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.

Monday, January 4

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January 4, Monday - The usual routine. Picked up Marv's glasses, which he likes. Took Marv to Dr.
Bud went bowling & came home sick.

January 5, Tuesday - Doug and I are in the office together. Very discouraged today. My mouth is too big.

January 6, Wednesday - Got home today and Marv was real sick. Got a prescription from (Dr.) Miller and he slept pretty good. Hate my job this week.




Marv is my dad. Marvin is his middle name, like mine. Like my mom, he was from a family of six, but the comparison ends there. The Simpsons were friendly enough, but they were not close, at least to the casual observer. His dad died in 1954, and his mom lived in the little house in Fort Scott, Kansas where the family moved sometime around 1920. Dad would have been ten.

Dad and his Cadillac, ca 1967. This is a rare photo, as he seldom looked at the camera.

My dad and his family.
No one looks at the camera, a defensive move against the
powerful output of the M5 flashbulbs that were so common back then.

Our glasses came from Chick McBratney's optical shop on Minnesota Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas, a relationship that dad stuck with for decades.

Dad's regular doctor was Wilson H. Miller. When dad first started seeing Dr. Miller, he was working out of a small office upstairs at Independence Avenue at Monroe. At the time of dad's death in 1974, Miller was Chief of Staff at Research Medical Center, and had an office on the Country Club Plaza. Dad paid for that office.

Dad's health was always teetering between bad and worse. His heart attacks in 1962 left him nervous and afraid of dying. Please remember, the treatment for a heart attack in 1962 was Demerol and weeks of bed rest. In dad's case, sixteen weeks flat on his back at St. Joseph Hospital on Linwood Avenue in Kansas City. The Demerol made him think the nuns were ghosts, and the pigeons on the ledge outside were eagles. He gave up cigarettes, stopped using salt, switched to that godawful Sanka instead of coffee, and always kept a small bottle of nitroglycerin tablets in his pocket in case of an angina attack. It worried him ceaselessly that any day might be his last. If he had been born a few years later, bypoass surgery might have extended his life by decades.

Bowling was central to my teenage years. I bowled several leagues at Allen's Bowl on Independence Avenue. Dad sponsored a couple of my teams. I tried to maintain my dignity in spite of wearing a blue-trimmed King Louie shirt with "Simpson Baits" embroidered across the back. I wasn't all that good, but I was determined as hell.

Doug was an unknown Kroger employee - I think he was a manager trainee or co-manager. See January 7.