During the summer of 1953, I was working at Howard Motor, the Chevrolet and Buick dealer in my hometown, Augusta, Kansas. I was just a high school kid trying to make and save a buck so I could buy a car the following year.

1953 was a big year for Buick in that it was the company’s 50^th anniversary. To celebrate they had come up with design changes to enhance both the looks and performance of their cars. One large change was the creation of a two-door hardtop model which, I believe, was the first car known as the Riviera. One distinction was the paint job. The tops of the cars were painted an ivory color, and the bottoms were bright and sassy.

One of the first proud owners in our town was Junior Ewart. I don’t remember Junior’s real first name, but he always went by “Junior” anyhow. I can tell you that Junior was married to Connie Howard, the daughter of Ray Howard who owned the Buick dealership. Junior’s new Buick was the sharpest car in town. It was painted ivory on top and fire engine red on the bottom. Wow!

One day, I was washing a car on the wash rack which was near the back of the garage when I heard Service Manager, Kenneth Markley, call my name. I came out of the wash rack and saw Kenny beckoning me to the front of the shop.  Just inside the front door, I saw Junior Ewart’s car surrounded by a bunch of guys. Kenny was standing with Junior and Ray Howard, and, along with them, were the Body Shop Foreman and an insurance guy.  When I got there, I was told the shop had brought them together. Junior had gone to the golf course that morning and, upon arrival, had parked by a fence. While Junior was playing golf, a city employee was spray painting that fence with silver paint. Naturally, there was a breeze which resulted in Junior’s car having a serious case of the silver measles. There were hundreds-if not thousands- of little silver specks all over the car. Junior probably cried a little before coming to the shop for help. This group of guys was trying to decide the best way to take care of the problem. The insurance guy didn’t want to spend much for a new paint job. The Body Shop foreman warned that a repair never looks as good as a factory job. Ray was there as kind of a final authority, and Junior just wanted his pretty car back.

I had been detailing cars on our used car lot and was waxing for customers. I had become pretty good at it.  Kenny asked me if I could take care of the problem without hurting the paint job. I knew you couldn’t buff those silver spots away without thinning the paint job. I didn’t want to hurt the paint, so I decided to experiment with some of my skills on the windshield and chrome. Using my thumbnail, I found that I could cause the specks to pop off with very little effort. I told the group I could remove the silver spots and then wax the car by hand rather than buffing, and there would be no damage. After a discussion, Kenny told me that I had the job and wouldn’t be working on anything else until it was done.

I went to the drugstore and bought a pack of single-edged razor blades and then got to work. The razor blades were perfect. You could slip the blade under the edge of the spot, and it would pop right off without leaving a mark. This was the good news. The bad news was that there were ten jillion of the little devils.

I tore into it, and in two days had all the spots removed. The third day, I waxed the car by hand. A few times, I found some of those little specks that I had missed. The end result was that the beautiful fire-engine red was restored.

Everyone was happy and made it a point to tell me so and shake my hand. I ended up with a lot of brownie points and a $35 bonus as well as my regular wages.

Dave Thomas

1/29/2026

This year we will celebrate the 250^th anniversary of the founding of our country. This has been a sorrowful year for our democracy, and it got me to thinking of some of the trials and tribulations our nation has faced. In my thinking, I finally got to WWII and the Greatest Generation. Everyone gave support to the war effort, and, for many, that included their children. I was only five when the war started and almost nine when it ended, but I knew many friends and neighbors and townspeople who had sent their sons to war.

We lived at 19 Cliff Drive in Augusta, Kansas in our small town of 5,000 folks. Two doors south of us lived Harold and Martha Guest. Martha, who was known as “Mattie,” was the sister of my great aunt by marriage, Rachel (Wright)Peebler. Rachel was the wife of my uncle, Dave Peebler, and the two ladies were sisters of Johnny Wright.

Harold and Mattie certainly contributed to the war effort. Their son, Ed, went to the army, and their sons Bill and Jack went into the Navy. Their daughter, Jean, was going with a man named Wayne Porter who was in the Army, and their daughter, Jane, was going with Charlie Fennell who was in the Air Force. When Harold and Mattie or the girls received mail, the whole neighborhood knew due to the whoops and hollers emanating from their house.

Fortunately, all of the guys made it home after the war. I don’t remember what the other guys did, but Jack, who had quit high school to enlist, reentered Augusta High to finish up and get his degree. Jack was more interested in chasing girls and having fun than going to school. Everyone left for work before Jack had to get up, so I was hired as a “waker-upper” to go to the house and wake him up and to stay and nag him until he finally got up.

