A Collection of Stories by Neligh Coates Sr.
A lot of people think I have lived in Kansas City all my life, but I was born in Plattsmouth, Nebraska. My folks later moved to Enid, Oklahoma and I was seven or eight years old when we came to Kansas City.
While we were living in Enid, Dad took me out to see an airplane fly which at that time was something we had never seen. We went out to a pasture where hundreds of people had turned out to watch. We saw the pilot take off and when he came in to land, he flew low over the crowd. Everyone ran in every different direction, they were so afraid. Later on I learned that the pilot was Mr. Cessna, who later started the Cessna Aircraft Company, now located at Wichita. Kansas.
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I used to have a little "fix-it" shop, repairing irons, lamps and small appliances.
Later on I started to build radios, the old original crystal sets, and I sold many of them to the neighbors.
At one time, the Jones Store Company had a contest for the best crystal set costing less than $1.00 to make. I won the prize of $50 and if I remember correctly, I gave this set to Jean.
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I was always keenly interested in ice skating; in fact, I would sometimes skate from early morning until late in the evening.
At some point, I decided to go into the skate sharpening business. I fixed a jig to hold the skates even with the grinding wheel and with this set up, I could sharpen a pair of skates in ten minutes.
I worked out of the basement at 2810 Tracy and at times had people lined up in the basement and outside down to the street waiting to get their skates sharpened. I charged 25¢ a pair and during Christmas vacation I would sometimes make as much as $600. I did this for several years.
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There is one thing about me that a lot of people won't believe, but when I was a boy I was the most shy and timid person you could ever imagine. I wanted to get off to myself and did not want to be with other people.
This worried my mother so much that she would take me to lunch at the Muehlebach Hotel at times just to get me out and around people. She also did lots of other small things to help me overcome this problem.
As a young man, traveling and selling tile, I carried brick samples around with me which weighed about 35 pounds. When I got on an elevator I was too shy to call out the floor I wanted, but would wait for someone else to do it.
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It is hard to explain to people who did not live through the depression of the 1930s the steps we would take to save a few cents, but one such experience stands out in my mind.
My dad had an office at 12th and Oak and there was a cafeteria where we liked to eat our lunch at 8th and Grand. It was the Forum Cafeteria and the food was good, it was an inexpensive place to eat.
We had quite a little mail to send out each day consisting of bids on jobs, bills to pay and a lot of general correspondence so we would get the mail ready, sort it out and each of us would take a stack to deliver in person thus saving the 2¢ necessary to mail it.
After delivering all the mail we could, we would meet at the cafeteria where we would have saved enough money on postage to pay for our lunch. Our lunch would not cost more than fifteen or twenty cents each unless I decided to have their apricot chiffon pie which I thought was the best I had ever eaten.
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My older brothers took me with them on float trips down the James and White Rivers in South Missouri. You could float for many miles as the rivers wound around in the Ozarks, yet at the end of the float you could obtain a team of horses and drive back to where you started, a distance of only 15 or 20 miles. We floated for a whole week, shooting rapids, catching fish and camping on gravel bars. It was quite an adventure.
We could see rafts, some of them a hundred feet long made of fence posts or railroad ties. We learned that they cut the timber, pushed it down to the river bank and then took grape vines to lash the logs together. The rafts were their means of delivering the logs and ties to the nearest railroad. A man on each end used a long pole to guide the raft.
There were lanterns at intervals along the rafts and between the lanterns we could see young boys with a club in their hands, hitting the fish as they jumped up on the raft. By morning, they would have a gunny sack full of fish; in fact, fish sometimes jumped into our boat and this is no fish story either. I really enjoyed these trips and made them for a couple of summers.
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During the days when tie timber was in demand, my father bought quite a little acreage in the Ozarks. There were lots of trees which were big enough to be used to hew a railroad tie.
As I understood it at the time, the natives did not want their timber cut and I guess some of them were pretty "rough and ready." I have heard Dad tell about going to a little town and getting a team of horses and a buggy from the livery stable to go look over his land. He had to decide when certain trees were ready to be taken out and sold.
He would be met by hillbillies armed with guns, threatening him and telling him to get out. He told us lots of stories of how he finally talked them out of any violence for Dad never did carry a gun.
