Leveraged Intelligence

Mayo’s Descendents

Only one of these two sitting here with Maynard is a bloodline descendent.  Guess which one!

Mayo, sorry to hear about the accident that took the pinky off your left hand, man.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

My father is 84 today!  And, I will admit that this is not a recent photo for he was just 82 when this picture was taken.  Still, he hasn’t changed much.

Look at the eyes!  Anything you need to know is in the eyes in this picture.  How the hell did he get eyes and a focus like that?  Well, to start with, he was born in the middle of a Kansas winter.  This past Monday night in Kansas, it was 13 degrees Fahrenheit, –10.5 Celsius,  because that’s how December in Kansas is.  And he was born at home, weighing  between 2 and 2 1/2 pounds – about a kilo for those across one pond or the other.  Since it was cold and he was a preemie, he needed an incubator.  So, they turned on the oven and set him on the door, a good idea considering that he was turning a little blue!  At that point, a theme for a life was set.  To quote a famous man, my father himself, “I’m a survivor, baby!”

And that’s just what he has been ever since.  Every place he’s gone, he has led.  Of course, part of that is because he really isn’t made to follow, something the Army found out on occasion.  Part of that is because he never cared much who was following, because he was just doing what he was going to do.  The rest of it was always having a very clear sense of himself and his purpose.  He was a successful coach, a successful Principal, a successful teacher, a successful meter reader, a successful road gang worker and could have been a successful lawyer, preacher or businessman.  The kids, teachers and parents loved him.  Show him a need and he has always exceeded it.  Give him a nut and a wrench and that sucker was welded!  But, I’ve got to tell you, play poker with him at your own risk!  Show him a rule and … well, he might follow it if it makes sense anyway.  But nothing goes out of control.

Dad’s a specialist at living life and some of my best formative years were spent talking with him about – well, about anything.  Nothing was or is off limits.  We talk religion, we talk politics, we talk events, we talk sports and we always talk meaning.  He never has taken time out of his life to talk with me, he’s always wanted to do it and a kid can tell the difference.  His kids at school could, too.  So could a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses, LOL.

He’s had a pretty good knack for making choices in his life, too.

And, you know the best part of all.  He isn’t living his life looking in the rear view mirror.  He’s living it like he always has, moving ahead, with a purpose and glad to be alive!  Survive, baby!

Happy 84th!!

One Remarkable Day

Part of the continuing Blogger’s Consortium series with simultaneous posts on the topic being done by Ashok, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Helen, Judy, Magpie 11, Maria, Marianna and Ramana – in alphabetical order.  The Grand Old Man of the group, Ramana Rajgopaul, came up with this topic.

I’ve got to tell my readers – I love these guys!!

This evening, I will be going to work lighting for the second and final week of our local High School’s annual musical, this year Evita.  For years, I’ve tried to tell parents how special it is to be involved with their children’s accomplishments as closely as possible, to take an interest and share that interest with them.  This is for the parent, for the rewards are legion; for the community, for the interactions make for bonds that withstand stress and bring creative joy and nurturance; and especially for the children, for they will carry that tradition on when the time is ripe.  It is activity that reverberates through the generations and gains momentum.  It is a counter to the dark hopeless entropy that moribund societies face.

This is the story I’ve told before on this blog, repeated with emphasis of one of those days spent with my father that simply is irreproducible and irreplaceable.  I was a ten-year old baseball player in Salina, Kansas.  A pitcher.

There was a local semi-pro team in 1960 and an extraordinary thing happened to and for them.  The greatest pitcher of all time – and I mean that without exaggeration – came into town for three weeks to pitch for them, the great Satchel Paige.  Paige had pitched for years in the Negro Leagues and he was so good that the great Joe DiMaggio said that Paige was the only pitcher he simply could NOT hit!  He is, to this day, the oldest player to ever play in the Majors, not being able to break the color barrier until after it was done by the great Jackie Robinson.  Paige’s short major league career STARTED when he was 47!

When he came to Salina for three weeks, he was in his later 50’s.  He still had a fastball that hummed and a curveball that dropped off the table.  And this all-time great decided to put on a pitching clinic for all the local little-league pitchers.

He began by talking with us in the most easy, least egotistical manner you could imagine.  There were about ten or fifteen of us little guys there and we hung on every word.

He had a catcher and an umpire position themselves behind the plate and had us stand behind the mound.  Then, he did the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen a baseball player do: he had the catcher place a matchbox on the plate and told the umpire to call balls and strikes over the matchbox, not the plate!  Without a warm-up, he threw about 15 straight strikes over that match box.  He could do it with a curve, with a fastball – I think he could have done it standing on his head.

When asked whether he had off days when he couldn’t throw strikes over the matchbox, he replied that, “No.  I can always do that.  But, on the good days, I can throw it over the corners of the matchbox, on worse ones I have to throw directly over the box.”  Just like that.  No brag.  Just fact.

In later years, I saw him interviewed by Ed Bradley on 60 Minutes.  Bradley asked him about his legendary control and he demonstrated by throwing rock after rock across a pond hitting whatever decoy duck that Bradley picked out for each throw.  He said he had always been able to do that, since he was a child.

After showing us many things, like his move to second – and his lack of a move to first, which he said was just how it was -  he smiled and said no man could do everything!  But, he wanted to know what we would do as pitchers in a special situation.

