Poet's Alibi
The Autobiography of Job Clifton Conger, IV

Introduction
            On February 1, 2004, I concluded that because I am serious about finishing the story of my life with the world, I better start finishing it now. At 2:15 p.m. that date I began revising the text I had shared at my personal home page so that the new version would flow better and include additional information, recalled from memory. This is an autobiography drawn from my mind. No papers kept in boxes were consulted here. The more recent years will tap the journals I began keeping off-and-on in the 1980s but that’s it.
             My goal of this effort is to connect with friends and acquaintances whom I have known, who will find me and contact me after seeing their names in this production. Linda Walden and Jay Bruninga, friends from elementary school days emailed me after discovering their names in this production. Others, whose lives did not affect me as warmly may did, are invited to do likewise or leave well enough alone.
             This effort is also intended to tell perfect strangers – possible employers, aviation enthusiasts, poets, songwriters, genealogists and even the odd lurking anonymous twink, more about my life. My life has been blessed with many of these.

The Name
                  At no time in my life have I regretted the name I was given by my parents Avis (formerly Avis Dorothy Jones) and Job Conger, both transplants from Georgia to Springfield, Illinois, who arrived from Georgia in 1939. They and my sister Dorothy lived in an apartment on South Eighth Street before purchasing a house at 2016 Whittier Avenue. I never knew or even saw or was told the address of the Eighth Street apartment, but was told it was just a few blocks of what is now Abraham Lincoln Home Historic Site. I, Job Clifton Conger, IV, arrived at St. John’s Hospital on September 5, 1947, a few years after Mom, Dad and Dot had settled in on Whittier, the only home I would ever know until I moved out as a young adult.
       I was named after my father, who was named after his father, who was named after his father, and in case you don’t know, my first name rhymes with "probe;" not "cob." Mom used to call me "Joby" (Jobee) to distinguish between her son and her husband. In grade school, my friend Kenny Hendricks called me Kangaroo Rooster, based on "Conger" as I recall. When I was public information officer of the local Civil Air Patrol, cadets and fellow seniors called Lieutenant because I was accepted, on enlistment, as a 1st Lieutenant.   Distant cousins called me College Grad because although my sister Dorothy graduated from nurses school training as a registered nurse, I was the first to graduate from a regular college. Early into my young life, it was apparent that too many strangers had trouble, and then resentment that followed on the heels of learning that my name didn't rhyme with "cob." When I’d explain that it rhymes with "probe" many reacted as though they had been accused of stealing chickens. My dad used to become visibly offended when people addressed him as "rhymes with 'cob,'" but I learned to laugh at it. I show my own unawareness of the world in too many ways to fault well-intentioned strangers  for showing the same ignorance in referencing my first name.
     For the record, people also mis-pronounced Mom's  name, using a "long a" as in "pace" and Avis Rent-A-Car, instead of the "short a" as in "haberdasher." It bothered her, but it didn't rule her. She ruled it. And for this uncommon fortitude and many other things, which I spoke of to her all too pathetically little when she was alive, I consider that a majorly proportion of who I am (good aspects in the main) I am because she was my mother.
              

Early Days
                    It’s not coincidence to me that I was born the same year as Springfield’s Capital Airport and the same year the United States Air Force was born as a separate military service. I have no memories of how the beds were arranged when I joined the family.
                    My brother William Harrison Conger was born September 12, 1949, two years and a week after I came along. Later, as an adult, I was told that I was expected, but that Bill had been a "surprise." I remember his infant bed in Mom and Dad’s bedroom when he was still at that stage, but I don’t remember sharing a bedroom with Dot. By the time I was old enough to remember anything, she had moved out of the house because, as she told me later, she could not wait to get away. Bill and I shared the same bedroom, across a short hall from Mom and Dad’s bedroom, and right next to the bathroom. I could hear almost every sound from my bed on the other side of a common wall. A parent in the shower was s sure sign that breakfast could not be long in coming. Wake-up calls were always shouted up the stairway, and seldom were repeated in the morning. Bill and I always awakened hungry, though we never went to bed in that condition.
                As I grew, I understood and believed that my home and surroundings were the best I could have imagined. It was a beautiful house with storybook-wonderful neighbors, site of almost two decades of storybook-wonderful memories for me. After I began writing poetry, I used to think it was no coincidence that I lived on a Street named after John Greenleaf Whittier. I guess it was a more positive influence than if I had grown up on John Dillinger Drive.
