Friday, May 7

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May 7, Friday - Felt real good today - Went to store in morning. Delivered bait afternoon, then stopped to see Patty. She's doing fine.

May 8, Saturday - Bud got up with sinus-sick headache. Went to library first thing - then to Katz. Stopped by Gladys to give mom Mother's Day $2.00 Plan to have picnic at Jean's tomorrow.

May 9, Sunday - Had a lousy day for Mother's Day. Marv and I had a brawl - made me so upset I couldn't go to church. Ruined my whole day.

Bait deliveries and relatives in the hospital - it's our family theme.

I used to have crippling sinus infections. They felt like someone driving nails into my eye sockets. They just came and went. I got used to them.

I spent a lot of time at the library at Northeast High School - I remember that this time I was working on a speech for the Drama Club. It had to do with the Colossus of Rhodes. I'm not sure if I picked the topic or if Mrs. Womack threw me under the bus on that one. The Colossus of Rhodes? Really?

Katz Drug Stores was a midwest institution, and if you couldn't get it at Katz, you probably didn't need it. While we got our prescriptions filled at Fredman's Drug Store on the Ninth and Spruce triangle, we got nearly everything else at Katz. I bought records, cameras, film, and pretty much everything else there. They had a creepy animated black cat neon sign that used to freak me out. Not as much as the big glowing face on the U-Smile Court out on 40 Hiway, but creepy all the same.

Katz Drug Store

U-Smile

Again, I was totally and blissfully unaware of any of my folks fights. I just didn't know about most of them. Don't know why this one started, or how it went down. It must have been a rough one if it took my mom down like that.

Chances are, my dad raised a stink because mom was going out to her sister Jean's house in Independence. Jean never tried to pretend that she liked my dad - or anyone else, for that matter - and my dad had an inferiority complex where mom's family was concerned. Jean and her husband Frank built a house, stick by stick, out on Arlington Road before I-70 disconnected the north end of the street from the rest of the world. Uncle Frank, who, like my dad, was a meat-cutter of the A&P variety, did most of the work himself, and the house was a marvel of mid-century modernity - built-in televisions and appliances, rocker switches to control the lights, the steepest, narrowest, stairs I've ever seen, and a far-too-small kitchen. I'm quite sure mom saw it as a dream house, a dream that she would never see in real life.

At any rate, dad probably wanted to go fishing instead of going to Aunt Jeans.