Corky’s Real Life Tale of Terror!

Hi all you blog folks!

Back when I first started spinning these tales (I think I was talking about our life in Manchester) I think I mentioned that as a child (and adult) I had nightmares. Those of you that have watched the Walton’s on TV probably remember how they all say good night to each other at the end of the show as the lights go off in each room? Well, I would say goodnight to everyone in the house including our pets until my Mom would finally say, “Corky, if you don’t be quiet and go to sleep I may have to come in there.” I knew that meant that I had to shut up but sometimes I didn’t go right to sleep and would roll around in my “fudder” bed and think about all the things that just might happen to be hanging around to get me. What they wanted me for I’ll never know but I figured they did and I’d go to sleep for awhile and then wake everyone in the house with all kinds of noises; mom would come in and quiet me down and then we’d all get some sleep.

I had this aunt Esther that was scared of everything (the daddy-long-legs were all tarantulas to her) and I spent a lot of time with her. She is the one that figured out where Robert came from. My mother was never afraid of anything in her life (one time she was washing dishes during a thunder storm and lightening came and knocked out the light bulb and her only worry was that it was getting dark and she wanted to finish the dishes…….I was hiding behind the couch I think) and she would just give aunt Esther the devil for scaring the kids so much. After all, a red circle around the full moon didn’t necessarily mean that the world was coming to an end very soon. Aunt Esther could whip her weight in wildcats but she was still scared and very, very superstitious. Just a little background on some of the other nuts in my family, lol.

When Con was about 10 months old and we were living and taking care of Joe’s grandmother (she stepped off the curb and broke her leg so needed someone to take care of her) and Joe and I were the ones that were chosen. She was a fine lady and we enjoyed her and she enjoyed Con like he was one of her own babes. She was 80 and I was just past 19 so there was a little age difference and she taught me a lot about lots of things. One of her daughters decided that we needed a little vacation and took her home with her for a couple of weeks. During that time I decided it was a good time to do my fall house cleaning and it was quite a job because the house was fairly big.

I hadn’t had any trouble with nightmares or sleeping for some time but one night, quite late, I leaped out of bed and told Joe that someone was trying to cut my head off and he should help me. Well, you can imagine how it must have affected him…..me running around and around the dining room table trying to get to the front room door and he was coming out of a deep sleep. He swears that when he got up there was something or someone hovering over Con’s bed (in our bedroom) and he went over there to see what was going on. I was still in the dining room but managed to make it to the front door which I unlocked and ran out and jumped off the front porch (skipping all the steps and my knee still hurts from time to time from that flying leap) with Joe behind me trying to get his clothes on so he could go outside and catch me. By the time he got outside, he didn’t know which direction I had gone and didn’t want to leave Con with “the thing” and didn’t know what to do. I had gone next door; beat on their door; got them all out of bed and told them that someone had tried to cut off my head. I came to myself (woke up) and there they were…..circled around me wondering what in the hell was going on. When I finally really came to, I sheepishly told them that I guessed I’d better go home because Joe would be worried about me. I think they were happy to let me go, lol. I met him in the yard and he took me in the house and went back to bed and had quite a long talk (I think he was afraid to let me go back to sleep or that “the thing” might come back)

I stayed in the house for a couple of days until I had to hang out diapers (no driers in those days) and the neighbor lady peeked over the hedge and asked me, very kindly, if I was feeling better and that she thought I was doing too much and should maybe take it a little easier.

I have never been so embarrassed in my life!!! One thing is for sure, Joe swears “the thing” was there and another thing I was happy for……I had just bought new nightgowns from Penny’s…..thank goodness they did not have Victoria’s Secret stores then.

This happening is why I had to sleep next to the wall and get permission to get out of the bed after dark. I talked to my Mom about it and she said that of course there are Poltergeists but they are not to be feared……..that was fine for her, they weren’t trying to cut her head off.

I’ve worn you out so will close for tonight. Our bedroom happened to be the room where Joe’s aunt Margaret had died when she was l0 years old I just thought of that.

Corky

Grandpa Would Be 100 Today!

