My earliest memories of Thanksgiving go back to the 1940s, when my parents and I often spent the day with my step-grandmother Lucy and my Aunt Ruth at their home in Hamilton, IL, about 40 miles from our farm in Missouri.

Lucy, who became a step-mother to my dad and his seven siblings in 1897 when their mother died, and anchored the family when their father died two years later, had turned 80 by the time I was born. She was “hard-of-hearing,” as they said in those days, and I was instructed to “speak up” when addressing her.

In one of our conversations, she told me that her parents had taken her to a Lincoln-Douglas debate in Quincy, Illinois when she was a “babe in arms.” While she had no personal memory of the event, the historic connection we made with Lincoln made a lasting impression.

Although the family had a few homemade recipes for grape and dandelion wine, Lucy considered herself a teetotaler. But one of my uncles gave her a bottle of French brandy each year on her birthday, and my aunt noted it had been consumed when Lucy’s next birthday rolled around. It apparently did her little harm, as she lived to be 98.

Each Thanksgiving, Lucy and my aunt often invited members of Lucy’s family, and occasionally my dad’s oldest sibling, my Aunt Florence, also would join us. There was a neighbor who occasionally joined us, a Mr. Fenton, who worked for the railroad and once gave me a ride on a switch engine – a real adventure.

Aunt Ruth, who had lived for a short time in France, took pride in her cooking, and the meal was always a great occasion. She also had a large garden, fertilized with compost from her kitchen. She also canned the surplus, and had well-stocked jars on shelves in the basement.

After the main meal, which left everyone stuffed, we all made room for ice cream, which my aunt frequently topped off with Crème de Menthe liqueur – making it a unique sundae, and another “exception” to the family’s teetotalling nature.

Ken Weyand is the original owner/publisher of Discover Vintage America,  founded in July 1973 under the name of Discover North.

Ken Weyand can be contacted at kweyand1@kc.rr.com Ken is self-publishing a series of non-fiction E-books. Go to www.smashwords.com and enter Ken Weyand in the search box.

A recent visit to the Parkville Nature Sanctuary north of the downtown area in Parkville, Missouri revealed a tiny jail near the north edge of the parking lot. The structure is cube-shaped, measuring approximately six feet square, with a lattice of inch-wide iron strips. Along with an early-day cellar in the Nature Sanctuary that once stored food for students at Park College, the jail structure offers a look at Parkville history.

What makes the artifact strange is the “information placard” posted on one of its four sides. The heading, “A Tale of Two Spooky Witches,” describes the history of the tiny jail, including a macabre ghost story.

Under the heading, the placard describes the structure as Parkville’s first jail, abandoned in the woods when a new, larger jail was built, sometime in the early 1900s. According to the placard, Parkville was visited by two witches — sisters that lived in the woods and occasionally came into town to terrorize the children. One of Parkville’s early mayors decided to trap the sisters in the jail, and leave them there so they would never be able to scare the children again. Then, apparently, the abandoned jail was forgotten – at least according the placard.

Ken Weyand is the original owner/publisher of Discover Vintage America,  founded in July 1973 under the name of Discover North.

Ken Weyand can be contacted at kweyand1@kc.rr.com Ken is self-publishing a series of non-fiction E-books. Go to www.smashwords.com and enter Ken Weyand in the search box.

Recently I found four old childrens’ books my mother had stashed away – curiosities of her early life after she moved with her parents to Kahoka, MO, where my grandfather became a rural mail-carrier. Born in 1895, she began her education when styles and customs were much different than today, and the books she saved offer a glimpse into that quaint era.

Three are marked with her name, including a tiny eight-pager, “Old Rip Van Winkle,” on linen stock with her name on the front. Its story is told with large type and colorful illustrations, using the inside-front and inside-back covers. It was published in 1898 by W.D. Conkey Co., a Chicago-based firm that also published the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Another, “Swinging on the Gate,” a 12-pager with large type, is inscribed “To Mabel Forrester from her Sunday School Teacher, Mrs. Forrester.” Oddly, this would have been her mother. The book’s cover and back have four-color illustrations, with smaller black and white pictures on the inside pages. The inside covers are illustrated with alphabets and numbers. This little book has no publisher or date listed. Clothing styles indicate the period to be late 1800s.

