I can’t remember if I was 10 or 11 that summer that my Dad, a bricklayer, contracted with the city to build some manholes for a sewer extension project. It was just a couple of years after World War II and Augusta, our little town of 5,000, just like the rest of the country, was beginning to grow as the men returned from the service and started their lives again. The northwest part of town was the logical area for growth and the city intended to extend the sewer lines to cover that area. The proposed line would start at the edge of a developed area at the south end of Henry Street and run south for about a half mile. It would pass through a hillside that was limestone covered with some short weeds and grasses because there wasn’t enough dirt to support anything else.

This hillside was one of my favorite places and I didn’t ever tell anyone else about it. It was the only place in town where there was an abundance of horned toads and ring-necked snakes. I’m sure you’re familiar with horned toads but maybe not with the ring-necked snakes. They were normally up to 6 or 8 inches long and were a deep black in color with a bright orange band around the neck. They were skinny, not even as thick as an earthworm, and were just the perfect size to carry around in your pocket. We always turned them loose in a few hours so they wouldn’t be harmed by being captive.

The construction guys were digging the ditch or trench with what we called a “steam shovel” back then. The machines were no longer powered by steam so I guess we should have called them “diesel shovels.”  The bucket pointed forward on these units as opposed to the back-hoes we have now with the bucket pointing toward the cab. Anyhow, the trench was dug to a depth of 8 to 10 feet and every so many yards a circular area was hollowed out to accommodate a manhole. The manholes were circular and maybe 6 to 8 foot in diameter at the base and grew smaller as the thing approached ground level. I guess they kind of looked like an igloo with a tube sticking out the top. Dad installed metal rungs or steps inside that were anchored in the brick work, as he went. The purpose of the manhole, of course, was to allow a workman to have access to the sewer line in case there was a blockage or some other problem.

This was to be my first time working for Dad. I wasn’t big enough yet to mix mortar or to carry  a 5 gallon bucket of mortar down a ladder but I could help get the bricks to where they needed to be.  A quantity of bricks had been left at the location of each manhole. Those bricks had to be taken down into the trench and placed where Dad could reach them as he worked. For this, he said he would pay me $.01 (1 penny) per brick. I thought I was going to be rich!

The boss on the job was a man named Glen who worked in the city maintenance department. Glen was a nice guy and the reason we knew each other by name was that whenever the city workers did a project in our little town it always drew a crowd of kids. Glen was an easy-going guy who answered all kid questions and I think he knew us all by name.

There was an abandoned house at the bottom of the hill and we always put our lunch bags and water can in there and then we also ate lunch there because that’s the only place there was any shade. The temperature was running between 90 and 100 every day so the house was a perfect retreat.

Speaking of lunch bags and heat, I need to digress for a moment. When we fixed lunch back then, we made a bologna sandwich and slapped a little mustard on it, wrapped it in a piece of waxed paper, and put it in a brown paper bag. If we were lucky, there was an apple or a peach to throw in also. Nowadays, lunch means a 50 dollar Igloo insulated box containing a 3-course balanced meal, sodas, and 5 plastic bottles of water. Lunch has sure gotten complicated.

To get back to business, the old abandoned house was also a cooler place to keep the dynamite and the blasting caps. One day when we were all eating lunch, I was asking Glen questions about dynamite and blasting because he was the one that did all of that. One of the things he told me was that the fumes coming off a stick of dynamite were so powerful they could give you a terrible headache or even make you sick at your stomach. The trick was to not have the stuff directly under your nose and to be careful about taking a deep breath. Glen said that they had to do some blasting that afternoon and if it was ok with my Dad he would show me how to prepare the dynamite and the blasting caps.

Dad had been listening to all of this and he agreed that I could come back to the house and watch Glen. Glen said he would be heading back to the house in about an hour and when I saw him heading that way to come on over. Dad and I went back to work and I got enough bricks stacked up to allow me to stay away for a while without Dad running out. Instead of carrying all the bricks down the ladder, he had been letting me drop them into the trench as long as I didn’t let them hit each other and break. I would then go down in the trench and stack them neatly within his reach.

There was a case of Hercules Dynamite and a box of blasting caps in the house. The dynamite looked like you would imagine…red sticks wrapped in wax paper with an appearance not unlike that of a road flare. The blasting caps looked like a short piece of brass tubing with two wires coming out the end. Glen told me how the wires would be attached to a detonator and that closing a switch would send an electrical current to the blasting cap causing it to explode and having been inserted into a stick of dynamite, would cause the dynamite to explode, too. Glen had a wooden dowel that had been sharpened to a point on one end. He showed me how to push the pointed end of that dowel into the end of a stick of dynamite and make a cavity for the blasting cap to be placed in. Next he would insert the cap into the cavity and use his fingers to mold the material over the end of the cap to keep it from falling out. You could mold the stuff just like a piece of clay. That’s all there was to it. The other workers would have drilled the holes in the rock and one of them would help Glen place the dynamite sticks in the holes and wire them up. When they were ready to blast we would all be given the signal to take cover in the old house and Glen would yell the classic warning “Fire in the hole” and set off the blast. I got to help with the preparation several times and really enjoyed it.

