Now, about chips...

I’ve read a few lists on Facebook today, one was a list of ten best books, voted on by some famous authors.  Another was a list of best movies, according to some experts.  There’s no shortage of this kind of article.

When I play around with making such lists, I don’t claim to know what’s best, I just know what I like.  So in that spirit, here my list of chips I like, top down, starting with my favorite.

#1.  Sun Chips.  I’d buy these more often, but anymore they cost a king’s ransom for just a little bag.  Aldi’s has a store version they call Multigrain Chips.  Yes, I can tell a bit of a difference, but they’re still really good, at a more reasonable price.

#2.  Nacho Cheese Doritos.  I had a few of those today, and that’s what got me started on this.  I have to use strict self control with these…I could easily eat half a bag at a sitting.  Not a good idea.

#3.  Fritos, the original.  Yes, I mean those good ol’ greasy corn chips, unchanged from the 1960s.  The kind of snack food that gives nutritionists conniption fits, and makes me feel a bit guilty if I have them too often.

As an aside, I remember when I was a child, there were only six kinds of salty snacks you could buy in bags at the store.  Plain potato chips, barbecue chips, Fritos, cheese curls, pretzels, and already popped popcorn.  There were also peanuts or mixed nuts or cashews, but they were usually in cans.  It wasn’t until the late 60s, early 70s that we got sour cream and onion chips, Ruffles (have ridges), cheese balls, Bugles, and a lot of other fancy-pants snacks.

Back to my list, which so far has been all multigrain or corn chips.

#4.  Sour cream and onion chips, followed closely by…

#5.  Sour cream and cheddar chips.  Almost a tie, that.

#6.  Cheese curls…if they’re the crunchy kind.  Cheese puffs…eh, not so much.

#7.  Cool Ranch Doritos.

#8.  Barbecue chips.  This varies a lot, some brands are just too salty.  And sometimes I’m in the mood for them, but other times, not really.

#9.  Plain Potato chips.  I do still like these, and they used to rank much higher on the list.  These days though, I like some added flavor.

Just so you know, I avoid anything with “HOT” or “Flaming” or “Jalapino” in the title.  Tell me again, exactly why would I want chemical burns on my taste buds?

I could also mention already prepared Chex Mix, but I won’t.  It’s just that I so much prefer buying the ingredients and baking the mix up fresh.  Makes a world of difference.

One more personal note…for me, peanuts trump all of these.  But since this is a list of chips, I’ve got to draw the line somewhere.

Lassie...what a strange show.

After an interesting day of job interviews – one each for me and my wife – I sat down in front of the TV to put my mind in vacation mode for a while.  Flipping through the channels, I stopped at our COZI-TV affiliate, and they were showing Lassie.

Now, I say the following in jest.  Well, partly in jest anyway.  I remember watching the show as a kid, and you couldn’t help but like Lassie.  Say it with me folks, “Good girl, Lassie”!

What I saw tonight wasn’t one of those “Timmy fell down the well…again” episodes.  Apparently some calamity had happened in the woods – maybe a forest fire – and Lassie took it upon herself to go around and check up on the little woodland creatures, and set things to rights if necessary.

(Hey, you know what you can find in the woods?  Squirrels!  I saw one on Lassie.  Okay, yeah I’m sure that’s true, but they’re not what you’d call exotic.  It’s not like you’d hear, “Dad!  Let’s go to the woods.  I know it’s a long way to drive, but I really wanna see a squirrel.  Please?”  Look kid, just come over to my yard.  We got your squirrels.  Bring your traps along, and you can take as many of those tomato thieves with you as you want!  But I digress.)

Where was I?  Oh yeah, the woods…Lassie…little animals.

By the way for those of you new to our fine world, Lassie was a big, good natured collie dog who apparently communicated by a combination of body language and barking.

So a fox walks into the woods.  Which sounds like a setup to a joke, “A fox, a dog, and Indiana Jones walk into the woods”.  No, no, no.  No joke, this fox was a skinny, scrawny thing.  Really pathetic looking.  Lassie watches the fox for a while, then harangues it with a few barks.  The fox pauses, then ambles on a bit.

Then we see a quail.  The camera pans over a bit, and there’s the quail’s nest, with five eggs out in the open, unprotected!  Lassie looks at the nest, then looks at the fox looking at the nest.

Foxes gotta eat too, you know.

