Cookie & Family Trips

You would drive up to the Upper Peninsula all together? To the Two Hearted?

David: Would you go on those? We had a great experience. We, yeah, go up and we were, um, It rained the whole time and we were on a steep bank of the Two Hearted, River, yeah, and camping. And, uh, if anybody had, when the children were little, and if anybody fell down that bank while you were in deep water, Deep water.

Margo: And we all sat in the car. And they had a little, they put up the hood of the trunk of the car. And they had a burner. And cooked some soup or something. And handed in the window. The flies were terrible. And, uh. And this was before the bridge was there, right? You'd take a ferry across to the E. [00:12:00] P.? And, um, and then, I was, David, He just wandered off some place and fell in the lake, and we were stopping when we caught him in time to get him.

How old was he? So I remember carrying him around in a sweater. I had his dark naked in a sweater, but he was soaked. And we broke the axle in the car. The roads were terrible. He took some keys and left them in a store, the car keys or something that he'd been playing with. And he had to find somebody to open up the store and let us in.

And it was a horrible trip. Just horrible. This is when we were kids you're talking about, right? How about when you were a kid? Was he taking you up there when you were kids? Oh, as long as I can remember, I have a picture. I think I remember. Yeah. I think [00:13:00] I remember you saying. Well, I was just. Well, Mother, I don't know, Daddy seemed to be so much a part of our life.

He was always so calm and took a, you know, wanting to have us raised the way he thought we should be raised. And, uh, Mom had been raised by a very strict, uh, Scotch Presbyterian family, where you couldn't cook on Sunday or do anything, you couldn't play cards. And she had trouble, she wanted to be tough, and she had trouble with, uh, just how to handle us.

I thought your dad was pretty strict, but he was looser than she was. But in a very loving way, in a very loving way. Uh huh. I thought he was, you know, trying to teach you something, not just Discipline you. And, uh. Didn't Granny, uh, escape across the lake or something to Syracuse? [00:14:00] Right. Well, back then, yeah.

She was in Port Hope, right across the water from, uh, Oh, New York. Rochester, New York. And, yes, and she was very adventurous and was a secretary. She wanted, she would take She went over to Rochester to be a, and that's where she met Daddy, to be a secretary. In Rochester, New York? Mm hmm. What was he doing there?

Well, he was a civil engineer, and I don't know what I think that's where, cause we were doing the, I was doing, I'm not sure why, but a little research on the reinforced concrete. Yeah. I think it was when I was, um, looking at Rackham Auditorium where he did the tile and stuff and that he was, uh, fairly advanced in theories of, uh, reinforced concrete and I think that's where the leading guy in that field was located and [00:15:00] developed, uh, if you go to Normandy Beach, they had these caissons that were made out of concrete, and they would float them across and then drop them and make an instant harbor.

David: And I think they also looked at boats made, and then Gary had that concrete, did you ever see the concrete sail? Yeah. So I think that's where that technology was. He started out teaching in the engineering department at the University of Michigan. I'm not sure how long he taught. did that, but he disagreed with their teaching techniques.

Margo: And so then he went into business for himself with this construction company, which was Tile Flooring. Cook Floors, right? He did all the floorings in the dormitories, and in the Rackham Building, the Alumni Building, and, and, Kresge's Floor in Detroit, uh, Kresge Source Floor in Detroit, and Commercial Building, Commercial Floor, and Stairway.

I remember you saying you didn't think he ought to be a businessman. [00:16:00] You what? Oh. You didn't think he should have been a businessman. No, he said I should have been a doctor, but blood upset me back then or something. But yeah, no, because he was, he was never interested in the money. It was the, and the situation.

And you, you said he was. And for instance, he would accept jobs. Nobody else. That you couldn't make money on. Someone wanted a job with real heavy, heavy equipment. And it meant a special, very expensive kind of flooring. But it was hard. He was competing against, I'd say Italians or something. It would undercut things all the time.

So he struggled with the business for, and particularly during the Depression, because they stopped building. There were a few years that were pretty difficult. I remember you saying he was too nice also. Too nice? Yeah. That's what he was saying. He never, yeah, he was wanting He wanted to accept the challenge of something and, and see if he [00:17:00] could work it out.

And he didn't always worry about the money, and the, uh, But, Okay. Yeah you're wrong. We're, we're talking about your dad again. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. But I felt in Mother's way, she showed her love for us. She made all kinds of clothes for us, and She admitted for us and in her way she was, you know, very, very loving and interested in us, but she just was used to strict discipline.