Life before Ice, by Phillip Hoyle

It’s no wonder Mom was happy to live in town where almost everyone had electricity in their homes. Not so on the farm where she grew up just ten miles south of Junction City.

When Mom moved into town to attend high school, she entered a new world of running water in kitchen and bath, flush stools inside the house, electric lights in every room, natural gas stoves and heating systems, and refrigerators that could even make ice. No wonder to me that she never wanted to return to the farm except to visit her folks. And when she was being courted by a young man who wrote for a newspaper, was buying into his father’s grocery store (that wonderful citified substitute for a farm garden and fields), played the piano like a dream (classical, church, and jazz), and sang with expression and in tune, it looked like her life could become one of relative ease, say contrasted with her mother’s.

In town Mom could have ice every day—winter and summer: iced coffee (which she abhorred), iced tea (great with meals in summer), and iced cream (need one say more?). She could quickly get ice onto a burn, bruise, or swelling should a child need it, and make better whipped cream by beating it in a bowl surrounded with ice, on and on. And should she see a need for a large quantity of ice for any reason, she could simply call the local Ice House and the Ice Man would show up to deliver the size and style of ice needed. It took me years to understand any of this; in fact, I just figured it out this year, 2016, my 69^th year, when I started writing about my early childhood.

My great grandparents on both sides of the family rarely had ice and certainly had no electricity in their homes. My grandparents grew up without electricity but fortunately got some when the Hoyle’s moved from Dwight to Junction City, Kansas in the 1920s and when the Schmedemann’s greeted the national rural electrification program to Clarks Creek in 1947—the year I was born. I’m sure the same was true of my rural Colorado in-laws as well. To my amazement, my mother-in-law used to eat crushed ice a lot, even had her own ice crusher to make it. For her the habit may have been some kind of celebration of what she had missed in childhood and probably kept alive the hope that she might someday retire to life in town. Eventually she did so and kept enjoying her shredded ice.

My family was lucky to have a refrigerator with a freezer compartment. It was rather new, probably purchased the same year I was born. I say this because the folks’ old refrigerator, a small one with a very small ice maker near the top, went out to my maternal grandparents’ farm. Their lives surely got easier. By the time I could make sense of anything, we in town were living high with running water, city sewage, electricity, natural gas heat, a gas range and oven, a swamp cooler, and a refrigerator with a freezer unit. This was luxury in our town. Ice was made in cubes at home using trays with movable grids. Pull up the handle and out pops the ice cubes, but watch out; they might be all over the floor. Or you might have trouble getting them out at all. That’s when we’d run water over them to begin the melting.

I take it all for granted and do so love my Monday bowl of Guinness Ice Cream with chocolate chunks, but that could be for the enjoyment of the ale flavor and that of my favorite candy.

© 5 Dec 2016  

About the Author 

 Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

Birthdays, by Phillip Hoyle

My fifteenth birthday was a day of celebration but not so much over me as it was over our family’s move from Junction City to Clay Center. Don’t mistake this by thinking we were excited to be leaving an army town to go to some idyllic place in the countryside. Actually we kids were horrified to think we were moving to a town with only one four-way stop light. We were going out to the sticks in our minds. Still, the move was a celebration.

Probably this birthday was the first one I had that didn’t feature a cake with candles, wishes, and the suspense of wondering if I would get all of the candles blown out in one breath. The night before we family members went to several neighboring houses to sleep since all our goods had been packed the day before into a moving van. Tippy, my beagle, stayed in our garage, the cats on the back porch of the house. We came back for them in the morning. When we were ready to leave, we kids went to get the three of them for the trip. I put Tippy on the leash, Lynn got a good hold on Kissy—her Persian ’fraidy cat—and Holly picked up Mascot—a reprobate tomcat that one rainy afternoon had come home with our youngest sister. I said I’d get the car door. Tippy insisted on sniffing something and then we took off in a run around the west side of the house. The girls and their cats came around the east side of the house just as Tippy and I burst by. Kissy clawed Lynn in a desperate and successful attempt to escape. We got Mascot and Tippy into the car and went searching for Kissy who was nowhere to be found and, if she heard us calling “Kitty, Kitty, Kitty,” didn’t care. We had to leave her and go meet the truck some forty miles away.

