Wednesday, March 31

March 31, Wednesday - Came home. Rather hated to leave hospital. Made a lot of friends and met some old ones from the store. House looked so nice and clean. Marv worked so hard on it. Furnace is nice. Marv took Bud to Doctor - he has deep sinus infection.

Home is a special place, more so when you've been away for a while. Dad worked tirelessly to get the place cleaned up for mom's return home. I remember one night that he and I polished and waxed the hardwood floors throughout the house. He could get a bit obsessive, but I also know that he was trying to stay distracted.

Dad was a believer in paint for everything. Our little house was probably a couple of inches smaller inside after all the coats of paint dad put on the walls over the years. I did not get dad's obsessive paint gene.

Our heat plant was a gas-fired floor convection furnace. There was no blower, no heat vents save the large grate in the floor, no return air. When it came on, it did so with a satisfying "whump", and the house heated slowly and mostly unevenly. We often closed off the front of the house to keep the main section warmer. Poor folks have poor ways.

Mom had the chair closest to the furnace, that seat befitting her role as breadwinner. Dad, however, controlled the thermostat. I think it was my friend from across the street, Steve, who christened my dad "Thermostat Rex".

Every fall, dad would take the grate from the floor and vacuum the inside of the sheetmetal heat exchanger, light the pilot light, and balance a square cake pan on top of the exchanger. As the weather went from cool to cold, dad added water to the pan to keep some humidity in the house.

Thinking back, I can't imagine how we all avoided a quiet death by carbon monoxide poisoning.

When my hair went from Vitalis and Brylcreem to Beach Boys to Beatles and far beyond, the furnace served as a rustic, awkward, but extremely efficient hairdryer. This was years before the invention of the handheld hairdryer. 

Google "Remington Hot Comb". 

When you came in from shoveling snow or trying to dig the car out of a snowdrift on 11th Street, standing on the floor grate wrapped you in an column of warm, dry air and you had to be careful if you were still wearing rubber overshoes, or you'd melt the soles to the grate. Even the smell of burning shoes somehow smelled like home.

One of the happiest moments of my life was in 1970 watching the Girl from Iowa drying her chestnut hair over that grate.

Sunday, March 28

March 28, Sunday - Went to church. Bill was up today, also Marv and Bud. Getting anxious to go home. Sure have lots of nice friends. Mary was up tonight.

March 29, Monday - Marv's birthday. Dr. Hesser took tubes out today. Talk about hurt! Had lots of company. Maxine and Mildred wound up the day!

March 30, Tuesday - Talked to the boss and Marie this morning. Have enjoyed the phone. Laid awake and talked to Marjorie till late last night. She's in bad shape.

Not much new here. You have to laugh to keep from crying, I suppose. Mom is stuck in a hospital room. She's just lost a breast to cancer, and doesn't know if she'll be alive in six months. Still, Marjorie is in bad shape and deserves Mom's friendship and steady counsel.

I remember dada and I went to Crane's cafeteria that afternoon.

Thursday, March 25

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March 25, Thursday - Got up yesterday five times. Got up today & sat in chair while Karen fixed my bed. Go to bathroom quite often. Flowers and gifts and cards. Everybody has been so nice.

March 26, Friday - More flowers, more cards, more visitors. I have such nice friends and family. Johnson was over today. Mom has a terrible cold & went to the doctor today. We're sure doing our best for the medical profession.

March 27, Saturday - Hesser was in & took off some of the bandages. I have to take at least 15 xray treatments. I'll probably go home next Wednesday.

There really isn't much to add or illuminate here. Mom is dealing with things in her post-op hospital life, a smaller world than she'd like, but one still inhabited by her family and close friends.

She found out that she'll have fifteen Cobalt treatments to come, but home is on the horizon.

Monday, March 22

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March 22, Monday - More blood - and an Xray. Al Mathis stopped, Marv and Bud sent flowers. Marie and Betty J. came up and paid for TV for me whenever I want it. Nice group of people I work with.

