Monday, January 19, 2015

June 3 and 5, 1953

Thur Morning June 3, 1953

Dear Folks

I haven’t had time to let you know that everything is ok.  I got back last night about .  I got some pictures back that we took the first week at Hunter Liggett.  I got your box.  It was sure good.  Well I have to close now.  I will write later.  We have a night problem tonight so it will be Fri or later before I can write.
Love, Ted

PS you can send the money anytime.






Friday June 5, 1953

Dear Mom and Dad

How are you.  I haven’t had much time to write.  I had a night firing problem last night and I did not get back until about .  I got up at  this morn and we didn’t leave till about .

Last night we fired all tracers at targets that were about 200 yard in front of us.  They turned a spot light on the targets.  The lights were two miles away and in back of us.  The instructor said you could read a newspaper 35 miles away from the light.

We have some good classes for the next 2 weeks.  We get to fire a lot of live ammo.  We have several convoys too.

We start our 15th week today.  Yesterday I stayed in the Btry area.  They gave me 11 new men that hadn’t started basic yet and I had to get then to clean up the bivouac area, except for the tents the kitchen used and all the stove water cans etc.  Everything was lined up on the parade ground to be worked on.

We get a pass tomorrow, I guess that will be the last one.  I don’t know what I will do yet.  I want to take my shirts some place and have them worked on. 

I might need a little more money.  If I do I will call you and let you know.

I haven’t heard anymore about the school.  I hope it turns out to be something good and I hope I stay in the states or go to Europe.

Well I don’t have much more.  I haven’t written to Margie for over a week.  I just don’t have much time to write.
Love, Ted

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

May 31, 1953

Sunday May 31, 1953

Dear Mon, Dad, and Snapper

How is everything today.  It was nice to talk to you last night.  I was wanting to call you all day long but I didn’t think I would be in camp.  It was good to get back to a bed and some hot food.  We go back out about and will probably stay in tents for the rest of the time we are out.  I think we will be back about Thur.

I have really climbed some hills while I have been gone.  Friday we marched 12 miles to get on some trucks; it took about 3 hours.  We carried our field packs all the way.

Friday we had a Korean night problem.  We stayed awake all night in our fox holes.  Well at least we were supposed to stay awake.  They had tanks running all around the area.  The noise coupled with the thought that a tank would run over us sort of kept us awake.  They kept setting off dynamite and dropping flour sacks and even had some psychological war fare.  They played records of Marilyn Monroe talking and singing.  It was interesting.  The North Koreans do that to make you home sick they tell us.

Saturday we came in and worked around the barracks etc.  I went to the show last night.  I saw “Stage Shows.”  They have some good movies and we don’t even have to pay.

Well not much more to say.  I’ll write again this week.

Love, Ted

Sunday, January 11, 2015

May 27, 1953

Wed  May 27. 1053

Dear Mom, Dad, and Snapper

Well everything is going fine.  Sunday we went into the base camp for KP Monday.  We ate good there.  Steak for breakfast.  I guarded the kitchen Sunday night and got to sleep till Monday .  The KP stayed Monday too, we came back out Tues .  I guarded Monday night also.  I ate all night long.

I got you package Tues morning.  I have plenty of cigarettes now.  The cookies were sure good.  We have hot breakfast and then hot C rations at  and cold C rations at night.  I carried the cookies, crackers and cheese out to the field and we at them.  I saved the candy and sardines.  I had the sardines for dinner last night along with some cold pork beans.  I had to eat everything fast because I couldn’t carry all of it, we move all the time and carry everything we have.  Next week we will be in tents again and it will be better if we have packages.  We go back to the Camp Roberts area about Fri and finish our bivouac.  So far I have enjoyed it.

I was an aggressor last night and didn’t have to dig a fox hole.  All the guys have to did fox holes to sleep in.  Martin and I are still together.  He has KP with me and he was an aggressor with me last night.  We laid our stuff down on the ground and slept next to each other.  Really kept warm that way.  The aggressors play the part of the enemy.  We slip into camp and attack them etc.

We are on one of the highest ridges on the Hunter Ligett Militia Reservation.  They call them hills here but I would call them mountains.  The weather out here is still the same.  It hasn’t rained yet.  If it rains wile we are in the open we have our ponchos so we wont get wet. 