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There was a vacant lot at 29th and Troost, next door to the Campbell Baking Company.
Mr. Campbell had copyrights on the name Holsum and received royalties for the use of this name for bread. The company also made Hostess Cakes. They delivered bread and cakes door to door and when the delivery men came in the late afternoon, they would park along a wall outside the building and leave their trucks while they were checking in with the cashier.
We had dug holes or caves in this vacant lot. We had all kinds of tunnels and even rooms with fireplaces. While the trucks were lined up and the men were inside, we would take the cakes out of the trucks, throw them over the wall and take them into our tunnels or caves.
One day they caught us and called the police. The police came tore the tops off our caves and tunnels and completely wrecked our set-up.
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When I was a young boy I had a job with Ed Price who, by the way, was a very brilliant man with a wide knowledge of radio. I think he had one of the first broadcasting stations in Kansas City.
At the time I worked for him, he drove a bread route for the Campbell Baking Company. They used electric trucks, steered with a sort of stick, and up in front of the seat were the racks filled with bread.
Around 24th and Troost, there were what could be called first-class boarding houses and as the women came out to buy bread, he would have them spotted. He would pull a loaf of bread from under the counter, put it under the stool or seat, bounce up and down on it a couple of times and when these women would ask him if he had saved them some really fresh bread he would reply. "Sure. Here it is, feel it". They thought he was wonderful. He was quite an interesting person and I made a little spending money shagging bread for him.
I later knew Ed Price at Lake Lotawana. He still had many talents but unfortunately, his health went bad.
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One summer, I went to work for Dad in St. Louis. My brother Meredith was building a big tile barn on a farm owned by Mr. Champlin of Champlin Spring Works.
The farm was located next to Lambert Field and while I was there, Charles Lindbergh was flying his SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS, tying it down just across the fence from Mr. Champlin's farm. I would go over and chat with him quite often. He was always very nice and explained things to me about the plane.
The next time I saw him was in Honolulu shortly before he died. I went up and spoke to him about this incident; he remembered it very well.
He was a very interesting person and a fine man.
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When I was thirteen years old, Dad gave me the tool bench, which is still in our garage. It is solid, clear maple, which is a very hard wood. The top is a chopping block, such as butchers use. I have used this to build many things: two boats, two miniature automobiles, furniture for the children, the cabinets that are still at the Lake, the door to the closet, drawers, and everything I could possibly build and haul out on a trailer. Considering how much I have used it, the bench is still in good shape today.
I still have some of the tools Dad gave me, although during the years when I was so involved in the business, I didn’t use them very much. I know I gave some of them away, but I still have quite a few.
I might also mention that the shovels and a lot of the garden tools I am using today belonged to my father. They are just as good, if not better than when he bought them. At least, they are all slick and shiny with hard use.
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I went to school at Valparaiso, Indiana and during all the time I went back and forth between school and home, I never paid a railway fare, I either bummed, hitch-hiked or drove some old automobile I had bought.
Sometimes I shipped out on cattle trains. At that time, the law required somebody to be in attendance when cattle were shipped as they had to be fed and watered every 24 hours. I might be able to get a ride into Chicago and then ship out to Kansas City on one of these cattle trains.
One experience in particular was thrilling to me at the time. I rode the Santa Fe from Chicago to Kansas City. I knew how to read time tables and after checking the schedules, I would decide what train to use. Then I would find out what track the train would leave on, then go down and count the rails until I got to the track for the train I wanted to ride.
One Christmas, I decided to come home and I didn't tell my folks about it. I borrowed a sheep skin lined coat from Walt Bixby, a boy at school. In Chicago, I located the train I wanted, walked around it and crawled up on top of the water tank. I laid back on my back with my arms spread out until the train pulled out. Just ahead of the water tank was the coal car; there was always a difference in height between them of about three feet so I would nestle in back of the coal car to break the wind.
We pulled out of Chicago - the next stop was Joliet then Fort Madison, Iowa, just across the Missouri River. As the train got ready to leave Joliet, a couple of railroad detectives came along, saw me, and asked what I was doing up there. I told them I was riding to Kansas City and they told me to get off. I got off on the opposite side of the train and waited for it to start. Then I grabbed on to the second or third car, crawled up, walked the tops back to the coal car and stayed there.
