Tuesday, August 31

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August 31, Tuesday - Worked today. Felt pretty good. Went home and laid down. Was so dizzy I screamed. Got up about 3:00 a.m. and couldn't walk. Dizzy and pain in my back was so bad.

Saturday, August 28

August 28, Saturday - Took mom to Safeway before I came to work.

August 29, Sunday - Worked today. Busy but not too much. Went home and was so dizzy.

August 30, Monday - Got hair fixed. Went to Dr. Miller - he said dizziness was caused from inner ear. More pills.

The summer drags on - work, doctors, Mondays at the beauty shop.

Things are pretty slow until September 4 - my birthday looms.

Wednesday, August 25

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August 25, Wednesday - Short of help in front end. Wrote orders and worked in office.

August 26, Thursday - 

August 27, Friday - Worked in checkstand all day till 4:00. Was so tired I was stupid.

Some days are just days at work

Sunday, August 22

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August 22, Sunday - Went to church, and Marv took us out to lunch. Stopped at Parkview and bought tickets for "Sound of Music" and then fishing until 7:00.

August 23, Monday - Got hair fixed. Mom, Bud, and I went to Forum for lunch and then to see "Sound of Music". Great, would like to see it again.

August 24, Tuesday - Work today. Usual Tuesday. Cigarettes never got put up. Marie and I worked the front end over.

Lunch was likely Crane's Cafeteria, located at the corner of Truman and Hardesty, one of our regular stops. We were not, as a family, inclined to fine dining, but Crane's was a welcoming, and quite good stop on our culinary itinerary. Their fried chicken was absolutely amazing, but it was offset in my fourteen year-old mind by dad grinning toothlessly and asking for "cornpone" instead of cornbread in the service line. Mortified, I tell you.

Crane's Cafeteria

Straight from food to fishing. How I've avoided therapy is anyone's guess.

The Sound of Music with mom and grandma. Another on our cavalcade of musicals. I didn't mind, and I still love musicals. That Angela Cartwright was in it made it that much better. The Forum was, as you might have guessed, a cafeteria, downtown at 1220 Grand Avenue. It was tantalizingly close to the Wonderland Arcade at 1200 Grand. The Saturday shopping trips when mom would allow me a trip to Wonderland were some of my best memories of downtown KC. Mom became quite adept at Skee-Ball, while I became an accomplished shooting gallery addict.

Wonderland Arcade Skee-Ball

Wonderland Shooting Gallery and Pinball Machines

Thursday, August 19

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August 19, Thursday - Had a busy day. Had meeting in the store (store managers) Went fishing in the evening.

August 20, Friday - Worked like crazy all day. My arm hurts so bad I thought it would drop off. Rumors of a riot. Drove home with windows rolled up and doors locked. Wouldn't let Bud go to drive-in.

August 21, Saturday - Rumors still drifting around. Johnson real worked up. Dave Downing came and had lunch with me. He likes California.

August of 1965 saw race-centric rioting break out in the Watts area of South-Central Los Angeles. In the wake of the riots, civil unrest and rumors spread across the rest of the country.

Mom's store was at 31st and State Avenue, in a racially-mixed area of Kansas City, Kansas, as was most of her trip home. She had graduated high school at Wyandotte High School, just a few blocks away. 

Our house was located behind the "Spaghetti Curtain" at the edge of Northeast, which had a prominent Italian community. The theory, as we understood it, was that as long as there was a flourishing Italian community, blacks would dare not encroach into the territory. The Curtain ran from Little Italy in Columbus Park, along Independence Avenue to the East Side. It took a jog to the south and enveloped the neighborhoods north of Truman Road out to the steel mills in the East Bottoms.

I never saw a black student until my junior year in high school. Then there was only one. A few years after I graduated, desegregation came to Kansas City. Buses brought black students to Northeast from the inner city. The Spaghetti Curtain collapsed as many Italian families headed to the suburbs of Gladstone, Blue Springs, and Raytown. A few years after that, mob warfare broke out in Kansas City's River Quay district. Bars and other businesses exploded for no apparent reason. So did cars. Soon after, Little Italy ceased to be the bastion of Italian life in Kansas City. Families, sponsored by area churches, emigrated from Russia and after the war, Viet Nam. 

