Long ago on independence square (Kansas City, St. Louis: construction, school district, university)

[WCHS'59]

Here are some reminisces concerning McCoy grade school at 1010 South Pearl in Independence, now the Music/Arts Institute. I hope Sally36 or anyone else can respond as to their remembrances.

I attended Kindergarten through sixth grade at McCoy.

Miss Maloney was my Kindergarten teacher and we did not seem to get along. I still remember crying when she scolded me. It was probably my fault though. On one occasion, I wanted to color my pictures with crayons by rubbing hard. I broke some crayons doing so. She insisted I rub lightly to fill in the pictures.

Miss Maloney sent a note home one day saying that I was having trouble seeing things. Next thing I knew I was in Dr. Sturges office on north Liberty Street (he later moved over on north Main Street) and I had new glasses and have worn glasses all day every day since. One day before going home from school I was climbing on the raised stone works (now gone) on the stone wall in front of school, slipped, and busted one lens of my new glasses.

At the beginning of school, we brought throw rugs to Kindergarten with us so that we could take a nap by putting the rug on the floor and lying on it.

There were no school buses. Everyone walked. Years later, I thought that my walk was several miles but sometime ago I clocked the distance at six-tenths of a mile.

My first grade teacher was Miss Lyle; second grade Miss Booth; third Miss Wallace; fourth Miss Barton; fifth Miss Valbracht; and sixth Miss Read. Miss Vada Trask was the principal. There were no male teachers in the entire school. Miss Read got married early in the school year and she was always talking about her Joe.

The janitor was Mr. Showeger (sp) and he manually rang the bell all day long for call to class, recess, lunch, etc. He stuck what appeared to me to be a strange looking key into a socket on the wall and rang the bell using his pocket watch to time the ring. There was only one clock in the entire school and that was on the wall near the principal’s office on the third floor.

Coats, packed lunches from home, and miscellaneous school supplies were kept in large wood door closets within each room. Volleyball, baseball, and basketball equipment was also stored in these closets for recess and lunch time games. There were no volleyball nets. We used the volleyballs to play dodge ball. There were also teeter totters, a big slide, swings, a “Jungle Jim” climbing apparatus, merry go round, etc. A parking area for bicycles was next to the big slide.

One of the teeter totter games was to have a boy on each end trying to buck the other guy off by slamming your end of the teeter board hard to the ground. Or, having the other guy in the air and just getting off your end causing the other guy to fall. These shenanigans were extremely dangerous but no one got hurt and I do not recall the teachers ever getting word we were doing this sort of thing.

I seem to recall there were around 600 kids at McCoy when I left for junior high. At some point, some kids had to start going to the new Benton School because of the overcrowding. The original part of McCoy was built around 1910. A pretty good sized addition was built on the north before I arrived. While I was there more classrooms were built in the rear of the school.

Twice in Miss Valbracht’s fifth grade class, they had to bring in another row of desks to accommodate several new students. I seem to recall the number of kids in the huge room was 57. That sounds really large but there was a surge of new kids and I remember the teacher saying that her class was just too big and nothing could be done about it.

Despite that many kids in one room the room quieted when prompted by the teacher. Parents taught their kids to behave and this was reflected in the classroom. However, everyone would talk when the teacher left the room and the longer she was out the louder it would get. Paper airplanes would fly also.

Our desks were the type that had an ink well, the writing surface top came up, and items were stored underneath. The writing surface also connected to the seat in front. The seats and writing surfaces were bolted to two wood runners about eighteen inches, or so, apart running down the room. Needless to say, there was no air conditioning.

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The boy’s restroom was in the basement of the original part as was the cafeteria and Kindergarten. I cannot recall where the girl’s restroom was located.

It was a big deal to become a sixth grader and then be able to get out of class and go down to the cafeteria and set the tables and put the milk out for everyone at lunch time. We got to have lunch before everyone else, also. Lunch was free in return for the light labor.

When I started eating in the cafeteria in the first grade, the cost was fifteen cents.