               My first memory was my lying on a high table in a hospital, maybe at Springfield Clinic.    People were working close to me causing me major anguish but no discomfort or pain that I can remember. As an older kid and adult, I did not discuss this earliest memory with anyone, but I believe the event was connected to a medical procedure associated traditionally with infant boy babies born into the Jewish faith. And instead of resenting the choice they made with their rightful, parental prerogative, I grew up considering myself lucky in that regard for reasons that have no place in an autobiography.
         Before attending school, I wrote my first story. Mom and dad had taught me how to print the letters. Wrote it on dad's business letterhead. He owned a men's clothing store in prospering downtown Springfield called The Man Store, an excellent name I have always thought.  For years, the "story" was kept in dad's top dresser drawer, and I looked at it for the last time sometime in junior high. Don't know what happened to it after that, but they were my first words formally written as a story about age four.
       "Once ubon a time, there were three angles. They lived in a clod. They had fun in the clod. They were happy in the clod" 
                 I also learned how to tell time before going to school.  As though it happened yesterday, I remember arising from bed (Brother William Harrison Conger slept in his own bed across our bedroom.), looking at a white Westclox dresser clock in our room, walking into mom and dad's bedroom across the hall in our house at 2016 S. Whittier and saying, "Dad, wake up. It's seven o'clock," and feeling incredibly surprised and proud that I had done this. The rest of the time keeping knowledge just happened. No effort required and none expended.

Kindergarten
                 About the time I turned five years old, I cried when family friend Barb Van Meter said goodbye to me at Kindergarten class at Lawrence school between First & Second Streets on Laurel.. Through the east door down the stairs to the first door on the left. The school remains intact today as an adult education center.  Being abandoned by a girl (who was probably all of a second or third grader to a throng of other kids, mostly strangers, did not harmonize with my elementary sensitivities, but eventually, I got used to it.   Kindergarten was good to me after that. Mandatory naps on small rugs we had brought to school.  Mine was blue and grey and white striped. Large wood blocks to play with.   Recesses. My teacher was Mrs. Archer. I never saw her again after kindergarten, and I don't have a face to place with the name.  
                   Kindergarten was in the basement of the school, across the hall from a room that must have been used to teach home economics, though I can’t imagine that subject being taught in grade school. I had no classes there. I will always remember fragrances emanating from that room where they cooked meals for the older kids, maybe for the faculty. My only glimpse of that room came when polio shots were administered to the kids there. This had to be about 1952 or 1953.
I was afraid of the needles the first year they were given, and that first time, I may have whimpered a tear or two as we all waited in line. My reaction was nothing compared to other reactions I saw. The following year, when we went through the same line-ups, Mom had instructed me to smile as broadly as I could and grit my teeth. All I knew was that the sight of the needle penetrating my arm scared me, but I smiled, gritted my teeth. There was a reporter from the newspaper taking pictures that day, and a picture of me with a smile and gritting teeth was printed in the next edition. I would have my motley but generally pleasant countenance in the paper two more times before graduating from college.
                    My brother Bill was not a big part of my life until he became old enough to fight – when he was about five or six years old. During the earliest years, I know I liked him, and we played together with Jay and Mike Bruninga next door to the north, and with nearby neighbor kids. From the time he learned how to throw a punch, for the rest of our time together at 2016 S. Whittier, we were thorns in each other’s sides. I'm sure I was as much of a pain to him as he was to me. I seemed to have been born a pacifist by temperament. I resented his picking fights, seemed to be in a defensive posture with Bill and other aggressive neighborhood kids, and found it preferable to take a punch than give one. Early on I saw that I could get reactions by saying something, and that seemed cleaner and more rewarding than fisticuffs.
                     Early memories of airplanes: I was scared to death of the noise! Mom would tell me later in life that during my first airplane ride, age about four, in Bill and Polly van Meter’s Cessna 195, I cried from the minute the engine started to the minute it stopped when the flight was over. Later I waited by the airport fence with mom while dad and Bill would go flying with Bill and Polly. I was afraid of the noise, but I loved their looks. I was fascinated by everything but the racket.
Bill and Polly and their kids Barb (my kindergarten escort), Nancy and John were family friends, and we often walked over for picnics in their back yard on Lowell Avenue. It was at one of these occasions that I learned what a frankfurter was. Bill was a certified public accountant and the whole family were as warm and friendly as folks could be. Dad sold mens apparel at Roberts Bros. downtown, and even in elementary school, Mom worked selling womens wear at S.A. Barker, and later at Roland’s, I believe. And I learned that we ate hot dogs at our house. The van Meters ate frankfurters.