I asked my mother to write up a piece on Grandpa to celebrate his 100th birthday!  She wrote a beautiful remembrance, beautiful in its humanity and honesty as much as in the love it shows.  It’s such a middle-American story from the mid 20th Century that it is well worth the read.  It’s quite a story:

Hi Con,

I’ve been thinking about September 3, 2009, being my Dad’s 100th birthday, had he lived so long.  Really, with the life he did live I’m surprised that he lived to be 75.  He was a person with many sides.  He was a Mama’s boy and you never got him anything that would spoil for Christmas because he always managed to get home so that he and his mother could open their gifts together…..after we finally got to the place where we had enough money to buy gifts.  He was a poor but really handsome man (until fighting changed the shape of his face and nose) that came from "the wrong side of the tracks" and married a very pretty girl (until she ate so many beans and potatoes that she got fat) from "the hill" but still gave his strongest allegiance to his mother (his father left the family when he was young and he and my Uncle Frank took on the chore of taking care of Mama and the kids).  They had 9 kids but two of them died as babies….Frank was the oldest and my dad was third in line.  When he and my mother were married, her father gave them money to buy a house…..which they did and moved into it with Grandma and the kids.  My mother put up with Mama until I was three years old and told him that she wanted a home of her own……that was when he went to a tax sale and bought three lots for $3.00 each and Dad, Frank and Uncle Gene dug out a VERY LARGE hole and built us a place of sorts to live in.

     When you think about it it was pretty well thought out.  The whole south side had windows above ground so we had air in the summer and sunshine in the winter.  The walls were railroad ties covered with wall board and the floor was really hard packed dirt covered with Persian rugs donated by my mother’s mother (who never once set foot in our house),  Our cook stove was a small wood stove with an oven so we had heat and mom could cook and bake with it.  She baked bread twice a week and I always thought she baked me my own loaf of bread or cake in a jar lid (it was really her thermostat to tell her when the oven was ready for whatever she was baking that day, lol.  You entered through a ground level door that had a small shed like building that gave you access to about 10 steps that took you down to the door that entered the living area.  The shed had a place for wood and coal and a barrel for water in the winter time in case the well froze and we couldn’t pump water (don’t ever stick your tongue on to a pump handle in the winter….Mom had to heat water to get me loose).  My folks had a trundle bed and my brother slept in the part of it that slid out and I slept on a cot spring that sat on a chair and another barrel that was cut down to match the chair (I didn’t turn over much because I’d fall out).  It was a bit like Opey sleeping on the ironing board when Andy and Aint Bea had company, lol  Anyway, the dugout kept us warm, dry and healthy until Mom’s father, Christopher Columbus, remodeled his milk house and brought it down to give us an "upstairs" of sorts (I was in the 4th grade by then).

     I never knew my dad to be without work of some kind.  He worked for the local politicians, drove a cab, worked for the county driving a truck until it fell through a bridge and the county could not afford another one, worked on a garbage route with his younger brothers, drove a truck all over the country picking up fruit and vegetables for a produce company and during WW11 was the Assistant Fire Chief at Camp Phillips.  When the camp closed they wanted him to transfer to Iowa but he didn’t want to leave Salina.  He had during all these years managed to fill up the dugout (which he should have used for a basement) and built a small house on the back of the lot and they lived in it until he got the big house built (I was 15 by then and had met Joe and figured that as soon as we finished school we’d have a house of our own).  We decided that we’d like to get married when I was 17 (he’d already asked for my hand and given me my engagement ring) so one night I woke the folks up and told them that if we could figure out how to live on $135 a month we’d get married.  My dad told me that he guessed he could finish the attic into a couple of rooms and make our kitchen in the room at the bottom of the stairs if we could live in that.  In three weeks the attic was finished; the kitchen was cute as could be with a two burner hot plate and orange crate cupboards; all fresh paint and wallpaper; and, instead of Joe moving me out, I moved him in (I think to his mother’s dismay).  We paid 1/2 the utilities for rent, lol, and dad always bragged to anyone that would listen that his son-in-law paid his rent right on the first of every month.

     My Dad was a good man but I did not realize how good until he and my mother moved back to Abilene after he retired from the Rock Island Motor Transit in Denver where they moved (when I was 28 and Joe was a school principal) so he could start the Piggy Back Operation for Rock Island (they moved truck trailers on the railroad from Denver to Chicago until the railroad sold out).  When you see the rail cars rumbling down the track with double-decker cars loaded with truck trailers, my dad had a big part in getting that part of railroading on line.  My mother developed diabetes and he had had to have part of his stomach removed and they moved back here so we could help them in their time of need. 

