Friday, July 16

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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.)

Sunday, June 13

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June 13, Sunday - More rain. Feel droopy.Went to church. Brought Mom over to our house for a while. Rained like crazy. Bud didn't feel well from his sunburn so we went to bed early.

June 14, Monday - Cleaned the whole house and baked a cake. Cool. Bud still doesn't feel too well. Blisters all over his shoulders. Today was my last treatment. Thank goodness.

June 15, Tuesday - Have to see both doctors next week. Hesser on Wednesday - Allen on Saturday. Was going to town this morning, but felt too badly. Went fishing with Marv and Bud this afternoon. 

 The sunburn aftermath continues. I had huge blisters all over my shoulders. Had to sleep on my stomach. I have never experienced another burn like this since, thank you. I'm surprised I've never had an issue with melanomas. (Knock wood)

Not much else going on - mom is taking her last Cobalt treatment, and hanging out with dad and me at the lake. The only cake mom ever made was Angel Food.

More fishing at 40 Hiway Club Lake. My tolerance for carp fishing isn't great. If you're not a carp angler, the process for fishing for the overgrown koi doesn't involve boats, waders, fly rods, or anything that looks like the standard wade-in-the-water style of fishing. If you want to catch carp, you sit. And sit.

Common Carp

My dad's rig was something like this - an open-spool level-wind bait-casting reel on an eight-foot fiberglas rod. (Spinning reels were for posers and children.) The reel was spooled with 28-pound test braided nylon line. At the fish end was a split nylon leader with two treble hooks, one six to eight inches higher than the other. Directly above that was a lead sinker. When dad was ready to go after the scaly monsters, he baited both hooks with one of his patented (fact) dough baits, reared back and cast this whole mess out into the lake. A good cast was somewhere between forty and sixty feet from the shore. Dad would then set his rods into rod-holders that he and my uncle Lawrence had designed and welded together. Then he waited. Seriously. For what seemed like days.

Bait-casting reel

The idea was to watch for signs of the carp messing with the bait - a wiggle of the line, a soft tug and the hook, a ripple in the water. Then with a flick of the rod, you set the hook and held on. A good-size carp can work you over for a half-hour or more, and the big ones never give up until they're nearly dead. I caught a 27-pound carp when I was twelve. It took 90 minutes to bring him in. You worked them closer to the shore a few inches at a time, finally coaxing them into a huge landing net.

Carp glamour shot

The only thing left to do was take a picture of the damned thing, usually on a rope or a clip stringer. My family history is told with hundreds of pictures of carp hanging on ropes near relatives.

Carp on the doorknob, Bud at the window, 1951

My granddad William H. Simpson, Fort Scott, Kansas, 1947, with fish

I know of people who ate carp, but we didn't. They are an oily species, and I'm told that they're chock full of Omega-3 fatty acids. Residents in poorer neighborhoods in Kansas City could often be seen fishing in Swope Park or Troost Lake, usually for carp, sometimes catfish. The lunkers weren't sport to them, they were sustenance.

We generally gave them away to people with less-finicky eaters at home. Years later, one of my interns at the studio, a student at the Kansas City Art Institute, told me of her winter in Prague.

As it happens, in the Czech Republic, a traditional Christmas dinner is carp that has been cooked in milk. The story was confirmed by one of my employees at Glacier National Park last year. I'm told that Prague rivals Paris for sheer beauty, but I think I'll visit in summer.

My strategy for amusing myself on fishing trips was a big can of Turtle Wax and some rags. While dad sat on the bank and tried to outsmart the clever bottom-feeders, I waxed the Big Blue Cadillac. That sucker really shined up nice. 

My personal Wes Anderson movie continues. Our narratives have much in common.

Saturday, May 1

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May 1, Saturday - Took first cobalt treatment. Real easy. Cleaned house in a.m. while Marv washed. TV no good. Went to bed early.

May 2, Sunday - Went to church alone. Marv went fishing. Bud and I had nice afternoon. Mom came over and stayed all night

May 3, Monday - Went to St. Luke's early. Patty's surgery was benign. Such a relief. Took another treatment. Was so tired, I was sick.

I don't know how to compare cancer-recovery therapies in 1965 versus today, but mom's treatments seemed to take everything out of her. It doesn't sound like she did radiation and chemo at the same time, but I'm not sure.

Mom never complained, never gave anyone the impression that life had been in any way unfair to her. She did what she did every day - she put her head down and charged forward. It wasn't always easy.

Dad usually fished at area pay lakes - lakes that were stocked with carp and catfish, and charged admittance for a day's fishing. Unless it was a genuine lunker, Dad rarely kept the fish he caught, but then again, he rarely paid to fish there. He gave the owners samples of his bait to try or give away, and they let him fish for free. One was Shur-Katch Lake near the banks of the Little Blue River near the Heart Drive-In. Another lake was near Smithville, Missouri, but it was a fair slog to get there before the freeways went in. Dad's favorite was 40 Hiway Club Lake, near 40 Hiway and Lee's Summit Road. The "Club" in the name was an indicator that black people need not come down the driveway.

