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

Religion and Spirituality

Part of the continuing Blogger’s Consortium series with simultaneous posts on the topic being done by Ashok, Grannymar and Ramana – in alphabetical order.  Ashok came up with this topic … ambitious fellow that he is.  I mean, this is a WHOLE LOTTA TOPIC!

Non-free media use rationale for Elmer Gantry (film)

Gantry was a hard living salesman and he consorted with drunks and whores.  But, he had a passion for life and he had an abiding belief in God.  A genuine belief in God.  The nature of that belief was tested and fleshed out when he became a revivalist preacher in the American Midwest of the early Twentieth Century, became a revivalist preacher because he was mightily attracted to Sister Sharon Falconer.  The problem was that Sister Sharon kind of was deluded that she was God’s chosen messenger while Gantry thought she would do just fine as a real human being sharing life and passion with him!  Ultimately, Gantry’s very real faith grounded in life was what carried him through while Sister Sharon’s delusions did her in!

I’ve always loved that movie, REALLY loved it.  And part of that is because it evokes so many of the forces of life’s spirituality that has formed my underlying beliefs.  Let me show you a picture of my father taken during World War II:

He was AWOL in Vancouver at the time.  If it didn’t endanger any men or hurt the war effort, he wasn’t really what you would call a fan of the rules!  Let’s face it, he could have walked straight out of Casablanca looking like that.  Later, he lost his older brother over Germany in that war and he was on the first wave assault ship heading across the Pacific to attack Japan when the bombs were dropped.  They were estimating with his guys 90 – 100% casualties, if you can imagine that!

He came back from that war hardened, really hardened.  A lot of soldiers return from war more than a little lost as human beings.  They can still live hard, but something is missing in their souls.  Then, along comes love:

Sister Sharon, step aside for the real thing!!  No delusions for this young woman, shown in a picture from Christmas 1945.  I say young woman, even though she was only 14 when the picture was taken.  Somehow, hard times grow you up fast and she was no stranger to hard times.  Very bright and quite beautiful – as is obvious – she took care of business!  Both feet were always planted squarely on the ground.

So, now God goes to work and places this ex-soldier in a diner with some friends, a diner where my Mom was a waitress.  She waited on their table, of course.  And, when one of the guys asked if she would go out with him, she told him flat out, “No … but I’ll go out with him!” pointing to Dad.

So, two good-looking bright people have now met.  The young woman raised as a Nazarene Christian – and, trust me, Gantry and his delivery had NOTHING on the Nazarene Christians! – and a young man who has just been molded in the crucible of Hell needing to find his way back home.  To make a long story short – because I intend to do some further work on parts of it in later posts about our family – Dad went back to college on the GI Bill to get a degree in Business and a Minor in Philosophy of Religion.  He had to reclaim his soul – and he had to do it his way, part of it in the classroom, part of it with Mom and part of it in bars on the tough side of town with his new in-laws!  I’d be hard put to judge which place brings you closest to God; the sanctuary, the Comparative Religion classroom, or the bar!  But, one thing is for sure, it is the love that ties it all together.

So, he studied and drank and fought and loved, and they shared life and had me and my sister.  Some of my favorite memories of my youth are sitting with Dad discussing religious ideas.  It was no holds barred.  As much as he was in love with Jesus, Dad was never a Holy Roller.  He behaved toward the Church a whole lot like he did toward the Army.  A lot of the rules were irrelevant as far as he was concerned and that was what he taught his boy.  But – and this was key – it wasn’t because he didn’t believe.  It was because he always felt the package presented was short of the truth.  And the truth he saw was earned in discussions with some really fine theologians; in studying other religions besides the one with which he was raised; in figuring out his own truths of life with his wife that he loved, with the kids that he taught and with the herculean task of reclaiming that which was rightfully his, his own loving spirit.

The Church and religions in general like to control and offer rewards and punishments.  Many are quite happy to peddle hysteria and snake oil like Gantry often did, but a life like my folks had inoculates you against their power grabs in such a way that you can separate the wheat from the chaff and feast spiritually from what religious giants offer.  But, it takes life’s forge to get you ready for that and sometimes it is earned with a black eye or a split lip or a philosophical discussion on a bar stool.