During the drive to Clay Center, Tippy hung her head out the open window, Mascot got sick in his litter, and Lynn cried over the loss of her pet. Finally we got to the new town and opened the house to receive our furniture, appliances, and personal effects. I don’t recall a cake or any such celebration, but I do know I began to move into my room, one with a large closet, plenty of wall space for my artwork, and a carpeted floor. The junior decorator in me was a bit over-excited for already Mom had ordered drapes and such, and we were setting out to re-do the whole house.

Later that day, after the van had pulled away and things were settling down, I went outdoors to set up Tippy’s new home in the garage and eventually to assess the lawn. The new power mower was due to arrive the next day; I wanted to be ready. Since the big old house sat on three corner lots, I was trying to figure out how to organize my attack on grass and weeds. I heard a ruckus in the north yard and went to investigate. There I found Mascot stealthily marking his new territory and blue jays in great screaming protest attacking him like protective dive bombers. Such drama!

We were all moving in and making our best ways into the future. I would have new responsibilities, a new school, new teachers, new church, and new friends. I hoped nothing would dive bomb my attempts to make my way. And fortunately I found a strong music program, many activities with kids at church, and a new job. Actually it was the same job—carrying out groceries—but in a new store, this one managed by my uncle who paid me twice as much as my dad had in our other store. I felt like I was growing out of boyhood in a rapid approach to adult life, and I felt ready for it all. While the day’s activities were exhausting and probably there was not a birthday cake, the whole package was a celebration of life and of a new future for me as I began the sixteenth year of my life.

© 14 Nov 2016  

About the Author 

  

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

Train Trips, by Phillip Hoyle

As a child I liked to go to Coronado Park on South Washington Street to ride the miniature train. It puffed around the perimeter of the park back then and to me seemed as real as could be, an adventure of movement, a fascination with technology, a feeling of the wind on one’s face while traveling at imagined breakneck speed. I’m sure I thought of bandits or Indians like in some western movies I had seen. Of course the kiddy train was tiny compared with the big black steam engines that pulled box cars, fuel cars, grain cars, and the like. It was tiny compared with the big Union Pacific passenger trains that came into our station at Junction City, Kansas.

I also recall sitting on a large train at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo up above Colorado Springs, a train that for years took passengers from the zoo to the Shrine to the Sun higher upon the mountain. To four-year-old me it seemed gigantic but still would have looked puny next to the Union Pacific trains back home. I was decked out in my western wear at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. Back home I would simply be a little boy, but even at home the railroad loomed large. My grade-school best friend’s father was an oil man on the Union Pacific and greeted and lubricated all the trains on his daily shifts. I fantasized taking a trip by train, a real one that led to something new.

One Sunday morning many, many years later, a Sunday morning that turned traumatic for our mid-Missouri congregation, I heard a train whistle blow as if to call me away.  That morning the senior minister Jack McInnis died. He and I had worked with the church for seven years. My only thought was to get on that train and get out of there. I did so two years later when I booked a seat on the Southwest Chief to Albuquerque. But first I caught a ride on the Amtrak that stopped at Jefferson City on its way to Kansas City. There I ran around for a day with a dear friend to say goodbye.  

Finally, I got on the big train to make my way west. At KC Union Station there was a long delay. We waited and waited for the very late train. When we boarded, I got comfortable and waited for the train to start moving. No go! I got out a book to read. (On trips I’m always prepared to read.) I made my way through several chapters. Still the train sat in the dark rail yard. Finally after three hours more the train took off. There had been engine trouble. No quick fixes were available and no extra engines could be substituted unless the train had been sitting on the track at Chicago or Emeryville (near San Francisco)! We made our way across the Great Plains at night.

