Chapter Fifteen - Adagio and Apache

Chapter Fifteen
Adagio and Apache

Memories don’t always come back in nice chronological order. I must first talk about the arrival of our sister, Ginger. In December of 1946 Ginger joined our family. I remember a few months before her birth that mom told Gary & I we were going to have a new brother or sister. Back then the only way you could tell ahead of time if the expected baby was going to be a boy or a girl was how a needle suspended on a thread would move over the pregnant mother’s abdomen. As I remember we were quite excited about having a new brother or sister and I must say she has never been a disappointment.

Let’s move back ahead to my junior year in high school. I believe that Ginger was about seven years old at the time. Mom wanted her to have ballet lessons, but there was no money for that. So, undaunted she made a deal with Dorothy Flory to give Ginger ballet lessons if I would dance exhibition for the Dorothy Flory Dance Studios. That of course meant that Dorothy would have to give me dance lessons as well for free. She paired me up with her best dancer Linda Larson who was a grade behind me in school. Linda was a great girl and I really enjoyed dancing with her. We did Adagio which was a kind of combination ballet with ballroom dancing including lifts. Fortunately Linda was a nice petite girl. We also did Apache which was more ballet with lifts but done in the costume and style of the Left Bank in Paris. Linda & I performed in several reviews for Dorothy Flory as well as appearing in shows at Topeka High School.

Another dancing experience I remember happened in my high school years also and brings to mind something Gladys Knight says in one of her CD albums about “dance parties in the basement with the blue lights". Several of our mothers arrange for a group of us teenagers to be given ballroom dance lessons in the basement of one of the mother’s home. It was a good experience and in those days as Gladys says “you danced with your partner – you didn’t have to go looking for her.” One of the songs that was popular to dance to was Rosemary Clooney’s “You Belong to Me”. She became George Clooney’s aunt.

Another thing that we would do for entertainment was to have parties on a sand bar in the middle of a small river or creek. It was the kind of activity you’d see in one of the old Annette Funicello and Frankie Avlon movies except they took place in Kansas and not at the beach in California. We went on hayrides too only as I remember they used a tractor to pull the hay wagon and not horses. I remember Gramps use to say that taking a girl home from a date in a horse drawn buggy was better than a car because you didn’t have to steer the buggy.

Another major activity I was involved in was being the editor of our Sr. Class yearbook. It was kind of a prediction book. All 500+ seniors were in the book with a little blurb on each and predicting what they would become. I basically had to coordinate all the research, writing, publishing, etc. It was an interesting challenge and I think we came up with a pretty good product. The “Sunflower” was our school yearbook and was a typical yearbook.

In my junior year I was involved with AFS, American Field Service. AFS would sponsor exchange students for a one school year program. Our exchange student for my junior year was Adele Berg from Norway. That was probably my first experience of knowing and having a friend from another country. The summer after her year with us a busload of exchange students from Norway came through Topeka and stayed over for a day or two. I believe AFS is still active and a great program.

I made a major decision during my senior year. I had been bitten by the drama bug and wanted to pursue a career in the movies but what could a young boy in Kansas do? I read a magazine article about a well known actor, Glenn Ford, who had attended the Pasadena Playhouse theatre school. I became convinced that was the route for me. But a major obstacle stood in my way – money. So, I decided I would go into the air force where after a four year hitch could get education money under the GI Bill of Rights. However, the government threw me a curve ball in the first part of 1955 the year I would graduate from THS. They were canceling the GI Bill of Rights. I would have to have enlisted before the school year was over to qualify for the existing bill. Well, I decided I needed to graduate and so, I enlisted in July after graduating hoping they would put the bill back in during my enlistment. They didn’t but I was able to save up the money during my enlistment period. Next chapter a slight chronological detour to Scouting before going on with my tour in the USAF.

Editor’s Note: In doing some research for this chapter I came across a photocopy of a little booklet on my relative William Carroll Means mentioned in “Chapter Eight – Gramps”, who was an itinerant preacher. I had stated that his circuit was in Kansas but I found out it was in southwest Iowa.

