Saturday, July 31

July 31, Saturday - Hated to come to work today. Stayed in bed till 10:00. Had a nice day. Home by 9:30

Mom's life is flat right now. Her Saturday shift is noon to 9:00 p.m. She's trying to get back in a groove of some kind, but she's still worn out from the physical and emotional stress of dealing with her breast cancer, the treatments, and all her time off work.

Wednesday, July 28

July 28, Wednesday - 

July 29, Thursday - 

July 30, Friday - Pat Simpson called today. She got to town Tuesday for a month. Sonnie and Harm are not coming home.

Pat Simpson is my brother's wife. Sonnie and Harm are my sister and her husband.

Sunday, July 25

July 25, Sunday - Nice cool day. Went to church - went out to eat and took a nap. Went fishing a few hours in evening. Nice day.

July 26, Monday - Went to beauty shop and helped do washing. Took nap and went fishing in the evening. Nice weekend.

July 27, Tuesday - 

More tedium from the heartland. The only consistent theme in all this is fishing. Always the fishing.

Thursday, July 22

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July 22, Thursday - Worked pretty hard. Forgot to send in KMP order. Upset the whole Kroger organization.

July 23, Friday - My first paycheck since March. Hot

July 24, Saturday - Worked late with Johnson.

"KMP" is the order system for items carrying Kroger house brands. There were no computers, of course, just big - and I mean big - clipboards with pages and pages of items listed by category. I can only imagine how mom felt having dropped the ball on this major piece of the store's stock order.

When I finally got my shot at carrying the mega-clipboard in the early '70s, I found that the items you were trying to order were not listed in planogram order.

If you've never worked retail, a planogram is a visual shelf-space planning system for placing merchandise in a company-approved manner. At Kroger, planograms showed the item name, shelf placement on the gondolas, and the correct number for product facings. Most of the product resets were done by a traveling band of store merchandisers who swoop in, make lots of noise, reset the shelves, then swoop back out again.

By the time I went to work at Lowe's in 2010, planograms were largely executed by in-store Product Services staff, though most departments still had to deal with the process on a regular basis. At a warehouse store, though, the shelfs are fourteen feet high and able to carry tons of product, both at customer level and in high top stock, accessible by ladder and personnel lifts and by fork-lifts and reach trucks.

One of the highlights of my time at Lowe's was being to add "Fork Lift Certified" to my resumé.

Mom finally gets a real paycheck again. Soul-crushing, mind-bubbling heat in Kansas City, complete with wet-towel humidity.

Saturday night at Kroger. Man, that's living.

Monday, July 19

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July 19, Wednesday - Rained hard in the morning. Got hair cut and fixed. went home and stayed all day. Rain.

July 20, Tuesday- Bud called about 11:00 and said Marv was so dizzy he couldn't stand. Finally had to go home and take him to the doctor. Didn't go back to work. Johnson wasn't too pleased.

It's always something at our house. Dad lost his bearings and mom had to leave work and haul dad out to the Country Club Plaza to see Dr. Miller.

Her boss, Kenny Johnson, was not happy, but didn't have much to say about it.

Note: To this day, I have periodic bouts with vertigo caused by my inner ear, and have to take part of the day to readjust my otoliths. I've always wondered if this is related.

Friday, July 16

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July 16, Friday - Didn't work as hard today. Spent afternoon in office. Didn't feel too hot all day. Boss said I didn't have to work Sunday. I'm glad!

July 17, Saturday - Took Bud to hobby shop first thing. He told me I was one of the good ones. So is he! So ends my first week back. Hot today. 93°

July 18, Sunday - Intended to go to church, but slept until 10. Rained on and off all day. Went over and showed Mom Colorado pictures in evening.

The office in Kroger parlance was usually a square platform near the cash registers at the front of the store. For mom, it meant she could sit on a stool and count tills, make deposits and change for the checkers. I learned to count tills from my mom. She'll get through the next day and have Sunday off. Saturday was her day to work until close, finish off the week's books and make deposits. She would typically turn around and be back at work at 8:00 a.m. on Sunday. Turn and burn.

The "Hobby Shop" is Northeast Toy and Hobby, directly across Independence Avenue from Northeast Junior High. Owned by the Collins family, the Hobby Shop was my Saturday addiction, mostly car models, greatly detailed, and way more expensive than I would have thought, considering. Model kits by AMT or Revell would have retailed for about $3.95 - about $32 in 2020 purchasing power. I had boxes and boxes of spare parts from other kits, and would use them to build custom versions and one-off hot rods. Jesus, I was spoiled.

