Monday, June 7

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June 7, Monday - Feel much better. Went with Marv to pick up ingredients. Nice day. Went to take treatment. Plan to go to Colorado the last week in June with Patty. Hope it helps my mental outlook. Marv and I had a terrible row, so I went down and did washing and then Bud and I went for a ride.

June 8, Tuesday - Not much doing today. Spent most of the day sleeping.

June 9, Wednesday - Got permanent. Feel better. Raining hard. Bud went bowling and we bought two new chairs for the porch and then used them all evening.

Another day in the city. My folks battled it out - I'm guessing it had to do with Sandy and/or the bait business - probably both. I only heard my folks fight one time in my life, and I confronted them about it. They never fought in my presence again, but I know they had a few verbal Donnybrooks.

When mom and I went for a ride, it meant I was going to get to drive the Cadillac. I can't believe we all lived through this. I had so much experience behind the wheel when I finally got to take Driver's Ed in high school that the teacher would tell me where to go, usually on the freeway, and having just finished his lunch, would nap in the passenger seat until we got there, I woke him up, and we changed drivers. One day, I changed directions after he dozed off and much to the delight of three other Northeast High School students drove to the rustic confines of the old Kansas City Timing Association Drag Strip down on Front Street. We made two strong quarter-mile passes before he woke up as we pulled up to the starting line for a third go. It was the first time I ever heard a teacher say "Fuck!" I got ten detentions and a good talking to from the principal, Mr. McKenna before he commuted my sentence. He was getting up in years, and mistakenly thought I was a football player and thus, entirely blameless in all things. The other students told the story for years.

The back porch. What might be referred to as a deck these days, though not as attractively appointed. It faced Chuck Capo's junk yard, the Twelfth Street bus turnaround and the Jackson Hoe Bar. Beyond were the train tracks of the Santa fe Railroad, and the constant stream of freight and passenger trains going from Chicago to Los Angeles and back. People told me it was noisy. I didn't notice. When I moved to rural Colorado in 1972, I couldn't sleep because the train tracks were at least a mile from my bedroom window, and it was way too quiet.

Our back porch was the default portal to the house. You drove into our yard from the 11th Street side, onto a huge gravel apron and right up to the porch. The front porch, a real concrete porch, had two doors - one to what was originally the living room facing the street, and one to the parlor, or dining room. Odd layout.

What passed for our living room was staked out of the original parlor, and my folks used the living room as their bedroom. When I was very small, we all shared that bedroom, and dad used the only real bedroom as an office. It later became my room, and my bed faced the alley that fronted Jackson Court. The neighborhood teen Visigoths' favorite sport was waiting until I went to bed at night, and as I lay there reading or listening to the hapless Kansas City A's on the radio, they would creep up around the window, and stand just far enough out that my reading light wouldn't shine on them. On some agreed-upon signal, they'd all yell at once and scatter. Fuckers. I still don't like  open shades when I can't see out.

The back porch was the gathering place for the neighborhood. Good chairs were a necessity.

Chairs - they weren't "vintage" back then.

Dad held court with the kids, and mom caught up with the Ladies of Jackson Court™. Dad sent up clouds of pipe smoke - he had given up cigarettes a few years earlier when his ticker betrayed him, and as a pipe-smoker kept Sir Walter Raleigh in business. The aroma was as though he was inhaling a pile of cherry-flavored Three Musketeers bars bars wrapped in vinyl seat covers. Old vinyl seat covers. Really old.

If you don't know any pipe-smokers, they are the contemplative thinkers of the world. Decisions have to wait until the pipe is stoked, set alight, the match shaken and disposed of, and few thoughtful puffs have been negotiated, the pipe studied, relit, tamped, and puffed again. You do not hurry pipe smokers. Don't even try. The more you hurry them, the slower they get. If they smoke a pipe and also wear a hat, abandon hope, all is lost.

I tried pipe smoking a couple of times, mostly as an affectation of anti-establishment hip style, but I didn't have the patience for the damn things. Cigarettes were cheap* and easy to come by, packed the required nicotine punch, and had the cool factor that a pipe just didn't have. Cigarettes gave me credibility with my denim and Acme boots costume swagger. I started smoking when I was sixteen, and only managed to quit twenty-one years later. An horrific bicycle crash left me stuck to the couch for a few days. The ashtray was mounded so high with butts that no more would fit, so that was that.