Another way for the boys to get out of class early was to be a Safety Patrol Boy. We wore white “Sam Brown” belts with a badge furnished by the American Automobile Association and carried a flag that I think was half green and half yellow. We would be at the major street intersections and stop motorists with the flags when the kids crossed. There were stop signs at the intersections but the school felt the safety patrol boys were needed anyway.

When the Music Arts Institute rehabbed McCoy a few years ago, the first thing I noticed was the new windows. The McCoy teachers had to use long poles to open and close the huge old windows.

Half a block away, on the corner of South Pearl and east South Street was a mom and pop grocery store and we bought our school supplies there. A pack of eight crayons cost 5 cents. That store today looks like it did back then but is now living quarters for someone.

In the fifth or sixth grade, I got into trouble one day for hitting a volleyball so hard that it landed on the roof of the school and it did not come back down. Of course, I was trying to see how high it would go.

In the third grade, I was arguing with two girls and one of them pushed me into a huge bottom level window that was for the janitor area in the basement. The window had a flimsy wire guard that kept me from going into the basement but the glass shattered. We all thought we were going to prison but all we could do was look at the damage rather than run away. Mr. Showeger soon arrived from inside and surveyed the broken glass. Looking up at us he asked what happened. We all said we did not know. He said that we must know something but we kept denying it. Afterwards, I was scared for several few days that he had reported me to the principal but apparently he did not.

While I was in the sixth grade, there would be seventh and eighth graders, former McCoy students, who would get off their bus near the school and come to visit the teacher. The teacher always seemed to love this and we would usually be reading while they quietly talked. I always wanted to get to junior high school so that I could make the same kind of visit and talk with the teacher. But I never did.

[Mad Anthonie]

I'll answer some of this now, and more later. Garden chores await...

Originally Posted by WCHS'59

For instance I thought Bostian Chevrolet was on Lexington but someone earlier mentioned it was on Maple and I think I can go along with that.

I'm pretty sure both answers are correct. If that was the dealership in the 400 block the showroom faced Maple, the service entrance was in the lower level opening onto Lexington.

Originally Posted by WCHS'59

It was called Browns Market and service station then but then became the C&J United Super Market...

At any rate, I went to work as a teenager at the C&J United Super at 23rd and Kiger. It was a small store.

My father-in-law was a good friend of one of the owners, Mel Waits. The J of C&J was for his wife Jane.

Originally Posted by WCHS'59

In that same area was formerly an archery company, York Archery, the manufacturer of bows, arrows, and archery accessories. When I attended Central Missouri State (now University of Central Missouri) in the early sixties and took an archery class, all of the equipment was manufactured in Independence.

That building still stands, I'm not sure if it is in use. Here is how it looked during a fire in the early 1970s.

[WCHS'59]

Mad, glad you have this information. York Archery was manufactured under the company name of Woodcraft Manufacturing. They made other things also but I cannot remember exactly what. I do recall that 1970 fire. I was in the service at the time and now remember reading about it in my Examiner subscription. That same photo might have been in the Examiner, I am not sure.


I believe you are right about Bostian Chevrolet having a presence on both Maple and Lexington Streets. While I think about it, there was a Dodge dealer on the corner of Maple and Spring streets right across from the Granada Theater.


Clarence Heflin and Jerry Fisher were the manager and assistant manager respectively of the A&P Super Market that was on South Liberty Street down from the square. They went together and purchased Brown’s Market at 23rd and Kiger naming it C&J after their partnership. Their store was a United Super, a participating “chain” created by Fleming Foods in North Kansas City. United Supers have apparently long since faded away. Clarence and Jerry expanded the 23rd and Kiger store while I was still working there and then they opened a new store on East Susquehanna, another at 35th and Noland, and another on Woods Chapel Road. I believe another was on South Chrysler. All of these stores are now gone or operating under another name.


