To be fair it all began in El Paso, TX at Biggs Field Air Force Base. That is where I was born. We moved to Salina, Kansas and I actually have photographs from that time and then after my Dad left the military we landed in Harrisburg, Illinois where my dad’s parents lived. We rented a house around the corner from my grand parents. We lived across from a big dairy processing plant and could watch the trucks come and go. The only other things I remember about Harrisburg was riding in my Grandad’s pick up truck and that we had coal delivered to our house to fuel the furnace. My dad worked for my Grandad at Hunsinger’s Garage. My Grandad, Dad and Uncle all worked there and they basically worked on big trucks. When we left Harrisburg we were bound for Wichita, Kansas and that is when the story really starts.
I am basically going to start my blog and the first installment with what I remember of my childhood. This chapter will not be too extensive and merely will suggest what helped shape who I became. I have never been one of those people who tried to do a lot of self analysis. I never had the patience for it. I kind of lived each day…. a day at a time and made the most of all those days. Life was very simple then. This starts for me in 1951 when we lived in a rented house in Wichita. The Arkansas River flooded and our home was in the flooded area. We had a floor furnace and my sister and I watched the water come up to just below the floor. It was exciting and scary at the same time. The water never got into our house. My Dad worked at Boeing and had a huge aircraft inner tube which he tied a wash tub in the middle of and we took that “floating device” to the store. We paddled our way to the grocery store and brought food home. The flood waters subsided a few days later and we survived the flood. Next thing I remember was the trauma of my first day at Kindergarten. I honestly believe that being taken to class by my mother and unceremoniously left to fend for myself was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. I did survive that event but I still remember how unhappy I was. Looking back…once I stopped crying and screaming I found school to be an amazing place. I loved school. I remember taking a nap each day at the prescribed time with everybody else. School was magical. I think the only days I ever missed were when I had chicken pox, measles and the mumps. Of course not all of those happened while I was in Kindergarten.
The next thing I remember was moving to the west side of Wichita where my family bought a modest new house for under $9,000. Hard to believe these days. I was enrolled at OK School, a K thru 8 grade school. There was a lot of history with OK School and it also was amazing to me. Again my love for school continued. I even liked school lunches. Most of my friends didn’t and I never could understand why. In retrospect I believe that the blandness of the food my mother made caused me to really like the school food. I don’t remember much about those years but I do remember the fun I had at home. We had a huge vacant lot next to our house. There was no end to what me and my friends could do in that vacant lot. Play baseball, play army, build forts… you name it… everything was possible. The neighborhood was full of kids. We played together constantly… into the night until we had to come in. We would break for dinner then go again after dinner… I would go to bed each night dog tired from playing and thinking only of doing it all over again tomorrow. I feel like I need to elaborate a bit more about that vacant lot. It remained vacant the entire time I lived there. It provided a blank canvas for kid activity. The lot became a baseball field, a war zone, a place to build a fort, a place for hide and seek, it was everything. My world was pretty small but with the presence of that lot my world was expanded exponentially. The lot was home to traveling revival groups. They would show up and put up a big tent and people would go to services in the tent. They would leave and someone would plow the field… can you imagine how much fun a plowed field is to kids. They planted corn and we watched it grow, played in the corn and then after it was harvested the bottom of the stocks were like a new toy. The stalk left after harvesting was about a foot long and then there was the root ball. These we used as projectiles in war games and were really cool to make forts out of. We dug fox holes and pretended to be soldiers… when I think back to that lot I have only wonderful memories. I remember one time when we had built a fort of sorts on the lot. It wasn’t much, I don’t think any nails were involved, it was just a bunch of scrap wood fashioned into something we referred to as a fort. A man from the county came by and spoke to my parents about the structure. We had to take it down because they didn’t want us building anything on the lot without permits and that kind of stuff. We, of course, removed the wood and had a good laugh. I may have missed my calling by not becoming a contractor.
The Tornado
There is one thing that I want to share with you which is a big part of growing up in Wichita. The weather. The picture at the beginning of this article is very typical of my memories of weather in Wichita. The entire world conjures up a picture in their mind of Kansas because of Tornadoes and of course “The Wizard of OZ”. Any one from Wichita will tell you that our town is a lot more than Tornadoes but they would only be telling a half truth. People say if you don’t like the weather wait 5 minutes and it will change. Truer words have never been spoken. Wichita at the time I was growing up was the bullseye for the United States for frequency of tornadoes, so it was common to pay attention to severe weather. In the spring it was a way of life. Every night on TV there were warnings about severe weather and they would draw lines on a map and say that one or two miles either side of a line from point A to point B could have severe weather activity for the next hour or so. You would start to get a bit numb to these warnings but they were ever present. We had a sequence of warnings. There was a Watch, a Warning and an Alert (the Alert became an Emergency years later). Each one of these carried with it an increased degree of concern. When we finally got to the Alert stage… air raid sirens would go off all over the city. It was like a war zone. One night around 5PM before dinner I was out front with my Dad and noticed an eerie silence… there were very ominous clouds and not a breath of air. Soon we went in for dinner. While we were having dinner the wind blew the front door open. My Dad went to the front door to close it and shut the door on his finger. He let out a howl and it was very upsetting to me and my sister. He came back to the table and shortly thereafter the power went off. For some reason my Dad told us to go in their bedroom and get under their bed. It was a heavy iron bed. We huddled under that bed for some time and heard what sounded like a freight train go by. The next morning we ventured out and saw the devastation. Every other house had been reduced to rubble. It was crazy. I had never seen anything like that. The only damage to our house was a blown down carport. We were very lucky that our house had not been destroyed. I had new respect and fear for the power of tornadoes. Soon after this happened my Dad sawed a hole in the floor of my room and dug a hole under the house as a tornado shelter. We put food and other supplies down there in the event we had to scurry into that place. As I recall we only used it a few times. No tornado came that close again.
