Pat & Irene

Taken in the late 1980's

 

On June 16, 1943, Pat married Irene Bowen.  Irene had a son, Bobby, who was twelve years old at the time.  Bobby's father, Robert Otey Bowen, had died when Bobby was five, so Pat was the only father that Bobby could ever remember.  Pat loved Bobby as much as if he were his own son, and was very proud of him. Pat and Irene moved a lot after they were married until they retired at Gravois Mills.  While they were living at Coloma, in Carroll county Missouri, they became the parents of a baby girl.  As they were old enough to have grandchildren, and this was Pat's firstborn natural child, they tended to "spare the rod and spoil the child". Pat loved to fish, hunt and trap.  The following story was related to me recently by Janie Colliver, who resides in Carroll county.  Her husband had heard it at the coffee shop when it was related to him by Bill Trussel. "Your Dad was a good hunter & fisherman, but didn't like to get up early in the morning, so he and Bill made a deal that Bill would run the fur traps early in the morning, and he would run them at night, and they would split the bounty.  Bill said he always knew where to set the traps, and always got some nice fur. Bill also remembered when your folks moved one time, and the neighborhood always helped each other move.  He said there was a fire still in the cook stove, and they loaded it on the wagon, and when they got to the place where they were going to live, the fire was still going, and they unloaded and set it up, and didn't have to start a new fire!!!" It's hard for me to relate to Dad ever sleeping late, because by the time I could remember, he always arose early in the mornings and until he retired, often didn't go to bed until very late at night. Some of my earliest memories are when we lived at and operated Sharon store in Saline county.  Sharon is located on C highway between Marshall and Miami.  Neighborhood men would come and play cards at a big round table until late in the evenings.  Dad would also hold "turkey shoots" in the fall with the prizes being turkeys, hams and other items.  We only operated the store for a couple of years before we moved to a large two story farmhouse nearby, referred to by my family, as the Hamner house.  We left the farm after about a year and resided on another small farm near Higbee Missouri for about a year before moving to Bogard, in Carroll county, and operating a restaurant there.  Dad was a wonderful cook, but I imagine most of the cooking fell upon the shoulders of my mother, as Dad was often gone fishing or playing pool in a large game room that was a part of the restaurant.  After running the restaurant for about a year, Dad discovered an opportunity in Slater, in Saline county, that he couldn't resist. We left Bogard, the home that Mom dearly loved and opened a tavern in Slater.  Business was good, and the lease was reasonable, but Dad only ran the tavern for about a year before deciding to farm.  We lived on that farm, known as us as the "Lyons farm" because we had purchased it from Dave Lyons, for about another year and then my Uncle Bob and Aunt Sue Chambers decided to let us rent their much larger farm near Carrollton, so we moved again.  I was in the fourth grade at this time and really hated to leave all my friends, but Mom was delighted with the move, because now we would be just a few miles from her sister, Mary, in the small town of Bogard.  Mom always thought of Bogard as "home".  Of course, Dad, being the adventerous person that he was wouldn't stay on this farm long and about a year later he heard of a small store that was for lease in the Sugartree community of Carroll county.  This store was about ten miles the other side of Carrollton from where Uncle Bob and Aunt Sue's farm was, but still close enough to Bogard that Mom would get to visit with her brother and sisters often.  The best part of this move was that I didn't have to change schools again, as Sugartree was still in the Carrollton school district.  We made many lifelong friends while we lived at Sugartree, even though we only stayed there a couple of years.  Then we found our way to Kansas City area and stayed a while with Aunt Sue and Uncle Bob in the upstairs of their home in Grandview.   We didn't stay at Aunt Sue and Uncle Bob's long before we found an elderly lady, Mrs. Williams, who was looking for someone to live in her house and care for her.  She was a delightful little lady, but she couldn't hear a sound.  She loved to watch television and often we would go into her living room late at night and turn the sound down, as she didn't realize she had the TV playing at full volume.  While we were living there a tornado struck the southern part of Kansas City, Ruskin Heights, Grandview and several of the other neighboring communities.  Thankfully none of us or Mrs. Williams was hurt.  I helped with some of the clean-up in the area, and it was amazing the items we found and placed in the destroyed Ruskin Heights Shopping Center, hoping the owners would find them.  Dad was a very stubborn man, and on the evening of the tornado he decided he just had to go check on his mother and sister, who lived near Raytown.  He proceeded down 71 Highway to the area of the bank and Chevrolet dealer when he was stopped by a policeman.  Dad said that we were going through because he had to check on his mother and sister.  The policeman placed his hand on his gun and told Dad that they were picking up dead people right and left and there were hot power lines down and no one was going through.  This was one of the few times that I ever saw my father not get his way.  We turned around and went all the way through North Kansas City and around the storm area and entered Raytown from the other side to find that the house that his mother and sister lived in had escaped the storm by about seven blocks and that they were OK but out of electricity.  I used to climb a maple tree in Mrs. Williams yard, just outside her window, and read for hours and hours at a time.  She delighted in watching me as I sat in the branches of the tree with my book.  When we decided to move, she had me climb the tree and place ribbons on my favorite perch, so she would be able to look out the window and remember me sitting there.  From there we decided to lease a resort called Morning Sun Lodge, on the Lake of the Ozarks.  It was a fun place to live, even in the winter, when Dad kept his job with Midwest Tree Service in Kansas City.  We stayed at the resort for almost exactly a year, during which Dad got to fish a lot every week-end in the winter and all summer long.  My ill health forced us to return to the Kansas City area so I could be attended to by a group of wonderful doctors in Raytown.  Soon we discovered that Mrs. Williams was once again without a caretaker, so we moved back into our old home.