In later years, Harold, Mattie, Ed, Jack, and Wayne all moved to Los Angeles where the guys helped to build the massive 405 freeway.

This was a family that gave big in both war and peace.

Dave Thomas

1/22/2026

Ring-A-Ding-Ding

We didn’t have a telephone when I was growing up. While visiting friends and relatives, I was able to learn the protocols such as party lines, long distance, Information, and generally how you should conduct yourself. My small hometown, Augusta, Kansas, was probably considered as having a very small telephone system. Reading the newspaper ads, I learned that McDuffee’s Service Station was telephone number “2.” The Augusta Theater, I believe, was number “6,” and Howard Motors was “66.” My great uncle, Dave Peebler, was “413.” That should give you an idea of the system size. We had good neighbors who would take calls for Mom or Dad and come over to the house and get them.

When I was 10 or 12, the Gardner family had rented the house to the south of us. Billy and I played together every day and when we heard that you couple make a phone line with a couple of tin cans and some string or cord, we couldn’t wait to try it out. There was only about 20 feet between houses, and our bedrooms faced each other, so it was simple to string a line across. We had quite a time with our telephone. I’m not sure if the thing worked, or if we just heard each other shouting back and forth.

In March of 1957, I enlisted in the Navy. Three months later, coming home for leave after boot camp, I learned that my folks had both a telephone and a television. I guess that once you are rid of the person eating you out of house and home, you can afford the finer things.

In the 1970’s or 1980’s, remote telephones were designed and became popular. We had one. I was working for a company that designed and sold remote phones. Our company’s receptionist sat just inside the front door. A tech would place a base station on a small table near the girl. The remote phones were guaranteed to work up to 200 feet. It so happened that there was a telephone pole exactly 200 feet from the front door. The technician would lean on the telephone pole, and he and the receptionist would take turns making and receiving calls to see if the phone worked. It always looked like they were killing time, but they were actually doing a final test.

I don’t have a cell phone because I can’t see the apps on an Iphone. I have macular degeneration and am legally blind. I should explain that I have enough vision that with the help of a digital magnifier, I can handwrite these stories, and my daughter, Terri, types them and posts them to the blog. Cell phones connect you to the world. They can keep you in touch with your friends and relatives. When my wife, Pat, is talking on the phone and laughing, I know that everyone is all right.

I’m ending the way I started- with no phone. That’s the way it goes.

Dave Thomas

1/15/2026

It was a warm summer afternoon in our hometown of Augusta, Kansas. Jack Watson and I were standing on the steel bridge at the southeast edge of town. This bridge over the Walnut River was pretty high, maybe 20 feet above the water. On the upriver side of the bridge was a small dam with a notch in its cap that let the river spill into the pool beneath it. The area beneath the bridge and for a few yards downstream seemed to be a breeding ground for snapping turtles as we never failed to see some of them when they surfaced along the edges. If we were able to pot one of them and then get it out of the water, we would take it over to a nearby farm and give it to a lady who lived there. She had a bunch of kids and would cook up a turtle feast for them. A couple of times, she shared a cooked piece with us. Yes, it tastes just like chicken.

On the downriver side of the bridge, there was a patch of land that was part of Glen  Lietzke’s farm. Jack and I, with our .22 rifles in hand, were watching for snapping turtles when we saw movement in the weeds on the Lietzke property. As we watched, two feral cats came slinking out of the weeds and went to the water’s edge. Without hesitation, they stepped into the water and began swimming across the river. We were both floored! Whoever heard of a cat swimming? We watched in amazement as they expertly swam across the river. When they got to the other side, they shook themselves off and entered a gulley that took them up the bank. This had all been done in a calm and direct manner as if it happened every day. We had certainly learned something about a cat’s will to adapt and survive.

Dave Thomas

12/31/2025

Critters and Humans

Birds and animals interact with humans when there is something they need. I’ve got stories on this blog about some of these critters and will refer to them in this piece.

My grandpa had a quarter section of land in the desert just west of San Simon, Arizona. There was a tiny house, just a couple of rooms there, and he would sometimes spend the night.  Grandpa saw a roadrunner near the house a few times, so he would throw table scraps into the yard for the bird. As he spent more time at the house, he saw more of the roadrunner, so he bought a sack of bird feed and began putting some out every morning just after dawn. The roadrunner began to expect the feed at the same time every day. If Grandpa was late getting up, the roadrunner would hop up onto the window ledge to wake him. Smart bird!