Clarence Heflin ran successively for state representative in 1966 and then state senator and I guess their partnership went downhill after his first election. I think they might have split the stores with Clarence perhaps selling his half but Jerry operating his stores as Jerry’s United Super. After Clarence Heflin was defeated at the polls in the eighties, he became associated with the Missouri State Penitentiary system in Jefferson City. I thought he was the warden but maybe not.
I do not know Mel Waits but the store at 23rd and Kiger might have been sold to him and he kept the original name. I cannot say when Walgreens was constructed on that spot.
One other item of note: sometime in the early sixties, 23rd Street was widened to four lanes. Some people were still calling it Alton Street. 23rd Street had an additional left turn lane onto Kiger going north right in front of C&J and that lane had the first left turn arrow ever seen in Independence.

[WCHS'59]

ROTC was established at William Chrisman High School in 1934. Does anyone know what year the ROTC program at the school was terminated?

For all practical purposes, I left Independence right after high school, although I returned frequently. It appears that ROTC enrollment went downhill rather fast in the sixties. There is a photo on the web labeled “William Chrisman ROTC 1966.” There were only eight uniformed students in the picture. I am guessing that the unpopularity of the military and the Vietnam War killed interest in the program.

Sally36 mentioned watching the ROTC boys marching down Union Street at the old William Chrisman on Maple Street. I am expanding on that with some information about the William Chrisman ROTC that might surprise a lot of people as to the depth of the program.

I was frequently marching with an M-1 on my shoulder down Union Street during my one year at the Maple Street WCHS before going to the new high school on Noland Road. Each fall before it got too cold the new sophomores would learn close order drill and the “manual of arms” on that street. The street would be blocked off to motor traffic during this time.

As part of an annual end of school year ritual, we had the entire ROTC battalion with the ROTC band marching in formation on Union Street down Union across Walnut and onto The Campus where there was a “pass in review” dress parade. When the entire battalion formed on Union Street, the formation would extend down the street for almost the entire block. At that time, the battalion consisted of four companies of two platoons each and a little over fifty students in each company. A student Color Guard marched at the center of the four companies.

In keeping with the attitude of the time: No girls allowed.

We wore Army uniforms Monday through Wednesday and it sure helped with school clothing costs. The uniforms were from a huge supply stock kept in the school and these were used over and over each year. Rather than wearing such used clothing, I purchased my uniform from the Army surplus store that was on or near the southwestern corner of Main and Lexington.

Also, during the spring, small unit tactics theory was taught in the ROTC classrooms, which were at the school’s eastern entrance off Lexington. Putting this theory to the test, we followed that up with an annually held tactical exercise at The Campus. We all had our assigned M-1 rifles and there was a lone machine gun. Everyone had blank ammunition. On one “attack” the firing started and a hobo with long unkempt hair and dirty clothes awakened by the commotion came flying out of the tall bushes and ran off with a most excited and confused look on his face. He managed enough composure to grab his extra shirt before he departed. I have always wondered if the Independence Police Department was notified when these tactical exercises took place. A number of startled motorists would drive by on Walnut Street.

An item of note about firing blanks in the M-1 rifle. Unless a gas suppressor is attached to the end of the barrel, firing cannot take advantage of the semiautomatic capability of the rifle. The school did not have any of these suppressors. The bolt lever had to be manually pulled back to insert a new blank round each time the weapon was fired. We did not mind though. Normally, the firing pins were not in the M-1 rifles and these were stored separately. For tactical exercises, each student temporarily had a firing pin in his weapon.

With the move to the new school on north Noland, tactical exercises were held to the east of the old stadium and where the new stadium is now. That entire area was a rugged ravine at the time. Close order drill took place on a parking lot in the back of the school.

Two dedicated ROTC class rooms were in the basement of the new WCHS. On Maple Street there was an ROTC class held for each company over four school periods. At the new school, there were two companies training at the same time during two school periods in the afternoon. Each company was in one of those classrooms. After roll call, the students in these classrooms walked down to the sub-basement where there was a larger training and seating area. The armory was also located here and there were several hundred M-1 rifles in locked stacks, a number of M-2 carbines, many .45 pistols, Browning Automatic Rifles, a bazooka, and a .30 caliber machine gun in the inventory. In formation, ROTC squad members carried the M-1, Lieutenant platoon leaders carried the M-2, and Captains and above carried .45 pistols.