It got bitterly cold that night so at Fort Madison I went into the station to warm up a bit. It was early in the morning; the air was very cold, and believe it or not, I saw the sun shining double.
I took a mail train out of Fort Madison which left about half an hour after the passenger train I had been on. As usual, I rode in back of the coal car on the water tank because this was the safest place to be and it afforded the wind break I have mentioned. I got so cold I couldn't stand it any longer but I saw a little valve on the stoker and opened it to see what would happen. Out came the steam and I sat in that steam all night and kept warm.
When I arrived in Kansas City, it was four degrees below zero and I was sick as I could be for I had been sitting behind the engine all night long with the smoke in my face. I walked into the Union Station just as if I owned the place not realizing how black and dirty I was. It took me weeks to get the smoke and soot from around my eyes.
When the story on the cable car was written up Walt Bixby wrote to me reminding me of the marks I left on his coat that night.
Another time I bought a Model T Ford in Valparaiso for $7. After fixing it up, I drove it home and sold it for $14. There were no paved highways in those days; I drove most of the way over dirt roads and down farm roads. In some places, there was a little concrete but not much.
Also, I hitch-hiked between Kansas City and Chicago. I had reached St. Louis and was trying to pick up another ride when a chauffeur driven car stopped for me. There were two men in the car and after talking with them, I learned they were Cas Welsh and Welch Sanders, both a part of the Pendergast machine that controlled Kansas City politically at that time.
I rode up in front with the chauffeur and as we went through Fulton, Missouri we passed the reformatory. Cas Welsh said “I have put many a kid in that place." He had been a judge at one time and I thought it was pretty bad for a man of his stature to make the remark he did almost bragging about the number of young boys he had put in the reformatory there in Fulton.
Once we bought another Model T Ford; this one with no top and no fenders. Five of us got together to drive down to see the Kentucky Derby. One of the boys was Jewish and had very kinky hair. Also, he was dark and tanned from riding in the sun and wind. After we were seated in the grandstand, the police came and accused him of being a negro, telling him he would have to leave. But there were five of us who didn’t agree and we caused considerable commotion.
There was a fence between the grandstand where we were and the Clubhouse where the elite were enjoying their Mint Juleps. I looked up and on the other side of the fence I recognized Walt Driscoll who was there with his mother and step-father. He had heard the commotion and looked over the fence to see what was going on. They invited all of us to join them and showed us one great time. This was the last time I ever saw Walt.
We took this same car, no top and no fenders, and drove to Watertown, New York to spend our Easter vacation at the home of one of the boys. His parents took us on a ride through the Thousand Islands, one of the most beautiful spots there is. These islands are in the St. Lawrence River on both the American and Canadian side.
On our way back to school, we ran into some roads that had been freshly oiled. Since the car had no fenders, the oil was thrown up in our faces which were already sun burned. They started to blister.
Here is another case of necessity being the mother of invention. We went to a grocery store where we got a supply of paper sacks. We punched out holes so we could see, tied the sacks around our necks to keep off the sun and wind, and wore these back to school.
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My father was really a tee-totaler. He thought that anyone who drank or smoked would end in the penitentiary at the very least. He believed this so strongly that with four boys in the family, he promised each of us $1,000 if we didn't drink, smoke or chew tobacco until after we were twenty-one years old.
Our family always had breakfast together and on Bill's birthday when my mother removed his plate, there was a new crisp $1,000 bill. It is the only one I ever saw.
As time went on though, it was obvious that we were going to have to tell Dad that both Florence and Olive smoked cigarettes. They had been sneaking off to hide when they wanted to smoke, but we finally decided it was time to tell him. I think this was at Christmas time. We mustered up our courage and the girls smoked their cigarettes. Strangely, Dad had become so fond of both of them, he didn’t say anything and from then on, there were no more conversations about smoking.
