Friday, July 16

Click to enlarge

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.)

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.

Monday, June 28

Click to enlarge

June 28, Monday - Left Limon and went to Denver. Cooked lunch at Echo Lake. Went to Central City and spent the night at Estes Park.

June 29, Tuesday - Went to Grand Lake by way of Trail Ridge Road. Took a cruise ride in the afternoon and rested the rest of the day. Called Marvin.

June 30, Wednesday - A beautiful day! From Grand Lake to Berthoud Pass, to Loveland Pass to Hoosier Pass to Manitou. Bud and I went up the Manitou Incline.

Our vacations tended to be whirlwind affairs - Limon to Echo Lake to Central City Estes Park is about 220 miles. You could generally drive into a mountain town somewhere and without benefit of reservations, find a nice place to stay.

We cooked lunch out among the pines on a Coleman propane camp stove. Even to my jaded 15 year old palate, it tasted like cordon bleu. The stove, because of the high altitudes, required a larger gas orifice to work properly. My aunt Patty latched onto that and we heard orifice jokes all the time we were in Colorado. It's a goofy family, to be sure. It took a few years for me to understand the understated humor of orifices.

Trail Ridge Road is a scenic wonder, but Grand Lake is not all that much to write home about, except for the stories about the fur-bearing trout that live there. So mom called home. Remember, this is 1965. Long Distance calling is a thing, and a few minutes on the phone between Colorado and Kansas City would probably have cost six or seven bucks or more. Say hello, keep it brief, and hang up.

All the passes, Loveland, Pass, Berthoud Pass, Hoosier Pass, and on to Manitou Springs. The standard procedure went something like this: Pick a route on the map, decide when and where to eat lunch, and take off driving. Arrive at a waypoint, get out, point at the sign, have your picture taken, lather, rinse, repeat. Sadly, those images have been lost to the ravages of time, dozens of moves, crabby relatives, and our dramatic downsize.

Here's one from a number of years earlier, taken on a big family caravan vacation. This is at Snowy Range Pass, Wyoming:

Please note the nine year-old photographer on the left holding his trusty Ansco Pioneer 620. I already knew what I wanted to do with my life.

Anyway, the Manitou Incline was, to me a wonder of engineering. It was a railway that ran up the side of a mountain in Manitou. You sat in a reclining seat, facing Colorado Springs. As the car started up the steep incline, you were no longer reclining. You were sitting upright and wondering what would happen if one of those drive cables snapped. You'd be doing Mach 1 by the time you got to the bottom, I think. My aunt Patty got a case of the yips thinking about it, and I used my natural talents as a jokester and smartass to keep her mind occupied with laughter. By the time we got to the top, the whole damn car was laughing, and when we got back to the bottom of the incline, the some guy told my mom he and his wife had so much fun listening to us that he paid for our dinner. Historical perspective: he never should have encouraged me. I still think I'm pretty funny.

The Incline Railway was closed after a rock slide in the 1990s, but the roadbed, minus the rails remains. Now, crazy people hike up the damn thing. Straight up. What a world.

Friday, June 25

Click to enlarge

June 25, Friday - Washed this morning and went to store this afternoon. Johnson wasn't too happy that I wouldn't be back until the 12th. Stayed home last night - no fishing. Talked to Marie.

June 26, Saturday - Marv and I ironed and I packed Bud's and my suitcase. Went to Doctor Allen in afternoon. Delivered bait and sat on back porch with neighbors till 10.

June 27, Sunday - My birthday. Started trip. Doesn't seem that I should be 50. Breakfast in Junction City, lunch in. Supper and stayed all night in Limon. Bud is traveling better this trip.

Damn, I can't believe mom was (only) 50 at the time. Age perspective is entirely relative, and skewed when approached from a position of ignorant youth. Happy Birthday, mom.

For the record, if mom were still with us, she'd be 105 on the 27th.

Westward hoo boy! Getting from Kansas City to Colorado in 1965 wasn't the straight, flat, superslab adventure it is today. Interstate 70 (the first Interstate highway in the country, thanks to President Eisenhower, semi-native son and local hero) was still being constructed, and much of the trip west was on U.S. 40, a two-lane highway with a 60 mph speed limit, and a town every six or ten miles. We saw them all. "The Victory Highway." It took forever to get anywhere once you got past the smooth, fast, Kansas Turnpike at Topeka.

