In The Cigar Box

I usually rise early – even on weekends.  Saturday was no exception.  The routine includes all of the normal stuff geared toward jump starting an old body into motion and taking the dozen or so vitamins and other pills that are supposed to ensure a health-filled, longer life.  For me, mornings also include the ritual of getting Eva (the diva doodle) on her way to a day filled with the stresses that only a doted on dog can fully grasp. Today, Eva had an appointment with the vet to follow up on an ear infection diagnosed a couple of weeks earlier.  It seems that the longer hair on a labradoodle, while it may be hypoallergenic, is conducive to repetitive and difficult-to-cure ear infections.  So for the last two weeks, Eva and I have endured the twice daily wrestling matches that ensue when I try to insert a small tube deep into each of her ear canals and squeeze out a dime sized dose of medicine.  She resists this fun activity – usually by flipping, jum...

A few weeks ago, our brood met at Kennedy’s to watch a basketball game between MU & KU.  My brother’s son, along with about half the crowd, cheered for the Jayhawks while the rest supported the Tigers.  The game was gilded with every kind of meaning and importance that any game could muster.  The game fulfilled the hype but could not displace memories that are longer and larger than any momentous game.  I had parked on the side street where there was a side story tapping at the edges of my mind.  Walking from the car for only a half a block was like stepping through a half-century of memories. Before the fire fully consumed it forever, on this block stood the Waldo Astoria Theater.  The last show had played there some years earlier as the market drew new theaters to Johnson County.   The original building, the Westmoreland Theater, was built in 1924 to bring Vaudeville to Waldo.  But from 1939 until 1973 it was a magical movie house...

An archaic definition of “quickening” is the moment during pregnancy when the life force enters a fetus and he or she becomes a baby.   No, I’m not entering the debate about when life begins nor will I argue any of the political positions.   This is just one more story for entry in the cigar box.   What I remember were the evenings.   These were evening during the part of the year when days were shortening and darkness came well before bedtime.   During some of those evenings we would lay in bed and the mother of our daughters would say put your hand right here.   Just as I did, the little rascal would kick me.   Of course, in those days, we didn’t know whether that rascal was a boy or a girl but I do not remember ever wishing for one or the other.   I do remember panic and joy spinning together like strands of long shiny hair being braided into pigtails.   Pigtails like the ones our daughters would wear to Mrs. Smythe’s preschool or later...

The west wind is known as a zephyr.  It is a gentle breeze that carries seeds in its hands and drops them along its way.  What a great name for a train.   Beginning on the first of February, 1953, the CB&Q Railroad began the Kansas City Zephyr.  It took advantage of the Kansas City shortcut, a new section of track that trimmed two hours off the trip from Chicago to Kansas City designed to compete directly with the AT&F’s California Zephyr.  The KCZ was often sold out and getting a ticket took planning ahead.  The final run of the Kansas City Zephyr was in April of 1968, signaling a milestone in how we traveled that might have been a major event had it not occurred in such a tumultuous time. Situated west of the Chicago River between Jackson and Adams Streets was Union Station with the main entrance into the Great Hall located on South Canal just outside the Loop.  Most of the station was below ground beneath the skyscrapers that becam...

Last Friday evening, on a whim, we tried Ciao Bella, an Italian restaurant in downtown Lee’s Summit. Just as we parked, the closing strains of Eva Cassidy’s People Get Ready played from my iPod through the car speakers. The restaurant sits on SE Main Street across from the historic Lee’s Summit Depot.   Just west of the depot lies the track on which daily Amtrak trains run and that separates SE and SW Main Street.   The Depot has been retired so passengers board from a kiosk on the other side of the track.   B rick store fronts stand along SE Main like a choir arrayed to serenade arriving passengers.   These buildings and their occupants have sung their siren songs since well before horses and trains were mostly replaced by automobiles. We were seated in the front by the west window as the sun was dropping to the horizon.   Orange  cast  rays slipped through the blinds and made me squint.   Across the street sits a retired caboose ...

After raking the mulch back where it belonged, I walked through the full green grass that this early spring has made.  It's already tall and thick enough to make each shoe seem like the prow of a canoe cutting through the gentle ripples of a serene lake.   Of course, the reason I was out there was because Eva the Doodle had decided that the mulch needed rearrangement and, being self motivated when the end result is trouble, she took on the challenge.   Walking in breeze buffeted blue grass is relaxing but I admit that I wouldn't have done it except for Eva's escapade.    Just as I reached the top of the small rise in our yard, below the limbs of our bald cypress trees, there lay a perfect blue egg mostly hidden low in the grass.   I checked in the tree and surrounding bushes for a nest but none was there.   This tiny blue egg did not have a chance without the nurturing of its mom so I picked it up and noticed that on the bottom there was ...

Blue.  Whether you think of a serene sky with white puffy clouds or a mood brought on by ill fortune or a rainy, gray day, blue carries complex meanings for a simple, short word.  For April and for thousands of people, blue is the color of autism.  The Cigar Box will be blue for a month – for Mason, and for his mom, dad and brother and for every family dealing with autism. From the stories of my youth, blue was the color of Paul Bunyan’s pet ox, Babe.  When my girls were young, Papa Smurf and all of his Smurf kin and descendants gave their town an omnipresent hue of blue.  As recent as this weekend, the fans of college basketball are seeing Kentucky Blue in great supply and the Blue part of Kansas’ colors is pressing for space in the blue world of basketball.  Now it is the color of wrist bands, lights on the front door and autism decals on the car. On one of the best blue sky days, we took a walk, Mason and I.  We circled the church inside a...