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S. Fairview Ave (Alley), graffiti, 2003

Bored with all my usual walks around the east side, I decided to walk through one of the many alleys that run north-south in between the neighborhood streets. Some houses have their garages facing the alley, others facing the street; I don’t know why they are not consistent or what led to preferring one over the other. I have rarely if ever seen the backs of all these houses before, so it was a strange and disorienting experience, which served to make my walk a lot more interesting. The alley I chose was between South Clemens and Fairview Avenues, and is asphalt. There is obviously no sidewalk, but I began checking some of the driveway entrances for stamps. To be honest, all the garages back there looked pretty tired, and in a couple of places there were mysterious concrete pads where a garage or shed was probably demolished, so I wondered how old any stamps I found would be. I didn’t find any, but I did find this piece of graffiti.

Was “Brain” a nickname, or did Brian somehow manage to misspell his own name? I’m guessing the latter, but what do you think?

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N. Hayford Ave., “Zawala”, 2018

I assume this is graffiti, though the name/date format and the placement almost suggests a handwritten contractor marking. But, for Little Christmas, please enjoy the well-lit house I found it in front of. It’s on the west side of North Hayford Avenue between Fernwood and Saginaw.

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Graffiti, Allen St., 2022

I have been walking Allen and Lathrop Streets a lot recently as they are a hot spot of Christmas lights right now. This cryptic message is on the west side of Allen between Kalamazoo and Marcus.

The date is obvious; what to make of the rest? C-R-U5? That last digit is a 5, right?

There’s actually something else I want to get from Allen Street but by the time I got going tonight it was too dark. That will probably be next time.

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Regent St., graffiti

This bit of sidewalk graffiti is very familiar to me. It’s on the east side of Regent Street between Michigan and Kalamazoo (more specifically, the 200 block) and I pass it all the time since I only live a block or two away. It appears to read “MERC” and I often muse about it. I have worked out in some of my past blog entries that a name in the walk almost certainly belonged to someone who once lived in that house. The most likely guess in this case is the same. And yet…

As I walked by it this evening I got to thinking about what kind of name, or nickname, “Merc” is. Was it short for something? What name could it even be short for: Mercedes? Then it came back to me: when I first moved to Lansing, the girl who lived next door with her (apparently) single mother was named Mercedes. She went by “Merce,” as I would have spelled it, though as I never saw it spelled out should could have spelled it “Merc” for all I know. If a Virgil can be Virg pronounced Verge, than a Mercedes can be Merc pronounced Merce. She introduced me to how startlingly children serve as a proxy for the passage of time. My first year in the house she was young enough to go trick or treating and then one day I realized I hadn’t seen her in a while. The last time I saw her next door – presumably returning for a visit – I saw that she was a young adult and I could barely understand how or when that had happened. I think it wasn’t too much later that my neighbor moved away too.

I have no reason to think this mark was left by the Merc(e) who was one of my original neighbors, especially since it wasn’t left in front of her old house which is, as I said, a couple of blocks away. But I can’t rule it out, either. After all, if you were the right age and walking by a freshly-poured slab of concrete, and had a stick handy…

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Washington Rd., Mt. Pleasant, graffiti, 1964

There are a few little churches which, while obviously not formally affiliated with CMU, are tucked surprisingly tightly into campus near the building where I work. They are all small, low-slung, modern-looking buildings. It was outside one of them, Christ the King Lutheran Chapel, that I found this sidewalk graffiti.

I think it reads “G.H. + P.K. Nov. 9 1964” although I am not confident about the second set of initials. The year makes sense as likely being when the sidewalk was first constructed. According to Christ the King’s “About Us” page, the chapel was dedicated in 1966.

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Vine St., KLM Lum graffiti, undated

I found this neat, unobtrusive graffiti on the south side of Vine Street between Ferguson and Custer. It’s alongside a house that faces Custer. I initially speculated that it was two sets of initials from two people in the same family, with a last name starting with M.

Checking the property records online, however, I found that in 2009 the house was sold by someone with the last name Lum. So either someone in the house was named K.L.M. Lum, or KLM were the leading initials of three members of the house (perhaps the children). The owner’s name I see in the records did not start with K, L, or M.

