Kalamazoo Township | Bluedepth's Journal

Several days ago, on May 24th I left work and headed home, on my usual path which takes me right through the center of Kalamazoo. I drive down East Michigan Ave headed east towards Eastwood, towards Kalamazoo Township where my home is. I’ve taken this path countless times and on a lark I had the roof of my car wide open and I was stopped at the light where East Michigan and Edwards Streets meet, waiting for the signal to turn. While I was waiting in traffic I idly looked up through the roof and I noticed a building, 275 East Michigan Ave. It was a plain building, tan with red highlights and I didn’t think anything of it until I noticed something unusual about it:

Wha? Hugh J. McHugh 1885. He was someone important as his name was etched into the façade, on a nameplate of all things. This started me thinking. I knew that there were several notable McHugh’s, they had migrated to Chicago and I had a hunch that that family started MCHUGH construction which has been a part of several roadway projects in the city of Chicago. Just the idea that there might be someone with my last name in Kalamazoo isn’t really a huge surprise. Is he a relation of mine, other than his last name? I don’t know. But I did some research on him anyways and added him to my MCHUGH tree on Ancestry.com just for shits and giggles. He’s just an island at the moment as I can’t connect him to anyone in my family tree at all, at least not yet.

This is what I know of Hugh. He was 45 years old in 1880, he was in the US Federal Census in 1880 in Kalamazoo Michigan. He worked as a stone mason and later on he was appointed or elected to “Alderman” in Kalamazoo. I don’t know if the aldermen were elected or appointed. He was also the subject of a Michigan Supreme Court decision, thanks to some documents I found at UMICH online. Something about a law in 1885 and a bond for mechanical something or other. He was married to Ann McHugh (Willson), she was 53 and was a Housekeeper. Rosa, their eldest child and daughter was 17 and worked as a “Servant”, Thomas was 15 and a Painter, Joseph was 11 and listed as “At Home” and they all lived with their maternal grandmother Sarah Willson who was 84 and stayed at home.

One curious little extra bit which I found remarkable was that in the Michigan Supreme Court case, a name shows up, Oscar T. Tuthill. I saw the name and just giggled. Tuthill is a name on my maternal grandfathers side of my family. So, we’ve got McHugh’s and Tuthill’s in Kalamazoo (or Lansing probably for Tuthill), something interesting to knock around at least.

It’s a surprise to see your family name carved in stone and on a building that has been there for 128 years.

I’ve gone as far as I can with Ancestry as I don’t have a paid account. It’s interesting and when I have some spare time maybe I can find the archivist at WMU and make some inquiries there. They’ve got stuff dating back to this period and more.

Sprint is utterly adorable. So far there have been two notable problems we’ve had, the first was trying to get a new line established for a new staff member in the office. They gave us a number with the exchange 363, which fails local dialing because the other POTS companies don’t understand that 363 is in the 269 area code. Sprint’s solution wasn’t “We’ll fix it” but “You should call the other POTS companies and request it be fixed.” Oh, really now? The second problem we had been crappy service in Kalamazoo Township. Instead of owning the problem, they simply just gave me the 1-800 number to essentially DIY. If I had 3 lines and ran a dumpy mom-n-pop shop out of Climax Michigan I’d be fine with it, but I’ve got damn near 25 lines and I spend two grand a month – I would appreciate some TLC god damn it. So here is an email I wrote to Sprint…

Thanks for the information.

This is the second time that Sprint has kicked the can as it were, the first time was Sprint’s determination that their customers were the proper party to resolve local carrier exchange switching errors and now with poor signal quality, as well. On some level I could be upset that Sprint has refused to take ownership of problems related to their network and problems brought to them by their customers but I am really not that invested in haranguing either of you about this. The first time is a mistake, the second time is by design. I have made a personal resolution to reduce the amount of stress and trim my rage for my own personal health and wellbeing. We are learning quickly that Sprint isn’t really invested in the whole ‘taking ownership of problems’ practice and because of these failures we are awaiting the announcement of an Apple iPhone 4-CDMA class device to be brought to Verizon and when that device is announced and manufactured I am going to recommend that we take our business to Verizon. I don’t expect any better customer support from Verizon, but at least I won’t be filled with fantasies of skeet-shooting my mobile device any longer and feeling little blossoms of cluster headaches whenever I reset my device and get mocked by “SprintSpeed”.

As for the twin problems, the first one being the 363 local exchange switching error, we’ve avoided that by swapping numbers with a line number we already had possession of in the 599 exchange, solving that problem by sheer abandonment. As for the second problem, conditions may have improved for my user who was having problems, and if they come up again I will not bother either of you but take the issue to BWTS directly.

Thanks

So all we have to do now is wait. Wait for Verizon and Apple to ink those contracts, make sure Qualcomm has enough Viagra to go the distance, and hope that Foxconn doesn’t endure anymore “It’s Raining Men (and Women)” 🙂

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Who are you, Hugh?

Kicking The Can