Memory Lane Anecdotes

1/5/17 - I had a flash back today.  Our grandson left some Delicious apples here so I had one for breakfast.  As I was eating it, I thought “This is too sweet and the skin is tough.” 

Then I remembered how I loved Stark’s Delicious apples as an early teen.  There was a neighborhood grocer across the street from dad’s garage.  The grocer was on the Southwest corner of 70^th and Prospect.  Any time I was able to come up with a dime, either a tip from a customer or conned from dad, I’d head across the street and buy a Stark’s Delicious apple the size of my two fists pressed together.  There was one lady customer that would always give me a dime because I’d buy an apple instead of going to the drugstore on our side of Prospect for ice cream. 

Funny how tastes change.  I’d go to the drug store for Campbell’s Mock Turtle soup for lunch when I could.  I considered it a taste treat, now it doesn’t even sound good.

1/19/17 - Some of these memories are from 1943/1944 as mom and dad worked at Pratt & Whitney as part of the war effort.  They tried sitters but I wasn’t having any part of a stranger telling me what to do in my own home.  So, I was shipped to my grandparents for the summer and then to my Aunt and Uncle in Warrensburg so I could go to a school in town.  There are several tales from that era.

Above, I mentioned the Lutheran church at Four Corners.  There was a bell mounted on a block of cement outside the church that would be rung after the service was over.  Back then, many would ride in drays, spring boards or horseback to go to church.  Most, like my grandparents, farmed using horse and mule as there were no services to the farm, save the magneto party line.

One Sunday, someone hitched their mule to the wheel on the bell.  Something startled the mule and he lunged to get away.  That made the bell ring which scared the mule more.  This caused a lot of racket right in the middle of the service.  After that the rule was hitching rail only.

1/26/17 - More of Marty’s memories from the farm and Warrensburg.

Perhaps I should explain a tad more about why I was shipped to the farm when mom and dad worked at Pratt & Whitney.    The original plan was for a sitter to watch my sister, Nancy, (who was two then) and me during the day while mom and dad were at work.

The first lady they hired I don’t remember too much but she would show up with a hangover and go ballistic whenever Nancy or I would make too much noise.  I complained to mom and dad but it wasn’t until she showed up drunk that they realized how real my tales of woe were.

The next lady was older and actually very nice I suspect.  However, as I mentioned in my last reminisce, I didn’t take to the idea of a stranger giving me orders in my home and I gave her a lot of grief.  Example that I remember, apparently I quit eating so the doctor prescribed some pills to help my appetite.  (In retrospect, I believe I was acting out because of the changes to our life.)

Anyway, one evening I ate a cookie before dinner, bringing out the usual “You’ll ruin your appetite and won’t eat dinner!” admonishment.  To which I told her, I have pills for that and took one of the “appetite” pills saying “See, if I take a pill after each cookie, I’ll still be hungry!”  Long story short, she panicked thinking I was over-dosing and told mom and dad that she couldn’t “handle” me and that they should get someone younger to deal with me.

The “younger” sitter turned out to be two late-teen girls which made matters worse.  They were bossy, more interested in talking to each other or being on the phone forever with their boyfriends or girlfriends than dealing with Nancy or me. 

One night, they were on the phone gabbing and it was bugging me.  I’m not sure but I think it was about dinner time and I wanted to eat.  That bugged them as they wanted to talk on the phone, so they locked me out of the house on the back porch.  I wasn’t having any of that so I was yelling, kicking the door and pounding on the window pane. 

It wasn’t too long before I put my fist through the window pane, slashing a nice gash in my right hand.  That got them off the phone!  Mrs. Enlow, the lady who lived across the street was a nurse, so they went with me over there where she treated the cut with methylate and bandaged it.  (With my boys, it would be a fast trip to ER for stitches, but back then you took care of it yourself.)

Needless to say, they were sent away – and I was sent to the farm/Warrensburg for the next year or so.

2/2/17 - Trip to Town - As I had noted, my grandparents farmed the old way, no powered equipment except the 1935 Chevy that they owned.  Grandpa had taken the back seat out of the car so they could put the eggs and cans of cream to take to town to sell.  Come Saturday, Grandpa would load up the back with the week’s product and we would head to town, usually Higginsville, sometimes Valley City.  