One of the main learning objectives was for a student to be able to disassemble an M-1 and put it back together. We would have contests to see who could break down and reassemble an M-1 in the fastest possible time. The good students could do it blindfolded. M-1 rifles were not cleaned on classroom time. At various times during the school year, each student took his assigned M-1 home for the weekend. A cleaning kit was concealed in the butt of each rifle and the weekend assignment was to clean the weapon. School buses would have several 15-17 year old students carrying rifles. I believe the practice of taking weapons home stopped beginning with the 1957-58 school year.

Also in the sub-basement at the new WCHS was a firing range. (There was a firing range in the WCHS on Maple Street also. As near as I can recall, it was in an area under the boy’s gym.) The WCHS ROTC Rifle Team practiced on the firing range, held shooting meets with other area high schools there, and traveled around the area competing against other schools having a rifle team. The Rifle Team was considered a school sport and one could “letter.”

M-1s were not fired on this range as they were too powerful and the noise was too ear splitting for their use indoors. The rifle team used smaller caliber arms. When the members came up to the firing line, they clipped a paper bull’s eye target on a wire mechanism. A hand operated bicycle like pedal moved the targets downrange. After a member finished firing, he reversed the hand operation moving his target back to his position to see the results. I think at the Maple Street location, all members had to cease firing and then walk down the range to pull and look at their targets.

Captain Evan S. Riley, an active duty US Army Captain (known at the time as a Professor of Military Science and Tactics) was in charge of the program and two active duty sergeants assisted him. One sergeant, SFC Neuman, was mostly an administrative person. MSG Vernon O. Taylor did most of the training. Military subjects consisted of close order drill, military history, small arms familiarization and maintenance, military protocol, topographical map reading, small unit tactics, etc. I really liked the topographical map reading learning about azimuths, back azimuths, triangulation, elevation, contour lines and intervals, etc. Each one of us had a military issue compass for the class.

All ROTC instructors were considered as teachers at WCHS but the Army paid their salary. I can recall MSG Taylor grumbling because he had to attend teachers meetings. Today, I believe high schools with ROTC have retired military personnel doing the teaching and the schools have to pay their salaries.

WCHS had a large official olive drab painted Army vehicle assigned that was for the sole use of the ROTC department. This vehicle also took the rifle team to its shooting matches at other schools.

Each spring there was an extravagant ROTC Ball held at the Memorial Building. All the guys were in freshly pressed uniforms and all the girls in formal dress with orchids on their bosom, etc.

Each summer there was a ten-day field encampment at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Everyone lived in 20-man tents, ate outdoors, and used outdoor facilities. One of the tents held a portable shower facility. Junior ROTC students attended from all of the Kansas City and St. Joseph area high schools that had ROTC. One of the highlights was firing for record with the M-1 rifle at 300 yards. This encampment was not mandatory training and it was up to each student to determine whether he could attend. I attended between the sophomore and junior year and again the following summer.

The ROTC also had a close order drill and precision drill team. Originally the team name was the Pershing Rifles but that was changed to the Pathfinders. The members practiced in the morning before school. In addition to the uniform, they wore white helmets, white scarves, white gloves, white belts, white spats, and had white slings on their rifles. I recall the Halloween Parade as one event in which they marched and they competed in a statewide drilling event with other state high school ROTC units in Columbia.

Earlier, I mentioned “No Girls Allowed.” However, around the 1958-59 school year, someone decided there ought to be a girls drill team that would be the equivalent of the Pathfinders. The Pep Club became that drill team and started practicing close order and precision drilling but without rifles. The girls learned to “fall in” and learned all the close order drill executions such as “right face,” “left face,” “forward march,” “rear march,“ column right,” etc. They performed at some basketball games during half time. They wore blue skirts, gold jackets white blouses, black and white saddle shoes and white gloves. The senior student who was the ROTC battalion commander trained and led them when they performed.

[WCHS'59]

SallyB mentioned board sidewalks in Independence. We had those close to our residential area for about a half block or so. I lived on south Harkless Street but the board sidewalk was in the vicinity of Hayward and Crane. I am not sure who did it or when they were torn up. That area is now a public park.