     The two parts of my dad that I could hardly tolerate were that he was a weekend alcoholic (from Friday night until Sunday night) and he loved to fight (not for the love of fighting but for the love of hurting someone).  If he couldn’t find anyone else, he’d look Uncle Frank up (unless I had sent my brother after Uncle Frank) and they would go at it.  He had times when he would try Joe’s patience but I think he knew that if they ever fought, he would not see much of us or his grandkids…..even in his foggy times.  My brother told him (after he came home from Korea) that if he ever touched my Mom again he’d have him to answer to as well as Joe and that ended that problem.  He always took pride in my brother, me and especially Joe (because he had two college degrees, lol, and would put up with him…drunk or sober).  Con (another college degree) and Viki gave him joy you could not believe and their kids lit him up like a Christmas tree.  He never took a drink or had a bad word for anyone that I know of after they moved back here.  He told us that he finally was living like a person was supposed to.  He would call me (after I retired) and tell me that he’d make the coffee and furnish the poles if I’d furnish the sandwiches and go fishing with him.  I’d laugh and tell him I had a pole and the sandwiches were frozen and ready to go and we would fish a lot of the ponds up around Manchester…..he’d get on the pond by telling the owner that Joe Hake was his son-in-law and that did the trick.  I enjoyed those last too few years with my dad and wish he could have lived like people are supposed to all his 75 years. 

Thanks, Mom, that was marvelous!  And here’s a toast to you, Grandpa!  You left me with a lot of good memories.

A Serious, Sad Event in Kansas…

There is an article in the SF Chronicle this morning on the killing of Dr. George Tiller, late term abortion provider in Wichita, KS one week ago.   It deals with the impact of incendiary speech and is worthy of examination.  Whether your views are from the Right, Left or Center, incendiary rhetoric does not help.  It may sell soap, but it does not help.

What does help is sincere reflection, especially from those closest to the problem.  My mother and I were discussing this on the phone a couple of days ago and she related to me a story that you really must read.  It is very relevant, very powerful, very personal.  It has a lot of heart.  But, what it is not is an effort to sell soap and especially not to be incendiary.  Her effort at reflective balance is laudable and moving and I give it to you unedited, in her words:

The year was 1945;  springtime;  I had just turned 14; and, had been a junior in high school until I refused to cut my hair so I could take swimming.  My mother told me that if I didn’t go to school, I had to find some kind of job;  so, I was baby sitting to pay for small necessities until I could convince someone that I was 16 so I could get a good job and earn maybe ten to twelve dollars a week…..woo-hoo!  The war was starting to wind down and many of the soldiers and sailors were returning home to their families.  Having learned so much the first semester of that year, or so I thought, and refusing to get my hair cut (my really FIRST REAL REVOLT) taught me many things.  Some good and some really bad.

Being independent was always a failure of mine.  Many things came to me very easily…..some things were lessons that were forced on an innocent kid and really hard to accept.  As most of you are aware of, this has been a very bad time in Kansas as far as history is concerned.  The killing of Doctor George Tiller was a heinous crime committed by a person that is mentally unstable (according to our news media back here) and should have been locked up for things he did many years ago.  He had no reason to kill Dr. Tiller other than the fact that  he ran an abortion clinic that performed late term abortions (something that is legal here).  Dr. Tiller had just been cleared in court for 19 charges brought against him by an Anti-Abortion group.  I’ll not name names but these people have been against Dr. Tiller for many years.  Back in the 1990’s someone shot the doctor in both arms as he went to get into his car.  After that, he would hire off duty police officers to escort him whenever he went out (to his clinic, church, etc.) but having been acquitted of any illegal activity he thought that escorts were no long necessary…..especially to church where he was an usher and where he was shot (as witnessed by two other ushers that were threatened with the weapon used to kill the doctor).  I am not a fan of abortion and cannot fathom the idea of having one and I feel that the real leader of the group has blood on his hands (even though the nut case that committed the crime was not a true member of the group just a wannabee I guess).  The man killed Tiller; got into his car; and, headed for his home which was a town close to Kansas City.  He was arrested in Gardner, KS and offered no resistance.  He is being held in the Wichita jail and his bail is very, very large……in the millions of dollars.

When I was 14 years old, I had no idea what an abortion was.  We did not have subjects such as sex education in Health or even the notorious 5th grade Health classes that explained how little girls became women.  What we learned, we learned from our mothers and mine did not choose to talk about sex except to say that it was not something that GOOD GIRLS DID until they were married……kinda’ like the Rusty Warren record where the mother is standing on the curb after the wedding yelling, "You can do it now."  Times were different then but some girls, and women too, did it and got pregnant.  Some girls, and women too, did not want to have a baby or marry the boy, or man, that had made them that way……..no matter, the law said that you either made the male marry the female; send the girl away to the mountains (or desert) for nine months for her health and put the baby up for adoption; or, maybe the girl and her mother would both go away for the mother’s health and come back with a "baby brother or sister" for the girl and it would be reared as a sibling for her.  That way there would be no disgrace for the family and they could all go merrily on their way and be a supposedly happy family (even so, some of these families didn’t look very happy and many people whispered behind their backs).  ABORTION WAS AGAINST THE LAW and the only way to have one was not very pleasant.