We have seen the crows do things to get our attention, too. Once, Lame Foot pecked on the screen door to let us know it was chow time. The crows sometimes do a  fly-by. They fly below the height of the windows so they can look in and see us, and we can see them as well.  Most of the time, they just walk around on the driveway and squawk.

Our cat, Isabella, used a non-verbal way of letting me know it was bedtime. About 8:30 PM, she would go to the place where the hall entered the living room. She would sit back on her haunches and stare at me until I acknowledged her. Then, she would head down the hall to our home office which was her bedroom and lay down. I followed her in, scratched her forehead and ears and rubbed the bridge of her nose and then I told her goodnight.

My cousin, Vivian, had a box tortoise that showed up every morning and parked itself in the same spot by her door. She saw it eating out of a cat food can she had put out, so she bought some small cans of food for it. The tortoise was large enough to reach over the side of the can and take a bite, so it worked out fine.

Pat and I were babysitting a parrot named “Highpockets” for some friends who were on a vacation. Some parrots have a lot to say, and Highpockets was one of them. One evening, we were eating some grapes, and Pat said, “I wonder if Highpockets wants a grape?” I said, “I don’t know if parrots eat grapes.” Highpockets said, “I like grapes!” Another time, I got up at about 5:30 AM and went downstairs. Highpockets’ cage was covered, and I tried to slip past without waking him. I just wanted a cup of coffee with no hassle. As I tiptoed past, a voice from the cage asked, “Is anybody there???”

It’s time for fun!!

Let’s have a good time! Turn to your Amazon Dot device and say, “Alexa, play Boot Scootin Boogie by Brooks and Dunn!”

Dave Thomas

11/29/2025

Updates to Our Crow Friends

A neighbor came over to discuss the crow situation. I didn’t know we had a crow situation, but he filled me in. He said that one of his neighbors had a new baby and that the crows showing up right after 6:00 am were waking the baby.  He said that he and his wife were soon to have their own new baby, and they were afraid the noisy crows would be waking her as well. I thought this was a bogus call on his part as babies can get used to a railroad track running past the house. I didn’t say so because the guy was apologetic and well-mannered. I commiserated with him and said we didn’t want to cause trouble in the neighborhood, so we’d do whatever it took. After he left, I told Pat about it. She was quite upset. She had earned the trust of the crows and made friends with them. They recognized her, answered her calls by flying in, followed her car when she left the house, and even came down and visited with her on social calls with no food involved. They also recognized our daughter, Terri, and her car as well. Pat didn’t want to do anything that would upset her relationship with the crows.

A few days later, the neighbor came back and brought his wife and daughter with him. We invited them in and had a nice talk about the “situation.” They suggested that Pat feed the crows later in the day at 3:00 pm, and she agreed to give it a try, but she later decided she would feed them at 2:00 PM instead of 3:00 so she could maintain some since of control of the “situation.”  It took a few days, but they adapted to the new time.

The season and the weather changed, and it must have become harder for the crows to find food. Now, we sometimes have as many as 30 of them showing up at mealtimes.

Our granddaughter, who also lives in the neighborhood, needed to find a house that would suit her family better, so she called a local realtor. The realtor, who turned out to be our neighbor guy, went to our granddaughter’s home. “So you already live in the neighborhood,” he says. “Yes,” she says. “Do you know the crow lady,” he asks. “Yes,” she says. “She is my grandma.” It’s a small world.

Lame Foot and Bouncer are still showing up on a regular basis. Lame Foot doesn’t seem to be doing as well as before. He has always hopped on one leg, just using his bad leg for balance when he stopped. Now, he seems to run out of energy and falls over frequently. We don’t know if he is just older or if he is sick. His feathers don’t look as shiny as they should. Hope he’s okay.

Dave Thomas

11/20/2025

I don’t have a current story, so I will try to find something in memory that will interest you. After school was out in our junior year (1953) and senior year (1954) of high school, John Luding and I spent 2 or weeks baling hay. The end of May and early June was the time the alfalfa crops had grown high enough for the first cutting of the summer. John and I hired out to Paul Slagle, a contract baler, to get that first cutting taken care of. The alfalfa was cut or mowed by a mowing machine pulled by a tractor. Paul Slagle’s job was normally to cut, rake, bale, and stack the hay. If the farmer had the time and the implements, he might do the cutting and raking himself. After that initial work was done, Slagle would use his tractor and baling machine to bale the hay. If I recall correctly, Slagle had a Massey-Harris tractor and a New Holland (string-tie) baler.