On Christmas Day, we decided we would like to have a high-ball, which Olive fixed. She made one for Dad that tasted like lemonade, but she put some gin in it. Dad got to feeling really high and said he had never tasted such good lemonade. I know he never carved a turkey faster in his life. Later on, we told him what we had done and as time went on, he would sit down occasionally and have a drink with us.
Later on in his life, he moved to Carmel, California and out there he had a couple of heart attacks due to thrombosis. We would go out to visit him and drive him around. He loved to watch the ocean waves and Olive sat with him and talked to him by the hour.
One day about lunch time while we were sitting in his living room, Olive and I decided to have a drink and he had one with us. He was sitting on the divan and said to me, "Son. I am going to tell you something I thought I would never tell you. The doctor tells me if I had had some whiskey every day. I wouldn't be in the trouble I am now."
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During the height of the depression an ex-boyfriend of your mother's named Ernest Coffin was employed by the A & P Tea Company in their coffee division. A & P sold three brands of coffee: Red Circle, Eight O'Clock, and Bokar. Ernest asked me to build a display for him which he wanted to use at some sort of trade show or fair over in North Kansas City. We had no place to work, but through A & P we got permission to use a vacant store room on the Plaza right next door to the Plaza Theater. I fixed up a nice display and A & P gave him an award for it.
But there is more to the story than that. I had to hire an artist, Ed Rush, to paint the names Red Circle, Eight O'Clock, and Bokar on the display which was over six feet tall so it was quite a job. Ed had been out of work for some time and was pleased to get the job at the 75¢ an hour I offered him.
When we were all through, Ernest came to me and asked how many hours we had spent and I told him. He later gave me a check from A & P, and when I figured my time, it came out to about 25¢ an hour. I paid Ed Rush 75¢ an hour, so you can see I didn’t make much for myself.
Ed said he was going to do something for me because he felt I had been "gypped" and he did. We were working on the little house at the Lake and the four maps over the bunks which are now in our kitchen were drawn by him and given to us. He was a fine artist and if you don't believe it, study these maps carefully some time.
Speaking of the depression, when I drive through the Plaza today, I cannot help but remember how destitute it looked at the time I was building the coffee display. There were not nearly as many buildings as there are today, of course, but businesses had gone broke and stores were vacant everywhere. Where Swanson's is now located Chandlers had a greenhouse and a nursery so times have changed, but the beauty of the Plaza is unsurpassed.
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When we first started Clipper overseas, it was necessary for us to go to Europe frequently; in fact, I cannot tell you how many times we have crossed the Atlantic both by ship an airplane. The first planes were DC-4 and it took about twenty-two hours to go from New York to London. They flew from New York to Gander, Newfoundland, then to Shannon, Ireland. They did not serve meals on airplanes then, but you could eat at Gander and Shannon. They did, however, have berths and you could go to bed. Actually, it was a long, hard flight. The English government had two ships at certain locations in the Atlantic to serve as weather stations and the planes flew from one weather station to the next. I have sat up with the pilots many times when they were talking to the weather ships and they would fly so close to the water, you could see the waves and the ships that reported weather conditions.
The only means of communication the pilot had was radio contact with these weather ships. Of course, there was a weather navigator on the plane who would “shoot the stars” looking through a plastic dome.
Later on, I happened to see in the paper where a navigator was shooting the stars through the dome when the dome popped off. Of course, the planes were pressurized and this poor fellow was pulled out through the opening and they never did find him. As time went on, planes got much bigger, better and faster. They had better communications and navigation. In fact, I think they did away with the weather ships not long after we began flying the Atlantic so much.
Some of these early flights became very luxurious; they had begun to "wine and dine" the passengers yet they still had berths so you could sleep.
Speaking of sleeping, one time coming back from London, we stopped at Gander. The pilot reversed his propellers and I thought I had had it. The plane just shuddered and the noise was terrific. I woke up and even after I found out what had happened, I never did get back to sleep.
We used to like to fly Air France when they first started flying the Constellation. The service was beautiful and the French food was simply great. Fine food was in abundance on the little carts which were pushed up and down the aisle. The French chef presided with a waiter to help. You could select your meat and the chef would slice it - it was really great. They served anything you wanted to drink: whiskey, wine, champagne. If you weren’t careful, you didn’t feel so well when you reached your destination.
