Wednesday, September 22

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September 22, Wednesday - Threw Ryan's medicine away. Made me break out in a rash. Dizzy as ever. Marie is back - bless her. Couldn't operate without her.

September 23, Thursday - Bud brought home his band uniform today. Showed everyone in the neighborhood. he has to have white shoes.

September 24, Friday - Worked a while in checkstand. Went to Dr. Sims. Bless him! He told me to take water pills and no salt.

Mom's relationship with doctors was a bit of a hit and miss proposition. Her regular doctor, Dr. Sims, seemed to agree with her, and she would take his advice no matter what anyone else said.

I had just started the ninth grade at Northeast Junior High School. It was a bit weird in Kansas City, but the Junior Building, which was cater-corner from the Senior Building, had grades seven, eight, and nine, while the Senior Building had grades nine, ten, eleven, and twelve. The split between the two schools for the ninth grade was, I think, based on birthdays. At any rate, I was a high school freshman attending Northeast Junior High. As a freshman, I was in Harry Bianco's band class. Bianco was the band and orchestra teacher at the High School, and recruited for marching band from the junior high A Band.

I went to the band room at the High School and picked up my uniform - purple pants with white side stripes, a purple suit coat, a silver metallic shield overlay, and a silver metal-flake Shako hat with a purple feather plume. As I recall, the pants were just a tick highwater on me, but that was to be expected - my clothes often fit better in one direction than another. The piece that would complete the outfit was a pair of snow-white bucks.

This always struck me as a bit odd, as the premier event for marching bands in Kansas City was the annual American Royal Parade. Five miles winding through the streets of downtown Kansas City. The American Royal is a livestock show, horse show, and rodeo, and as such, featured horses. Lots of horses. Horses weren't trained to do their business at the curb, and the parade route was a minefield of horse crap. If you were lucky enough to get a place near the front of the parade, your trip was relatively sanitary, but if you were a second-tier school like ours, and started way at the back of the line, and I do mean way at the back, you were walking into horse-poop hell.

Later iterations of the parade tried putting all the horses at the back of the line, and there were attempts to have cleanup crews police the horse poo. Over the years, the parade lost much of its luster, and became a so-so event in Kansas City, far from its original high-stepping glory. 

Part of that was Kansas City's ongoing inferiority complex. You'd see headlines in the paper like, "Is Kansas City more liveable than New York?" and "Can Kansas City Hold Its Own Against Larger Cities?"

In the early part of the twenty-first century, Kansas City started coming into its own. Low cost of living, central location, and progressive leadership made the city an attractive locale for startups and urban immigrants from both of the hyper-expensive coasts. You could sell a house in San Francisco and buy an apartment building in Kansas City.

Anyway, after my first American Royal Parade, my pristine white bucks were a soft green color. Pretty tangy, too.