The Nankin Township Historical Society

We're approaching Halloween night so I'll stick to an appropriate subject: Gundella the Witch. In this letter from a young new witch named Marlene the woman asks for a spell to break the bad luck which she incurred since taking initiation via the so-called "Full Moon Ring Method". She goes into some detail about both the initiation as well as the bad experiences. Gundella gives her a jinx breaking spell and instructs her to destroy the ring if she felt t hat it was the cause of her problems. She also adds in a rebuke-sales pitch by suggesting that if she'd like to learn about real witchcraft then she ought to buy her record "Hour of the Witch."

They often misspelled her name! Eastern Michigan University was fortunate enough to have renown sociologist Marcello Truzzi on their staff and when he died his papers were donated to the institution. Among those were many letters to Gundella the Witch (Truzzi had brought her to local and national prominence a few years beforehand and the two became good friends), both for her Witch Watch column in the Observer newspapers and personal correspondences asking for spells, that Truzzi was using for a study. Hundreds of letters, in fact. Fortunately for me I have a co-worker who goes to school there and was willing to grab me some photos of a few of the letters. Originally, I had wanted them scanned but seeing the photos that she sent makes me realize that they are better seen as is. Since I'm likely going to EMU today to gather some of the Gundella letters so as not to overburden my "colleague" (as the librarian referred to my co-worker in an e-mail; laughably since I'm...

Somebody is selling this reproduction photo of an actual postcard of a Little Caesar's Pizza Treat store in Garden City that looks to be from the 1960s. After being successful with his first few stores, including the first in Garden City in 1959, Mile Illitch began franchising the Little Caesars brand in the early 1960s, expanding to norther Ohio and Indiana in 1963. It was the original store and operated until 2018. Detroit Free Press , October 11, 1963

( enlarge ) Is it improper to post about Nankin Township after Nankin Twp. was no more? I don't care if it is. If you're ever in the mood for fourth-rate high school journalism then the "Fifth Estate" (think Peter Werbe) is the perfect rag for your tastes. I mean, they are leftists so you can't really expect reason or good taste to prevail but this is the bottom of the barrel in written media. This article from the spring of 1971 deals with party goers in Hines Park at Valley View in Westland. The revelers in "ripple and joints" were apparently raided by busloads of marauding cops who wanted to put an end to the nightly partying on the drive. A guy named Glenn got throttled by the "pigs" as did countless others according to the Marxist propaganda. Brent Little of Garden City spoke for everyone when he said "Why don't they just leave us alone? We can't get jobs, and can't afford to go anywhere else. What do they want us to do--g...

Detroit Free Press , September 9, 1965 The other day I decided that I needed myself a postcard, envelope or anything with a NANKIN postmark so I did a little research on the matter, having found no example on eBay or its ilk. It turns out there may be a reason why such a specimen is so scarce. Up until 1964 the towns within the township--Wayne, Garden City, Inkster and Plymouth (Livonia must have already had their own; then again I didn't even know that Plymouth fell within the boundaries of Nankin)--were getting mailed stamped with their respective town names. Obviously, this didn't last long since Nankin went kaput in 1966 so it's obviously going to be quit difficult to locate one. Old Nankin, on the other hand, might be the easier prospect of the two. More specifically East Nankin, which I believe existed into the early to mid 1900s.