BackGround: Detroit Temple, Detroit, Michigan.
Up Dated 29 December 2007
Third Generation
James Waite was born 13 June 1913, Port Huron, St. Clare, Michigan, and married 16 Oct 1935; Flint, Genesee, Michigan, Vera FRANCISCO, the daughter of James E. FRANCISCO and Estella CHARON. James Died August 1995 of Cancer in Tucson, Pima, Arizona.
James Waite McCOOK liked the house on Prospect Street. There was a barn behind the house where his Grandad ELWOOD kept a horse named Chimes, which he later gave to his grand children on the farm. Ernie ELWOOD only drove the horse when the weather was too bad to drive his car--a Dort touring car with side curtains for rainy weather.
Robert Elwood's girl friend Olive FRANCISCO'S sister Vera came down from Grand Rapids for a few days. Naturally, James Waite was asked to escort her, which was fine with him, and they've been going together ever since! Besides working at the Saitorium, Olive was a patient there. She was to have surgery on October 17, 1935, so Vera and James were married on the 16th! James W. remembers his sister JEAN took Vera to Howell to get the license, but he dosen't know who got the preacher. It was PEARSON from Oak Grove. Anyway it came out o.k... Chuck and Doris WEITOFF came up from Detroit.
Vera June and James W stayed on the farm. They made an apartment upstairs and lived for twelve years and then in the fall of 1946 Vera begain to be troubled with rheumatoid arthritis. When they took her to clinics in Ann Arbor and Detroit and when they weren't able to help her, they made the decision to move to Arizona.
In November of 1947, they had an auction sale on the farm and sold all of their household goods, plus the stock and tools. Dwain MEYERS was the auctioneer. They had about $5,000.00 and left after settling up with Robert A. and Eva. They went to Grand Rapids and bought a 1927 Goshen Cruiser trailer. They also looked in Lansing and other places. Several of the neighbors had a send-off for them. CAMPBELLS, STELZERS. Martha STELZER cried when they left. She just knew they'd never get to Arizona.
James W. and Vera were a long 10 days getting to Arizona pulling our new house trailer with our 11 year old Dodge, but we made it! I guess Rob thought we couldn't go it alone so he bought a trailer and we all left Michigan about the same time.
We had the hitch rebuilt in Sapulpa, Oklahoma. We stopped in Davenport, Iowa, to visit Russ ANDERSON and stayed overnight there. Rob and Olive met us there. They had to accept Russ' invitation to stay in the house as there was a convention in town and all the hotels were full. They left the next morning and arrived in Tucson 5 days ahead of us!
Vera began to feel better as soon as we crossed the Mississippi River.
We spent one or two nights in Missouri. One was Joplin. Two in Oklahoma. One at Hydro. In Roswell, New Mexico, we went to a show for Susie's birthday. We bought her some cowboy boots. After the show I couldn't remember where the trailer was parked but Mary Ann did so we wern't lost, after all! We saw a polo team cross the road at Roswell.
We spent Thanksgiving on the road. Had dinner at a greasy spoon restaurand in New Mexico. The cook was the waiter and got around on crutcches. He was big, fat, and dirty!
We came over the Organ Mountains east of Las Cruces. We went up in low gear and came down the west side in second gear doing about 50 mph. The old Dodge really screamed comming down! I think Deming was the last stop before Tucson. In Tucson we stayed at a Mobil station on the south side of town, (Park Ave. & I 10), We went to the Post Office the next morning and Rob left us a letter telling us where he was. They had parked their trailer at a new mobile home park called Crescent Manor. We pulled in and parked beside Rob and Olive and that was our home for the next three years. That was the only time I ever paid rent except for motels.
Olive was in bad shape. Rob didn't think she would live a week, but she fooled us! Sometimes every day!!
We had planned on going to Casa Grande and possibly going to work for Leo ROGERS, who married Earnestine TESCH. ut, since Rob and Olive were in Tucson, we stopped there.
