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February 20, Saturday - Dr. Gripkey. Marv wants to go to California on vacation. Weight 167 - I've lost 35 pounds. Sure get around better. Bud asked Pat to go bowling Monday. His social life will bankrupt us. 70ยบ today - 20° by morning. I hope I get to go to church.
February 21, Sunday - Slept till 9:00. Bud and I went to church. Ate lunch and started out to new airport. Too much traffic, so we came back to Municipal.
Mom always had great friends in the stores. While I don't know these people by name, I know they kept mom happy in her work.
I've been racking my brain trying to figure out what this school program was, but I can't put a finger on it. It almost had to be a band event of some kind, but I'm not sure.
Dad's health is a constant concern. While he was a large man, and strong as an ox, his heart disease weighed so heavily on his mind that he was often convinced of his own frailty and impending death. He had worked hard all his life, and until his heart attacks, was a two-pack-a-day Pall Mall smoker. After his heart finally and dramatically betrayed him, we became a salt-free, caffeine-free, nicotine-free household. Dad's worry was contagious. Sometimes he would nap on the couch, and I would stop as I walked by to watch his chest rise and fall and make sure he was still breathing. Crazy begets crazy.
I think Dr. Gripkey was mom's weight-loss advisor. She's down to 167 from just over 200. My mom is 5'-2" on her best day. Dad wants to go to California to see his son Bill and daughter Sonnie. I have it on good authority that this trip won't happen.
Apparently, I had asked Patty Saunders to go bowling. On a Monday night. You would certainly think I would remember that, but I honestly don't. It would have taken me four years at this point to work up the nerve to ask her to do anything with me, although we were pretty consistent phone buddies. . It's very likely that afterwards, we would have been dad-chauffeured down to Allen's Dairy on Independence Avenue for carhop-delivered hot fudge sundaes. There's nothing so sexy as a chubby kid having a panic attack sitting next to a petite blonde in the back seat of a baby-blue Cadillac. My hands are sweating just thinking about it. Patty and I still converse via the occasional email. Hi, Patty!
I am a high maintenance, extremely expensive, 14 year old, but one very smooth date.
Mom and I went to church - Bales Baptist, with its thundering pipe organ and horseshoe-shaped sanctuary. The pastor was probably still Reverend Moad, the minister that baptized me a couple of years before.
Airports were, and remain to this day, an important source of entertainment for me. All during the late '50s, my dad and I would trek down to Kansas City Municipal Airport, (MKC) and head up to the open-air observation deck atop the south terminal. There, we watched Vickers Viscounts, Convairs, Douglas DC3s, and Martin 404s take off and land. As the planes taxied to the gate, they feathered their propellers and shut down all but one engine, but there was still enough prop wash to knock your hat off. The real star of the show was always the Lockheed Super G Constellation, the "Connie", still, to my way of thinking, one of the most beautiful airplanes ever manufactured. It looked like a swan with a distinctive triple tail and four thundering Wright radial engines.
It was later in the fifties when the first jets appeared at Municipal, and if you were fortunate enough to be on the Intercity Viaduct when a Boeing 707 took off to the south on runway 19 in the days before noise abatement, you received an eardrum-busting treat as the plane flew over you at an altitude of a couple hundred feet. More than one driver, hypnotized by the big jets, drove straight into the guard rails as the mighty 707s flew over.
Municipal Airport was built in the crook of the Missouri River, and had no room for expansion. Jets required more runway than Municipal's 6,500 foot north/south could provide.**
Mom and I went to church - Bales Baptist, with its thundering pipe organ and horseshoe-shaped sanctuary. The pastor was probably still Reverend Moad, the minister that baptized me a couple of years before.
Airports were, and remain to this day, an important source of entertainment for me. All during the late '50s, my dad and I would trek down to Kansas City Municipal Airport, (MKC) and head up to the open-air observation deck atop the south terminal. There, we watched Vickers Viscounts, Convairs, Douglas DC3s, and Martin 404s take off and land. As the planes taxied to the gate, they feathered their propellers and shut down all but one engine, but there was still enough prop wash to knock your hat off. The real star of the show was always the Lockheed Super G Constellation, the "Connie", still, to my way of thinking, one of the most beautiful airplanes ever manufactured. It looked like a swan with a distinctive triple tail and four thundering Wright radial engines.
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| Lockheed Super G Constellation in TWA livery |
Municipal Airport was built in the crook of the Missouri River, and had no room for expansion. Jets required more runway than Municipal's 6,500 foot north/south could provide.**
To help drag Kansas City, kicking and screaming into the future, they built Kansas City International Airport, (MCI). It had three circular terminals, each of which provided for short sixty-foot walks to the gates from the drop-off area. It was a pretty big deal in Kansas City, and mom and I set out on the 25-mile trek to see it. At that same moment, it seems 75,000 other Kansas Citians thought the same thing, and headed north to see the new miracle airport. We got snarled in Northland traffic and gave up. Back to Municipal where we belonged. I still hate driving in traffic.
When I owned my studio, my favorite work-avoidance venue was Downtown Airport. I would sit at the south end of Runway 1-19 with my aircraft radio and listen to air traffic control. You can seriously kill off several hours that way with no effort at all.
** I think it was ahead of the 1992 election when George H.W. Bush visited Kansas City. They flew that big ol' 747 Air Force One into MKC - KC Downtown Airport. Lou Holland Drive - the road immortalized as "Road Song" in 1967 by photographer Pete Turner - was barricaded and they parked that monster out near the Airline History Museum. I got to the airport about four hours ahead of Bush's announced departure, just to watch the launch.
I don't know who was at the controls of that aircraft, but that sucker came up out of the airport at full throttle like a rocket off of Runway 19, kept climbing as it banked right over Kansas City, Kansas and was well on its way to cruising altitude before it got to Worlds of Fun five miles to the northeast. Wow!
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| Municipal Airport - now the Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport (MKC) |
** I think it was ahead of the 1992 election when George H.W. Bush visited Kansas City. They flew that big ol' 747 Air Force One into MKC - KC Downtown Airport. Lou Holland Drive - the road immortalized as "Road Song" in 1967 by photographer Pete Turner - was barricaded and they parked that monster out near the Airline History Museum. I got to the airport about four hours ahead of Bush's announced departure, just to watch the launch.
I don't know who was at the controls of that aircraft, but that sucker came up out of the airport at full throttle like a rocket off of Runway 19, kept climbing as it banked right over Kansas City, Kansas and was well on its way to cruising altitude before it got to Worlds of Fun five miles to the northeast. Wow!
Unrelated detail: my first cousin, once removed, Johnnie S. Simpson, after 27 years in the military became, in 1947, crew chief of "The Sacred Cow." The airplane was designed so President Roosevelt could navigate his wheelchair around the cabin.
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