Tag Archives: kennett

The ravages of time

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The photo above was taken last September at the 50 year reunion of the Kennett High School Class of 1966. Richard Peck and Larry Mullen standing; Joe Browning, John Robison and another guy seated. I attended my ten year reunion but skipped all the others. I’m glad I went to this last one. Got to spend a little time with Joe whose energy was released back into the Universe this week.

I took the other photo in 1968 in Richard Peck’s basement. A place to drink beer and be as young as we would ever be. L-R: Richard Peck, Jim Bob Green, John Robison, Jane Marshall and Lynn Strickland. Charlie Peck and Joe Browning down front. This photo became (for me) iconic of that wonderful time. How we came to be the old men in the class reunion photo is a mystery.

Junior High basketball team

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My buddy John and I were two of five seventh graders that ‘made’ the junior high basketball team. (Sorry, can’t remember the other three) I remember this as a Very Big Deal at the time. I also remember that I wasn’t a very good basketball player. I didn’t handle the ball well and I wasn’t much of a shot. I was selected solely on the basis of “hustle.”

Coaches love hustle. They believe they can teach you how to be a better ball handler and improve your shooting skills… but they can’t give you that special mojo known as hustle. You have it or you don’t.

What Coach Proctor mistook for hustle in that skinny white boy was a near-pathological need to please this new male authority figure in my life. Throw myself headlong onto the hardwood floor? No problemo. Run “potato races” (sometimes known as “behind the lines”) until my lungs burst? I can do that.

None of which contributed very much to the final score but coaches know they need some of this second-string fire to keep the good players pushed (nudged?).

As I got older I discovered I could have much more fun in a pickup game at the park. Which is where I met Freddie B who lived in near-by public housing and played wearing rubber flip-flops. Freddie didn’t hustle. And he didn’t miss. From anywhere on the court. Swish.

These days, as I allow myself to move with the Tao, I sometimes flow, but I don’t hustle.

Hamra’s Department Store

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The photos below were taken by Johnny “Mack” Reeder, probably in the early 50’s but perhaps as early as 1948 or 1949 (maybe a vintage car buff can help me narrow that down). This just off the “courthouse square” in Kennett, MO. The first photo is facing West.

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I remember Hamra’s from my youth (born in 1948) but I’m hard-pressed to tell you exactly what they sold. Clothing and fabrics, obviously, and I recall a shoe store next to the main store shown in these photos. There were several stores like this in “downtown” Kennett. Graber’s, James Kahn’s, Penney’s and some I can’t remember.

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I don’t think this was a “grand opening” so I’m guessing this was some sort of special sale. The photographer was one of the original employees of KBOA (the local radio station) and might have been recording the big crowd that resulted from advertising.

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The third photo speaks to the rural flavor of our small town. Lots of bib overalls. I remember hearing stories about hundreds of people flooding into town on a Saturday to purchase supplies for the farms that made up the local economy in those days.

50th High School Class Reunion

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30 or 40 eighteen-year-old ghosts trapped in ravaged, aging bodies shuffling around the room desperately trying to recognize people you knew half a century ago. The time-honored tradition of name tags featuring photos from the high school yearbook was honored. So we smiled and shook hands and looked down at the kids we once were, unable to conceal the “what the fuck happened to you” horror.

We only lost 30 or so classmates (from a class of about 150) which is sort of amazing given that we all grew up eating nothing but fried food and breathing crop dusting chemicals and the toxic plume that was sprayed every summer night to battle the clouds of mosquitos.

I went with some trepidation (I went to the 10 year reunion but none after) but wound up enjoying myself. I can’t speak for others but the person looking out of my eyes was/is that 18 year old who went to school with all of the old people in the room, with their titanium knees and heart stints. I couldn’t see the old me they were seeing. I hope and assume it was the same for everyone.

No, what I thought would be a depressing shuffle down memory lane turned out okay. Maybe a little “survivor high” if there is such a thing. We made it! We’re still here! “Fuckin A!” as we said in 1966.