What goes around, I suppose - I like a pipe now and again, but Sir Walter Raleigh and his fruit-salad tobacco-packing ilk need not apply. I prefer an artisanal herbal kick these days.

*I started smoking cigarettes in 1967. They cost about thirty cents per pack, the equivalent of about $2.50 today. 

Thursday, February 25

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February 25, Thursday - Cold again 5° Getting starter fixed. Fell in the store. Hope I didn't injure myself. Bud and I made out his schedule for next year. He's taking band at my suggestion.

February 26, Friday - Stopped at Mom's this morning. She's better but not her old self. Busy today, warm - 50° at 6 p.m.

February 27, Saturday - Had a good day. Felt real good and got a lot done. Spring day - 70°.

Not much to see here, but it bears mentioning that I would have been in band, no matter what Mom suggested. The push here was to step up to Varsity "A" Band at Northeast High School while I still had classes across the street at the "Junior Building". This put me in marching band, for what that was worth, at Northeast. The marching unit was a small, ragtag, group, 25 members tops, with questionable musical talent, and marching skills to match.

Truth be known, I was pretty excited about the whole thing. After six years of trumpet in the public schools, private classical lessons, and suffering through the hormone-infused middle-school shenanigans of eighth-grade band, "A" band seemed like a free ride to Juliard. They had uniforms in the Viking signature purple and white, and silver metalflake Shako hats with white plumes. It was Meredith Wilson's "Music Man" come to life, and I loved it. Did I mention the white bucks?

I'm glad no recordings of our actual playing exist. It would be horrifying to hear that today. The best connection to come out of Varsity Band, under the direct tutelage of one Mr. Harry Bianco, was Stage Band, what most might call Jazz Band today. Here I learned to improvise, 12 bars at a time. It was a small, select group of high school musicians playing hits from the Big Band era. We visited tea rooms, women's clubs and nursing homes and played the music of their lives.  This connected me back to my folks in interesting ways. Because of this connection and a family dedicated to the musical TV stylings of Mitch Miller and His Sing-Along Gang, (don't judge) I still have a soft spot for the music of the forties. Mitch helped me appreciate mens' choruses and Welsh Mens' Choirs.

Magnus Chord Organ

My dad had an emotional attachment to music that I never could put my finger on. He encouraged me at every turn, and the songs he reacted to the most were songs that I wouldn't have guessed he would have a connection to. He bought me a Magnus chord organ from Jenkins Music when I was about twelve. I wanted something I could noodle out trumpet arrangements on, and a piano was out of the question, money-wise.

The Magnus was actually pretty cool. It was a reed organ, which meant that it was basically an accordion with legs. There was a motor inside providing air that was channeled through the reeds based on which keys were pressed. It had thirty-seven piano keys and twelve chord buttons on the left side - six major, six minor. The sound was not at all unlike a parlor pump organ, a harmonium, or a large Melodica. Sheet music was available for these things that had the key notations by number as well as the chord designations. I didn't need the numbers because I could sight-read but the chords were pretty handy, because my left hand wasn't.

Outside of Christmas and the ever-present Baptist hymnal selections, dad's request list was pretty short - "The Band Played On", "Back Home Again in Indiana", "The Banks of the Wabash", "Yankee Doodle Dandy", and not much else. I always suspected that these were songs that reminded him of his first wife, an old flame, or just another time, but dad never really said as much. There was definitely a connection to Indiana, or so it seemed. He had never been to Indiana that I was aware of. I know he was envious of my ability to read and play music, but he grew up dirt-poor, and music was a luxury when there were eight people living in a 700 square foot house in Fort Scott, Kansas.

Music was a gift my dad gave me that has lasted my entire life. He bought me my first horn and signed me up for classes without even checking with mom when I was six, and used his connections to get me a classical tutor from the Kansas City Philharmonic, and it has made an incredible difference in my life. I really should have stayed with it and done more with it, but the fact that it occupies such an important part of my being is good enough. Thank you, dad.