Now you are thinking, Good Lord, did she get pregnant and have an abortion?  No, I didn’t but the woman that I baby sat for did.  Her husband had been gone for some time (maybe doing the same things she had done, I don’t know) and was coming home so what was she to do but what she felt she had to do……break the law and have an illegal abortion (remember this was before the Roe Vs. Wade law was passed).  She asked me if I would go with her to the doctor and sit in the car with her kids while she had a checkup.  I said OK and did just that.  I did make some remarks about the grungy part of town we were in and that he must not be a very rich doctor to have his office down there.  It didn’t take him very long to do whatever he did to her and she came back out and told me that if she got sick that I should drive the car on home and make sure the kids were OK.  I told her that I couldn’t drive and she said that she thought I wouldn’t have any problem because I was a smart girl and had surely watched while other people drove.  I looked down at her car seat and it was turning red and I asked her what kind of checkup she had had (I knew that I had a problem on my hands but didn’t know what it was).  She said just a female thing and it caused women to bleed sometimes and that she wanted me to be sure to see to the kids and make sure that they had their supper; baths; and, were put to bed before I went home.  I assured her that I would and I did but after performing my chores I checked on her and she looked like she was going to die (which scared me a lot).  We didn’t live very far apart so I took off for home and told the woman that I was staying with what had happened and why I was so late getting home.  She went over to the other house and after walking up one side of the woman and down the other, took her to the hospital where she stayed for several days.  I stayed with the kids during that time because she had no relatives in the area (when my mother found out what I was doing, she went ballistic as only she could and laid down some laws as to what I could and could not do as far as working was concerned).  It is a period of my life that I would just as soon forget but it also shows what happens when laws are made that cannot be enforced.  If they reverse the Roe vs. Wade law, this type of thing will happen more and more only some women and girls won’t even go to quack doctors for an abortion, they will rely on clothes hangers or turkey feathers like they did back in the good old days…..and a  lot of them will die like they did in the good old days.

As I said before, I am for women’s choice.  I do not think you can legislate morality and we have no place to treat the mentally ill (unless they have committed a criminal act such as rape or murder).  My husband and I had no trouble getting me pregnant but I had one pregnancy that was easy and one that was hard from the night I conceived her (my husband had made a pact with a friend that if he found his wife to be pregnant to let him know and we would have kids the same time).  We had our daughters two weeks apart so you can see that we had no trouble at that time.  Troubles developed in the first trimester and I spent a lot of time in bed; threw up most of the time; and, took meds to keep me from aborting which has caused problems for our daughter but during that hard period, there was never a thought in our minds about not carrying that beautiful little baby to full term.  In my opinion, it should be every woman’s choice because I could not have any more children after I had her and we would have missed out on a lot of joy (and headaches) had we not had her.  Nobody has angels…..even in the good old days.

Corky

Mom…this is too good to just be a comment!

My mother wrote this as a comment and the general public should see this out in the open.  It’s just too good to stay hidden.  I only added some formatting:

Maynard,

Don’t feel bad about taking a class over. I never did get to take Kindergarten (country school that I walked to 2 miles morning and night) and I always felt deprived. So, to make up for it, I was a bit of a pain to the teachers all the way through school. I spent more time in the office (answering the phones; running the mimeograph machine; or working in the storeroom handing out paper, pencils and other supplies)or being a hall monitor letting anybody do anything they wanted to as long as I wasn’t directly involved

I hated having to sit next to some of the slow boys so tried to get out of that whenever possible but I loved to read and I got to put everybody to sleep after lunch with a chapter a day.

When they moved me from country school where in order to go to the bathroom the teacher had to unbutton my suspenders (I wore bootpants with lace up boots) then my bootpants, then my long underwear (during the winter months) and send me to the basement bathroom. After I did whatever it was I needed to do, I came back upstairs and she had to redo all the things that she had undone so I could go. This took place many times during the day until one cold day she refused to go through the ritual and you’ve got it……I wet my pants and they were frozen by the time I walked home. My mother had been friends of the teacher in high school and I still have the note that she wrote and the answer that the teacher sent home with me the next day…..Mom not happy at all and the teacher very apologetic.

