hump in the middle, roads on a Sunday afternoon. Sometimes you had to hang on to the loop of material hanging next to the window to keep your balance ( NO seatbelts in those days!or babyseats!) Those were adventure days and today my husband and I enjoy going on a drive "on the roads less traveled" to timbucktoo!!!

Later on when there were more children and we lived on Main St., Dad would take us for a drive up the Thumb of Michigan. We would stop for a swim at Caseville and maybe eat somewhere and have a good time.

Grindstone City, top of the Thumb. We would walk out the breakwater type area and look at those huge monsters of lime? laying on their sides and took pictures of family on them. Some of us have those pictures. If you do, why not put one in our family album?

Talk about driving: Dad took me (Margaret) out to Grandpa Luthers farm on a gravel road and then told me to get out, that I was going to learn how to drive! Talk about surprised! I don't remember which car but it was stick shift. So, we jerked our way up and down that road. Now, tell me: Did Dad teach you how to drive? Tell your story. Maybe you were out in the field in the back 40 driving, tell your story....

We lived in the Upper Peninsula in various homes in Gladstone and in Gross, MI across from the Mead Paper Company, paper mill. Dad was working on becoming a boiler maker.

Dad would drive the Model A down into the Escanaba River and wash it.  The water was only mid-calf, the bottom was solid flat rock.  Thats probably why they even named a town near there: Flat Rock.

There were 3 dams on the Escanaba River, near where we lived.

Dad would fish near them and usually caught some too.

Across the highway between Gladstone and Escanaba was the Indian Trails Park. The Paper Mill picnic was there each year. It has tall trees and even an indian burial ground up some steps on a hill.

We lived across from the paper mill, in one of 4 houses. There was one pump in the backyard for 3 of the houses. I think Mrs. Bichler had a pump in her house. She was Grandma to Susan and Sandy Vandlerberge. They lived in Escanaba. Later, when I lived in Midland, Sue was a professor at Delta College. I met her in a store somewhere!

The Mothers took turns washing their clothes in the only Maytag next to the pump. When I say pump, I mean a handle on it that you have to prime! There were metal clothes lines above the pump and Mom always told me, Don't swing from the clothes lines, you will hurt yourself.

Did I listen? No, one day I ran inside with blood on the bottom of my head at the back from hitting the cement around the pump. I had stitches and have a scar from being disobedient as a kid.

Those were the days, each family had their own OUTHOUSE! Very cold in the winter up there in the Upper Peninsula!

Dad killed a copperhead snake at work one time and skinned it. I remember Uncle Bill Blake did not like even looking at the skin of a snake. Dad used to keep that skin rolled up in the top drawer of his dresser. Wonder whatever happened to it??? (See photo below)

I think it was Mom, Dad, Beryl and I that lived in a little house across from the Roundhouse for the trains in Gladstone. It was fun watching them move in and out of the train yard and cars were hooked up and the sound of the engines. To this day the sound of trains is a comfort to me. There aren't many up here, only an occasional one in Boyne Falls when we are visiting my husbands sister, Freda. Good memories!

We lived in the back apartment of Dads Mother, Lorraine Murphy.

I used to have a record of me, very young, saying, Birdie, Birdie...

now I know why that was one of my first words. My Great-Grandmother was BIRDIE Struble! My Dad , or possibly she had been working on me learning her name!

As a family we would travel to Mackinaw City and wait for the car ferry to cross the Straits of Makinaw. As we waited Dad would buy smoked salmon that vendors would walk around the line of cars and sell. The fish was wrapped in white meat wrapper paper. That was our supper or lunch.

When we finally were on a car ferry, Wawatam or some other one, we would get out of the car and walk up onto the top deck of the ferry and watch the seagulls and Mackinaw Island off in the distance.

As we would travel to Gladstone to see Grandmother Lorraine Murphy, we would stop at Lehtoes Pasties Shop just beyond a road side park. We ate our pasties at the park and then would travel on to Rapid River and visit Aunt Pat Kindy and then on to Gladstone.

My cousin, Kay (kindy) Gleeson and her husband, Jim own her home on the Little Bay de noc.

One year when I was around 11 or so and Kathie and Beryl several years younger, we all went for a ride on a diesel engine with Uncle Bill Blake an engineer. We all had a chance to pull the whistle. We went from Rapid River to Kipling, just outside Gladstone.

There is a picture of Dad with his Grandpa. Dad was about 14, wore a leather skull cap with a big smile from the window of the steam engine.

Dad taught us how to swim at an early age. We would swim at the county park at Quanicassee. Quanicassee is where the indians used to live along the Quanicassee River. Did he teach you how to swim? Tell your story... Quan-a-ca-see, thats how you say it!

We used to swim at Gladstone Park. It had 2 huge metal slides in the water for kids. There was a wooden raft out where only swimmers could go to jump off. My goal was to be a good enough swimmer to get there and I did!

The Struble family reunion was held in the Gladstone Park picnic area.

Before there were any fast food places, there was A & W Root Beer Stands. Gladstone had one just before the park. Cold root beer on a hot day sure was nice.

The horse tank in the back yard. Do you have a memory to share?

One very hot day, Grandma Butterfield came down from her apartment at the back of the house with her old fashioned black bathing suit on and a rubber bathing cap! What a surprise to all of us! We have pictures. I don't remember her getting into the horse tank and yet she probably did.

Dad liked ice fishing on the Saginaw Bay and we kids would ride out in the car on the ice with him and ice skate while he would fish in his ice shanty. Sometimes there were big humps in the ice from where it had separated and grown new ice to close the gap. Sometimes there was a small gap, kind of scarey. Yet Dad had no fear of us winding up on an ice flow.