23 March, Tuesday - Surgery at 8 a.m. Everything that has ever happened to me has made me a better person in some way. Whatever happens today will be all right  do the same and be all right.

24 March, Wednesday - Not much good today. Bud and Marv came over and spent the day. Oodles of flowers from so many nice people. All my family has been up at least once.

There are few things that will make you feel more helpless than spending the day visiting someone you love while they're in the hospital recovering from major surgery. Mom lost her left breast and a major amount of chest tissue and lymph nodes to cancer.

Dad and I spent as much time as possible on the fifth floor with mom, and then we'd retreat to the coffee shop in the lobby to decompress.

At one point dad went out to the parking lot to smoke his pipe. I stayed inside and tried to do homework, but I was so distracted, I went to find him. He was sitting on the curb, sobbing. It was the first time I ever saw him cry.

I only saw him cry one more time - the day in September 1972 when I left home and moved to Colorado. It shook me to see him like that, and it's only recently that I have come to understand the depth of hopelessness and painful despair that causes emotions to spill out like that. For all his faults and myopic shortcomings, my dad truly loved my mom.

Friday, March 19

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March 19, Friday - The usual Friday. Bought groceries - $18.00 A little warmer today, but not much. That bunch of girls I work with are goofy. Sure have a ball. Marv had supper ready, as usual. He's so good.

March 20, Saturday - Got my hair fixed this morning. Stopped by mom's, then to work. Turned in my keys - feel as if I'm leaving for good.

March 21, Sunday - Carol's shower. Bud and I went to church, home for lunch, and here I am in Room 521. Didn't even get to my room before they started taking blood.

Mom is just treading water here. She's headed for the hospital for a radical mastectomy on Sunday, and she's just trying to hold it together. If she played one game of solitaire in front of the TV that week, she played a hundred. Mom usually reserved solitaire for the times when she didn't want to deal with dad. It was her mute switch. It was her sole foray into the world of the passive-aggressive. The sound of riffling cards makes me nauseous to this day.

Knowing my mom, the idea that she had to turn in her keys would have felt like jumping off a cliff and into the void. She loved her job - most of the time - and it kept her centered and grounded. Kroger was like home to her, the people she worked with were like family. This was my mom, in a nutshell. She created a new family in every setting. People depended on her, and she relished her role as the rock. 

Tuesday, March 16

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March 16, Tuesday - What a day! Real busy in store. No help, of course. Lights went out, had a flat tire, rained and hailed something fierce. Bud went to bowling alley and got home about 12:30. Didn't sleep well.

March 17, Wednesday - Not too much doing today. Mike and Ron came down. I went to bed about 9. Cold 15 tonight Bud wanted me to take him to a used car lot to look at a car, but I declined.

March 18, Thursday - Marie and I in the front end, as usual. Not too busy, though. Still cold.

I remember the hail storm so well. It came through about 4 in the afternoon. I was riding with Ron in his 1957 Chevy convertible. We were headed west on Anderson Avenue near Kensington or Cypress when the first hailstones started to fall, small stones at first, then progressively larger and larger until we were being pummeled with icy rocks the size of baseballs falling from the sky - onto a convertible. We noticed one of my classmates, Mike Rittermeyer, walking west on Anderson and we honked at him and told him to get in. By now the convertible top was in shreds, and we were trying everything we could think of to protect ourselves from the onslaught. I wound up with two big goose eggs on my head, and Mike always joked that he would have stood a better chance out in the open. Houses all over Northeast were damaged - windows, roofs, siding, and of course, the cars. Ron's Chevy was a dimpled mess. The hail broke the steering wheel and bent both sun visors like tacos. The windshield was completely gone, and broken glass was everywhere. It was a scene from a war zone.

