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 7

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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. 

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, 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.

Monday, April 19

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April 19, Monday - All in today. Spent most of the day in bed. Took Bud to Wards and got him pants.

April 20, Tuesday - Feel better today, but Patty goes to St. Luke's May 2 to be operated on May 3.

April 21, Wednesday - Went to mom's for lunch today. Margaret came over and fixed my hair. 80°

More of life in the margins. For some reason I need pants a lot. My pudgy ass may have been splitting the seats out of them, or one of my surprise growth spurts may have made the old pants look like Capris.

 Remember, this is 1965, and you couldn't wear jeans to school. "Dungarees", they called them. I did get a brief pass when I bought some White Levis. Almost got away with it. I felt like a rebel, if only because the radio ads proclaimed that "Poor Fat Marvin can't wear White Levis. Well, fuck you, Levi Strauss, Marvin wore them anyway! When Mr. McDaniel realized they were jeans, I was sent home to change, and awarded ten suspension hours. "Eighth Hours." It was back to slacks. Black slacks, white socks, suede Chelsea boots. Lather, rinse, repeat.

There were huge cultural differences between regions. My snooty second cousins came down to visit my Uncle Bob and Aunt Mary all the way from their Topeka suburbs and openly sneered at our urban white socks and pointy-toed shoes. I popped him right in the snotlocker. Broke his nose. That's how we dealt with smartasses at Northeast. Sent them packing, and never saw them again.

We were a Montgomery Ward family. Wards had a massive store at the corner of St. John and Belmont. Sears was actually closer to us over at Truman Road and Cleveland, but we did Wards. My aunt Gladys called it "Monkey Wards". We bought everything there - clothes, furniture, tires - my first real camera, a Mamiya/Sekor 1000 DTL SLR came from Wards. Mom bought it for me in 1969, trying to save my miserable life. Eventually, it worked. More on that later.

My first 35mm camera: Mamiya/Sekor 1000 DTL

Mom's sister Patty goers in for an unknown surgery. This family is a medical TV series in the making.

Tuesday, April 13

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April 13, Tuesday - Felt less tired today. Cold and damp today. Patty called, said her doctor recommended surgery. Hope she doesn't put it off too long.

(tilt)

April 14, Wednesday - Didn't get check from union. Called Roberta. She called and then turned it over to (unknown name).

April 15, Thursday - Marv and I went to Northeast's Easter Assembly. Bud was in it. Very good. Depressed today. Talked on phone a lot - an hour with Florence.

The Pattons continue to help keep up the doctors' Lincoln payments.

Roberta is mom's Union Shop Steward. The union provided for lost wages during sick leave. Retail Clerks Local 782 was a monster union in grocery retail in Kansas City, outmuscled only by the Amalgamated Meat-cutters Union. This association by proximity will become more evident later in the year.

The Easter Assembly. This seems hard to imagine here in 2018, when religion in public schools is relegated to the close cover of the individual. In 1965, the schools didn't so much as participate in the establishment of an official religion as allow the majority Judeo-Christian faction to express its majority openly. It's just the way things worked back then.

We had a Christmas Assembly, an Easter Assembly, and others as needed to support the beliefs of the residents of Northeast. As a musician, I was always somewhere in the mix, usually in the horn section, playing Christmas carols or other music in support of the holiday.

The Easter assembly was one of the few school functions held during school hours that was well-attended by parents and family. It was a big deal, a series of living tableaus staged by the previously mentioned freshman Drama Club, "Taming of the Crew".  It depicted The Last Supper, The Crucifixion, and the Resurrection and Ascension. If the school year lasted another 40 days, they probably would have celebrated the Pentecost, but I digress.

The scenes depicted were taken from famous works of art - The Last Supper was modeled on Da Vinci's 15th century mural in Milan. The Crucifixion was actually the Descent from the Cross, as depicted by Rubens. The source of the Resurrection's artwork is lost to me, but I remember it being a simple depiction, probably also by Rubens.

Here's how it worked. The stage was set with the basic set pieces and props, but without actors. In my part, The Last Supper, there was a long table center stage, set with plates and cups, Judas' salt cellar and various other pieces designed to recall the Da Vinci fresco. I kept imaging the whole thing laid out with Fiestaware, Melmac, and depression glass. The cups and the Holy Grail might have been some of those colorful anodized aluminum tumblers.

Aluminum Grails, Non-Holy Variety

Between the stage and the audience was a semi-sheer scrim in white. It lowered the amount of detail visible on the stage, and gave the scene a painterly effect, with several small lights sweeping across parts of the scrim. More light equalled less detail.

Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci, Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan
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Portrait of the artist as a disciple. Bartholomew, the missionary; also Nathanael

At a signal, the orchestra began to play. I don't remember the music, but I'm sure it was something subdued and reverent, probably a simple Bach piece rendered entirely unlistenable by the screeching eighth-grade violins and shrill clarinets. On the same cue, the actors started to drift onstage, in full costume and makeup, and made their way to the table. It looked like total chaos, until, at the last possible moment, the players snapped into the positions depicted in the painting. There was a crescendo from the orchestra, an audible gasp from the audience, and we heard someone in the auditorium exclaim, "Oh, my God". We were truly awesome.

Offstage, someone read the account of the Last Supper from the Bible, probably from Mark 14. I can't imagine who it would have been, as no one in our group had the voice to carry it off, and most were on stage. You certainly didn't want a pre-pubescent male channeling "Our Miss Brooks'" Walter Denton. It might have been Mrs. Womack, the drama teacher. I don't know. I knew a couple of eighth-grade guys that were shaving twice a day, and might have been able to lend a solid baritone to the proceedings, but it was unlikely that they were actually able to read, much less evade detention long enough to participate.

I was Bartholomew, on the far left, mostly because I was so tall that I could lean over the table next to James and Andrew and still maintain the height relationship. St. Bart had flowing robes, and greasepaint-enhanced facial lines and wrinkles. I don't remember who played Jesus or some of the other major characters, but I do remember being relieved that I didn't have to play Judas. My dad, the Sunday School teacher, would have had a litter of three-legged calico kittens if I had been chosen to portray the betrayer of Christ. 

Parenthetically, many years later, one of my professors at seminary was known to say that the actual event, if it happened at all, would have been a rough, crowded, and a wholly unruly affair. He should have seen the level of chaos that a bunch of Junior High School kids brought to the story. Maybe they should have had it in the cafeteria.

In retrospect, it's probably a good thing they didn't try this with Christmas, too. Anyone playing a 14 year-old pregnant Mary would have been the laughing stock of our rowdy and somewhat unruly blue-collar school, although I know who they should have picked for the part. 

Ahem.

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.

Sunday, April 4

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April 4, Sunday - Felt terrible today. Gloomy day. Spent most of day in bed. Patty and Walt came over in evening.

April 5, Monday - Bill and Sam were over - felt good today. Talked to Mary a couple of times. Didn't take tranquilizer. Went to store today.

April 6, Tuesday - Felt pretty good. Didn't sleep too well last night. Took tranquilizer today. Mr. and Mrs. Kirkpatrick came over  - brought geranium and pretty red rug. People have been so nice.

Again, mom's sister Patty and her husband Walt. Bill and Sam are mom's brother Bill and his wife Althea, "Sam".

The Kirkpatricks are, I believe a church couple acquaintance of mom's from Bales Baptist Church.

In all my years, I never knew my mom to take a tranquilizer, sleeping pill, or so much as a sip of alcohol. Later on, as I approached my twenties, she mooched a couple of cigarettes from me, and went through the motions of smoking them, but never inhaled. I suspect this was an effort to shock me into quitting. It worked - twenty-five years later.

The idea that she was wrestling with the idea of taking tranquilizers at this point tells me that mom was really struggling with the unknowns of having cancer, and what the future had in store for her once the radiation and chemo treatments started. She was, simply stated, scared shitless.

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, 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.

Friday, January 1, 1965

January 1, Friday Started the year right. Worked 10-7 - busier than I thought. Bud went to Patty's - color TV. Weight 174

January 2, Saturday Worked as usual. Made appointment with Dr. Curran for 25th. Marv goes to the doctor Monday. $100 short. Wish I was a chorus girl.

January 3, Sunday My Sunday to work. Since Thursday I've worked every hour the store was open except 5.

This is a pretty good baseline post. Mom is at work, the Kroger store at 31st and State Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas. She is a head cashier, "head checker" in their parlance. Her job is to keep the front end of the store running smoothly, maintain cash accountability, and keep the books. Her Saturday entry indicates that her daily counts came up $100 short. She doesn't say whether it was from one till or total, but that kind of money sets off all kinds of alarms. "Wish I was a chorus girl". Mom had a love-hate relationship with her job at Kroger. I suppose all working-class heroes have that.

Mom, in the store office at Kroger.

Mom mentions her weight. It has been her cross to bear for years, but her weight always seemed to define my mother in her own eyes.

"Patty" is mom's sister, my aunt. Her daughter, Susan, two years older than I am, is one of my best buddies in the family. We vacationed with Patty and Susan, and I was as comfortable at their house as I was at home. We laughed a lot. That was Mom's family in a nutshell. Close, supportive, and always laughing.

L to R: me, my cousin Susan, my aunt Patty; Pike Peak, 1961

Mom was the oldest of the six Patton kids. She was born in a tiny house in equally tiny Jarbalo, Kansas in 1915. Her siblings were, Paul, Jean, Jane (Patty), Bob, and Bill.

Mom and the Pattons, Christmas, 1975