The Lansing I Knew: Our newest publication for your local history library
Mary Jane McClintock Wilson is a remarkable woman who serves as a tour guide in her new book, “The Lansing I Knew,” in which she reminisces about the people, places and things she observed through her nearly 96 years in Lansing.
The new memoir is an enchanting look at Wilson’s childhood and teen years growing up on Lansing’s west side during the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s. Wilson’s family lived in three homes in Lansing on Drexel Road, Washington Avenue and Moores River Drive.
Many of the sites and businesses she visits in her book have passed into time, but are still fresh in her memory.
“I had saved many items from my childhood and teen years, which helped paint the picture of Lansing,” she said.
Her book is the story of an earlier Lansing, featuring people, places and happenings seldom found in history books. In great measure, the work arises from the remembrances of Lansing citizens including the author’s own experiences, which ultimately reveal a past Lansing that calls to be shared.”
During the author’s childhood and teen years, Lansing was booming and new housing developments and apartments were sprouting up. The family first lived in the newly opened Washington Apartments on South Washington Avenue, where the nearby Clapham’s Grocery Store supplied most of the neighborhood’s needs.
In 1928, the family moved to a new opened subdivision on Drexel Road, where her brother William was born. She rambled through the neighborhood and met the families who lived there. She especially liked spending time at the Number 7 Fire Station, which today has become a private home.
“I decided to do the book, since so many memories I have are going to be lost, ” McClintock Wilson said.
She said she began working on the book two years ago and blocked her story out like a play, creating different topical categories for each chapter like, “A Goodly Neighborhood,” “Early Churching” and “Schooling and Pearl Harbor.”
“This is about the Lansing I observed growing up,” McClintock Wilson said. “My favorite time growing up was my teen years. My good friend Betsie Sessions and I would ride our bikes together all around the town.”
Those trips included bike rides to Lake Lansing down dirt roads.
“One of the favorite after school hangouts was Rouser’s Drug Store. A group of us would go there after school and fill three or four tables. I still remember the Swiss milk panama sundae and the mud sundae,” the author said.
For those who are wondering, a mud sundae is vanilla and chocolate ice cream covered in chocolate sauce, peanuts and marshmallow sauce.
McClintock Wilson also remembers with fondness the backyard plays neighborhood kids performed.
“We’d put on a play and sell tickets for a dime to neighbors,” she said.
When the Great Depression struck, she recalls cutting back on everything from clothes to food, despite her father, Freeman, owning a car dealership.
She recalls her mother, Ruth, giving handouts to “tramps” who knock on their back door.
“We’d share with them what we could,” McClintock Wilson said.
When Pearl Harbor hit, McClintock Wilson was about 16 and she stayed in touch with her high school classmates who had gone overseas.
“I can remember writing to all the boys I knew overseas,” she said.
While attending Verlinden, West Junior High, Lansing Central and Sexton, McClintock gravitated toward English and the dramatic arts programs.
In her adult years, McClintock has contributed meaningfully to preserving local history including serving on a committee to save and restore the State Capitol and preserving the history of Sparrow Hospital. She also wrote a biography of her father and his time serving with the ambulance corps in World War I with Ernest Hemingway.
McClintock Wilson is making arrangements to donate her Lansing ephemera to the Local History Room at the Capital Area District Library.
“Fortunately, all the things I saved over the years help refresh my memory,” she said.
McClintock Wilson’s memory is keen. She not only remembers the mud sundaes, but taking dancing lessons on the top floor of the Olds Tower — now called Boji Tower — as a child. As a teenager, her family moved to a beautiful home on Moores River Drive, where one of her dreams was fulfilled.
“I always wanted a pair of loafers instead of oxford lace-ups,” she said. “Most of my contemporaries are gone, but this is one way I have of honoring them.”
Article by Bill Castanier