Our trips Way Out West* usually went something like this: Assemble the members of the traveling caravan at Tom and Pansy's house at 1501 Garfield in Kansas City, Kansas. The target time for this was around 4:30 a.m. This gave the participants, which could number anywhere from six to fifteen people, a chance to have a cup of grandma's hot, brown liquid that she claimed was coffee, have a pre-travel prayer and bible-verse reading, usually led by my dad, and head out the door to the waiting cars. It was a Baptist Le Mans start.

The largest of these groups was the Great Yellowstone Vacation of 1959. There were twelve or fourteen of the Patton Clan in a caravan of five cars.We didn't take our car, a 1947 Chevy Stylemaster of questionable roadworthiness. Instead, we got to drive grandad's fairly new 1958 Chevy sedan. There was a catch, though. It had to be the lead car, and my grandma had to ride shotgun. Meanwhile, grandpa Tom rode with some of the others. I thought this was odd for many years, but now I understand. Grandpa loved riding with my uncle Bob in his big, lime-green, 1958 Pontiac Bonneville. Wider than a locomotive, and made of pure Detroit chrome, it laid down the miles like a flying carpet from One Thousand and One Nights. Blink, and you're in Denver.

Grandma absolutely loved to travel. Grandma had also never learned to drive. This meant that, as we traveled, grandma's eyes were on the horizon, thinking about where we should be headed, not about how tired the driver may be, or how many miles had lapsed since anyone got a break of any kind. About the time the driver would be looking for a place to pull the wagons in a circle for the night, grandma would have a look at a road map, and say, "Let's drive on to (insert name of distant town here)." As the days passed, and this routine repeated itself several times, my dad lobbied for a different arrangement, and somewhere near Independence Rock, Wyoming, grandma became the subject of a secret morning coin toss. Whoever lost got Pansy and became the de facto lead car. Another Patton Family legend in the making.

Grandma's love of traveling became part of Patton Family Legend at her 1971 funeral. She died in August of that year, and friends and family gathered at the Nichols Funeral Home in Kansas City, Kansas to have a few laughs and say goodbye. This is how we did things. Funerals were not moribund group-crying events. They were celebrations and a whole lot of fun, really. My date said she had never laughed so hard at a funeral. Yeah, I had a date for Grandma's funeral. After the services, the cortége lined up and headed north for Leavenworth County and our Family Reserve. (Hi, Lyle.) My dad was in the lead car with the funeral director, giving driving instructions. He was wholly unqualified for this job.

 To prove this, he instructed the limo driver to take a left turn off of HIghway 92 in the middle of Downtown Leavenworth. The driver did as instructed and soon, the snaking line of vehicles was jammed into a couple of side streets. One was a dead end.

One by one, the cars, limos, and hearse started turning around on the narrow back street. I was in my Mustang a few cars back. An older woman who was pulling weeds in her front yard stopped what she was doing to watch the processional mayhem. She motioned to one of the limo drivers. He rolled down his window. 

She yelled, "You can't go this way. It's a dead end." 

That was the end of any kind of decorum for the rest of the day. As the family car passed me headed back the other way, I could see my mom and my uncle Bob laughing their asses off. My date looked at me in wonder. 

When we finally made it out to our oak-shaded cemetery near Easton, Kansas, and the casket moved to the gravesite, the minister started the service: 

"Pansy Patton always loved to travel. Especially in Leavenworth County." 

That was it. There were so many people howling with laughter that it took several minutes to get things calmed down enough to finish the funeral. We laughed about it for years. It was that kind of family.

Dudes, Wyoming, 1959
Uncle Walt, Uncle Bob, great-Uncle John, dad,
Grandpa Tom and The Black-Hatted Barefoot Bud - Five Feet tall at age eight.

Anyway, back to 1965. Mom and I were riding this trip with my aunt Patty and my cousin Susan. This was the tightest pod of the Pattons, and we often vacationed together. We laughed a lot. My cousin Susan was two years older than I was, and we had been best buds for as long as I could remember, longer actually. Susan was the big sister I never had.

Himself, my cousin Susan, and Aunt Patty at the top of Pikes Peak

We lost Susan a few years ago, and though we had drifted apart as adults, I still miss the great times and the laughter we shared. She was an amazing cook, and passed that gene on to her daughter.

We drove out in my aunt Patty's red 1962 Chevrolet Impala SS convertible, and a couple of hours after after the ungodly middle-of-the-night start, we rolled into Junction City, Kansas for breakfast. We had a regular downtown cafe stop there, and though I can't remember where, I do remember what - pancakes, always pancakes. Butter, syrup, cold frothy milk. I usually woke up again around Hays.

