Dad

It was a busy fall the year I took the job at the Health Department and had to deal emotionally with all the sad stories and the feeling of being helpless. Maybe by staying super busy it was a way to try not to think about it. I was also beginning to gain a reputation for never saying no when asked to do something.

Since the job was only part-time there was still time to be active in the New Neighbors League. My six month career as the editor of the newsletter came to an end and I was appointed Vice-President in charge of activities. The club had some fifty activities for members to participate in every month including Bridge, Racquetball, Knitting, Dining In and Dining Out, Tennis and on and on. There were always requests for new ones and I started a Stock and Investment Club not knowing a thing about it.  Thank heavens Barney helped me out there since he had worked on Wall Street and led the group along. The other one was a Mom and Tots roller skating event one afternoon each week. Here I was a little devious in that it gave me the chance not only to put Wally on skates but also to skate myself. 

The best way to get something done around the house was always to invite two-hundred people over for a Wine and Cheese Party.  The basement needed to be finished so somehow I managed to paint, wallpaper and carpet the basement by the time the party rolled around.
The party was a huge success judging by the ten garbage sacks of empty wine bottles lining the driveway the next morning and the fact that the floor upstairs did not fall through as dear husband, Dennis, had projected. It also turned out to be a very good advertisement for my little decorating business since the house looked pretty good.

Wally turned five in October and  I had some drapes to take to Mother's in Oklahoma City so Wally's birthday party was a family gathering with my brothers and their families. Those did not happen to often.  Maybe we just never learned how to spend time with relatives except for Uncle Tom who was the only one who lived close.  I can count on one hand the number of times growing up that we ever saw any of our parent's families. I don't think we ever thought that was strange - it was to us just normal.

I had not had much time to spend with my Dad since my parents divorce in 1966.  He had worked and lived in Kansas City for many years before he met and married Mother.  During a lot of phone calls after I moved there he told me a lot about the city and there was a hint of him wanting to visit so on the way home from Oklahoma City we swung by Muskogee and picked him up.  Dad was seventy-four, remarried, retired and you would not trust him out on the road by himself as he was always directionally challenged and a terrible driver. For the first time in my life I had my Dad all to myself.

Dad was forty-two when I was born and being of blond Danish decent he was gray headed by the time I was in school.  I can remember being embarrassed when other children would think he was my grandfather. By the time I was in high school I had changed my opinion to being very proud of him as he was so intelligent and kind.  That was probably about the same time I began to realize that my parents should have never been married.  They used to tell me when things were not particularly great around our house that all families argued, didn't speak to each other for weeks or avoided being around each other.  When they divorced they never mentioned the other one and my brothers and I were very careful to not do it either.

So I had my Dad for a week and I had great misgivings in the beginning about what to do with him since I had not ever had the chance to spend that much time alone with him.  Those thoughts went away very quickly as we never ran out about things to do or to talk about.  Uncle Tom had told me stories about Dad going to speakeasies during prohibition and he finally fessed up to all of Tom's stories.  We visited places where he had lived when he was married the first time, by the building where the Katz Drugstore had been, a fun drive to Lawrence, Kansas where he had gone to college and to the cemetery where his parents were buried.  He would sit at the kitchen table while I cooked or while everyone else was watching television and we would just talk.
If I was busy he would sit and read all my medical textbooks from college and then we would have long discussions on the medical profession and pharmacy. 

My Dad never trusted any doctor except one so when we were growing up Nurse Mary, as we called her, would come to the house for vaccinations or shots for tonsillitis.  The only doctor I can remember was Dr. Hewitt, the local neurosurgeon, who took stitches out and treated me for mono.  Dad never went to a doctor that I know of but must have been pretty good at diagnosing himself since he had any medicine he needed at his fingertips and was never sick even with a cold.  I did notice while he was visiting that their were several times when he reached into his shirt pocket for a pill.  He told me they were nitroglycerin tablets which was the end of the conversation.  I knew enough to know that taking those meant serious heart problems but I also knew enough not to question him.  I did not think even at seventy-four he was going to start going to the doctor.