To digress for a moment, baling machines originally used baling wire, but were later converted to string rather than wire.

After the alfalfa had been cut, it was then raked into a line as long as the field so it could be picked up by the baling machine. The tractor was continually moving forward so the bales of alfalfa were dropped several yards apart. Next, a tractor pulling a 4-wheel trailer came along and the bales were loaded aboard it.

Johnny and I were the guys that picked up the bales and loaded them onto the trailer. One of us would drive the tractor while the other walked alongside the trailer. When you came to a bale, you would reach down and snag it with your hay hook and pitch it aboard the trailer. When the floor of the trailer got crowded, the driver would stop the tractor, and both guys would neatly stack the bales to where they were 4 or 5 high (I forget which).

When the trailer was fully loaded, we would drive to the place where the farmer wanted the haystack, or we would take it and put it in the hay loft or barn.

If the hay was to be put in the loft, we pulled the trailer up close to the barn. One guy would get on the trailer, and the other would get in the doorway of the loft. The guy on the trailer would use his hay-hook to snag a bale and would raise it up as high as he could. The guy in the loft would reach down with his hay-hook and snag the bale and jerk it up onto the floor of the loft. Yes, this was work! When the floor of the loft got crowded, both guys would stack the hay until it was up to the rafters.

This was real work, but we gloried in it.

To be standing in a field just after dawn, with the sun coming up, the sky turning blue, a light summer breeze blowing, and the wonderful smell of that fresh cut alfalfa was heaven. Sweating and then feeling your muscles responding to every command made you feel alive. I loved it, and, to this day, I can smell the aroma of that newly cut alfalfa.

Dave Thomas

11/13/2025

Some cooks go nuts if you try to add salt and pepper or any kind of seasoning to the dishes they have prepared. These cooks think of themselves as artists and don’t believe we earthlings are qualified to mess with the dishes they have prepared. My mom had a more common-sense approach to this problem. She said to us and any newcomers to the table, “I have prepared a well-balanced meal that will maintain your good health. If you think that modifying the seasoning will give you greater pleasure, then that’s what you should do. The only thing of importance is that you eat the food.” She always had salt, pepper, butter, garlic powder, chili powder, relish, mayo, horse radish, Worcestershire sauce, and catsup available for those who wanted it.

I’ve noticed that some people are real snobs when it comes to catsup. Mom always had a bottle of catsup on the table and encouraged us to use it. We certainly did. For those of you not lucky enough to be raised in a catsup-household, I’ll list a few items that can benefit from that wonderful red stuff. If you start the day with bacon and eggs and hash browns, give those potatoes a big dollop, and if some slops over onto the eggs, it will jazz them up as well. Hamburgers, French fries, hot dogs, hash, roast beef, beef Stroganoff, chicken and noodles, navy beans, vegetable soup, chili, potato cakes and liver all taste better with catsup. My mom loved liver and insisted that we eat it to prevent anemia. Just looking at the stuff made me gag, but I learned that smothering it in catsup made it bearable.

Be creative and enjoy every meal.

Dave Thomas

11/6/2025

My Forty Years of Playing Defense

I spent forty years commuting on San Diego freeways. Most of the time, it was a humdrum existence. My time on the road was just spent driving and listening to the news or country music. Once in a while, though, things got tough, and I had to get serious real quick. The problems came from folks who really should have been classified as “opponents.” Most were just drivers who weren’t paying attention. The others were usually construction guys or people who were moving.

The movers were people who were moving to a new home or those who had just purchased furniture with no truck and so they had to use their car to transport their new item. I frequently saw chairs, dressers, and rugs on the freeway. Once in a while, there would be a family that had just purchased a new mattress and tried lashing it to the roof of the car. That didn’t ordinarily go too well. I once had to dodge a washing machine that had escaped from its source of transportation.

The construction guys were the worst. I have dodged ladders, buckets, sawhorses, bags of cement, hoses, and a lot of other stuff. It’s quite exciting when a white cloud appears in front of you, indicating that someone has just struck a bag of cement. My worst moment was when a Bobcat came off the back of a truck. A Bobcat is a small tractor used in construction work. Fortunately, the Bobcat broke off into the right lane, and I was able to dart into the left lane.

As you can see, commuting can be very exciting, and, fortunately, I never peed my pants.

Dave Thomas

10/30/2025

Streisand

We watched Barbra Streisand on PBS the other night. She is still the best and the most interesting singer we have ever had. When she goes after a note, you don’t know where she’s heading, but when she gets there, it is right and pure.

Dave Thomas

10/23/2025