That was the first day I met the Rittermeyer family - Al and Carolyn, and their four boys Mike Mark, Matt and Marshall. They would become my surrogate family for the next fifty years and more, and to this day, I still consider Mark to be my brother. Mike died suddenly from a heart attack a few years ago. We did the things brothers do. We got in trouble, we got out of trouble, we had as much fun together as any nuclear family has ever had. I can go on for hours about the good times we had together, the motorcycles, the trips to Keokuk, Iowa and Lenexa; the Saturday night house parties and all the music we made, but suffice it to say I am so much better as a human being for being a part of  this remarkable American family.

The Rittermeyer Brothers - Mike, Mark, Matt, and Marshall

Me with my brother Mark.

Moving on: As usual, Bud is trying to put the strong-arm on mom. In my defense, I wasn't aware of what mom was going through with her upcoming surgery, how terrified she was, or how sure she was that she wouldn't survive this ordeal.

The car in question was a 1948 Packard Henney Hearse. I saw it a used car lot on Independence Avenue, right across the street from Katz Drug Store. I'm guessing it weighed 6,000 pounds, and had a torque-monster flathead straight eight under the mile-long hood. It wore a velvety patina of age appropriate for its years. I saw a hearse as my ticket to fame and teenage alpha notoriety, and after all, I was only eighteen months from being able to drive it legally. I think I was just weird enough to pull it off.

This isn't the actual hearse, but the year and model are correct.

The guy at the used car lot actually let me drive it around the block a couple of times, and to this day, I have seen few vehicles that ran as smoothly and quietly as that Packard. When it was parked with the motor running, you couldn't feel any vibration, and if you didn't know for sure, you couldn't tell if it was actually running or not.

Still, mom prevailed, and the hearse sold a few days later to a guy from East, a rival school over on Van Brunt Boulevard, south of Truman. He swapped out the straight eight for a big-block 396 from a totaled Impala Super Sport, and was headed to North Kansas City to have it painted when a gas line popped off the carburetor, and the Packard burned to the ground on the ASB bridge. Hi ho.

Saturday, March 13

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March 13, Saturday - Made a trip to the hobby shop as usual, then downtown to get underwear. Margaret and Eva got me a pretty gown. Not very busy Gampper said I had a job as long as I wanted one.

March 14, Sunday - Pretty slow Sunday. Feel much better today. Myrtle and Lee came by to see me. Everyone in the store has promised to come and see me. Lois Ward is replacing me.

March 15, Monday - Paid rent, got hair fixed, went to store, did laundry, went to Dr. Hesser. Go to hospital next Sunday, operation Tuesday Went out for dinner and went downtown and shopped.

As usual, mom's expensive kid demands tribute in the form of ready-to-assemble plastic. Gampper, Kroger Zone Manager for Kansas City, Kansas just made a friend for life when he promised mom a job no matter what.

Slow Sunday at the store - Myrtle and Lee are mom's maternal aunt and her husband from Topeka. Lee Crawford ran a laundry a block west of the Kansas State Capitol building. Dad always referred to Lee as my rich uncle, and while he may have been well-off relative to our means, he wasn't a Patton family benefactor, and had a family of his own. His grandkids visited Kansas City a couple of times, but we really didn't hit it off. They were suburban kids, and we, the big-city mice, didn't agree with what passed for a Topeka sense of style.

Grandma Patton (Pansy) with Lee and Myrtle Crawford

Rent. Mom and dad moved us into our little house on 11th Street in 1955 after several years in Fort Scott, Kansas. My uncle Lawrence, aunt Gladys' husband, was employed by Cirese Investments, owned by Big Joe and Mary Cirese. They charged mom and dad $60 a month for the house on six lots. Lawrence and his son Frank helped dad excavate a large enough area under the house to serve as dad's bait factory. (Just thinking about that makes me cringe. There was a small area that held a water heater and room for a washing machine. They dug out five times that much area, hauling the dirt out in buckets. It was like something out of The Great Escape.)