Chapter Fourteen - Topeka High School

Chapter Fourteen
Topeka High School

Topeka High was a good school and had a pretty good size enrollment. There were about 500 senior students in our graduating class. The school building itself was of classic style architecture basically in the form of an “X” with the wings having three floors. At the center there was a tall gothic looking tower which was the main entrance.

When I entered THS as a sophomore I started down the athletic path and went out for football. I had played well enough in Jr. High to have a bit of a reputation, but at the high school level I didn’t weigh enough nor was I fast enough to play the position of fullback well. Midway through the season a change of path was made for me. One day during practice I was running a kickoff back up the field when I was tackled with enough force and the right place to tear a cartilage in my left knee. What got to me was it was practice and I didn’t get the glory of being helped off the field with the fans applauding. In fact there wasn’t much sympathy at all. That injury had me on crutches for the start of the basketball season so I was late trying out for that and didn’t have the skills to make the team. Undaunted, I went out for swimming and BF Gary Rowles was trying out too. I remember once in the early part of the season at practice I was racing another swimmer in the backstroke and giving it my all. I really did give it my all. On getting out of the pool I went in to the locker room and vomited. And to top it off, the other swimmer beat me badly. So much for my Mark Phelps career! Over the summer I worked in a frozen eggs & poultry processing factory in the cold storage area and one of the other workers accidentally ran a hand truck of frozen turkeys upon the heel of my foot. So much for football that fall. So, I decided to focus on student government and drama.

In my sophomore year another one of my good friends, Carter Umbarger and I combined our campaign efforts in running for Sophomore Representatives. Carter won one of the representative positions, but I didn’t make it. So, I became the Student Council’s Parliamentarian. I had to make sure everything went by the by-laws.

The three plays I remember doing at THS were “The Barretts of Wimpole Street” the story of the English poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. I played one of Elizabeth’s brothers complete with jacket with tails. I played an elderly border Mr. Hide in “I Remember Mama”, and the taxi cab driver in “Harvey” about a loveable man who’s constant companion is an imaginary six foot rabbit named Harvey.

I was an organizer in high school. I was involved with putting on musical reviews and a principle designer and coordinator of our Jr.-Sr. Prom which we held in the school cafeteria which we had fixed up like a night club. We called it Club 55 because that was the year we graduated high school – 1955.

Speaking of the school cafeteria during my sophomore and junior years I worked in the cafeteria at lunch time to earn my lunch. I would work for half the lunch period and have the other half to eat. We had pretty good hot meals like roast beef, mashed potatoes, a vegetable and a hot roll. Also, on the working subject both Gary and I caddied at the local golf course on weekends. We could make $3.50 for carrying double plus tips. We also mowed lawns to make some spending money. (this was pre-high school days) It doesn’t sound like much but remember it only cost 35 cents for the adult ticket at the Coed. Kids today can’t make spending money like that because adults are doing those jobs. I guess that’s enough for this chapter. In the next chapter Adagio & Apache.

Chapter Thirteen - The Schools

Chapter Thirteen
The Schools

Let’s first touch on school segregation a little. My elementary school, Central Park, was segregated; however, the kids never knew or considered the issue. At that time everyone went to a school in their neighborhood and so if a neighborhood was predominantly of one ethnic group that’s the group you’d find in the school. Both Crane Jr. High and Topeka High schools were integrated. At Crane we had both colored students and white students but I don’t remember any Mexican students. At Topeka High we had all three ethnic groups but for the most part all the groups lived and kept to themselves. “De facto segregation” was the term applied to this custom. It meant that ethnic groups were segregated by fact not law. While we’re on terms I first remember using the term “negro”; then came “colored people” which was somewhat interchangeable with “negro”. Those terms dropped out of usage and we went to “Blacks”, and now the current term in usage is “African American”. Those of Latin American decent were first called “Mexican” but now the term most generally used is “Hispanic”. Those of Japanese decent were called “Japs” or “Nips” during World II and usually used in a derogatory way. I don’t think any of the different ethnic groups thought that much about segregation. Most people felt “that’s just the way it is.” It wasn’t until much later after moving to California that I became aware that the Supreme Court case “Brown vs the Board of Education” involved the school system in Topeka. (Note: in adding this link I found that there was school busing in Topeka at that time something I was never aware of)

At Crane Jr. High I was very active in sports participating in football, basketball, track and softball. I lettered in both football and track. My brother was a “jock” going before me and I don’t think studies were ever his strong suit. I usually did pretty well in school getting mostly “A’s” and “B’s”. I also remember being in at least one stage play at Crane. It was about a submarine crew stranded deep below the waters and the trials and tensions of the crew. I don’t remember the name of the play, but I do remember growing a beard for the play. I think mostly because I could grow a beard something most of the boys my age couldn’t do.

