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.

Tuesday, June 1

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June 1, Tuesday - Rained real hard this morning. Went to Dr. and Kroger this afternoon. I know so many nice people from there. Talked to Mickey. Stormed and we went to Wurtz's basement.

June 2, Wednesday - Not much doing today. Sultry - Marv bought tackle.

June 3, Thursday - Opened the bait shop today. There'll be no going any place now.

Part of the magic of living in the Flyover is the weather. Four seasons in one week is not out of the question, and after the first of April, the sky will open up and punish you with huge storms - torrential rains, hailstones the size of oranges, and tornadoes.

The inhabitants of these lands have created tornado sirens. When activated by local authorities, these sirens wail to warn everyone that their lives are in danger. The people, thus warned, instead of taking shelter, go outside and with their necks craned like turkeys in the rain, stare at the lowering sky. Many of these same people, when they see an actual tornado heading their way, will head underground and take shelter, if only at the last possible moment. Other people, like my dad, who grew up in Fort Scott, Kansas; feel the approaching storm, and the second the sky turns that sickly shade of green, dive underground like a prairie dog being chased by a coyote. When we lived in Fort Scott in the early '50s, a small tornado neatly removed the back wall of our house on Washington Street. The storm came and went while my mom was trying, unsuccessfully, to squeeze her backside under her big iron bed. We had no basement.

Basements are a necessity in tornado alley, and many people wouldn't begin to consider living in a house without a basement. Since our basement was a small and highly aromatic fish bait factory, it was not unusual, given enough warning, to seek shelter in the basements of friends and relatives with "normal" basements. This time around we went to the Wurtzes, my aunt Gladys and her husband Lawrence, who lived in a basement apartment at Eighth Street and Chestnut Avenue.

With less warning, we made do at home. On May 20, 1957, all manner of hell broke loose in the plains. Thirty-five confirmed tornadoes took aim at parts of Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Missouri. Concordia, Kansas was hit by a large tornado accompanied by hail that measured seven inches in diameter. A regulation softball is half that size - 3.8". 

At that time, mom was working at a small Kroger store at 27th and Brown in the Quindaro district of Kansas City, Kansas. Her 3-transfer bus trip took an hour and then some, so when she was ready to leave work at 5:00, her dad, concerned about the weather, came and picked her up and took her back to his house and basement shelter.

Meanwhile, dad and I headed down to the bait factory basement. From the cellar door on the south side of the house, we saw dozens, I repeat, dozens of spinning funnel clouds whirl across the dark green sky. The Everly Brothers, Elvis, and Pat Boone played on WHB Radio in between sparse and cryptic weather-related break-ins. Mom called home when she got to her dad's house, and that was the last we heard from her until she showed up at our front door around 9:00 p.m. The phone lines were jammed, and many were down.

Around dusk, An EF5 tornado - top wind speeds over 200 mph - first touched down near Williamsburg, Kansas and tracked for 71 miles until it finally lifted near Raytown, Missouri. It devastated the sleepy bedroom community of Hickman Mills and destroyed the small suburb of Ruskin Heights, Missouri. Forty-four people lost their lives that night and more than 500 were injured.

Weather warning were hit-and-miss back then. Two years before Ruskin Heights, in 1955, a tornado wiped out the small Kansas town of Udall, Killing eighty at one swipe.

Anyway, back in 1965, mom senses that the bait shop is part retail establishment, part anchor, and 100 percent not at all what she had in mind. (The influence of her mother is evident in all this. Pansy didn't think much of dad's bait business.) The lid is about to blow off of the pressure cooker. Stick around.

Sunday, January 10

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Sunday, January 10 - Went to church - excellent sermon. God doesn't expect perfection - just your best. Helped Bud write a story. Drove over to Mom's for a few minutes. Patty & Walt, Paul & Linda were there.

Monday, January 11 - Nice day. Got my hair fixed, did the laundry, took Marv to the doctor. He has some kidney & prostate trouble. Bought me a new dress, purse, and Bud 3 pair of sox.

Tuesday, January 12 - Work as usual - inventory today. Felt better. Bud went bowling tonight, got home about 11:30


Mom loved church, and was always lifted by the message. At this point, I'm pretty sure she was still going to Bales Baptist Church, on 12th street. Later, she would move to Independence Avenue Baptist Church.

Mom was an excellent writer and storyteller. When I needed the seeds of help getting a project under way, she knew how to give me just enough to get started, then she backed away and let me move forward on my own.

Her mom, Pansy, still lived in the house at 1501 Garfield in Kansas City, Kansas. Mom's dad, Tom, died the previous October. They had been married fifty years at the time of his death, and the entire Patton clan kept a close eye on their mother's well-being. This is a tight-knit family, and proximity to her family is probably why we lived in Kansas City to begin with. When I was born, we lived in an upstairs apartment at 1932 N. 14th Street, just a block away from Tom and Pansy, and next door to my great-grandmother Effie Snavely.

Clusters like this were common in many families, including my dad's. When I was two, we moved to a rental house at 207 South Washington, in Fort Scott, Kansas. This was a short walk to my grandparents' house on Wall street, and close to my uncle Clarence's meat locker, where dad worked as a meatcutter.

When I was four, we moved back to Kansas City, into a rental house on the Missouri side at 4137 East 11th Street, owned by Joe and Mary Cirese. It rented for $60 per month, the equivalent of about $530 today. Mom and dad never lived anywhere else. When my mom, suffering from cancer for a second time, moved from that house in 1978, the rent was still $60. Mary Cirese will always be "Saint Mary of 11th Street" to me.

I'm all but sure that mom decided that Fort Scott was too far away from her folks for comfort. Then again, they may have wanted me to have the opportunities that a larger city's school district would afford.

Patty & Walt are mom's sister and brother-in-law. Paul, the next younger Patton is there with his wife Linda.

Monday, mom's day off. The normal things that people do: chores, shopping, errands.

Tuesday, back to work. Inventory in retail settings is always a big deal. Outside services come in and go through the store like a locust storm. No one looks forward to inventory.

Bowling again, since it's a Tuesday night, I can assume I was standing in as an alternate for one of the men's teams I bowled with. Late getting home on a school night. Spoiled rotten I was.