If it wasn’t raining, yours truly rode on the running board hanging onto the doorpost.  Can you imagine the furor that would raise today?  If it was raining, I had to sit on Grandma’s lap – a thing not very “manful” for an eight year old!  

2/23/17 - Pat -  I have mentioned that I lived with my aunt and uncle during my second grade school year so I could go to school in town.  They owned a six acre farm at the SE edge of Warrensburg, a short way from the college farm.  My cousin took care of the college livestock during school vacations.

They had a horse named Pat whose role in life was to keep us kids entertained.  A blaze face and white stockings, I loved that horse!  We trained him to do different things, like if we would lie limply over the saddle – dead man style – and didn’t make a move or sound, Pat would go to the back steps of the house and kick the step until Aunt Helen would come out.  We thought that was cool, aunt Helen got tired of being interrupted all the time and told us to stop doing that unless it was for real.

Another thing Pat did characteristically was to “freeze in place” if he perceived something was wrong when we were mounting him.  Evidently, my cousin Vernon had been teaching Pat to start off as soon as your foot was in the stirrup and as you had swung up on the saddle, cowboy style.  I was home by myself and decided to ride Pat somewhere.  I was unprepared for Pat to take off as soon as my foot was in the stirrup and instead of swinging up on the saddle I lost my balance and grabbed the saddle horn with my left hand.

Pat stopped instantly and my body momentum swung me around to where my back was against Pat’s left front shoulder, my right foot hit the ground just as Pat set his left front hoof down.  Unfortunately, his hoof was on the toe of my shoe.  Now my left foot is twisted in the stirrup and my right foot is pinned by Pat, I am facing away from Pat with my back to his shoulder and Pat FROZE!

I did everything I could to get loose but I was spread eagled and Pat knew something was wrong so he wouldn’t move.  I could feel his shoulder muscle quiver as I pleaded with him to lift his left leg, pulling or pushing on it with my right hand, slapping him on the foreleg, laughing at first and finally crying to no avail.  I’m guessing this happened about four or four thirty in the afternoon.  My Uncle Fred got home from the feed store about six PM and found me in the back yard yelling at Pat. 

Uncle Fred got my left foot loose from the stirrup and when I could stand normal Pat seemed to understand all was okay.  He lifted his left front hoof off my foot and when I stepped back, gently butted his head against me as though to say “Are you okay?” 

3/2/17 - Saturday Baths – As I have mentioned earlier, my grandparent’s farm was “non-technical” in the current sense of the phrase.  There were no electricity, gas, water or sewer services.  There were no tractor or trucks, just horses, mules, and horse powered implements such as wagons, plows, surreys, manure spreaders and mowers.  The manure spread on the fields came from - I’ll let your imagination fill that gap.

Without the “amenities” of “modern life” there were obviously no daily showers or baths.  Actually, my grandparents were on the leading edge of understanding health risks as they kept a cup labeled for each family member by the water pump plus one for visitors.  When we had visitors, after they had used the “visitor cup(s)”, they were washed and replaced.

However, the lack of showers or tubs did not mean we lived in slovenliness.  Not at all, we all had a bath Saturday before church and before any special occasion.  And here was the weekly ritual if there were no special occasions.

Often, when I was at the farm, my cousins Vernon and Norma Jean were there.  Every Saturday afternoons before dinner, (actually there, it was “supper”), Grandma would fire up the stove in the smoke house to heat the bath water for our weekly baths.  In the smoke house, there was a galvanized tub that was a common item those days, but I can’t say as I have seen on in the past fifty years.  It was about three to four foot in diameter and at least three foot deep.  It was used for laundry, baths, making lye soap and many other uses.

Once the water was heated, a kettle or two was poured into the wash tub with kettles of cold water to make a warm bath.  Then, if the cousins were there with me, Norma Jean got the first bath, then me, then Vernon.  In between, there would be a kettle of hot water splashed in so each of us had a warm bath.  Then it was Grampa’s turn.  Then we were all sent to the house while Grandma had her bath.  (When Grandma was ailing before she died and my Aunt was giving her care, my Aunt commented that it was the first time she had seen her mother nude.  The German Lutheran’s there were very “proper”.)

