Beauty In The Sky

Beauty in the Sky         

   I vaguely remember my Aunt telling me years ago that my great grandfather Sanford Speaks was said to have invented one of the insulators you see on telephone poles but never took out a patent on the invention.

   Sanford lived in Linn County, Kansas and as the story goes, he was traveling by horse back in the mid 1880s to Kansas City so he could apply for a patent on his invention when he decided to stop at a tavern for something to eat and drink.  Too many beers loosened his tongue and he started bragging about his insulator and how he would soon be a rich man. With his belly full and his ego sufficiently inflated, he continued his journey. Just twenty miles down the dirt road two armed thugs from the tavern caught up to Sanford and took his invention and any future rewards it might have brought his way.

   My Aunt didn’t hear the story directly from Sanford. It was handed down to her from an older relative when she was a child and we all know how stories can change each time they are told. I do however; have a photo of my great grandfather taken about 1885 that shows him holding up an insulator with a wire some how attached to it with out being tied on so there must be something to the family legend.

    I recently learned that my old friend Jim Mummaw has a collection of approximately sixty five glass insulators. I asked him if he thought there could be any truth to the Sanford Speaks story. “I’m just a beginner in the hobby.” Jim said. “You really need to talk to Charles Brandon out in Overland Park who has one of the largest glass insulator collections in the country.”

  It was as though I had descended into the treasury room of King Tut’s tomb when Charles and I entered a large room in his basement. Literally hundreds and hundreds of beautiful glass insulators filled shelves from the floor to the ceiling on three walls.  Sunlight from a near by window poured over and through vividly colored insulators in a glass cabinet magnifying their beauty. They certainly wouldn’t have looked out of place sitting among King Tut’s gold and prized possessions I thought as we slowly made our way around the room pausing every few feet to closely examine the insulators that looked more like a work of art than a simple component once mass produced by the thousands from the 1850s to the 1950s.

“The insulator is designed to keep the wire off the pole.” Charles said when he noticed the puzzled look on my face as I stared at an oddly shaped one. “You don’t want the wire to come in contact with the pole because the current will bleed off into the ground.”      

     For a hundred years the efforts of inventors to improve the insulators ability to keep the current loss at a minimum and protect them from vandalism created some interesting shapes that resembled every thing from Trojan helmets to salt shakers, ginger bread men, bat ears, Mickey Mouse ears, Pluto the dog, mushrooms, bee hives, bullets, castles and even a giant screw. Some were constructed with pleated glass or copper skirts to create a longer path of resistance for the electrons to follow down the pole to the ground. It was also hoped that the pleated skirts would cause the insulator to break off in small chunks when hit by a bullet or rock instead of completely shattering.

     I noticed that the insulators came in several different shades of blue, green, white, black, purple, amber and gray. “Why is there such a big variation in the colors?” I asked Charles. “They just sit on top of power poles so what difference does it make?”

  “The Power and Telephone Company’s could order insulators in what ever color they wanted.” Charles explained. “The various colors really didn’t mean any thing. The glass manufacturers used what ever glass was left over at the end of the day to make the insulators. Although, in some cases the power company might designate blue to the neutral line going through town and the amber ones for the other two legs. One utility company here in Kansas City used Electric Blue Mickey Mouse insulators with milky swirls embedded in the glass exclusively for the DC cable serving the trolleys running along Brookside into the Plaza area. It’s the only place they were used in the entire country.  Some insulators were clear when they were made but over a period of time the sun turned them purple because of the manganese found in them. They never made red insulators because it took a small amount of gold to make red glass.”

      The vast majority of Charles’s 4,300 insulators are about four inches in height and approximately three inches wide with a few smaller ones about the size of a quarter. The grand daddy of them all proudly sits in a corner of the room. The green giant weighs in at a whopping 57 pounds and measures 18 inches in width making it the biggest insulator ever found in the world.

   I asked Charles what got him interested in such an unusual hobby. “I grew up on the out skirts of St. Joseph, Missouri.” the 52 year old mechanical engineer said. “I was a distance runner in high school back in 1971 and did a lot of my training in the country since it was so close to my house. I especially enjoyed running along the railroad tracks. I’d see signal lines and poles with insulators still attached to them lying off to the side of the rails. I thought they looked pretty cool and unscrewed a couple of them. I figured that carrying one in each hand as I ran would build up some muscles. They were every where and came in so many different sizes, shapes and colors that I started collecting them.”

    In addition to the unusual shapes and jewel like colors, Charles would learn that there were a couple of other key miscues glass manufacturers inadvertently did that attracts collectors.

    The manufacturers weren’t too worried about creating perfect insulators so iron and other impurities were often in the glass when they were made. This would sometimes cause slight imperfections such as milky swirls and other flaws that would make them quite valuable to collector’s decades later. Embossing errors such as backward letters will earn an insulator a spot at the front of a display cabinet.

