My earliest recollection of my mother’s confronting Detroit’s retail giants dates to sometime in the late 1930s. We lived in the rented house on Beniteau, not far from the river. We had lived in a furnished house, and the move to Beniteau required a substantial purchase of new furniture. So my mother and father went downtown to Crowley’s department store and bought everything we needed—from the kitchen to the dining room to the living room and the bedrooms. Because it is the American way, they bought it on credit.

It wasn’t long before they fell behind on the payments. The city had reduced my father’s workweek to four days, and a family that had been barely making it on full pay was now trying to get by with 20 percent less.

One morning, while my father was at work, a Crowley’s truck pulled up in front of our house. Two men—a driver and his younger helper—knocked on our door and said they had come to pick up the furniture. Standing next to them was a court bailiff holding a clipboard with the writ of replevin, a court order allowing Crowley’s to repossess our furniture. The writ also listed the items to be recovered, which was virtually everything in the house.

My brother Jim and I watched from behind the screen door. I was about seven, Jim five. Bill, about two at the time, was in a playpen in the living room.

Mae Shine stood on the porch, hands on her hips, and planted herself squarely in front of our door while the driver, who was not demonstrating an abundance of enthusiasm for the task at hand, explained quietly to her why they were there.

The bailiff, on the other hand, was a self-important functionary with a large stomach who seemed overly impressed with his role. He wore an old gray fedora, a white shirt and a dark tie, and wide black suspenders. He kept interrupting the driver, shaking his clipboard, and reminding my mother that he had a court order empowering Crowley’s to remove any furniture or appliances listed thereon.

My mother ignored him and concentrated on the driver, who seemed like a nice person; my mother undoubtedly had already identified him as a reasonably decent man and therefore the most vulnerable player in this little drama. She could see that he was clearly not as excited about his part in the unhappy task as the bailiff seemed to be. The helper stood to one side, uninvolved. His job was to carry things, and he was apparently waiting to be given the order to lift something.

My mother continued to argue with the driver. She explained to him that my father was a longtime City of Detroit employee and, like all the streetcar men at the time, was working fewer hours. She pointed out that we were only a few months in arrears, and it was only a question of time before we became current with our payments. All we needed was a little time.

The driver told her that was between her and Crowley’s credit department, that he was only doing his job, which was to pick up the furniture listed on the writ and take it back to the warehouse. She would be doing the right thing, he said awkwardly, if she stepped aside and let him do his job. He explained encouragingly that we could probably get it all back as soon as we brought our indebtedness to a level that Crowley’s was comfortable with. It would all work out in the end, he reassured her.

My mother believed none of it. She knew instinctively that if the furniture ever left the house, it was never coming back. It was

also clear to us from the start, even as young as we were, that the furniture was going nowhere. Stepping aside was not part of Mae Shine’s genetic makeup. We had never seen her do it before and did not expect it to happen on this occasion, especially since she was operating on home ground.

She continued to work on the driver. We had a good credit record, she told him, and always paid our bills. We were good citizens and not deadbeats. My father had worked for the city for more than twenty years and had been a soldier in the war. She said she had a hard time understanding Crowley’s rush to take her furniture after only a few missed payments. She suggested he come back when her husband was home and speak with him. He said he could not come back, that he had been ordered to pick up the furniture that day. The bailiff again tried to interrupt, tapping the court order on the clipboard with his pencil. My mother told him to mind his own business, that this was between her and the driver, whose defenses, she sensed, were beginning to crumble.

They were about thirty minutes into the discussion when it became obvious that she was running out of arguments as well as time. The driver had taken off his cap by this time and was almost pleading with her to let him take the furniture. The helper, hands deep in his pockets, was leaning against the porch post, obviously bored by the whole thing. The bailiff raised his clipboard again and started moving toward my mother as he repeated what he had said earlier about the court order. She shot him a look, a clear warning that if he messed with her, he would be messing with the wrong woman. She took a half step in his direction. He took a full step back and shut up.

Finally, my mother played her last card. She stepped away from the screen door and pulled it open.

“Take it,” she said with a sweeping wave of her hand. “Take it all.” She told him we had paid too much for it in the first place, that it was junk, and that she could get better furniture for what we still owed on it.

The driver walked toward the door, his helper, suddenly alert,  

close behind. The bailiff stayed put, ready to check off each item on his clipboard as it was loaded on the truck.

The driver had one foot inside the house when my mother pointed at my brothers and me and told him: “And while you’re at it take them, too. If you’re going to take their beds, you might as well take them, too.”

Take them to Mr. Crowley’s house, she said, and let them sleep in one of his bedrooms.

For my brothers and me it was not one of childhood’s golden moments. Not only had people come to take our furniture, now our mother was giving us to a truck driver from Crowley’s.

The driver froze. He looked at us and saw two bewildered kids and an infant, the older two looking like they were about to cry as they waited to see if he was going to take them away. Then he turned and quickly left the house.

“To hell with it,” he said. “We’re not taking this furniture.” He went back to his truck, his young helper hurrying after him. The bailiff shook his clipboard a couple more times in my mother’s direction but said nothing and did not linger on the porch. He hurried to his car and drove off after the truck.

My father and mother were able to work out a repayment program, and they got to keep the furniture—and the kids. More than sixty years later most of the furniture she described as junk is still in the family: sturdy oak pieces, as substantial as and looking as good as—or better than—they did all those years ago when Crowley’s efforts to reclaim them failed miserably on the front porch of 635 Beniteau.