3/9/17 - Living on a Family Farm – Although I spent many a summer at the farm or in Warrensburg at my Uncle and Aunt’s city farm, I was considered a “City Kid” by those who lived around my grandparents, even my cousins.  The rituals of living on a “family farm” without power or powered equipment are life activities that my children and grandchildren do not believe really happened.

For example, they balk at the idea that I – at age eight – was reading the Sunday comics to the hired hand that worked for grandpa in grandpa’s later years.  Or that he could hone a knife so sharp that he would test it by pulling a hair from his (or my) head and “shaving it”.  If the knife didn’t cut the hair, he went back to the hone until it did.  I’d love to have one of those knifes now!  My neighbors think I can put an edge on a knife, but not like he did.

Nor do my progeny really believe that another former helper on the farm (John), who lost his vision helping Grandma do canning, was a permanent dependent at the farm because there was nowhere else for him.  Old John was putting the canned meat and vegetables on shelves in the “fruit cellar” under the kitchen when one burst.  The glass shards penetrated both eyes, blinding him.  The doctors removed his eye balls as they were collapsed and no way to repair them.

I do remember sitting on John’s lap talking with him when I was probably five or six, while he was listening to his battery powered radio in the living room.  (That is where he stayed most of the time except for meals.)  I was always a “curious kid”, or so they tell me, so I was moving my finger into his eye cavity to feel it when Grandma happened to come into the room.  There was a sharp “Buddy, stop!” and I was quickly removed from his lap and admonished to “Never Do That Again!”  I didn’t.

The batteries for his radio were six volt batteries, about three inches in diameter, about six to eight inches tall.  They were made with a carbon rod for the center pole in a canister filled with electrolyte.  The old batteries were tossed outside along the unused porch.  I was fascinated by the carbon rod cores.

Grandma was perplexed!  She made my shirts out of feed or flour sacking.  They were made of cotton and printed with patterns for making shirts and skirts back then.  However mine, and only mine, were falling apart or coming out holey after a wash.  Then she found me tearing apart John’s used batteries to get to the carbon rod cores.  Apparently, I was wiping my hands on my shirts to get the electrolyte off my fingers.

Strangely, my supply of spent batteries disappeared as did my inventory of carbon rods!

Another aspect of living on a depression era family farm that my progeny doesn’t believe and then I will quit. We had a well for water and an outhouse for obvious reasons.

I remember one winter night when my cousins and I were at the farm overnight.  Grandma put us in the guest room bed.  The bed had a feather mattress in which you sank so deep that the blanket only touched the mattress, not you!  She also had heated bricks so that each of us had a warm brick, wrapped in a towel, at our feet.  Talk about cozy!

About midmorning I woke up needing to take a leak.  The very idea of going downstairs in the dark, let alone hiking across a snowy path to the outhouse overwhelmed me!  I lay there, knowing what I needed to do, but was not able to get the courage to do it!  Apparently I was whimpering and Grandma heard me as she came in to see what the problem was.  Then she brought in their “honey jar” to solve my problem.  You should see the look on my grandkids faces when they learned what a “honey jar” is.

Okay, I lied - one more memory.  I said earlier that all viewed me as a “City Kid”.  My cousin talked me into peeing on an electric fence.  Even though it was only powered with a battery and had a ball going back and forth in a glass tube to send a pulse every time it reached the end of the tube – DON’T PEE ON AN ELECTRIC FENCE!  It hurts!

3/16/17 - More On Living On A Family Farm – Although my time on Grandma and Grandpa’s farm plus school season in Warrensburg was only a little over a year and a half, it didn’t take long for me to have standard chores on the farm.  My jobs included weeding the vegetable garden, feeding the chickens and collecting their eggs, milking cows (in my case, cow) and cleaning – horse stalls, chicken coops, pig sties, etc.

If Vernon was at the farm while I was there, the garden weeding became a tilling project with my being tied to the front of the three blade tiller as the “horse” and Vernon handling the tiller.  At first I thought it “cool” but soon decided that hoeing wasn’t so bad after all.  Least ways, you only blistered your hands, not rope burn your chest and shoulders where the rope “sawed”.