At that time, I don’t think anyone could visualize what the airplane would finally come to and how fast you can go from New York to London today, especially with the degree of accuracy and the number of planes flying with comparatively few accidents.
I just have to tell you another little story about an airplane trip we will always remember. We were going to London on a DC-4 and that time we decided to fly to Chicago then on to Gander, Shannon and London.
At Chicago, the hostess informed us that someone had forgotten to load the liquor kit. There was a liquor store across the street so we proceeded over there and obtained all the supplies we needed. There were only two other passengers on this particular flight: one was a Greek being deported to Greece, the other man was a butcher from Chicago who was going to Belgium to see his mother.
We had berths on this flight but the Greek sat up all night looking down at the floor. The butcher began to sing; he had a very good voice and by the time we got to Shannon, we were really living it up. By the way, this was around Christmas time.
We were to get breakfast at the Shannon Airport, but first we went into the bar which opened off the big dining room. Lots of planes stopped at Shannon to refuel and allow the passengers time to eat. The butcher was happy and started to sing. People began to flock into the bar, coaxing him to keep singing. He sang mostly Irish songs – I remember “The Irish Eyes Are Smiling” and “Mother Machree” especially. The passengers would not leave the bar so the plane just waited. In those days it was nothing to hold up a scheduled departure.
In fact, I have called the airport myself to tell them I would be fifteen minutes late arriving and they would hold the plane for me—but those days are gone.
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The first time mother and I went to Europe on the Queen Mary, Candy and Edith Huston went with us on the Twentieth Century Limited from Chicago to New York. We had suggested they go to Europe with us but Candy said he couldn't get away just then.
We stayed overnight at the Waldorf Astoria and the next day went aboard the Queen Mary. We had a lovely stateroom and were showered with telegrams, flowers. champagne all wishing us bon voyage. When the ship sailed, the most impressive sight was the people standing on the pier singing "Now Is the Hour.”
After we returned, Candy came to the office at Clipper one day and told me that he and Rex and Edith were planning to go to Honolulu. He said he had bought tickets for mother and me to join them. I insisted I did not have time to go to Hawaii just then. That night at the dinner table I was telling the family what Candy had done. All of a sudden Carol popped up and said. ''Why don't you and mother fly over there and meet them?" We talked it over and finally decided it was a pretty good idea especially since they had gone to New York to see us off on the Queen Mary.
So Mother and I went to Los Angeles and we drove them out to the pier where the S.S. Lurline was to leave. We saw them off with all the fanfare that goes with a sailing. From there, we went to San Francisco and flew to Hawaii.
Of course, we arrived several days ahead of them which gave us time to get our Aloha shirts and all that goes with the atmosphere of Hawaii. Candy had told me they were going to stay at the Royal Hawaiian hotel so I went there and arranged for us to have adjoining rooms.
The morning the Lurline was to arrive we went to the pier and what a sight it was. Here were bands playing; everyone was wearing leis jubilant over the arrival of the Lurline. As the boat came in we saw the passengers throwing money in the water. The little native children were swimming alongside the boat begging and they would dive for the money. This was the first time I had ever seen these youngsters diving for money and it was quite a sight.
We got a place on the pier and while I was taking moving pictures, the boat pulled in to dock. When they had tied up, the cabins were within about three feet from where we were standing. Looking out the window were Candy and Edith. I just said "Hi Candy" and he was speechless. We all went to the Royal Hawaiian and had ten wonderful days.
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When your mother and I and the Ellises were in Africa, the pilot took us to the Chobe Inn on the White Nile. The pilot had a friend named Ian who had a camp not far from the Inn. We borrowed a car and drove over there. It was a very interesting place. Around this camp, which was on the river bank, he had all kinds of elephant and rhinoceros skulls which were scientifically tagged for some form of research they were doing. After talking with him for a while, he could see we were very much interested and asked our pilot to fly him over to where his own plane had gone down when he flipped over in a wind storm. We all decided to go. On the way over, we flew right down the Nile and could see hundreds of hippopotamuses in the water; then on out over the brush country where there were so many herds of elephants it was unbelievable. In all my trips to Africa, I never saw a sight like this again.