For some reason this made me think of Solomon, preparing to pass judgment on a difficult dispute.  What will Lassie’s decision be?  “Okay fox, you can eat two quail eggs, but no more than that.  Got it”?

Then the camera cut to the branch of a nearby tree, where sat an owl and two owl chicks in the nest.

“Okay, two quail eggs, and I’ll throw in one of the owl chicks.  But don’t you even think about going for the other one”!  But of course, all you heard was barking.  More barking.

It’s as if Lassie expected all the different forest animals to understand Doggish.  That would be like one of us traveling to France or Germany and expecting everyone to understand English.

What must be going through the minds of these animals?  It wouldn’t matter much to them that Lassie lived on a farm.  No, when you live in the woods you have to be tough.  I can almost hear them thinking, “Just who does this softy from the suburbs think she is, coming here and poking her nose into our business”?

Right then I was called to supper, which is just as well.  I don’t know if the plot turned into some dramatic struggle, fox versus helpless small animals.  It wouldn’t have been anything really intense, though.  We could watch Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom if we wanted to see intense.

Proof

Last year when my main computer needed to be replaced, the new box came with Windows 7, which I like.  One problem, the Cannon scanner software doesn't communicate with the new system.  I considered upgrading the scanner software, but have decided to move it to my other computer instead, which is still using Windows XP.

Which means it's about time to pack away the old HP scanner, which is slow, noisy, sometimes balky, and not that user friendly.  I'd have jettisoned it long ago, except that:

A.  It still works, and
B.  It has a transparency adapter so I can scan in 35mm negatives and 2" x 2" slides.

All that preamble to tell you that I've started a massive project to scan all my slides.  I'm not very far into the project; I'm up to about 1956.  I had a rather exciting "Aha moment" when I noticed something in this slide, for the first time yesterday; and I've seen it many times over the years.  This is from my first birthday.

On or near November 12, 1954, and appropriate to this blog, this was in Grandma and Poppy's kitchen.  Left to right, my Uncle Bud, me, and my sister Connie (I'm not sure why she's staring at the wallpaper).  Now Cousin Mike, see if you notice anything...interesting about this picture.  I'll give you a few moments...

Hint:  I've mentioned this here before (paragraphs 17 & 18), it's an old family story.

What we have here is photographic proof of waaaaaay back when I started out as a lefty, before my dad trained me out of that, and made me mixed-handed.  Before yesterday, I didn't realize there was any evidence.  It's neat the things I discover when I look through old stuff.

Oh, and another bit of trivia.  The windowpanes slid into the walls, and you'll notice the one on the right side is open.  I'm sure this wasn't too late in the evening, but it was already dark.  And though this was in southern Missouri, November evenings are usually cool there.  But this was 1954, an unusually hot year, or so they tell me.

While I'm in the mood, here's a few more pictures from that evening.

This one was actually taken just before the one at the top.  I don't know if Connie's trying to get my attention or Bud's.  And I don't know if Bud just sampled some of the cake, or if he was prompting me what to do next.  Well, we can see the story, even if we don't know the dialog.  This next image I cropped...seemed to improve it, I think.

I hope you enjoyed those!



  

Happy Father's Day 2012

So, what to do here? I've written years ago some memories of my Dad, a simple link to that old post here shall suffice, if you want to read, or re-read what I wrote. That was focused and personal, fond and happy memories.

Father's day can be many other things though. I'm a father of four great kids, and the three local ones helped me celebrate this evening with vanilla ice cream and hot fudge sauce in waffle bowls. I also had a wonderful conversation with my eldest daughter in California; I always enjoy it when she calls.

There's also the realization of other men, perhaps friends at church, or uncles, cousins, brothers-in-law, and other relatives, and seeing their relationships with their families (I thought of going family-tree-style, and posting photos of several of my male relatives with other family members. I'm thinking I'll still do that, but getting those photos organized will take longer and go later than I want tonight). So there may be a part two to this.

On my way here to post, I happened to notice on my Blogger Dashboard that my Cousin Mike had posted some neat memories and photos of his Dad, my Uncle P. J., on his blog "Central Standard". Mike also posed a question that was raised by one of his friends...

 "If you could spend one day again with your Dad, which day would it be"?