The chickens knew the morning feed routine.  As soon as I would step out of the kitchen door to head to the barn where I would shell and crack corn for their feed, they would pour out of the chicken yard and follow me to the barn where they would get in my way trying to get at the corn while I was running the hand operated sheller. 

When I had enough feed for them and started back towards the chicken coops, they would run in front of me but not very far so to make sure where I was really going.  One of those mornings, one hen laid an egg right in front of my while on the run.  I picked the egg up and it was still warm and pliable so I pushed a dent into it.

I showed it to grandma after feeding the chickens and received a lecture on damaging sellable product.  That egg was my breakfast that morning.  You can’t get much fresher eggs than that!

The reason I was specific about my milking one cow while the cows were being milked is simple.  I was assigned the cow that was slow to milk as she had caught two of her teats in a barbed wire fence which had scarred them.  While grandpa and the hired hand milked four each, I would finally get one done.

I won’t go into the details of cleaning stalls, chicken coops, etc. but it was a non-fun dirty job.  Those days were the occasions of mid-week baths or –if we were lucky – an hour or two of playing and swimming in Walnut Creek that ran alongside grandpa’s farm.  

Each spring, the hog house was cleaned out.  Grandpa usually had two to four hogs at the farm for breeding and then butchering in the fall.  If Vernon and I were available, cleaning the pig house was our job.  The pig house was a shed, probably eight foot by ten that had been used for decades.  Dad said he and his brother cleaned it every spring while he grew up.  By the time Vernon and I were cleaning it, the floor inside was a good foot below ground level from years of scooping it clear.

When Vernon and I would finish, grandma would have us strip down, give each of us a fly sprayer filled with DDT and have us spray each other down to kill any lice or fleas.  Can you imagine the uproar if someone did that today?

And, finally, telephones.  The only “modern” amenity at the farm was the magneto or crank phone.  Two long rings and a short was the signal for their phone, but regardless of the ring code, grandma would drop whatever she was doing, run to the phone and lift the receiver while stuffing her apron into the speaker so those on the line wouldn’t know she was listening in.  Since everybody else did the same thing, it was effectively the local “twitter” community.  

4/6/17 - A Few More Farm Memories – This incident occurred at an earlier time during a family visit to the grand folk’s farm.  We may have been there for several days as dad was helping grandpa do the haying.  I would have been around five or six then and was supposedly helping by stomping down the hay on the wagon while dad and grandpa were pitching the mown hay onto the wagon with pitchforks.

Apparently I got bored and had climbed off the wagon and was playing at the back by grabbing the back rail and swinging or just doing a kid’s goofy stuff.  Anyway, the clear memory is of my grabbing the rail and pulling myself up but when I dropped back to the ground, a blue racer snake decided it had enough of the noise and action locally so it shot out from under the wagon, between my feet and headed for points elsewhere.

Dad always claimed that I jumped up the six to eight feet to the top of the hay without touching the wagon.  I don’t know about that but I can attest that I “stayed on the job”, stomping down the hay until we took the load to the barn!

At another time when I was spending a week or two at the farm, Grandpa and Grandma took me to sale at a relative’s farm, “Uncle” Ed Bruns.  I’m not sure of the connection but I believe Ed and Grandpa were cousins.  I do remember them being very competitive which each other.  Anyway, two things I clearly remember about that afternoon. 

First, I saw the first (and only) steam powered tractor I have seen.  “It was huge” – to borrow Trump’s favorite phrase – the two rear wheels were taller than any man at the sale.  It was fired up and had a power take-on one side with a wheel to drive a belt.  The belt was driving a thresher and one of the activities that day was farmer’s bringing their grain there to be threshed for a fee.

The other thing I saw at the sale, I’ll never forget.  The main feature of the sale was livestock.  They were auctioning horses, cows and hogs.   I was watching the guys on horses in the hog pen, separating the hogs as they were put up for sale. 

Several of boars had not been de-tusked and had some six or eight inches of real weapon in their jaws.  One of them ran under one of the horses and slashed open the horse’s belly, dumping it’s entrails on the ground.  What happened after that I don’t know as grandma grabbed me off the fence and took me to the kitchen with the women folk.  I was pretty putout about that!

