Daily life in Prairie Village, KS Continue reading
Jamie: The biggest event, by far, of my years in grade school was the birth of my sister Jamie on January 4, 1956. Since I had been hoping for a younger brother whom I could shape in my own image, I was bitterly disappointed at the news. I was seven years and four and a half months old, in the middle of second grade in the weird split class taught by Sr. Lucy.
I remember little about those first few years. She quickly became a very cute little girl with blonde hair and dark eyes. Both of my parents had very dark hair and brown eyes. I inherited their hair, and she got their eyes. Her hair got darker as she got older. My eyes constantly changed color but never turned completely brown. I can’t remember Jamie having any serious health issues while we were in Prairie Village.
We would often watch Romper Room (with Miss Virginia) or Captain Kangaroo while I waited for my school bus to arrive. Our favorite parts were the Tom Terrific cartoons, especially Might Manfred the Wonder Dog. Jamie called me “buzzer”, and when the Bluebird arrived, she happily announced “Bus school!”
When she was older we sometimes played cards seated on the floor in the living room. Her favorite game was war, which she almost always won. I have never been known to take losing very graciously. On one occasion, after a few defeats at war, I was frustrated enough to suggest that we play a different game called sevens and fives. I invented rules as we went along, always with some reference to seven or five, for example, “Oh, you got a deuce, 7-5=2, so you must give me five cards.” She never caught on, and I was finally victorious.
My parents sometimes joined us in the Game of Life. I did not cheat.
My dad worked in advertising and public relations. His company, Business Mens Assurance (BMA) required him to travel a few times every year. My mom also usually attended the annual meeting, which was held at some resort location like Sun Valley, ID, or Banff in Canada. On those occasions we had a babysitter. I think that my grandmother Clara took care of us once or twice, but usually the sitter was hired. Jamie and I did not like this. The ladies were nice enough, but we were used to delicious and nutritious meals every night. None of the sitters came close to reaching this standard.
On the other hand, if my dad went on a trip by himself, our meals actually improved. There were a few really tasty dishes that my dad banned from the table. There were several of these, but the most memorable one was chicken breasts wrapped in bacon and chipped beef, covered with mushrooms, and baked in cream of mushroom or cream of chicken soup. She served it over rice, which my dad detested.1
Jamie went to kindergarten at Tomahawk School when I was in the eighth grade at QHRS. I paid scant attention at the time. However, much later she told me that she had to walk to school, and on one occasion some older kids had assaulted her in some way, verbally or physically or both. That is all that I know; I have no recollection of this at all.
Jamie liked to go to Fairyland, a small amusement park on the Missouri side. Our parents took us a few times. I did not enjoy it much. Rides have never been my thing.
Medical/Physical: My health was generally good. My mom had to take me to Dr. Batty’s office to get stitched up a few times. Other than that I was pretty healthy; I probably got the flu once or twice, but I remember that I had close to perfect attendance nearly every year. I never even broke any bones.
Like everyone who was around when the polio vaccine effectively removed one gigantic worry, my mother definitely believed in inoculations. Since I hated needles, this was a problem for me, especially since my smallpox inoculation never “took”. I had to go back every year or two to try again. Several times my mother sat me down and emphasized that if there was ever an outbreak of smallpox, I must try to get inoculated.
My dental health was essentially perfect after the water got fluoridated. I had hyperdontia, an extra tooth between my upper incisors and the left canine. The dentist checked it every time that I visited his office. Finally he decided to pull it, and all of the other teeth just adjusted themselves in my gums. I never needed braces.
I got my first pair of glasses in 1959, and until the end of high school every time that I went to the optometrist I needed a stronger prescription. After I reached forty I needed reading glasses, but a decade or so later, my need for both types of lenses decreased.
I have hypermobility in the joints of my hands. In grade school I could painlessly touch every finger and my thumb on my left hand back to my wrist. My right hand was only a little less flexible. I could also slip any finger in and out of the lowest joint. I could still touch my left thumb all the way back a few years ago, but it hurt. Now my fingers sometimes painfully slip into the wrong joint by themselves, and I have to force them back.
I entertained the guys and grossed out the girls with these tricks. I also liked to show how I could wiggle my nostrils and my ears. I learned the former from a pet rabbit and the latter (both at once or one at a time) from Howdy Doody’s goofy friend, Dilly Dally.
Pets: I have a dim recollection of a pet rabbit that got away and got caught by a dog a few houses down the street. That did not end well.
I know that I also had parakeets at least twice. One was named Mickey, and one was named Nicky. I taught them both to talk.