That's a great question, and my first thought was of an afternoon when I was sitting in the radio room (now the computer room), in fact, within a foot of where I'm sitting now. Dad was telling stories of when he was a boy and watched an air show in, I think, Detroit. I don't quite remember all the details, so I might well want to revisit that time and get Dad's stories on my tape recorder. And maybe ask a few more questions.

Or, I might want to go back to a quiet family moment in Poppy's living room, which I've written about here. Not a word was spoken for a while but I was young, we were all in reasonably good health, it was so peaceful, and I had not a care in the world.

Then again...there was the time we had traveled down to the farm to visit Poppy (my Mom's Dad, if you're new here and wish to keep score). On this trip we had brought along some floor tiles as the old linoleum was getting really worn out. I was in my Uncle Bud's room reading comic books for quite a while, so the project was already under way when I walked into the hallway. Dad had started to glue down the new tiles in the living room, which surprised me. I said, "Oh, so you don't scrape up the old linoleum first"? With a straight face Dad replied, "No, we'll just add a new layer every time, and eventually we'll have to scuttle around like this"! He then demonstrated the "scuttle" by hunching his back over and taking a few steps at about half running speed. That was, far and away, the funniest thing I ever saw and heard him do, it totally cracked me up!

Dad's good humor was of the dry sort, delivered unexpectedly. I didn't hear him laugh often. But...there was the one time when I brought my (then) girlfriend home and announced to Mom and Dad that we were engaged. Dad's face just lit up, and that was a laugh of joy. That might be the day I'd re-visit, for a number of good reasons.

Boy, it would sure be hard to pick just one.

Happy Birthday, Mike!

It’s Mike’s birthday again, and boy did that year fly by! I spent some time earlier trying to think of something extra clever to post, but had a bit of writer’s block; other than to say that we got no mail today. So Mike, how did you get your birthday to be a postal holiday?

Anyway, instead of trying to come up with something new, how about something old.

I have good memories of the times my family and I would travel to Poppy’s farm in the Ozarks. Usually we’d stay a week, a few times almost two. Always there would be a day or two when Mike’s family would drive over from Branson. If the weather was good, and it usually was, we’d divide our time inside the house and outside in the yard. We could always come up with something to do, even if it was just to look at comics and crack each other up with jokes.

One year we came up with a club, the Human Bean Club. We tied a rope between two closely spaced trees and put an old blanket across the top, weighted down with a few rocks at the bottom; that was our HBC tent. A flag was hastily made with a sheet of paper, colored with crayons (probably from that box of smoky crayons I'd bought at a dime store in Forsyth that had a fire sale). This was - I think - 1964 or 1965. We agreed that having a club had merit, and eventually play money was made and I think membership cards (I can't prove the latter from the archives though). The HBC club lasted over a year, maybe almost two years.

Sometimes I was invited to Mike's house to spend the night, and the hours would fly by. Paper, pens and pencils were an absolutely necessity, and the "creativity" (silliness) would begin. The cartoons I'd draw would usually involve characters I'd make up with oval shaped bodies, hastily drawn hands and odd eyes, big honkin' tennis shoes and messy hair. The plots usually involved trying to outrun a tornado, or were a setup for some pun or play on words. In later years, I came up with one truly odd attempt to build a storyline combining elements of Star Trek, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hogan's Heroes (hillbillies hiding from the rev'noors in underground tunnels, firing a phaser-like weapon to freeze an approaching tornado). If it was late enough and you were sleep deprived, it almost made sense. Kind of.

Mike had his own character, Fuzz-Man, whose special power was that he could attract lint and expand to giant size. Useful when dealing with his arch-enemies, Captain Endust, and the giant vacuum cleaner. Sometimes Mike would draw an already established super hero, usually Batman. Most of my stuff was just odd humor, but Mike's superhero themes inspired me to come up with Jello-Man. That character had worked in the Jello factory and one day had accidentally fallen into the vat of grape Jello (I had a purple pencil). Now that he was a shape-shifter, Jello-Man could thin himself out and ooze under the door when he accidentally locked himself out of his apartment. And he could also...hmmm...well, what else? I'll get back to you on that one. Someday.

Later and later it would get. We'd try to keep the laughter to a minimum as we passed the cartoons back and forth. We'd always get shushed once or twice from Mike's mom or dad. The stuff they put up with.

Once we got into foreign languages. Mike knew some German, and I had learned some French in class. We'd write the foreign words, then the translation. The sillier the better; things such as "I don't understand the beach", and "When will the potato sing"?