Hans Lloyd Hansen, which was his full name, was never a Dad who sat on the floor and played games or taught my brothers how to play baseball.  My best guess is that his dad had not done that either.  He did love to play Canasta and was hard to beat.  He loved Studebakers and drove them until they quit making them.  We grew up learning to have an immaculate automobile as he wiped his off with a chamois every night and checked it into the local Studebaker dealership on days when he thought it might rain or snow.  The guys at the dealership always knew his car would show up if the weather was bad with some non-existence complaint. He wore a suit, tie and wing-tipped shoes everyday and only in later years owned a sports coat.

The most important thing he and mother taught us was the value of work.  He was a practicing pharmacist for fifty-two years and there were many a night he would get out of bed and go to the drugstore to fill a needed prescription for someone. He set a great example by working long hours six days a week and my brothers and I all had jobs by the time we were fourteen even if it was only throwing newspapers.
He never raised his voice or complained and only spanked Paul once which was really hard for him.  Of course I knew when I was very little that I was "Daddy's Girl" and I did try not to take advantage of how easy it was to get a new dress for a party or something to stop diarrhea when I was on my way to play in a golf tournament.  He attended every dance or piano recital, play, talent show or girl scout award ceremony that I was ever in. In most ways he taught me how to be a good parent in ways mother was not capable of.

He and I had a great trip back to Muskogee stopping in Branson before it became a huge tourist mess and seeing the places we had driven to on our family Sunday drives when I was little. It was a week I have always been thankful for.

There But For the Grace of God Go I

I could very easily skip over the story of working for the Johnson Country Health Department as a Family Planning Counselor.  But it is a part of my story.  The lessons learned from the job were not only eye opening but a great lesson in compassion for people that were less fortunate than I, people I either ignored growing up or that I didn't know existed. In all honesty I jumped at the chance to do it knowing it would look good on a medical school application but I gained far more than that.

The job consisted of doing pregnancy testing, screening for sexually transmitted diseases, birth control methods and abortion counseling.  Roe vs.Wade had passed in 1973 on the issue of laws that criminalized or restricted access to abortions. In 1979 the view of sexual morality had changed drastically from what I grew up with in the era of "nice" girls were not supposed to be sexually active until they were married. I knew nothing about sexually transmitted diseases but there were memories of girls getting pregnant in high school and of course, the hint of what an abortion was from the story I wrote titled Family Secrets, 6/13/18. 

A county health department offered services to the segment of the population that does not have a doctor, does not have insurance and can not afford a visit to a doctors office.  They also have clients who may not want to go to a family doctor for reasons of privacy. Beyond female services they also offered Well Baby Clinics, vaccinations and other services for the entire family. Services were conducted on your ability to pay or free if you could not afford any medical care.  Nurses were in charge for most of the services with doctors scheduled in at regular intervals as they were when I was a volunteer prior to the time I took the part time job.

The term Family Planning I found out was not exactly what the job entailed.  There were few discussions with anyone as to how many or when a client should have children which to me was the proper use for the term family planning.  It was a steady stream of pregnancy testing and breaking the not so good news to women - correction - children that they were indeed pregnant. There were not many times when I gave out the news that someone was pregnant that they could not wait to spread the news to family and friends. Most of the time there were no husbands or even boyfriends they wanted to rush out and tell.  There were a lot of tears. These were the nightmare stories that still haunt me.

One day a thirteen year old girl arrived in my office with her mother.  The girl did not even look thirteen, skinny, not very clean and very scared.  Her mother who I have always referred to a "toothless wonder"
wanted a pregnancy test for her daughter.  Upon the news that the child was indeed pregnant the girl could not even comprehend what that meant.  The mother boasted to me that she had her first child when she was fifteen and could see nothing wrong with her daughter being pregnant. The "toothless wonder" had multiple children by multiple men and thought a pregnant thirteen year old girl was fine to have a child and would not hear anything about terminating the pregnancy. She even declined signing the girl up for the prenatal clinic.  I gave the girl my card with my home phone number on it in case she needed someone to talk to but she had said nothing during the entire clinic visit so I knew I would never hear from her.

