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Warren Bernard Christopher House - Red Arrow Highway, Sawyer, Michigan (1956-63)
Bud and Karen Christopher moved into a very small one-room house on Warren and Wally's property in Sawyer, Michigan in 1955 after living in "The Cottage" their first year of marriage. Bud, Gib Ackerman, Gordon Christopher, Ted and Vic Branson all helped remodel the house by upgrading the kitchen, adding a bathroom and replaced the roof. It was still pretty much a one-room house and that eventually seven people lived in. At first, there were two cribs as evidenced by a couple photos below. When Jimmy was born Bud and Karen bought bunkbeds. In 1962, Bud decided he was going to double the size of the house by adding an addition. He laid the blocks and was about to begin working on the addition when Bud and Karen decided to move to St. Joseph instead. It was closer to his work at Auto Specialties and would be a house they owned. Click here to see a slideshow of the 1010 Broad Street Home in St. Joseph. Several of Grandma Wally's grandchildren moved into the home over the years after Bud and Karen moved out. The house collapsed some years ago and is in quite bad shape now.
A few memories leap to mind about the small house. One, we had two dogs, Buster Brown and Buttons. Buttons gave birth to a litter. We kept one of the puppies we named "Blackie." Buttons slept under the side of house and was attacked by a racoon right after she had her litter. Dad had to kill the racoon with a rake to take it in to the vets to see if it had rabies, fortunately, it did not. It did have distemper and Buttons was given shots and quaranteened. Another concern was it was a bit dangerous with Red Arrow Highway and very high truck traffic right out front of our place. Mom often told a story of when Larry and Jimmy were playing out by the road and she heard the squealing sound of brakes. By the time she got to the road, she said the truck driver was as white as a sheet and very upset because he said he just missed Jimmy who ran into the road. Red Arrow Highway was a very busy highway then, it was U.S. 12 until the Freeway was finished then they rerouted U.S. 12 through the southern counties over to Detroit (it used to basically be I-94 before the freeway was opened). The older three kids had to wait out by the road for the bus to take us to Chikaming school (go to the map page to learn more about locations in Southwest Michigan of important to the family).
We had lots of fun playing on Grandpa Warren and Grandma Wally's farm. The barn had a hayloft that Wally's kids would jump out of onto the hay or a mattress below. When Dayle and Bernie joined them Mom was quite upset when she found out. There were tractors and a barbed wire electric fence that most of us remember shocking us. The fence was to keep the cows in the pasture. See Warren's House for more info. Grandma had a rather mean dog, Pepper, who was chained to her doghouse on the path between our house and the farm. We would run past Pepper to see who could get the closest - undoubtedly, Bernie's idea. Larry was nipped on the heal because he got to close and needed stiches.
There was a playhouse built by Knut Söderling on Grandma's land right next to Pepper. We loved to play in that house, but it had bees and wasps and we were stung more than once. Warren had small building for tools and kept a handgun in the drawer. It always scared me.
What do you remember? Let me know and I will add it to this page.
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