Jess and Mary Moretina ran the lake, which had a grill and snack bar along with a miniature golf course. Mary made a killer cheeseburger, and you could grab a Vess soda from the chest cooler. This made it tolerable for me to go along. Bank fishing for carp is a slow, long-term activity - bait casted into the deeps for the bottom-feeders, with long waits in between any kind of activity. Dad usually had four or more level-wind bait-casting rigs lined up along the bank, each with 28-pound test line. He scoffed at spinning reels as being the tools of the amateur fisherman.

If a luckless carp sucked in the bait, it was like hooking onto a bull elephant with an outboard motor. Carp are extraordinary fighters, and it might take a half-hour or more to tire and land one once it was hooked.

40 Hiway Club Lake as it looks today

This often proved to be more boredom than even an only child can handle, and if I didn't bring the supplies along that allowed me to wax and detail the Cadillac, I could often be found at the snack bar or playing miniature golf.

I once gathered up all my nerve and asked young Patty Saunders, whom I had met bowling five or six years earlier, to go with us to the lake on a Saturday afternoon. We fished, played miniature golf, and ate cheeseburgers. She drank Grape NeHi. I drank Vess Red Cream Soda. I don't remember if this was before or after I asked her to go see "Pajama Game" with me. My adoration of Patty overpowered my brutal shyness, at least temporarily. Musicals solved everything.

For the record, tomorrow, May 2, is Patty's birthday. To this day, she reminds me that she's older than I am and that I should show her the respect she deserves. I do so willingly.

Wednesday, April 28

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28 April, Wednesday - Went with Marv to pick up ingredients. Spent the rest of the day at home. Mary goes into the hospital Monday - operated on Tuesday

29 April, Thursday - Went to store and then to see Gladys. She felt pretty bad. Came home and relaxed. Felt pretty good.

30 April, Friday - Didn't sleep well. Got up and had a fight with Marv over Bud. Got hair fixed. Went to see May Fair Lady with Mom, Patty, Walt and Bud. Real good.

Dad's supply trips were epic adventures into the world of fish bait ingredients. Dad regularly picked up 100 pound bags of wheat shorts and flour from Robin Hood in North Kansas City, huge whey blocks originally designed for poultry farms, 55 gallon drums of cheese trimmings for catfish bait, 55 gallon drums of blackstrap molasses, (Yep, the trunk of the Cadillac could easily hold a full 55-gallon barrel, and my old man was strong enough to wrestle it out by himself.) and my favorite trip, every loaf of two-day old Taystee bread that dad could squeeze into a '55 Cadillac sedan. The back seat was jammed to the roof, and usually the trunk and as much of the passenger side of the front seat as dad could muster and still have room for me to ride along.* Dad had cultivated a friendship with someone at Taystee, and they just gave dad all the bread he could cart away, sometimes twice a week. They couldn't sell it, and the bread was destined for the dumpster, so what the heck. Dad found he could use bread as a replacement for wheat shorts and flour for some of his bait. The bonus factor was that the bread that was "Baked While You Sleep" was already infused with industrial strength preservatives, which meant dad didn't have to buy big bags of mold-killing sodium propionate to add to bait. Dad, like me, could be frugal to a fault. 

Tastee has Wheaty Flavor

If you're inclined as this point to compare your Uncle Ferd's homemade corn-flake dough bait to dad's stuff, you can pretty much stop now. Dad spent years in R&D finding the combination of flavorings and ingredients that made his bait unique. The running family joke was that the minute you walked in the back door, dad would thrust something under your nose, and say, "Here! Smell this." This madness was his method, and over the years he isolated flavors from other foods - cumin, curry, fenugreek, hops, whey, celery, and many others that he eventually incorporated into bait or other flavorings. He built a small distilling device for extracting essences of flavors that didn't exist on the market. Yes, we had a still.

Dad's baits didn't spoil, didn't get hard in the container, and never failed to catch fish. Four years after dad died, I went shopping for a gift for an angler friend of mine. I found a couple of cans of his Big Thunder Carp Bait at a bait and tackle shop in Independence, Missouri. It was still good. It was soft and pliable, and still had that distinctively sweet molasses aroma. Dad definitely knew his business. Your Uncle Ferd doesn't know shit about fish bait.

What could make mom and dad fight over me? Hard saying, but I never saw any of it. I only saw mom and dad fight one time, and that was about fish bait. Truth is, I think mom was concerned that dad was spoiling me into the ground, a theory that I can confirm without hesitation.

"My Fair Lady". If my mom and her mom were going to a movie or a theatre production, you can bet your valve oil and harmon mute it's going to be a musical. 

*Why dad didn't buy a pickup truck is still a mystery to me.

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.

Thursday, April 1

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April 1, Thursday - Had a real nice day. Patty and mom came over and brought some thank you cards. Wrote a few - will write some more tomorrow. Kroger office girls sent flowers. Felt real good today.

