The Highlight of My Year and More
The nighlight of my year was my first crush. At the time, I considered her my first true love. Diane Wilborn lived on the west side of College, about six houses south of Laurel. Jay Bruninga and I were mad about her, and I felt like the luckiest boy at Lawrence when she invited me over for Kool-Aid and cookies after school. She had an older sister Linda. Since that time, I have been in love with the name Linda, though my dream name for someone to whom I would give my heart eternally was Anne with an “e.”.
. . . . . It may have started with Wendy Booth’s mother Anne who was married to a true gentleman three doors north from us on Whittier. Byron (“By”) Booth was probably the father I wish I had had instead of my dad. We threw footballs across front yards often. My throwing ability improved a lot. And he married a terrific woman. But I digress.
. . . . .Every Anne I have cared for has been generally the brightest and blessed with more maturity than I have demonstrated, and blessed with a taste for more than I could provide.There have not been many, but I’ve tried extra hard with anyone with that name. I still love the name . . . . It must be Anne with an “e.”
. . . . Diane was heart throb #1. After hurried visits to Tony’s market across the street, to squander a nickel on candy, I’d ask a friend to deliver it to her or to a fragile, distinctively-voiced and also-blonde Jennifer Wilson, daughter of Arch Wilson, owner of Arch Wilson Men’s Clothiers on Fifth Street downtown or Loretta Whitney. I never came close to even holding hands with any of them. We gazed and giggled, and that was what life was all about with me.
. . . . Wendy Booth, daughter of Anne and By, was an antagonist for some reason, though I got along fine with her parents. Wendy was a genius and grew up to achieve significant fame in higher education. Linda Dirksen, who was about my age but went th Blessed Sacrament, a Catholic school northwest of us (about the same walking distance as to Lawrence) was an acquaintance whom I admired and respected. She and her family moved out of the big brick house three doors south of Ash on the west side of Whittier during the summer after third grade. The Gernenz family moved in. Karen was a year older than me, blonde, statuesque and also smart as a tack. . . or is it sharp as a tack? No matter; she was both. Her sister Susan, blond, my brother Bill’s age was a shorter, vivacious clone of Karen. Mr. Gernenz was an official with the Baptist church. His wife was grey-haired — might have been silver-blonde — was as nice as grownups come. The whole family was first class. We had some good times from the start. Bill and I hung out in their back yard over several summers and they’d come over some times and hang out in our back yard.
I became a Cub Scout late in third grade. Steve Grumman’s mon, Ken Hendricks’ mom, Danny Spears’ mom and later Bernie McCabe’s mom were den mothers. My mom couldn’t be one because she worked every day. Den meetings were after school at den mothers’ homes. We had monthly Pack meetings in the basement of First Christian Church downtown on the southeast corner of Sixth at Lawrence. Later I learned this was the same church that Vachel Lindsay’s family had attended. During my Cub Scout days, I didn’t know poetry from Shinola. Our scout troop visited the Butternut Bakery on west Jefferson Street, the Seven Up bottler on Clear Lake and the Illinois Air National Guard base. During that tour I stood on a maintenance ramp peering into the cockpit of a Republic F-84F Thunderstreak, and listened to (probably) a crew chief explain the airplane was armed with four .50 calibre machine guns in the fuselage (which I knew about already) and two in the wing roots (which I didn’t know about). I thought it wsa strange and pretty old-fashioned that a jet fighter would have guns int he wings; okay for World War II Mustangs and Spitfires, but strange for fast jets.
. . . . The neighborhood was changing. The Powells who had lived at 2020 next door to the south, moved out and the Tacks moved in. Paul tack was two years older than me and he loved airplane models as much as I did. One day I visited, and he showed me an Aurora kit of the Grumman F6F Hellcat he was building. He explained, as he painted light green stripes on the ailerons, that these were aircraft carrier identification markings. I didn’t have more than a vague idea of what he meant. In later years I learned about those markings andthat Paul should have painted them in white; not light green. I also remembered his model and with a little research during junior high school years, learned he had been modeling a Hellcat based on the carrier USS Intrepid.
. . . .Next door north, the Bruninga family moved out, to Buffalo where Red resumed his distinguished career as an FBI agent. No more “Chicken Delight, served just right.” When he retired, they moved back to Springfield, many years later.
. . . . As the weather warmed on Whittier the kids in our neighborhood learned about a new grade school being built about two blocks south and two blocks east.Blackhawk School would be for kids in 4th through 6th grades. During the early summer, I rode my bike over on an overcast, cool Sunday and found walls up and the fragrance of fresh cement. Alone and unobserved, I found a way into the layrinth of fresh-turned earth, red bricks and mortar. I crawled into the space between a floor and foundation, stepd quietly around a large room with freshly-dried concrete and wondered aobut my future. There was not a cound in the world, but it was light enough inside to see, and no one new I was there. I stayed probably 45 minutes. A solemn time for me. Then I came home.
