Roger’s Remembrances

Summer days were days of no school and lots of fun things to do. School let out in late May and did not reconvene until early September. We had three full months of June, July, and August for a complete change of pace — very refreshing. One continuing chore was to deliver the paper route each week day evening. I got a substitute for the times I went to camp or on a family vacation.

Grade school years
During grade school years most of the kids in the neighborhood went barefooted all summer long. Right after school let out in May it took a week or two to get your feet toughened up. However, they never got tough enough to stand very long on a sidewalk baking in the Kansas sun. We had remarkably few wounds because of no shoes. The most common occurrence was a stubbed toe when running on the sidewalk. These healed quickly. An occasional Mexican sandburr needed Mom’s skill with a needle to extricate it.

The first summer event was Daily Vacation Bible School at First Presby. We learned Bible verses, sang songs, listened to stories, and played games.

Most of the time I played with the kids on our block. There were about six others close to my age. Bob and his friends usually were not part of our activities. When we had enough for a game, we played hide and seek, punch the pig, kick the can, beckon-beckon — all of which involved some version of whoever was “it” trying to find the rest who were hiding. We agreed beforehand how far from “home” we could hide, usually not farther than the adjacent yards.

For “Cowboys and Indians” we chose which we wanted to be. I don’t remember just what we did except that it involved “shooting” each other with imaginary weapons — either a bow and arrow or six-shooter, depending on what you were. There was an occasional argument as to who was the survivor in an exchange of “shots”, but it seldom went further than words. After we got our rubber guns, it was pretty clear who had shot the other one first. See BROTHER BOB about the construction of rubber guns.

We dug caves in our back yard. The main room was a few feet deep and was reached via a tunnel which had many turns — to block out the light. We put boards across the diggings and put a layer of dirt on top of the boards. The end result was a very dark place. Candles provided light for the “meetings” in the cave. The material for caves, shacks, and other projects requiring lumber came from a stack of such which resulted when Dad tore down an old chicken house and a shed which were not used nor wanted.

One project shared with Bob was building a “shack” in the back yard. Bob was about junior high age and knew how to put it together. The shack had two rooms, bunks, a roof that did not leak, windows, doors, and a cook stove with chimney. It was not a pretty sight, but we liked it. We would sleep out in the shack once in a while. We also ate there. The “we” involved Bob and me and some of our friends. We got along reasonably well, though there were arguments. See “1914 Models” in AUNT ETHEL for comments about fried potatoes in the shack.

Brother Bob helped me build a succession of push carts from the assortment of lumber, wheels, and nails available. These boasted a bonafide steering wheel mounted on a broom stick around which were wound the steering ropes. I think it was Bob who first showed the others how to cross the steering ropes so that when the steering wheel was turned “left” the front wheels also turned “left”.

Miscellaneous activities included climbing trees, making daisy chains, making scooters from old roller skates and two-by-fours, and playing with toy cars and trucks. The family would often take picnic lunches out to the “bluffs” on west 17th street. One of my favorite activities was “wading” in the Arkansas river. It was a very wide, sandy, and shallow river — just right for wading.

Junior high years
In junior high years I rode my bicycle out to Stevens pool to go swimming. Stevens had three pools — one with a high diving tower (about 25′), one with low boards, and one shaded by trees and so cold it was not used much. I would jump feet first off the top floor of the tower. That was thrill enough for me.

The three summers of junior high age I went to Hi-Y camp at Camp Woods near Elmdale. There would be about ten of us from Liberty Junior High in a cabin together. Bill Cole was our adult leader. He was a snake specialist and had with him a number of harmless (but big) bull snakes which he used in his talks about snakes to the entire camp. We sometimes took a bull snake into our bunks with us!

Camp activities included swimming and canoeing in/on the lake, rifle shooting (I earned two bars on the “sharpshooter” rank), archery (I skipped that), handcrafts (I still have a beaded belt some place around here), and writing letters home (a required activity). There was also a track meet.
One evening of camp was the “sex talk” by the camp director. I learned some astonishing things.

