The Chili Cone Chronicles: How I Survived the Sixties in Small-Town America

The Chili Cone Chronicles: How I Survived the Sixties in Small-Town America

In The Chili Cone Chronicles, Michael Winslow shares his remarkable story of growing up and coming-of-age in a small midwestern town during the tempestuous, whirlwind time of the 1960s. Funny and poignant by turns, Winslow offers a memorable journey through the mayhem as he relies on the comfort of his family, oddball friends, and small-town charm to make everything right in his own little corner of the world. Against a backdrop of calamitous world and national events, Winslow recalls the cocoon of his youth on a sane island at the twilight of corner grocery stores, passenger trains, drive-in movies, and greasy spoons. While it may be true that you can never truly go home again, Winslow's stories awaken the child within, providing glimpses into a fading way of life filled with such delights as eating an ice cream cone filled with hot chili, surfing Suicide Hill in flattened cardboard boxes, and feeling the exhilaration and pulse-quickening excitement that accompanied boxcar running in the dark of night. Thoughtful, warm, and full of hometown vignettes, The Chili Cone Chronicles will compel the willing to recall their own budding youth-and the events, places and people that were a part of it. The Chili Cone Chronicles How I Survived the Sixties in Small-Town America By Michael Winslow iUniverse, Inc. Copyright © 2010 Michael Winslow All right reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4502-7706-8 Contents WAKING UP WITH SUGARFOOT........................................1SIGHTS, SOUNDS, SMELLS & STRANGE CHARACTERS.....................7THE LEGEND OF THE CHILI CONE....................................15IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD.............................................19THE WOODS, HOLIDAYS & LIFE AT THE GULAG.........................25AT LONG LAST SUMMER.............................................35RUNNING WITH THE PACK...........................................42THE ERIE CONNECTION.............................................52ROCKET MAN......................................................62RITES OF PASSAGE................................................71WINDS OF CHANGE.................................................86GOING LIGHTLY FROM THE LEDGE....................................100AFTERWORD.......................................................121 Chapter One WAKING UP WITH SUGARFOOT It was as if he were kidnapped by the mob or abducted by Martians. Or more likely, forgot to come home from The Knotty Pine, the seedy, rundown tavern by the railroad tracks where he liked to swill Pabst Blue Ribbon with the boys after work. The only thing I knew for sure was that one minute my father was there, and the next minute he was gone—beat up Chevy Apache truck and all. I don't recall, even though I was only four years old at the time, a formal announcement from mom about what had happened. In any case, in the summer of 1959, after eight years of marital bedlam and domestic turbulence, mom filed for divorce from dad. And from the moment we moved out of the little house with the cupola window at 4th and Lincoln Streets in Erie, Kansas, none of our lives would ever be the same. The first stop for mom and my older and younger sisters and I was an upstairs apartment at 5th and Butler in Erie—just a few blocks from our former home. Looking out from the kitchen window of our new living quarters, I could still see the old house. I felt if I stared at it long enough, dad would magically come home and move us all back there and everything would return to normal. No matter that, according to my mom, 'normal' was anything but. I am not sure what the 1,232 other townspeople of Erie thought of mom—a 26 year old divorcee with three kids was not generally thought of in a positive way in that era—but Lloyd Lane, the gaunt, middle aged man who owned the rambling house where our apartment was located—clearly was infatuated with her. We weren't at that address for long, but I remember him acting very peculiar around mom any time he was near her. Together with acquaintance Chin Moses, they became good friends and spent time visiting, fishing and concocting home brew in Lloyd's claw foot bathtub—the pungent, cider-tinged aroma of which I can still smell to this very day. Little did I know that all the while mom had been carrying on a clandestine romance with an older man in Chanute, Kansas, 16 miles northwest of Erie. Before you could say 'kindergarten' mom was re-married to a stern, humorless man named Bob Wright and we were packing our bags once again—this time for another town. It was 1960. Compared to the tiny village of Erie, Chanute was a virtual metropolis of 10,849 residents. I had been regaled with stories of the town teeming with commerce and truck, train and bus traffic—and I couldn't wait to get there to check it all out. Imagine, then, my acute disappointment when learning that the house we would be living at with Bob and his two sons from a previous marriage was actually on the outskirts of town o