  Charles showed me a thread less insulator from the 1860s that was simply jammed over a wooden pin on the cross arm of a pole after soaking the pin with oil. Storms and vandals would occasionally knock them loose, so some one designed a plunger in 1871 to swirl out threads as the insulator was being made so it could be spun on to the pin to keep it in place. Drip points at the base of the insulator to help get rid of moisture that could build up from temperature variations and lesson the insulation properties was another clever improvement.

    

  

 

    With inventors constantly upgrading the workability of the glass insulator during the hundred years they were in production, I’m beginning to think the story about my great grandfather might have some truth to it.  I asked Charles what his thoughts were on the Sanford Speaks story.

   “He was obviously proud of what ever his involvement was with that insulator.” Charles said. “Having been in the hobby for 35 years, I don’t recall seeing any photos of some one posing with their insulator. The fact that you don’t see a tie wire holding the wire in place shows more than a remote chance that he devised a new way to hold the wire in place. I would say he was involved in some way.”

   People are still finding the old insulators in places such as abandoned railroad tracks, garage sales, in mines, on trees, on buildings, antique shops, newspapers and from collectors like Charles who sells and trades them as a member of the Missouri Valley Insulator Club.

       It seems the collectors bug has bitten me as I now find myself subconsciously glancing skyward every time I’m in the country. Perhaps I’m hoping that some day I will be driving down a desolate gravel road and suddenly see a long forgotten row of ancient glass insulators high atop a power pole glistening in the morning sun like beautiful rare jewels and I’ll know exactly how Charles Brandon feels. 

WHATSOEVER

A Powerful Beacon 

     

    Like a lighthouse, the tall red brick building sits high atop a hill doing its best to guide people in the right direction.

  Originally built as the Jackson schoolhouse in 1889, the eighteen room structure at 1201 Ewing has been home to the Whatsoever Community Center since 1941.

    Whatsoever was born in 1915 when a group of women from the Independence Boulevard Christian Church in Northeast started a soup kitchen in the basement of a café on Winner Road.

    The centers name came from the bible verse, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it  with thy might.”

  From that little soup kitchen, Whatsoever evolved into an important ally to countless parents in the surrounding neighborhoods.

   I grew up in the Sheffield neighborhood directly north of the center in 1950s and 60s.  Most of the families had an abundance of children, which was great when it came to getting up a game of baseball or football but could spell trouble on summer vacations when we became bored with the games. It’s no different in today’s world. Kids with plenty of idle time and nothing to do can easily get in to trouble.

   Fortunately, Whatsoever was just a few blocks away so we spent a lot of our spare time participating in the many activities they offered such as the game room, art room, boxing and field trips.  

   Even though its been at least forty years since I was last there it hasn’t changed much. A lot of good memories from my childhood came back as Whatsoever executive director, Charlie Gasich and I climbed the creaky 119 year old stairs to the second floor.

    The center has a inspiring feel of hope and expectation similar to Ellis Island where millions of immigrants walked through its doors to gain access to American.      

 Thousands of children from all walks of life including myself have passed through Whatsoever’s wide double doors on their way to becoming adults. Some of them were from poor families, some were immigrants and some were from wealthy families but they all came for the same reason which was and still is the support and guidance provided by the centers staff and the long lasting friendships they develop.

   Because of the age and size of the building I mentioned to Charlie that it wouldn’t surprise me if the old place had a ghost or two roaming the halls late at night after things got quiet. He replied that several people including his self have heard heavy footsteps on the stairs when no one else was in the building. Numerous times, workers have heard faint whispering that sounds like a young girl when they are alone. Cold spots in the middle of summer have been experienced in various rooms.

   Since it was a child’s voice that they heard, I thought it would be interesting to bring in Millers Paranormal Research to see what we could find.

   Millers arrived on a cold Saturday evening last January. Charlie, Whatsoever Youth Services Director, Crystal Rice, my daughter in law Shani Castle and I helped carry up several thousand dollars worth of infra red cameras, tape recorders, digital cameras, emf meters, 35 mm cameras, thermometers and monitors to the second floor. Charlie and Crystal took the paranormal team who has done over a hundred investigations on a tour of the building so they could decide what rooms to use the equipment in.

    Once that was done, all the lights were turned off except one room that was used as the command center.

    Shaker and Seer Misty Maeder who earlier that morning used her psychic abilities to work with three police detectives on a murder case in Pomona, Kansas began leading a small group of us through the pitch black building with only the occasional flash from our cameras to show us the way.

   We didn’t go very far before we encountered the spirit of an older man in one of the offices. Misty talked to him while the rest of us remained quiet. “This man stays here because he wants to see changes.” She explains. “He says he use to donate money to the center when he was alive.”