Before I fell asleep I thought of my Great Grandfather, Frederick Schmedemann, a German immigrant who in the late 1860s worked for the Union Pacific as its crews laid the first track across Kansas. He cooked for the crew and during that time met William Cody who was supplying meat for the workers at the expense of the vast and rapidly dwindling buffalo population after which he was named. The family story says Buffalo Bill was so pleased with the meal my great granddad prepared, he gave him a gold piece. By the time I came along, though, there had been way too many depressions in the US economy. The gold piece probably went towards improving the farm or paid some doctor for caring for a family member with the flu. Who knows? I never saw it, never heard any subsequent stories about it. Maybe it was lost on a bet or paid for the first year’s coverage when crop insurance first was introduced. There were such stories about those later days on the farm, but no gold piece.

As the sun came up in mid-Kansas that summer morning through the window I watched rabbits, deer, and groups of domesticated cattle (no buffalo herds of course) and thought more about my great grandfather, his new life in America, and the new life I was hoping to begin in Albuquerque. Finally, I got a little breakfast, after which I returned to my novel.

I felt sorry for elders on that trip and for parents with little children. But when compared with wagon train travel down the Santa Fe Trail, this mode of transportation was a breeze.  That afternoon, when we were starting up Raton Pass, the train slowed to a stop and began backing up. The engineer announced that a switch had failed. They would change it by hand to get us on the sidetrack where we would be safe from the train hurtling down the pass towards us now. When that train sped safely by, we still didn’t move. The engineer said a computer engineer was on his way from La Junta, Co, to fix the problem with the switch. I chose this time to clean up and shave so I’d look good for my family. Finally, finally, finally we pulled into the Albuquerque station where my family met me and drove me to our new apartment. The reunion was grand, and a couple of days later I began a new job in that fair city.

© 22 July 2014 

About the Author 

 Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

State of Origin, by Phillip Hoyle

I moved into my apartment on Capitol Hill soon after reaching Denver in my fifty-second year. There I lived in the third block south of Colfax Avenue, that old highway that has claimed to be the longest main street in America. Not owning a car, I walked everywhere, but was surprised when a friend asked, “Aren’t you afraid to walk along East Colfax?”

“No,” I immediately answered. “It’s just like the main street in the town where I grew up.” I wasn’t freaked out to walk down an avenue with bars, tattoo parlors, Army surplus stores, small groceries, gas stations, two-story buildings with markets below and apartments or offices above, theatres, people of various races, even drunks on the street. Strolling along Colfax always reminded me of my hometown Junction City, Kansas that was located adjacent to the US Army Base, Fort Riley.

I had spent my childhood and early teen years living in the third block west of Washington Street, the long main street that offered in addition to groceries, clothing, theaters, lawyers, and real estate, a variety of beers, tattoos, Army surplus, pawned goods, drunks, and prostitutes. My family lived on West Eleventh Street, but the more colorful array of folks and their bad habits rarely made it that far off the main drag.

Washington Street ran for eighteen blocks from Grand Avenue on the north, the gateway to Fort Riley, to I-70 on the south—well eventually when the Interstate made its way that far west. On the south end of Washington Street our family ate at the Circle Cafe that offered Cantonese and American food. Dad ordered Chinese food, Mom her favorite fried chicken, and we kids our regular hamburger, French fries, and a Coke. Later, when I began working at the store, I had lunch sometimes at the Downtown Cafe where, much to my junior high delight, I discovered chicken fried steaks. I already knew the middle part of Washington Street from walks with Mom when she shopped, but also from visits to the two Hoyle’s IGA stores, both located along Washington, one at 9^th, the other at 13^th. Then there was the Kaw Theater where we watched movies and ate the homemade cinnamon and horehound candies made by Mr. Hoyle, the owner and the father of my Aunt Barbara. Duckwall’s and Woolworth’s stores sat on the east side of the street in the same block as Cole’s Department Store where Mother used to model clothes on occasion. I had seen photos of her as a young model posing on the runway.