Crescent Manor Trailor Park was a new court laid out in a double circle. Curr MOHLER and his brother Bob ran it. It was nearly full when we got there. The rent was about $21.00 per month.
I called Vern CASSIDY. Pauline SOLOMON had given us his address on the south side of town. I worked for him afew days and then went to work for a friend of his named Clare ORNBERG who was building a motel on the Benson Hiway. The Owl Metel.
The girls started school at Flowing Wells in December 1947. They had 150 kids there. Homer DAVIS was the principal and Iola FRANS was Susie's second grade teacher. Mary Ann was in fifth.
When Rob ran out of work I went to work for American homes for $1.86 per Hour, to make payments on our unsold houses. That was in the fall of 1948. There I met Clyde KARNOPP and Clare HOWE, who was married to Rose FLINT??FF from Howell.
Rob traded houses and moved to 2221 E. 1st Street around 1950. He got a partner named Joe ZIGGY. Joe was about 49. They built four houses on Beverly Street near 22nd Street and that ended the partenership. Joe went back to Detroit. JOE put up $100,000.00 in hard money. We could have built almost anything going on in Tucson at that time but Joe's youngest boy got an allergy and they wanted to leave.
In 1950 Rob got a fire job near Patagonia on the Oak Bar Ranch. We moved our trailer down there after school was out and stayed all summer. Tom COS was the caretaker on the ranch, and was good company. Pop WARNER came down and cut the rafters one day and Don TEWART helped some but mostly we hired help form Nogales across the line. We rode horse back that summer and swam in the pool after the owners left. Pete LEWIS was the owner. He was married to one of the Spreckles Shuar heirs.
When we took our trailer to the ranch that summer, it was a hot Sunday! Lynn VIGES came to see us from Phoenix. Our old 1941 Plymouth got hot so Lynn hooked his new Dodge on and pulled us a lot of the way.
We moved our trailer next to the house that had burned so I didn't have to travel to work all summer. It was a real nice job. I saved some money and Rob made some. He bought his first truck in the fall and towed the trailer home for us. VIGES came down later in the summer for a visit on a week-end. Once they stayed overnight, Lynn wasn't feeling too good. He only lived a few years after that. His doc lived across the street from him and was treating him for the wrong thing and he died. I don't remember what year but it must have been about 1956 or 1957. He built a few nice houses and the Masonic Hall in Mesa.
He was a nice guy.We had a bunch of people from the court down one Sunday. The FRY's and the folks; Wade and his family were there, I remember.
In 1950 we finished the job on the ranch, Vera and I bought two lots at the corner of Prince and Flowing Wells and moved there in the fall. We brougt everything over from the court.
There were three lots but I tried to jew the owner down. He wanted $1800.00 for all three. I offered $1500.00 and ended up giving $1500.00 for two.
We had an outside toilet for awhile. The folks bought the second lot from us that fall, for $750.00 and moved their trailer over from the court after we built a wash room and bathroom as a start on a house for them. They finished their two bedroom, two bath house in 1955. It was real pretty! Red brick with a firepolace. Rob drew the plansfree-hand on a piece of cardboard and we started the next day. It cost about $7,000.00 and took about 90 days.
Rob got work at FORT HUACHUCHA in about 1954 and we all joined the carpenter's union.
I went to Country Club Church of Christ a few Saturdays and gave my time. Susie was going there after she started going with Larry MANN.
They gave me a job for six weeks or so. This was in about 1955. After a few Saturdays, Harry MANN asked me if I wanted to work steady for a while. I did and I did. I worked with Thad Mc HOLLAND. Hollis COKER was around to oversee the job as well as Adrian HON. They worked for Mc Coy Construction Company.
Susie was baptised in 1955, and Vera June about a year later. I followed in 1964 about the time we built the Northside Church building, and Eva sometime after that. I was baptized the same year we went to France to see Dave.