After that I just came and went whenever I wanted to…..didn’t even have to ask. I skipped the 2nd grade after being tested and went to town school as a third grader and since they were learning cursive writing and I already knew how I got to help a lot of kids learn to write.

One day, a dog came into the classroom and since I’d been wrestled around by a greyhound I got up on top of my desk……the teacher came in and smacked me up side the head (without asking me anything and this time my mother made a trip to school) and after that I took over that school room.

I had lots of fun helping with the Kindergarten parties and teaching the "little" (I was 7) kids to button their coats, etc. The teachers had me do anything they could find to keep me out of their hair. Things went pretty smoothly (even the 8th grade thing) until one time I fastened (with a thumb tack) my horned toad to the history teacher’s desk drawer and when he opened the drawer it tried to get out (naturally) and the poor man nearly had a heart attack. I thought he was a wuss and he thought I was a demon from Hell and he made me stand with my toes against the wall and my nose in a circle on the blackboard…….that gets mighty tiresome after an hour or so!!

I could hardly wait til Halloween so we could egg his house, lol. After that year, I went back to the new house and the school system thought I should take the 8th grade over since I hadn’t taken the 7th grade….my mother had to go to school again and she made it quite plain that I was not going to do that.

So, I went my freshman and sophomore years in Salina and decided to go to Coffeyville for a visit during the summer and liked it so well decided to go to school there. I was 14 at the time and the first semester was great but the second semester I was scheduled to take first hour swimming. At that time I had hair that reached nearly to my waist and it took it a long time to dry plus it was so thick I couldn’t get it into a swimming cap. I went in to have a little heart to heart talk with the principal about changing my P.E. to last hour. He said that the schedule was already made out and I could braid my hair or cut it off as far as he was concerned. I told him that as far as I was concerned I would do neither of those things; I was quitting school; and, I wanted my book and locker fees returned to me. He told me that I was only 14 so I could not quit and I said the law was that you had to be out of the 8th grde or 16 and I was out of the 8th grade and I’d wait in his office for my check. The poor man would have killed me if he could have gotten away with it and when I called my mother and told her what had happened she said that it was OK if I wanted to quit school but if I did, I had to get a job.

I know you must be getting tired of reading this so I’ll stop for now and tell you the rest of my story tomorrow night.

Sleep tight,

Corky

The Tear Drop

March 24th…My Mother’s Birthday!!!

Readers, so many of you are coming to know my mother and, as you’ve found, to know her is to become her friend!  She is easy to meet and always has been.  There are a number of contributions she will continue to make to this blog, stories she wants to tell and stories I want told and the stories are always full of human warmth and richness.  This is the way her newspaper column was and the community in Abilene loved it.

She also has an unrevealed talent that I think you’ll enjoy: she’s an accomplished painter!  I’d like to give you a sampling of some saws that she has painted, but this is just a brief beginning.  I need to photograph more of her pictures, most on canvas but some on items like milk cans, and will see about creating a picture gallery for her works.  For now, the saws:

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Manchester: The Apartment – The Rest of the Story!

Hang with this story, gang.  It has more nuggets than a California gold mine!  You not only get to hear about Manchester living, you get to meet my mother more fully.  Imagine yourself sitting in the living room as she tells the story…  Both of my folks are a lot of fun!!

Get ready because you are going to hear more about "The Apartment", lol

I had to quit working the other night because my head was starting to ache……I’ve been having small cancers removed from my face (I think the doc doesn’t like my face because for the past 30 years he has been taking off small pieces of it) and this last time he had to take some skin from the left side (he called it my "laugh line" and we all know it is a wrinkle) to graft over a hole he made in the right side of my nose. The bandage on my nose makes it hard to see through my glasses unless I twist my head around a lot. I wish I had known when I was young what I know now about the sun and the problems you can have from having a fantastic tan….blonde hair and tan skin makes you a female "hunk",lol, and since my husband likes a little diversity now and then I decided that the only place he was going to get it was at home….hence the blond hair and brown skin that has caused me much pain. It was probably in vain tho’ because one time I had a red rinse put on my hair and he didn’t notice that he was living with a redhead for two weeks and then only because the sun was shining right on my head and he had to notice it or admit he was blind. The real story is that my beauty operator was doing weird things with my hair because it was easy to work with and I was nuts enough to let her use me as a model to show what you could have done to your hair if you only had the nerve (one time she picked up the wrong bottle and I had to work (I was a reporter-photographer for a newspaper at the time) with cotton candy pink hair. My poor husband never knows what to expect…..most of our 63 years together, lol.