Ken Weyand is the original owner/publisher of Discover Vintage America,  founded in July 1973 under the name of Discover North.

Ken Weyand can be contacted at kweyand1@kc.rr.com Ken is self-publishing a series of non-fiction E-books. Go to www.smashwords.com and enter Ken Weyand in the search box.

Operating in an era when airplanes were a novelty, pilots navigated using “dead reckoning, and a good landing was “any landing you could walk away from,” Kansas City’s early-day airports saw a variety of aviation history being made.

Greater Kansas Citians saw their first flights in December 1909, when Charles K. Hamilton, a member of the Curtiss aviation team, flew exhibition flights on an improvised field in Overland Park, KS. The flights were sponsored by the Overland Park Athletic Club and covered more than a mile at an altitude of 500 feet. Visitors made their way to the field using the Strang Electric Line, an interurban trolley.  

The area’s first airport was Keller Strasse Field, using a portion of Albert C. Reed’s farm, east of present-day 87^th and Holmes Road. Its early customers included  E.L. Sloniger and Blaine Tuxhorn, two of the area’s first pilots. Sloniger flew for a Kansas City-to-Wichita Airline, formed in 1925, that lasted for three months. Tuxhorn operated his own airline between Kansas City and St. Joseph. In 1926, he even built his own airplane for the route.

Richards Field, located south of Hwy. 50 near present-day Raytown, was little more than a pasture, but attracted a variety of pilots, and National Air Transport, Kansas City’s first major airline. Kansas City’s first airmail service began May 12, 1926, when a Curtiss “Carrier Pigeon” landed at the airport.

Kansas City Municipal Airport, a large field located in just north of the Missouri River in Clay County, was dedicated on August 17, 1927, by Charles Lindbergh, three months after his solo flight to Paris. Lindbergh was scouting the area as a possible location for T.A.T. Airlines, later to become T.W.A. In a speech, Lindbergh praised the area. A recording of it encouraged the company to establish Kansas City as its headquarters.

For more Kansas City-area aviation history, read Ken’s E-book, “Early-Day Flying in Kansas City.” $2.99 from Amazon.com.

Ken Weyand is the original owner/publisher of Discover Vintage America,  founded in July 1973 under the name of Discover North.

Ken Weyand can be contacted at kweyand1@kc.rr.com Ken is self-publishing a series of non-fiction E-books. Go to www.smashwords.com and enter Ken Weyand in the search box.

The isolation often meant that a week spent looking forward to a visit to a county-seat town for a matinee showing a Hopalong Cassidy flick with a side of Bugs Bunny cartoons while my parents did their trading could be ruined by a Friday night rain. The 4-mile dirt road connecting us with the nearest blacktop would turn to mud, a challenge too great for our old Chevy.

Looking back, growing up on an isolated farm had its advantages. From an early age, my folks allowed me to explore the farm on my own. I remember my six-year-old self playing in a shallow creek while my dad plowed bottomland. I’d build small dams that would quickly wash away, and pursue crawdads and frogs that usually avoided by reach. It was a far cry from the helicopter parenting that isolates and protects today’s youngsters from the realities of life, but I survived.

The photo shows Ken as a toddler at the back of their farmhouse, which featured a pump for drawing water. His dad (and occasional harvest hands) would use the pump to wash up before entering the house for dinner.

Ken Weyand is the original owner/publisher of Discover Vintage America,  founded in July 1973 under the name of Discover North.

Ken Weyand can be contacted at kweyand1@kc.rr.com Ken is self-publishing a series of non-fiction E-books. Go to www.smashwords.com and enter Ken Weyand in the search box.