April 2, Friday - Went to store today. Pooped out afterward. Gladys brought me some gowns and 2 pullovers.

April 3, Saturday - 

Patty, you'll remember is mom's sister, Gladys is dad's sister

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.

Sunday, March 7

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March 7, Sunday - Took Ron, Mom, Bud and Marv to the airport. Tried to go to church, no place to park. Had a good time, took mom home and watched TV in evening.

March 8, Monday - Carol did my hair, did washing. Marv found out about my left breast & rushed me to Dr. Sims. (Now what?) Sims rushed me to (Dr.) Hesser. Took Marv out to his birthday. May be pretty busy on 3/29, or I may not be busy at all.

March 9, Tuesday - Low day. Blue, blue, blue. Told Johnson about my operation - he was so kind and understanding. I bawled like a nut. Tomorrow will be better. Worked on the front end - real busy, too.

Again with the airport. No one is traveling anywhere - we're just going to look at the airport. It's real Wes Anderson stuff.

Then the shoe drops. Mom found a lump in her left breast the size of a golf ball. If I remember the conversations properly, she had known about the lump for more than six months, but didn't think it was alarming enough to see a doctor about. Dad wasn't so calm, in fact he was furious that mom had sandbagged the discovery.Her regular doctor, Dr. Sims, was equally concerned, and immediately sent mom to see a surgeon, Dr. Hesser, the same day. The surgery was scheduled immediately and would take place about two weeks later at Bethany Hospital in Kansas City, Kansas; the same hospital I was born in some fifteen years earlier. They had the nerve to tear it down in the 1990s.

Bethany Hospital's Early Days

Mom took dad to his birthday celebration early - which can mean nothing besides a dinner at Crane's Cafeteria at the corner of Truman Road and Hardesty. Crane's fried chicken was and still is, to my mind the best I have ever eaten, and while they closed years ago, the very mention brings the taste back to me as though it were hot on my dinner plate. This was pretty much the only restaurant my mom and dad ever went to on any kind of regular basis. Cafeterias were, in general, the venues of choice for my family. Cranes. Myron Green's, Putch's - we knew them all, plus a few more in Topeka. Standing in lines as we pushed trays along seemed like second nature. It was the time of the factory worker. 

Crane's Cafeteria

Dad's real birthday is March 29, but mom didn't know if she would be able to follow through when that date rolled around. My mom was strong, but the reaction of dad and the doctors terrified her, and rightly so. In today's parlance, mom had Stage III metastatic breast cancer. It was entirely likely that they would take her breast, some muscle tissue, and as many affected lymph nodes as possible.

The reality of what's about to transpire has hit mom, and she's laid low. I'm sure she dreaded telling her store manager the news. Mom's manager, Kenny Johnson, was a strong manager, and he treated his people like family. Mom, and most everyone who worked with him, was crazy about the guy. My mom was the store mom, and a lot of the employees there would have walked on hot coals to keep her out of the hospital.

We all would have.

Thursday, March 4

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March 4, Thursday - Snowed all day. Took groceries to mom after work and slid all the way home. Got stuck in front of the house.finally backed into driveway. Called Sonnie to tell her about the snow.

March 5, Friday - Terrible driving this a.m. Slick and still snowing, took an hour to get to work. Margaret and I planning a shower for Carol jo March 21. (Tilt)

March 6, Saturday - Everything looks better. Sun is shining - first time in a week. Went to sleep in the chair before I went to bed.

Every time it snowed, we had to call Sonnie. Or every time the leaves budded out, or the leaves turned brown and fell into the yard, we called Sonnie. Sonnie and her husband Harmond and their two boys, my nephews Brian and Mark, moved to Southern California in the early sixties. So did my brother Bill, his wife Pat, and my niece Cindy.

That's where the similarities ended. While Sonnie pined for the change of seasons, Bill celebrated Christmas by building a fire in the fireplace and cranking the AC as low as he could get it. Then, he'd pack up the family and head to the beach. Bill lived out his life in Southern California, while Sonnie and Harm fled for the Chicago area, and ultimately, Denver.

Bill

Sonnie and the Boys

Meanwhile, Mom says the world looks better. This is a temporary condition. Stay tuned.

Sunday, February 28

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February 28, Sunday - Raining today: So tired. Mom is feeling better. Marv ordered more gravel for the driveway, ordered new tires. Have a full schedule for tomorrow.

Our lives in a nutshell. New tires and gravel for the driveway.

Our house sat on what was once the space for six houses at the corner of 11th Street and Spruce in Kansas City. I don't know what happened to the other five houses, but we had a lot of yard to deal with. 

Our landlady, Mary Cirese, approved the addition of a gravel driveway from the 11th Street side, and it climbed a slight incline until it was even with the house. It then came around the back of the house, up to the back porch, a rough structure that today would be referred to as a deck.