Now, since I’ve bored you nearly to death, we’ll get back to early living.

I think I neglected to mention that our apartment in Manchester had beautiful mahogany woodwork and the ceilings were made up of embossed metal squares. Those squares would probably be worth a lot of money now and they had sense enough to keep them and the woodwork natural…..no paint on any of it. They did paint the doors tho’ and I’m sure they were mahogany, too, because they were really thick and heavy. A gust of good Kansas wind against them would really send you flying…..either in or out, depending on the way you were going. We had to climb 22 steps to reach the porch that took you to the doors and it was really fun to go to one of the bigger towns to shop and come home and make several trips up and down to unload the car filled with kids, groceries and whatever else I could manage to afford. In those days we did not have credit cards so we were very careful to spend only what we could pay for with cash. We had a bank account but only wrote checks to pay for "large purchases" or for items that were paid by mail (utilities; rent; doctor, etc.).

When we moved to Manchester I was 22 ; Joe was 27; Con was 3 1/2; and, Viki was 6 mo. old. We would spend the week days in Manchester and the weekends in Salina with one or the other of our parents…at first. After we became acquainted with some of the younger couples we would spend the whole week there and go to church on Sunday. On Sunday I would get up early and put the beef roast in the oven, surrounded with vegetables, set the timer so everything would be cooked by the time we came home after services and the whole downtown area smelled like roast beef because I cooked enough to have leftovers for half the week. One weekend we went to my parent’s home and they had bought a 17" TV set……I thought maybe I had died and gone to heaven.

We could see Elvis and the Ed Sullivan show plus everything else that happened to be on the one channel they could get. After we went home we talked it over and decided that there was no reason in the world why we couldn’t have a TV set too……the lack of money came into it somewhere but we ignored that and figured out a way to do it by scrimping on this or that and saving money on gas because we would be entertained in our own home. We bought a set and they installed the antenna on our roof (nearly in the clouds) and we really had the monkey by the tail!! We had the first one in town and it was quite the conversation piece for awhile. We never had very good reception until we moved but ignorance is bliss I guess and we nearly always enjoyed whatever we had…….as long as we had each other and a roof over our heads.

I don’t think that I mentioned that stone buildings (and every other building) in Kansas are infested in the spring and summer with Box Elder bugs. They are little black and red bugs that don’t do anything that I know of. They don’t bite you; don’t eat your clothes like crickets do; don’t make any noise; or, leave a trail or anything. However, they were very prolific (lot’s more so than rabbits, lol) in our building and when Viki started to crawl she decided that they would be good to eat. She would take off just like a shot to catch one and Con would come running like crazy yelling, "Come quick, Sissie is eating bugs." I would go to wherever he had come from and find her sitting on the floor chomping away on what she soon learned to call "Bocky Bugs". I guess I should have left her alone, I never have heard of anyone dying …or even getting sick….from eating the darned things but it just seemed so gross to have her eating bugs that I tried every way I could possibly try to get rid of the things…..but I never did get rid of them and she finally quit (Con was pretty good at putting his finger in her mouth and scooping the bug out). I was always afraid she might eat a spider or something but I guess if she did, it didn’t do her any damage because she grew into a fine looking and smart lady. I don’t think Con could have very much luck at scooping anything out of her mouth now…..if she really wanted to eat it. She probably still has a scar on the under side of her chin from holding onto the window sill and jumping up and down on her bed…….she had been told time and again not to do that because she might fall out the window. Instead of falling out of the window she fell down behind the bed and split her chin. We had to make a quick trip to Abilene to the ER and get her stitched up……I nearly died but she couldn’t wait to show daddy what had happened to her. He always got a report as soon as he came through the door plus he got to eat whatever she had cooked with her Betty Crocker Cook Set That day……that stuff probably tasted worse than Bocky Bugs but he always ate whatever she had. One day we surprised daddy with a puppy that the man that ran the gas station across the street from our building had given us. He told me that it was a cross between a toy cocker spaniel and a Chihuahua. He was coal black and we thought we had a real prize…..we even had named him Pedro. Joe took one look at him and said, "Cork", he always calls me Cork unless he says CORKY then I know I’m in trouble, have you looked at that dogs feet? He said that dog will be big as a horse….by the time he was 6 months old he weighed 65 lbs., was still growing and we had to give him to a farmer. Our next dog was a terrier but that is another story.