How did my folks win?  They put the truths of life, the love of people and their own spirituality first.  They had to.  It was survival for them.  But, note the important distinction here: they did not approach spirituality through religious understanding – they approached religious understanding through their spirituality.  And they threw something else out the window, the idea that being human is somehow bad, something to be escaped.  They embraced their humanity and celebrated life – and found God right in the middle!

Power and a Cup of Coffee

Is this man free?

Is this woman free?

I know that both are care givers and that this not only restricts travel freedom, but can be just plain tiring.  I know that both have mobility limitations; hip, back and/or leg problems.  These would seem to not be the characteristics of free people – yet I think they both have a mastery of something most people have never thought about and many will never understand.  They both have a quiet mastery of the moment.

The man in the top picture is my friend Ramana Rajgopaul at his home in India and a post on his blog spurred this posting.  The woman in the bottom picture is my mother in her home in Kansas.  Different cultures, different genders.  But, in the scheme of things, what difference do these small matters make?  Some things are universal and universally available – and time pretty much fills that bill.

What you cannot see (unless you look very closely) is the cup of coffee behind Mom’s knee.  If I had a nickel for every time I’ve seen her sitting with a cup of coffee…  We were sitting and talking one day and I told her that I thought I knew what sitting with that cup of coffee was about.  It was about just sitting.  Not worrying about money or transportation or anything else.  Just sitting for awhile.  I felt it was her form of meditation – and she agreed.  To me, her coffee drinking was a very valuable time exercise. 

The present is the point of power.  Nothing can be done at any other time.  Nothing can even be at any other time.  But, the present can be expanded or contracted.  Expanded, it can contain both the packed trunks of the past and the ephemeral concerns for the future.  The price paid is dissipation.  Life becomes a washed-out, half-hearted ghost of itself.  The result is emotional and spiritual bondage.  Every movement, every thought is without enthusiasm.  Every action is without potency.  Life has no immediacy.  Life just isn’t alive!

Don’t get me wrong.  There are great memories to be shared.  There are good plans to be made.  But, they are part of a laser-like focus in the present when done in the most healthy way.  The past is not viewed sentimentally, it is celebrated.  The future is not dreaded or obsessed over, merely prepared for and released.

The present offers an even greater treasure when it contracts.  Athletes know it as the zone, when they are so attuned with the moment and only the moment that everything slows, their timing becomes perfect, their touch precise.  Any action offers that zone and you know when you are in it.  Writing offers that zone when the words flow and the ideas pour out in an ordered, coherent fashion, content expressing inner emotion and understanding.  Public speaking, teaching, music – even partying – have the zone.

Meditation contracts the present even further, for it couples with a quieting of the inner dialogue, a cessation from broadcasting the world.  It allows the most fundamental perceptions to arise and the world becomes magical.  Suddenly it becomes clear that there are more dimensions available to the human perception, questions unasked in the normal hustle and bustle.  It becomes a world of wonder and the mundane becomes miraculous!  An inkling forms of how the prophets and the shamans see the world at all times, for they learn to reenter the world without leaving their meditative state.  They are true masters of the present.

That is why I see these two people to be free.  Not just these two, of course, but they are part of this blog’s close family and I treasure that.  It is not because I see them as shamans or prophets – although, who knows? – but because I see them ever savoring the moment, reflecting within to expand without.  That is what makes them warm and supportive of the people and world they find around them.  That is what makes them free.

That is why I offer a toast to fellow free spirits from some fellow free spirits:

From left, my mother, me, my daughter, my father.

How are you doing right now?

Time to Reopen the Whine Bar!

We’ve had so many heavy topics lately, I thought that it was time to open the old establishment back up.  Whew, what a run!

I asked Mom to paint a picture to put up on the wall and this is what she came up with:

I, of course, told her that it was a perfect representation of our attitude here.

Now…belly up to the bar and tell me what is on your mind.  Whine anyone??

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!