It took several dump-truck-loads of crushed 1/2" aggregate to cover the driveway, and a lot of muscle work to even it out. Dad always threw in a truckload of fine-crushed gravel, colloquially know as "chat", to fill in the rougher gravel areas and make a smoother surface to walk on. More shovel work.

This is the actual house. The driveway is long gone, as is most of the yard.

Not sure, but it sounds like new snow tires late in the season. Bad weather on the way. 

Thursday, February 25

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February 25, Thursday - Cold again 5° Getting starter fixed. Fell in the store. Hope I didn't injure myself. Bud and I made out his schedule for next year. He's taking band at my suggestion.

February 26, Friday - Stopped at Mom's this morning. She's better but not her old self. Busy today, warm - 50° at 6 p.m.

February 27, Saturday - Had a good day. Felt real good and got a lot done. Spring day - 70°.

Not much to see here, but it bears mentioning that I would have been in band, no matter what Mom suggested. The push here was to step up to Varsity "A" Band at Northeast High School while I still had classes across the street at the "Junior Building". This put me in marching band, for what that was worth, at Northeast. The marching unit was a small, ragtag, group, 25 members tops, with questionable musical talent, and marching skills to match.

Truth be known, I was pretty excited about the whole thing. After six years of trumpet in the public schools, private classical lessons, and suffering through the hormone-infused middle-school shenanigans of eighth-grade band, "A" band seemed like a free ride to Juliard. They had uniforms in the Viking signature purple and white, and silver metalflake Shako hats with white plumes. It was Meredith Wilson's "Music Man" come to life, and I loved it. Did I mention the white bucks?

I'm glad no recordings of our actual playing exist. It would be horrifying to hear that today. The best connection to come out of Varsity Band, under the direct tutelage of one Mr. Harry Bianco, was Stage Band, what most might call Jazz Band today. Here I learned to improvise, 12 bars at a time. It was a small, select group of high school musicians playing hits from the Big Band era. We visited tea rooms, women's clubs and nursing homes and played the music of their lives.  This connected me back to my folks in interesting ways. Because of this connection and a family dedicated to the musical TV stylings of Mitch Miller and His Sing-Along Gang, (don't judge) I still have a soft spot for the music of the forties. Mitch helped me appreciate mens' choruses and Welsh Mens' Choirs.

Magnus Chord Organ

My dad had an emotional attachment to music that I never could put my finger on. He encouraged me at every turn, and the songs he reacted to the most were songs that I wouldn't have guessed he would have a connection to. He bought me a Magnus chord organ from Jenkins Music when I was about twelve. I wanted something I could noodle out trumpet arrangements on, and a piano was out of the question, money-wise.

The Magnus was actually pretty cool. It was a reed organ, which meant that it was basically an accordion with legs. There was a motor inside providing air that was channeled through the reeds based on which keys were pressed. It had thirty-seven piano keys and twelve chord buttons on the left side - six major, six minor. The sound was not at all unlike a parlor pump organ, a harmonium, or a large Melodica. Sheet music was available for these things that had the key notations by number as well as the chord designations. I didn't need the numbers because I could sight-read but the chords were pretty handy, because my left hand wasn't.

Outside of Christmas and the ever-present Baptist hymnal selections, dad's request list was pretty short - "The Band Played On", "Back Home Again in Indiana", "The Banks of the Wabash", "Yankee Doodle Dandy", and not much else. I always suspected that these were songs that reminded him of his first wife, an old flame, or just another time, but dad never really said as much. There was definitely a connection to Indiana, or so it seemed. He had never been to Indiana that I was aware of. I know he was envious of my ability to read and play music, but he grew up dirt-poor, and music was a luxury when there were eight people living in a 700 square foot house in Fort Scott, Kansas.

Music was a gift my dad gave me that has lasted my entire life. He bought me my first horn and signed me up for classes without even checking with mom when I was six, and used his connections to get me a classical tutor from the Kansas City Philharmonic, and it has made an incredible difference in my life. I really should have stayed with it and done more with it, but the fact that it occupies such an important part of my being is good enough. Thank you, dad.

Friday, February 19

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February 19, Friday - Slow business, but Ruby, Ethel, Eva and I had a ball. At lunch & on our breaks we laughed till we cried. Went to the program with Bud. Good! Marv still doesn't feel well.

February 20, Saturday - Dr. Gripkey. Marv wants to go to California on vacation. Weight 167 - I've lost 35 pounds. Sure get around better. Bud asked Pat to go bowling Monday. His social life will bankrupt us. 70º today - 20° by morning. I hope I get to go to church.

February 21, Sunday - Slept till 9:00. Bud and I went to church. Ate lunch and started out to new airport. Too much traffic, so we came back to Municipal.  

Mom always had great friends in the stores. While I don't know these people by name, I know they kept mom happy in her work.

I've been racking my brain trying to figure out what this school program was, but I can't put a finger on it. It almost had to be a band event of some kind, but I'm not sure.