Dad also liked to fish in his boat and he and good friend, Shorty Archambeau, would fish and have a good time. They both worked at the Saginaw Steering Gear in Saginaw.

Dad was an automatic screw machine operator.  It put the threads on the drive shaft of the steering wheel to hook up with the rest of the car.  At least that was my understanding of how things work in a car!!  Correct me if I'm wrong somebody. 

Dad would drive to M-81 and catch a ride in to work Monday thru Friday. He usually got home a little after 4 pm and then we would have supper. Dad usually wore navy or brown work shirts and pants to work.

I remember the first time we ever went to a fast food place! Dad took us all to McDonalds in Saginaw. I think burgers were 15 cents!

Our family rarely went to a restaurant.

One year, Grandma Butterfield took us all on vacation to Niagara Falls. Dad drove us.

She and I slept in the Bridal Suite! We laughed about that. I was in high school and Wes was a toddler. It was the first vacation I remember and alot of fun. We even went to a sitdown Italian Restaurant.

Dad would rototill the garden for Mom and helped plant the seeds.

He enjoyed picking off the tomatoe worms. The worms had a horn on their head and were nasty looking.

They would eat the green leaves on the tomatoe plants and if enough of the leaves were gone the plant would die. Kathie remembers that we were paid 5 cents for a tomatoe worm and a penney for a potato bug!!!!

One of the fun things Dad did, was have us run outside the house and he would give us a penny for every time around. Nice way to get the kids out of the house!

Dad and Mom made we three girls a playhouse when we lived next door to Blackie and Barbara Lou Aldrich on Maple Street. It was complete with bunk beds and a sink and had 3 windows that opened up with a piece of wood to hold it out. There was a table that was propped up with a leg. We had alot of good times playing in that house.

Dad had Wes's dog, Max, while Wes was in the service and Dad would spend hours out back in his red metal chair near Max, petting that dog. Max was a good dog and alot of company for Dad.

Max got loose one winter and was hit by a car and lying in the road at the 4 corners of Fairgrove. A farmer came and put Max in his pickup and took him to his farm. He called Dad and said Max's leg was frozen and that he would shoot him for Dad. Dad cried and the farmer said he would bring him home. Dad took him to the vet and so Max the rest of his happy life had 3 good legs and didn't seem to mind it at all. His irsh setter personality took it in stride.

Dad liked to go to auctions. Grandpa Luther would be the auctioneer and Dad would buy a box of this or that and so the barn became a haven for alot of miscellaneous things.

Does anyone remember the big trunk that was upstairs in the barn? What was in it? Kathie remembers: Grandpa Glen Butterfield had his tools of his trade before he bacame a crane operator.

Dad would take me to the auctions and to this day, I still enjoy going to antique stores or looking at antique stuff at flea markets as a result of those early days of auctions. Not to buy, just to bring back memories of things I had seen as I was growing up.

In the winter, Dad would bring things in from the barn and tinker with them at his workshop and make things for the wall or repair things for Mom.

Dad could play several instruments by ear. We had a chord organ in the living room. He and I would sing duets to some of the old county western songs.

Dad also played Great Grandma Edna Butterfields pump organ, taken from her home in Akron after she had passed on. You had to use your feet to make the sound come out, kind of like riding a bicycle with pedals.

He enjoyed playing his accordian and was good at belting out a song as he played. I think my sister, Kathie Humpert, has Dads homemade "books" of songs, made from cardboard from the backs of writing paper and words to songs from County Western books taped on the "pages".

Dad was also good at the juice or jute harp and harmonica. He also played the ukelin. A combination ukelele and violin that sat on your lap and you strummed.

When Aunt Jackie and Uncle Don would come on Labor Day, he would play along with Aunt Jackie, on her ukelele and her Dad, Jack Furtaw, on the violin and her sister, Betty played an instrument too.  It was fun to sit around and listen or sing along.

Dad was a great one to camp. He enjoyed picking wild blueberries . One August, he came to my home in Midland with a large white styrafoam cooler full of wild blueberries!

One year, Dad took the seeds from the sweet peas that grew on the side of the barn and threw them out the car window up at House and Trout Lakes. Now, when you go in July or August, you see those bright pink flowers all over along the roads where he scattered those seeds! A nice reminder of a Dad who enjoyed camping.

I think it was his good buddy, Shorty, that introduced our family to camping at House Lake. Dad enjoyed fishing in his boat on Trout and probably taught Wes how to fish from that very boat.

One year, Dad had a heart attack while camping. Mom had to camp on the parking lot at the hospital in Gladwin while he gradually improved. Dad was 45.

Dads Father, Lawrence, was a heavy smoker. He had a single heart attack and died at age 40. Dad was 17 at the time and he had the fear that he too would die at 40. The stresses of life and fear caused him to eat himself to a heart attack at 45. He was never able to return to work. He had to take disability retirement. He lived 17 years, long enough to see some of his grandchildren grow up.

http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=1930usfedcen&indiv=tr...

1930 United States Federal Census

about Lawerence W Murphy

Name: Lawerence W Murphy

Home in 1930: Flint, Genesee, Michigan

Age: 5

Estimated Birth Year: abt 1925

Relation to Head of House: Son

Father's Name: Lawerence W

Mother's Name: Loraine S

Occupation:

Education:

Military service:

Rent/home value:

Age at first marriage:

Parents' birthplace: View Image

Neighbors: View others on page

Household Members: Name Age

Lawerence W Murphy 29

Loraine S Murphy 29

Patricia L Murphy 8

Lawerence W Murphy 5

Name: Lawrence S Murphy

Birth Date: 9 Aug 1924

Death Date: 18 Jan 1987

Gender: Male

RESIDENCE: Fairgrove, Tuscola, Michigan

Place of Death: Caro, Tuscola, Michigan