    First Grade
              My teacher Mrs. Mary Pitzer was a member of Mom's bridge club. First lessons in learning how to print were old hat for me. Spelling correctly took some effort. First friends were made in first grade: Steve Grumman lived less than a block north of me, and we walked home from school together often. Other friends included John Forneris, who lived north, up by Sears on South Grand, David Redding, who lived close to Ash, like me but on Lowell, Danny Spears, who lived on Pasfield,  across the street from "Miss Nuttywoman's" house, Tommy Robb, address unknown and Kenny Hendricks who lived way over on Fourth Street, just off Ash.  Three or four of us would walk around the school during recess approaching another kid and shouting YANKEE OR CONFEDERATE? If the reply was YANKEE! we nodded or said something cute and marched onward. If the reply was CONFEDERATE, we made gun shapes of our right hands and made pistol sounds as we blew the rebels to smithereens! There was never any contact or fighting. It was fun and we were kings of the asphalt and cinders.
              Dad had found his way to Roberts Bros., a men’s clothing store, after some setbacks during the early years at Lawrence. He had lost his lease to the clothing store when the property was offered to him to purchase, and he declined. The building was sold to someone else, and Dad did not find a new location. By that time, I believe his partner from Georgia, who had invited Dad up to go into business with him had already sold his share to him and returned south. I believe this; I do not know it. After the Man Store had closed, Dad, who was also a professional photographer and had taken many early photographs of Capital Airport as it was built and dedicated, opened the first color film processing lab in Springfield. That became his full-time profession. For three or four years, he visited Lawrence school and took pictures of my class lined up in our class rooms. To this day, when I look at the pictures I remember at least 10 of the probably 25 or 30 kids in the group. I don’t know why he closed up the photo business and color lab on Adams Street, near where The Man Store had been, but it happened. For several years, part of our basement was full of equipment from that business. He set up a dark room, and tried to get me interested in developing black and white film. Dad was an excellent instructor, but I was not the student I should have been. There was absolutely no allure in the spooky yellow and red lamps he used, or the smelly chemicals or the silence and sense of isolation of it all. He did impart to me an understanding of good photography.
                  HOME! After coming in the door, it was an easy hour of television or playing in the back yard after a fast peanut butter & jelly sandwich. Mom was there, the house was always warm, and life was good. At about 5:00, my brother Bill and I would get into the car with mom and we’d go downtown to pick up dad getting off work at Roberts Bros. mens’ clothiers on the north side of the square. Often we’d give rides to Frank Stead and Charles Paris (never Charlie; he was an Englishman with a wonderful East London Cockney accent you could cut with a knife. I saw Charles in February 2003 when I was getting a tire repaired at a popular maintenance shop, we greeted each other warmly as we always have over the years, and his accept was as rich and musical as it was when I was seven years old!

    Second Grade
                         Miss Allen came to us her first year out of college. We gave her so much of a hard time that her first year of teaching was her last. This I heard later on from Mom and Dad. Looking back, I'm astonished that we could have forced an intelligent adult to opt out after only one year. She was also the first woman I feel in love with. New friends: Bobby Briggle, Jeff Halden, Allan Sherman. Another pal was Ricky Nichols who lived on Pasfield just east of Whittier. He was also a Cub Scout. Janet from Olney Michigan – she might have been Janet Olney from Michigan -- was a flirt who for the fun of it would flash her dress while seated at her desk for groups of curious boys.  She probably has 50 grandchildren today. Only Jeff's friendship continued through the rest of grade school. We four loved to draw. Jeff and Allan were ship artists; Bobby and I drew airplanes. Usually I made my designs up, but they were usually World War 2 types, always side views. I'd not learn how to draw in perspective until into college, and even then, not very well. 
                    Eisenhower ran against Adlai Stevenson when I was in second grade. Most of my friends were for Stevenson -- who happened to be living in the Illinois Governor's Mansion at the time --, but I was for Ike because he was a general, and I knew all about him from reading stories about World War 2.
                    My next door neighbor, Jay Bruninga and his younger brother Mike were friends and later nemises.  In second grade I discovered plastic model airplanes, built my first kit (Hawk 1/48 scale MiG-15) and gave two  airplane kits to Jay for his birthday: an Aurora 1/48 kit of the Japanese A6M Zero and a Lindbergh Flying Saucer. When he showed me his built models I laughed because instead of soaking the decals in water and sliding them off onto the plastic,  he cut them out and glued them on! From that humble beginning, Jay became an eye doctor, commercial pilot and flight surgeon for the Illinois Air National Guard! And I'm still putting on decals the right way.
