Wednesday, May 19

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May 19, Wednesday - Went up to Leavenworth cemetery. Next time I will take some peony plants. Bud started his bowling league tonight.

May 20, Thursday - Went to town by myself this morning. Got along fine - a little tired. See Marg Benson almost every day in the Dr's office. She looks bad.

May 21, Friday - Went to store and doctor. Same old grind.

Our family plot is west of Leavenworth, Kansas on State Highway 92, not quite to Easton. Bethel Cemetery is a genealogical gold mine for the Patton Clan, including the German immigrant, Frederich Beuckemann, and his wife, Minna Beuckemann, nee Mackeson, my great-great grandparents. My folks are both there now, in a shady spot under towering oak trees that overlook a quiet valley.


More bowling. Wednesday night Men's League. School night out with the beer-drinking men of the Armco and Sheffield Steel Plants. I learned a lot about bowling from these guys, as well as a lot about a bunch of other stuff. Learned some swell new words, too. I later found out that most of my new vocabulary couldn't be used at home.

Bethel Cemetery, Leavenworth County, Kansas

Monday, May 10

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May 10, Monday - Took Bud to library and found book for speech. Got money and paid bills like crazy. Took Bud to the R______. Went home and Bud worked on speech. Sinuses ok. Marie has diabetes. (Bill started to work on mom's bathroom today.)

May 13, Tuesday - Helped Marv do washing, then took treatment 8. Bud stayed home and finished working on speech. "Colossus of Rhodes". Marv went fishing and Bud went bowling. Had lovely evening - did just as I pleased. I like it.

May 14, Wednesday - Feel low today. Marv ironed and I swept through the house. Took treatment 9. Bud stuck key in John's car and it became wedged. Crisis!

I don't know where mom took me, but I obviously found my way back home.

Bill is mom's brother - he and Uncle Bob spent some time working on the Patton house at 1501 Garfield in Kansas City, Kansas. The house no longer exists. I'm told it burned to the ground in 2005. When I was born we lived at 1932 North 14th, next door to my great-grandmother, and just around the corner from the Patton house. Mom's family was tight, and a cluster like this would have suited mom just fine. All the same, we moved a couple of times before we wound up on 11th Street. When I was very small, we lived on 10th Street, right next door to Whittier Elementary School, and somehow we relocated to Fort Scott, Kansas, where my dad was from, for a couple of years. The idea of mom being that far from her family seems unlikely, and whatever the reason for that stop, I'm sure dad heard about it.

Mom and her brother John at The Patton House, KCK
I'll be switched if I know who that little kid is.

Grandma and Grandpa Patton with Uncle Bob at The Patton House

You'll see a lot of references to doing the wash. We did all our laundry with a Maytag wringer washer something like this one:

The process was labor-intensive.

• You filled the washer with hot water, added detergent - Tide - and then the dirty clothes. You then switched on the agitator.

• After an appropriate amount of time, you stopped the agitator, activated the wringer, and fed the clothes from the washer to a tub filled with water for the first rinse.

• Time to drain the washer. Some had pumps for this - ours was gravity-powered. Right into the floor drain.

• After you drained the washer, you refilled it with cold water for the second rinse. You then put the clothes back through the wringer and into the washer. 

•  Turn on the agitator again. After the clothes have been properly rinsed, they go back through the wringer into a now-empty rinse tub, ready to be dried.

The drying process was solar and wind powered, by way of a couple hundred feet of clothesline in the back yard. A bag of clothespins was hanging on the line, and your fourteen-year-old son  dutifully, more often than not, helped you pin your clothes on the line.

You get the idea. After this ordeal, there was ironing to be done. No miracle fabrics - cotton, thank you, and cotton needs to be ironed. I learned how to iron when I was ten years old, and still prefer to do my own, although I really don't mind a few wrinkles these days.

"John" was one of the neighborhood guys that always had one too many cars, and dad never thought twice about letting them park them in our huge yard. This one was a 1950 Ford Coupe, shot up in primer gray. John had to wait for his next paycheck to license it, so it sat next to the old box truck that inhabited our side yard. (More on that vehicle later.)

1950 Ford Coupe - Not John's

As I was fascinated by all things automotive, I took a look inside, sat behind the wheel, and in a fit of temporary insanity, showed Tommy Jackson how one of my assortment of padlock keys would likely start the Ford. What could possibly go wrong?

The key slid into the lock and then promptly stuck. Tight. I couldn't so much as jiggle it. I felt the blood drain out of my face. Dad was going to be furious, and John, with his boxcar haircut and his Chesterfield cigarettes rolled into his T-shirt sleeve, would probably just kill me outright and leave my lifeless body next to the railroad tracks behind the Jackson Hole bar.

Tommy, always the hero, hightailed it for home, and I went inside and eventually told dad what had happened. In typical Marv fashion, he said nothing, but walked outside to assess the situation, came back inside and dug out the Yellow Pages to look up "Locksmiths", and made the call. The Yellow Pages, in case you're younger than forty, was a phone book of business numbers. The pages were yellow. Neat, huh?

A couple of hours later, the locksmith showed up, took out the Ford's ignition switch, removed the offending key, and gave dad the bill. $10.00 worth of expert lock-smithery. In today's money, that's about $82.

I could sense dad seething in the kitchen as he said goodbye to the locksmith and closed the back door. It was deathly quiet. And then dad walked into my room, handed me a folded piece of paper, and walked out. I open it and read this short verse:

"No more keys in locks, my lad,
for ten bucks it cost your dad."

Honest to Jesus, I think I really would have preferred a good beating, but that just wasn't my dad's style.

Monday, March 1

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March 1, Monday - Bud home with a cold, I spent most of the day in bed - just tired. Sleet and snow. Cold tonight. Put gravel in driveway and back yard.

March 2, Tuesday - Had store (zone) meeting today. Came home and went right to bed - sore throat & cold. Bud went bowling until 11:30

March 3, Wednesday - Feel better today. Got things pretty well caught up in office. Went to chiropractor. Falling apart.



Another short post. Mom is increasingly tired and feels listless much of the time. Some of this is the winter blahs, some of this is a general sense of futility. An additional factor will be revealed soon.

Bowling until 11:30 for an eighth-grader. Who's spolied? A Tuesday night men's league has several important functions: 1. Bowling with men whose games are far superior to my own helped me become a better bowler. 2. It started to pull me out of my shell. 3.The guys on my team looked the other way when I sneaked a drink of their beer. 4. I learned a lot of interesting new words.

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. 

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.