Sadly to say there were many just like her.  Some came in without their mothers with that same scared look in their eyes.  There was only one clinic that performed abortions for the health department and it was in Topeka.  They charged three hundred dollars which was more money than most of these girls could imagine plus there was usually no way for them to get to the clinic. The really sad part of the whole scenario is that most of the girls who came through my office came from homes that were not the best for love and attention.  Some dude would come along, pay attention to her, throw out the word "love" and the girl would do anything to keep that attention. The dude would then disappear leaving the girl devastated and more often than not, pregnant.

There were grown and supposedly adult women who already had more children than they could care for that used abortion as a means of birth control. What do you do about them?  It was difficult to hide the anger I felt but at the same time it was not my job to preach to the masses.  The best I could do was to give them a referral for an abortion along with a suggestion they used another method for birth control.  It was better to think that perhaps an abortion was better than bringing another child into what seemed to be a vicious cycle.

By far the saddest case I remember was a seventeen year old couple that came in together.  They were seniors in high school from fairly affluent families that had been dating along time.  Both had plans to go to college on academic scholarships. They came to the health department for a pregnancy test so the family doctor would not know.
By the time I had to tell the girl she was pregnant we were all in tears.
Both were Catholic and abortion was not something they could do but at the same time how do they tell the parents?  This scenario has probably played out millions of times in history and no one can answer this question except the couple themselves.  I don't know what happened to them but the three options they had was to have the baby, have an abortion or commit suicide.  Each alternative was not good in it's own way.

My boss, Frances, and I had lots of talks about the fact I would come out of my office at times in tears.  She always told me that there was nothing wrong with that as I may have been the first person who ever cried over the plight these girls were in. She wished she could cry for them but through the years she had just become a little hardened with story after story. Francis understood that after three months at the health department I could no longer take the agony and the frustration of not being able to change the morality of the world. I just could not take the constant sadness of the thoughts and nightmares that haunted me everyday.

I hear all the pro and con arguments today on the subject of abortion and I understand them.  I myself could have never had an abortion but as a doctor I could have performed one in a New York minute.  I see on the news or read in the paper everyday the heartbreaking stories of children being abused, starved to death or killed by a family member and I think of all the clients who passed through my office. Who was there to defend or to raise all these children who were not welcomed into the world in the first place? The sad part was that this was not a new problem but one that has been occurring since the beginning of time. Perhaps one day there will be answer.

I learned a lot in those three months and as hard as the lesson was I have always been glad that it made me realize that everyone was not as lucky as I. There have been many times that in reflecting back on that experience made me think of my mother's favorite saying which was "There but for the grace of God there go I".  I also realized that if you haven't been in the trenches you simply have no idea of what it is like.

Sorry that this story is not one that made you laugh or one filled with my usual crazy antics.  We will get back to those next week. This story is one I had to tell as it had a profound effect on my view of the world and gave me a greater sense of compassion for others.

Gorda

I was actually always a little sad when school started in the fall.  As much trouble as it was at times to have to make plans around Wes and Wally I really did enjoy the summer days when I didn't have to get Wes up and off to school.  Then when school was out for the day making sure I got home or there was someone for Wes to stay with. I guess I really liked the lazy days of summer if you could call mine that.

Probably living in the neighborhood we lived in with mainly young families all close to the same age with plenty of children made a big difference. A lot of that summer was spent taking a couple of car loads of children to the zoo, tours of the Royals stadium, the local pool, the art museum and any other place that we could find to entertain them.  When there didn't seem to be any particular place to go some one's front yard would be filled with bikes and the lucky house filled with children.

There were no children's television programming past nine o'clock in the morning, no cable networks, no computer games and Wes and Wally's childhood was much like mine in that how much fun you had depended on how creative you were in finding things to do.  A lot of my original decorating work was in the neighborhood so it was easy to take Wally with me and Wes would always show up with friends to visit especially in the new construction wallpaper work.  I may not have realized all the time back then but I really had the best of the stay-at-home Mom and the sort-of-working Mom worlds.