                     One day, Jay's father Red returned from a trip to California driving a yellow Jeep with the business logo of Chicken Delight on the door. He had been an agent for the FBI before getting into the chicken business. He had purchased the first (and only) Chicken Delight franchise in Springfield and even built a new building on Laurel, across from the Zesto ice cream drive-in (a second-string Dairy Queen lookalike) and sharing the same parking lot as the new Pease's Candy store. Noonie Pease, whose son Greg was a MAJOR inspiration to me as a model airplane builder and later a guitar player, had earlier moved his store from Third Street at South Grand, next to the GM&O Railroad tracks, to a quieter place a block south and several east. This franchise, which flourished long before Kentucky Fried Chicken came to Springfield, had a motto. "Chicken Delight / Served just right / Have a bite / of Chicken Delight." I don't know how I remembered the slogan, but I do remember it was primarily a pick up/take home restaurant.  It was a real treat when Dad brought some home for dinner. It was good fried chicken, but mostly I remember the covered pressed styrofoam plates and plastic utensils. We were clearly approaching the zenith of high times in 1955 and I knew it. 
                       The Bruningas were duck hunters. One of Red's hunting buddies was Wayne Duncan (and his wife Edree) who lived right across the street from them. The two owned a "swamp buggy," a large flat bottom boat powered by an airplane engine driving an cut down airplane propeller at the rear.  The engine was kept sheltered in Wayne's garage between hunting seasons, and the rest of the boat was stored bottom up in the back part of of the Bruninga's back yard behind their garage.  In our yard, we had our swing set nearby. The fragrance of olive drab paint on the boat hull from the high summer heat was intoxicating. They were the happiest summer memories I'd know until I met Janet Weber.
Those were days before backyard fences. We played together or we didn't. We respected everyone in the neighborhood, and they respected us. The Chicken Delight building still stands today, having served for about two years in that capacity and as home for several other businesses. So does the Pease's under new ownership for the past 25 years.
                    Though we owned a bronze-colored Hudson Hornet and a Crosley before that, the first family car to make a major impression on my was the family's new 1953 Oldsmobile Rocket 88. I had just come out of the corner grocery store at Ash at Lowell,(half a block from home)  when I heard a horn. I looked up and there was dad, inciting me to take a ride in our new car. I didn't even know we were getting a new car.
               It was in this car that  I learned what a brave man my dad was. On a warm summer Sunday, dad, Bill in the front seat and I in back piled into the car for a trip to the Washington Park refreshment stand for snow cones. Dad knew how to treat a car. Since our house was only five lots from the end of the block, he would never accelerate as we pulled out of the driveway heading to the stop sign. The engine would idle all the way, warming up as we went. Other neighbors didn't use this kind of uncommon sense. Usually, I drive the same way leaving my home today. Why rush to the end of the block?
               It was a beautiful, warm and sunny as we rounded the left turn from Whittier onto Ash, heading west. .It was then that I noticed a buzzing sound behind me, and I turned around to find the largest hornet I had ever seen, It was paying no attention to me; just trying to fly through the back window, crawling along the hat rack behind the seat and then buzzing madly, hurling himself at the glass. I was scared out of my young wits! I explained the situation to dad, not two feet from me, and he said to stay calm. HA! I cowered against the back of the front seat and we drove all the way into the parking lot of the Washington Park refreshment stand. I followed as Bill exited the front door right and I almost crawled out the back door on the left. As Dad got out of the car, he removed his handkerchief from his back pocket, refolded it, opened the back door to the car, reached in and grabbed the hornet in his handkerchief, threw it down on the parking lot and stepped on it to crush the buzzing demon. In a few seconds he stepped off. The hornet crawled out of the handkerchief, sat there a few seconds and flew merrily away! I am still amazed by Dad's display of raw courage!
                            Before I could walk, parents would remember to me, I would pull myself up on my feet, holding onto the doors of the family radio/record player console and dance to Dinah Shore singing "Buttons and Bows." I watched Dot playing piano and tried to play by ear about as soon as I could climb onto the piano bench. I still remember her Chopin sheet music. I could hum Chopin etudes before I could add two plus two. By the start of second grade, I began taking piano lessions from the unforgettable Miss Daigh, who lived in a small single-story apartment structure on Dial Court, a five minute ride by car and ten minutes by bike. Most of the time, she came to our house, but during the summer I often rode my bike to her place for afternoon lessons. She was oldold, had the fragrance of an oldold person and had the personality of a meat cleaver. Miss Daigh has been recommended by one of mom’s bridge club friends, and an older student – say 35 or 40 years old – would have appreciated her more than me. Besides learning how to play up to a third level (piano level), just beginning to approach recital-quality playing I had endured all I could. It was fun, being the star of music classes when the school district music teacher came to our room and passed out triangles and rhythm blocks. I was one of just a few kids who already knew the difference between a half note and a whole note and what a sixteenth rest and PP mean, but I was not enjoying the process. I hated to practice and seldom did. Miss Daigh had a problem with me trying to play a tune by ear, based on what I could remember of her playing it. My reliance on my ear interfered with my progress on piano, and I was more intent on fighting (not literally; she was a gentle woman, and I was a kid) Miss Daigh. Mom and Dad had warned me that if they let me stop taking lessons I would wish in later years that they had not. And they were absolutely right. I can still read solitary notes in the treble clef, but I’ve forgotten everything I ever learned about music below middle C.