We learned later that Ian had a contract with the government to thin out the herds of elephants and the hippopotamuses. He got the tusks from the elephants and the ivory from the hippos. In addition, he was paid so much for the kill.
This program to thin down the herds had been started because they were afraid the animals would turn the country into a desert. An elephant could take one paw and push over a good sized tree just to get to the leaves. Also, they peeled and ate the bark off the trees. The hippos would come out of the river and go over to a sort of plateau where they ate the grass so short it was being killed off so it was felt that some measures had to be taken to preserve the land.
When they planned to make a kill, they notified the traders who would come in with big trucks loaded with men and poles. After the kill, the natives tied the poles into a rack of sorts where they could lay the meat out to dry. There was always more fresh meat than they could dispose of. There was some kind of arrangement whereby they sold the meat and paid the government so much.
They always killed the hippos at night by going out with very bright lights, which caused the animals to freeze, then they shot them one after another. Ian had two boys with him who helped do the shooting and he also had natives to maintain his camp.
After we had been acquainted for a while and he saw how interested we had become in what he was doing, he told me he would get his boys together that night and kill a hippo. He came by with two jeeps; one for us, the other loaded with his men.
We went to a very pretty spot; it was a sort of cove in the river and we could see a lot of hippos swimming around. Ian and the fellows who were to do the shooting were running around with the powerful rifles yet dressed only in sandals and a pair of shorts. They started to shoot and got a hippo. The big problem was getting him out of the water. They used poles about twelve feet long to sound the bottom and this way they could tell when they had found him. All the time, while they were jabbing around with their poles, there were other hippos and alligators swimming around to see what was going on. They had their mouths open and were making a lot of noise, but these fellows would just try to run them off using the poles with which they were trying to locate the hippo they had shot. They kept swimming around among the hippos and alligators - it was quite a sight. When the hippo they had shot went down, he had become lodged between two rocks so it was very hard to get him out of the water. They used chains to put around his neck then dragged him out using a winch on the jeep. I had never realized that men had as much endurance as these men had diving down, working with the chains swimming to chase off the alligators and so on, but they finally brought him to shore.
They laid him out and started to work on him. It is impossible to describe how they handled the knives they used which were big somewhat like a corn knife. When they cut off a leg and thigh, it took four or five men to lift it into the truck.
Before they did any cutting though, they measured his length, height, the size of the ivory. They opened his stomach and took samples to send to the laboratory and wrote down all other kinds of data.
After it was all over, I became very upset when I found that the flash on my camera was not working so I did not get all the pictures I wanted, although I did get some.
It was dark by this time and I don't know how they ever found the road back to the Inn. They wanted us to go with them the next morning to see them make a kill right across from the hotel, but we were all too tired to go; however, I woke up and saw all the bright lights and heard the trucks running back and forth. Later, when we flew to the next camp, we could look down and see them still working on the hippos they had killed.
The elephant kills were handled differently. They would set a time and place, then drive in several very large trucks along with the jeeps. They took a jeep and drove right into the herd, then the men would start to walk around in a circle. The elephants would also start to circle while all the time they were closing in on them. There were just three men doing this.
When they got the elephants closely packed together, one man gave a signal and all three of them started to shoot until there was just a big pile of elephant bodies. Then the traders came in and got to work loading their trucks. They sold the elephant meat. Ian got the ivory and so much money for the kill.
I might add that Ian took a liking to us due to our curiosity and showed us a lot of things. Along the river bank he showed us where beautifully colored birds built their nests in the sand on the river bank.
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Again, the Ellises were with us when we went to Tahiti. We had made arrangements to get a car and a driver from a Tourist Bureau in the hotel, but when I went there, they informed me that although they had two cars. They had only one man who could speak English and he was not available to us. I went across the hall to a taxicab window and told them what I wanted. They furnished us one of the finest drivers and guides we have ever had.
After showing us around, he told us there was going to be a wedding in his village and asked us if we would like to see the wedding ceremonies. Of course we told him we would, so he picked us up the next morning.
