DUNCAN ALEXANDER CAMPBELL

11/29/1862 - 12/00/1944

Perhaps the best way to meet Duncan Campbell is to present two pictures of the man, two instances which mark the period towards the end of his life. I recall Dad, on his birthday, standing slim and tall before the fireplace, saying: "Gentlemen, today I am eighty." So he was and blind; I was the only person in the room with him. As the cataracts clouded his eyes, his mind began to go. At eighty, he lived in the past with his memories and all of the visions which pressure caused by increasing cerebral arterio-sclerosis created. It was two years before he died and more years before Mother and my brother began to take apart the basement which so well defined his personality. Picture, do, an average-size basement, clean, orderly, and filled with all of the cared-for tools with which he had kept all of his property in prime condition. Every joist was studded with nails that held a long accumulation of nuts, washers, and whatever else could hang. Orderly, frugal and self-reliant, he had known where everything was and everything was in good repair ready for use. Such was his life.

I do not know when Dad came to the U.S., obviously some years before 1911. He was comfortably established before he went courting Joseph Laurencelle's second daughter, Violet May. They married - August 17, 19??. (I wasn't there - no invitation.)

Born and raised on a farm, he returned to farming twice during his life; farming was always his greatest love for on a farm he was ruler of all he surveyed and with his own energy he could create life. I have a vague memory of hearing that he had worked as a tailor in New York. He engineered for a while for the Michigan Central; once all young boys dreamed about working on the railroad. He had tales to tell of the drives to Bay City, of runaway trains and of head-on collisions. He worked for others but he was at heart an entrepreneur. All of this before unions froze the average non-gifted worker into his job. But my Father was certainly not average. He owned a theater - which cousin Vera Johnson/Anderson/Snyder (sister of Earla Johnson/Harlan) insisted was no cheap nickelodeon. It was successful enough that he, riding the streetcar home after the theater hours, dropped a dime; with the day's receipts in a money pouch in one hand and his gun in his pocket, he considered whether or not to stoop and pick up that dime; a good Scot, he stooped. One of my early memories - about three years old - comes from that theater; my Mother and her friends, the MacKay girls, had taken me to the theater with them; the picture portrayed a fire caused by an over turned kerosene lamp and two women trying to save the few things which they could reach through the flames. I was a frightened child. He owned a shoe store; I have memories of a pair of white high-button shoes with patent leather trim and tassels. Years later, I met one of the men who, young, had worked there for Dad. An electrical contractor when I met him again, he told me tales of some of the old customers. Then it was that I learned to raise my eyebrows about high society, Detroit style. Then back to the farm; he bought two hundred acres near Clarkston, land that raised a bountiful crop of stones! What with the problems of the quality of the soil and the steepness of the hills that thwarted the best efforts of his Buick (my first smashed finger in its door.) and the coming of WW1, that farm was sold and we returned to the city. Dad bought a six-family flat (he always believed that housing should work for you) and found work as an engineer for the gas company. This multi-storied flat was on Third near Holden; the last I knew it was still standing although many things in the vicinity had been demolished. With the war over, it was back to the farm: this time one hundred and sixty acres near Plymouth. It was fertile soil, good land that rewarded his efforts. He fell one day, shoved a vertebra out of place and knew that the pinched nerve and the withering arm marked the end of his farming. Prices were high then; some of the neighbors were holding out for a thousand dollars an acre; Dad sold his one hundred sixty acres for fifty thousand dollars. The buyers were dreaming of developing that land for housing; Detroit was growing fast. But not fast enough for my Father to accept their hypothesis. Union Guardian took over the mortgage and Duncan Campbell took the cash. He bought a two family house on Northlawn, moved into the lower flat and waited to find more income housing in which to invest. Finally he found and purchased two income houses with a monthly income which would care for the four of us and bring in enough money to send me to college. He settled down to farm his backyard. Never any vegetables, only grapes, rhubarb, sweet and tender, and flowers in abundance. How often I have seen him with a bouquet of his best, offering them to Mother - a gift of love. He never crossed his lawns without penknife in hand to attack any weed that dared to show itself. There was never a complaint about what life had done to him; what was he accepted, working within the areas of his own competencies. Those who complained about what the depression years had done to them had never lived as a small boy on a cold ungiving Canadian farm in the late eighteen hundreds.

The depression increased. Dad carried one couple for nine months because the wife was ill and he had not the heart to make them move; they finally decided that they simply had to find other accommodations for themselves. A woman looking for day work stopped at the back door offering a full day's work for ten cents, her lunch and car fare; Mother sighed with regret for she did not have even the dime to pay. Then the saga of the Harlans started; I had met Allen. Dad, over sixty years at the time, took on another mortgage so that there would be money to send me to the university. That took courage. I have often wondered since just how my parents felt after all of their sacrifices for me when C. Allen and I married. There was never a word said.