                In second grade, my brother Bill and I had been jumping on our parents’ big bed as though it were a trampoline, when his the back of his head fell onto my head. I was lying face up, and after planting his feet at the foot of the bed, he allowed himself to fall backwards, expecting to hit nothing more than the mattress or pillow, but instead, hitting my forehead. At least, my nose didn't break. We all went to the doctor with concerned parents in the lead and I was told I’d have a black eye for awhile, but it was nothing major. And a black eye I had. For about a week, I walked around with it, and kids would ask me how I got it. My answer: "My brother hit me over the head with a baseball bat." Not true.Thank God, Bill was also not injured. Since that time, I've wondered if there was a slight concussion and brain damage from the fall. I grew up to be slightly dyslexic and I have so many uncommonly wired circuits in my thinking process, that I sense that fall might have played a role. Another incident, this one in winter also might have done likewise.
               Steve Grummon and Kenny Hendricks and I were walking to Steve's house for a Cub Scout meeting after school. We were horsing around, throwing snowballs at each other, and I caught one with my right cheek bone, just under my right eye. Kenny had packed it tightly, and there might have been some pebbles in it; can't be sure. When it hit, it created a small bulge on my face like a boil, but deeper under the skin. I didn't lose vision, and after we washed it out at Steve's house, I was fine; no lasting pain. But it sure scared me. And all parents knew what a bad boy the thrower of the errant slush ball had been. Mom blamed Kenny the rest of my life for a right eye deficiency that she attributed to the snow ball. It didn't get in the way of the friendship. Henny and I stayed friends until we started attending different junior high schools. I always believed I could have saved myself some hurt if I had been a better dodger of snowballs.
               Across the street from us on Whittier lived  Art and his wife (forgot her name) and daughters   Lois and younger sister Nancy, my age. Art played cornet in the Shriner's band and played Santa Claus to neighborhood kids during the holidays. They were good people.
               During summer vacation, I traveled on a train with Mom, sister Dorothy and brother Bill out to Leavenworth, KS to spend some time with Mom’s sister, my Aunt Estelle Anderson. She had married a surgeon in Georgia, and he became very prominent in Leavenworth. Durwin Anderson, their only child would grow up to be the State Attorney General in Florida, but that was a long way away from 1954, might have been 1955. They lived in a mansion across from a school. That summer I awakened after my first night in cousin Durwin's bedroom. He was a giant. I was sitting in bed, looking toward the window he slept next to. He awakened, looked at me and said, "Good morning, bud, what's up?"  To this day, I remember the wallpaper pattern in that bedroom and the entire floor plan of that house. I would return there one more time, and would love to travel to Leavenworth to see if the house is still there.
                Uncle Turner had owned and flown a 125 hp Globe Swift and Aunt Stelle, a Taylorcraft before I was old enough to remember them. During visits, he would talk about the airplanes, what they were like to fly, and how both had been blown away in a Kansas tornado. They took this as an omen and did not replace the airplanes. During one converation after dinner, I remarked to him how impressed I was by the F-86 "Sabrejets" that just started flying at Springfield's airport. I said I thought they had to be safe airplanes because they sure landed in a neat way. Turner replied that a pilot had been killed trying to land a Sabre at Leavenworth's airport, that the airplane was a killer, and all planes were killers if you didn't fly them right. This effectively ended my pontificating as a sprout kid about flying with my uncle who knew more about anything than I ever would.
                 I believe that Uncle Turner introduced Dot to the nurse training school there during this visit, that she applied and was accepted. The sites and smells of Leavenworth were an exciting world to me. The school across the street from Aunt Stelle’s house had a tall stone wall on one side of the playground. Tried climbing it once, but it was impossible. I realized this before I got hurt.
             
    Third grade
                     Miss Kessberger, was a classic stereotype of an older teacher with black hair in a bun and steel-rimmed glasses. Here we learned how to write longhand. Miss Kessberger was strict, but she cared about her students. She read to us from a book called The Boxcar Children. Later as an adult I purchased a copy of the book and cherish it to this day.
