Baby buggys and car seats

My sister, Helen, and I had two boys close together and lived in small apartments in Topeka. Our mother went looking for a buggy for us and found just the thing at a Topeka furniture store. It was a navy blue canvas buggy but it had a section that dropped down in the front so when they got older their feet could dangle. It folded up good so could go in a car and was canvas so was not heavy. It was great to have beside your bed. It must have been rainproof also as it was great on a rainy day if you were caught out away from home.

I used it through all five children and I think my grandchildren slept in it when they visited. When Ray worked for the Topeka paper and we lived four blocks from the paper he called one night to say a drug store, Walgreens, was on fire and did I want to come down. Steve was asleep in the buggy so I put on my coat, added another blanket and went out the door the three blocks to the fire on the corner of Kansas Ave and 8th street. Steve slept right through the excitement and Ray walked home with us at three in the morning. I really should give the buggy to someone as it is under the bed in one of the back bedrooms and is as good as it was when we got it, although the canvas is a little faded now. Maybe they don't put children in buggies anymore. I think they are generally in strollers or car seats now. As I think about car seats and how they have improved over the time from the first ones that came out. We bought the first ones of those in California when we were visiting my sister Ethel and her family and it would have not held the child in if there was a bad wreck.

Kansas turns 100

Earlier I wrote about Shawnee and its birthday. Now Kansas had a birthday too a few years after. A committee picked 10 famous Kansans in TV and business. I guess they did not take on Eisenhower. The business ones are a little hard to remember but the TV ones are easier. We had Milburn Stone from "Gunsmoke" and Vivian Vance from the "I Love Lucy" show. There were others from business. One I remember was a banker from New York who when they went up on the podium at the dinner in the Municipal Auditorium in Topeka pushed his chair to the back of it and fell off backwards. He was not hurt but it was a little awkward for awhile. I hope he was a better banker. I think the little girl from "It's a "Wonderful Life" was a Kansan but don't remember if she was there. They had a pageant at the fairgrounds but it was in the summer as Kansas' birthday is January 29 along with our daughter, Susan. She is much younger than the state. I thought I had a unique way to celebrate with having a daughter. I controlled not naming her Kansas but named her after myself but she always used her middle name.

Raggedy Ann Dolls

Whenever I went to the hospital to give birth to a child I took along something to give the kid or kids left at home when I came home. When our fourth child was going to be born, I got the idea of making Raggedy Ann dolls. The three children we already had loved the stories. I got my pattern and went to work. It was fun. We had had a bad incident with a doll with Sally when she was young inhaling the stuffing so I looked around for something safer that I could use and I got the idea of nylon hose. I asked my friends and relatives to give me their cast off nylon hose when they had runners in them and stuffed a Raggedy Andy for Steve and Raggedy Anns for Sally and Susan. They loved them. I can't remember if I did any more or not and expect the patterns are still on the shelf over the washer and dryer.

balloon sticks

For Christmas I received a lovely amaryllis and it has many blooms on it. It is now reaching the end and is bent over. I knew I still had some balloon sticks in my closet so got one to hold it up. It did not work. I was thinking how I got the sticks.

We moved to Shawnee in 1951 and Shawnee was founded in 1856. In 1956 we were celebrating and my cub scouts were to sell balloons at the parade. I don't remember how we blew them up but we stood by the parade route and were assigned a spot on Shawnee Square. It was nice little park. It now has Shawnee City Hall. But then it was a small park in the center of Shawnee. The town jail was across the street north of the park. It had been built by the first prisoner. They later moved it to the new Shawnee park west of the original one but changed it so much it did not look the same. Two blocks south was the street that led to the Indian cemetery. It had been on land that the Methodist church owned during the Civil War. Across the square was the Shawnee Bank on the corner of Johnson Drive and Nieman. Nieman Road was named after the first banker. The second president was named Pflumm and we named things after him also. Of course Johnson Drive is named after the man who started the Shawnee Mission Indian School in Fairway where they taught the Indian children. He was killed by some robbers from Missouri who thought he had money. Cantrell must have camped in the little square before he went to raid Lawrence. There are many springs in Shawnee and I expect there was a good one in the park at one time.

My mother and cutting off the head of the bed

We moved into our new house that my father had helped draw the plans for when I was three. My two sisters and I had a southwest large bedroom. We had new iron beds. I was not long out of a crib. My mother thought we looked like a room at an orphanage because of the many beds. She decided it was the kind of beds with high headboards. She took a hack saw and sawed off the heads and made the foot of the bed the head of the bed. She had bedspreads that covered up her work and we looked very fancy and up to date like a picture in "Household Magazine." It really did improve the appearance and we did not look so much like a dormitory. Ethel and my bed now had their heads against the west wall and Helen had the head of her bed against the east wall and closet. In the summer time to get the breeze the three beds were lined up with their heads against the south wall. If we had guests they moved the beds closer together and I was generally picked to sleep in the crack between the beds. I generally fell in the crack. It wasn't bad. It was fun to be close to my visiting cousins.

Be the secretary of an organization

I learned early that I was not really presidential material but liked being secretary of a group. Presidents have to go to all sorts of meetings that secretaries do not have to attend. I loved taking minutes and reading them at meetings and since you read them yourself you did not have to spell correctly. My husband, Ray, liked to be president and I don't think he ever joined anything without ending up president. Once he was elected treasurer and that was not good as he never understood bookkeeping and I was the unknown treasurer. He did a better job as president. Over the years he was president of the Shawnee Mission Indian Society, the Sister City Committee of Kansas City, many PTAs (with five children you are a member of many PTAs). As president of Sister Cities, we went to Spain and Japan for Kansas City. We went to China but that was a trip offered us when the China government was taking travel agents to show them what they had to offer for customers. Other places we went like Africa and South America he was covering them for the Star and they let him bring me along. I still enjoy writing minutes but since I do not hear well it is not a career so I think I will become a famous writer instead. Now if I could just think of a plot I would be on my way.

Doors

I am really mad at the way they have made doors. In my father's house which was built in 1926 they knew the width doors should be but lately they have made doors smaller. We did have one small door on the downstairs lavatory which was not good but the other doors were the correct width that a person in a wheelchair could roll through. The doors on the house I live in now was built in 1951 and the doors in the back bathroom are narrow like that. However they are all correct for my walker. The walker I have for being a short person are just right for the doors, but not the wheel chair. However they used to be wrong if I was an inch taller. When we added on to our house the neighbors were changing their house and did not want their doors so our contractor purchased the doors. They were like the original ones in the house. It was nice to tell the world about doors and now I will relax and just let them be what they are meant to be--divide the house in parts.