Frankenmuth is a tourist town at the base of Michigan's Thumb nicknamed "Michigan's Little Bavaria". It was first settled in [] by a group of German Lutherans. When we first moved there, there were still families who spoke Bayerisch (a Bavarian dialect of German) in the home. It was a town then with around 2500 or 3000 people. It had shops downtown with Bavarian architecture. There are two large restaurants in town known for their family-style chicken dinners, Zehnder's and The Bavarian Inn. My father worked construction for Bavarian Builders. In the first week of June, the town hosted the Bavarian Festival and Bavarian Parade. Are you detecting a theme?
Frankenmuth was a great place to grow up. The schools were good, for that area. A lot of the population either worked directly for the automotive industry or some adjacent industry like the tool and die company in town. Saginaw, the "big city" to the north and Flint, the "big city", to the south still had some remnants of the auto industry, so it was not like people were making the hour and half drive down to Detroit. You went down to Detroit if you needed to go to the airport or to see a ball game.
In Frankenmuth we lived in this little house made of field stone. I think if you ask a resident of Frankenmuth now if they know the Stone House, they would know the little house on Ardussi Street that you are referring to. It really was a tiny house at least until my parents converted the attic to a second floor and added the family room to the back of the house.
We spent most of our time in that back family room. The heat sucked in it and it would get freezing unless there was a fire going in the fireplace. My brother Billy knew how to build a fire before he was in kindergarten. I think he is still a bit of a firebug to this day.