Suburbia 1955

    Because of the frigid, snowy conditions, I thought I'd post something involving warm and probably hot weather. We moved to Shawnee, a suburb of Kansas City, in 1951. Our house was part of a new development set  in the middle of a cornfield, actually I'm not sure what kind of field it was. But it was a gently rolling area barren of any trees. In this movie from the summer of 1955 we've lived there for four years, but the trees were still shorter than most of us. Mary writes in her memories of her life:

        Going in to 1955 we had two big events.  Both on the 17^th of January.  Nieman School was ready.  All the kids were loaded on a bus, one room at a time, with all their books and supplies and moved from Flint School to Nieman.  Steve no longer would ride the bus.  I took him in the morning along with assorted neighbor children and he walked home.

            The same day The Kansas City Star trial started.  Congress had decided you couldn’t own a newspaper and a radio and TV Station.  Some said the Star [trial] was brought on by Pres. Truman who was mad because they never hit the porch with his paper.  Ray covered it.  The Star lost but Ray got a raise because Mr. Roberts said he did such a good job.

      Glaringly absent from her highlights was one I remember vividly, that the Philadelphia A's moved to Kansas City. We had occasionally gone to the Kansas City Blues, a minor league team of the New York Yankees, but now we were entering the major leagues. (We thought that, but it turned out we were still a farm team of the Yankees, just not officially.) Even to me at five that seemed important. As you can tell from the following clip, Steve quickly donned a shirt celebrating that.

      Nancy Love who was Steve's age lived behind us. She can be seen running into the tent Sally received for her birthday. Also joining us in the tent is another neighbor, Richard Freyermuth.

     Below is the longer clip which even includes the city bus that went by more than once a day. If Mom needed the car, Dad would make his way to and from downtown on the bus. I'm assuming the commute which could take nearly an hour by car, would have been longer on the bus. If Sally and Steve have corrections, let me know.