I think you should plan on sending me $50 in money orders.  I wont need it for a while.  Well not much more to say.  I’ll write again.  Everything is fine.
Love, Ted

Friday, January 9, 2015

May 23, 1953

Saturday  May 23, 1953

Dear Mom, Dad, and Snapper

How are you.  I am in my pup tent writing.  We packed up Thurs night and left about  in the morning and came to Hunter Liggett Militia Reservation.  We came by truck.  We put up our tents and in the afternoon we had a patrolling problem and a night patrolling problem last night.  Everything is done just like it would be a real war zone.  We eat ten yards apart in the chow line, always ware our steel helmets, cartridge belts, and rifle every place we go.  We got up at 7 this morning and moved to a new area.  We will be here till Monday.  Then we will be moving all the time.  No tents or anything.

I had to stand guard last night from about 1 to 2 and .  That canned heat is good.  It really warms the tent up.  Martin and I are bunking together.

I got your cookies Thur night.  They were good.  I didn’t get to eat them all and couldn’t bring them with me.  I couldn’t carry all that I would have liked to.  The flash light comes in handy when we are in the tent at night.

We shaved this morning after we got in our new area.  Used our steel pots and cold water.  Took some pictures of it.  I sleep fairly warm.  I sleep with my clothes on and 2 blankets on me. 

Did you get my card?  I had to send it early.  I sent some pictures too.  The pictures you sent were good.  Some of the guys are playing baseball this afternoon. 

It wont be too long till I’ll be home.  About 2 weeks after this bivouac.  I don’t know how much money I will need to get home.  I’ll let you know.  Well I can’t think of much more to say.  I’ll write the next chance I get.
Love, Ted

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

May 20, 1947

Wed  night May 20 1953

Dear Folks

I am out in the field tonight.  Just finished dinner.  We are going on a night compass course.  We went out last night on squad tactics.  We got back to camp about  and they gave us coffee and sandwiches.  We fired recoilless rifles again and had a demonstration on the flame thrower.  Tomorrow night we will be getting ready for bivouac Friday.  Our company commander told us that we will be eating c rations 2 times a day and sleeping out in fox holes and on the ground.  No tents.  We will have to carry everything on our backs. 

I really feel bad that I forgot Snapper’s birthday.  Seems like it slipped up on me kind of fast.  I was remembering it all the time up till the last 3 or 4 days.  If you get him something I will buy it.  I won’t be able to get anything for a couple of weeks. 

Well I better close for now while I can.  I’ll mail this tonight or in the morn.  Whish I cold write you more .  I don’t feel right unless I write you.  I am going to carry some stationery on bivouac.  I got your letters last night in the field.  The pictures were good.
All my love, Ted

Tell Margie I won’t be able to write for a while.


Love, Ted

Monday, January 5, 2015

May 18, 1953

Monday  May 18, 1953

Dear Folks

Well don’t have much time to write.  I have to move tonight.  About 37 guys are moving out of our Btry.  They joined the Regular Army and they got their orders.  So they are going to make their barracks else where.  I will be in the third platoon now.

I was going to go to church tonight but didn’t.  Guess I will later.

Saturday was the big parade, about 13,000 were in it.  Wish you could have seen it.  Sat afternoon we didn’t do much of anything.  I went to the show Sat night and saw Young Bess.  It was a real good picture. 

I got plenty of sleep Sat and Sun.  Sunday they let us go to town and get things for bivouac.  I didn’t get all I needed.  I will get soap etc at the PX.

4 of us went bowling.  We bought some canned heat.  A case of 216 cost $9 About 2 dollars a piece.  We are selling it for 25 cents or five for a dollar.  It cost us less than 5 cents a can.  We should make about $10 a piece on it.  We have our money back already.  We are going to get double for it on bivouac.

We are still on recoilless rifles.  Tomorrow  is the last day.  I have a night problem Tues and Weds night.  Friday we leave for bivouac.  I won’t be able to write for awhile now.  May be Thurs night. 

I got your cookies and candy and flashlight and 2 letters tonight.  Cookies are really good.  I think I will close for now.  I’ll write you the next chance I get.  Tell Talent hello and all the guys.
Love, Ted

Sunday, January 4, 2015

The Most Popular Girl at Van Horn

The most popular girl in all of Van Horn my Junior and Senior year was my on again off again steady girl friend.   At least her mother and father thought she must have been because she dated a lot of different boys all the time, at least so they thought.

It wasn't that her parents didn't like me, which if they didn't like me I could not blame them for the way I conducted myself many times, it was just that they thought she was not old enough to tie herself down to one guy.  Of course they were right, but tell that to any of those who were star crossed teen age items back in the day.