The good news is that the time I invested working on 1/25 scale model cars returned benefits when it came time to work on real cars.  The analog is flawed when it scales up, but I knew where everything went, how most things worked, and I rebuilt my first small-block Chevy engine the following year. The Visible V8 Engine helped me there.

I can't remember, but I think the firing order was the same as Chevy's 1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2. You're welcome.

The rest of the kits were by AMT, Revell, and occasionally, Monogram. The vast majority of my cars were customs, hot rods, and a few race cars. 

Shoot, if I was doing this now, you could even get a White Freightliner Cab-Over.

That earworm is provided at no charge. I got all the way into July without posting a music link, or a reference to Lyle Lovett. This video showcases some of my favorite people in the music business doing a favorite Townes van Zandt song. They are all consummate musicians, but pay particular attention to Keith Sewell's amazing flatpicking skills. Bonus: one of the great drummers of all time, Russ Kunkel, not behind a huge drum rig, but perched on a little cajon. He looks happy to be there. (Russ Kunkel and I sport similar hair styles.)

Tuesday, July 13

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July 13, Tuesday - First day back. It all comes back (like a bad dream). The usual routine. So many people were glad to see me - it embarrasses me.

July 14, Wednesday - More of the same. Went fishing with Marv in the evening.

July 15, Thursday - Worked too hard today. Woke up in the middle of the night and the bed was spinning.

Mom finally gets to go back to work after her mastectomy. She was extremely popular with her Kroger family, and was a kind of store "Mom". She had her choice of stores in the Kroger system, but stayed with her store at 31st and Minnesota Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas. It was about ten miles from our house in Northeast Kansas City, Missouri. That decision was obviously colored by her wanting to be in close proximity to her folks, who lived at 15th and Garfield, just a couple of miles away. Her family always came first.

As hard as mom worked, she seldom took breaks, and never complained, especially to her Kroger kids. Looking back, I'm surprised she didn't just drop dead at work.

Saturday, July 10

July 10, Saturday - Went to store and picked up keys. Came home, turned on air conditioner and stayed inside rest of the day. The kids at the store gave me $20 for my birthday.

July 11, Sunday - Stayed home all day. Slept till 10:30 - too late to go to church. Such a heathen. Neighborhood very quiet.

July 12, Monday - Got ready for work tomorrow. Got hair fixed, etc.

$20 in 1965 equals $158 today!

Mom finds refuge in the dry, air conditioned air. Summer is Kansas city often feels like being slapped with a hot, wet, towel. Heat from the high plains coupled with humidity from the Gulf of Mexico creates a gooey stew of atmosphere. It takes all day for laundry to dry on the clothesline.

Mom now faces the reality of going back to work after four months sick leave. I'm surprised she lasted as long as she did. Mom had no hobbies, wasn't much of a reader, and her social life revolved mostly around her family. I'm sure she was about to crawl out of her skin dealing with dad and me.

Wednesday, July 7

July 7, Wednesday - Went to Fort Scott - thought we'd stay all night. 104° so we came home. Nice trip - nice day. Mom is better.

July 8, Thursday - Hot today. Loafed most of the day. Betty Hendricks got on a crying jag and sat on the back porch crying for an hour. We will move soon. (I hope)

July 9, Friday - Went to store in Missouri. Went fishing in evening.

Strikethrough: Went to 201 in p.m. to pick up my keys. The kids gave me $20 for my birthday.

Grandma's house in Fort Scott wasn't air conditioned.

A trip to Fort Scott during a heat wave is made much more enjoyable by the meat-locker-cold air conditioning of the Big Blue Cadillac. Previous attempts at staying cool along the way included outfitting one of our old cars - probably the ghastly oxidized-green 1951 Plymouth - with a window-mounted evaporative "swamp cooler". The hitch is that in the sopping, dripping humidity of the Missouri/Kansas summer, water never actually evaporates, it just loses all hope, gives up, and changes directly to mildew.

Evaporative Cooler

The idea was to fill the tank with water, and before you set out, pull on a rope that rotated a fabric wick through that water, and then as you drove, the water evaporated, cooling the air that was forced through it. You only pulled on the rope while you were standing still. It wasn't designed for Kansas and Missouri, and once, mom, frustrated by the lack of cooling yanked on the rope while we were doing about sixty on 69 Highway. The resulting cold-water shower soaked the entire interior of the Plymouth. We were all wet, but not really all that cool. We were never really all that cool.

