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.

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.

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.