Leveraged Intelligence

Manchester: Time to Move

The above is a satellite image of Manchester as it looks today.  To refresh you, we lived in the apartment above the grocery store when we first moved to Manchester in 1953.  It is where the rectangle that I have in maroon above sits.  And, my friend and classmate, Connie, took some pictures in Manchester last week, so I thought I would share with you at ground level how some of it looks today.

This is Main Street and the first big building on the left is the store and apartment.  The smaller building on the left is where the phone operator lived – and operated!

The next picture is from Main Street of the store and apartment as they look now:

Alas, nothing lasts forever and in 1955 it was time for us to move.  The distance wasn’t that great, but it was a move probably halfway across town.  I mean, it was two blocks.

The yellow line on the map above is the path we followed for the move.  First, it takes you past the city park (the aqua box by the yellow line):

The next picture is a close-up of the swings and gazebo.  What is less obvious is that the space between the gazebo and the swings was the width of our pickup football field.  It was also the city movie theater seating:

Moving on up the yellow line, at the end is a two box outline in fuchsia of where the school was – and turning right, you go to where our rental house was.  Our property was in the blue box, if you can see it.

To this day, I’m not sure why we moved.  Maybe it was the lowered rent, from $25 to $15 per month.  Maybe it was the yard.  But, my best guess is that it was so Dad didn’t have such a grueling commute to work!  Across the street from the school was the PERFECT location for us.

Now, stay tuned, because the next Manchester entry will be Manchester: The Dangers!

To be continued…

Manchester: Standing for Truth, Justice and the American Way!

my little superman Originally uploaded by David M. Zuber

When we lived in our Manchester apartment, my mother made a cape for me from a red scarf. It was the cape of my favorite superhero, the only REAL superhero – Superman! I flew all over the apartment with hands out front and my cape flowing behind. As I flew, I made those “whooshing” sounds like they had on TV.

The beauty and magic of childhood is that ability to “become” the character you are emulating.  When you make believe, you do it with all your heart.  I had X-Ray vision, was invulnerable, could fly, had super strength.

Later, it was the comic books.  Again, Superman led the way!  For a dime, you had a treasure to be read over and over.  You could read it in your room, on the couch, sitting under a tree, sitting in a swing… And you were transported into their super world, totally into your new surroundings!

Then you become an adult!  End of fun, right?  No way!  You know me better than that.  It just doesn’t give me the same buzz running around with a scarf tied around my neck saying “Whoosh!” if you know what I mean.  But, what does turn my crank is imagining what it would be like to have Superman grow up in our world, our world as we find it.  Not with super villains to confront, but with our everyday concerns.  Along those lines, I have a series of questions to ask you about what Superman might be like in our world and I would love to hear some of your ideas:

Would he dismantle Al Qaeda?
Would he make the North Korean missile moot?
What relationship would he have to world leaders?  Would he go to the G20 Summit?
Would he force an end to armed conflicts as people started them?
Would people get to point of saying it was "just" Superman flying up there?
Would his "job" ultimately bore the crap out of him?
What would his religious beliefs be like?
Would he endorse political candidates?
Would he have an audience with the Pope?  Would the Pope have an audience with Superman?
Would he support positive technologies?
Would he have causes that he backed?
Would he be willing to kill one or some to save many?
Would he identify as American or take more of a global identity?  He has a super brain. Would he invent things?

What do you think, gang?  Have at it and I’ll jump in with you!

Addendum: I just have to throw this in, because it is so funny for this topic:

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!