A couple of more memories from Crane were working at a drug store and my first kiss. I worked at a drug store which was a couple of blocks from school and I worked after I got out of school. One of jobs was to make syrup for the soda fountain. We would fill these gallon size glass jars with water and add sugar up to about a third of the jar. Every once in a while we would shake the jars so that the sugar would dissolve. Once the sugar dissolved we would add flavoring and then it was ready to make soda fountain drinks. Another job I had at the drug store was to deliver pharmacy orders to the customers’ homes. I used my trusty Schwinn bike not only to get to and from work but to do the deliveries. I also used my bike to get to football practice after I finished work. The coach let me report to practice late on the days we had practice. The football field wasn’t at the school but was only a few blocks away. I have good memories of my Jr. High years which included dances in the school gym. They were a “get your back up off the wall!” kind of affairs where kids are just beginning to relate to each other. And that first kiss was memorable from the standpoint it probably took me about a half an hour to work up the courage to kiss her. The “her” was Sally Coleman but I don’t remember dating her after that. It wasn’t because it was a bad experience, but it just didn’t happen. After I worked up the courage to kiss her, the next thing I knew I was out on the street walking home. Most of the people that I went to Crane with went on to go to Topeka High which I’ll cover in the next chapter. Oh, Crane was right across the street from the Fair Grounds that I mentioned in “Gramps” Chapter Eight.

Chapter Twelve - The Radio

Chapter Twelve
The Radio


Bill Cosby in one of his comedy routines talks about their old floor model radio with 100 knobs most of which didn’t do anything. Ours didn’t have 100 knobs but it had a lot of knobs and looked similar to the one above. There was one knob to turn the radio off & on and I believe a separate knob for the volume. Then there was a larger knob like the white knob in the above picture with which you turned the radio dial above the white knob to tune to your station. You didn’t really use the rest of the knobs.

Remember there was a time when homes didn’t have TV sets. We would come home after school and sit on the floor next to the radio and listen to shows like “Jack Armstrong the All American Boy”, “Captain Midnight”, “Terry and the Pirates” and others. There were more family oriented radio shows too like “Fiber McGee and Molly”, “Red Skelton”, “Intersanctum”, “The Shadow” and one of my favorites “Jack Benny”. “Jack Benny” had a routine where he would go to the railroad station and you’d hear the track announcer say “train leaving on Track 5 for Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga”. It wasn’t until I moved to California that I realized that those were actual towns but that a railroad track would have to go all over the map to go through those towns.

Madison Avenue was selling to the kids back then too. The radio shows would make offers that you could send in say 50 cents and a cereal box top to get your own Atomic Decoder ring. I remember that the Lone Ranger show had an offer for building your own Western town. You’d get a paper map which you would put down and then put cardboard cut out building, which you assembled, on the map to build your town. They had different maps and buildings you could get of course by sending more money and box tops.

Some of the radio shows made the transition to TV such as “The Lone Ranger”, “Red Skelton”, “Jack Benny” and “Amos and Andy”. There were others too. One radio show that eventually made the transition to TV later when color TV came in was “The Green Hornet”.

While we’re on the subject of communications let’s take a moment to talk a little about Alexander Graham Bell’s invention the telephone. I seem to remember that at one time we had a “candlestick rotary” telephone like this:



I know that for several years we had a rotary dial phone like this:

The move from the old rotary dial phone to the push button phones was just the beginning of the communication technology revolution. When Ann & I went to the 1989 convention in Warsaw, Poland the in-flight movie both going and coming back was a Tom Seleck movie “My Alibi”. In it he had a mobile phone in his car which was built into a console between the front seats of the car. While in Poland one of our tour guides was very happy one day. We found out she had just got a telephone in her home which she had been waiting twelve years to get. Of course today everyone is walking around “wired” as they say. This high-tech communications has both a good and a bad side to it, I think.