After school started it was time for me to show up at the Johnson County Health Department.  At first it was two afternoons a week but jumped to three afternoons very quickly.  As a Family Planning Counselor I did pregnancy testing and birth control counseling.  I had spent quite a bit of time during the summer hanging out there and watching the nurses and my boss, Frances, in their jobs and learning as much as I could. I had learned a lot in my previous volunteer job assisting the doctor doing exams one evening a week but the daytime position was another world.

Being a teenager in the early sixties had taught me a certain set of values and I learned very quickly that growing up in sort of  a middle class family I had sort of missed part of the real world. There were many talks with the young nurses at the clinic about the changing morality of the current teenagers.  I discovered very quickly that not everyone grew up in a nice house with a two parent family. Also that having sex before the age of twenty was the normal thing to do.  I remember them explaining to me that things were actually no different than when I was a teenager but that the age just kept getting younger.
I guess that I assumed that everyone was just like me not knowing that there was a whole other world out there that I knew nothing about. More on this later.

I had only seen Barney once when I delivered the rest of the blinds and drapes for the downstairs of his house in the five weeks between his travels and mine.  There had only been a couple of phone calls and of course the silly one from me from Oklahoma. When he called the day I got home and we made plans for lunch on Thursday. it was going to be fun to catch up on what we had both been doing in all that time. Needless to say I would not go into great detail about the exciting trip to Oklahoma or the misadventures of going to the race in Indy.

I got to our meeting place at the fountain by the County Club Plaza first.  He pulled up in his car and told me to hop in he had an errand to run before lunch.  As we drove through the streets of Kansas City the conversation was about how much we had missed each other.  It was rather difficult for me to embellish the trip to Oklahoma and ended up talking more about drag racing which he did not know much about.  We were so busy talking that I didn't pay much attention to where we were when he stopped at a rather huge empty house.

He told me to come look at the house with him and after I got out of the car he told me he needed me to count the "vindows". We both started laughing and I asked him when he figured out that Gorda was actually me.  He said he wanted to say that he knew right off but that he fell for it hook, line and sinker.  He dashed over to count the windows and waited for Gorda to call him back.  Finally yesterday he called the phone company and told them he had lost a phone number of someone who had called him on the day of the call to see if they could help. Actually he knew Gorda's suggestion to just Dial 9 would not work.  Being as charming as he was in his business persona they told him the call had originated in Warner, Oklahoma and gave him the number.  There was no one else in the world he knew that would call him from Warner, Oklahoma.

The laughter at lunch was so bad that it was difficult to eat.  Barney would try to look stern at me and mumble something about the fact that I was the one that did not learn phonics in school as he had to type all my college papers so I could even pass due to bad spelling.  Of course, I had to remind him that he actually said he remembered Gorda from a seminar.  Or just out of the clear blue he would start laughing and so would I.  At one point he wanted me to promise not ever to do anything like that again.  Of course I had to tell Mr. Barney I vould not do same thing again - maybe just little different, ya?

Vindows, Vacations and Birthday Parties

Things worked out for me to start Barney on his lessons in how to be silly.  Not being terribly interested in watching some of my father-in-law's favorite television shows such as Hee Haw and the Grand Old Opera there was plenty of time for my mind to wander and come up with a plan.  By a stroke of luck the day before we were to go home to Kansas City it was decided that one last fishing trip was in order.  Wally was definitely not interested in going so I volunteered to stay home with him.

With the house all quiet I picked up the phone, dialed his number and heard his very business like hello. With a very thick foreign accent from no particular country and a napkin over the phone I said:

"Mr. Barney, this Gorda Siigniinstiine. I vent to your talk in Chicago and need ask questions."

"Good afternoon, Gorda.  I remember you. How do you spell your last name and how can I help you."

" You no learn ponics in school? It easy, S-i-i-g-n-i-i-n-s-t-i-i-n-e?" You talked on property in your village in money trouble. Vas it in place named Beewood?'

"I believe that it was Leawood, a very nice housing addition. If it is that particular property it is in foreclosure and could be purchased much below market value.  Are you interested in a home in this area or for resale?"

"I buy many homes. Vhat I need to learn is how many Vindows does house have. Vindows very in need. Fresh air come, plants grow and make feel good."

There was several moments of silence except for the sound of papers being shuffled.

