There will be a steady parade of people through your life. Let’s hope that some of them are characters. Characters will add something to life…kind of like putting Tabasco sauce on your eggs in the morning. They are refreshing and cause you to wake up and enjoy what’s going on around you. The character I’m going to tell you about is a man that I haven’t seen for almost 60 years. Yet, when I think of him I still get a smile on my face.

Shorty Miller was a character. No, Miller isn’t his real last name but its close enough. If you just saw Shorty from the waist, up, you’d think you were looking at a giant of a man. His broad shoulders, a deep chest, and powerful arms were impressive. The problem though was short legs. Shorty was somewhere between 5’2” and 5’6” tall. When I first knew him, he was probably in his late 50’s. He had a wife and 4 or 5 kids. The kids were all at least 5 years older than me but I knew a couple of them well enough to say “hi”. Shorty worked for one of the local oil companies. I think he was involved in working on pipelines.

Now, to get serious about this, I’d have to say that Shorty loved his beer and a good time. Come Friday night and/or Saturday, he was generally down at the pool hall shooting pool and drinking beer and having a good time. I think everyone pretty much liked him. He always had time to share a laugh or a wink with everyone, kids included. I was told that since he and his wife both knew how he was about a good time, his paychecks went to her and she gave him an allowance. If he used up his money too early in the evening it became a serious problem for Shorty and good entertainment for everyone else. It was said that he had been a circus performer in his early days and could do a lot of strength tricks. Beer was only 10 cents a glass so Shorty would try to involve the other patrons in betting that he could or couldn’t do certain tricks. The locals all knew what he could do so if they bet against him it was just a nice way of buying him a beer. If there was an out-of-towner in the pool hall then the betting might get serious.

After I turned 18 and could be in the pool hall legally I was able to see Shorty in action. I only got to see two of his tricks so they are the ones I’ll tell about.

The first trick was pretty simple. Shorty would bet that he could go out in front of the pool hall, stand on the curb, there on State Street, bend over and place his palms flat in the gutter. Seems impossible, doesn’t it? Most people can’t bend over far enough to touch their toes but Shorty could go way beyond that. His big torso and long arms took care of that.

The other trick that I got to witness three or four times was more a matter of strength and endurance. Shorty would bet that he could shinny up a light pole backwards! This trick usually attracted bigger bets (more beers). Once all the bets were in, Shorty would lead the crowd out onto the sidewalk and to the nearest street lamp. He would walk over to the light pole, lock his arms around it, swing his legs up into position, and commence going up that pole upside down. It was actually easy for him but he would make a show of it. Then, when he reached the top he just turned around and slid back down and collected his money. With any luck, he would have enough to keep him in beer for the evening.

Keep your eyes open for these characters and remember what you see. It may be good for a chuckle 50 years from now, when you need one.

Dave Thomas
November 10, 2013

 

 

It was a hot Saturday in July and there were 4 of us in the car. We had no plans for the day and finally decided to ride down to Oklahoma just to see something different. We drove south on US 77 and went through Winfield and Arkansas City on our way to the state line. We crossed into Oklahoma sometime around noon and by then the temperature was over 100 degrees.

Continuing south, we were still a few miles from Newkirk when we started seeing signs for a pool hall. The signs all mentioned pool but additionally said things like “Air Conditioned”, “Ice Cold Beer”, and “Cool Inside”. We noted the signs and their messages and thought it would be a great idea to stop and have a cold beer in an air conditioned place. This was the 1950’s and air conditioning wasn’t universal as it is now. Department stores and banks and other large places had “air” but the run-of-the-mill stores didn’t.

We got into Newkirk and immediately spotted the pool hall. The signs said “Pool”, “Beer”, and “Air Conditioned”. We were thankful because it was really hot and we were excited to just think about cooling off. We stepped inside and immediately felt the change in temperature. As our eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness we looked around and saw the “air conditioner”. On top of a small table was a galvanized tub containing a large block of ice and right behind it was a very large fan! After we got done laughing, we took seats as close as possible and ordered a beer. It was really quite pleasant. We cooled off a little and resumed our road trip, mindful that we had learned some lessons about advertising and marketing.

Dave Thomas
December 8, 2014

Grandpa, A.A. Thomas, seemed to have always had a mustache or goatee, or both. The oldest picture I have of him as an adult, dated approximately 1893, shows him with a full mustache and long sideburns. One year, when he would have been close to 80 years old, he had a goatee that was pure white and three or four inches long. As we know, he wasn’t Irish, but to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day he dyed his goatee green. I was told that Augusta used to have a Saint Patrick’s Day parade and Grandpa marched in it. I don’t know all of the details. I was of grade school age at the time and didn’t actually see him on Saint Patrick’s Day. A few days after the holiday we were at their house for supper and I got to see the remains of the green dye and it wasn’t a pretty sight. Apparently, Grandma had been trying to scrub the dye out of his beard and didn’t have much luck. Oh, well, it made for a good laugh for a lot of years.

Dave Thomas
April 28, 2013

 

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