1962 Chevy - Image:http://allamericanclassiccars.blogspot.com/

The topic of conversation around our meals was always what we were going to do for the next meal, though this time around we had either packed sandwich stuff and ate at a city park somewhere along the way - Hays, Russell, or Wakeeny - or mom skipped a groove and didn't finish the sentence. An overnight stay at Limon included a ceremonial "We made it this far." dinner and a trip to the local municipal pool to wear out the road-hyper kids, then off to bed for another early start the next day.

"Bud is traveling better." is mom-code for Bud isn't having his violent episodes of car-sickness this trip. Nice. Oy, I could tell you stories.

* Do you have any idea how difficult it was to work in a Laurel and Hardy reference in a blog post about a road trip in 1965? Be amazed. I could connect even more dots and add Tilda Swinton to the narrative, but it's getting late. Besides, if you know, you know.

Monday, June 7

Click to enlarge

June 7, Monday - Feel much better. Went with Marv to pick up ingredients. Nice day. Went to take treatment. Plan to go to Colorado the last week in June with Patty. Hope it helps my mental outlook. Marv and I had a terrible row, so I went down and did washing and then Bud and I went for a ride.

June 8, Tuesday - Not much doing today. Spent most of the day sleeping.

June 9, Wednesday - Got permanent. Feel better. Raining hard. Bud went bowling and we bought two new chairs for the porch and then used them all evening.

Another day in the city. My folks battled it out - I'm guessing it had to do with Sandy and/or the bait business - probably both. I only heard my folks fight one time in my life, and I confronted them about it. They never fought in my presence again, but I know they had a few verbal Donnybrooks.

When mom and I went for a ride, it meant I was going to get to drive the Cadillac. I can't believe we all lived through this. I had so much experience behind the wheel when I finally got to take Driver's Ed in high school that the teacher would tell me where to go, usually on the freeway, and having just finished his lunch, would nap in the passenger seat until we got there, I woke him up, and we changed drivers. One day, I changed directions after he dozed off and much to the delight of three other Northeast High School students drove to the rustic confines of the old Kansas City Timing Association Drag Strip down on Front Street. We made two strong quarter-mile passes before he woke up as we pulled up to the starting line for a third go. It was the first time I ever heard a teacher say "Fuck!" I got ten detentions and a good talking to from the principal, Mr. McKenna before he commuted my sentence. He was getting up in years, and mistakenly thought I was a football player and thus, entirely blameless in all things. The other students told the story for years.

The back porch. What might be referred to as a deck these days, though not as attractively appointed. It faced Chuck Capo's junk yard, the Twelfth Street bus turnaround and the Jackson Hoe Bar. Beyond were the train tracks of the Santa fe Railroad, and the constant stream of freight and passenger trains going from Chicago to Los Angeles and back. People told me it was noisy. I didn't notice. When I moved to rural Colorado in 1972, I couldn't sleep because the train tracks were at least a mile from my bedroom window, and it was way too quiet.

Our back porch was the default portal to the house. You drove into our yard from the 11th Street side, onto a huge gravel apron and right up to the porch. The front porch, a real concrete porch, had two doors - one to what was originally the living room facing the street, and one to the parlor, or dining room. Odd layout.

What passed for our living room was staked out of the original parlor, and my folks used the living room as their bedroom. When I was very small, we all shared that bedroom, and dad used the only real bedroom as an office. It later became my room, and my bed faced the alley that fronted Jackson Court. The neighborhood teen Visigoths' favorite sport was waiting until I went to bed at night, and as I lay there reading or listening to the hapless Kansas City A's on the radio, they would creep up around the window, and stand just far enough out that my reading light wouldn't shine on them. On some agreed-upon signal, they'd all yell at once and scatter. Fuckers. I still don't like  open shades when I can't see out.

The back porch was the gathering place for the neighborhood. Good chairs were a necessity.

Chairs - they weren't "vintage" back then.

Dad held court with the kids, and mom caught up with the Ladies of Jackson Court™. Dad sent up clouds of pipe smoke - he had given up cigarettes a few years earlier when his ticker betrayed him, and as a pipe-smoker kept Sir Walter Raleigh in business. The aroma was as though he was inhaling a pile of cherry-flavored Three Musketeers bars bars wrapped in vinyl seat covers. Old vinyl seat covers. Really old.