When I was in about 7th grade, the folks bought tennis rackets and a net from Sear-Roebuck via mail order. There was an old weed-covered court about three blocks from 506. A bunch of us got together, cleaned off the weeds, put up our net, and used that court for a lot of good tennis fun. There was an old line marker still around. I cleaned the weeds from behind a barn next door and hit tennis balls against it by the hour. The uneven surfaces of the barn siding and ground gave some crazy bounces that probably helped my reactions.

Bob didn’t take to tennis, but I loved it. On many summer evenings Dad and I would drive down to Carey’s Park to play a few sets. I can remember how we would roll up the windows on the car for the drive home — so that we would still be hot for a nice cool bath at 506. By 9th grade I played a fairly good game. Dad took me to tennis tournaments at St. John (or was it Stafford?) and Lindsborg. For the Lindsborg trip we stayed overnight up on Coronado Heights. I was playing against men and never got past the first round. But it was a good time with Dad.

Somewhere around 8th grade I did some model airplane building. I think it was done mostly in the summer. The models were fairly simple — rubber band motors. A couple of them even flew a bit. But radio came along and crowded out the interest in the airplanes.

Senior High Years
Senior high summers I played an occasional game of “sandlot” baseball, built on the radio shack, played tennis, practiced the piano, took swimming lessons, worked on Lizzie, pulled crab grass. Rusty Luckett (living a block away on 8th street) and I pitched hardball to each other, and I got so I could throw a reasonably decent “in” curve. But Hutchinson High did not play baseball, so I never did learn the finer points of that game. That probably is a factor in why I never did enjoy watching it very much.

A couple of summers I attended Presbyterian youth conferences at the College of Emporia and at Branson, Missouri. Branson was a nice setting — high on a hill overlooking the river/lake. Is that Lake Tannecomo?

One summer I taught 3rd and 4th graders in the vacation Bible school at First Presby. We learned the hymn “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee”, and I’ve liked it ever since. The kids called me “Mr. Ghormley”, which was a new experience for me. I guess to a 3rd grader a high schooler is pretty old. I took a bunch of them home in Lizzie each day.

By the late 1930s I had a job during the summer at the Pure Ice Company. I drove a semi-trailer and hauled ice from where it was frozen (mostly at the Morton Salt Company in South Hutchinson) to the docks where it was distributed. The ice came in 300-pound chunks which we handled by sliding them along the dock. The ice tongs were the type having a single handle linked to each pincher. The harder you pull, the harder the sharp pinchers hold the cake of ice.

Several times a week (depending on how hot the weather) I took a semi-trailer full (63 300-pound cakes) of ice to Sterling. A few times I went to Pretty Prairie (when their own truck was on the blink).

On one trip to Sterling, disaster struck. I had taken the smoother, but graveled Highway 14 for one stretch. At one spot I had slowed to about 15 mph and moved to the left side of the road to pass a stopped car. The shoulder was SOFT, and I found myself slithering slowly but surely into the ditch. The semi ended up resting against the embankment at a 45-degree slant. Oh me! What a feeling!

I walked to a near-by farm house and called the office. They sent about five regular open-body trucks, and the ice was transferred from the semi to the other trucks. Most of it was salvageable. I spent the night in the truck, and the next day the wreckers came and pulled us out of the ditch and back to Hutch.

The inevitable call to the “office” came, where I recounted how I got into that ditch. George Hinds, the Big Boss, didn’t bawl me out — just hit where it hurt when he said he was disappointed in my judgement at taking that big semi on a gravel road. Stick to the pavement — which I did from then on!!

One assignment was to “ice” railroad refrigerator cars. (Photo to right: Mac Weldon, my supervisor.) Each end of the car had a compartment which would hold a couple of tons of ice blocks. Two of us would drive a single-body truck along side of the rail car. One would work on the truck floor, cut the ice into chucks small enough to handle (about 30 pounds), and toss them up to the second man standing on a platform on top of the sides of the truck body. The second man caught the ice in his tongs and tossed it into the open hatch of the rail car. We developed quite a rhythm in the swinging, catching, and tossing process. Sometimes (as in the picture: Roger, Jack Butler, Dick Mettlen.) there were three of us.

