Sunday, October 10

Click to enlarge

October 10, Sunday - Bud and I dumped Marv at Mary's and we went driving. Let Bud drive some. went to Bethel Cemetery and then to Topeka. Butchers are picketing and they're locking us out, too. Poor Mickey. She's so upset.

October 11, Monday - Cindy's birthday. Got my hair fixed. In touch with all the girls from the store. We'll show up for work.

October 12, Tuesday - Went to work, but couldn't cross the line. Went down and signed up for compensation. Doubt that we'll get it, but we'll see. Went to two Thriftway stores for work.

Mom tossed me the keys to the Cadillac in downtown Leavenworth, Kansas and I drove the nine or so miles out to the cemetery so mom could put some flowers on her dad's grave. Bethel Cemetery is our family reserve, and mom and dad are both buried there. He died in 1974, she died in 1979.

We left the cemetery and I drove the fifty-odd miles to Topeka by way of mom's birthplace, Jarbalo, Kansas. I would have happily driven to Denver. My place has always been behind the wheel.

Cindy is the daughter of my half-brother Bill and his wife Pat.

Mom decides, along with her crew, to show up for work, but she knows full well she won't be able to cross the picket line.

Thriftway was one of a half-dozen independent grocers that took up the slack when the chains locked out the unions.

Thursday, October 7

October 7, Thursday - Sent car back again today and bought a new battery.

October 8, Friday - An ordinary Friday.

October 9, Saturday - Dad died a year ago today. Strike has started. Milgram's. Look for the other chains to lock out the butchers.

Cadillacs. I remember the Caddy's battery being twice the size of others, and it probably cost three times as much. Cars were a complete and total pain in the ass in the fifties and sixties. Carburetors, distributor ignitions, spark plugs and points, drum brakes. They were designed to be serviced regularly and without fail. Having a mechanic in your backpocket was important. Dad had the home numbers of Lynn and Joel at the Standard Station on Independence Avenue. Really.

Mom's dad dropped dead on his front porch the year before at the age of 72. He worked most of his life on the railroad, tending refrigerator cars - "reefers". I always thought Grandpa Patton was really old when he died. He was the age I am now.

The Grocery Strike of 1965. Milgram was a locally owned chain of stores, but most of the Kansas City grocery landscape was made up of national chains - Safeway, Kroger, and A&P. If you worked in the business in those days, you were union. Clerks belong to Retail Clerks Local 782, meatcutters and wrappers belonged to the Alamgamated Meatcutters Union. No one dared blink in Kansas City without going through the unions first. The Meatcutters wielded the same kind of power and influence that the Teamsters did, and were probably even stronger in a town with as many slaughterhouses and packing plants as Kansas City. 

The Kansas City Stockyards - Be grateful you can't smell this.

The four major industries in Kansas City in those years were the packing houses, Armour, Swift, Cudahy and others; the steel mills on the other end of town, Sheffield Steel and Armco; the railroads that kept them all supplied, and the defense industry. Bendix Corporation was planted on a couple hundred acres in what was then the southern limits of the city. They built assemblies for atomic weapons. Dad always said that if we had enough warning of incoming Soviet missiles, we'd run downtown and head to the top of City Hall for the best view. We were going to be toast, anyway.

Milgram's talks with the Meatcutters stalled, and they locked the union out of their stores. It would just be a matter of getting the word out around town before the other chain stores followed suit. The independent grocers, mostly based in Kansas, were non-union, and would soon represent the only grocery jobs in town. Things are about to get rough. The scramble is on.

Monday, October 4

Click to enlarge

October 4, Monday - Got my hair fixed and went home and went to bed. Slept all afternoon

October 5, Tuesday - Bud was sent home from school for fighting. Marv went up with him and got everything straightened out. Having car trouble.

October 6, Wednesday - Sent car back today.

Car trouble. This is a 1955 Cadillac Series 62. Car trouble comes with a second mortgage. If dad had taken the Big Blue Cadillac to Greenlease Cadillac downtown, I'd still be paying for the repairs. Dad had a mechanic he trusted - two, in fact. They both worked at the Standard station at Independence Avenue and Van Brunt Boulevard. Lynn and Joel could, quite honestly, fix anything that had wheels on it. A few years later, when my 1962 Chevy dropped a main bearing, Joel built me a nicely warmed over small block with lopey 3/4 race cam and Lynn wrenched up a hard-shifting, bulletproof Powerglide transmission.

In the ninth grade, I had a target painted on me, or at least that's how it felt. I was pretty big for my age, but pudgy. Let me rephrase that- in the ninth grade, I cracked the two hundred pound barrier. The Levi's commercials on the radio that taunted "Poor Fat Marvin" were made with me in mind, and I almost never heard the end of it. (I went by Marvin in school. Nicknames weren't allowed, and I'd be damned if I was going to be called Orville everywhere I went.) Every insecure little guy that wanted a reputation took potshots at the doughy big guys, just for bragging rights.

This fight was instigated by a small Italian kid, a Napoleonic psychotic case study with a chip on his shoulder and horseshoe taps on his heels. He came bouncing up behind me after gym class and clocked me upside the head. From behind. I wheeled around and pounded the only thing I could reach - his head - and I hit him hard. He fell, his nose suddenly gushing blood, back into the row of lockers that lined the hall.

It's said in professional sports circles that the referees only see the second punch being thrown. It is exactly the same in Junior High School. Coach Gene George came around the corner just as I launched into the little guy. He then grabbed me by the belt and escorted me to the principal's office. The principal walked me, still carrying my funky white drawstring gym bag, to the front door, handed me a note, and told me to come back with a parent.

After a short detour to the Northeast Book Store and another stop at Fredman's Drugs on ninth for a handmade Cherry Coke from the fountain, I meandered home. Dad sighed, got my side of the story, put on a clean shirt and went back to school with me, and had a heart-to-heart with the principal, Mr. McDaniel. He and dad were both Masons, I think. I was reinstated in time for lunch. I walked into the cafeteria and man, did it get quiet in there.

That particular little banty rooster never bothered me again, but the scenario repeated itself a half-dozen times that year and next. I came out unscathed from every encounter, and the predators started to realize I wasn't the easy target they thought I was. They mostly left me alone from then on. I had a couple of encounters in high school, but nothing that I couldn't handle.

The Big Blue Cadillac still has issues. I figure they hadn't spent enough money on it yet. The car knows.

Friday, October 1

October 1, Friday - 

October 2, Saturday -

October 3, Sunday - Spent the day at Mary's. Marv fished and I caught up on my letter-writing.

The tedium is like quicksand.