Tim Macy at Thirty

by Pa Rock
Proud Dad

My youngest, Tim, was born thirty years ago today in Mountain View, Missouri. It was the first day of fall, and if he had been born female he would have probably been named Autumn in honor of the change of season. (His sister occasionally calls herself "Summer," so perhaps our family has some seasonal affectation!)

Tim was born on a Sunday. His mother went into labor in the morning, and we wheeled by our church enroute to the hospital and dropped his two older siblings off with his future godparents, Jerry and Carolyn Kinder. Our doctor at St. Francis Hospital in Mountain View was Jon Roberts. Because he knew us well, he was comfortable in asking Tim's mother if a group of EMT's could come into the delivery room to watch a live birth. There probably weren't as many of them as I remember, but it seemed like the room was full of on-lookers as Tim entered the world.

Another woman was delivering at St. Francis at almost the same time. I don't remember the parents' names, but the baby was Candice Brown. Happy 30th, Candy. I hope that you have had a wonderful life and made your parents proud.

My parents were vacationing in Florida with Mom's sister and brother-in-law, Christine and Bob Dobbs, when Tim was born. Christine's birthday was also September 23rd. They stopped by Mountain View on their way home to meet the newest Macy.

For those of you who don't know how proud I am of Tim (and his brother and sister) well, you just haven't been paying attention! He works with disadvantaged youth for the University of Kansas (smells like social work to me!), and he is an accomplished author and playwright who has had a play produced at the Kennedy Center in DC and has had two of his short stories made into films. All of that was in his twenties - think where his thirties can take him!

Tim has always pushed me to write, and last year when I would occasionally take a day off from the Ramble, he would immediately email asking what was wrong. This year, because of Tim's prodding, I have set a goal to publish in the Ramble every day. He is also challenging me to work my ass off at the gym, and, yes, my ass is disappearing!

If you would like to know just how fine of a person Tim Macy has become, read the comment that he posted to my blog entry yesterday entitled "Sadness." He cares about others. I could not be prouder!

Happy 30th birthday, Tim! May you have many, many more!

Nights at the Edgewood Drive-In

by Pa Rock
Shameless Reminiscer

There was a time in America when the term drive-in referred to an outdoor setting where people went on warm nights to park in a field, hang a speaker on their car window, and watch movies on a giant screen. Often there was a playground for the kiddos up under the large screen, and a snack shack that served a full menu of popcorn, cold drinks, hot dogs, and other movie fare. Drive-in theatres are mostly a thing of the past now, with the occasional holdout that manages to stay open more as a curiosity than anything else.

The drive-in theatre of my youth was the Edgewood, located on busy Highway 71 just south of Neosho, Missouri. From the highway it appeared to be a fine old southern plantation mansion with a two story white facade framed by magnificent white columns. The owners of the Edgewood liked to brag that it was the most beautiful drive-in in America, and my mother would note, with a sense of pride, that she had traveled to many places and never seen one that was any nicer.

When I was very young my parents owned a truck stop in Goodman, MO, with my mother's sister, Christine, and her husband, Bob Dobbs. My mother and aunt ran the restaurant while my dad and uncle managed the gas station and garage. It was the kids' job - me, my sister, and our two cousins - to stay out of the way. We played hard!

It was the 1950's. Many people had television, but it had yet to reach out and control our lives. The age of wonderful radio programs was just coming to an end. Movies were the most popular form of escapism at that moment in history. Neosho, just ten miles up the road, had the closest movie theatres. The same family owned them both - the indoor Orpheum for winter viewing, and the Edgewood for outdoor viewing during the late spring, summer, and early fall. It was always a very big deal when the drive-in opened for the season.

Drive-in's originally charged by the car, regardless of how many people were crammed into the vehicle. Each car only took up one space and used one speaker, and the more people - the more refreshment sales. Toward the end of the era, many started charging on a per person basis - causing legions of flexible youth to enter the premises in the trunk of a car, and hoping, of course, that once they were past the gate their friends would let them out!