In 1965, much of The United States was racially segregated, in spite of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which effectively outlawed segregation and racial discrimination. In Kansas City, fear between the races was far from being legislated away, and while my dad and my granddad lived and worked with blacks (before they were known as African-Americans), mistrust ran high, and their bigotry, ingrained in them for their entire lives, bubbled just below the surface. My mom's dad never tried to hide his hatred of blacks, and I found my time around him to be uncomfortable, to say the least.

In 1964 and 1965 rioting had been taking place in several northern urban centers, including New York Chicago, and Detroit. The middle '60s became known as the "Long Hot Summer." After the Watts Riots, the top blew off the rumor mills everywhere. Rioting never broke out in Kansas City, but that didn't keep people from anticipating unrest and fomenting fear and mistrust. It was really sad.

More on the Watts Riots here.

Monday, August 16

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August 16, Monday - Got hair fixed at Avenue Beauty Shop. Like it fine. Took Bud to M-W and bought school clothes.

August 17, Tuesday - Had the usual Tuesday

August 18, Wednesday - Felt bum today. Had a few words with Mick. Went to bowling alley to watch on his last night (summer league) but got too cold. Went home and watched TV.

Mom had to change beauty shops for her weekly tune-up. Her regular shop started closing on Mondays, her only day off.

School clothes shopping at Montgomery Ward. Mom and I always did battle over clothes. I was trying to not look like a complete dweeb, and mom was trying to keep me from outgrowing the clothes before we got home. We always managed to reach a medium compromise, if not always a happy one.

Last night of Summer Bowling. Allen's Bowl, on Independence Avenue, was meat-locker cold in the summer. You could almost see your breath, even on the hottest days. Too cold for my mom, anyway.

The aroma still comes back to me - stale beer and cigarette smoke.

Friday, August 13

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August 13, Friday - Not too busy today. Marie went home sick. Betty asked us to pick up Sandy again tonight. Fred's still mad. Big deal! Hot

August 14, Saturday - Hot

August 15, Sunday - Worked today in deli. Did pretty good, I thought. Hot and then rain.

Tuesday, August 10

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August 10, Tuesday - Worked the front end by myself today.

August 11, Wednesday - 

August 12, Thursday - Had a Friendliness Survey at the store today. Came out pretty good. Betty asked us to go get Sandy tonight. Fred is mad at her.

Retail organizations regularly check up on their employees - basket checks, secret shoppers, friendliness surveys - the idea is to see if the employees are doing their jobs correctly, not costing the company money through errors, making the customers feel welcome, etc.

The Sandy Chronicles continue. Fred is her step-dad, betty is her mother.

Saturday, August 7

August 7, Saturday - Pat and Cindy will be over tomorrow. Had a usual Saturday.

August 8, Sunday - Pat and Cindy spent the day with us. Had a nice quiet day. Was exhausted and went to bed early.

August 9, Monday - Got hair fixed. Beauty shop will be closed on Monday from now on. Called about keypunch school. Sounds good. Took Bud to (continued on next page - Dr. Williamson. Went fishing.)

Pat and Cindy are my half-brother's wife and their daughter, my niece.

Keypunch school. Keypunch was a means of feeding programming and input information to a computer, 80 characters at a time, via punch cards. You remember punch cards, right?

80 Character Punch Card

Information was entered into a punch card via a console, then the card was sent to a verifier who checked the information. The card was then sent to a mainframe card reader attached to a computer that input the data, where it was manipulated to produce the desired computation.

The idea of going to a keypunch school sounded good to mom and her sister. A sit down down job with normal hours that wasn't retail.

Wednesday, August 4

August 4, Wednesday - Feel better all the time. Got caught up in the office today. Hot 96°

August 5, Wednesday - Hot today

August 6, Thursday - Lois came and had lunch with Eva and me today. Nice person. Went to Wild Woody's tonight.