The bride-to-be was in a little sort of hut with some lattice work around it - really sort of like a chicken coop. The people came bringing her gifts and food wrapped in tea leaves. As I understand it, she had to stay there for a week before the wedding and time went on and on. Finally we were told that the priest who was to perform the ceremony had arrived.
By this time, they had the groom lying on a table. He was covered with blankets even though the temperature was very high. The priest filed a little off his front teeth as he laid on this table. It made chills go up and down our backs to hear that file grinding those teeth but after that ritual, they were married.
It so happened that later we saw an issue of the National Geographic which described this teeth filing ritual just as we had seen it performed in Tahiti.
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The original Missouri Yacht Club was located in Kansas City at the foot of Main Street on the Missouri River. Over the years, many of the members had dropped out but a few of us were still interested, and when we built homes at Lake Lotawana we decided to re-organize the Club at the Lake.
We first rented a vacant farm house which we cleaned up and repaired somewhat. We hired Mr. and Mrs. Queen to act as caretakers and prepare food. They served mostly fried chicken and all meals were country style. She was a good cook and it was a treat to go out there.
One Saturday night, three couples of us went out to have dinner and a little party. It started to rain and the roof leaked badly; we could not mop up the water fast enough. We drilled holes in the floor so it could run on through.
The old farm house was beyond further repair and it was obvious that if we wanted to continue the club, we would have to do something about different quarters.
Candy Huston and I were driving out to the Lake together one afternoon and got to talking about what we could do in the way of a new building. We soon had our plans drawn up which we presented to the membership. At first there was a storm of protest that the plans were too elaborate, but after a long evening of debate, the members agreed to go along and appropriated $50.000. We spent about $46.000.
When completed, we had some 5,000 square feet of space on two floors. On the main floor we had a large dining room, a lounge, a screened porch, a card room where private lockers were available and a glazed tile kitchen with a walk-in refrigerator. In addition, there were living quarters for the manager.
Below the main floor, there was an open veranda and a play room for the children. Outside was a nice grass terrace where people could sit and watch the sailboat races.
After the Queens retired, we were fortunate to be able to hire Alice and Fred Stephenson. Fred was not only an excellent cook, but he was very versatile and an excellent manager. The club made money as long as the Stephensons were there, but they finally felt they had to leave. The Yacht Club is still a fine building and has been a source of pleasure to many people over the years.
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My father always believed that owning farm land was a good investment and in the early 1940s after Clipper had made a good start, he told me the first thing I should do was to go buy a good 160 acre farm. I told him I did not know anything about farms, nor did I have time to look, but if he wanted to come to Kansas City, I would have someone drive him around to see if he could find something suitable.
We were living at Lake Lotawana at that time and one night he came in to tell us a "For Sale" sign had just gone up on a 400 acre farm right in back of our lake property. He said he could not imagine a better location.
We bought it and named it Lakeridge Farm. It was in poor condition as far as buildings and fences were concerned, but since it was so close, we went up and worked at every opportunity trying to get it cleaned up.
We first remodeled the old farm house which was made of solid walnut. It had been built before the Civil War and had bullet holes in it from a battle that had been fought on the farm itself.
After that, we built a barn, a chicken house, a machinery shed and what we called a "pig patio" where we fed the pigs. All the time we owned the farm, we were either building something or accumulating farm machinery.
We made a beautiful winding lane up to the farm house and on each side we planted a row of pin oaks, about a hundred of them. At the time they were planted, they were tiny and Olive and I watered them, pruned them and watched over them as if they were babies. I saw the farm recently and these trees are now about 14 inches in diameter and look like a picture.
We built the farm up to a sort of show place and then decided we had better sell it because, contrary to what my dad thought, you could not make enough money on a 400 acre farm to support it. We were surrounded by the lake and other large farms so there was no way we could acquire more land.
We had a big auction when the farm was sold. I felt I had put so much into it, I could not bear to see things sold, but I went afterall and had a very good time.
Howard Adams is the man who bought it and he wanted it primarily because of its historical value and the fact that it had been a battle ground in the Civil War. He made arrangements to move the old original farm house to Missouri Town where it is nearing complete restoration. I understand that present plans are to convert the farm to a golf course and to sell some of the land as lots for the construction of quality homes.