Saturday, June 19

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June 19, Saturday - Took Bud to Susan's for swimming. Marv and Sandy went fishing. Such a quiet day. Baked a cake, waxed the floors, and took a bath.

June 20, Sunday - Father's Day. Mom's birthday. Nice day. went to church and then took Marv to dinner at Waid's. Good meal. Went over to Mom's in evening. Frank and Jean were there. Jean's hearing is much improved. Thank goodness.

June 21, Monday - Marv and I washed. Then I paid rent and went to store. Stayed home in evening. Not much doing. Went downtown and bought two new dresses. Bud went to drive-in and got in at 1:30 a.m.

My cousin Susan was my closest relative on the Patton side of the family. She lived near the Wyandotte-Johnson County line in Kansas City, Kansas. We had always been pals, and when the family gathered at Pansy's, we always found ways to entertain ourselves.

Susan belonged to the Sun and Surf Swim Club out on County Line Road. Although I was recovering from the Mother of All Sunburns, I jumped at the chance to go hang out with Susan and her pals. Susan was two years older than I was, and was thus far more sophisticated and way more clever than I was. Her friends were smart, confident, and popular. They teased me mercilessly. It was like landing on Venus.

Most of my time this trip was spent preening and trying figure out how to wear my hair. I had given up the little dabs of Brylcreem and the polished Princeton haircut I had been wearing for years in favor of a more Beach Boys inspired fluffy mop, with just the right amount of front coverage. Not Beatles-style by any means, but certainly not my previous L7 square look, either. I'm sure I looked a fool, but I was so unaware of my place in the universe, it really didn't matter. I added a light spritz of peroxide to the front to add a bit of highlights. Jesus, really?

It must have been a special day indeed to break out of the Crane's Cafeteria rut and head over to Waid's for dinner for Father's Day. We always made a fuss over such days.

My aunt Jean's hearing has improved. Good thing. We were starting to yell at her so she could hear us. Family gatherings had started to sound like Sundays in Little Italy, except we didn't have anyone named Anthony to yell at, and there was no Caruso to be heard.

Monday is wash day, and mom went to Cirese's and paid the rent, ran downtown and just generally puttered. I get my puttering gene from mom. Man, I really hate puttering.

Mom and dad rented their house on 11th Street from Joe and Mary Cirese. My uncle Lawrence worked for them as a handyman and maintenance worker. When we moved into the house in 1955, the rent was set at $60 per month. That equals the buying power of about $575 in today's dollars. When the Cirese's son died in a horrific car crash in 1960, mom and dad sent flowers to the funeral home and visited before the funeral mass. Mary Cirese took my mom aside and told her that as long as she lived, she would never pay a dollar more in rent than she did on that day. My mom moved out of our house in 1978 to live in an assisted living complex. Her last rent payment was for $60. Mary Cirese was a saint. She died in 1999 at the age of 97.

I went to the drive-in, although mom doesn't say who I went with. There are only two possibilities - I might have gone with Ron and Mike, or I might have gone with dad's fishing buddy Sandy. I preferred Ron and Company because of the movie choices. Ron would have been more likely to go see Beach Party movies, and Sandy and her friends were more chick-flick and drama prone. There were, however, additional benefits to hanging out with Sandy.

Usually, it was Sandy, one of her girlfriends and me. We sat three across the front seat, gnawing on drive-in corn dogs and pizza, and slurping huge Cokes, and more or less tried to track with the movie. Sometimes we parked ourselves on a blanket on the hood of her car.

It took an entirely new turn the first time Sandy invited two friends. Sandy and her original friend sat up front, and I shared the back seat with a younger girl, who we'll call Friend Number Two. (Kevin help me, I can't remember her name.) She was maybe five feet tall, slightly built, freckled, had short-cropped hair, and was a bit high-strung, as I remember. The second it got dark enough for the movie to start, she peeled off her shirt and settled in, now topless, to snuggle up against me and watch the movie. I sensed that I was the unwitting and red-faced butt of a giggly girl-joke, but I really didn't care. It's difficult to explain how unprepared I was for all of this.

For a shy fourteen-year-old, the proximity of compact and unfettered teenage breasts in the back seat of an old Dodge was like a birthday, Christmas and the Fourth of July all rolled into one. My blushing, stammering overreaction to her sudden partial nudity made her laugh. She encouraged me to make the best of the situation. This routine happened maybe a three or four times that summer.

I kinda wish I could remember her name. Nah.

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.

Tuesday, February 16

February 16, Tuesday - (In the margin - Stayed up late last night & watched "Tall Story"! Cute.) Snow was forecast, but the sun is shining. Bud did wear his new pants to school. He gets initiated into the speech club today.

February 17, Wednesday - Had cash audit at store. Thought sure we'd get written up on bad checks, but after juggling, Ray said we had to have 2! Happy Day!

February 18, Thursday - So tired today. Bud in program tonight and tomorrow night at school. Mom's cold is some better, but Marv doesn't feel very well.


The movie "Tall Story" must have been the Late Movie on channel 5. Would have aired at 10:30 p.m. or so. None of the three stations stayed on the air after midnight. There were distinct differences in their respective sign-offs - WDAF, channel 4, the NBC affiliate, signed off with a baritone singing "The Lord's Prayer", albeit a Baptist version  - "debts" versus "trespasses". KCMO, channel 5, representing CBS, signed off with a display of martial firepower superimposed over an American Flag while The Star Spangled Banner played. I honestly don't remember what KMBC, channel 9, ABC did to sign off. In all cases, after the sign-off, the screen went to static and white noise, usually until 6:00 a.m.

Of course Bud wore his new pants to school. It was the Bud thing to do. Today I get my badge of honor from Taming of the Crew, the Speech Club.

I'm not sure what program I was in. There are really only two choices - a band concert, or a speech event, probably an oratory. Since mom didn't mention helping me work on my speech coming up to this, I'm going with band.

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.