Fort Scott, Kansas is where my dad's family is from. His folks bought a little house past the city limits way out on East Wall Street in the 1920s so they could raise a family without moving every year. Before that, the family's listings in the city directories show them as renters, and moving every single year.

My grandpa Simpson died when I was very young - 1954 - and Grandma lived alone in the little house until she could no longer care for herself and moved to Kansas City to stay with my Aunt Gladys in the 1970s. The house on Wall Street had only rudimentary indoor plumbing - cold water in the kitchen, and an outhouse in the back. To get to the outhouse, you had to walk past next-door neighbor Ora Fairman's chicken coop, and occasionally, they'd raise a fuss. My relationship with Mr. Fairman's chickens was mostly with them as a curiosity. I'd feed them from time to time, and spent a lot of time watching them, trying to figure out what made chickens tick. I'm still not sure. Chickens are odd people.

This trip to Fort Scott, there was a show-car custom 1950 Ford sitting next to Fairman's house. The Candy Apple Red** lacquer had begun to craze some, but the interior was Rod and Custom Show perfect. Red and white naugahyde tuck and roll, with a custom horseshoe shaped rear seat. At the focus of the seat's inner circle was a built in cooler. I would have swooned over such high-gloss automotive sex anyway, but the car had just been featured in one of my many car magazines. It was like being in the presence of royalty.

Rod & Custom, March 1965

Grandma's house, (r) and Ora Fairman's place

Fort Scott was a military town during the Civil War, and, I'm told, had it not been for market pressures brought on by the war and the Chicago fire, of all things, it would have been the major rail hub in the midwest instead of Kansas City.

As a kid, there was plenty to see in Fort Scott - the Frisco train depot was at the foot of Wall Street near First Street, and in the early fifties, there were still a couple of steam trains that came through town. There is something about that whistle that you never forget. We would grab soft-serve cones up the street and sit on the platform to wait for the Frisco to roll through. Dad put pennies on the rails and waited for the train to mash them into little copper dinner plates.

Time and progress has filled in Harkey Park, a baseball diamond and gathering place a bit closer to town. It was situated in a deep bowl along Wall Street, and was dad's baseball venue when he played in town, and a point of assembly for Klan Rallies and other fun small-town activities.

In the older part of town, Gunn Park was a family-friendly place for fishing, picnicking, and when the weather in Kansas turned into a raging furnace of heat and humidity, a place to go sleep. During heat waves, the park would fill with families on blankets, trying to avoid the stifling heat long enough to get a good night's rest. Imagine. I know we slept in the park a couple of nights during the heat wave of 1954. That was the year that dad finally broke down and bought his mammoth Fridgidaire Air Conditioner. We moved to Kansas City the following summer.

Any discussion of Fort Scott, Kansas should include mention of renowned photographer and native son Gordon Parks. Born in Fort Scott a couple of years after my dad, he became one of America's most prominent photojournalists. Fort Scott Community College operates the Gordon Parks Museum on its campus.

Leonard Bernstein, New York
Photo by Gordon Parks, from the archives of The Gordon Parks Foundation

Anyway, mom's optimism about moving was just that, optimism. It never came to pass, ands more nights than that one, the back porch was where mom and dad held neighborhood court - crying jags, police calls, lost kids, and stray dogs all found their way to our house.

Mom's getting ready to go back to work - she's got her keys, birthday money from her store kids, and a willingness to get things back to what passes for normal. More fishing. Always the fishing.

**Note from the Hyper-Pedantic Car Guy: "Candy Apple" only applies to the color red. It's Apple Red, but it's shot with Candy Colors. There is no such animal as "Candy Apple Orange". "Candy Colors" or in some cases "Kandy Kolors" are simply transparent layers of richly hued lacquer applied over a gold or silver base coat. The process in the '50s and '60s, as invented by immortal hot rodder Joe Bailon was laborious and fraught with danger:

• Apply the appropriate base coat - gold or silver metallic
• Apply the first coat of transparent color 
• Rub out most of the lacquer by hand, eliminating bumps, dust, and other imperfections trapped by the rapidly-drying lacquer 
•  Apply another coat of transparent color
•  Lather, rinse, repeat until the color is uniform and clear and deep as a pool of liquid gemstones
• Finish by sanding, buffing, and polishing the top coat until you forget why you started this process in the first place.  

