Kansas City With The Russian Accent

From The Mind of One Russian Jewish American

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  • Old Newspapers: Red Satellite Up With Dog

    On November 3, 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik II timed to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. Sputnik II was bigger and better than Sputnik I and carried a dog Laika – the first animal to orbit the Earth.

    The American headlines did not suffer from subtlety and political correctness at that time:

    Kansas City Star coverage of Sputnik II

    *closeup of the article.

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  • Old Photos: June Wedding

    Few words before this post. No, I did not become a fan of weddings, but I thought that the fact that this wedding happened exactly 63 years ago today is the neatest thing; people in these photos should be in their 80’s so it’s not impossible that someone would remember being there or hearing about it. None of the text below belongs to me, it was reproduced from the Life Magazine article from July 14th, 1947, which has many additional photos and a detailed description of the preparations and the ceremony. Although my friend Hyperblogal was already operating his photography business in 1947 these photos were not taken by him; a famous Life Magazine photographer Nina Leen gets the credit for them. Lastly, this is going to be long, so keep scrolling. More photos can be found here.

    The boom in weddings, which was set off at the end of the war is still going strong. Last month it was responsible for a bumper crop of brides throughout the U.S. Some of the weddings were big and grand, others small and quiet, but every one was a major event in the lives of the participants. As a tribute to this burgeoning romanticism, Life herewith presents a picture album of a U.S. wedding which took a place in Kansas City, Mo. on June 21 (*1947).

    The bride was blue-eyed, blond Barbara Winn, 23–year old daughter of Mr.and Mrs. Edward Lawrence Winn of 1022 West 64 Street Terrace, Kansas City. Her father is well-to-do contractor. The groom was Thomas Ferrel Bailey, 23, of Topeka, Kan., whom Barbara first met at a New Year’s Eve party in 1945. Tom had just been discharged from the U.S. Army Air Forces as an air cadet and was returning to complete his studies at the University of Kansas, from which Barbara graduated in 1945.

    When Barbara and Tom announced their engagement, they decided that they wanted a big wedding to entertain all their friends. Barbara’s mother particularly liked the idea because she had eloped herself and had missed the excitement of a big church ceremony. And since Barbara was his only daughter, her father was anxious to make the wedding a resounding success. For the groom the wedding preparations were pretty hectic because he was being graduated form the University of Kansas on the Monday before the Saturday ceremony and was piloting his owe plane back and forth to his home in Topeka on countless last-minute errands.

    A large wedding like Barbara’s is one of the modern society’s elaborate rites. In staging it Barbara was constantly helped by her parents and her brother Larry, but like most American girls she made all the decisions herself. It was in fact a full time job. How she brought it to a happy conclusion is shown below.

    Tom Ferrell and Barbara Winn planning their June wedding.©Time, Nina Leen.
    Tom Ferell and Barbara Winn consulting with the minister in their chuch before the wedding.©Time, Nina Leen.
    A Wasserman test is given to Barbara for $2. As a means of checking social diseases the State of Missouri wisely requires every couple to pass this painless blood test before they can be married. ©Time, Nina Leen.
    Bride Barbara Winn shopping with her mother for a wedding cake for her wedding. Six weeks before the wedding Barbara finally ordered a six-layer cake from a caterer who specializes in wedding cakes. It was a marvelous thing adorned with candy gardenias and bowknots. It cost $100 and rested in a wreath of real gardenias.©Time, Nina Leen.
    Invitations are a chore for Barbara's family. They sit around the dining room table, addressing 525 envelopes 5 weeks before the wedding. All guests were invited to both the wedding and the reception.©Time, Nina Leen.
    Bride Barbara Winn's father.©Time, Nina Leen.©Time, Nina Leen.
    Bride Barbara Winn's home.©Time, Nina Leen.
    Barbara Winn and her mother buying the flowers for her June wedding.©Time, Nina Leen.
    Barbara Winn and Tom Ferell eating a barbecue supper given by Barbara's bridesmaids before the wedding.©Time, Nina Leen.
    Wedding presents sitting in Barbara Winn's bedroom before her wedding.©Time, Nina Leen.
    Tom Ferell and Barbara Winn attending their bridal dinner before their wedding.©Time, Nina Leen.
    Bride Barbara Winn wearing her new wedding dress for her wedding.©Time, Nina Leen.
    Bride Barbara Winn wearing a blue garter on her leg for her wedding.©Time, Nina Leen.