                     Here also I met Donna Parks who had an English accent because she was born in Kent, England. We talked about where she used to live, how the entire city smelled of fish. I don't remember that she stayed with the class the entire year. Another interesting combination was Norma Burchard. I don't remember one specific line of conversation I had with her, but I remember swinging in the schoolyard swings with her.  From the end of third grade until I was writing this paragraph, I had forgotten her, a warm smile and dark hair. She was mature beyond her years, and though it seems strange coming from a fellow looking back on his life as a third grade kid, if I had met her 15 years later, I think I would have fallen for her in a big way. As things transpired, I don’t remember having an actual crush on her; I just knew that she was bright and pretty, and I enjoyed being with her.
                     During early Lawrence years, I either rode to school with Mom or Dad and walked home or rode home with friends, especially after half way through third grade when mom started to work at City Hall. I had a key to the house and for a year or two didn’t have to deal with my younger brother. We went our separate ways from the start.
                  Tony’s Market was located on Laurel Street almost right across the street from Lawrence. It was a treasure trove of penny candy, including wax lips and moustaches, lots of licorice, Lik’M’Aid and Bazooka Joe bubble gum. Tony’s was an older neighborhood grocery with a cash register up front by the window and probably two aisles of food. Across the back wall was the butcher shop where meats and fish were displayed under refrigerated glass. We ate our sack lunches in the basement at school, but had time during lunch to visit Tony’s.
                    A few blocks west of Tony’s on Laurel were three built-together shops we always walked by coming home from school. The first was a baker that served the best butter cake ever made in Springfield. The second was a shoe repair shop that outlasted the other two and the third was a barber shop occupied by several over the years. Some Saturdays dad and Bill and I would drive over, pick up some butter cakes and bring them home for a magnificent breakfast. Some days I’d go by the place on the way to school and get butter cake for myself, but at 25¢ each, I simply could not afford to throw my money around like that These three shops were located between Spring and College on the south side of Laurel.
                 Half a block west was the B&B market, another mom and pop grocery on the southeast corner of College at Laurel. This was the spot of choice for friends on the way home because it was a little larger and sunnier than Tony’s. We called the owners Mr. & Mrs. B,, people with faces I remember, middle aged folks with greying hair and smiles.. 
                Sears Roebuck & Co. built a beautiful big store on South Grand between First and Second Streets. It became my after-school heaven. My friend Allan Hinds lived between Lawrence and Sears, about a block from school. Often I would detour to Sears to ride the escalators, sometimes to buy candy from the glass-fronted candy bins and counter just inside what seemed to serve as a lobby and buffer zone between the main entry doors and the store-proper. This lobby had stairs that led to the second floor or basement floor. On the right, as one entered the store from the parking lot on the south stand-up counter featuring Hires root beer and hot dogs. There was nothing better than a hot hot hot dog steaming from the stainless steel rolling grill elements and a freezing cold Hires root beer from a dispenser built into a big "barrel" on the side of the counter. I can still remember the aroma from those hot dogs. Sears also had a terrific toy department, and here I bought model airplane kits regularly for several years. I probably spent as much time at Sears as I did at any other single place from about third grade through early junior high.
                 In the spring, I was pulled out of school when the family and a friend of my sister’s drove to Cochran, Georgia so Mom could visit her ailing mother
                 The April trip to Georgia was a real eye-opener: the shacks of tenant farmers in the country, pecan trees. Only vaguely do I remember Grandmother Jones, a frail, white haired woman. Could not tell you her first name if my life depended on it, or anything about the house, except the girl who lived next door. We had one conversation one evening in her back yard. We both climbed a tree and sat on a branch. I loved this girls accent, and I wish I remembered her name. I saw her for three hours in my life. During the visit to Grandma Jones’ house, I slept on a real feather bed and visited an uncle's farm where I saw livestock for the first time in my life. Everyone I met talked like Mom. Dad had spent most of his live in South Carolina and Georgia by the time he, Mom and my sister Dorothy moved to Springfield in 1939, but by the time I was old enough to remember the sound of his voice, he didn't have a trace of the South in it.
                 Mom never lost her accent. In my teens she asked me on at least one occasion to call some people who had a refrigerator for sale. They had placed a classified ad in the paper. Mom wanted me to do the talking because I sounded like a Springfield Yankee, and she was worried people would think she was a person of color from the sound of her voice over the phone. I was proud to have been born a Yankee (the winning team, so to speak) but I revere my family who stayed behind. I also revere the genteel way of life that Mom missed so much.  The people I knew in the South were kinder to each other and to strangers than many of the Yankees I've come to know.