Once in a while we'd get philosophical. I had realized something that had troubled me a bit. At the time, M&Ms came in red, orange, yellow, green and brown. We'd been on a completely different subject, so I sprang it on him.

"Mike, why are there no blue M&M's"? We had a good laugh over that and pondered what we could do. We decided we ought to send the company a telegram:

DEAR M AND MS STOP WHY NO BLUE STOP

I wish we'd followed through and actually sent that, but neither of us quite had the nerve. But as we all know there have been blue (and purple) M&Ms for some years now, so they must have gotten the message somehow.

Once or twice we stayed up late enough that we heard the newspaper hit the front step. Mike would go out and bring it in, and we'd head straight for the comics page.

We had to be among the first in town to read the days comic strips in the Branson Beacon. Got a jump on most everybody else. That felt good. Then we'd finally get a few hours sleep, and pretty much be worthless for the rest of the day.

Mike, I hope you had a great day and made more fun memories!

(I'd like to read a response to this...I know I left stuff out.)

Don't you give me those dirty looks...

That begins my favorite lyrics from Yakity Yak, just before the clue given by Mike.

Don't you give me those dirty looks,
Your father's hip he knows what cooks...

That's a fun memory. I'd guessed 1958 when I figured out it was Yakity Yak, performed by The Coasters, but I was prepared to be off a year either way. Then I looked it up and found it was 1958...bonus. I don't always get the year right.

I even remember hearing that song on the radio "back in the day", but I'm sure I didn't appreciate it until some years later after hearing it repeated as a "blast from the past" or a "golden oldie".

Light 'em if you got 'em

The time is nigh for the High Holy Days at Bob's house, for it is the time of fireworks in our land. Whether it is model rockets (another passion), or fireworks, Bob is more than a little pleased when there are propellants to ignite.

You may wish to keep him out of your garage, should he come to visit.

And we are pleased to rejoice with him over his hometown's decision to allow fireworks this year and, yes, Bob, you should by all means join in when you can, as if you need my encouragement.

I, for one, while I enjoy the fireworks, prefer not to trouble myself with them. When all is said and done, I get too sweaty and too gobbled by mosquitoes to enjoy myself. We will, though, haul our lawn chairs across the street and watch the display put on by a large church in the area. After I lather myself with bug repellent.

Speaking of summertime activities, I, for some reason, was remembering an episode from my childhood today. This would have been the summer of 1963 and my older sister and my younger sister and I were enjoying some Dr. Pepper. And you recall Dr. Pepper's logo of those days, with the 10, 2, and 4, which suggested a clock face and the times of the day to drink Dr. Pepper. Well my older sister pointed out that the numbers also coincided with our respective ages at the time.

We thought that was neat in '63. I still do.

May Travels, part 1: The Old Roads

Five days ago, my wife and I drove to Springfield and back to bring Daughter number 2 back from Missouri State University. We each drove a car in order to have enough trunk and back seat space to bring back all her stuff. Loading the cars was uneventful. As I got my car loaded first, the three of us agreed there was no pressing reason that I had to hang around.

So I started home early, and did something I had talked about for years, but never felt I had the freedom to do. Since I wasn't on a tight schedule, I drove the old roads. I hadn't thought about this ahead of time, so I didn't have my DeLorme's Missouri atlas along; otherwise I could have found more miles of the original alignment. As it was though, I re-created the trip along what was old Missouri 13 highway through Bolivar, Fair Play, Dunnegan, Humansville, and Collins. I also got off the "new" 13 at V highway and took the old route through Vista and Osceola.

Scan from 1958 Phillips 66 Missouri map (Central Ozarks inset)

Well, you no longer have to stop in the above mentioned towns. Since 1962, a new 16 mile stretch of Missouri 13 has been open, a diagonal cut-off from three miles south of Bolivar to one mile west of Humansville. Not only did this cut-off nine miles, the inclines are much more gradual and you don't have the limited sight distance or occasional tight curves of the original route. Also, in the last ten years or so this entire stretch has been made a divided highway; the last section to open was the Collins bypass last year.

A scan of part of the 2008 Official Missouri map, for comparison. Also notice that the stretch around Osceola has been straightened over the years.