And he pointed to me!  He said, “Son, here is the situation.  A man is on third.  You wind up and he breaks for home.  What do you do?”

Satchel Paige asked ME a question?  The only question he asked all day?  I said, praying it was the right answer, “You hurry your windup as much as possible and throw the ball outside so the batter can’t put a bat on it and the catcher can bring it back on the runner.”

He looked at me and said, “Boy, no kids get that one right.  But you did!  Let me shake your hand.”  And he came over there and shook my hand!  Satchel Paige shook my hand!

  And you know what was great about it?  My dad was right there.  We talked about it all the way home to tell Mom!

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.

Facing Aggression

Yesterday, a high school boy tried to pull off a Columbine massacre at a Bay Area High School and we are talking about serious intent.  He had 15 or so pipe bombs, two of which he managed to set off – no one injured, thank God – and had various weapons including a chain saw and a sword with him.  Those people he didn’t get with the bombs, he intended to get with the saw or the sword!

Now, this might have ended very badly – except that at great personal risk, a teacher tackled him at total personal risk.  Some people are like that.  Presented with life-threatening risk, they perform, often without thinking about it twice.  These are special people.

My Uncle Rudolf, shown in the above picture in 1937 feeding a wild bear in the woods at Yosemite Park, was one of these special people.  But, he was different than some people who can face danger or aggression with equanimity.  He wasn’t one of the aggressive people to be around, he was more a magic man who seemed totally unafraid of anything.  In New York, they were building a skyscraper and everything was taken down from the construction one day except some essential tools.  Well, they couldn’t rig all the safety stuff to go back up there, they needed someone to go out onto naked girders 50 stories above the ground to retrieve them.  Uncle Rudolf said sure, he would do it and waltzed right out and got them and brought them down.  He probably would have done it without pay, but the money was nice.

Visiting a huge dam, he got up on the railing and the edge and walked out, right on the edge of a gazillion foot drop.  Now, I’ve had some adventures in my life, but you’d have to tie me up with a rope and haul me out to get me to do some of the things he did!

And, as a kid, I can remember what a delight it was to have Uncle Rudolf around.  He would play the neatest games with you.

All of these characteristics, coupled with a pretty good head on his shoulders, made him a pretty astute business person and he ended up going to California and becoming a successful almond rancher.  He had a great life right up until in his late 80’s he died on the French Riviera!

Have you had anyone special like that in your life?

Advisory: don’t feed wild bears in Yosemite!

Straight Out of Steinbeck

"After 40 every man gets the face he deserves"
— Abraham Lincoln

Uncle Frank earned that face.  Some of it was formed by nature.  Some of it was formed in a brawl or two.  Most of it was formed by character.

He was one of those rare thoughtful few who knew that only a few men looked at life by what was right and never paid much attention to the cost.  If you are lucky, you’ve known a person like this in your life.  If you were luckier, you were related to him.

When he was a boy, he and my Mom’s Dad, brothers, had to take the girls to school across pastures in the snow.  They didn’t have a real sled, it was kind of a platform that didn’t actually have runners.  Aunt Esther, Aunt Mary – and one other I think that I can’t think of – rode on the platform and it was a lot of work for the boys.  So, one day they got the bright idea that they could hook it to the cow and let the cow pull it.  Unfortunately, the “sled” got hung up in something and it literally pulled the cow’s tail off!  True story!  And they got in a lot of trouble.

Later, Uncle Frank could trade anything and always came out well in the deal.  He went out with the goat during the depression, traded the goat for something, traded that for something else … and on and on … only to come back and trade something for the original goat!  Came home with the goat and other stuff.

Later, he and his wife went out with a wagon and had a bunch of blueing on it for people to use with their laundries.  By the time he got done selling it, he had made enough profit to buy a lot at the edge of town.  He dug a hole in the lot, put a roof over it, and moved the family in!  My grandpa did the same thing next door and Mom grew up in that dugout.  I’ll let her tell you more tales of life in it.

Uncle Frank liked to go out and drink with the boys.  He was a happy drunk!  Some drunks weren’t happy drunks.  Now, Uncle Frank wasn’t very big.  The biggest thing he had going for him was his heart.  But, what the bigger, unhappier drunks didn’t know was that even though Uncle Frank never started fights, he finished them!  Dad says he hit like a mule!

Uncle Frank never got rich.  Unless you count life experience, that is!  In that case, he was Rockefeller.

And, yes, Grannymar, his ancestry was Irish!

Half Moon Bay for the Day

Across the bridge – San Francisco across the Bay with Mt. Tam behind it:

Through some countryside:

And, after about 40 min of drive we are at the Tide Pools at the Pacific:

Check out some life there.  Note that ten years ago, tidal zone education by a scientist / artist turned into Spongebob Squarepants and a decade  and ten billion dollars later, they are both still going strong.  See if you can see anyone you recognize:

Have a romantic interlude:

Take note of harbor seals pupping:

Go to a beautiful adjoining beach and haul the food down:

Eat the way pinko Californians eat (Sushi, humus, snap peas, watermelon, chips, herb roasted turkey, diet pepsi – life is good!).  In case you are wondering about the diet soda and chips … why they are free range!:

Play a little catch:

Lay out with the sunscreen slathered on and relax totally.  Then head back home, fully satisfied!

You can find the full photo collection here:

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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?

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!