My brother Rob died July 30, 1958. He had felt bad all summer. Dr. FARNESS had told him to be careful, which ment nothing. He had hired Dean DAVE as an estimator in the spring and wanted to get into big cement jobs.
When he died we had a road job going west of Casa Grande about 40 miles and a sewage plant at Eloy, another road job at Tombstone, plus an Artillery bunker at Fort Huachucha. All the jobs got finished but the company was broke. I think he worried himself to death.
We finished the Casa Grande road job a year after he died. Larry MANN and Johnny MORROW helped me on it. Pouring curb, etc. This was in 1959.
Dean worked for the company for about a year as an officer, vice president or something, then took a lot of the machinery to Albuquerque and went in with Ernst METZ. They lost their shirt and all the equipment.
I heard that METZ was in the hole $200,000.00 when they finished the project. All the books and records burned up as they were bringing them back to Tucson. Somewone threw out a cigarette and it landed in the file cabinet and everything burned up. R.E. McCOOK CONSTRUCTION was out several pieces of equipment.
Vera June, Eva, and I went to France to see Dave and Collette and the boys in August of 1964. Vera was working at the Flowing Wells water office. She started there in 1959 to help her mother out. As I remember. Stell only got $34.00 a month Social Security, and couldn't get by. When we got back, Vera's boss, Merle FURY, fired her for taking too long a vacation. It was o.k. as we wanted to go to Michigan the next spring anyway, I was working at the Arizona Sash and Door at that time. I worked there for two and a half years but quit when we got back from our trip to work out of the Union Hall again.
When we went on our trip we drove to Michigan and left our car at Jerry BELYEA's near Clinton, Michigan, and flew to New York and on to Paris where Dave met us. Collette's parents had an appartment in the same building where they lived and they let us stay in it as they were away on vacation. We nover got to meet the OURYS.
We took a trip to Amsterdam through Belgium and another to London while we were there. We went to church (Church of Christ) in Paris in a store building one Sunday.
When we got back to New York, we went to the World's Fair for a few hours, then flew to Detroit where my cousin Jerry picked us up. Aunt Hazel had driven clear across the state and picked up Stell (Vera's mother), in Grand Rapids, and suprised us!
We went to Grand Rapids every summer starting in 1965 except in 1970 when we built the rest of the building on Prince Road, the bakery and El Chico Restaurant which cost $25,000.00.
We gradually built our house on Flowing Wells around the corner from the folks and lived there too 1966. At that time the county took a strip fourteen feet wide off our lot to widen Flowing Wells Road. They also got fifteen feet off our lot on Prince Street and fifteen feet off Eva's frontage. They gave us $20,000.00 and Eva only 2,000.00. Ours was parking lot and theirs was only front yard. So we tore our house down to make parking for our building and moved into Eva's house. She moved into a new trailer in Frontier Trailer Court. We gave her $25,000.00 for her house and lived there till December 1969, when we bought the house at 1708 Root Lane. for $14,500.00.
Harry MANN loaned me $12,000.00 to build the first part of the building.
The first part of the building, the laundry, beauty shop and Doc's office cost about $12,000.00. When we built the restaurant and bakery, it cost about $24,000.00, ten years later.
We lived in the trailer house that we bought in Michigan till we finished the house completely. We paid $2,800.00 for it and sold it to Lynn VIGES brother-in-law for $400.00.
In February, 1970, we tore down the brick house at 1365 W. Prince Street (formerly Eva's house), to build the El Chico Restaurant, and the bakery. It (the house) had been up about fourteen years.
James Waite McCOOK died of Cancer 25 August 1995, Tuscon, Pima, Arizona, and Vera died 16 May 1997, Glendale, Maricopa, Arizona.
CHILDREN of James Waite McCOOK and Vera June FRANCISCO:
+ 5121. 1. MARY ANN b:
md: ;
Ike WARNER.
+ 5122. 2. SUSIE b:
md: ;
Larry MANN.
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