Chapter Four - Capitol Page to Schwinn

Chapter Four
Capitol Page to Schwinn

I got my first paying job when I was in the 4th grade at Central Park. My aunt Mary, an older sister of dad, was able to get me onto the staff at the state capitol as a page in the State Senate. Aunt Mary worked at the capitol as either the department head or one of the supervisor in a department that handle some kind of licenses. That’s what I remember anyway. She was also very active in the local political party. As a page in the senate I was basically a messenger boy. As I remember there were four to six of us kids, mostly boys but I believe there were some girls, working in the senate and there were more pages over in the House of Representatives. We would sit in chairs up by the podium in the front of the Senate and a senator would hold up a message or possibly a bill he wanted introduced. One of us would scurry over to the senator and either take the copy of the bill up front to an "in basket" or their message to whomever they wanted it delivered. Sometimes that would mean taking a message over to the House. It was an interesting job and I enjoyed doing it. I worked there for one year’s session. Mom I guess worked something out with the school for me to miss some classes. I guess the school felt the experience was a good learning opportunity for me. A couple of things that I remember about the work in the senate were that the senators didn’t really seem to pay a lot of attention to what was going on but I probably was missing something. :-) :-) The other thing was that sometimes somebody would send a senator a bushel of large red delicious apples. I guess to gain some kind of influence, and they would give each of us pages an apple.

Now what would a 4th grader do with all that new found wealth. Buy a nice, new Schwinn bicycle. Dad and Gary took me downtown to the bicycle shop and I picked one out and paid for it. In those days it was cash and carry – no credit cards. Now here’s the irony of the tale. Dad didn’t feel I was old enough or have the experience to ride the bicycle home. So how were we going to get it home. We couldn’t take it in the car. You probably have already guessed. Yep, Gary rode it home. He was the first one to ride my nice, new shinny bike. Oh well, over the years I’ve forgiven him. I got a lot of use out of that bike and it will reappear later in this saga.

While we’re in the subject area of the Capitol building, there are a couple of things I remember about it. First, on the main floor in one of the wings was a huge, impressive mural of John Brown at Harper’s Ferry. He was a fiery man in history during the Civil War times. Kansas was a very bloody state during the Civil War due to the fact that it was a swing state divided almost equally between pro-slavery and abolitionists.

The other thing that stands out about the capitol building was climbing to the top of the dome. Getting up there was quite an adventure but the 360 degree panorama of Topeka was worth it. You could take an elevator up to 4th or 5th floor where there was a circular gallery that went around the edge of the base of the dome from which you would have an unobstructed view all the way down to the bottom floor. A bit breath taking in itself but nothing compared to the final ascent. You went up another level of stairs around the outer edge and then there were approximately thirty stairs suspended on nothing reaching up to a center, spiral, opened staircase up to the top. Once at the top you went out through a door to a viewing area encircling the top of the dome. Once you got up there it was not spooky; however, you can’t stay up there forever. Coming back down was as frightening or more so than going up. The last I heard they closed the dome and you could no longer have that harrowing experience.

In the next chapter steam locomotives.