Dad's gigantic industrial Hobart mixer had a permanent spot on the original concrete pad, and the rest of the operation horseshoed around the basement, through the center grade beam, and over to the east side of the basement. Dad eventually put a ladder and trap door in our bathroom that allowed access, though not easy access, to our basement in case of a tornado or the beginning of World War III. Either seemed likely in those days. The original entrance, a short ramp facing south, was still handy for doing laundry or dropping off 55-gallon barrels of blackstrap molasses or cheese trimmings that dad used to manufacture various baits. Stick around, this gets interesting later in the summer.

Anyway, sixty bucks a month. In today's money, maybe $550. A few years later, when big Joe died, there was talk of raising the rent, but Mary held off. When dad had his heart attacks in 1962, Mary reassured mom that she would never have to pay more than $60 for rent. Mom finally moved out of that miserable little house and into assisted living in 1979. Her rent was still $60, the equivalent then of about $130. Anyone who says anything bad about Mary Cirese will have to answer to me. She was a saint.

Wednesday, March 10

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March 10, Wednesday - Things are better today. I'm glad. Couldn't stand another day like yesterday. Worked hard. Training 2 new boys - patience is a virtue. Bob and Patty called.

March 11, Thursday - Still teaching the boys. Trying hard to keep up my spirits. Should go downtown tonight, but will put it off until Monday. Mary called.

March 12, Friday - Dad's birthday. Worked pretty hard - short of help as usual. Have a yearning to see the mountains. Jean called. Everybody has been so kind.

Mom's life as a head checker for Kroger was a constant revolving door of new hires. Everyone had to know how to run a cash register, count back change, and bag groceries along with whatever duties came with their respective department assignments. The only department that didn't have to deal with my mom was the meat department. Their union was stronger even than the Retail Clerks.

This is the first birthday anniversary for Grandpa Patton since his death the previous October. Mom took her dad's death really hard, harder perhaps, than the rest of the siblings. This is what led me to my "Extreme stress or grief as trigger events for the onset of cancer" hypothesis. I don't know of any research institution that's taking my idea seriously, or even looking into it, but this, and at least a half-dozen other instances are all I have to run with. I'm quite sure that a lot of cancer is actually the product of a sort of genetic lottery, but I don't know much about it. 

Update: Recently, I have come to understand that the stresses associated with grief and loss are far more severe than I had previously thought. My mom was a tower of strength.

The family phone tree kicked in almost immediately, driven by the matriarch Pansy. Bob, Patty, and Jean are all mom's siblings, Mary is Bob's wife. This is a tight, tight, family in every respect. Their ability to support one another was amazing to see and experience.

When my dad had his heart attacks in early August of 1962, mom still needed to work as well as watch over dad in the hospital. I stayed with my aunt Patty for a while, with aunt Jean for a while, and finally, when school started after Labor Day, I became a latchkey kid until dad finally made it back home in late October, and my dad's sister Gladys kept an eye on me from time to time, as did the neighborhood moms - Mrs. Jackson, Mrs. Fairhurst, Mrs. Stark, and Mrs. Billings next door. It was a real neighborhood, where neighbors cared for and about one another.

Sunday, March 7

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March 7, Sunday - Took Ron, Mom, Bud and Marv to the airport. Tried to go to church, no place to park. Had a good time, took mom home and watched TV in evening.

March 8, Monday - Carol did my hair, did washing. Marv found out about my left breast & rushed me to Dr. Sims. (Now what?) Sims rushed me to (Dr.) Hesser. Took Marv out to his birthday. May be pretty busy on 3/29, or I may not be busy at all.

March 9, Tuesday - Low day. Blue, blue, blue. Told Johnson about my operation - he was so kind and understanding. I bawled like a nut. Tomorrow will be better. Worked on the front end - real busy, too.

Again with the airport. No one is traveling anywhere - we're just going to look at the airport. It's real Wes Anderson stuff.