"Gorda, I don't seem to find that exact information but I am sure it has sufficient windows."

"I must know exact number.  You go count and I vill call back tomorrow, yah?

"I can do that.  Is there a number where you can be reached?"

"I staying in hotel.  The phone says Dial 9.  Vill dat vork?"

"I don't think so but just be sure to call me tomorrow. It has been so nice talking to you."

"I like talking to you. I vill call tomorrow. Bye, Mr. Barney."

"Goodbye, Gorda.  Talk to you soon."

How I got through the call without laughing I will never know. Loved the fact that he remembered Gorda whom he never met and the sound of the shuffling papers. I could picture him jumping in the car and heading off to count vindows.  The fun part will be how I let him know he had been played with, yah?

The trip back to Kansas City was the usual drive straight thru as fast as you could get there.  One of the most annoying parts of travelling with Dennis was that there was no reason to stop to eat when I could cook once we got home. Wes and Wally would complain about starving but the answer was usually that we would be home in three hours so there was not reason to stop and eat. 

We arrived home on Saturday, the weekend before Labor Day which meant I had a week until we would be off again for Indianapolis and the NHRA drag racing nationals. But I also had to squeeze Wes's ninth birthday party in. I had managed to get the drywall done and sanded before we left. That was a good thing as I think every child in Lenexa ended up being invited to the party.  With being able to use the basement and the access to the backyard it went pretty well but it would be the last birthday party I would have at home. We do not want to talk about Dennis using a mop to get the drywall dust up off of the concrete floor the morning of the party. I must say it did create a rather interesting white swirl pattern all over the floor, gave me the luxury of spending most of the day on my hands and knees with a bucket of water and a scrub brush and a reason to ban mops from my life forever.


That particular year going to Indy was very exciting.  We left Kansas City very early in the morning.  Dennis had gotten a blow up mattress for the back of the station wagon for the boys if they wanted to sleep since we always seemed to drive all night.  Everyone was settled in the car as we headed down the road but about the time we had gone seventy miles Dennis asked me if I had picked up his wallet. Somehow I guess it had become my responsibility to be the curator of his wallet, glasses and keys. Guess I fell down on my job that time.

Back to Kansas City to get his wallet and off again.  Ever listen to cursing for 140 miles in two hours and twenty-three minutes until we got back to the place where we had turned around? But that was not to be the most exciting part of the trip.  Just across the Indiana state line we needed to stop for gas.  Of course the boys were hungry but it would be a waste of time to eat since we could eat gourmet White Castle burgers when we got to Indy. So the boys got potato chips and Root Beers.  As we were pulling out of the station Dennis slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting a truck. Remember the air mattress in the back of the station wagon where the boys were?  Well, somehow Wes's Root Beer flew out of his hand and travelled across the back seat to splat on the back of Dennis's head.

Sorry....not sorry....but that was funnier than making Barney go count windows. There was no way I could keep from laughing but through Dennis's cursing I do remember hearing how not funny it was.  No it actually was very funny especially since he did not stop to clean up the mess.  Guess it was more important to drive down the highway in a sticky Root Beer smelling mess than to waste another minute.  He even went to White Castle still in the Root Beer stained shirt and sticky hair.  Seems like there was some rule about once you checked into a motel room you could not leave until morning so changing before going to eat  was out of the question.

Leaving the race track in Indy around 7:00 pm meant pretty well an all night drive home. Wes started back to school that morning, Dennis went off to work and Wally and I cleaned out the car and put everything away. Things were about to get a little busier with my part-time job at the health clinic starting, finishing the basement for the upcoming Wine and Cheese Party and several more decorating jobs to go make quesstamations on (it always seemed I had to make a guess at a price quote). I was actually just very happy to be home with little time to think.

Barney called and we planned lunch on Thursday.  Vonder if he vould mention counting vindows? Yah!

DISASTERCATIONS

AAH....it is vacation time.  From childhood experiences of only two memorable vacations during which my parents were not speaking to each other the entire trip I preferred not to think about them much less go on one.