                  Dorothy was in nurses training when I was in third grade. She brought a friend, Joni, her roommate along on the trip south. While Mom stayed with her mom, the rest of us drove to Daytona Beach, Florida and stayed at the Blue Waters Motel. What a world of wonder! Playing in the ocean surf. Warnings not to swim far out into it. The taste of salt water. The shells, pieces of crabs. A dead sea gull on the beach.
                Soon after we arrived at the Blue Waters Motel, I wandered away from the beach towels where Dot and Joni and my brother Bill were settled in. Probably 10 minutes into my stroll, I realized I was lost. I was on the beach,  and there were plenty of people, but I didn't remember whether brother and sister and sister's friend were in front of me or behind me!  MAJOR ANGUISH! I walked from the beach into a patio-like area between two walls of motel rooms, and saw a small party of grownups watching me. For a future wordsmith, I had no clues regarding what I should do.  I decided that I could not walk over and ask for help. (This memory is like yesterday to me.) A different approach would be necessary, but what?  I started crying! They came over, asked what the problem was, and I told them I was lost. They asked me where I was staying, and I remembered The Blue Waters Hotel. They said everything was okay, and they walked with me until I recognized the hotel sign. I don't remember even saying thank you to these people, but I remember walking back to join the family, still on the beach towels and behaved as though nothing had happened.  But I was shaken pretty badly and never again knew such a feeling of being lost. I have felt fear, woe, desperation and pain far worse than I did that sunny afternoon, but never the total painful disconnection from family --  at least  until I turned about 50. But that's getting ahead of myself. . . .
                     So we returned home, I did the catch up work for Miss Kessberger, and I never saw her again. She was a terrific teacher.
             The highlight of my year was my first crush, though I considered her at the time to be my first true love, Her name was Diane Wilborn, and she lived on the west dide of College, about six houses south of Laurel. Jay Bruninga and I were mad about her, and it was a stroke of luck 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 a woman I could really go ballistic over is Anne. I don't know why names mean so much to me, but every Anne I have cared for (there have not been many) have been from another planet with far more maturity than I’ve suggested myself capable of demonstrating and with a taste for more than I could provide. I still love the name.
                    During hurried visits to Tony’s, I’d spend a nickel on candy and ask a friend to deliver it to a girl of my dreams, usually Diane Wilborn or the fragile, distinctively voiced and also blonde Jennifer Wilson, daughter of Arch Wilson, owner of Arch Wilson Mens Clothiers on Fifth Street downtown or Loretta Whitney. Besides having a crush on Diane Wilborn, I had crushes-lite on Loretta and Jennifer. I never so much as held hands with any of these girls. We just gazed and giggled, and that was what life was all about for me.
                 Wendy Booth, my age who lived three doors north of me on Whittier, was an antagonist for some reason, not a friend, though her mom was an absolutely stunningly good looking woman. Wendy was a genius and grew up to major achievements. Linda Dirksen, who was about my age but went to "Catholic school," Blessed Sacrament was an acquaintance whom I admired and respected. Her family moved away when I was in fourth grade. The Gernenz family with Karen (a year older than me, stunning, tall and blonde) and Susan (shorter and younger and blonde) moved in. We had some good times togther as friends later in grade school and junior high. Mr. Gernenz was an official with the Baptist Church.
                     I became a Cub Scout in late third or early fourth grade. Steve Grumman’s mom, Ken Hexricks’ mom, Danny Spears mom, and later Bernie McCabe’s mom were den mothers. My mom could not be a den mother. She had to work. We had monthly pack meetings in the basement of First Christian Church at 6^th at Lawrence downtown. Later I learned this was the same church that Springfield native son poet Vachel Lindsay’s family had attended. WOW! But at the time, I didn’t know poetry from shinola. Our scout troop visited the Butternut Bakery on 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 and hearing the guide, probably the crew chief explain that the airplane was armed with four .50 calibre machine guns in the fuselage (which I already knew about) and two in the wing roots (which I didn’t know about). I thought it was strange that a jet fighter would have wing guns. I thought that was pretty old fashion, the style for World War II Mustangs and Spitfires. But silly or not, I remembered and left that hangar aching to learn more about F-84Fs!
                     The neighborhood was changing. The Powells (if I remember correctly), an older family next door to us on the south, moved out and the Tacks moved in.  Paul Tack was two years older than me, and he loved airplanes and models as much as I did. One day I visited and he showed me an Aurora kit of the F6F 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, that Paul should have painted them in white; not light green.   I also remembered his model, and with a little research determined he had been modeling an airplane  flown from the carrier Intrepid.