I suppose I ought to mention that I've been fascinated with maps since I was seven years old. My mom, bless her heart, had almost no sense of direction. If my dad wasn't driving, getting lost on long trips was a distinct possibility. On one of our many trips to Taney County, mom handed me a map so I could help her while she drove.

Now, the term epiphany has been overused, and I want to resist cheapening it further here by using it to describe the simple act of handing a map to a kid. But I've got to tell you the result was anything but simple; it was like a switch was suddenly flipped on in my mind. I'm sure I'd seen maps before but had taken no notice of what they were until that moment. Somehow I comprehended that These Real Places That Are - and how to go from one to another - were displayed in pictures, words and numbers. Right before my eyes. An all-out wonder, indeed. And the fact that the houses and people weren't shown didn't bother me at all. I "got" right away that it was symbolic, though I doubt I knew that word yet. I had many miles of the real world shrunken down so I could hold it in my hand and learn it. Truly an odd feeling.

So last Wednesday, I drove from Bolivar west on Missouri 32 to Fair Play, then North on Missouri 123 through Dunnegan and Humansville. I haven't seen this scenery in 47 years, and much to my delight, there were things I saw that I remembered from way back when. True, much I didn't recognize, but once in a while I'd see an old barn or old stone farm house that gave rise to an "oh yeah" moment of recognition. Sometimes it was just the lay of the landscape, or how the intersection of 32 and 123 in Fair Play is laid out. The way the town of Dunnegan is arranged - 123 highway is elevated a bit and you drive along the edge of town. You have to glance off to the left (as you drive north) and down a bit as you drive, to notice the houses.

As I mentioned, north of Collins I turned West to drive through Vista and Osceola. There's not much left of Vista, but it never was a big town. That's kind of a tight curve combined with a hill there, so I concentrated on my driving. But I think I noticed only three houses. Maybe four. And I enjoyed seeing the town of Osceola again. Kind of a pretty area that you miss entirely if you're in a hurry and stay on "new" 13.

Another Mays Blast

Save your eyes.

I remember the same Public Service Announcement (PSA) that Bob mentioned in the previous post. I, too, thought it an odd announcement. It seemed to me that it didn't make sense, that it wasn't relevant in my world. Blasting caps? I had never seen one. I almost felt deprived and wanted to go and actively search for blasting caps. Then I could tell the police where I found them and I would be a hero, 'The Boy Who Found the Blasting Cap'. It would probably get in the Branson Beacon and you could never get in the Branson Beacon enough.

The other thing that always caught my eye was the baseball action, of course, featuring Willie Mays. I was young, but I knew who Mays was. I seemed to understand that this blasting cap issue must be a big deal because Mays was telling us about it.

But mostly I noticed the halting and stiff delivery of his lines. I wondered if Willie Mays really talked like that and, if so, that was strange. Now I know that he was obviously reading his lines and it was probably filmed in about two takes. It's hard to tell color on the old footage, but Mays is wearing a uniform that says 'San Francisco' instead of one saying 'Giants', so I would guess it was before a road game. The presence of a significant crowd in the background would also suggest that it was nearing game time and they were just trying to get Mays to say the lines. I would say Los Angeles or New York would be likely spots for filming.

Anyway, the cadence for "but you protect your arms and hands and legs, and save your eyes" always struck me a really odd and I remember listening for it, especially 'save your eyes', as if it was the highlight of the spot.

Say hey.

Blast from the past

It's funny what you think of during the course of a day. Today I happened to remember an old public service announcement that I used to see every so often on television back in the 1960's and '70's. A serious warning about the dangers of...yes, that's right...

Blasting Caps!

What I recalled was that while the spokesman warned about being careful when you play outside, the camera would zoom in and someone would point out three blasting caps laid out on the ground - don't touch! Then the scene cut to a movie of an explosion. I had forgotten who the celebrity spokesman was until I checked online...well, Youtube to the rescue!

I won't make light about the safety issue, apparently those things were / are dangerous enough. But I'm curious about the background of this. Why this particular warning? And why don't we see this PSA today? Are the cleanup procedures at construction sites better now, so it's no longer an issue? Were they lax about such things 40 years ago? Was there a theft of blasting caps, with some being found in vacant lots? Or did a crew that filmed Public Service Announcements sit around one day...

"Cuthbert": "Guys, we need to make one more PSA to complete our contract, and frankly I'm stumped. Got any ideas?"