Just a couple of more words about communications/entertainment. I remember when television came to Topeka. I was in Jr. High and one of my school mates was one of the first that I knew of whose family had a TV. Of course at first it was only in black & white and the screen was not large. TV programming would start about 7:00 AM and go off at midnight. They would always sign off playing the national anthem and showing a picture of the American flag. When the anthem was over they would show a test pattern for awhile that had a picture of an American Indian chief on it. Some of the shows that were popular in those days were: “Gunsmoke”, “Show of Shows” with Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, “Truth or Consequences”, “The Fugitive” with David Jansen, “Wanted Dead or Alive” starring Steve McQueen and “Paladin” with Richard Boone. TV families included “Ozzie and Harriet”, “Father Knows Best”, “Leave It To Beaver” and who could forget “The Munsters” and “The Adams Family”. One of the first shows to go to color was “Bonanza” with the Cartwrights. With the advent of television came TV Trays and TV Diners both are still with us in some form or another. Both have probably been detrimental to the family evening meals together. Next time we’ll return to the school.

Chapter Eleven - The Coed Theatre

Chapter Eleven
The Coed Theatre

Our neighborhood movie theatre was called the Coed. It was a couple of blocks West of Central Park Elementary school; so, in easy walking distance. It was in a building with two other businesses. On one side was a barber shop and the other side there was a donut shop. The price of an admission was 14 cents for children and 35 cents for adults. Saturday matinees were where you wanted to be. I don’t remember how much the donuts cost, but usually we had enough money to get into the movie and to get a donut. In those days Hollywood was turning out movies like a factory. We would get a double feature, a cartoon, previews of coming attractions and maybe an episode of a serial or maybe a newsreel. The movies usually changed twice a week or at least once a week. Most of the movies were in black & white and a square format.

Many of the features we would watch would be cowboy and Indian movies with stars like Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and Hopalong Cassidy. Hopalong Cassidy was cool because he was always dressed in black with a black hat and yet he was a good guy. He had two pearl handle six-shooters and of course was a crack shot. There was Roy Rogers’ sidekick Gabby Hayes who was a favorite of us all. I remember reading somewhere once where a Native American said he used to like the cowboy and Indian movies and always cheered for the cowboys. He didn’t identify with the Indians at all because Hollywood’s version never came close to reality. I’ve never heard an African American say this but I imagine the same thing could be said about Hollywood’s African natives in the movies like the Tarzan series. Johnny Weismiller was a favorite but his sidekick Cheetah, the chimpanzee, was the character that captured my heart.

The Coed would have raffles sometimes at the Saturday matinees and one time I won a chicken. How proud I was to take that home to Mom to fix for dinner.

The Coed theatre as I mentioned was a short walk from home; however, you had to go through Central Park which usually was no problem. If Gary and I would go to see a Frankenstein or Wolfman movie and we didn’t get out until after dark, we would make it through Central Park in record time especially if there were a full moon.

When I got a little older, Jr. High age, it was no longer the matinees that held the charm but either Friday or Saturday night at the movies. I remember going to the movies with your girlfriend and trying to get up the courage to put your arm around her during the movies. Once you got up the courage then you were faced with a decision. It didn’t take long for your arm to start going numb from resting on the bony, narrow top of the seat. So, did you brave it out to impress the girl or remove your arm for awhile and get the sensation back, maybe putting your arm back later.

We had two large theatres downtown that we would go to occasionally called the Jayhawk and the Grand. I remember that my mother took me to Kansas City to see one of the first major color movies, “Yankee Doodle Dandy”. It starred James Cagney who normally played a gangster type, but in this movie he was a song and dance man. The first 3D movie I remember seeing was “Bawana Devil”. There were a lot of throwing spears directly at the audience and that type of thing. One of the technological movie breakthroughs that I remember was “The Robe” starring Richard Burton and Victor Mature. It was a biblical picture about what was suppose to be a robe Jesus used just before his death. It was in CinemaScope which widen the picture format about double. It was more like man’s natural vision. One other thing that stands out in my memory about the downtown theatres were that negroes or colored people ( I don’t remember which term was being used then) were required to sit in the balcony. The Coed didn’t have a balcony. I could probably go on and on about movie memories but there’s already lots of books published on that. So, instead in the next chapter we’ll go into the radio shows.