  The words were no more out of her mouth when Shani nudged me. “Some thing happen to me in the hallway leading to the office.” She said. “ I don’t feel very well. Can you get me outside?” Long time Millers member, Brenda Marble went outside with us to see if she could help. Crying and over come with emotion, Shani said some thing in the dark hallway seem to pass through her body leaving her weak, confused and extremely sad.

“ That was the spirit of the man in the office.” Brenda told us. “We call that experience taking a hit. He did indeed pass through you as he left the room. The feeling is similar to getting hit on the back of your head by a baseball bat but you don’t feel it right away. It drains all your energy, your knees are weak, your head is swimming and you’re about to go down. You will be fine in an hour or so.”

  All though not fully recovered, Shani was ready to continue after thirty minutes or so. As the investigation progressed, Misty found the spirits of two young boys and a little girl.  

 “ The girl died here back when the center was some type of hospital.” Misty said. “She is here all the time but the two boys come and go. They drowned in a nearby creek and are attracted to Whatsoever because of all the kid energy and it’s a place they probably had fun at when they were alive.”

   Three 150 pound heavy bags suspended from the ceiling in the boxing area of the basement were violently swinging in unison as Misty and Brenda entered the room. It was as if some one had pushed each one of them as they walked by but no one else had been in the room since we first arrived.  An infra red camera was set in place to watch the bags but they remained stationary the rest of the evening. Before we left the basement,  Brenda asked for volunteers to stay and quietly sit in the pitch black room for a while. I was just about to take a seat in a comfortable looking chair when I heard a young sounding girl whisper my name. It was very faint but most definitely my name. The two women sitting next to me hadn’t said a word so it wasn’t them. It didn’t scare me but sure got my attention. The entire experience was very interesting as we watched orbs come and go on the monitors and explored all 18 rooms.

    Millers Paranormal Research assures me the spirits aren’t going to hurt any one and just add a little mystique to an old building with a rich history of helping children.

   “Over the years, we’ve had people occasionally stop by to reminisce about their childhood days at Whatsoever.” Charlie said. “ Some of them leave the center money when they die because we affected their lives in some way when they were kids.  Recently, a woman about 75 years old came by to take a trip down memory lane. While looking through the hundreds of pictures we have she came across an old photo of the Hep Cats which was a group comprised of mostly teenagers who came to the center to socialize, dance and listen to music. Her eyes filled with tears as she held the picture and remembered her time with the group as a child.”

      In those days, baseball, football and boxing were the main sports played at Whatsoever. Boxing is still popular but due to the large Hispanic population in the area, soccer is now the favorite sport with some basketball still being played in the large gym behind the main building.

   In addition to sports there are many other activities for eight to sixteen year old kids such as field trips, an art room for projects, a computer room and a place to do your home work. Its all free and you can come as often as you like. Drug and alcohol prevention,  literacy, education and other youth development programs take place after school and during the summer.

   They also do meals on wheels for seniors, some senior socialization, infant toddler care for children six weeks to two years old and a pre school for children two to six years old.

  I asked Charlie if it was expensive to keep the old building up and running.

“Yes it is.” he said. “ Using our old furnace for just three hours a day this winter cost us between 1,500 and 2,000 dollars a month. It recently died and people in the community and board members rallied to raise money to have a new one installed. KCPL also helped because the new furnace will be more energy efficient and save us money. We hope to raise enough money to replace the air conditioning units next.”

  United Way, Combat, various foundations, fund raisers and private donations keep the center going.

    Charlie is no stranger to the Northeast area. The fifty one year old grew up in the east bottoms, went to grade school at Assumption and graduated from Saint Pius in 1974. His father and two sisters still live in the bottoms. He is executive director but mops floors, delivers meals on wheels and fixes what ever needs fixing.

  Charlie and his staff of seven full time and two part time employees work long hours but its worth it when a kid comes back a few years later and gives them a big thank you for turning their life around. He estimates that close to10,000 kids have walked through Whatsoever’s doors in his thirteen years on the job and every year brings in new ones.   

  All six of my children spent a great deal of their time at Whatsoever as they grew up. I asked my oldest daughter Angela, who is the program administrator for Combat, what the community center meant to her.

     “ Whatsoever had a significant impact in my life.” She said. “They guided me thru various phases as I grew up.  The people at Whatsoever were like parents, friends, employers, disciplinarians and educators. They molded and encouraged young people providing them with hope and opportunities. Whatsoever was always that big red brick building that guided us into the future. They were always there if we were lost, or more importantly, just needed direction.  I partially credit Whatsoever for me being who I am today and cherish all of the many memories from a small child to when I graduated college.”

   Like a lighthouse, Whatsoever casts powerful beacon of light in the darkness to guide people to safety.

   Come in and quietly look at the wonderful old photos and you might just hear an ever so faint voice whisper some thing in your ear.