In the twelve years of marriage to the "then husband" the only real vacations were the trips Ford Motor Company sent us on. Even though we went to great places they were still disatercations.  Weekends to drag races were not exactly vacations as we usually left at 3:00 in the morning, went straight to the race track,  then the motel in the wee hours of the morning or drove home all night. 

Around our house vacations were the two week trips to Warner, Oklahoma to my "then in-laws" home.  Now I did like my in-laws, Alpha and Allen, and always had a good time with them.  But two weeks in a town of roughly 1,200 people with no pool, no theater or anything else besides a furniture store, a post office and a not very good hamburger stand can get a little tiresome.  The worse part is that my Dad and brothers lived twenty miles away and Mom about a hundred miles and I was lucky if we got to visit once or twice.  Of course I could never go to Muskogee by myself to see any of the high school friends.

Days were spent fishing, which I have a hard time with due to the poor fish gasping for breath or driving around seeing the sights of northeastern Oklahoma. Alas, Wally had about the same reaction to fishing as I did.  At four years of age it dawned on him that the pretty fish now swimming in the kitchen sink ready to be slaughtered were going to be dinner.  He went to the living room and refused to come into the kitchen until after dinner.  There were lots of card games and the construction of a jigsaw puzzle or two.  The boys ran wild all day as there was nothing they could get into or anyplace they could get lost.
Perhaps the one good thing was that I didn't have to cook much since I am terrible at frying food or making poke salad or knew how to make
biscuits and gravy or pinto beans.  My mother taught me "yankee cooking" so I was pretty useless in Alpha's kitchen except to do dishes.

Both Alpha and Allen had huge extended families that dropped by everyday. Things were always more fun if Dennis' sister and her husband Jim arrived during our visit.  Jim was a lot of fun and when he was there it seemed like there was a great deal more laughter.  I had gotten good at making the best of anything and the trips to Warner were good practice.

Before we left for Warner Barney had arrived home.  He had been gone for almost three weeks and I realized how much I missed seeing him. I guess that I had thought it would be a nice break from how complicated the whole situation was. Actually it was quite the opposite and it was noticeable that the longer he was gone the more often he called.  Plus the usual conversations about what he had seen in Philadelphia or Chicago or how the seminars and book signings were going changed to more how he felt about things.

I was a little terrified that I had opened up a can of worms I wouldn't be able to close when I brought up the subject of being able to tell by his eyes there was a lot of things he was not saying.  It actually had made it easier for him to talk to me about his feelings than he had been before.  Maybe it was easier for him on the phone as our conversations became longer and much more frequent. It was an interesting change for the better.

The day I went over to install the rest of the blinds and drapes he answered the door in a huge pair of sunglasses....the ones that are about a foot wide. It was obvious that they were to keep me from watching his eyes and we both doubled over in laughter.  I realized that Mr Always Perfect Eagle Scout was learning how to play.  Playing as an adult is an important part of life and very good at chasing your troubles away.

Moving to Kansas City with all my crazy neighbors and a great influence from my college room mate, Cathie, I spent a great deal of time playing. I had to act like the perfect corporate wife but I discovered how much fun it was to go to the grocery store in the middle of the summer with my neighbor dressed as a clown and me as Raggedy Ann or pop out of the neighbors bushes when her husband came home dressed as a huge rabbit. In really bad times you just have to think back about the reaction on someone's face when a giant rabbit pops up out of the bushes and most of the seriousness of life slips away.

When Barney had actually thought of buying the sunglasses and surprising me with then I realized that he perhaps was beginning to let loose and have the fun he had never had growing up. As much as I loved him and as awesome as he was I always had the feeling there was something missing. The sunglasses and our conversation about his family life growing up made me realize he never learned to play or to just be silly.  

I really didn't know how I was going to survive two weeks in Warner, Oklahoma without seeing or talking to him.  Much to my surprise I actually did very well.  In the bad moments, the anger over not getting to spend more time with my family or high school friends I would think of Barney in those glasses. Also contemplated on more silly things to do to him and see what he comes up with.  

Little did he know that his course in Silliness 101 was about to begin.
Staying at the house with non-fisherman Wally on the last fishing expedition of the endless two week vacation gave me a chance to teach Barney the first class in Silliness 101.