I suppose everyone knows that Independence is the county seat of Jackson County but Kansas City has a 29 story courthouse even though it is not a county seat. Independence has the courthouse on the square, the courthouse on Kansas Street, and the one room courthouse on Walnut. I believe all three are officially considered as courthouses even though all may not function as such.

The Tom Sawyer restaurant was located on Maple Street in a basement just west of the Western Auto store at Union and Maple. It was supposedly a very good place to eat. I never went in there.

The Courthouse Exchange restaurant now operates in the basement of the old JC Penny building. That restaurant advertises as having been in business since 1899. Its previous location was on Maple Street just east of the old Velvet Freeze location.

Goldman’s Jewelry was located next to Crown Drug Store on Maple. I bought my first transistor radio there. I paid one dollar down and one dollar a week walking up from junior high school after school one day each week to pay the $1 and then taking a city bus home. That transistor radio seemed a hundred times smaller than the previous portable I had. It was a large heavy Silvertone (Sears) portable that used a ton of batteries.

KIMO, a country and western radio station was located on North Osage Street. When I got a crystal radio set at age 11 that was the only station I could pull in and listen on my one piece earphone. Years later when I was in Hilo, Hawaii, the local station there was KIMO. I believe those call letters are now assigned to a radio station in Montana. KIMO in Independence became KCCV and apparently moved to Overland Park, Kansas.

There was a KIMO movie theater on south main in Kansas City. I don’t believe there was a connection to the radio station.

The Independence Daily News was a newspaper that operated for a short time in the 50s and was located with or adjacent to the radio station. The building or buildings housing the radio station and newspaper were just north of Truman on Osage and are now gone.

Before my time: radio station KLDS.

When I was a sixth grader at McCoy school, we were bused to the RLDS auditorium for some kind of an all school sing limited to district sixth graders. The auditorium at that time was unfinished on the inside and had a bare concrete stepped floor and plain old park benches for seating. A few years later, when my high school class graduated in that building it was totally finished, had carpet everywhere, and had plush seating.

Leslie Curtis, who had attended McCoy School, died from injuries sustained in football practice during my junior year at the new WCHS. There was no auditorium at the time, but when one was built a year or two later, a plaque was installed in the hallway dedicated to him. He was of a small build and I was surprised that he tried out for football.

[WCHS'59]

On the corner of Lexington Avenue and Walnut Street there is now a United Nations Peace Plaza commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations. It is dedicated to those persons serving in the Peacekeeping Forces of the United Nations. In addition to a bronze statue of a young woman releasing a dove, the flags of the USA, the United Nations and the State of Missouri are displayed

[WCHS'59]

Sharon Kinne? Does that name ring a bell?

According to one web site “She was one of the most remarkable criminals in U.S. history. A housewife, she turned cold-blooded killer. In 1969 she escaped from a Mexican prison and disappeared without a trace.”

Born in 1939, her first murder was in 1960 when she shot and killed her husband just east of Independence and blamed it on her two year old child. She later killed her lover’s wife in an effort to get the man to marry her. The body was dumped on Crackerneck Road in what was then a secluded area.

She was found not guilty in the lover’s wife murder. She was convicted of murdering her husband but the conviction was overturned. While waiting for a new trial, she left for Mexico. In Mexico, she killed one man and shot another and was sentenced to a number of years in prison.

Sharon Kinne was featured on Unsolved Mysteries but she has never surfaced since escaping from the Mexican prison. Jackson County still has an outstanding arrest warrant for her. There was a book written about her a number of years ago.

Her first murder took place on 26th Terrace about a mile and a quarter east of where I was working at the C&J United Super. At that time, the house was outside the Independence city limits. Her second victim was dumped about two miles south of where I worked. She was a customer at C&J but I only have a vague recollection of seeing her on one occasion. However, one worker spoke to her and she claimed that she was innocent.

If still alive, she would be around 73.

[WCHS'59]

I mentioned in an earlier post that all Independence Junior High School ninth graders were required to create a notebook on the history of Independence. This was a requirement of the citizenship class and the school year was 1955-56. I am not sure when this requirement started or how long it lasted but after I left the ninth grade for WCHS I heard a rumor that there were too many kids running around the business district asking people about the history of Independence and the assignment was stopped.