If you don't know any pipe-smokers, they are the contemplative thinkers of the world. Decisions have to wait until the pipe is stoked, set alight, the match shaken and disposed of, and few thoughtful puffs have been negotiated, the pipe studied, relit, tamped, and puffed again. You do not hurry pipe smokers. Don't even try. The more you hurry them, the slower they get. If they smoke a pipe and also wear a hat, abandon hope, all is lost.

I tried pipe smoking a couple of times, mostly as an affectation of anti-establishment hip style, but I didn't have the patience for the damn things. Cigarettes were cheap* and easy to come by, packed the required nicotine punch, and had the cool factor that a pipe just didn't have. Cigarettes gave me credibility with my denim and Acme boots costume swagger. I started smoking when I was sixteen, and only managed to quit twenty-one years later. An horrific bicycle crash left me stuck to the couch for a few days. The ashtray was mounded so high with butts that no more would fit, so that was that.

What goes around, I suppose - I like a pipe now and again, but Sir Walter Raleigh and his fruit-salad tobacco-packing ilk need not apply. I prefer an artisanal herbal kick these days.

*I started smoking cigarettes in 1967. They cost about thirty cents per pack, the equivalent of about $2.50 today. 

Thursday, January 28

Click to enlarge

January 28, Thursday - Cold and snow this morning. Colder tomorrow. Felt tough today - took Bufferin all day. Went to bed as soon as I got home.

January 29, Friday - Snowed all day and grew colder. By the time i got home it was 15°. Bought groceries - $20.72. ($161) Have a cold, too.

January 30, Saturday - Temp - 5°. Feel miserable. Should have stayed home. Customer reported me to Johnson because I checked too fast! Got back a stolen check. Tomorrow has to be better.

The idea that a customer would report you for moving too fast is only foreign if you've never worked with the public. There were simply some customers that wanted you to pick up one item at a time, enter it, and wait for their approval before you went to the next item. At that rate, a full basket of groceries, which would set you back $30 or more, would take twenty minutes instead of five. Ain't gonna happen, sister. Over the course of my career with Kroger I was reported for checking too fast, sacking too fast, wearing my hair too long, wearing an offensive after-shave, and maintaining a snarky attitude. I can refute everything but the attitude problem. I was then, and now remain, a committed smart-ass. I can usually only say two serious things in a row. After that, I go for the laugh. I was never written up by my managers, because they knew how hard I worked.  Such is retail. The Johnson referred to is Kenny Johnson, the store manager at 31st and State.

The stolen check coming back is totally mom's fault because she trusted her gut instead of sticking to company procedure. Customers filled out a signature card with the store they did business with, and once checked and approved were given a number to use when they wanted to write a check. A card for my account might be something like S-390. If one of your checks came back, your card was pulled and put in the provisional file. Even with the number on the check, it still had to be approved by the head checker, head grocery clerk, or a member of management. If all the pieces weren't in place, it was incumbent upon the employee to turn down the check. If they took a bad check and it hadn't been cleared, it could come out of their check. It's some really nervous shit when a check comes back, even more so when your name is on it.

Click to enlarge

January 31, Sunday - Today is better. We have a chance of getting our money for the bad check. Byron put his name on the check after I made the statement that I would pay for the check. I appreciate it but I take full responsibility for my mistakes - stupid as some of them are. Took my prescription to Schneider yesterday. Will get my glasses next Saturday. Blizzard warnings out for tonight. Signed up for vacation the 14th of June. May go to Colorado.

Mom is still battling the bad check, but Byron Scanlon, the store co-manager has stepped up and taken mom's side. Byron would be the first Kroger manager I worked for the following year at the store at 61st and Leavenworth Road, also in Kansas City, Kansas. Mom set me up with that store and Byron to help me keep my car on the road, even though it was almost fourteen miles from our house on the Missouri side. It paid $1.40 per hour - fifteen cents above minimum wage, but then again, gas for my thirsty 1957 Pontiac Hardtop was only 32 cents per gallon. I worked an average of 25 hours a week. You do the math.

Wait, Mom didn't get her glasses from McBratney?

Blizzard warnings = busy grocery store. 

Mom always tried to put her vacation sometime in the first two weeks of June. I was usually out of school by June 19 or so, and the weather for road trips across Kansas wasn't unbearably hot. It took a full day to get from Kansas City to Limon, Colorado. Most of the trip was on US 40, a two-lane that stretched from Topeka, the western limit of the Kansas Turnpike, to the Colorado line, 400 miles away. The speed limit was 45mph, and the distance you could travel without hitting a small town was limited, to say the least. 

Now, where was I? Whatever, here comes February.