I got to know Washington Street. North, between 15^th and 16^th streets stood Washington School where I attend grades one through five. On occasion I got to be the crossing guard on the main street, wearing the white halter that symbolized enough authority to push the button for the stop light and walk halfway across the four-lane street with a stop sign. No accidents occurred on my watch. The school playground for older students was on Washington Street so I saw its activity from swings, monkey bars, and see saws. Walking down that street one afternoon when our class went on an outing to visit the local potato chip factory seems as real today as it was then. Across the street from the school was Kroger’s, and across the street from our store that Dad managed, sat Dillon’s. I knew these stores to be the competition. Next to Dillon’s was the Dairy Queen where we kids liked to go on Sunday nights after church. I knew Washington Street.

As older elementary kids we neighborhood boys began to walk the street without adults. There we discovered the bars, a variety of shops including the Army Surplus stores where we looked longingly at the gear of soldiers, the barbershop where my best friend Keith got his flattop haircuts and where I first saw professional wresting on TV, and tattoo parlors where we’d choose our future body ornamentation from designs displayed in the windows. From Washington Street, we’d gaze down East Ninth where we knew several houses of prostitution stood. We’d continue on to Duckwalls and Woolworth’s where we loved to look at toys and sometimes swiped them, to the Junction Theater where we ogled the ads for adult films we never got to watch, or to Clewel's Drug Store where we drank sodas at the fountain where they mixed drinks and I often ordered a grape Coke. Occasionally we’d walk on to Dewey Park where we saw small children dancing at the city band concerts, where a statue of the 19^th century Admiral George Dewey with his drooping handlebar mustache stood atop a classical archway, and where large WWII cannons stood sentry. By day people sat there in the shade of huge elms and more than once on hot summer afternoons we waded in the fountain that dominated the middle of the park.

I never entered any of the many bars but was fascinated by their neon lights, dark spaces with cool air wafting strange odors out the front doors. I wondered about the men we saw inside sitting at the bar drinking beers, usually quiet but sometimes with juke box blaring and loud talk and laughter, especially around payday when the GIs came to town to squander their meager paychecks in the dives on Washington Street and the whore houses on East Ninth. The challenging presences rarely made it over to where I lived, but of course, we boys had planned all our escape routes in case we might have run-ins with drunks. Our survival tactics were actually just another form of play; after all we were kids, boys with dreams of self-sufficiency, survival, and strength.

Life changed for me over the decades between my fifteenth birthday when we left Junction City and my fifty-first birthday when I showed up along Denver’s Colfax Ave. My experiences along the unusual Kansas main street prepared me for living in the city. In my fifties I continued to spend time among people of various races and backgrounds. I ate Chinese food, chicken fried steaks, and really nice hamburgers along Colfax. In contrast to my childhood activities, I did go into bars and did get a tattoo. I still didn’t go into whorehouses. In this real, really large city I walked down many streets and greeted many people. I shared a new life with them but still kept my eyes open to possible developing trouble and chose my routes with the wisdom I had learned in childhood walking along Washington Street with my friends. Then I walked unafraid but never unaware. I still do.