Cousin Vera Johnson/Anderson/Snyder said to me one day: "Let me tell you about your Father!" I replied: "I know. He worked hard for his money, used it carefully and bought only quality." I know; Laurencelle and Eleanor have most of the household items that were still at home when Mother died. As a matter of fact, Laurencelle and Eleanor had lived for years with Mother in the lower flat of one of the buildings on Forrer Avenue which Dad bought in 1929. Mother's upright piano is now in the Henninger's basement. We had moved it to the cottage so that we could have music all summer long; we did not want to leave it there and young Joe was interested in music. (about the Henningers, who are John's in-laws, more later). Laurencelle has the grandfather clock in working order now after it had stood silent for many years. Mother's Haviland china, and her cut glass bowls and pitchers are now with Eleanor. There were two oil paintings on the parlor wall; with the changing fashions in paintings, Eleanor still treasures them for neither she nor I have any idea of their possible value. I do imagine that they are not outstanding works; they are pleasant landscape scenes. At one time Father bought a Bosch radio - always the best and only the best. We had a Victor phonograph. The furniture was heavy birch cared for and re-upholstered by Dad and Mother (presently one of my nieces has the big rocking chair with the lions heads). One did not change furniture easily during the depression years unless one could buy at a bargain price; such a purchase accounted for the dining room furniture. (Following an ad in the Detroit News, Mother and Dad bought for $100 a 'dining room suite': table, six chairs, a buffet and china closet; there has never been such a bargain since. What had served the same purpose before? I do not know - it probably went to our cottage.

Over the years in town, Mother and Dad would take the street car downtown, go to Grinnels and spend several hours listening to recordings before making their decisions and purchases. Those were the records which often made their way to John and Nettie in Canada. I do have early recordings of Caruso and Gluck; not all of those recordings were long hair. C. Allen and I once had a Zenith record player that would play three speeds - 78s, 45s, and 33+ - with that machine I was able to listen to any old records. Dad had bought 'By-Heck' - a pre-Spike Jones if any of you know what that means. Campbell carried that record from Cranbrook party to Cranbrook party until finally it was broken. Old wax records scratched easily and broke easily. Many of the records at home were ten inches in diameter, light music for relaxing; many of them were twelve inches in diameter, cut on one side and carefully chosen which meant that they were expensive, that they were quality: only and always the best.

The houses in town had painted interiors. I do not recall what was on the walls at the Clarkston farm. But at the Plymouth farm, Dad chose the paper himself; he and Mother hung it; and it was quality. In the dining-living room there was a chair rail - a three inch strip of wood which protected the wall from being bumped by the high back of the chairs; for the wall below that rail, Dad had bought heavy oatmeal paper; above on one wall was a landscape. Such paper and such printing was special between the years 1919 and 1925. Vera and I were right - Dad bought quality. For a country boy, he had good taste.

The Buick was sold when it could not go up the steep hills at Clarkston. Mother never drove any of the cars; at Clarkston she used the trotter and a buggy. (That trotter's name was Juanita. She cut a leg badly jumping a fence. Like a broken hip for humans, a cut that deep was a death knell for a horse; the vets did not know then what they know now.) There was no car during WWI; there was no need since streetcar service was convenient and frequent. On the Plymouth farm, Dad drove Fords. Back again in town, he bought a Studebaker which he and Mother used until he could not see. It took the two of them to drive it; Father to handle the actual starting and the steering while Mother did the navigating: there is a light, there is a car coming, move to the right, to the left. They seldom drove in strange areas; their trips took them to visit the relatives. Together they did all right. After he died, she went back to the streetcar. I presume Laurencelle sold the old Studebaker. At the time of a death when you are pre-occupied with your own growing family, you do not pay much attention to details. Please forgive me if the years seem to overlap; various parts of many years really do just that; or to follow a thread of thought, one weaves in and out of time.

With the coming of WWII, times became more difficult for my parents. The army took Laurencelle off to New England to learn soldiering. C. Allen volunteered, impromptu, for Navy service; he was just thirty-nine, had three children and had just begun his own business. There was no way the draft could have called him; but he was from Tennessee, the Volunteer State and he had to go. We left for Bremerton. The world had grown darker for my Father; he had been too old at seventy-five for eye surgery. Slowly his mind slipped further into the visions of a blind man; Mother's troubles increased as she tried to care for him; back at the beginning of their lives together, she had made a promise: 'for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in good health and bad.' She had given her word and she was determined to keep it. Finally we prevailed upon her to put him into a hospital. Reluctantly, she did. He must have been in the Ypsilanti hospital for about two years when he fell and broke his hip - once again a broken hip with the usual consequences. Mother had the whole burden to carry of the last years, of the death and the arrangements. Laurencelle and Eleanor were on the east coast; C. Allen and I were in the west. Mercifully, the Canadian family reached out to help. Now my Father lies in Narin? (Florence writes 'Ivan'.) Cemetery among many of his kin. Today I find him still repeated, repeated in the faces and the characters of my children; John, Jim, Jay, and the Duke bring me patterns of the past.

As in every life there were good times and bad; I never knew for youth knows too little to question. I do not remember a small brother, Milford, who was born and died when I was two. It is surprising that I remember, from about the end of my third year the movie scene of fire; I recall the fire in the Clarkston farmhouse; in my mind are memories of a winter walk to the mail box to find there a Christmas toy piano. I remember my fear of the Jersey bull that had such a temper; Father never faced a bull unless he had pitchfork in hand. A pitchfork is the farm tool of many uses; its long handle is finished with three long prongs of steel - a fine weapon when ever necessity demanded. There are no snapshots to reinforce my memory of these things. I recall having been taken to see a parade on Woodward Avenue at the time of WWI; I remember the American flag, carried by women in Red Cross uniforms. In my mind's eye I see, a woman at each corner; there were others who carried a part of its length for it was large - I see no more than two other women on each side. Dad threw in a silver dollar - only a dollar but that silver dollar was worth twenty or more of today's.

Remembering is a bitter-sweet thing to do.