Dick Mettlen was a favorite of mine. He was always cheerful. Once in a while we missed a catch, whereupon the thrower would say, “Sorry, my fault”, the catcher would respond, “No, my fault”, the thrower, “My fault” etc. for several rounds of “My fault”s. Sorta stupid, but a good “family joke”.

Our bosses early on would say to be SURE you have the right car before you throw in the ton or so of ice ordered. The rail car number was a 7 or 8-digit number. One day we found the rail car, and every digit on the car agreed with the digits on the order — except the last digit. We figured that the order must be mistaken, so we went ahead and iced the car. You guessed it — as we pulled away from the car we had thrown 2000 pounds of ice into, we saw a car across the trackway that was the RIGHT car. It took a little time to climb down into the wrong car, toss the ice back up and onto the truck and put it where it belonged. We never told anyone of that DUMB misteak — as far as I know, this is the first recounting of it.

Church Softball
In my high school and college summers First Presby had a team in the YMCA Church Softball league. We played once or twice a week and won more than we lost. Most of the time I pitched. In those days the pitcher was allowed only a simple underhand motion — no windup of any kind. The games were played in the long evenings, though we did not have Daylight Saving time to lengthen the evenings. I loved it and was sorry the several times that the Pure Ice job interfered.

Radio KWBG
During August of my last summer in Hutch (1940) the owner of the local broadcast station KWBG (Kansas Watches Billy Greenwald) contacted me about a job as an engineer. The Chief Engineer, Harold Bourell, was a ham (W9IXE) and knew I had a Commercial license from radio club conversations. They needed an engineer. Pure Ice said it was OK for me to quit right away, so I signed on as an engineer at KWBG. (I think its call letters were later changed to KWBW.) It was a fun job, and it paid better than Pure Ice. During the day I ran the turn tables, checked the transmitter, and controlled the mikes used by the announcers. In the evening, I became the announcer as well. Mom let me know a couple of times when I got home that the cotton fabric is not PER’ca lee, it’s per CALE! And the Mexico (or Texas?) town is not Chi Huey Huey, its ChiWahWah. There were a couple of others.

Near the end of August Mr. Greenwald said Bourell was leaving, and asked me if I’d like to stay on as Chief Engineer. I told him many thanks but I should get back to K-State.

Vacations
Except for the Colorado trip mentioned in VERY EARLY YEARS, up through my grade school years we never took a family vacation. I’m sure there was no money available for such, and one didn’t get very fancy in a 1914 Model T Ford. Dad did take us on shorter week-end trips — often to Lake Tahoe near Peabody. We all slept in Lizzie as described in VERY EARLY YEARS. The first REAL vacation was after Dad got the 1929 Model A Ford. It was the trip to Kansas City via Mound City mentioned in some other Chapter. In my Junior High years we took a week-long trip to Camp Carlisle (near Stafford?) and two trips to Colorado. Dad had fun re-visiting spots he had been to years before when he went solo in Lizzie.

One of our favorites was the second trip to Colorado when we holed up in Eldora for nearly a week. It was a nice hike up to the old resort hotel. A few decades later the Roger Ghormley family re-visited Eldora and found the cabin the Ray Ghormleys had stayed in. The resort hotel was still there, but now reached by a real road. It brought back good memories to me.

In the summer of 1934 Dad, Bob, and I drove Sally (the 1929 Model A) to Chicago for the second year of the “Century of Progress” World’s Fair. It was just past the depth of the Depression, and Mom and Dad must have really struggled to get enough money for that venture. The three of us rode the “L” and took a boat trip up to Milwaukee and back. We took in the “Sky Ride”, and I went on the BIG roller coaster. That was almost more of a thrill than I wanted.

Summers were very, very good days.

End of SUMMERS