Chapter Ten - The Hood Topeka Style

Chapter Ten
The Hood Topeka Style

Our Hood consisted of just a couple of blocks. Across the alley from our home lived Roger Givens, Gary’s age, and Dwayne Givens who was between Gary’s and my age. Next to the Givens was another boy about Gary’s age. Down Fillmore street on our side live Penn Morton one of my BF’s and on the corner beyond him was Joe Morgan. There were a couple boys up the street that got into some of our activities but the ones I named were really our group. Across the street from our house there was a vacant lot that was about 40 yards long and 20 yards wide (it seemed bigger). The lot was our football field. On the back of the Given’s garage on the alley side was a backboard and rim, our basketball court. The alley was also our “kick the can” arena. In “kick the can” one person is IT and everybody else hides. If the IT person finds someone before they can run in and touch the home base yelling “free”, then they’re caught and held there at home base. Now here’s the good part, if someone can run in while the IT person is looking for people and they “kick the can” everyone is set “free”. The IT person has to reset the can and start all over again. Boy! That was fun. (unless you were the IT person)



One more memory involving a group of us kids. There was an elderly couple that lived next to our football lot who were not the friendliest of people. One Halloween a group of us went “Trick or Treating” and to our surprise when we got to their door they invited us in. So, we were already to receive some candy for our treat when the old man pulled out his “jew’s harp” (or mouth harp). A mouth harp is a small metal instrument made in a U shape with a thin rectangular piece attached at the bottom of the U. A person holds the mouth harp in one hand and with their lips grasps the edges of the protruding parts of the U. Then they vibrate the thin metal piece rhythmically with the other hand using the mouth as a resonator. All the old swashbuckler movies had a crewmember that would play a “jew’s harp”. So that was our “treat” --- or maybe it was a “trick”. (To hear what they sound like click here)

There’s a strange phenomenon that occurs with a group of boys when they get together. They try to get somebody to get into a fight. Well, I was one of those somebody’s. Joe Morgan was the other somebody. Joe was physically kind of a “bully” type but wasn’t really a bully as far as I remember. Even though they would egg us on, especially the older boys, Joe and I never obliged them.

A couple of other memories of my younger days in the hood were more of a personal nature. During World War II most kids’ daily life reflected the events going on in the world. Penn and I would be down in his basement and we would turn some chairs over on their side adding some boxes to form our B17 Flying Fortress. With our vivid imagination we would be on a bombing run over the heart of Germany. As Indiana Jones would say, “I hate Nazis!”

A couple of more memories of World War II, in our home we had wooden sliding doors between the living room and the dining room. Gary and I would recreate adventures from the war movies popular those days. The sliding doors would actually be a hidden entryway to our secret radio room where we would send the allies important espionage intelligence. Of course, the Gestapo would never find us out.

Another of my BF’s, Gary Rowles, and I got this small, illustrated book on Judo. The illustrations would use an American GI executing the different judo moves on a German soldier. We would go to the church gym and put a mat down to learn and practice the judo moves. It was a good thing we never had to actually put our skills to use.

As I started this section of World War II a host of memories came flooding back to my mind. “Lucky Strikes goes to War!” Luck Strikes was a popular cigarette of those days. I don’t think they still make them. In those days it was mostly men who smoked cigarettes and it was kind of a Marlboro thing. Anyway, at that time they would use an aluminum foil wrapper on the cigarettes. Aluminum was needed for the war efforts so kids and adults would collect old Lucky Strikes aluminum wrappers and turn them in to be recycled for the war efforts. The makers of Lucky Strikes decided to package their cigarettes without the aluminum foil wrapper and thus “Lucky Strikes goes to war!” Chewing gum was also wrapped in aluminum wrappers and were collected too.