4 13 17 - More About Horses – Grampa had a matched pair of greys, Prince and Queenie.  They were inseparable and Grandpa told me they were brother and sister.  Knowing what I now know, I doubt it but they were almost identical in stature, color and markings.

Like most kids, I was nuts about riding horses so the time I am remembering is a family visit, probably for the weekend.   Grandpa had me up on Queenie and was walking her around the barn yard, giving me my “horse ride”.  It was near milking time so dad decided to ride Prince out to the field to move the cows to the barn.

Once dad got far enough down the lane going away from the barn that Queenie saw them, she let out a squeal and started rearing.  In doing so, she pulled the reins out of Grandpas hands, or he dropped them reaching for me – I don’t remember.  I do remember Grandpa grabbing me before I slid off her back and seeing Prince had stopped dead still after hearing Queenie’s squeal. 

Queenie ran into the gate, knocking it open and ran up to Prince, then the two of them proceeded down the lane; side by side as the team they were, as though nothing had happened.  I have been told that it took a couple of more visits before I started pestering for a horse ride again.

Horse trading was still a very active business in the forties as a lot of the middle Missouri family farms still used horses and mules for power.  It seemed that at every visit, Grandpa had a different horse or mule team.  Dad said Grandpa considered himself a sharp trader and that left him open to some not so good trades.  (In dad’s case, if it didn’t have cylinders and carburetor, he didn’t have any interest in it.)

One of Grandpa’s acquisitions was a former trotter.  Why he wanted it, I don’t know unless it was a “Sunday Buggy” horse.  It was a very handsome horse with red and black coloring, high arched neck and a trotter’s gait.  However, something I never knew was that it had been trained to go fast when the reins were pulled tight and to stop when the reins were loosened.  Totally the opposite of how I knew to manage a horse.

It was harvest time and all the neighboring farmers would gather at one of the farms to do the harvest until all had their harvest in.  It was customary for the farm being harvested to provide lunch that day.  On this day, it was my chore to take the lunch out to them in the field, so I harnessed up the new horse to the buckboard.  I’m not sure I was supposed to be using him but no-one had said “no”.

Anyway, there was a culvert crossing the road between the farm house and the access to the field.  I knew I had to go slow over the culvert to not spill the cold tea so pulled back on the reins, saying the traditional “Whoa, boy” only to have the horse shoot out like a race horse.  Well, he was a race horse after all.  I jerked on the reins again but we were already at the culvert.  The bounce going over caused me to drop the reins and grab the seat board to not get bounced off.  The horse immediately slowed down and then stopped with no guidance from the reins and me hollering “Whoa, Whoa!”

The cold tea had sloshed out some but most was still in the milk can but they all had seen my “adventure” and were laughing about it.  It took a couple of years before it wasn’t brought up by someone at every visit.  Also, I did get a lecture from grandpa afterward about what horses I was allowed to handle and which not.

(PS - Cold Tea for us was either “sun brewed tea” or stove brewed tea that had been lowered into the still well until it was cool.  The still well was a four or five foot wide well dug down below ground water lever.  They kept their butter, milk and other perishables, lowered down in buckets into the well until needed.)

5-4-17 - Almost Decapitated – My Uncle Fred ran the Good News Feed store in Warrensburg.  Later, after I had “served my sentence” at the farm and in Warrensburg for my second grade year, I would spend a couple of weeks each summer at the farm and a couple of weeks in Warrensburg with my Aunt and Uncle.

It was the year between my fifth and sixth grade year I believe when I was staying with my Uncle and Aunt that Uncle Fred made a run to Kansas City’s Rodney Milling Co. to pick up some feed.  He took Vernon and me with him for reasons I no longer remember, probably to give Aunt Helen a space of peace.

Anyway, after we had loaded the feed onto the truck, the foreman offered to give us a tour of the mill and extolled the view from the top floor.  We were interested so the tour began.

I don’t remember much of what we were shown until we got on the elevator to go to the top level, which I believe was nine or ten stories high.  There was a broken bag of malt in the elevator that he suggested we taste, telling us that was what made the difference between a malted milk shake and a milk shake.  Of course, Vernon and I tasted it and as straight stuff, it was strong!

