Thursday, June 10

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June 10, Thursday - Bud didn't have to go to school today. Hot. Not much doing. Spent the evening on the back porch. Thelma was up. Mom went to Denver last night - will be back Sunday.

June 11, Friday - School is out. Hot today - 85°. Bud went swimming. Marv and I had to bring Lambs' car home. Jean goes to Memphis Sunday to have her ear operated on.

June 12, Saturday - Nice quiet Saturday. Sold some bait in morning. Rain all afternoon and evening. Mom called from Salina - will be home about 12.

Kansas City Public Schools year ended in June in those days, and reconvened after Labor Day. My birthday, in the first week of September, was often the last day of summer vacation.

Back on the back porch with the neighbors. Thelma is my friend Leonard's mom. While it was hot and humid, dad never wrestled the window air conditioner into place until the first day that it hit 95°. Installing the huge, energy-gulping window unit was an ordeal on many levels. This was before the days of window units that one person could easily manage. This thing was a behemoth. Dad, of course, being dad, had a system. He kept the air conditioner on top of mom's hope chest, and in the corner of their bedroom. When it came time to install it, he put the chest on a pair of carpet pieces, slid the chest into the living room, and through a series of short lifts and feats of superhuman dad-strength, slid the monster into the window. It was always a joy to feel the cool air fill the house, and to feel the humidity drain away. The neighbors may not have agreed, though. When we switched on the massive Frigidaire, all the lights in the neighborhood dimmed.

I went swimming with my step-cousin (!) Marsha at the Raytown Swim Club. There's that "club" handle again, shorthand for "whites only", though I wasn't aware of all this for quite a few more years. Marsha was my newest cousin, having arrived only the year before when my uncle Bob married her mom, my new Aunt Mary. There was a lot of weird sexual tension between me and my new cousin, but after a few nervous slap-and-tickle sessions, we worked through it.

Our day at the pool was spent entirely in the water, splashing and goofing around. All day. Hours and hours in the sun. Years before the invention of sunscreen. When I got there, I was early summer fish-belly blue/white. When I left, I was bright rose-red, and getting redder by the minute. It was the single worst sunburn I've ever had. I'm just so grateful that I had a full head of hair back then, otherwise, my brain would have cooked in my skull. It was just horrific.

By the next day, my shoulders and back were covered in blisters. I asked for morphine, but all I got was a lecture and a small fan. It didn't help. I couldn't move. When my back peeled, it came off in huge, crinkly sheets. I molted like a cockroach. This is not Kafka. I was not transformed.

From the What Goes Around Department: The Raytown Swim Club became Super Splash U.S.A sometime in the 1990s. I did two location shoots for them not long afterward, enlisting a group of ten or twelve parent-approved and model-released kids to do what kids do in pools in the summer.

Raytown Swim Club, now Super Splash USA

My aunt Jean, mom's sister, had issues with her hearing, and years later, after my mom died, she had issues with me. When mom was facing her end-of-life issues from her third go with cancer, she moved from her efficiency apartment in Temple Heights Manor, a Baptist-sponsored high-rise assisted-living facility, and into Jean's house for a while. When it became clear that mom wasn't going to get the care she needed at Jean's, she moved to a nursing home in Raytown. After mom died, I went to Jean's to get what was left of mom's stuff, and was informed that she had decided to keep a number of items instead of letting me go through mom's things - pictures, letters, etc - as well as some furniture and other effects. I may well have said some unkind things. I'm not sure, as I was blind with rage. I found out later that several members of mom's family gave Jean a dressing-down over all this. I wanted nothing to do with her.

My aunt Jean described herself as the "mean one", and after nearly thirty years had passed, she and I buried the hatchet, and we found common ground as she joined me in my search for my ancestors on her side of the family. May she rest in peace.

The Lambs are Sandi's parents. They always had car issues. Cars are the bane of poor people, more so in a spread out town like Kansas City. It's the Los Angeles of the Plains. For no more people than it has, it takes up massive amounts of real estate. House lots and yards there are huge, with ample spacing.

Friday, May 7

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May 7, Friday - Felt real good today - Went to store in morning. Delivered bait afternoon, then stopped to see Patty. She's doing fine.

May 8, Saturday - Bud got up with sinus-sick headache. Went to library first thing - then to Katz. Stopped by Gladys to give mom Mother's Day $2.00 Plan to have picnic at Jean's tomorrow.

May 9, Sunday - Had a lousy day for Mother's Day. Marv and I had a brawl - made me so upset I couldn't go to church. Ruined my whole day.

Bait deliveries and relatives in the hospital - it's our family theme.

I used to have crippling sinus infections. They felt like someone driving nails into my eye sockets. They just came and went. I got used to them.

I spent a lot of time at the library at Northeast High School - I remember that this time I was working on a speech for the Drama Club. It had to do with the Colossus of Rhodes. I'm not sure if I picked the topic or if Mrs. Womack threw me under the bus on that one. The Colossus of Rhodes? Really?

Katz Drug Stores was a midwest institution, and if you couldn't get it at Katz, you probably didn't need it. While we got our prescriptions filled at Fredman's Drug Store on the Ninth and Spruce triangle, we got nearly everything else at Katz. I bought records, cameras, film, and pretty much everything else there. They had a creepy animated black cat neon sign that used to freak me out. Not as much as the big glowing face on the U-Smile Court out on 40 Hiway, but creepy all the same.

Katz Drug Store

U-Smile

Again, I was totally and blissfully unaware of any of my folks fights. I just didn't know about most of them. Don't know why this one started, or how it went down. It must have been a rough one if it took my mom down like that.

