The Callans and McClarys, by John Edward Callan - Callanworld

kick the top of the door from the
kitchen to the dining room of the
big house at 1000 llth street,
which is over six feet high, with
the other. For her time and
place, a good swimmer .
I always thought she was
prettier than the mothers of my
contemporaries, and certainly
she acted younger. The idea
about her looks might not have
been purely subjective. Once,
driving back from a visit to
Wichita, in a little town in
Kansas, some teenagers pulled
up slightly behind the driver’s
side of the car and whistled at
her. I leaned back and shouted,
“That’s my old lady” (which in
those days meant mother , not
spouse or spouse -equivalent),
and she tried to shush me.
She was an excellent driver,
not only for a woman but by any
standard. Probably — she certainly
thought so— she was a
better driver than my father.
Certainly she was more consistently
sober behind the wheel,
and at all times more attentive to
the road, since he tended to get
distracted by something he might
buy or sell or, like a good herd
of cattle, could just admire.
Once, during the second world
war, when a local man (R. D.
Patrick, an auctioneer, I think)
needed a bull (perhaps several)
transported to Texas and could
not find a driver for his semi,
Mom offered to make the run
though I do not know that she
had ever driven that large a truck
before (and later, when we towed
a trailer full of Dad’s family
furniture back from Wichita, she
seemed totally ignorant of how to
back it up to the dock), but when
told that she obviously couldn’t
do it because she was a woman,
she raised such hell that everyone
caved in and, accompanied
by R. D. “s wife, she made the
trip/ stopping at a cotton field to
pull a stalk to bring me.
The most frustrated she
ever got was on an occasion
when she was going to drive from
Schlotzhauer ‘s Buick-International
dealership, where she was
bookkeeper, in a pickup truck
headed in to the side of the
building. She kept putting the
stick shift where reverse ought to
be, and the truck would inch
forward, she finally found out—
perhaps she had to ask, which
would have irritated her even
further—that the transmission
had 4 forward speeds and the
reverse was not top left but
somewhere else.
She was a terrible backseat
driver, at least with me. Once I
was driving west on 6th street
towards Locust and she was
warning me about cars 2 blocks
ahead. So I stopped the car in
the middle of the street, opened
the door, got out, and told her to
drive. After that, she was a little
more reticent with her-advice,
but not much.
She must not have led a
sheltered girlhood—she said that
she was 25 years old before she
knew that you could drink Dr.
Pepper straight. Her high school
education in Arkansas City,
Kansas was apparently the
~ 91 ~
equivalent of many college
degrees today: she still remembered
some of the Latin she had
learned, and in other ways the
rigor was greater than my high
school education, which ended
in 1951.
Her hands were very active,
whether she was talking or
smoking a cigarette or (as usual)
both. Like her father, she
seemed to lean forward into a
conversation, and she tried to
satisfy her curiosity about almost
everything by listening and
asking questions or reading. She
love to see new things. When we
first moved to Boonville, Missouri,
in 1939, she was fascinated
by the MKT railroad
bridge over the which raised its
middle section to let riverboats
pass. When she heard the
whistle, she would grab me and
head for the riverbank to watch
it.
It is a good thing that she
could find the river, because in
the 27 years she lived in
Boonville she knew which way
was north only by looking for
the bridge that carried U.S. 40
(Main Street) over the Missouri.
And like everyone else in
Boonville, she walked lengthways
on a downtown sidewalk
only under protest.
Otherwise, she seemed
younger and far more energetic
than the mothers of my contemporaries,
who did not smoke, at
least in public, and were probably
far better cooks and housekeepers
{not a difficult feat). She
was in great demand from the
The Callans and McClarys
other kids
to chaperone hayrides and
other parties, drive teams to ball
games before we were important
enough to rate bus transportation/
and in later high school
years provide the house for
parties.
She was, I think, good with
her own children, in the first
place, she had the sense to let us
pretty much alone. • Occasionally
she would give me mild
remonstrances about my worst
habits—losing my temper, being
unkind to or about others (she
had a pretty sharp tongue herself),
not suffering fools gladly.
She didn’t push me to perform
in any particular area. She may
have seen me play basketball and
baseball, but I can’t remember
an occasion (when she carpooled
teams, I was still a
benchwarmer), but she did
attend performances of plays and
recitals in which I appeared.
.And I think that she was pleased
with my grades and with my
status as one of the most competent
altar boys and leader of
prayers at the daily mass which
most parochial school children
attended {we certainly did; Dad,
an unchurched Protestant, saw to
that). The Christmases she
arranged (at least I gave her
rather than Dad the credit) have
made all subsequent ones seem
disappointing. I had toys and
other playthings which none of
my friends seemed to have (she
let Dad’s half-sister, Nanelou
Sweeney, a school-teacher and
musician, take care of the