Dad's health is a constant concern. While he was a large man, and strong as an ox, his heart disease weighed so heavily on his mind that he was often convinced of his own frailty and impending death. He had worked hard all his life, and until his heart attacks, was a two-pack-a-day Pall Mall smoker. After his heart finally and dramatically betrayed him, we became a salt-free, caffeine-free, nicotine-free household. Dad's worry was contagious. Sometimes he would nap on the couch, and I would stop as I walked by to watch his chest rise and fall and make sure he was still breathing. Crazy begets crazy.

I think Dr. Gripkey was mom's weight-loss advisor. She's down to 167 from just over 200. My mom is 5'-2" on her best day. Dad wants to go to California to see his son Bill and daughter Sonnie. I have it on good authority that this trip won't happen.

Apparently, I had asked Patty Saunders to go bowling. On a Monday night. You would certainly think I would remember that, but I honestly don't. It would have taken me four years at this point to work up the nerve to ask her to do anything with me, although we were pretty consistent phone buddies. . It's very likely that afterwards, we would have been dad-chauffeured down to Allen's Dairy on Independence Avenue for carhop-delivered hot fudge sundaes. There's nothing so sexy as a chubby kid having a panic attack sitting next to a petite blonde in the back seat of a baby-blue Cadillac. My hands are sweating just thinking about it. Patty and I still converse via the occasional email. Hi, Patty!

I am a high maintenance, extremely expensive, 14 year old, but one very smooth date.

Mom and I went to church - Bales Baptist, with its thundering pipe organ and horseshoe-shaped sanctuary. The pastor was probably still Reverend Moad, the minister that baptized me a couple of years before.

Airports were, and remain to this day, an important source of entertainment for me. All during the late '50s, my dad and I would trek down to Kansas City Municipal Airport, (MKC) and head up to the open-air observation deck atop the south terminal. There, we watched Vickers Viscounts, Convairs, Douglas DC3s, and Martin 404s take off and land. As the planes taxied to the gate, they feathered their propellers and shut down all but one engine, but there was still enough prop wash to knock your hat off. The real star of the show was always the Lockheed Super G Constellation, the "Connie", still, to my way of thinking, one of the most beautiful airplanes ever manufactured. It looked like a swan with a distinctive triple tail and four thundering Wright radial engines.

Lockheed Super G Constellation in TWA livery

It was later in the fifties when the first jets appeared at Municipal, and if you were fortunate enough to be on the Intercity Viaduct when a Boeing 707 took off to the south on runway 19 in the days before noise abatement, you received an eardrum-busting treat as the plane flew over you at an altitude of a couple hundred feet. More than one driver, hypnotized by the big jets, drove straight into the guard rails as the mighty 707s flew over.

Municipal Airport was built in the crook of the Missouri River, and had no room for expansion. Jets required more runway than Municipal's 6,500 foot north/south could provide.**

 To help drag Kansas City, kicking and screaming into the future, they built Kansas City International Airport, (MCI). It had three circular terminals, each of which provided for short sixty-foot walks to the gates from the drop-off area. It was a pretty big deal in Kansas City, and mom and I set out on the 25-mile trek to see it. At that same moment, it seems 75,000 other Kansas Citians thought the same thing, and headed north to see the new miracle airport. We got snarled in Northland traffic and gave up. Back to Municipal where we belonged. I still hate driving in traffic.

When I owned my studio, my favorite work-avoidance venue was Downtown Airport. I would sit at the south end of Runway 1-19 with my aircraft radio and listen to air traffic control. You can seriously kill off several hours that way with no effort at all.

Municipal Airport - now the Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport (MKC)

** I think it was ahead of the 1992 election when George H.W. Bush visited Kansas City. They flew that big ol' 747 Air Force One into MKC - KC Downtown Airport.  Lou Holland Drive - the road immortalized as "Road Song" in 1967 by photographer Pete Turner -  was barricaded and they parked that monster out near the Airline History Museum. I got to the airport about four hours ahead of Bush's announced departure,  just to watch the launch.

I don't know who was at the controls of that aircraft, but that sucker came up out of the airport at full throttle like a rocket off of Runway 19, kept climbing as it banked right over Kansas City, Kansas and was well on its way to cruising altitude before it got to Worlds of Fun five miles to the northeast. Wow!

Unrelated detail: my first cousin, once removed, Johnnie S. Simpson, after 27 years in the military became, in 1947, crew chief of "The Sacred Cow." The airplane was designed so President Roosevelt could navigate his wheelchair around the cabin. 

Tuesday, February 16

February 16, Tuesday - (In the margin - Stayed up late last night & watched "Tall Story"! Cute.) Snow was forecast, but the sun is shining. Bud did wear his new pants to school. He gets initiated into the speech club today.

February 17, Wednesday - Had cash audit at store. Thought sure we'd get written up on bad checks, but after juggling, Ray said we had to have 2! Happy Day!