One day a black and tan dachshund showed up in our back yard. He would not leave, and he came inside as soon as we opened the door. My dad wanted nothing to do with him, but my mom, after placing notices in all the proper places, gave him food and water. I named him Sam.
After a couple of months, when everyone but my dad had fallen in love with him, some people from a few blocks away claimed Sam. We let them have him back, of course, but the three of us were pretty upset about it.
At the time my grandmom Hazel also kept in her apartment in KC MO a slightly chubbier dachshund with the same coloring named Tippy. At some point after Sam’s departure she gave Tippy, whose real name was Donnys Perry von Kirsch, to us. He was a little more difficult to love, but, once again, three of us came around.
The problem with Tippy was that he liked to bite ankles. He had a wonderfully intuitive sense of where every creature’s Achilles’ tendon was located, and he had strong jaws. There were a few small incidents, but we learned to control him.
Tippy liked to sleep with me in my bed, and, after we had moved to Leawood, he loved to play ball with me in the living room. I would throw a handball against the brick base of the fireplace. He would chase it when it bounced back. Then we would fight over the ball, and he would growl with pleasure.
I remember that on one Easter Sunday my mother had baked a rather large ham in the morning. I don’t know why, but while we were at mass she left it on the kitchen table. Tippy somehow got up on the table and devoured about half of it. Needless to say, my mom was upset, but there was instant karma. Tippy was miserable with an upset stomach for several days.
Sports: My parents occasionally visited their friends, Boots and Fay Hedrick2, to play poker. They had a son, John, who was my age. He had a deluxe Erector Set, and a basketball hoop was in their driveway.
For some reason, I spent the afternoon at his house once, and we watched the Celtics on TV. Ever since then I have been a Celtics fan. I have never seen an NBA game in person except for one exhibition game to which Tom Corcoran invited me in the nineties.
I played football and basketball at QHRS. Separate posts document my heroics on the gridiron and (posted here and here) the hardwood (posted here).
I was an avid but not fanatical baseball card collector. I also read all of the box scores for every Major League game every day. Since there were only sixteen teams at first, this was not that burdensome.
I played 3&2 baseball. My travails and glory on the diamond are detailed here.
There was not a lot of space around our house. I was therefore very excited to discover the Wiffle Ball shortly after its commercial introduction. It allowed baseball games in confined areas. I saved up my allowance money and rode my bike to the Prairie Village shopping center to buy the original set, which consisted of a skinny wooden bat and a hollow plastic ball with holes on one side to facilitate curves.
The holes provide wind resistance. Thus, a Wiffle Ball will go nearly as fast as a hardball when it is thrown or hit, but it will slow down much more rapidly. To make the ball curve, the holes must stay on the same side of the ball throughout flight. Any spin added by the fingers or wrist is counterproductive.
The best pitch, in my opinion is thrown perfectly sidearm with the holes down. This causes the ball to sink, and, since the harder part of the ball is on top, it normally produces hard grounders or soft fly balls, both of which are usually easy outs. The spectacular pitches are straight overhand with the holes on one side or the other. Whereas a major league curve ball might break two or three feet, a Wiffle Ball will often break twice that much (over a much shorter distance), and the right curve and left curve are thrown with exactly the same motion. It is also possible to throw a sidearm riser, but the hard side is on the bottom, and so fly balls carry pretty well.
The balls did not last long. They tended to crack and tear because the bat had no “give”. Seldom did a ball last a week. A few years later a 32″ yellow plastic bat greatly improved the durability of the balls. My training with throwing and catching a Wiffle Ball did not greatly improve my performance in hardball, but i put it to good use in our pickup games at Sandia Base in 1971.
I also collected football cards and played with them in the hallway. I remember being astounded by the Charlie Ana card because his weight was listed at 300 pounds. This is a vivid memory, but it must be wrong. There is no trace of him on google.
My dad and I watched NFL games together. He liked the Chicago Bears. My favorite team was the upstart Cleveland Browns. My favorite players were Otto Graham, Lou “The Toe” Groza, and, a few years later, Jim Brown.
I went bowling at Overland Bowl a few times. They charged ten cents a line and had human pinsetters. I was not very good. I could not get the ball to curve on demand, perhaps because of my super-flexible wrists. My best game was 180, a record that stood until I rolled a 190 when I was in my fifties. That was the last game that I ever bowled.