. . . . Many of my friends had older sisters, usually three to five years older than my friends. Diane Wilborn had Linda, Nancy across the street had Lois, Steve Grummon’s sister was Becky, Jay and Mike had Linda, Greg Pease had Linda, and I had Dorothy, an idol of sorts to me.
. . . . When I was still in grade school, she was on the Springfield High Prom Court, graduated with honors and began training to be a registered nurse in Leavenworth, Kansas, later trained at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis and finished in Springfield when St. John’s Hospital opened a nurses training school. She became a surgical nurse, got marriend to a great fellow, Bob Shymansky, and moved out to Wheeling, West Virginia. As a kid in grade school, I would leaf through her incredible lab drawings of internal anatomy and her text books, amazed at her skill as an artist and her impeccable lettering on the drawings and her handwriting. I still am when I remember those drawings!
. . . . .Dot’s friends from high school included Elsie and her brother Stu Dobbs who lived at Lake Springfield. During one visit to their home with my sister, I got a whale of a splinter in my bare foot. Elsie’s mom spent most of the afternoon getting it out, using lots of rubbing alcohol, tweezers, and a safety pin, sterilized under a match flame. Elsie was great to be around. Stu, a few years older, a nice fellow as well.
. . . . During the summer between 3rd and 4th grades, we traded in our four-door Olds for a 1956 Dodge Coronet convertible from R.E. Broe Dodge/Chrysler/Plymouth downtown on Fourth Street, across from Bates Chcvrolet. Bill and I knew this one was coming, and we waited eaterly by the street curb, looking north for the first sign of it. Dad drove it home from the dealer. What a wonderful car!
. . . . . In less than a month, mom, Dot, Bill, Dot’s boyfriend Roy Becket and I drove out to visit Aunt Stelle and Uncle Turner again. Roy was also training to be a registered nurse. We knew it was unusual, but we thought it was great that he was heading for an excellent profession. He was a gentleman as far as I knew, and the fact that Dot was even dating him showed he was a good man.
. . . . We arrived in time for the Fourth of July. A kid with a dollar and a pack of book matches would have a lot of fun in Leavenworth that summer. Every grocery store in that city sold fireworks and punks to light them with. Bill and I would talk downtown from Aunt Stelle’s to buy them often. The whole summer was a joyful symphony of “BOOMS” from near and far. The firecracker of choice was about an inch long. A smaller firecracker, called “Ladyfingers” was thinner, with less “POP” but almost as long. We also bought sparklers, bottle rockets and larger rockets we could not afford in large numbers and the vaunted cherry bombs which were red, globe-like like a cherry, and very loud. Dangerous too. I became adept at lighting a standard firecracker with a punk and throwing it into the air before it exploded. I also had a few Ladyfingers detonate between my thumb and forefinger attempting the same thing. They had a smaller, faster fuse, but aside from the noise so close to my ear when they detonated as I threw them, the damage to my fingers was insignificant and soon forgotten. I enjoyed setting off firecrackers in the dtrainage pipe openings from the two-foot stone wall bordering schoolyard across from the house. Placed far enough into the drain, on detonation, they sounded and looked like cannon reports with smoke following the sound out the open end. Bill and I also set them off in the alley in neighbors’ garbage cans. We were reported to the police and were even written up in the Leavenworth paper. Uncle Turner showed me the small paragraph. We didn’t have to meet with the police, and there was no punishment except for stern admonitions from mom and Aunt Sttelle to stop bothering the neighbors, and we did.
. . . .While in Leavenworth I purchased my first airplane model magazine, A 1956 Flying Models with an illustration of two fellows launching team racers, a kind of control line flying model. Years later I purchased another copy of the same issue and have it today along with a few thousand more aviation magazines. Another highlight of that summer was when Roy Becket drove me down to the hobbyshop, same one where I purchased the magazine, and I purchased my first flying model airplane: a Jetco Thermic Dart, a balsa hand-launch glider that had to be assembled with sandpaper, a razor blade for a sharp knife, and real glue. I also built more plastic models during the trip.
. . . . . During that last visit, we found out Leavenworth had an airport at Fort Leavenwortth, and we drove out on an overcast day that seemed to be hushed quiet. On the way we drove by the big military prison with high walls topped with barbed wire and guard towers, a somber place. We reached the airport just in time to see a C-47 taking off in our direction. I’ll never forget the sound of the engines at takeoff power, the silhouette of the transport against the gray clouds, landing gear still down, climbing slowly toward the low cloud base. Outside on the ground, it seemed a lonely tableau in the gray world. Gray days were few at that time in my young life. I would have my share, many years hence.
Coming next time: Fourth Grade
live long . . . . . and proper.