February 18, Thursday - So tired today. Bud in program tonight and tomorrow night at school. Mom's cold is some better, but Marv doesn't feel very well.


The movie "Tall Story" must have been the Late Movie on channel 5. Would have aired at 10:30 p.m. or so. None of the three stations stayed on the air after midnight. There were distinct differences in their respective sign-offs - WDAF, channel 4, the NBC affiliate, signed off with a baritone singing "The Lord's Prayer", albeit a Baptist version  - "debts" versus "trespasses". KCMO, channel 5, representing CBS, signed off with a display of martial firepower superimposed over an American Flag while The Star Spangled Banner played. I honestly don't remember what KMBC, channel 9, ABC did to sign off. In all cases, after the sign-off, the screen went to static and white noise, usually until 6:00 a.m.

Of course Bud wore his new pants to school. It was the Bud thing to do. Today I get my badge of honor from Taming of the Crew, the Speech Club.

I'm not sure what program I was in. There are really only two choices - a band concert, or a speech event, probably an oratory. Since mom didn't mention helping me work on my speech coming up to this, I'm going with band.

Saturday, February 13

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February 13, Saturday - Bud had to have a model. Sure hated to come to work - beautiful day. mom has a terrible cold. Dropped by there before and after work. Took some cough syrup by.

February 14, Sunday - When I left the house Marv was having chest pains. Wonder what's around the corner. Stopped at mom's on way to work. Not too busy. It's nice to come home and have supper ready. Marv is a good cook.

February 15, Monday - Nothing spectacular. Beauty shop, laundry, rent, store, and downtown. Bought Bud some pants for his program Thursday and Friday nights. He'll probably wear them tomorrow.

It's only now that I realize how expensive I was as a kid. A typical model kit by AMT or Revell in this days cost about 4 bucks. There were a few that I bought just to have parts for customization, and there were the additional costs of glue, paint, body putty (a sort of scale model Bondo) and other raw materials. A trip to Northeast Toy and Hobby might have set my mom back five bucks on average. In 2017 dollars that's a whopping $39 in buying power. If I had been my folks, I would have considered putting me up for adoption, or at least selling me off for scientific experimentation.

Dad was a good cook, in a basic meat and potatoes sort of way. Compared to my grandmother, it was Cordon Bleu. The chest pains were a fairly regular part of dad's life, and continued to make him crazy and a little hypochondriacal. Since his 1962 heart attacks weren't remedied in any way except for bed rest, there was always some residual angina and his teeny nitroglycerin pills were always with him.

Another Monday for mom. I got new pants for an unknown program at school. Mom has doubts that I can hold off wearing them until the program. She's probably right.

It bears noting that mom went downtown to get her shopping done. At that time, there was really only one shopping "mall" in Kansas City, "The Blue Ridge Mall". It sat at the confluence of 40 Hiway and I-70 in eastern Jackson County, some nine miles from the house. Mom preferred going downtown because she could could walk a couple hundred feet to the bus turn at 12th and Jackson and ride into the city instead of navigating the freeway east. Most of the downtown stores she shopped at were within a block or two of the bus stop at 12th and Main, so it was really an easier option all around. There was no advantage to the mall - at that time it was open air, with shops lining both sides of a central pedestrian mall. Later, in the early '70s, they enclosed the mall and it became a four-season shopping area.

Blue Ridge Mall, ca. 1958

Parentehtically, after they razed the Blue Ridge Mall, the built a WalMart Supercenter on teh east side of the property, and a Lowe's on the west half. That Lowe's was to become my store from 2010 to 2016, and when I stood watch at the front door at closing time, I was standing near the ghost front door of the old J.C. Penny's.

Sunday, February 7

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February 7, Sunday - Damp and foggy. Went to church - communion. Mom took Bud and me to see Mary Poppins. Outstanding. When we got out of the show, freezing rain. Supposed to snow. More war in Vietnam.

February 8, Monday - Took Bud to school, got a permanent, cashed a bond - (didn't want to) did the laundry. Picked Bud up. Marv doesn't feel well, real peevish.

February 9, Tuesday - Wore my glasses all day. Got along pretty well. Business slow. Marie and I are in the dog house (home). Bud joined the Speech Club. So foggy I couldn't see across the street.

Couldn't tell you from Mary Poppins. I remember seeing it, but it felt like a fever dream to me. Flying nannies and all just didn't resonate with a kid from a tough blue-collar neighborhood.

Baptist communion was grape juice and teensy little host wafers - about half the size of Chiclets. Low-sodium, and not at all filling. The "Welch's wine" made it through the horseshoe-shaped sanctuary of Bales Baptist Church in one of several chrome trays with little half-shot glasses and the wafers were passed around the church on plates with little doilies on them. I often wondered if there were official Baptist doilies, or if these were off the rack. My confusion grew quite a bit the first time I attended a Catholic mass at Holy Trinity, right around the corner from home. That was really hard for my tiny Protestant brain to wrap around. They got big crackers and a visit with the priest, but no table service. Catholics had all the cool stuff - statues, candles, medieval vestments, and a standing routine that parishioners could recite in their sleep.