I also remember that my grandmother Clara took me and my cousins Johnny, Terry, and Ricky bowling at least once in Leavenworth. That establishment also employed someone to set the pins. I remember this as a great time. I am pretty sure that my grandmother also treated us to some ice cream.
I never took bowling as seriously as other sports. I did not have a ball, and I had to rent shoes. I remember, however, that my parents bought Jamie and me an indoor bowling game that had vinyl pins and a hollow plastic ball. We set it up in the hallway of the house on Maple St. It was the perfect width.
King Louie was the big name in bowling allies in KC. They had automatic pinsetting machines and projectors that displayed the scores above each lane. They charged a lot more than a dime. Some of their buildings seemed like palaces to me.
My dad could not swim. My mother insisted that I take swimming lessons in the morning at the Prairie Village Pool. I think that I did this for two years, but I don’t remember the details.
I did not enjoy this activity. It usually seemed chilly to me before entering the water, and I was so cold after I got out that I could not stop my teeth from chattering. Another annoying factor was that I was a below-average swimmer. It was obvious that no matter how much I practiced, I would never be very good.
I often rode my bike to swimming lessons. One morning a German shepherd came sprinting toward me from the left. I have never been afraid of animals, but this one jumped up and bit me on the left thigh. I don’t remember what happened next, but the dog’s owners had to keep him chained up for a month to make sure that he was not rabid. My wound was not serious; I don’t even think that I needed stitches.
One great benefit of the swimming lessons was that I was able to earn the Swimming Merit Badge without much difficulty. I also took a Red Cross class that rewarded me with the Lifesaving Merit Badge, at that time the biggest impediment for most guys to attaining the rank of eagle.
No skiing or skating.
Fads: I could make the hula hoop spin for a few minutes, but I was not great at it.
In 1959 or 1960 trampoline parks started popping up like dandelions in Johnson County. I never went to one. Suddenly they all closed down, presumably because of lawsuits from people who broke an arm or leg.
The only songs on the radio that I really liked through my years in grade school were novelty songs like “Beep Beep” or the ones that featured a guy imitating Walter Winchell.
Scouting: I spent a lot of time in the Boy Scouts. I became a Cub Scout as soon as I was eligible, and I went right up all the ranksâWolf, Bear, Lion, Webelo. My mother was a den mother for a while. We wore our uniforms to school if we had a meeting afterwards. I remember that “A cub scout follows Akela,” but I never had any idea what it meant.
I was also in Boy Scouts. At the end of the summer after eighth grade, I had achieved the rank of Life, and I only needed one merit badge for Eagle.
My favorite merit badge was for hiking. It required three or four hikes of a few miles and one longer hike. I took the long hike with Gary Garrison and maybe one other guy. There were no adults. We walked out to Swope Park, had a picnic lunch, spent at least an hour or two at the zoo, and returned. We did not solve any of the world’s problems, but we at least defined the crucial issues concerning our friends, our families, and our school. It was tiring, but we had a great time.
I almost always enjoyed extended periods of time spent with friends. I loved going on camping trips. I never missed one. Our troop usually camped out in a field, which still abounded in the KC area, at least once per summer. On one of these outings I first tried coffee. I could tolerate the bitter taste if I added quite a bit of milk and sugar. I never drank coffee regularly until I started working on computer programs ten or more hours per day in the eighties.
I attended all the Camporees, held on one weekend every year. We had to put up our own tents and sleep on air mattresses or whatever we brought. Patrols competed against one another in various events. The one that I remember is knot-tying. I also remember frying steaks in Italian dressing. It was an accident, but they were absolutely delicious.
The most memorable one was when the clouds exploded one night, and I awoke to find myself afloat on my air mattress outside of the tent. We packed up and abandoned the field on which we were camping at dawn. It was great fun!
I absolutely loved going to Camp Naish for a week every year. We slept in permanent tents with raised wooden floors. We used straw mattresses. They supplied the straw and bed frames; we supplied the ticks and sleeping bags.
We sang interesting songs at meals, and there were huge bonfires most nights. We did all kinds of stufffâorienteering, capture the flag, many varieties of games with pocket knives such as stretch, mumbley-peg, and chicken. I cannot remember any medical emergencies, but I have trouble imagining how they could have been avoided.
I have many other memories, too, but I think that I will keep them to myself. I will just say that you grow up a little bit each year at scout camp.
I was never homesick. I have absolutely no negative memories of summer camp. My only negative memory of any camping trip was that Camporee night in which the field in which we were camping transmuted into a shallow lake.