© 16 August, 2012 – Denver  

About the Author 

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com 

Military Me by Phillip Hoyle

I didn’t serve in the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard or Reserves. I dropped out of Boy Scouts after moving up several classes and earning lots of badges. Although I liked singing in the choir at Boy’s State I pretty much detested its political plotting, campaigning, and especially marching. I wasn’t military material; not competitive, obedient, or strong enough. Still I had a strong military background; I grew up in a military town, Junction City, a railroad town next to Fort Riley in central Kansas. I grew up next to where General George Armstrong Custer with his Seventh Cavalry planned military campaigns against aboriginal folk. I grew up next to military games of the Seventh Cavalry Armored Division that in my time featured jeeps, tanks, big guns, infantry, and nighttime flares. I grew up knowing my great grandfather had worked at three Kansas forts when he first emigrated here from Germany and that two of my uncles had served in the military. I grew up in schools peopled with the children of Army officers, GIs, and civil service employees. I sat in classes with kids who had lived the past three years in Germany. I attended school with girls who grew up in Europe and spoke heavily accented English. Daily I heard the chop, chop, chop of overhead passing helicopters from the base airport. When we drove through the Fort I saw barracks, parade grounds, war memorials, historic officers’ houses, weapons, and armories. I saw the PX and the Commissary.  I went to church with folk from the Fort. I carried out groceries to cars owned by soldiers. I watched my neighbor polish his boots to the most unbelievable shine. I got to know his Japanese wife. I shopped in Army surplus stores, daily walked past GI bars, and on payday night saw lines of enlisted young men waiting to enter whore houses on East Ninth Street. I saw silk jackets with wild-looking dragons on their backs brought home from Asian assignments. I heard stories, saw military parades, and watched as convoys passed by on Interstate 70. I played Army with my neighborhood buddies using either plastic soldiers or our own play guns. I viewed endless military newsreels while awaiting my turn at the Saturday morning gun club in the basement of the Municipal Auditorium where local police took their target practice, in the same building that housed the USO. Army was everywhere, even in my imagination, but I couldn’t feature actually entering the service in any of its forms. I wasn’t a good match.

Dad told me of a worship service when America was on the brink of war, probably at the onset of the Korean conflict. The preacher that Sunday had waxed eloquently about the terrible enemy that was threatening our values and safety. After Dad had turned off the organ, stowed his music scores, and said goodbye to the choir, he stopped to shake the preacher’s hand.  He asked, “Why is it that preachers preach peace until the nation is on the brink of war and then preach war?” He said the preacher got really red in the face, but he didn’t tell me the man’s response to him, or if he did I have no memory of it. I was fascinated with Dad’s ability to support and confront, a natural counseling approach he had never studied. He did so out of a sense of conscience, a tribute I suppose to his father’s being reared Quaker. His people were thoughtful and honest. Coming out of high school in the early thirties, he was unable to attend college, but he was an avid reader, a theologically curious church lay leader, and very bright. I don’t recall Dad leading me away from military service, but I do remember his interest that I become a preacher. Perhaps he wanted me to preach peace.

In a Christian Ethics course in Seminary I developed a great interest in how decisions are really made, at least that’s how I expressed it. I opined over and over in the class the function of emotions in moral judgment and action. I criticized our texts that said little about their roles. I studied extensively in nineteenth and twentieth century philosophical, theological, and psychological theory of the passions to find out all I could. The teacher of the course liked to quantify our responses to ethical problems. “On a scale of one to ten,” he’d say, “where do you place yourself…?” We were supposed to choose a number. War was one issue. I refused to quantify my response but, knowing myself, explained that if I were faced with an enemy I would probably defend myself and my family. Having lived around the military all my childhood, even without being interested in becoming a soldier, I realized I’d probably want to defend my loved ones and country in some way. I might declare myself a pacifist theoretically, but if the enemy was crossing the border with guns aimed at me, I’d come to the defense. I was pretty sure that my response would be visceral. Visions of helicopters and jeeps, guns and GI’s still played out their power in me even fifteen years after I’d moved away from the Fort. I guess that’s just old military me.

On the other hand I pretty much believe in the sanctity of all life. Also I can pretty much be a wimp. Maybe I’d argue with myself as the enemy approached and have no chance to use a gun I don’t know how to shoot, be run over by an enemy who is stronger than I, or otherwise fight without any chance of winning. And if I lasted very long, I’d surely wonder “winning what?” Now that is really old me even though I can still hear the big guns blasting off in the distance of my childhood. Guess I’d better stick with philosophy.

© 23 Nov 2011  

About the Author  

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com