"Frank Lee": "Hmmm...what about we do one on blasting caps? Those suckers could really hurt a kid."

(Assumed names to protect the innocent.)

Back at my computer keyboard, with some old memories

Well I’m back, and it’s great to have a working computer at home again. (Obligatory comment: it’s funny how much we depend on computers now, and just a few years ago whether or not you had a computer wasn’t all that much of an issue.)

And thanks Mike for your posts - though I'm still not quite sure what to make of the last one. Interesting...um, yeah, that's it.

Anyway, while the compy was in the shop, I made various trips to two of the local libraries, the Mid-Continent Library South Independence branch, and the Kansas City Library Trails West branch, for internet access.

Changing the subject…

While at Trails West, I noticed a book display “Of Local Interest”. Here’s the one that caught my attention…


…so I checked out and read “Caught In the Path” by Carolyn Glenn Brewer. I’ll not attempt to make a full fledged book review; the comments on Amazon.com (where I found this photo) describe the book well. (By the way, the cover photo is of the tornado when it was out in the country near Spring Hill, Kansas, before it crossed into Missouri to wreak destruction in Martin City, Hickman Mills, and Ruskin Heights). I found other photos online from a NOAA site, so if you’re curious you can click and see what the tornado looked like from the Ottawa Kansas airport, a wider view of the book cover photo - note the multiple funnels – near Spring Hill, and the destruction of the Ruskin High School, the path through Ruskin Heights, and a close-up showing concrete slabs and debris.

If you’re expecting loads of technical terms, diagrams, and textbook explanations of how tornadoes form, that’s not what this book is about. The stories here are personal eyewitness accounts of people in the path, where they hid to ride out the storm, including one account of a survivor caught outdoors, who was briefly inside the funnel. The book is all the more fascinating for the personal touch. The last half of “Caught In the Path” details how individuals coped with the aftermath; finding family members, the cleanup, and how they pulled together as a community to rebuild.

A few things I found interesting…

I read some old, everyday expressions I haven’t encountered in years. One woman described what she had been doing just before the tornado hit, she had been “sprinkling clothes”. I remember my mom doing that as part of the ironing process…before steam irons were common. Later in the book, after the storm, another lady mentioned seeing a “fire wagon” drive down the street. I haven’t heard them called anything but fire engines or fire trucks for decades now.

I was reminded of some of the bad old tornado safety advice, which was thought to be good advice at the time. Some people wasted time opening windows to “equalize the pressure”, and didn’t quite get to the safest shelter in time. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame them. We were all told to do that for years, until the weather experts studied enough tornado damage to conclude it didn’t help, and the extra time spent would just put you at risk.

Also, there was one mention of a family who intended to get to the southwest corner of the basement, but didn’t quite get there…fortunately, as it turned out. Most of their house collapsed into that corner, and they would have been crushed. For many years we were told the southwest corner of the basement was the safest place, but the more recent advice I’ve heard is to get under a sturdy table or workbench, in a basement closet if you have one, or under the stairway if there’s an opening. These places offer better protection from falling debris.

Understandably, survivors separated from family members were in a state of panic, trying to find their loved ones. It struck me how difficult it was for people to find a working telephone, how many blocks they had to walk, to let relatives or friends outside the damaged area know they were all right. I suppose that today if an F5 tornado hit enough cell phone towers that could still be an issue. But I suspect with the narrowness of a tornado’s path (intense destruction, but not widespread like a hurricane), that most cell phone repeaters would still function, and it would be easier and quicker now to contact people afterward, than it was back then.

Except for my time away at college, I’ve lived in the Kansas City area my entire life. So in the book I recognized the names of several local television and radio personalities, Walt Bodine, Randall Jesse, Charles Gray, Joe Kramer, Bill Leeds, and also that of Kansas City mayor H. Roe Bartle.

May 20, 1957 - What I remember

On a personal note, I was only 3 1/2 years old at the time, but I distinctly remember that storm and I doubt that I’ll ever forget it. We lived in the Maywood neighborhood at the time, now part of Independence, Missouri. So, not only did the tornado miss us by several miles, but I don’t recall any hail damage either (of course, while the storm was in progress we didn’t know that the tornado would miss us). It was a tremendously strong thunderstorm, with a great deal of thunder and lightning, and it really poured too.