We were given a rather large lead time and I spent a great deal of time in the Jackson County library looking for information.

Of course we had no experience in writing research papers and most students seemed to find an article and copy all or part of it word for word. Nothing was ever mentioned about plagiarism that I can recall and I don’t know that we even knew the word. Some kids would cut a historical item out of a newspaper and paste it on a page in their notebook. None of us knew how to type.

In the fifties, the Independence Examiner would come out with an annual Progress Edition. It was a huge edition with several sections and many pages. In those days, it was as big as a then Sunday edition of the Kansas City Star. It was full of historical information and I had kept a couple years’ worth of those annual issues just because they looked important but had never read them. They really came in handy.

One day we heard in school that the city of Independence had some historical material to hand out to the ninth graders. After school a classmate and me walked up to City Hall at Kansas and Main and asked about the information. We were directed to the mayor’s office. His smiling secretary told us that the mayor was waiting for us and pointed toward his office. We walked in and there was a big fellow by the name of Weatherford sitting back in his chair with his feet propped up on his desk and a big cigar emitting a lot of smoke clenched in his teeth reading a paper. He did not budge one bit but just looked at us and motioned toward a stack of handouts and went back to reading. We grabbed one apiece and left.

When we got outside both of us started laughing about seeing the first politician we had ever seen in our lives and believed that he was the typical political figure we had heard so much about chomping a big cigar, his feet on the desk, etc. It turned out the information was not much and I recall it was very general and very disappointing.

Mayor Robert P. Weatherford had a cousin who was a teacher at the junior high.

Also, required of ninth graders was a vocational notebook that was based on what each individual wanted to do as a lifelong occupation. I wrote on Dairy Farming, something that I was really enthralled with at the time. Needless to say, I did not go that way.

As I recall, the requirement for the Independence history project was announced at the beginning of the fall semester and had to be turned in at the end of the semester. Of course, the teacher would keep reminding us as the semester progressed. The vocational notebook requirement was announced at the beginning of the next semester with turn in at the end of that semester.

These projects, especially the history project, were two of the most rewarding that I have ever experienced at any level of schooling. I knew nothing about the history of Independence when I started and afterward I knew one heck of a lot. A friend of mine from that same class remembers that the projects took a lot of time and effort for both and both was fun, rewarding, exciting, and satisfying. Not many people can say that about a class of almost sixty years ago.

If there is anyone out there who had to fulfill this requirement, please let us know your thoughts and experience.

[WCHS'59]

Someone mentioned in a previous post the bridge over the railroad tracks on south Main Street, three blocks from the square. Just before the bridge on the west side was Main Cleaners, a dry cleaning operation that my family patronized for many years.

Those tracks going under that Main Street bridge were a branch line. If you followed the tracks eastward they crossed Noland Road at Walnut Street and went through residential neighborhoods generally following Spring Branch Creek out to or almost to Lake City. Today those tracks end just past the underground space around what is now Missouri 291. One day many years ago my dad and I drove into that underground space. We drove back in among a number of businesses operating underground. Finally, we stopped, parked, and went into a manufacturing place and bought a power lawn mower that had been built right there.

If you followed the tracks going under the Main Street bridge westward they went by the Gleaner Combine Plant and met the main and then went by the Missouri Pacific depot.

The combine manufacturing moved to Hesston, Kansas, quite some time ago and they still make the Gleaner combines. Also in that area was the ice cream plant. I think the ice cream brand was HyGrade. Independence Stove Foundry manufacturing and some other industries were in that vicinity. The buildings are all still there but the companies are long gone.

Before arriving at the main, the tracks west also went by the Waggoner Gates Milling Company, maker of Queen of the Pantry flour. This was supposed to be the best flour produced in the Midwest. I cannot vouch for that statement but I do know we sold an awful lot of it in the grocery store where I worked. The mill exploded and burned sometime around 1965 or so but the National Frontier Trails Museum is now on that site.