Mom's getting back in the groove, I think. Getting her office caught up is important to her.

Lois and Eva are probably Kroger family. Not sure.

Wild Woody's Bargain Barn was a large, no, very large  discount store out on Noland Road in Independence. It was the superstore before superstores were invented. They had everything - groceries, liquor, furniture, the biggest record department this side of Hollywood, and really, if they didn't have it, you probably didn't need it. Strictly no frills, it was a destination if you lived in the city. It was a solid ten-mile drive from our house.

Sunday, August 1

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August 1, Sunday - Picnic tonight at Bob's. First Sunday back at work. Worked in deli. Got along pretty well.

August 2, Monday - Had to hunt a place to get my hair fixed. Mary Kern finally did it. Bud bought his car. Sold my last bond to buy it. Am I burned up!

August 3, Tuesday - Short on help as usual. Hot today. Didn't call home today on lunch hour - they were surprised to see me tonight.

Last things first. Mom always called home on her lunch hour. She did this to make sure we didn't need anything from the store, sometimes to let us know she had stops to make on her way home - just general stuff. That she didn't call home is a big deal.

So this:

The car in question, the reason that mom's hair is on fire, is a 1956 Chevy two-door post. I bought it from my pal Mike up the street. To be more accurate, my dad bought it from Mike, because I was too young to own a vehicle, much less drive one..

It was in pretty fair shape, and just had a fresh coat of Chevrolet Midnight Blue applied. Under the hood was the workhorse 235 c.i. Chevy Stovebolt inline six cylinder backed by the dependable two-speed Powerglide automatic transmission. The lifters were noisy, and like many Stovebolts, it had an accessory top oiler added in an attempt to muffle the clacking a bit. This drove my dad crazy, and would eventually lead him to trade in my car while I was at school. I come from a long line of worrying, crazy, people with bad decision-making skills.

1956 Chevy

The thing is this: I paid $300 for the car. On top of some seed money from dad a few years back, I had saved almost $700 from various projects, piecework in dad's bait factory, mowing lawns, shoveling snow, you name it. This was always the "car money." Mom was on board with this. It was more than enough cash to buy the car, and pay for the tags. Dad went ahead and put it on his insurance - I was too young to drive it anyway.

From here on out, my income went to small cosmetic fixes - chrome wheels, seat covers for the ratty bench seats, a glaspak muffler, and few sparkly trinkets here and there from Arrow Speed Shop on Independence Avenue. Yes, I had fuzzy dice. By the time a new school year rolled around in 1966, I'd have been able to swing the cash for aV8 engine swap and I'd be ready to take my position in the hierarchy of teenage death-wish motorheads at Northeast High School. A '56 Chevy would move me to the top of the lower-middle tiers in no time. Quite an achievement for a sophomore.

Cars were not ubiquitous at urban high schools back then. There was no student parking lot. It wasn't necessary. Of the pack I ran with, I was the only one with a car until late my senior year. Other guys were able to borrow their parents' car, but it wasn't the same.

Somehow, my dad had pulled a fast one, but I can't figure out what he did with the money. $300, in today's buying power would equal well over $2,400! What the hell? That mom had to cash her last bond for this is a tragedy. No wonder she was pissed.

Speculation: I can imagine a scenario where somebody in the neighborhood would put the touch on dad. He was as soft as they come, and a bit of an innocent. Our neighborhood was full of sob stories, and dad, the househusband, was always around to hear them. Yeah, I can see that happening. Car problems, medical bills, lost jobs, all would have activated dad's sucker gene.

Mom had always assumed that someday, if they worked hard, they could find a place of their own, stop paying rent, and join the Great American Illusion. The mean home prices nationwide in 1965 were around $20,000, and mom's last few bonds would have made a decent down-payment. I remember driving with her looking at bungalows around Northeast. She particularly like a couple of places on Denver and Quincy streets, just north of Budd Park. The disappearance of the last bond was her dream in flames. I can barely write thinking about this.

I honestly don't know the whole story here. I will never know, but it was obviously a pivot point in my folks' lives. I'm surprised mom didn't kill him in his sleep.