We would not be detoured from continuing our romance in some fashion or another and I suspect she rose such a fuss that her parents relented and let her see me  once a week I think.  But of course that was not enough.

So we would have a real date on Friday and then on Saturday I would have one of my friends pick her up at her house, go inside and meet her mother and father while I waited on the corner down the street or on the floor of the back seat of the car.  Risky and dangerous we were.

I know at least five different guys who were my friends and mutual friends of both or ours who would run the gauntlet so our relations ship would last and carry us on to perpetual bliss.

We went away to college and she got some sence, started giving other boys a chance at romance and married some guy with in a couple of years or so I am told to my heart sick feeling of rejection. .  I don't know if her parents ever caught on to hour duplicity or not.  I have never been able to ask her because my high school heart throb and I have not spoken or scene each other for  going on 50 years.  And besides I would really feel stupid if she didn't even remember our daring escapades.


I had not been to a Van Horn Football game in over 30 years.  Seems like Tom Koely and I went to one when the Falcons were finally playing for the Interscholastic League Championship but don’t know exactly when that was.  It was a first in school history.   Funny thing is I don’t remember if they won or lots.

When I was in High School I never saw a football game from beginning to end.  The last two years I was playing and my sophomore year I was too interested in trying to talk, with some success I might add, my girl friend, who shall remain nameless, to forgo the second half and head out towards the school buses that were parked un locked and with no attendants. 

But the other night Bev and I had nothing planned and I suggested that we see if Van Horn was playing and go to the game.  Those of us who are in our senior years get in free to all the high school sporting events sponsored by the Independence School District.  Being on social security one has to find free entertainment where one can you know.

When I was in high school Van Horn was part of the Kansas City School District and a fine district it was.  But because of miss management, forced busing, redistricting, family disintegration, lack of continuity of leadership, and a host of other reason real or imagined the district for many years was just a shadow of itself and Van Horn was one of the causalities. So much so that eventually a grass root effort lead by concerned local citizens and spearheaded politically by Victor Callahan, State Senator from the area bought Van Horn under the auspices of the Independence Board of Education.  Van Horn now has a bright future.  An alumni association has been established, scholarships have been given, and a hall of honor established for distinguished graduates.  I have been over looked for the last two years but eventually they will find me and be proclaimed as one of the honorees.  Well perhaps.

The Van Horn Falcons played the Butler Bears the night we went and unfortunately lost.  However the score on the field may have spelled defeat but those in the stands, kids, band, parents and all were winners.  The enthusiasm and diversity represented by the crowd, let alone those on the field, stood out and made me think that this is how it is supposed to be.  There were people of different races and ethnicity sitting side by side hand in hand, a far different picture than when I went to school there, but those were secondary identification marks.  First they were Falcons.  Nothing else had really changed since I was a young man playing or watching, at least the first half of the games.  Kids were laughing, yelling support, acting stupid, being courteous to the elders (which to my chagrins was me) and conducted themselves in such a manner as to make me proud that I had gone to school there. 

 Home coming is next week.  I think I will go.  Bev wants me to drag out my old letter jacket and let her ware it and if I can find my class ring she wants to put it on a chain around her neck. 


None of us can or should go back to Van Horn and expect it to be ours again, we passed that torch a long time ago.  But just perhaps for a few fleeting moments we will return to those days of yesteryear and remember what it is like to have the rest of your life ahead of you and not even realize it.  And if I am real lucky I might be able to talk Bev into slipping off to the buss at half time.


You cannot so it seems have a get together of Van Horn alumni of any size without eventually talking about the swimming pool at Van Horn.  There is always the talk of the boys swimming nude and girls having to ware swim suits that had holes.  The girls also suffered from the humiliation of what I have heard one female alumnus refer to as the “nude parade” after they showered.


I don’t remember feeling humiliated standing in the buff lined up in the shower hall way leading to the swimming pool, in fact no one really gave it much thought or so it seemed at the time.  The one thing that is why in this day and age of openness and acceptance such a thing would never happen and be fodder for lawsuits towards school districts and accusations of teacher perversion.  I mean wasn’t it more conservative back then?  Wasn’t modesty more prevalent?  Apparently not for we all got naked and paraded around as instructed without any thought of impropriety.


