N o other holiday unites people the way the Fourth of July does. Vegetarians don’t eat turkey at Thanksgiving. The only religion that celebrates Christmas is, oddly enough, Christianity (and as much as Pat Robertson hates to admit it, not everyone in America is Christian). Many people, myself often included, are asleep by the time midnight rolls around on New Year’s Eve.
VIDEO
Ricky and Fancy were severely punished — grounded for a month. Among the grievances articulated by their irate parents: destruction of household appliances, disabling of the family automobiles, staying out past midnight without permission and, in Fancy’s case, coming within a hare’s breath of breaking her poor father’s back when he lay down on his bed with the intention of reading the last tragic chapter of Madame Bovary.
I was an only child, and my mother worked at a grocery store in the Brookside area named Buckner’s. She always made divinity at Christmastime to sell to the store’s many customers. She later married the owner’s son. But I digress. Back then, the late 1930s, White Castle hamburgers were the very best.
Neither one of them can remember a time they did not know each other. In 1937 their mothers put their babies, Jack Klee and Vivian Eckert, in a playpen together while the families visited.
T he arrival of the warm weather puts me in the mood to throw a summer soiree. I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t entertained. Now I’m ready to dust off my screened porch, sweep out the back courtyard and fill it with friends. Here are a few tips I’ll be following as I entertain this summer. Perhaps they will help inspire you, too.
Kansas City photographer Gloria Baker Feinstein last year traveled to orphanages in Uganda to take pictures of children and bring attention to their plight.
Fourteen years ago Johnson County was developing into a major force in the metro area. Many people living “out south” were contributing greatly to the community through volunteerism but without much recognition. So the Volunteer Center of Johnson County created a gala to honor them, and hundreds of residents, thirsty for a fancy fundraiser in their own neck of the woods, flocked to the party.