In later years I wondered how my Dad felt when he let his kid go play with dynamite. I figure that Dad trusted Glen and knew he would see to it that the proper safety rules were followed. I also figured that Dad knew he could trust me to do exactly as I was told. And, last, Dad probably figured that if there was an accident, all of us on the hill would be vaporized no matter how close we were to the old house and the dynamite.

 

Dave Thomas
November 25, 2013

 

 

Another Story-Jimmy

I was working at Howard Motors. The shop had 6 stalls for regular engine work and generally had 4 or 5 experienced mechanics working. At this particular time we only had four mechanics and two of them had just been there a short time. One of them, Jimmy was a real nice young man, and was just married a few months prior. His wife came down to the shop one day and Jimmy introduced her to all of us. He was a good mechanic and was well liked by his clients. His hobby was a pair of nickel-plated .44 Smith & Wesson revolvers for which he loaded his own ammunition. He had invited me over to his house once to show me the pistols and his reloading equipment. Then, we went out to the rock quarry and did some target shooting with those nickel plated cannons.

The other new mechanic was a guy named Mike. He was a good mechanic also but was one of those devil-may-care guys and his hobby was building and racing stock cars. He was a crazy S.O.B. but I liked him. He had invited me to his place a couple of times to work on his ’37 Ford stock car and I had attended one of his races in Wichita at the Hillside race track. On one of these outings I had met his wife who was a real, nice girl.

One morning neither Jimmy nor Mike showed up for work. It was mighty cold outside but there was no snow or ice to cause any driving problems so we had no clue as to why the guys weren’t there. Kenny Markley, the Service Manager made some job assignments to cover the customers who were there when we opened up and we all went about our business. A while later I had a car up on the grease rack and was working on it and I looked up and here comes Jimmy. Jimmy was wearing a big coat and he started to unbutton it as he started talking.   He started right off with “You and your friends are out cruising around town every night and I want to know if you saw my wife and Mike last night?” As he finished talking, he also finished the last button on his coat and it dropped open and I saw that he was wearing his gun belt with a .44 on each hip! “What the hell are you doing, Jimmy?” I asked “what are you doing?” “Oh, I just want to talk to them”, he says, “Did you see them last night?” Well, yes, I had seen them drive past, laughing and carrying on but I wasn’t about to tell him. I’m starting to realize that this conversation is way above what an 18 year old kid can handle and start looking for help. The Dutch door of the Parts Department was open at the top and I can see Phil Harding, the Parts Manager in there working. Phil was in his 50’s, smart, quiet, and well respected. I also know that he was a Golden Gloves boxer as a young man. I figure he’s the right guy for this job. I said to Jimmy, “I don’t have any idea where they might be.” That was the truth. Then I say “let’s go talk to Phil and see if he can help figure this out.”Jimmy is so steamed up he’s about to explode and anything sounds good to him so we walk over to that Dutch door with the little counter built on it. Phil looks up and sees us and I wink at him so he’ll know something is up. Phil says “What’s going on?” “Well,” I say, “Jimmy thinks his wife is out with Mike and he’s looking for them. You probably noticed he’s wearing his guns and I thought maybe you could help us figure this out.” About this time, Kenny, the Service Manager yells and asks me if I’ve finished that car I was working on. I walk over to talk to him, practically wanting to kiss him for getting me away from that situation. I quickly told him what was happening and he said he would get on over there. Kenny was probably 6’2” and more than 250 pounds and was quiet and friendly and strong as a bull. He was another good man to put on the job.

I went back to work and left the two best men in the place to deal with the problem. It was probably about half an hour before Phil and Kenny came out together and told me what happened. They talked to Jimmy until he calmed down and then asked him for his guns. He gave them up without a fuss and they locked them in the company safe.

Jimmy and his wife got things straightened out. She was just a kid and when they had moved to a new town she didn’t know what to do with herself and got bored. When she met fast-talking Mike, he seemed more exciting than what she had been experiencing. Jimmy took her back and she got a job clerking somewhere to keep her busy. Mike quit his job and moved on, just like he always did.

