Thank you to all the great gentlemen at The Grand Court in Overland Park for a wonderful morning, yesterday. They have a men's club second to none and it was my honor and pleasure to visit with them over donuts and other breakfast goodies. I've visited The Grand Court before and I am always impressed by the beauty of the place and the friendliness of the residents and staff. Their motto is Exceptional Senior Living, and they sure live up to it. A trip to a place as terrific as The Grand Court, takes me back to childhood...my first...not the second which I hope to begin any day now.

Up until the age of six, I lived, for the most part, at a retirement village. It was called Bluffview Courts and my dad was the manager. The barracks-like apartments had been used by workers at the Badger Army Ammunition Plant during World War II and the Korean War. By the late 50s, it was a plot of land overgrown with weeds and over-run by snakes. The buildings were falling apart. My dad and some partners made a deal with the government, bought the property and created Bluffview Courts Retirement Community with my dad acting as on-site manager. At first thought, you may think it was a boring place for a pre-school kid to live but that was not at all the case. It was like having 500 grandmas and grandpas!

My real grandmas worked at the little grocery store on the property. So, no matter what time of day I'd wander in, I was sure to get a free treat. My temptation of choice, at age four, was a fudgcicle. To this day, a whiff of overly-cooled air takes me back to the MidWay Grocery and I must find and devour a box of fudgcicles. They issue a special alert at area stores when I approach the frozen treat section. If you ever hear "Code Ice Dweeb" you'll know I am in the vicinity.

There were big pipes that pushed through the ground at one end of our apartment building. They were from the septic system. They had been painted and decorated like giant toad-stools which seemed to invite a child to play there, as whiffs of past glories filled the air. Many times I would sit by those pipes and drop Lincoln Logs...Matchbox Cars...the occasional stuffed animal down the tubes. I'd let them go and then run from pipe to pipe to hear them land with a "splush." I like to think it was all done in the name of science but one of the maintenance men didn't appreciate my pioneering spirit. He was a retired mailman, named Bill, but worked part-time helping keep Bluffview looking good. Just as I was about to send GI Joe on the mission of his life, Bill pulled up in his truck. "Hey! Stop that. This is not a playground. You could fall in and then what?!" Well, I had never considered the fact I could be a pawn in my own twisted experiment and, frankly, the pipes seemed a little small for such an occurrence. Still, being mostly an obedient child, I stopped sending my toys hurtling into the pits and gave up whatever chance I may have had to be the Baby Jessica of my generation. Years later, that same Bill, married one of my grandmas. He was 70 and she was 73. My grandma said they were looking for a house near a school. Hope springs eternal...kind of like the fumes from the brightly colored septic pipes of my toddlerhood.

Bluffview was filled with characters. Leo had a cute little Sheltie dog and loved to talk with me about fishing. Spike had worked for Chrysler and had some scale model replicas of the cars he'd help build that he let me play with...under supervision and far from the aforementioned pipes. There was a guy, named Guy. I think he, in the dead of night, put fish in the pond so I'd have something to catch. A family named Provenzano used to come up from Chicago for weekends. Grandpa Provenzano would sit on the front steps of their apartment in his t-shirt and smoke giant cigars. The fact that a grown man would sit, in public, in his undershirt, fascinated a Lutheran country boy like me since we didn't even say the word "undershirt" for fear of it leading to "underwear" from which it was a short hop to impure thoughts. He could blow smoke rings and make smoke come out of his ears. Really, he could. There was one woman who must have sat by her front window all day, just waiting to run outside and offer passers-by apple juice. Another lady, named Cecil, was an artist and created some of the most unusual paintings anywhere, for which she won awards but about which she would never divulge her technique. Another woman, again from Chicago, named Harriet was one of smartest people I ever knew. She seemed to know something about everything. Remember Ken Jennings...the super champion from Jeopardy...the guy that looks like Brain from the cartoon Pinky and the Brain? Harriet would have cleaned his intellectual clock without batting an eye.

This was a very social group. Sometimes they would head into town for shopping or to keep appointments. They would pile into what they lovingly called The Varicose Van. They, also, had a bowling team called the Pepper Pots. My grandma threw the slowest rolling bowling ball in the world. She could let it fly...go to the little girl's room...stop at the refreshment stand...visit with some friends...balance her checkbook...finish whatever mystery she was currently reading....and still get back to the lane before the first pin grudgingly tipped over. Sometimes the pins didn't budge. They actually seemed to be laughing at the ball. In addition to the bowling team, they had an organization called the Bluffview Neighbors Club that held socials frequently. I would sneak in to eat the food and listen to the stories. Back then there was a show on TV starring the mustachioed Mitch Miller. He had been a record producer in the fifties and had earned Frank Sinatra's enduring hostility by having the singer record a song, during a career low-point, called Mama Will Bark. By the sixties, Mitch Miller was the host of a sing-along program. He'd pretend to direct all of us at home as we followed the bouncing ball to "Sing Along With Mitch!" At the Bluffview Neighbors get-togethers, I would guzzle some chocolate milk...to get the right facial hair look...and then lead the residents in song...using a spoon as my baton. I was about four and it was the last time in my life I ever got a group of people to follow my lead.

So, thanks again to the Grand Guys of The Grand Court for the good talk, good fun and good memories. Now, I have to get started on my second childhood.