When we got to the top floor, he showed us a “shaker box” that sifted hulls and debris from the seed.  The box was as big as a room and was vibrated in the x, y and z axis’s.  There were multiple screens spaced or layered down the depth of the “room” about every eight inches.  They were secured with bolts sticking out of the sides that were about six inches long, so you had these threaded bolts every eight inches vertically and every foot horizontally moving in circles and back and forth at a speed that made them look blurry.

Also, they had a “belt’ elevator that ran from the ground floor to the top floor.  It consisted of a leather or canvas “belt”, about two or three foot wide, with a two sided platform every twelve or fourteen feet and a “cup” or handle every five or six feet that ran continuously such that you could jump on the side going up and ride up a floor or two or jump on the side going down to do the same.

The foreman mentioned that someone had failed to jump off on the basement floor and had ended up riding it around the bottom but was able to reverse and ride up to the next floor and only incurred some cuts and bruises.  Then he led the group to the windows to look at the Kansas City skyline.

Of course, yours truly was more fascinated by the belt elevator than the sky line so I stood by the guard rail - which consisted of an inch and a half pipe made into a rail that was throat height for me at that age.  I remember holding my head back and trying to see to the bottom of the shaft.  Then there was a "whack, whack" on my head and I remember my chin hitting my chest.  I staggered back, dizzy.  I put out my hand to steady myself against the wall but suddenly my mind cleared and I was about to put my hand on one of the bolts that was moving in a circular plus an in and out motion.  That wouldn't have been a good thing to do.

I walked over to where the group was looking at the sky line but felt something on the side of my neck.  I brushed my hand on my neck and looked down at it saying “blood!”  Uncle Fred said later, he heard me say “blood!” and he looked down and all he saw was skull bone!  Apparently, the platform caught the back of my head below ear level and scraped a half moon chunk of scalp the width of my head up and flipped it over top of my head.   Our family doctor told mom that if it had been a half inch lower, it would have decapitated me.

I am proud of my folks though.  Years later I learned that they told Rodney Milling Co that if they paid for the hospital costs, all would be okay, but if they fired the foreman, my folks would sue.  The company kept the foreman on the job and apparently, over the years, he became the head of the operation.  However, mom sent me a newspaper article, in the eighties I believe, that he committed suicide by jumping off the roof of that same facility. 

Oh, yes.  I still cannot drink a malted milk to this day!

Beverly Reynolds – There wasn’t any particular attachment or relationship between Beverly and me but there were two incidents where I got the short end of the stick.  One, a lunch line incident occurred when I was standing behind Beverly and Joe Holt was behind me.  Joe reached around me and goosed Beverly who swung around and slapped me good.  That drew Miss Murray, our seventh grade teacher who had lunch line duties that day.  Beverly accused me of goosing her, while I was in full denial.  Miss Murray pulled me from the lunch line and sent me to the back in tears of frustration and embarrassment.  What was worse, often the last people in the line didn't get a choice of the entrée, if there was one, and sometimes missed out on the desserts as they might be gone.

Mrs. Woolf, the head cook, had apparently witnessed my embarrassment and punishment.  I had often complimented several of her dishes and was known to ask for more of several of them so I was a "good guy" in her book.  Mom once told me that Mrs. Wolf kept an eye me and who I "hung" with and if she didn't approve, she would suggest to mom to "coach me" away from whomever. 

I finally get to be served my lunch and the entrée was Spanish rice plus the dessert was a special cookie that Mrs. Woolf made, both things that I loved.  Mrs. Woolf saved me a generous serving of the rice and TWO cookies, telling me that she knew I wouldn't do such a thing.

And Beverly gave me a black eye; I don't remember the cause of the incident nor whether I was at fault or again an innocent bystander, I just remember our being on 60th St between Swope Parkway and Mark Twain on our way to school one morning.  There were five or six of us, half girls and half boys I think.  Something offended Beverly and she swung with her fist, nailing me in the right eye.  That was before school and by noon I had a lovely shiner.  Unlike the incident with Joe Holt, I don't remember what prompted the issue and whether I had said something.  Not likely as I wasn't much of one to say something offensive to anyone and had been taught that girls and women were special and were to be treated with respect, even my sister.  I had a hard time with the sister part.