Independence had two passenger train stations. The most familiar was the Missouri Pacific depot (now part of Union Pacific) on Grand Street. Amtrak has a flag stop at that depot, which is now owned by the city of Independence.

The other depot was the Chicago and Alton depot just off Chrysler Street, perhaps on Turner Street. That depot has been restored and moved to the National Frontier Trails Museum area. The Chicago and Alton tracks are now part of the Gateway Western railroad.

Passenger traffic stopped at the Chicago and Alton depot in 1961.

Jesse James was reported to have robbed the Chicago and Alton Glendale Train more than one time. Glendale Gardens is an Independence subdivision located in the area east of 35th Street and Phelps Road. The Chicago and Alton rails skirt the northern edge of that subdivision. A short distance down the rails from Glendale Gardens and just north of 39th Street there was at one time a small community named Selsa.

In 1961, the Selsa depot was still standing. Just before the last passenger train stopped at the old Chicago and Alton station in Independence, that “Glendale Train” was stopped at the Selsa depot and the passengers were “robbed” by “Jesse James” and his mounted masked gang in a reenactment that drew a lot of news publicity. I watched this reenactment along with hundreds of other people standing along Selsa Road. Not too long after that, the depot burned from unknown causes but most probably from vandalism.

[WCHS'59]

Most everyone from Independence knows that Frank James (real name Alexander Franklin James) was held prisoner for several months in the old 1859 Jackson County Jail on north Main Street. The cells in that building are really dungeon like.

When I was a kid, I heard several times that Frank James was buried in Hill Park. Someone told me the grave was near the large rock formations along the 23rd and Maywood Street side. I searched around that area several times and could never find anything. I would ask but no one knew anything about a Frank James grave. A few years ago, the proprietor of the book store at Main and Walnut told me where it was. The grave, along with several others, is on the northeast corner of Hill Park at Hardy and 20th streets. At one time Hill Park belonged to Jackson County, but Independence took it over and made many nice improvements. However, they closed the Rock Creek low water vehicle crossing and to me that was what gave that park a stand out character.

While attending WCHS, many Sunday dates were spent just driving several hours in the country and stopping somewhere to have a coke or a hamburger. My girlfriend and I were both sixteen years old. We had just about driven Jackson County out over so many Sundays. I could probably have driven the back way to Fort Osage blindfolded. So, on this particular Sunday we ventured north into Clay County to see if the countryside was any different.

Out in the countryside, we drove down a lonely unmarked dusty road and passed a locked gate with a sign that said “James Farm.” A long dirt roadway leading from the gate disappeared into a hilly area. We kind of wondered if we might have stumbled onto the Jesse James family place but we kept driving and soon forgot about it.

Several weeks later we drove down the same road and the gate was open. We decided to drive in and see what we might find. We were very apprehensive and thought we could be unwelcome guests at wherever we were going. The house could not be seen from the main road and we drove perhaps a quarter mile until we came to a farmhouse with a fence and a graveled parking area for several vehicles. There were no other cars.

A smiling old man came out of the farmhouse to meet us and shook our hands. The first thing we asked was this the Jesse James place? He said it sure was and wondered if we would like to look around. We sure did. This man said he was 79 years old and he was being the personal guide for two sixteen year olds—quite a generation gap. I will never forget how nice he was and how he answered every question we had.

Inside the house were all kinds of old stuff from the 19th century including the mirror, shaving gear, and straight edge razor of Jesse, himself. There was also a fragment from the bomb on display. His mother had lost her arm as a result of the explosion. As I recall from what the man said, the farm had been opened to tourists several years earlier but had been closed down for some time. This man was now trying to open it again. We were the first visitors and there was no charge.

We went inside an addition added in the 1890s. It was well preserved and housed the James family artifacts. We could not go in the part Jesse and Frank James lived in because that part had been condemned. It was the portion the bomb was thrown in.

The man eventually identified himself as Frank James, Jr. (Real name Robert Franklin James). We were floored to say the least. The following week, no one at WCHS believed we had met Frank James son.

The bombed portion of the house with its covered porch was not very big and has now been restored.