US Saving Bonds was another big patriotic thing of the war. School kids would buy stamps for 10 cents or a quarter and paste them into these Saving Bonds books. I believe when you filled a book you could turn them in for a $25 Saving Bond. So, school kids were lending money to the government for the war efforts.

I probably could go on and on, the Andrew Sisters, Glen Miller and the German POW’s detained at the Veterans Hospital on the edge of Topeka, but I won’t. I do remember though when the war ended. First the war in Europe, people went wild in the downtown streets of Topeka when the news of peace in Europe was announced. I don’t really remember the announcement of peace with Japan.

Next Chapter – The Coed Theatre

Chapter Nine - The Old Red Mill

Chapter Nine
The Old Red Mill

When we first moved to the home on Fillmore two blocks down at 17th St there was an active grain mill. I guess we lived close enough to the Southwest edge of Topeka that farmers could bring their grain in to the mill to be ground and bagged. However, it closed down soon after we moved to the Fillmore home. For awhile it was an adventurous place for the local boys to explore. Advancing time was soon to cause its demise and it was torn down.

Another relic of earlier times was the street itself that we lived on. It was constructed from hand laid bricks. By the time we moved there asphalt had covered over the center of the street with bricks only being visible at the edges. One thing I remember about that street was the Bauchman’s ice cream wagon. I don’t mean a motorized van vehicle. I mean a horse drawn wagon with bells on the horse’s collar. It was like a Norman Rockwell painting. He would have four or five gallons of ice cream in a compartment behind where he sat driving the horse. Between scooping out ice cream cones for the kids, he would spit out some of the tobacco he had been chewing on. Fortunately he would miss the ice cream. Bauchman made some good ice cream.

We also had a man in a mule drawn wagon loaded with country produce come down our alley about once a week. He’d have corn of the cob, watermelons, potatoes, string green beans and other items. Like the old red mill advancing time took its toll.

Another relic that lost out to modernization was the coal burning furnace that we had in the basement to heat the house. There was a coal bin in the Southeast corner of the basement that would periodically get filled with coal delivered to the house. I don’t remember too much about filling the furnace with coal, but I do remember that Gary and I had as one of our chores to carry out of the house the cinders left over after the coal burned. When dad and mom upgraded and replaced the coal furnace with a natural gas furnace our chore changed from taking out the cinders to making sure a water reservoir was kept full. The water was added to the heated air so that there was a comfortable amount of humidity in the house. Of course, there were times when it wouldn't get filled and it would be a matter of “it was your turn – no, it was your turn.” Dad wouldn’t be happy with either one of us.

A lot of things happened in the basement. Californians for the most part don’t know about basements, but you go anywhere East of the Rockies you’ll find that most homes have a basement. I remember helping my mom can fruits and vegetables in the basement. I remember canning tomatoes, pears, peaches and strawberries. With the strawberries we would make preserves. I remember getting bushels of apples but I don’t remember what we did with them. The others, we would peel, cut up and cook and then put them into a Mason jar. At the top of the fruit you put a layer of paraffin which would seal the fruit/vegetables and then put a seal type lid on top of the jar. Later on in the fall or winter when you opened up a jar of strawberry preserves and put it on toast you really had a treat. Good enough to make Smuckers jealous. Sometimes dad would make grape wine in the basement. That was interesting.

While we’re on the subject of household activities, let’s take a look at doing laundry. Again, down in the basement, we had a washing machine. However, in those days the washing machine was just a tub with an agitator driven by an electrical motor. When the clothes had finished the wash cycle, then you would put them through a ringer which was attached to the top of the washing machine and could be rotated to different positions. The ringer was two roller with a crank handle on one side that you turned to force the clothes through the turning rollers. You would ring out the soapy water and put the clothes in a tub of clear water and swish them around to get the soap out. Then you would put them through the ringer again to get the clear water out. Put them in a basket and take them out to the back yard to hang on the clothesline to dry. At least you didn’t have to pump quarters into it.

