Place of Origin by Jon Krey

All of my family was born in the U.S. except for one elderly female cousin to my mother. Aunt Berta. She was born before WWI in Bavaria. My relatives and parents were of German and English descent or Pennsylvania Dutch as they insist on calling it. This mixture could occasionally cause all kinds of ruckus though generally they were kind folk of humble origins having migrated here well over a century before. None were wealthy save one uncle on my mother’s side who used his considerable talent and influence to climb the ladder of success at Allis Chalmers all the way to president!  He was accorded the rank of family hero and the one and only person of means. Others were just ordinary folk tending the land as they had for generations. They came down into Kansas from Pennsylvania Dutch country sometime around the beginning of the 20^th century living in or around the small farming community of Fort Scott Kansas.  My how that little town of memories has changed. Gone are the cobble stone streets now covered with asphalt. Gone are the sidewalks of the Great Depression. Gone are the great and small Victorian homes that dotted the narrow streets in the 1940’s. It’s sad that so much history is buried; too often forgotten now-a-days. None of the young generation of Ft. Scott seem to care much though many landmarks have been preserved thanks in great part to my Dad‘s siblings.

But to go on:

With the Great Depression still breathing down everyone’s neck my parents left the “security” of Ft. Scott in 1939 hoping Dad could find a more lucrative job in the great metropolis of Tulsa, Oklahoma. He had no trouble leaving the farming community behind. Mom bore me at St. John’s Hospital’s “Lying In”, in Tulsa in 1940, not on the 4^th of July but 3 days advanced; the whole world soon to be toppling on the brink of WWII. 

Our home was a duplex on the east side of town, across the tracks. Simply called EAST TULSA./ WHITTIER SQUARE, in particular.   Certainly not the best place in Tulsa. Some 5 years later my baby sister Barbara was born on August 1945 on the same date, the 7^th as I.  Before and during the war Dad’s job had protected him ( and his small family) from the draft, staving off destitution . Luck wasn’t with us, his job in Tulsa came to a screeching halt with the war’s end leaving my family virtually out of a home. His brother found him work in Ft. Scott and a subsequent move provided menial work for him as a machinist. The company had held a government contract which expired suddenly, without notice, at wars end. Dad was a proud man and refused to live with our relatives there. He‘d maintained contact with fellow former employees in Tulsa.  New work opened for him in Tulsa with an up and coming firm known then as Tulsa Winch which as of the mid 1980’s evolved into the Sperry/Rand Corporation.  Though conditionally accepted, with the return of GI’s in 1946/1947 it became months before he was gainfully employed. He was able to find acceptable shelter for us with Aunt Berta in her dilapidated one bedroom apartment above the Tulsa train station. Crowded was an understatement. It was late fall, then a cruel winter. The only heat in the entire apartment was a small gas fired stove on the floor. I remember being hypnotized by the blue flame, orange glow of the radiant elements and “hush” of gas. Dad was exhausted. Nothing during that time worked out for him. He had worked as a house painter in the past as a young man but no work was available. Eventually, having tried so desperately to support us he had something like a nervous breakdown. Mom consoled him as best she could. He too often spent days with minimal sleep, frequently crying. I remember continuous fighting between them. It certainly didn’t help any of us and did nothing but scare me silly. I thought Aunt Berta was going to call the police and haul Dad off to…where? It didn’t help Barbara either though today she doesn’t remember it as I do. There was no money for a doctor. No work, no medication, no alcohol, nothing! Not even money for cigarettes. I heard years later there had been a family rumor of her leaving him for one of his old single friends. Barbara was around 1 year old then and definitely affected by the discord.  As with many that age she would break into shrieking crying jags. It might have been the arguing but Mom’s consistently bad temperament only exacerbated the situation. I hid in the corners of our room, my heart pounded, my own anxiety grew. 

In time, after around four months he finally was back at work; his mood greatly improved.

Both sides of the family were of Pennsylvania Dutch farming stock, a fact that many in my extended family hated and never talked about. The ties with a German heritage weren‘t something of pride then. I later learned that no one admitted any German connection without being ostracized. Little was ever spoken of our European origins but I did ultimately find out more. That’s another story.

These 4 wheeled vehicles are forever changing  my place, my “origin”! Years of family automobiles changed over time. We had a 1937 Plymouth for many years. Others had different sometimes bigger ones. All were hugely interesting. Space-ships like cars; Buicks,Oldsmobiles, Fords, Hudsons, Studebakers, Chevrolets, Packards. They’re all trasnport mechanisms.  Take you from one place in Space Time from one party of ORIGIN TO another. Not many of my relatives had new post war cars but those that did had things of pure beauty! I loved to pretend driving them. One aunt on my Mom’s side actually let me “drive” hers with me hanging onto the steering wheel. WOW what fun!  I WAS THERE, WHEREVER “THERE” IS. HEY LET’S TAKE A TRIP. AN ORIGINAL TRIP.  THROUGH SPACE TIME FROM AN ORIGINALLY, ORIGINAL PLACE.

Telephones with private lines were unheard of in Ft. Scott or Tulsa and  frequently used years-old wooden crank wall phones up in Ft. Scott to summon the operator. I still remember the phone number of my favorite male cousin I had a crush on (1558J). AM radio was all there was. FM was yet to be. Buicks had radios that thundered with bass and I was hooked and still am.

We all had a large console type radio with consistently bad tubes. It doesn’t matter where we lived or live. Most of us had a dad who was the repairman and found new tubes at Rex-All Drugs, Safeway, or in this day and age;  RadioShack or Walmart (I doubt any of them still have vacuum tubes though).. Among the many thingsJoplin. Joplin. Missouri was a Summer Place of Origin and of discovery for me in my youth. Back then in 1953  I finally did get to leave Earth, at least for 45 minutes.  Who knows, maybe next time it’ll be to Mars, lol. After all when I was a school kid and into space travel, my classmates called me MARS MAN!

Maybe my truest place of origin is WITHIN MY OWN MIND. I’m something of a traveler though. Always wanted to go from one PLACE OF ORIGIN to another PLACE OF ORIGIN wondering how to get there from here.  Wondering what’s just around that corner for me once there.

 Give me liberty or death but first give me a flying saucer so I can find new places and globs in space from which to originate. But first I have to get someone to loan me the money to by the damned saucer  at which time I have no idea where my origin will be.

So from Germany, England, Ft. Scott, Kansas, Tulsa, Oklahoma and now Denver, Colorado; all is history but history moves toward the present. So here I am and where I was and where from here I will go next. No one origin but many. No one place to live but many.

About the Author

"I'm just a guy from Tulsa (God forbid). So overlook my shortcomings, they're an illusion."