Several times, mom refers to cashing bonds. These were mature U.S. Savings bonds, and mom and dad burned through their nest egg just trying to keep their heads above water. This was particularly evident in winter, when dad couldn't make fish bait. We always ate better in summer.

Marie Cook and mom were the glue that held the front end together at the store, but somehow when one of them got in hot water they both did. This was most often because of a short till, or for a bad check that came back.

Speech club was a branch of Mrs. Womack's speech class, and went by the all-too-clever name of "Taming of the Crew." During the pledge phase, established TOCs, who always traveled in packs like coyotes, could stop you in the hall, and require you to perform "buttons." A button was a maneuver where you stuck one arm out to the side, placed your opposite index finger on your nose, and then proceeded to do deep squats, the number determined by the sadistic drama-nerd coyote ringleader. Since I was fresh from my broken foot, I was exempt from the buttons embarrassment. Instead, I was usually handed a script of some kind, and ordered to recite, as loudly as possible, in the middle of the cavernous concrete halls of Northeast Junior High School. One "I'm a little teapot" is plenty, thanks.

One morning, I was lassoed  at the close of the morning pledge to the flag assembly, and dragged up on the auditorium stage, where I dutifully recited, in my pre-pubescent tenor voice, an excerpt from "The Charge of the Light Brigade" in front of probably 800 or 900 students. They stood in rapt attention, watching the pudgy fourteen-year-old spew Tennyson, while flop-sweat poured down his face. My voice cracked when I read "theirs is not to reason why,". When I completed the assigned performance, some of the kids in the auditorium clapped, others catcalled and whistled. A few yelled. I earned my badge. Later that day I received my official TOC pin - a pin-back felt badge in red and black of the classic Comedy and Drama mask. It was quite an honor, and validation of my innate hamminess. The show must go on.

Monday, February 1

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February 1, Monday - High 10º - Very cold - quiet day for me. Got my hair fixed and did the laundry. The rest of the day I loafed and took a nap. Marv is so good to me.

February 2, Tuesday - Cold today - the same old thing at Kroger. Zone meeting at the store Mom says she will take us to see Mary Poppins Sunday.

February 3, Wednesday - Went to Dr. Williams and had my back cracked. Getting ready for the weekend. Looks as though we'll be busy. Every man looked like Dad today.

A typical day off, another couple of days at work, and a trip to the chiropractor. A zone meeting is the Zone Manager, in this case, I think it was Charlie Gamper, plus all the store managers from his zone, converging for a butt-chewing day of motivation. Grandma Patton is taking us to see Mary Poppins next weekend.

Mom still misses her dad terribly. He died suddenly about four months earlier. It was one of the few somber funerals I can remember in our family. Most of our funerals were light-hearted, even fun to attend. When Grandma Patton died in August of 1971, the services at the Fulton-Nickel funeral home in Kansas City, Kansas were serious, but not somber or tearful. She had been in declining health for quite some time, and her last days at the nursing home on Benton Boulevard were painful to watch.

As we formed the half-mile-long funeral procession that would take her body to our family cemetery near Leavenworth, Kansas, I assured my date - yes, I took a date to grandma's funeral - that the lighthearted party she had just witnessed really was our family's way of remembering Grandma Patton.

My mom and her family were in the limousine following the casket-bearing hearse and a heavily-laden flower car. My dad gave the driver directions through Leavenworth, and out onto Highway 92 west of town. Somewhere after the Highway 92 turn, things went horribly wrong. Dad got a little confused, and got us a little lost.

The hearse, and subsequently, every other car, made a series of wrong turns and eventually onto a three-block-long dead end street near the edge of town. As the hearse driver realized that there had been a horrible mistake and began to turn around, the centipede of cars scrambled for a way to get back in line behind all the black Cadillacs. The limo that I was riding in came to a stop directly next a woman in a flowered duster who was weeding her yard.

She waved at our car, and we rolled down the window. As the hearse pulled even with us on the other side of the street, she informed us, "You can't stop here, this is a dead end!"

This brought the parade to a complete stop, as everyone, included the staid and double-starched funeral director broke into fits of uncontrollable laughter. Eventually we negotiated our way out of Leavenworth on Highway 92 and pulled into the little oak-shaded cemetery on the northwest side of the road - there was only enough room for six or seven cars on the cemetery grounds, so the rest were parked down the highway toward Easton. When everyone had assembled graveside, the minister began the service: "Pansy Elizabeth Patton . . . and everyone just came unglued. There wasn't a dry eye in the house, and no one was crying. Pansy loved to travel, and had zero sense of direction or the time involved to actually get anywhere. She would have loved the meander to her final resting place.

The girl I was with talked about my grandma's funeral for years afterward, although I'm fairly sure she thought we were all batshit crazy. This funeral was the most fun I've ever had in a cemetery. Check that - it was the second most fun I've ever had in a cemetery. Ask me about that story some other time.