One year Boy Scout Troop 295 (or maybe Cub Scout Pack 205) must have needed money. We were all asked to sell upscale candy bars to our neighbors. The person who sold the most won a new bicycle. I knocked on a lot of doors, and I did sell a lot of candy. However, Mike Kirk sold more and won the bike. I won the second prize, twenty silver dollars, which are still resting comfortably in an envelope in my sock drawer as I write these words. I suspect that they are worth a lot more today than Mike Kirk’s bicycle.
I read Boys’ Life from cover to cover every month. I especially enjoyed the fiction, which for several months involved the adventures of an alien being.
Music: I did not have much interest in recorded music until the eighth grade. However, QHRS did have a band of sorts. My parents agreed to purchase an instrument for me. My inability to pucker eliminated the brass instruments. I ended up selecting the saxophone. The cheapest available model was an E-flat alto, which is what I got. If I had it to do over, I would pick a piano or a string instrument, which would have forced me to learn more about chords and keys.
The band director was Rocco DeMart. My mom would drive me to lessons with him in the basement of Jenkins Music Store in Prairie Village. The band put on at least one concert, and Mr. DeMart also held recitals. I played in at least two of them.
I did not really enjoy playing the saxophone much. My mother had to nag me to practice. My only clear recollection from those days was Mr. DeMart’s pleasure when I unexpectedly played “Was that the human thing to do?” in double-time. He thought that the way that I played it sounded better than the way that it was written.
The saxophone mysteriously disappeared when I was in the Army.
Reading: I read a very large number of books. I can’t tell you why, but I read David Copperfield twice. I really enjoyed Robert Louis Stevenson and anything that had sports or adventure.
Movies: I remember going to a few films. I am pretty sure that I saw Gone with the Wind in the theater with my mother and some other people. I slept through most of it.
The movies that I saw with friends were mostly westerns or war movies. I remember standing with some friends in a very long line at the Overland Theater to see Sink the Bismarck. We got all the way to the front of the line. However, rather than sell us a ticket, they told us that it was sold out. We all had to ride our bikes home, but we saw it later. It was not worth all of that effort.
Birthday Party: One year my parents said that I could have a birthday party. I got to invite two guests. I chose Joe Fox and either Kent Reynolds3 or Rick Ahrendt. I don’t remember any other details. Hardly ever did any of my friends come to our house.
I also threw myself a party for my thirtieth birthday in 1978. Other than that, none.
Visits: My dad would occasionally bring home one of his company’s agents or sales managers for supper. These were basically non-events for me. After supper I would retreat to my room to read, work on model airplanes, or play with my baseball cards.
I am not sure of this, but I think that occasionally my mom would host three ladies in the afternoon to play bridge. I might have watched a few hands. I know that by the time that I was in high school I had a reasonably good idea of how to play. It seems plausible that I might have learned something by watching. I think that we had a copy of one of Charles Goren’s books. If so, I undoubtedly read it. I read all the books that my parents had.
My dad’s army buddy, Jake Jacobson, visited us at least once. I am not sure of the year, but I clearly remember several things. It was warm out, and Jake drove us around in his convertible. In those days he was portly enough that he could use his stomach for steering if he needed both hands for something else.
We drove out to Swope Park in KC MO for a picnic. Mom was there, but I don’t think Jamie was around yet. Jake and dad drank beers and threw the empty cans into trash cans from long range. Such antics were new to me. When I got rambunctious, Jake would say “Michael, decorum!” My dad really liked that phrase.
If my dad and Jake ever talked about the army days, it was in solemn tones.
Work: I mowed our lawn. My dad must have mowed it when we first moved to Prairie Village. I cannot remember that ever happening, but I don’t think that he would have hired someone. Maybe my mom did it. She could do anything. By the time that I was ten or so, regular lawn-mowing was part of my chores. My recollection is that my allowance was a quarter per week.
I have no clear recollection of mowing any of the neighbors’ lawns when we lived on Maple St. in Prairie Village, but I might have.
Somehow I got involved with selling Christmas cards every year. I don’t remember the details, but I showed samples to a lot of people. I also took orders and delivered the cards when they arrived. My mom definitely helped.
1. I think that his prejudice was largely due to his experiences in World War II. He associated rice with the Japanese, and he had no use for them. I purloined this recipe and have prepared it to enthusiastic receptions dozens of times. I omit the chipped beef because it is too expensive and the dish has plenty of flavor without it.
2. Fay Hedrick lived to be 100. She outlived Boots by thirty-four years. Her obituary is posted here.
3. Kent Reynolds’ LinkedIn page is here.