My Portfolio

Caney was located at the crossroads of two railroads.  The Santa Fe ran trains north and south while the Missouri and Pacific, the "MOP", brought trains from the East and West.  The Santa Fe had all the glamour.  It had "The Streamliner."  In the `40's most trains were pulled by steam...

Caney had a bowling alley unlike any bowling alley ever seen before or since.  It was in a storefront building on Fourth Street, our “Main Street” just east of Winkler’s Drug store.  It did a boomingly noisy business until television came along.  It also was a business where the owner didn’t...

Kansas, by law, was a dry state.  The only legal alcoholic beverage was 3.2 beer, so-called because its alcoholic content cannot exceed 3.2% of its total volume.  A person can become intoxicated drinking this beer but they have to work at it.   Oklahoma, which was only one mile south, was just...

The hike to the dam was a leisurely walk.  There were plenty of things along the way worth doing.   Those cone-shaped glass insulators found today in flea markets were sat on the crossbars of the telephone poles that alongside the railroad tracks. They shattered with a glorious display of shrapnel when...

In early times someone built a dam across the Caney River out west of town, just at the bottom of Standpipe Hill.  It was a rudimentary dam, not much different in construction from those which small boys to dam up rainwater that runs in street gutters.   That dam had only one...

Normal 0 false false false EN-AU X-NONE X-NONE Dear Diary, Since Dad died in 1962, my life has changed in many ways. I don’t know how much alimony he paid, but just about everything is different now. I guess we were lucky as we have lived on Mum’s salary and have...

Normal 0 false false false EN-AU X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Unlike almost everyone I know, I didn’t encounter any inspirational teachers during my school years. As a Presbyterian, I was sent to Catholic schools from the age of 3 ½ when I became a monthly boarder at Star of the Sea in...

She said, "You were the good reader, weren''t you!"

I was a shy and somewhat serious kid, the kind most people don't recall being in their classes because we were all but invisible.  I would rather have died than speak up or call attention to myself in any way.  In the fourth grade, all that changed.   Until that year, my teachers...

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This is a tough one.  When this question came out it made me really have to stop and think.  I was EXTREMELY shy as a child but I loved school. My first grade teacher - Mrs. Howell - I was terrified of her.  At that time corproal punishment was allowed in...

As a child I lived in a tenement building at 548 Fox Street, near Southern Boulevard in the South Bronx, with my younger brothers and parents. School wasn't far away-- PS 25, at 811 E. 149th Street. My mom walked us to school in the morning, and I looked forward to...

  Technical Sgt. Raymond R. (Rudy) Carriker In Caney’s Washington Grade School we fourth graders, destined to become the first generation of Americans to pass from childhood to adolescence in a world totally committed to war, found our school days changed within the time of a few heartbeats.  We began bringing...

Becoming a court reporter would have never entered my mind as a 20-year-old.  At that time in my life I was playing piano up a storm and intent on graduation from college as a music major.  Fast forwarding 32 years in a chance perusal of the employment section of our Columbus,...

So many teachers have affected my life and directed me toward my destiny.  Who was my favorite teacher--the one that impacted my life the most then, as well as now?  Could it have been my second grade teacher, Mrs. Pulsipher, who used apricot pits as manipulatives to help me learn to...

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE “Whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe.” (Proverbs 29:25). Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt...

      The War was Everywhere Affecting Everything Don Carriker - 1944  12 years old At first "The War" seemed to be a fine thing.  There was an excitement and sense of purpose in the air.  Even a kid could feel prosperity blooming.   We moved from our primitive bungalow, with...

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE “And again, I exhort you, my brethren, that ye deny not the gifts of God, for they are many; and they come from the same God. And there are different ways that these gifts are administered; but it is the same God who...

I liked school and adjusted easily.  It was a no-nonsense “Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic” curriculum.   Reading came easy to me and writing was no particular problem. I don’t remember my first attempts at arithmetic but it was probably a miserable experience.  Dealing with numbers was my Waterloo from First Grade all...

When we first moved to Caney our house was a block north of the Missouri Pacific Railroad tracks.  Just south of the tracks there were two grocery stores.   Ferguson’s, on the east side of Wood Street, also sold gasoline and motor oil, and served as the office for what was then...