    Groomsman,possibly future Johnson County Congressman Congressman Larry Winn.©Time, Nina Leen.
    Bridesmaids.©Time, Nina Leen.
    The Bride Barbara Winn.©Time, Nina Leen.
    Tom Ferell and Barbara Winn walking up the aisle during their wedding.©Time, Nina Leen.
    Reception.©Time, Nina Leen.
    Cutting the Cake.©Time, Nina Leen.
    ©Time, Nina Leen.
    ©Time, Nina Leen.
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  • Checked Off My Bucket List: Pacific Coast

    I’ve always wanted to drive along the Pacific Coast. Many times at work I would look at the breathtaking images taken from the California State Route 1 and make a mental note to make it there, so I can add my own photographs to the enormous pile that already exists. So as soon as we got off the train we proceeded to rent a car and spend the next 36 hours exploring the Coast, Monterey, Big Sur an everything in between. We returned the car the 450 miles later, 450 miles of the best-looking scenic drive in the country. Even though we had to hurry through the area pressed by the vacation plans, we weren’t disappointed. We drove through a cloud, ate ice cream in Santa Cruz, spent a night in Monterey where we visited the Cannery Row and the best Aquarium in the country, stopped to take photos of elephant seals and a waterfall. But most of all it was about enjoying the view and loving the ride.

    On the unrelated note, cars that don’t use ignition keys are highly overrated and annoying. I hope it’s not a trend.

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  • Contents Of My Stomach

    The singer “was a virtual skeleton – barely eating and with only pills in his stomach at the time he died”, the paper said.

    Imagine you are a coroner, crappy profession that it already is, your days are filled with horrible, bloody, disgustingly smelling, disfigured things that no one in the right state of mind would even want to be in the same building with, and instead of enjoying a nice sunny LA day you have to dissect a skeleton-looking, hairless, needle-ridden body of a weird celebrity. Not only do you have to chisel off the layers of plaster and artificial prosthetic parts, you for some ungodly reason have to cut his stomach open to see what he was eating before he croaked. It’s in the times like this that you must feel that you should’ve picked another specialty like a podiatrist or a proctologist, albeit their worldview is somewhat constricted.

    That’s why I think every person should carry a card at all times with the contents of their stomach for the past 48 hours as a way to make the job of forensic pathologists just a little bit easier.

    Let’s see, today my stomach contains:

    • a cup of coffee
    • cheese and turkey sandwich
    • a orange/apricot jelly (from Bermuda) and toast
    • cherries
    • persimmon
    • apple
    • some frozen yogurt from Yummo (mix of 3 flavors) because they don’t sell Korean tacos on Monday
    • chicken patty
    • a piece of dried banana
    • salad (Caesar dressing)
    • cheese quesadilla
    • corn
    • some lemonade
    • a piece of Tippins coconut-creme pie

    I think that’s it. There maybe some leftovers of this cinnamon roll from Barb’s Kolache Bakery in Shawnee from a couple of days ago
    and just a little bit of the cherry kolache ( I gave the other ones away)

    but that’s just being too thorough.

    See this is not so hard.
    Maybe your coroner will be grateful for not having to dig through your rotting guts and will not “leak” embarrassing details of your autopsy to the media. In my book, that’s just paying it forward.

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  • Don’t Shave Me, Bro!

    I am all about killing and eating tasty chickens but I draw the line at shaving them!

    IMG00246

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