Chances are, my dad raised a stink because mom was going out to her sister Jean's house in Independence. Jean never tried to pretend that she liked my dad - or anyone else, for that matter - and my dad had an inferiority complex where mom's family was concerned. Jean and her husband Frank built a house, stick by stick, out on Arlington Road before I-70 disconnected the north end of the street from the rest of the world. Uncle Frank, who, like my dad, was a meat-cutter of the A&P variety, did most of the work himself, and the house was a marvel of mid-century modernity - built-in televisions and appliances, rocker switches to control the lights, the steepest, narrowest, stairs I've ever seen, and a far-too-small kitchen. I'm quite sure mom saw it as a dream house, a dream that she would never see in real life.

At any rate, dad probably wanted to go fishing instead of going to Aunt Jeans.

Saturday, April 10

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April 10, Saturday - Took Jean to hospital - did clean-up job. Should be home tomorrow.

April 11, Sunday - Went to Mom's for dinner - real good. Windy all day. Paul and Linda and Joyce were at Mom's too. Felt pretty good.

April 12, Monday - Went to Jean's. She's feeling pretty good - rather pale. I'm so tired. Going to cut down on tranquilizers.

More doctors, pills and hospitals. Jean's pills obviously didn't do the trick.

Paul is mom's oldest brother, his wife Linda, and my cousin Joyce.

Dinner at her mom's was always an adventure. While mom classified it as real good, my dad was afraid to eat Pansy's cooking. Her housekeeping skills were suspect, and her food was, well, inconsistent to say the least. Her kitchen had a particular smell to it. Dad once got so sick from Pansy's brisket that we almost had to take him to the hospital.

Grandma's kitchen was a collection of works-in-progress, as well as medieval cooking instruments - pressure cookers, vacuum coffee makers, and assorted Mason jars full of god-only-knows what. At the end of the kitchen was a rickety set of narrow stairs that led to the basement. The walls were lined with jars that grandma said contained tomatoes, green beans, and peaches, but they looked like they could have come from The Island of Doctor Moreau. One jar of tomatoes had eyes! I swear!

Her Norge refrigerator, situated out on the porch contained dark green bottles that had once contained prune juice, but that had been repurposed for "ice water". Ice water that tasted vaguely like prunes. Joy.

There always seemed to be a thin, sticky, film of some kind over everything in her kitchen, and if I could, I'd go back to that time and place and have it tested. I'm probably better off not knowing. The house no longer exists, and I'm told it burned. I truly believe it was a Superfund site that was razed and buried.

When I see an advertiser claim "Tastes Just Like Grandma's!" I run as fast as I can in the opposite direction.

Mom can't keep up with her drug habit, and nixes the tranks.

Wednesday, April 7

April 7, Wednesday - Patty went to take her x-ray - won't know the results for a day or two.

April 8, Thursday - Went to doctor - doing fine. Went to store first, saw everybody. They had taken $35 in collection for me. So much friendliness I feel so unworthy. Jean called tonight and said she had just had a miscarriage. Appended: We took Bud to Southeast for concert and went and got him.

April 9, Friday - Doctor gave Jean some pills. If they don't work, she'll go into the hospital tomorrow. The family is falling apart. Bob said Mary was full of infection.

It gets hard to keep up with all the medical doings with our family. Jean, mom's sister, has a miscarriage and gets pills for what amounts to a chemical D&C, Patty gets x-rays for something, Mary, mom's sister-in-law is full of infection.

Mom's kids at work raised $35 for her. In today's adjusted dollars, that has the buying power power of $270. I know the people mom worked with were like family to her, but this is amazing. This becomes a recurring theme. Mom had insurance through the union, but it doesn't sound as though the money has started to flow yet.

Wednesday, March 10

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March 10, Wednesday - Things are better today. I'm glad. Couldn't stand another day like yesterday. Worked hard. Training 2 new boys - patience is a virtue. Bob and Patty called.

March 11, Thursday - Still teaching the boys. Trying hard to keep up my spirits. Should go downtown tonight, but will put it off until Monday. Mary called.

March 12, Friday - Dad's birthday. Worked pretty hard - short of help as usual. Have a yearning to see the mountains. Jean called. Everybody has been so kind.

Mom's life as a head checker for Kroger was a constant revolving door of new hires. Everyone had to know how to run a cash register, count back change, and bag groceries along with whatever duties came with their respective department assignments. The only department that didn't have to deal with my mom was the meat department. Their union was stronger even than the Retail Clerks.

This is the first birthday anniversary for Grandpa Patton since his death the previous October. Mom took her dad's death really hard, harder perhaps, than the rest of the siblings. This is what led me to my "Extreme stress or grief as trigger events for the onset of cancer" hypothesis. I don't know of any research institution that's taking my idea seriously, or even looking into it, but this, and at least a half-dozen other instances are all I have to run with. I'm quite sure that a lot of cancer is actually the product of a sort of genetic lottery, but I don't know much about it. 

Update: Recently, I have come to understand that the stresses associated with grief and loss are far more severe than I had previously thought. My mom was a tower of strength.

The family phone tree kicked in almost immediately, driven by the matriarch Pansy. Bob, Patty, and Jean are all mom's siblings, Mary is Bob's wife. This is a tight, tight, family in every respect. Their ability to support one another was amazing to see and experience.

When my dad had his heart attacks in early August of 1962, mom still needed to work as well as watch over dad in the hospital. I stayed with my aunt Patty for a while, with aunt Jean for a while, and finally, when school started after Labor Day, I became a latchkey kid until dad finally made it back home in late October, and my dad's sister Gladys kept an eye on me from time to time, as did the neighborhood moms - Mrs. Jackson, Mrs. Fairhurst, Mrs. Stark, and Mrs. Billings next door. It was a real neighborhood, where neighbors cared for and about one another.