Another activity in the basement was more entertaining. We had a ping pong table and we got a lot of play out of it. I don’t remember mom playing but dad did. Also, Mr. Cayhill our Prudential Insurance man would come by once a month to pick up the insurance premiums. Then he would come down to the basement and play ping pong with us. I remember him more as a friend than a sales rep.
Next chapter we’ll go to The Hood Topeka Style.

Chapter Eight - Gramps

Chapter Eight
Gramps
My mother’s father’s name was Ralph Scott McMahon, “Gramps” (that’s what we called him). My mother use to say “when our faces were dirty we were shanty Irish and we were called Mac-Ma-hon, but otherwise we were Mc- Man. I don’t know much of anything about Gramps’ brothers or sisters. I don’t even know if he had any. What I remember though is that his family came to Kansas by wagon from either Indiana or Ohio. One time in doing some research on our family history on his side I came across an article about one of our relatives being a fairly well known itinerant preacher who had a preaching circuit there in Kansas.

Gramps had four daughters and one son. My mother was the third daughter. Her two older sisters were Aunt Grace and Aunt Midge and her younger sister was Aunt Fran. Her brother, who I believe was older than her was Uncle Roy. Gramps was a carpenter by trade and in those days that included cabinet making. I remember his tool room and the carpentry tools he had. There were no power tools. If he wanted to drill a hole in some wood, he would use a brace and bit. A brace was a tool that had a pommel like handle at the top connected to a shaft that had a U shape bend in it and a receptacle at the bottom to hold a drill bit. A craftsman would hold the brace and bit vertical to the board and then apply downward pressure with one hand on the pommel while with the other hand he would grasp the U shape handle, rotating it in a circular manner to cause the bit at the bottom to drill a hole in the wood. In Gramps’ day cabinet makers built cabinets and furniture using wooden pegs instead of nails and screws. Furniture was not put together with a powered staple gun like today.

As long as I can remember Gramps lived with my Uncle Brownie and Aunt Midge there in Cherryvale. He had a small room at the back of the house that had a bed, chest of drawers and a large easy chair. His bedroom wall was a gallery of grandkids’ pictures. I don’t remember how many grandkids and great grandkids he had but it was more than thirty. Gramps had a habit of sitting in the front room of the house reading the paper in the evening. He fell asleep while reading one evening and never woke up. He was in his mid 90’s when he died.

Going to the Kansas State Fair were probably my fondest memories of Gramps. The fairgrounds was probably four to five blocks from our home there on Fillmore St. When the fair was going on we could sit out back of the house and listen to all the side show barkers at the midway. A traveling carnival would always be the highlight of the State Fair. I remember going down to the fair with Gramps for many of the State Fairs which came around every year at the end of summer. We would visit the agricultural exhibits with the award winning farm produce. We’d also go through all the barns checking out the prize winning sheep, pigs and cattle. Also, we would watch the horse pulling contest where they would load up sleds with bales of hay or some other matter to see which team of horses could pull the heaviest load. The horses were later replaced by tractors – not quite the same. But the races that were held at the grandstand was a real favorite with Gramps. Now I’m talking about harness racing (and I feel like I ought to break into a chorus of “You got Trouble” from the “Music Man”.) If you’re not familiar with harness racing, the driver doesn’t ride on the horse like a jockey but rather rides in a small, light weight wheeled seat behind the horse. The horse had to maintain a fast trot like gait. If he broke out of that gait, the driver had to rein the horse back into the gait or be disqualified. Though gambling was not legal in Kansas, Gramps always said that the betting would be hot and heavy in the stable area. One other memory about the fair that doesn’t involve Gramps, but I want to relate it anyway was the Sally Rand sideshow. Sally Rand was I believe a somewhat famous burlesque dancer. I was too young to get inside to see the show, but of course her other dancers would put on a little bit of show on the outside to entice customers to come on in. Of course, all us young boys were right up front gawking.

One other memory of Gramps which I wouldn’t put into the category of fondest memories was a train ride with Gramps from a station in a town just a little East of Topeka down to Cherryvale. The reason it stands out in my memories is that when we made a brief stop at a station in the Southern part of Kansas I remember seeing a water fountain with a “Whites Only” sign. A little more on segregation in Kansas later.