Since that night, on occasion the story of the Ruskin Heights tornado has come up in our family. My sister Connie has told of something she and our mom had done earlier that day. Apparently the early part of the day was really nice (I don’t remember that part), and they had planted some flower seeds. Later on none of those flowers came up; the downpour from the storm was strong enough that it washed away all of the seeds.

Anyway, I don’t recall being scared of the storm at first. We had the TV on, and I was sitting up on the top of the couch with my back against the wall; enjoying the loud thunder and the flashes of lightning. It would have been about time for the usual TV routine, news, weather, and sports. But it was all about the weather, and the weatherman seemed more anxious than usual. Still that didn’t really register with me, until my folks started to get nervous. Someone called to me to come down, and I remember thinking I was about to get in trouble for sitting on top of the back of the couch. So I slid down to sit in the couch the right way with my back against the cushion.

About then the rest of the family “freaked out” for want of a better word. This was the first time I had ever seen my folks, or for that matter any adult, really alarmed about anything, and that’s what I remember most about that night. Someone shouted to me to get to the basement. I was still enjoying watching the TV and hearing the thunder, and I really didn’t want to go to the basement.

Allow me to backtrack for a bit to explain my aversion to that basement. First of all, to get down there one of the adults had to lift the door up from the back porch floor, which was weird enough; then we could walk down the steps. The point here is that I really, really didn’t like being in the basement of that old house. The walls were rough like stone, and it always seemed damp down there. The only other thing besides my dad’s workbenches was a big, old furnace (maybe a water heater too, but I don’t really recall where that was). The furnace had a round window where you could look in and see the flame of the pilot light; a huge, old, noisy, scary furnace with a mean looking glowing eye. It seemed that way to me when I was three, anyway.

When I didn’t get off the couch right away, mom or dad (I don’t recall for sure who) came and grabbed me. I remember being led by the hand, and I may have been picked up and carried part of the way (I’m a little vague on that detail). My sister, our parents, and I stayed in that old damp basement until the storm let up.

So, no damage in our neighborhood, but we saw pictures of the destruction on the TV and in the Kansas City Star. One thing mentioned in “Caught In the Path” that I remember hearing when I was a kid, was the trouble the sheriff’s deputies, police, and National Guard had in keeping sightseers away, so the rescue and cleanup efforts wouldn’t be hindered.

Two weeks later, my grandpa Wingate from Ohio came for a visit, and to celebrate his birthday. He had heard about the tornado, and wanted to go see the path it took through that neighborhood. By then the roads were clear and the Guard didn’t stop us from driving through. I vaguely remember seeing a lot of torn up stuff lying in yards, and Connie remembers seeing what remained of the Ruskin High gymnasium. When that had been built, along the outer brick wall were installed individual aluminum letters, spelling out RUSKIN. After the tornado, what was left spelled RU IN. In later years I remember seeing a newspaper photo of that sign.

If the weathermen had been shy about tornado warnings before, they sure weren’t after. I’ve been told that they overdid it for a while, that sometimes warnings would go out for what turned out to be just a big black rain cloud. I think everyone became more aware of what could happen during severe weather season, but all I know for certain is that I grew up in tornado alley and became fascinated with storms. As a kid, I learned that tornadoes came and went, and that there had been many, and would be many more. For years though, you would sometimes hear someone refer to The Tornado. Everyone around here knew which one that meant.

I also learned that the odds of seeing a tornado myself were low. “Tornado alley” covers a huge area, and most likely the next time one touched down, it would be many miles away. One spring (I think in 1964), a small tornado came near our grade school. The teachers hustled us off to one of the basement classrooms. At the end of the hallway was a big window, and I wanted to stay by the window in case it came around where I could see it. That wasn’t allowed, of course.

I did finally see one three or four years later, an F0 or weak F1 that actually struck the corner of our “new” house, right as it lifted back up into the clouds. That’s another story, so I’ll spare you lengthy detail; except to say the neighbors lost all the shingles off their roof, and we had some tree damage. My dad also had to replace a ham radio antenna. That’s the only one I’ve actually seen touch the ground, but I’ve seen a fair number of rotating wall clouds, and funnel clouds “part way down”. And most every year it seems tornadoes or funnel clouds will touch down or pass over part of our county, and we’ll hear the warning sirens blow.

Severe storms are fascinating to watch from a safe distance, but you have to respect the damage they can do.