50th high school class reunion

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In a few weeks I’ll make the five hour drive to the little town where I grew up for the 50 year reunion of the Kennett High School Class of 1966. I attended the 10 year reunion and vowed I’d never go to another. And didn’t. But there’s a strange (morbid?) appeal to the 50th. Like stumbling across the finish line of a marathon, throwing up and crapping your pants, yet elated to have completed the race.

I suppose this qualifies as a “right of passage,” and there won’t be that many more. Of the approximately 150 people in our class, 33 (22%) have been called to the office of The Great Principal’s Office in the Sky.

I’ve been fantasizing ways to make this event more fun: A prize for the most marriages/divorces? A little trophy for most number of times arrested/years served? Or a plaque for Best (and Worst) Cosmetic Surgery?

I’m not on Facebook so I have not kept up with most of my classmates. I don’t remember much about the 10 year reunion. I think that is the one where you show off your second/trophy wife and hand out business cards with titles of success. Those vanities will, I’m sure, have faded. Replaced by… what? The unspoken reality that this is the last time we’ll see most of these people. A bon voyage party for the Great Beyond.

Early Elvis contract

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ElvisGoblerContractKBOA

In 1955 Elvis Presley appeared at a little honky tonk called the B & B Club, in Gobler, MO. Not far from my hometown of Kennett, MO. More information here, including an audio clip with my father who was working at the local radio station. The contract above is between Elvis and Jimmy Haggett, who also worked at KBOA and booked entertainers on the side. If you look closely you’ll see Elvis was to receive 75% of the gate to be paid “after dance.”

Jeff Wheeler (1942-2015)

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Jeff Wheeler

Jeff Wheeler died last Friday. In 2002 a massive stroke left him unable to speak or walk and he spent the past 13 years in an assisted living facility in Kennett, MO.

When I applied for a job at KBOA in 1972, Jeff set me up in a studio with some copy and a tape recorder for my audition tape. I got the job and he showed me what I needed to know to work at a small town radio station. We worked together for most of the next dozen years.

I never met anyone who knew more about music. He built and maintained a huge record library (with double-entry card catalog) for the radio station. Like many in markets that size, Jeff did everything: DJ, news, sports, commercials, etc.

The stroke that took Jeff’s voice (and mobility) left his cognition in tact. He understood what other said to him, he just couldn’t respond.

A few weeks (?) after his stroke, Jeff’s wife died suddenly of cancer. That, my friends, is some Old Testament shit. I doubt anyone knows how Jeff really felt about the hand he was dealt ‘cause Jeff wasn’t talking. Never again.

His daughter and brother-in-law got in touch to see if I had any recordings of Jeff. Like a lot of radio guys, Jeff never got around to saving air checks and such because, well, he thought he’d always be working in radio.

I found an hour-long “History of KBOA” Jeff produced in 1976 and pulled out 4 minutes they played during his funeral. First time in 13 years anyone had heard Jeff’s voice. First time ever for a few, I suppose.

What you could hear in those few minutes was how much Jeff loved what he was doing. How much he liked talking on the radio. And you could hear how painful it must have been these last 13 years to be unable to utter a word.

But he’s back on the air now. Somewhere. Probably. Doing play-by-play, the county spelling bee, Trading Post, the Hometown News. Never sounded better.

Old Home Tour

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I don’t get back to my hometown much anymore. Still have friends there but the 5 hour drive seems longer every time I make it. I was there this past weekend and killed a couple of hours looking at some of the houses where our family lived when I was growing up. My first thought on seeing these is, how can they still be standing?
holtstreet

No.1 is on Holt Street and is the house where — as I recall — we got our first television. Probably around 1951.

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No.2 is on West 9th and I’m guessing we lived there around 1952-53. I attended first grade just up the street a few blocks.

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No.3 is the first house our family owned. 1955? A nice little 2 BR home where my brother and I grew up. It has fallen on hard times in the years since I sold it following my father’s death.

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No.5 (on Lester St) was my grandmother’s home back in 1957. And it wasn’t a new home then. She lived with our family for several years after she sold the farm where my mother grew up. Bought this little house around 1957 and it was an older house then.

Seems strange to me these house are still standing 60 or 70 years later. And that people are still living in them.