Friday, January 22

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January 22, Friday - Still raining, snow tomorrow. Felt bad but worked hard anyway. Bought groceries $14.22 ($110 today) Bud had his cast repaired at North Kansas City Hospital. Would like to find another job. Weight 169.

January 23, Saturday - Snow forecast all day, but no snow. Tough! Took mom to the store before I went to work. Worked with Doug in the office. He's doing better.

January 24, Sunday - Slept until ten! Went to church. Bud and I went to the Kansas City Museum in the afternoon. Quite a place! Came home and relaxed. Feel better.











When we went to have the cast repaired, Dr. Williamson remarked that the next one might last longer if I lost "some of that tonnage". Well, kiss my ass, Doctor Four Eyes! Dad heard that and vowed never to return. He found another orthopedic surgeon, we had my records transferred, and the cast was removed at the new doctor's office. Do not mess with Orville's only child.

No snow! Not only is it a pain in the ass to drive in, but snow always means a busy day in the Kroger store. Chances are they were pretty busy, anyway. Weather forecasting in 1965 was a dartboard proposition in Kansas City. Tough place to forecast, even now, but back then it was a 12-hour lead, if that.

TV weather in the 1960s bears zero resemblance to what you're used to today. Since most of the broadcasts were in black and white and imaged through a black and white camera, ChromaKey, the use of a green screen to super a weatherman (they were all men) over a map hadn't happened yet.

Weather maps on TV were clunky, pasteup jobs. The better stations used felt boards to stick pictures of sun, clouds, tornadoes, and other weather phenomena to the map.

Kansas City's two best know TV weather guys were Dan Henry (Bowser) and Fred Broski. Look at their fancy maps! They gave Fred a pointer!

Atta boy, Doug!

The Kansas City Museum has always been a cultural stepchild in Kansas City, if only because it resides in the older Northeast area instead of the wealthier Country Club Plaza district of the classic  Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Kansas City Museum - Photo:Visit KC

Tuesday, January 19

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January 19, Tuesday - Doug worked in the office. Bob Baker came in and gave Marie and me a checker's test. Missed 2 - so did Marie. Turning colder and raining.

January 20, Wednesday - Took mom home with me for supper. Had a good meal. Doug took his checker test - missed 18!

January 21, Thursday - Marie sick today. Bud broke his cast - gets a new one tomorrow. Warm, started to rain tonight.














Mom's still dealing with the manager trainee Doug. It's becoming increasingly obvious that there's no love lost between them. This is not an unusual situation between trainees and head checkers.

Garvey Band Stamper

Think back before beeping red laser scanners in grocery stores. When product came in the back door, it was checked in, the boxes (and sometimes the product) sliced open with box cutters, and each and every item in the store was price-marked using the old standby Garvey band stampers, or one of a whole rack of "stick stamps". Grocery clerks valued their stampers the way a gunslinger valued his Colt .45, and good clerks could price-stamp merchandise so fast, you almost couldn't see it happen. The point of all this is to make sure the store's merchandise is priced properly and legibly.

Monroe-Sweda Model 46

The cash registers were, at that time, the new Monroe-Sweda model 46s, a smaller, faster version of the old gigantic NCR models of the '50s.

The checker  used a foot pedal to move the conveyor belt that the customer had piled his order onto, grabbed the item off the conveyor with his or her left hand, looked at the price, determined the proper department - grocery, meat, produce, liquor, health and beauty, etc - entered the information on the register without looking at the register, hit enter, and moved on. Each checker was expected to maintain the highest possible accuracy with the highest possible speed. (There were actual checking and bagging competitions where grocery clerks showed off their skills.)

To this end, checkers were periodically tested by what was called a "basket test" administered by a paid mystery shopper, or "checker's test" done by a company trainer. The best checkers in the business might miss one or two, like mom and her friend and coworker, Marie Cook. That her nemesis Doug missed 18 would doubtless have sent mom over the moon.

Tuesday TV in 1965: My Mother the Car, followed by Please Don't Eat The Daisies, but mom and dad were always there for The Red Skelton Hour at 8:00

I still don't remember Grandma Patton ever eating dinner with us, but I guess it must have happened. I know the meal was good because my dad cooked it. After he left the grocery business, he managed the bait business and kept house. He parlayed his experience with the meat markets to create some of the most remarkable meals from the crappiest cuts of meat. Dad could make a chuck roast as tender as filet mignon, and just as flavorful. Mom, however only ever cooked one thing: fried chicken. It was worth the wait.

Lyndon Johnson was inaugurated on January 20, but mom isn't likely to mention it. She and dad never felt like national politics had much effect on their real lives, and mom came from a hard-core Republican family. When grandma got a orange tabby that kept tearing up the house, she named him "Kennedy".

That plaster cast on my left foot was no match for Kansas City's wet, sloppy, winter weather and my bulky, 170 pound frame.

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.