A typical night at the Edgewood consisted of a cartoon and two or three movies, separated by intermissions where everyone ran to the restrooms and snack shack, and the kids headed to the playground. The Edgewood playground was surrounded by very large plywood cutouts of Disney and other cartoon characters. It housed several swings, slides, teeter-totters, and a merry-go-round that the big kids kept running wickedly fast!

A nice thing about drive-ins back in the day was that the management didn't go nuts if you brought in your own food. My mother would have the cooks at the cafe pack us an evening meal to eat in the car while we watched the movies. One night she couldn't decide what type of sandwich she wanted, and told to cook to just surprise her. She was surprised alright when she bit into her sandwich later that night and discovered that it was a potholder slathered in mayonnaise between two slices of bread. From then on whenever anyone mentioned Florine's surprise sandwich, everyone in town knew how it was made!

Drive-ins began to disappear in the 1960's as the concept of daylight savings time came into vogue and caused the sun to stay out longer. (The shows couldn't be seen on the screen until after dark.) I remember going to the Edgewood on August 5th, 1962, with my sister and mother. I know the exact date because when we returned home we learned that Marilyn Monroe had died that day. The very last time that I can remember going to the Edgewood was in sometime in 1969, and I suspect that may have been its final season. I was home from college and a group of friends and I were there to watch Goldie Hawn in Cactus Flower. Actually we were there to visit and drink beer, but Cactus Flower was a nice diversion.

The Edgewood has been closed for decades, and the fine old plantation mansion facade was bulldozed many years ago in the name of progress. Today the site is occupied by a business that sells cattle trailers. But I can't drive down that stretch of highway without fondly remembering the place that was such an important fixture of my youth.

I doubt that drive-ins will ever make a comeback because there are so many other diversions available in modern life. But those of us who wax nostalgic for the good old days still have the option of parking in a field and watching movies on our iPods!

No, no, they can't take that away from me!

The Generation Before Mine

by Pa Rock
Personal Historian

There was something in the news from back home this week that saddened me. The Munitions Plant at Parsons, Kansas, is being deactivated by the Army. Don't get me wrong, I'm not pining over the demise of a bomb-making facility - any fool knows that there is no shortage of arms manufacturers or weaponry in the world today. But the Parsons Munitions Plant is different because it was a component in my mother's personal history, a significant part of her life that I heard her discuss on many occasions.

The Kansas Army Ammunition Plant was opened at the beginning of World War II to supply munitions for our nation's greatest war effort. My mother, then known as Florine Sreaves, had graduated from high school in Seneca, MO, in 1939. She was still a very young woman, and single, when the war began.

The young men were, for the most part, incorporated into the fighting forces as quickly as they came of age - with many volunteering to serve even before they were out of high school. The role of the women was not as readily defined, but many found ways to be active in the war effort. Tom Brokaw would later refer to the youth shedding their innocence during World War II as "The Greatest Generation."

My mom chose to do her part making bombs at Parsons, a job that could be, and often was, dangerous. Later during the war she moved to El Paso, TX, with her sister and brother-in-law, Christine and Bob Dobbs, where Bob went through his basic training at Ft. Bliss. During that time, if memory serves, Mom worked at the base Post Exchange (PX). (My dad, Garland Macy, graduated from high school in Neosho, MO, in 1942, and fought in the European Theatre with the newly formed Army Air Corps.)

I made a long audio tape of my mother telling stories about her life shortly after she was diagnosed with brain tumors. It was one of the last, lengthy sentient conversations that we ever had. We talked all morning, and enjoyed each other's company. That has been nearly twenty-five years ago, and those memories, and others, have grown dusty with time. But occasionally something happens to shake off the dust and bring back that ache that comes when someone important is missing from your life. The news of the closing of the Parsons Munitions Plant caused me to glance backward, if only for a moment.

Happy Birthday, Dad

by Pa Rock

My father, Garland Eugene Macy, was born eighty-four years ago today in rural Newton County, Missouri. He was the second son of Charles Eugene and Hazel Josephine (Nutt)Macy. His older brother, Wayne Hearcel Macy, died in San Diego, CA, in 1956, his younger brother, Tommy Dean Macy passed away in Newton County, MO, in 2002. His youngest sibling, Betty (Macy) Lankford, lives in Seneca, MO.

