Saturday, July 10

July 10, Saturday - Went to store and picked up keys. Came home, turned on air conditioner and stayed inside rest of the day. The kids at the store gave me $20 for my birthday.

July 11, Sunday - Stayed home all day. Slept till 10:30 - too late to go to church. Such a heathen. Neighborhood very quiet.

July 12, Monday - Got ready for work tomorrow. Got hair fixed, etc.

$20 in 1965 equals $158 today!

Mom finds refuge in the dry, air conditioned air. Summer is Kansas city often feels like being slapped with a hot, wet, towel. Heat from the high plains coupled with humidity from the Gulf of Mexico creates a gooey stew of atmosphere. It takes all day for laundry to dry on the clothesline.

Mom now faces the reality of going back to work after four months sick leave. I'm surprised she lasted as long as she did. Mom had no hobbies, wasn't much of a reader, and her social life revolved mostly around her family. I'm sure she was about to crawl out of her skin dealing with dad and me.

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, 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.

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