In the Beginning

Politicians are like diapers, they can smell and need changed often

Luke was not your typical child born as a baby boomer in the Heartland.  I am pretty sure that while he fit in the large group of kids in appearance, he was anything but ordinary.   His mother often said he would go at full speed until he stopped and then he would fall asleep.  It was not the sleep of the wicked, but it was not the sleep of the innocent either.  Now days, I am pretty sure that he would have been on Ritalin but who knows what modern medicine would be given today.  

Luke was the middle child of a pack of kids in his family.  He had a couple of older sisters and a younger brother.  The first group of kids were pre WWI and it was about 5 years later when Luke arrived on the scene.  I am not sure why his mother waited another five years to have another child but if it was an accident, it was a happy accident.  When you stood up the rest of the kids, they seemed pretty normal and only Luke stood out like a wild child. 

On the east side of Wichita, was the Beech Aircraft plant on east central.  Someone with a little foresight build a small neighborhood and called it Travel Air City.  For many reasons, explained later, it became known as Dog Patch as in the Al Capp funny paper city.  The salvation for the kids in that poor neighborhood was that they were blessed to have about the best school money could buy at the time.  Minneha was supported by a tax base from Forrest Hills and Eastborough which had more Doctors and Lawyers  living there than any other part of the city.  As the number of kids increased, the school district did not hesitate to  expand the size and number of buildings as the student population grew. 

Yep, you can bet your sweet ass that the diversity of the students was crazy.  There were kids that had parents that shopped at specialty stores and a lot of us that were lucky to get our fall wardrobe out of the Sear's catalog.  Luke's mother kept her Sear's card charged pretty full and by that, she managed to put clothes on the backs of the family.   Oh, no, Luke didn't care one iota what he wore growing up.  As long as it didn't smell too bad, he would throw it on and go anywhere so long as it was out. 

You cannot imagine the number of kids the baby boom dumped in Dog Patch.   When they would have a baseball game, the number of outfielders was huge.  If the ball was hit out there, fights would often break out as someone would try to pick up the ball and throw it to the infield.  There was no such thing as enough baseball gloves for everyone.  In fact both teams had to share what gloves there were.  For some reason we had enough bats but a lot of them were pretty marked up from hitting rocks.  Back then, fights were pretty much hand to hand combat and no one used bats to do battle with the other kids. 

One funny thing was the lack of baseballs.  It seems that almost every other week, the cover would come off some old ball and we would play until it no longer was anything we could use.  The cry would go out that we needed to round up pop bottles and sell them at the local Grocery store to get at least a dollar.  Nugene's father was the coach of a ball team in the Sherriff's League.  As such, they were required to furnish used balls and one new ball at every game.  His mother kept the balls in the Freezer because that was the only place she could lock.  We would always get together a dollar in change and send Nugene home to buy a new ball.  I would have been happy with a used ball for half price but they never seemed to be willing to let an of them go. For some reason, I always thought that those frozen baseballs were really cool, not cold but neat. 

Luke had several friends that he was close to and none much closer than Joe.  For some reason his parents went to the Catholic Hospital and his name on the birth certificate was Joseph.  Sure, Luke and Joseph were names out of the Bible and no one wanted to be called Joseph when Joe would do. Luke was just stuck even though he wanted to be called Jessie James.  No, he could never explain that one, he just thought that it was a cool name.  His other friends were Old Gene, Denny and sometimes Wayne.  Did you catch the Old Gene name, that was the reason for Nugene.  Denny's nickname was "ding ding."  When Denny's mother wanted her boys to come home, she would got right outside the front door and ring a bell like a ship's bell.  If she wanted Gary to come home she would slowly ring the bell one beat at a time.  Ding, ding, ding until she saw the whited of his eyes.  If she wanted Denny, she would ring the bell twice and then pause.  "Ding, ding, pause, ding, ding and pause.  If she came out ad just rang the bell over and over, we all ran home. 

Back in the day, there was no central AC in most of our houses.  The kids were sent out to play from the time they were able to walk until they left home.  Those that lived on Byrd Street had the Beech Aircraft parking lot lights that illuminated our backyards.  In the summer time, the games of hide and go seek and kick the can went on until the kids were called home by their mothers or the after the parking lot lights went off after 12:15 AM.  Living right there on Byrd, Luke's friends spent a lot of time at his house.  All sorts of mischief was invented there by those fertile minds. 

One thing that almost everyone in the neighborhood had was a bicycle.  Luke's first ne was one that his sisters rode and the only reason that he could ride it was that it was a girl's bike and it didn't have the bar from the handlebar to the seat support.  Luke would have crushed his nuts on one of those.  As it was, unhappy accidents were pretty common and Luke always had a bandage somewhere.

Oh well, I had better cut this first installment somewhere and this looks like as good a place as any. Tomorrow will be school at Minneha.

LUKE