Then the shoe drops. Mom found a lump in her left breast the size of a golf ball. If I remember the conversations properly, she had known about the lump for more than six months, but didn't think it was alarming enough to see a doctor about. Dad wasn't so calm, in fact he was furious that mom had sandbagged the discovery.Her regular doctor, Dr. Sims, was equally concerned, and immediately sent mom to see a surgeon, Dr. Hesser, the same day. The surgery was scheduled immediately and would take place about two weeks later at Bethany Hospital in Kansas City, Kansas; the same hospital I was born in some fifteen years earlier. They had the nerve to tear it down in the 1990s.

Bethany Hospital's Early Days

Mom took dad to his birthday celebration early - which can mean nothing besides a dinner at Crane's Cafeteria at the corner of Truman Road and Hardesty. Crane's fried chicken was and still is, to my mind the best I have ever eaten, and while they closed years ago, the very mention brings the taste back to me as though it were hot on my dinner plate. This was pretty much the only restaurant my mom and dad ever went to on any kind of regular basis. Cafeterias were, in general, the venues of choice for my family. Cranes. Myron Green's, Putch's - we knew them all, plus a few more in Topeka. Standing in lines as we pushed trays along seemed like second nature. It was the time of the factory worker. 

Crane's Cafeteria

Dad's real birthday is March 29, but mom didn't know if she would be able to follow through when that date rolled around. My mom was strong, but the reaction of dad and the doctors terrified her, and rightly so. In today's parlance, mom had Stage III metastatic breast cancer. It was entirely likely that they would take her breast, some muscle tissue, and as many affected lymph nodes as possible.

The reality of what's about to transpire has hit mom, and she's laid low. I'm sure she dreaded telling her store manager the news. Mom's manager, Kenny Johnson, was a strong manager, and he treated his people like family. Mom, and most everyone who worked with him, was crazy about the guy. My mom was the store mom, and a lot of the employees there would have walked on hot coals to keep her out of the hospital.

We all would have.

Thursday, March 4

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March 4, Thursday - Snowed all day. Took groceries to mom after work and slid all the way home. Got stuck in front of the house.finally backed into driveway. Called Sonnie to tell her about the snow.

March 5, Friday - Terrible driving this a.m. Slick and still snowing, took an hour to get to work. Margaret and I planning a shower for Carol jo March 21. (Tilt)

March 6, Saturday - Everything looks better. Sun is shining - first time in a week. Went to sleep in the chair before I went to bed.

Every time it snowed, we had to call Sonnie. Or every time the leaves budded out, or the leaves turned brown and fell into the yard, we called Sonnie. Sonnie and her husband Harmond and their two boys, my nephews Brian and Mark, moved to Southern California in the early sixties. So did my brother Bill, his wife Pat, and my niece Cindy.

That's where the similarities ended. While Sonnie pined for the change of seasons, Bill celebrated Christmas by building a fire in the fireplace and cranking the AC as low as he could get it. Then, he'd pack up the family and head to the beach. Bill lived out his life in Southern California, while Sonnie and Harm fled for the Chicago area, and ultimately, Denver.

Bill

Sonnie and the Boys

Meanwhile, Mom says the world looks better. This is a temporary condition. Stay tuned.

Monday, March 1

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March 1, Monday - Bud home with a cold, I spent most of the day in bed - just tired. Sleet and snow. Cold tonight. Put gravel in driveway and back yard.

March 2, Tuesday - Had store (zone) meeting today. Came home and went right to bed - sore throat & cold. Bud went bowling until 11:30

March 3, Wednesday - Feel better today. Got things pretty well caught up in office. Went to chiropractor. Falling apart.



Another short post. Mom is increasingly tired and feels listless much of the time. Some of this is the winter blahs, some of this is a general sense of futility. An additional factor will be revealed soon.

Bowling until 11:30 for an eighth-grader. Who's spolied? A Tuesday night men's league has several important functions: 1. Bowling with men whose games are far superior to my own helped me become a better bowler. 2. It started to pull me out of my shell. 3.The guys on my team looked the other way when I sneaked a drink of their beer. 4. I learned a lot of interesting new words.