You might have Candy Titian Orange applied over either silver or gold basecoats, or possibly Candy Cerulean Blue over silver. Candy Lime Green would usually be over silver. You get the picture. These days, Candy Colors are acrylic, and only a small part of the pantheon of Kustom Kar Kolors***, and much easier to deal with than the old lacquer finishes, but the result is much the same. Deep, rich colors that dance in the sunlight. Pure sex.

 

Candy Apple Red Chevy

 

Candy Apple Red Merc

Now, let's talk about Pearls and Metalflakes . . . . . 

***You'd think this stuff was invented by the same guy that names cafes in the Missouri Ozarks.

Sunday, July 4

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July 4, Sunday - Slept late and failed to go to church. went to Patty's in the evening for fireworks. The Kendalls were there. Marv is so happy to have us home.  

July 5, Monday - Did a big washing. Went with Marv to deliver bait. Helped Marv make bait. Real warm.

July 6, Tuesday - Marv did ironing before I got up. Makes me feel guilty. This neighborhood is terrible. Police have been out every day for a week.

Thursday, July 1

July 1, Thursday - Went to Royal Gorge and back by way of Phantom Canyon Road and Rampart Range Road. One way roads some of the time. Called Marv and told him we'd be back by Saturday noon.

July 2, Friday - Patty had car fixed and we finally got away from Colorado Springs about 1:30. Drove to Hays, ate supper (fried chicken) about 8 and went to bed at Fort Hays Motel at Hays.

July 3, Saturday - Left Hays about 8:30 and got into KC about 1:30. Stopped at both restaurants on the Turnpike but couldn't get waited on. Nice to get home. Sure had a nice trip.

Phantom Canyon Road and Rampart Range Roads are, even now, not for the faint of heart. We're in a 1962 Chevy convertible, and the road is rocky, steep in places, and very narrow in others. Mom was white-knuckling it all the way. 

Mom doesn't mention going up Pikes Peak on the bus, but it was a highlight of the trip. The bus drivers negotiate the hairpin turns and steep drop-offs as though they were headed to Whataburger for a sandwich. They seemed totally oblivious to the not-so-muffled screams of their oxygen-deprived passengers.

Mom learned a valuable science lesson that day, as well. Remember, mom is wearing an inflatable prosthetic bra because of her mastectomy. About two-thirds of the way up Pike's Peak, my aunt Patty pointed out to mom that her left side was twice its normal size. After the appropriate fit of sister-laughing, mom reached into her purse and got out the tube she used to inflate and adjust the bra. She reached inside her jacket, attached the tube, and started bleeding off the extra air, an action accompanied by a loud, whistling, hissing sound. 

The man in the seat on the opposite side of the aisle looked all over for the source of the sound. He saw my aunt Patty about to explode from the stifled laughter, and Patty looked right at the guy and said, "My sister is under a lot of pressure these days."

That set off another round of uncontrollable, gasping, red-faced laughter, and when we finally got to the summit, we were absolutely exhausted, as well as suffering from oxygen deprivation. We visited the summit house, bought a snow globe souvenir, had a donut and a cup of coffee, and went outside to wait, blue-lipped and woozy, for the cog railway for the trip back to the bottom of the mountain. I slept all the way down.

Not sure what was wrong with the car. It was a small-block Chevy in the summer, so it probably had to do with an overheated starter, but apparently, it was easily repaired, and back across Kansas we go.

Fort Hays Motel - Photo: Frank Brusca

Fort Hays Motel was pretty typical for Kansas crossings in those days. A long, connected strip of attached rooms in a row or sometimes in a horseshoe shape. Kinda like the Bates Motel. If those walls - and showers - could talk.

The Kansas Turnpike  - The KTA - was a marvel in the early days of the Interstate Highway experiment, but getting fed on the turnpike was an adventure, and usually a disappointment. Under the signature light-bulb-shaped water towers there was a gas station, and a restaurant. The gas station gigged you on the price of gas, and the restaurant had the worst service imaginable. I suppose it had a lot to do with their locations, and getting help out there was probably difficult. All the same, mom and my aunt Patty would have eagerly stopped at Junction City or Topeka if they had known how bad it would be on the 'Pike. Harvey House it wasn't.

Home again, with lusty tales of high adventure in the Rockies.