My First TV
We were one of the first families on our block who had a TV. It was a little Emerson Black and White TV. We used rabbit ears and had one of the tallest antennas in the area. It was a real curiosity. We would watch almost anything. This included test patterns, snow, the star spangled banner at sign off, the Ed Sullivan Show, Jackie Gleason, I love Lucy, Mr. Wizard, Howdy Doody, Flash Gordon, Ernie Kovaks, the Show of Shows and my personal favorite “Winky Dink and You”. This was a kids show that you needed a plastic sheet to put on the TV screen during the show. Once you put the screen on they would have you write or draw things on the plastic screen. It was engaging and creative. My sister and I loved it.
Running the Gauntlet
When I was growing up my world was very small. The area that I played in was bordered on the south by West Central Avenue. On the north was a cross street named Walker Street, it was about two blocks from Central and then Anna Street on the East and Clara Street on the West. This area covered approximately 4 square blocks. On the other side of Central was an area known as Hoover’s Orchard. It, to me, represented the sum total of all things evil. I believed that only bad things could happen to you when you crossed Central and went into that terrifying area. Wild dogs, even wilder kids, and scary adults of all shapes and sizes… not to mention the motorcycle people. I would have rather walked through fire than go into Hoover’s Orchard. Put me on “the rack”… apply thumb screws… anything before making me enter this place. My apprehension wasn’t shared by my parents. The closest grocery store was only one block to Anna and then 2 blocks across Central into Hoover’s Orchard. That was to get there but you also had to come back. So if the evil doers, heathens and trolls didn’t notice you going they could get you on the way back. My mother would casually say that my sister and I needed to go to the grocery store and pick up bread and milk or whatever. She would give me some money and I was expected to “Run the Gauntlet” so to speak and complete the shopping list that she gave me. It was always an adventure. I knew that this could easily be the last time for me. I should probably get my affairs in order because I most likely would not return. I always took a big stick with me just to be on the safe side. Looking back, nothing ever happened…a few close calls with dogs not on leashes, and juvenile delinquents also not on leashes but it didn’t change my fear of the possibilities. I would make the trip with my little sister at my side and we would walk to the store, buy the stuff and come back home. Even to this day I think I was a very brave soul to … Run the Gauntlet.
Family Pets
No narrative about one’s life is really complete without talking about family pets. I don’t remember much about our pets. I know we had a little rat terrier that we called Trouble. I remember at a tender age I was in the back yard with my mom pulling weeds. There were gophers in the ground. One of them poked his head up and Trouble was on him like a crazed animal… a Tasmanian Devil…you get the idea. It was a blurr. She grabbed the gopher and without getting into a lot of detail, lets just say it was a very bad day for that gopher. I have never seen anything like that. It happened pretty fast…. was extremely gruesome… and gave me a whole new perspective on my dog. After that I kept a safe distance from Trouble. I guess mom and dad took care of the dog, fed her and cleaned up after her. I am sure that on occasion I did feed the dog and even cleaned up after her but I know it wasn’t a daily thing. I do remember dog hair. It permeated every inch of our house and all of our clothes. I grew to hate dog hair. We also had goldfish from time to time. I don’t know why because they never seemed to live that long and we would rarely name them. An appropriate name would have probably been “Floater”. We were either feeding them too much or not enough. When the end came there was always blame to go around. I always felt that we probably got old ones or fish that weren’t that well to start with so it was inevitable that no matter how much we fed them they would eventually assume room temperature. Enough on family pets.
What’s That Smell
This is not something that I am particularly proud of but I think it is worth mentioning. When I was a kid I had a real problem with swallowing pills. Give me a liquid any time..no matter what it tasted like. I could take it. I was sure that I would choke on pills. It was always a problem. The fear of choking on pills, I know, was in my head but for me it was very real. Every morning our neighbor Mr. Marlett would drive his son and me and my sister to school. It beat riding the bus and was a great way to get to school. One day Mr. Marlett came to our house and ask my mother why I smelled so bad in the morning. He said that it was awful and he didn’t think it was a good idea to keep driving us to school because the smell was terrible and he was afraid it might actually cause his car to smell. My mother tried to get to the bottom of the problem and it was determined that I was not swallowing my morning vitamin capsule but eating it. It tasted awful but I wasn’t choking on it. Apparently the ingredients in those capsules had really bad odors and caused me to smell pretty bad on the way to school. I guess I was like Ralphie in the Christmas Story when the teacher wanted to know where Schwartz was and Ralphie had this dumb look on his face and didn’t offer the answer. I think I knew that I was the cause of the smell but I hoped that it would be something else. I was busted and told in no uncertain terms to keep the capsule in tact and to swallow it rather than eat it. Bottom line… I couldn’t swallow the capsules so mom found a liquid substitute. Problem solved and I was able to continue to get a morning ride to school from Mr. Marlett.
Party Line Is No Party At All
Anyone remember party lines? These were phone lines that were shared with a number of other customers. People you didn’t know and you could listen to their conversations and they could listen to yours. Imagine something like that today. These would violate so many privacy laws that they would be illegal. I don’t even know how that worked but it was an upgrade from the use of cans connected with string. These lines were cheaper and more affordable so we had one. It was a great day when we finally upgraded to a private line. Almost a reason to throw a party.
