January 17, Sunday - Worked today. Not real busy. Mom spent the day by herself. Will have her over for supper one night this week. Marv clipped his dog - got too close - clipped him in the butt.
January 18, Monday - Took Bud to school. Got hair done, ran errands, groceries, laundromat - the usual. Picked Bud up and watched television till 10.
30°
I probably milked that broken left foot for all it was worth, at least a couple of model cars to work on.
Mom was still dealing with Doug The Horrible Trainee.
Dad needed someone to talk to during the day, so he bought an AKC registered platinum miniature poodle from the Tutera family, a subset of Mary Cirese's family, and named him Rebel. He had him professionally groomed a couple of times, but decided that the cost involved was well beyond his budget. He bought a pair of clippers, and proceeded to do it on his own. Dad would have Rebel stand on the ironing board, and would proceed to give him an overall buzz-cut. There would usually be at least one instance of the plaintiff yelp of a bleeding poodle followed by dad cussing. We used the same pair of clippers to cut dad's hair. I have continued the tradition and have cut my own hair since 2003. I do not have a poodle. So it goes.
Mom's dad died the previous October, and the Patton kids watched over their mom pretty much all the time. Up until just before Grandpa Tom's death, my uncle Bob lived at home, upstairs at the house on Garfield.
Monday - mom's day off, but never a day of relaxation - always a long list of things to get done. More television. Mondays were TV throwaway nights, but mom never missed "Andy Williams/Perry Como" or "Ben Casey".
Please keep in mind that our TV was an aging Admiral table model a lot like this one - tubes aplenty, a mechanical channel tuner, and certainly no remote control. I was the designated channel changer and volume controller, and woe to the child that spun the channel knob too quickly. In the middle of the front of the set was a gold removable door that covered the vertical and horizontal hold controls, as well as the brightness setting. We never put the door back on, because you had to futz with this stuff all the time. On top of the set there was always a pair of rabbit-ears that required a deft, nearly mystical touch to readjust for each of the three stations in Kansas City - WDAF, Channel 4, NBC; KCMO, Channel 5, CBS; and KMBC, Channel 9 ABC.
About every six months or so, the TV would go on the fritz, and Bert, our TV repairman, would come out and swap out a handful of tubes - 6AU7, 6AU6, 12AU7 - these were nearly always the culprits. Once replaced, things went back to normal for a while.
Come to think of it, we were completely surrounded by "Berts". Bert, the TV guy, Bert, The Manor Bread delivery driver, Bert the chiropractor . . .
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