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E. Michigan Ave., sidewalk writing

This number is written (or maybe painted) on the sidewalk at the northeast corner of North Foster and East Michigan Avenues. I found it curious. It’s written neatly, albeit at an angle. My first thought was that it reminded me of a ZIP code, but even if that made any sense to write on the sidewalk, it’s not a recognized ZIP code.

No idea what this means.
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S. Fairview Ave., “Huntley” graffiti

“Huntley” is inscribed on the front walk of a house on the east side of South Fairview Avenue, between Elizabeth and Harton. The east side of this block – the 600 block – is entirely populated by nearly identical little Cape Cods. They are around 600 square feet and, according to the city, one-and-a-quarter stories. There are actually two different styles that alternate, one with a symmetrical front consisting of two windows and a centered door, the other with a single window and a door to one side. There are nine of these houses; a tenth on the corner of Harton was demolished in 2015. There is also another one just south of Harton, the only house on the east side of the 700 block. Curiously, they were built in 1941 and 1942, with the southern half of the houses having the later year. That’s a strange time to be building houses.

Despite their conformity, I really like them. Maybe it’s the coziness of a row of little cottages all lined up, or maybe it’s the way that their outline looks like the Platonic form of a house, or at least a child’s drawing of one.

The nearest house in this picture has the “Huntley” mark, at the sidewalk end of the front walk.

I haven’t been able to determine who Huntley was, though I presume a past resident of the house. While I can find references in old newspapers to people named Huntley living in Lansing, without addresses attached to them, I have no way to guess which, if any, this Huntley might have been.

The two styles of house can be seen in this shot.
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Regent St., Illegible

This marking is on a driveway facing the sidewalk, on the west side of the 300 block of Regent Street, between Michigan and Kalamazoo. It’s visible enough to be intriguing, but not visible enough to read. There seem to be two lines of text, with the bottom one more visible.

Please excuse the bit of my fuzzy glove visible. It was a cold day.

The letters that can be most easily made out are “JAM” and I think the next two are “IE,” which made me think “Jamieson.” Unfortunately, that clue didn’t end up unlocking anything for me in my searches. The line above it looks to include “DDY,” but that’s not much to go on. But I have come to realize it is probably actually the names of people who lived in the house at one time: the bottom one is probably just plain Jamie, and perhaps the other one is “Daddy” or “Buddy.”

I could not see the handprints with my eyes at the time, but they have become visible in this photo, which makes it very clear this isn’t a contractor’s mark but a memento.

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E. Saginaw St., Illegible

My walk last night, since I started out from somewhere other than home, found me walking past a building I have driven by countless times but never passed on foot before: Schep’s Garage on East Saginaw Street, on the southwest corner of Saginaw and Foster. It’s a building I really like, brick with little decorative crenellations. According to the city property records, it was built in 1931. It obviously used to be a gas station, and they haven’t even removed the old lights where the pumps presumably used to be.

I was hoping to collect an interesting old sidewalk stamp in front of it, but there really weren’t any. I did find this marking, which is oriented so that it is right side up to a someone facing the business, i.e. sideways compared with most contractor stamps. It’s illegible except for a letter P, and I can’t tell whether it was a contractor’s mark or graffiti, though it looks more like the latter.

The marking isn’t visible here; it’s below and to the left of view.

State Journal advertisements of the 1940s place Pete Bailey’s Hi Speed Service in this location. An ad on April 15, 1940, says “Visit Our New Station Ionia and Capitol or Our Old Station at 2320 E. Saginaw St.” Bailey’s was probably the original occupant of the Schep’s building because on October 30, 1950, an ad in the State Journal reads, “FLOYD ‘PETE’ BAILEY Bailey High Speed Service 2320 E. Saginaw St., is observing its 18th year in service to the Lansing community. The firm, operated by Mr. Bailey, provides a complete mechanical service, including repair of ignition, tires, motor tune-ups, and repair and adjustment of brakes. Other services include lubrication, battery charging, and towing service. The firm also sells all Hi-Speed products, gasoline and oil, new tires and batteries.” The last reference to Bailey’s I can find is an ad on February 5, 1951.

Schep’s Garage’s Web site regrettably does not have a company history, but the earliest reference I can find to Schep’s is an advertisement in the State Journal on January 1, 1985. What was in the Schep’s building between the 1950s and 1980s is a mystery to me.