My Dad and his siblings grew up in poor circumstances during the Great Depression. His parents raised chickens, a few milk cows, and tried to grow most of their groceries. They worked out to bring in extra money. My grandmother cleaned houses for people in Neosho, and my grandfather, "Chock," worked as a farm laborer. The family never owned a car.

The experience of living through the Depression had a lasting impact on my Dad, influencing him to become focused on gathering wealth and never throwing anything away. Today he lives by himself in the largest house in Noel, MO, and has it literally filled to the rafters with junk. One of his unflinching axioms is "never give your stuff away" - and he hasn't!

My Dad and his siblings attended school at Westview, a small rural school approximately halfway between Seneca and Neosho. He did well and lost some friends when his teachers had him skip a grade in elementary school. Westview only went through grade ten, so when he completed his sophomore year Dad moved to Neosho to live with relatives where he was able to complete high school. He graduated in 1942 and then joined the army.

Dad and his brother Wayne both served in Europe during World War II. Several of Dad's cousins were also in the War. My dad was in the newly formed Army Air Corps, which later became the United States Air Force. He worked keeping machine guns operational on airplanes. Dad advanced to the rank of staff sergeant, the only one of the Newton County Macy's to achieve that rank. Some of his cousins called him "Sarge" for years.

My Dad caught a missile in the arm during a training exercise in France, and wound up spending the last several months of his enlistment at a hospital in Springfield, MO. He was awarded the Purple Heart and the thanks of a proud nation.

After the War, Dad turned his focus to making money and starting a family. He met my mother, Ruby "Florine" Sreaves while he and his cousin, Dalton Macy, were driving a taxi in Neosho, MO. They were married on March 31, 1948, in Columbus, KS. (Ironically, Dalton Macy went on to marry my Mom's sister, Betty Lou Sreaves!) I was born in Neosho on March 23, 1948, and my sister, Gail, was born in the same town on October 10, 1950.

As my parents were getting established, my dad worked at Pet Milk in Neosho. He didn't like working for a salary, figuring that the real money was to be made working for himself, and he hated the union at Pet. Several years ago I talked him into penning a simple biography, and one line I remember was his rant on unions as being "the ruination of America!" He remains conservative to a fault. My parents prided themselves on rarely working for a salary, and usually owning the home they lived in. I believe that Mother told me they only rented once.

My parents joined with Mom's sister and brother-in-law, Christine and Bob Dobbs, to build a truck stop on Highway 71 in Goodman, MO, in the 1950s. It was called "Macy and Dobbs' LaBella View Cafe and Station." The Macy's were bought out by the Dobbs' in 1958, and our family moved south to Noel where my folks bought a tourist court called Riverview on the Elk River. My mother, sister, and I did most of the running of the 8-unit court while Dad ran a DX service station in Noel. Riverview provided a good income in the summers, but the gas station was necessary to tide us over in the winter. They sold the court in 1964, shortly after my dad had opened an appliance store in Noel. In later years he sold real estate and my Mother managed the office.

My Mother was diagnosed with inoperable brain tumors in early 1983 and suffered for nearly four years before finally passing away on December 8, 1986. During the time of Mom's illness, Dad surprised us by taking care of Mom (with hired assistants during the days, and by himself during nights), and working so hard at her care as to place his own health at risk. He was adamant that she would not wind up in a nursing home.

Through smart investing in things like rental homes, the stock market, and church bonds, my Dad has managed to acquire considerable wealth, much of it since my mother passed away. He is getting too old to take care of his rentals, and has begun to divest himself of them. And this year has been especially rough on his stock portfolio. But he remains financially comfortable despite the economic downturn. Growing up in the Great Depression had a life-long impact on his values, and he continues to see wealth as the one true gage of success. And, of course, by that marker, he has been very successful.

His children measure success by other markers, but we love our Dad regardless.