It was shortly after that that we decided to see if we could find a place to live on the ground floor. Viki was trying to fly out the window and I had an occasional nightmare (Joe made me sleep next to the wall and I had to get permission to go to the bathroom during the night) because he didn’t want me flying off the porch in my nightgown like I did in Salina one time. I woke up the neighbors and told them someone was trying to cut off my head…….when they sent me home, I know Joe would like to have done just that, lol). Just like the time I decided to clean Tweetie’s cage out on the high porch; opened the door and out he went into the park next door where they showed the movies (free, all you had to do was bring a chair or blanket to sit on).

Joe announced at school that our bird was loose and if any of the kids saw him to let him know. It wasn’t long and one of first graders found the bird and brought him home…..he got to watch TV and eat popcorn for a thank you treat. Poor Tweetie, he froze because we left him at home over Thanksgiving weekend and it got too cold in the apartment. Heartbreaker!!!!

When I learn how, I’ll answer y’all individually……now I’ll just say bye till next time.

Corky

Manchester: The First Apartment

by Corky Hake

The following story is one that only Mom could tell.  I plan to have more contributions from her – and from Viki – about our Manchester days.  These were GOOD days for us.

The following picture is not of Manchester, but kind of catches the flavor.  The apartment Mom is describing looked a little like the brown two-story stone building with a store front below.  Imagine it without all the other store fronts surrounding it.  Our apartment was above the grocery store in just this manner and was brown stone.  Now…I leave the narrative to Mom.  And, when she says “you” in the story, it is this blogmeister she is referring to.

Leading up to our move to Manchester……While I was in the hospital (after giving quick birth to Viki) your father came up and said that he had something he wanted to talk about. I immediately thought there was something wrong with you or our new baby (I had developed a clot in my leg and it was propped up on a zillion pillows and I was not to move without help from a nurse) and I wanted to just get up and run out of there. Then, he told me that he had not been happy in his job at Manhattan and he was thinking about teaching school if it was OK with me and he could find an opening someplace. Needless to say I told him that whatever he could find that would make him happy I was all for it. We stopped in Abilene and he went in and talked to the County Superintendent. Then, he came out and told me that there was an opening in MANCHESTER and after we got back to Manhattan; settled in for six weeks; talked about moving, etc., we made an appointment with the school board to look at the school and talk to them. They gave him directions and said it was the only big building in town so we couldn’t miss it. We drove into town from the south and the first big building we saw was the old blacksmith’s shop (now an artist’s home and gallery) and your dad said, “My God, you don’t suppose that is the school do you?” That was our introduction to MANCHESTER and I didn’t know what to say!!

Needless to say, that was not the school; we found the school board; he was interviewed; and, hired with a drop in pay, lol. They told us about the apartment that was above the store and was being redecorated and ready for us to move into in August if we were interested in talking to the owner. We met the owner; looked at the apartment (it had seven rooms and two baths) and your dad asked him what the rent would be. He said twenty five dollars a month and your dad’s mouth fell open and before he could get it closed the man said he would drop the rent to twenty dollars…..your dad found his voice (we had been paying $65 a month for three rooms in a basement close to the K-State Campus) and said twenty sounded fine and we’d move in August first. I didn’t ask him what color he was going to paint the walls, etc., but the whole thing was a pale kind of sickly green and it didn’t bother me a bit because I could finally look out the window and see more than just dirt or snow (we had a long snowy winter in Manhattan that year).

My dad, uncle and a friend of his that had a big truck moved us from Manhattan to Manchester. Fortunately dad was driving behind the other two because they hadn’t tied some of the furniture down too well and one of my tables that we had received for a wedding gift flew off and dad had to stop and pick up all the pieces. I later glued it all back together and have it in the family room yet (61 years later). We did not know it but the two in the truck were having a fine time and by the time they arrived at their destination were drunk as skunks…..I thought your dad and my dad would like to have killed the both of them. Not only were they drunk, they were hungry so opened up some sardine cans that I had packed in a box and were sitting on top of the truck eating. After dad got through with them, it didn’t take long to get that truck unloaded and on it’s way. People were standing around watching but I don’t think any of them knew what was going on because had they known, we would have been fired before we could move in.

It was really hot but we moved the furniture around and set up the beds and spent our first night in our new place being very careful not to walk in front of the windows because we had no curtains yet……we had blinds but the were pulled up to the top and you couldn’t see them. When I could get around to it I bought a bolt of brown corduroy and made drapes and from the top of the window to the window sill they measured nine feet long. I never did really know how high those ceilings were. The floors were all tiled with black and white squares which you kids had fun jumping around on after Viki got big enough to walk (and jump). One day I was taking a bath and the landlord came up to check on a water leak in the other bathroom and you went to the door and told him that I couldn’t come to the door but he could come on in and talk to me……fortunately he heard the loud screams coming from the bathroom and didn’t come in…..the poor man would never have been the same, lol.