Many years later a teacher at Northeast told me that since our skinny dipping days that studies have shown that at least 5% of all teenagers are Gay or at least lean in that direction and the practice was stopped.  If that is true I suppose the percentage has not changed much and that means that in the 1965 graduating class of more than 500  there were at least 25 of our class mates when standing around naked with the same sex were very uncomfortable and considered by officials as psychologically damaging. 


I can honestly say that to this day I have no inkling of who the 25 might have been.  We had some frail looking kids, some shy kids, and some kids that were just strange but to consider them Gay or in those days we said queer or homo never even occurred to me.  The part that bothers me the most is that those who were (and I suspect they were not the shy, frail, or strange ones) must have suffered and done so in silence.  What stress they must have gone through each swim day or while taking the mandatory shower after PE.


Kids are more open and accepting today but I bet many kids still suffer and think they are some kind of deviant and are picked on or bullied.  School officials have recognized this problem and have implemented programs and procedures to eradicate the tyranny of the majority.  I suspect the problem is becoming less and less even though it would not seem like it if you were the target of such harassment.


I don’t know what the swimming attire is now or how many of the schools even have pools nor do I have any clue if showering after PE is mandatory.  If I were to ask the school system I would probably be put on a watch list of some sort and when I ran for president some day my asking the question would be made public and the only support I would receive would be from the Rainbow Coalition.

Van Horn – Otto Kaifes


One time on face book I asked people who their favorite teacher was or which teacher influenced them the most.  It seems that Mr. Kaifes, math teacher and coach, won hands down.  So many voted for him that I began to think I was the only student that never had him for a teacher.  In fact I can never remember even talking to him or either one of us acknowledging the others existence even with a casual nodding of the head while we passed each other in the hall way.  I knew him by sight of course and he always sort of scared me a little.  He always seemed to have a scowl or a ‘don’t mess with me’ look.  I stayed clear of him but from what all I can gather this side of graduation it was my loss.

My ability to solve for an unknown might have been enhanced if I had him for algebra and perhaps geometry would not have mystified me so, for I understand he was a very good teacher and well liked, which in high school is tantamount to the same thing usually. 


Otto Kaifes appears to have had that intangible that many otherwise very good teachers don’t ever quite grasp.  More than one of his former students have told me he was a mentor, a confident, and a man who gave sound advice even if not always taken.  I will just have to take their word for it because I will never know - all is hearsay.  Hearsay however sometimes is as good as truth and even makes a better story. 


Like I stated above, I never knew or even talked to Mr. Kaifes, but I do have a short story about him.  It was told to me by Walt Zuber, whom some of you may know.  Walt became a teacher at Van Horn in 1966 the year after I graduated.  I met Zuber when he was a counselor at Northeast and I taught ESL there after returning from Alaska.  Walt was very entertaining in the teacher’s lounge and told me many stories about my old teachers at Van Horn.  He was surprised I never had Mr. Kaifes and told me a short story about him.  Walt is not above letting fact interfere with a good story especially when it is about some one else so what I relate next I have no way of determining if it is true or not – it is just hearsay you see. 


Kaifes, according to Walt, always drove cars that were old and dilapidated.  He never owned a new car and always bought a junked one for cash.  I don’t think that is too outlandish given what teachers must have made back then.  Zuber said Kaifes, would only perform minor maintenance on the car, drive the thing into the ground,  and when it finally did break down he would just take the title to the car that was already signed and notarized, pull the car along the side of the road, leave the signed title on the front seat, abandoned the car where it sat, and get home the best he could.  He would pick up a new almost junked car as soon as he could and start the process all over again.


Walt said Kaifes did get in trouble once or at least admonished by the principal at Van Horn, who might have been Mr. Curtis (thinking of Mr. Curtis still brings chills up and down my spine) for leaving his abandoned car in the parking lot for two weeks.  I guess it was in so bad a shape that no one wanted it.  The story goes that one of his students’ father owned a tow truck and hauled if off for Otto in exchange for some extra tutoring the boy needed.  Of course he did not know that Mr. Kaifes would have provided the tutoring anyway. 

Since Mr. Kaifes and Walt Zuber are still alive I must restate that the only part of this bland and lame story that I can swear to is that which Walt told me.  I don’t mind repeating what Walt told me even if it isn’t true because there is nothing detrimental stated about anyone and if fact paints Mr. Kaifes in a good light I think.  However, if one of you ever run across Kaifes or Zuber you might ask them about the validity of this tale and if you pass an abandoned car you might just stop and check the front seat, one never knows