Dave Thomas
December 7, 2013

 

Grandpa- At the Movies

Sunday afternoons were generally quiet in Augusta, Kansas, our small town of 5,000 people. The skating rink would be open and the Augusta Movie Theater would show a matinee’. Only the best movies were shown on Sunday. It might be a musical or a drama or a big-time western with big box-office stars performing. People usually started lining up at 2:00 P.M., the ticket booth would open at 2:15 and the movie would start at 2:30. If it was a good movie, the line might be 1/2 block long or longer. Sundays were family time so the whole family would be in line. There was always a lot of visiting as the line always contained people that you hadn’t seen for a week or two.

Grandpa, A.A. Thomas, didn’t go to the movies but he liked to be up there on Sunday afternoon to catch up on his visiting. In a town that size you knew everyone so it was easy to feel at home wherever you went. Grandpa loved to talk and joke so he was really in his element when in front of the movie house. He teased all the kids, flirted with all the women (even if their husbands were standing right there) and joked with all the men or started an argument just to liven things up.

One balmy Sunday, Grandpa had started an argument and he and a couple of men were getting pretty loud. About this time, a rookie cop came strolling up on foot patrol. The kid had been hired from out-of-town so he didn’t know anybody and no one knew him. You could see how green he was and that he probably just learned to wipe his chin and tie his shoes last week. He didn’t know that Grandpa and the other guys were just blowing and having a good time so he thought he should put a stop to it. Since Grandpa is the loudest of the bunch, the cop gets up in his face and tells him to quiet down. Grandpa pretty much ignores him and keeps arguing and that makes the cop mad. He starts talking tougher and reaches out to grab Grandpa’s arm. That’s when it got serious…Grandpa hauled off and decks this kid with one punch.  All the men around started scrambling and some grabbed Grandpa and some grabbed the cop. They escorted them both around the corner to the Police Station and called the Justice of the Peace at home. The J.P. came down to the Station and did some preaching to both of them. He told Grandpa that an 80 year old man ought to know better than to hit a policeman. Then he told the rookie cop to never challenge one of these old guys unless you are ready to go to war. The J.P. then sent Grandpa home and told the cop to go back to work.

Three different people told this story to my Mom the next day so I think it’s pretty accurate.

Dave Thomas
April 25, 2013

Another Story: Frank

 In our town of 5,000 we had a police chief, 3 or 4 police officers, and 1 police car. We knew all the cops by their first names because that’s the way it was in a small town. When the cops were driving down the street, they would always smile and wave. Again, that’s the way it is in a small town. One of the cops was a young man named Frank Bennington. Frank was a tall, slim, good-looking guy who always had a smile and a good word for grade school kids like us. The thing was, though, that Frank had an edge about him and you knew he wasn’t anyone you would want to mess with.

I knew Frank when I was in grade school and then he was missing from the local scene for a few years. I guess about the time I’m 16 or 17, Frank is back in town and he is Chief of Police. He looks a little harder, tougher but still a nice man.

One evening, I walked down town and messed around and about 9 o’clock was walking back home. I got to the corner of 6^th Street and State and looked to the west and saw a bunch of people standing around by the Scholfield-Hurst Ford dealership. This was kind of strange so I headed down there to see what was going on. There were a bunch of cars parked so that their headlights focused on the door to the Parts Department and people all around that were looking the same way. Out in the middle of the driveway was Chief of Police, Frank Bennington. Frank was wearing his side-arm like he always did but in his right hand he was carrying a shotgun…a 12 gauge pump. I asked one of the crowd what was going on. He said that our local switchboard operator at the telephone company had gotten a signal, and when she answered, no one responded. She listened for a bit and determined that at least two men had broken into the Ford garage and had knocked a phone off the hook as they commenced to rob the place.

I should explain that our telephone company was pretty small. I think there were a local operator and a long-distance operator on duty at night. To show you the size of our telephone company, the phone number for the filling station that also served as the Bus Stop for Greyhound and Continental Trailways was “2”, the movie theater was “11”, the Chevrolet garage was ”66”, and my aunt was “413”. Yes, life was simple then.

Getting back to the story…the operator listened for a moment, determined what was happening, and called the cops. Frank was at the station as was one other cop. They hurried on over to the garage and as they stood there and checked it out, a crowd immediately began forming. I was told that Frank had already yelled out for the men inside to come out with their hands up. I stood there and watched for a while and I guess that Frank got tired of waiting. He raised that shotgun to his shoulder and yelled “Come on out with your hands up or I’ll come in shooting!” The next thing we heard was “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! We’re coming out!” The two guys came dashing out the door with their hands up and were obviously scared to death. It turned out that they were two out-of-town punks from Wichita who thought our little old hick town would be easy pickin’s. It probably would have been, but for an alert telephone operator and a no-nonsense cop.

Dave Thomas
December 5, 2013