The apartment was over the store and built of stone so it was not really so hot in the summer (we invested in two or three fans) but it was cold, cold, cold in the winter. We heated with oil and had a really big oil stove with a fan on it but I always worried that you kids were not going to be warm enough. Consequently you looked like little Eskimos when I put you to bed at night and probably sweat all night long. My mother worried about me having tonsil problems and bought us an electric blanket to keep us warm. I put it on the bed and mixed up the controls…..I turned your dad’s heat up as high as it would go and he turned my side up as low as it would go until we finally figured out that the blanket was not defective…..we were.

To be continued………..

LOL!!!  Added note: it WAS cold in the winter in that apartment.  We came back from a weekend at Grandma’s in Salina one Sunday evening to find our bird frozen stiff!  Literally!

Oh, Mom…

I remember the first time Con brought his football suit home to be washed and I thought I would never make it through it. I took it down to the basement and put it in the machine with the soap, etc., turned on the machine and all hell broke loose! The machine jumped around like it had gone completely mad and I held on to it to try to hold it down until I could get it through the first cycle….sitting on a washing machine doing it’s own version of a boogie is not fun believe me! It finally made it through enough washing and rinsing that I figured I could safely take it out and maybe it would not attack me. When Con came home I told him that I would never ever wash that thing again and his coach should be ashamed to send things like that home with kids. He looked at me and dryly said, "Mom, did you take the pads out before you put it in the machine?" Since the only athlete in my family had been my mother and she was a hurdler I had no idea that the darned thing even had pads so I said no I did not take the pads out. He and his dad laughed until they knew they had gotten me to the hysterical stage and shut up…….they also took out the pads and you know, it was much easier without them.

When he got his letter jacket I spent one whole afternoon sewing all his letters and those little metal things you get for track, tennis, etc. on the thing……I had it nearly covered when he came home and took one look at it and nearly died. Again he looked at me and dryly said, "I think that if you work at it you will be able to hang my most tackles plaque on one of my temple pieces of my glasses." That evening I spent taking all the things off except the big A. I was truly proud of my son (and still am) but I have often wondered if he moved to California so that I could not buy his clothes and try to do things for him. Next time I’ll talk about some of our baseball experiences…….I knew just enough about baseball to be dangerous too.

Corky

Wrestling a Monkey for Icecream

Reminiscing is one of the beautiful things about starting a new year.  It is time to welcome the future – but also to celebrate the past.  My mother’s reminiscence this morning is priceless.

I’ve been thinking about crazy grandparents. I had two Grandpas (the third one ran off before I was born and I never did know him). My mother’s father was named Christopher Columbus with a good old fashioned German last name (where his parents came up with that name is beyond me but I have a first cousin who’s maternal grandfather was named George Washington Paris so he thought he was better than I was because he had both Christopher Columbus and George Washington as ancestors…..I always told him he was dingy because first names do not ancestors make).

Back to Columbus (he didn’t like being called Chris). I called him Papa and was his pride and joy. Curly headed little blond girls have a way with their grandpas especially if they are the only grandchild around.

Every Saturday my Grandma would make a list and Papa and Corky would go to town to do the trading (that’s what they called grocery shopping in those days) and after trading, . . it just so happened that we would stop at Strahan’s Creamery and get me an ice cream cone to take with me to the 5th Street Pool Hall where we would stop so he could talk with some of his friends and pick up two quart bottles of beer to take home (one for him and one for me he would tell Grandma).

I neglected to mention that an inhabitant of the pool hall was a monkey named Pete and EVERY Saturday he would take my ice cream cone and eat it. Didn’t bother me much because I knew that Papa would get me another one, as well as a penny’s worth of Horehound Candy and a penny’s worth of Red Hots on the way home.

After we got home he would unload all the things we bought for Grandma and then we would sit on the front porch (Grandma wouldn’t let us in the house with the beer, lol) and he would drink his quart of beer and I’d eat my Horehound Drops; then, he would drink my quart of beer and I’d eat my Red Hots (I saved what I liked for last). I was not very old or big and he was getting old and was 6′4″ (to me very big) and we would sit there and talk about so many good things that I still remember.

I’m sure that many people would think he was just a tad crazy but all I could think of was how much I loved him and how long it would be until it was time to “do the trading” again and go to the pool hall and wrestle the monkey for my ice cream cone.