                         Sometime during third grader, the Bruninga family: Red, wife Jessie, Jay and Mike and their older sister Linda moved to Buffalo, New York where Red returned to his distinguished career with the F.B.I..
                       As the weather warmed on Whittier Avenue, the kids in our neighborhood learned about a new grade school being constructed about two blocks south and two blocks east:  Blackhawk School for grades 4 -- 6.  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 this labyrinth of fresh-turned earth, red bricks and mortar. I crawled into the space between  a floor and foundation, stepped quietly around a large room with freshly dried concrete and wondered about my future. There was not a sound in the world, and no one knew I was there. I stayed probably 45 minutes and came home. It was a solemn time for me.
                      Many of my friends had older sisters, usually three to five years older than my friends. Diane Wilborn had one, Nancy across the street had Lois, Steve Grummon's sister was Becky, Linda was the older sister of Jay and Mike. Greg Pease had a sister Janet, and I had a sister Dorothy, Dot for short. Dot was 12 years older than me, an idol of a sort. When I was still in grade school, she was on the Springfield High School Prom Court, graduated with honors and began training to be a registered nurse in Leavenworth, Kansas.  By the time I was in high school, she had become a practicing RN after finishing training at Springfield's St. John's Hospital's new school, had been a surgery nurse and had married and moved first to St. Louis and then to Wheeling, West Virginia. As a kid in grade school I would leaf through her lab drawings of internal anatomy and her nurses text books and was absolutely amazed at her skill as an artist and her impeccable handwriting.    Fourty-five years later, I still am!
                    Dot's friends from high school included Elsie and (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 (if memory serves) most of the afternoon getting it out, using lots of rubbing alcohol, tweezers and a saftey pin sterilized under a match flame. Elsie was great to be around. Stu, the older by a year or two, was a background memory, nice fellow.
            During the summer, between third and fourth grades, we traded in our light green four-door Olds for a 1956 Dodge Coronet convertible. Bill and I knew this one was coming, and we waited eagerly by the street curb, looking north for the first sign of it. Dad was bringing it home from R.E. Broe Dodge/Plymouth just south of Central Baptist Church on 4th Street, across the street from Bates Chevrolet . What a car!
               In less than a month, Mom, Dot, Bill, I and Dot's boyfriend Roy Becket went out to visit Aunt Stelle and Uncle Turner again. This trip really made memories! Roy was also aiming for a career as 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 know, and the fact Dorothy was dating him at all showed he was a good man.
               We arrived in time four the 4th of July. A kid with a dollar and a pack of book matches could have a lot of fun in those summers. Every grocery store in Leavenworth sold fire works. BIll and I would walk downtown from Aunt Stelle's house and buy them regularly. The whole summer was a joyful symphony of booms near and far.  It was truly joyful and amazing. 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 had bottle rockets, a few larger rockets which we could not afford in quantity, sparklers and the vaunted cherry bombs. I became pretty adept, throwing the standard firecracker into the air after lighting the fuse with a punk. Had a few Ladyfingers detonate between my thumb and forefinger, but aside from the noise so close, the damage to my hands was insignificant and quickly passing.  I enjoyed setting off firecrackers in the drainage pipe openings around the slightly raised schoolyard across from Aunt Stelle's. Set far enough into the pipe, the detonation, with the smoke, was like a real cannon.   Bill and I also set them off in the alley in peoples' garbage cans. We were reported to police and even were written up in the Leavenworth paper. Uncle Turner showed me the small paragraph in the paper.  We didn't see any police and there was no punishment beyond a stern admonition from Aunt Stelle and Mom to stop it.          
                 It was in Leavenworth that 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.  Later I purchased another copy of that issue and still have it, along with several thousand more model magazines. Another highlight of the summer. Roy Becket drove me down to the hobby shop where I purchased the magazine AND I purchased my first model airplane: a Jetco Thermic Thrush, and balsa hand-launch glider that had to be assembled with real glue. I also built plastic models during this trip. Distinctly I remember a Revell B-47 and Aurora Yak 25. Later, I collected those kits too.
                  During that visit to Leavenworth. we found out Leavenworth had an airport at Fort Leavenworth, and we drove out on an overcast day.  There was a hurricane fence, but I don't remember buildings, except for the nearby prison with high walls, barbed wire on top and guard towers. It was a quiet day interrupted by the sound of a C-47 taking off in our direction. I’ll never forget the sound of engines at takeoff power and the silhouette of the transport, landing gear still down, climbing slowly toward the low cloud base. A lonely sound, yet so full of life for those on the inside of that airplane.

continued in Chapter 2 here