Ch 14 Respite from Heat

CHAPTER 14 RESPITE FROM THE HEAT Mid-July 1980

Racer and Andy returned to the worst Kansas City heat wave since 1954, maybe since 1934, hot summers when Kansas Citians slept in their city’s parks. In early July 1980 Chief Norman Carroll’s staff informed the press that his department could not assure park sleeper safety.

The 1980 heat wave would prove long and lethal. Persons seeking relief largely ignored the chief’s park sleeping prohibition.

Instead dozens of them sought solace on Cliff drive’s cooler slopes.

Across that July, rescuers, largely firefighters from Local-42, processed heat casualties at a rate averaging one corpse per hour.

Passantino Bros., Lawrence A. Jones and Sebbeto’s morticians were equally overwhelmed by casualties amidst a city’s grief. Water cooler historians ironically recalled how the preceding summer had produced surprisingly few heat-related deaths.

Purposeless shoppers ambled through Woolworth and Skaggs’ refrigerated aisles pretending to examine labels. The library’s reading tables filled to eight-chair capacity, ladies settling for Field & Stream while elderly men thumbed across outdated Mademoiselle’s.

Doctors and nurses reviewing case files responded with emotions ranging from sadness to anger: An 80-year-old male in the 2400 block of Lawn, dead in a home with windows painted shut, a 73year-old female in the 3500 block of Denver expired in a room equipped with a faulty air conditioner, “pumping-out” hot air; the decomposed body of a 55-year-old male discovered in the 4000 block of 16 th street, dead 3-4 days, a thermometer in that man’s bedroom registered 105 degrees.

Rescuers were baffled by an expired mental patient clad in a heavy wool sweater, likely a confused physiologic response to antipsychotics. Being old, a person of color or even disabled served to increase mortality three-fold. Add in thyroid or psychiatric diagnoses and those dangerous odds increased by a factor of ten.

An entry beyond pre-existing disease or age was that of Karen M. Thompson, headliner at 40-Highway’s Topless-and-More. The coroner was conflicted whether Karen’s demise was more

attributable to methamphetamine or heat. Speed plus anorexia and dancer status proved risky.

Glades, pastures and woods near Cliff drive all filled with sleepers and campers, some dragging ground cover. Middle-aged females sometimes settled for brassiere-based sleeping necessities.

The city’s homed and home-less curiously shared accommodations.

USMC Mel hadn’t waited on 1980’s heat wave to visit Cliff drive’s glades, pastures and woods. When Mel’s 6th Marines made their Easter Sunday 1945 Okinawa landings, most of the palms there had already been destroyed by naval gunfire. When Mel shipped out three months later, Okinawa’s vegetation was all dead, most of it burnt.

From the War Department’s perspective, the door closed on Mel’s combat experience when the Admiral RE Coontz, a troop ship, passed into Puget Sound near war’s end. But his other war had just begun.

Yes, his wife worried about Mel’s visits to Kansas City’s urban forest. Ostensibly, Mel gathered field specimens there but only a poor correlation existed between time and harvest.

Beneath an arboreal canopy, Mel sat or knelt, talking to the fern undergrowth. Such lushness created a visual impression of cool.

Mel possessed favorites, struggling to maintain objectivity, deftly identifying each plant.

Post-dinner, Mel and his spouse split into respective audio and newspaper camps, Mel tinkering with a reel-to-reel tape player, one with a McIntosh amplifier output. His favorites stretched from Antonio Carlos Jobim’s Aqua De Beber to Trini Lopez’ take on Watermelon Man. He wondered why his wife insisted on reading aloud news stories describing Cliff drive-based gang activity.

One night after they had irritated one other with musical and gang-reading diversions, a call arrived. She accepted a person-toperson call for her spouse, puzzling why Mel referred to the caller as Gunny. The Gunny-person and Mel spoke until a Bell operator interrupted to inform them another call awaited the shared line.

As nearly as she knew, Mel didn’t sleep at all that night, leaving early Sunday morning for a day at the Cliffs. When park sleepers joined Mel, he welcomed everyone, persons of color, those with

psychiatric frailties, the elderly and disabled, and, yes, brassieresleepers.

Other solutions to 1980’s heat crisis proved less successful. Each stifling evening past dusk, Olive bathed Otis in cool water, laying out fresh sheets to make the boy more comfortable. After putting Otis to bed Olive anticipated Andy’s stumbling arrival. Twice the KCPD had followed behind his weaving car, an odd public safety convoy.

Andy’s railroad-imposed absence had proven a chance for the boy but even with his dad sleeping there, back, it remained difficult to get him in bed ahead of Andy’s noisy arrivals.

For a little over a year, Missouri-Pacific pay masters had biweekly rewarded A.M. Smith but those funds’ outcome was unknown. Andy bragged that he had been attending Jigger-based business meetings, describing someone named Diesel Dave.

Pressing Andy regarding his plans to support his family, Andy oddly replied: Sale of caviar, biologicals, too.

Andy’s Jigger colleague, David Diesel Dave Numachev tried to pass himself off as a locomotive engineer. A more careful review of Dave’s personnel record would have revealed probationary hostler helper service, mainly shuttling locomotives across the yard.

While more time-on-task might have merited a promotion, before that could occur he was fired owing to a Rule-G violation, meaning intoxicated at work. He also poached tales from actual railroad veterans, first person-ing their accounts as if he they involved him. The bar’s railroad clients shunned someone they had secretly called No-Diesel Dave. Andy’s listeners similarly questioned why a railroad chemist would stumble over simple chemical names. And then there was his irritating insistence on that Tox-E-O-logy expression.

Dave couldn’t believe his fortune when Andy shared details of a Missouri trackside experience where Racer’s assistant had encountered two Cape Girardeau men, present there to poach some of Mark Twain National Forest’s Ginseng root. Andy added that he had kept a Cape Girardeau phone number, plus others originating with Missouri river paddlefish poachers.

While Dave had previously performed two risky runs for a crime crew, these were minor tasks, ferrying expired drugs to a local nursing home and circulating phony money orders. Reaching permanently unemployed status, Diesel Dave hung on to Andy’s words, speculating that Andy’s poaching connections could lead to collaborations with a Pennsylvanian Andy called Weeds-fear-me Wurth.

While Ginseng root brought high prices on the east coast, paddlefish eggs were Missouri’s caviar, retailing for hundreds of dollars per pound on the black market. When Andy finally reached Rolf on the bar’s pay phone, he passed the receiver to Dave. Wurth clarified that he was a wholesale-only buyer, worried he was speaking to a law enforcement plant. A conservative version of Wurth advised Dave to forward his qualifications to a Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania post office box. Past repeated versions of Hello Rolf – Andy here, it was obvious Rolf had already hung up.

The Jigger’s air conditioner performed flawlessly, hardly the scenario for nearly forty-percent of Kansas Citians, those lacking air conditioning. The city tallied fifty-three days when the mercury rose to 100 degrees F. or higher by noon. Temperatures tamed slightly past Labor Day, nevertheless the casualty list expanded, including duplicate entries for 80-year-old males and a second speeding dancer.

Despite his attic-like sleeping quarters, heat wasn’t Racer’ only concern. Notwithstanding a robust savings account, Racer recognized he needed a fresh source of income.

On a daily basis anonymous-appearing individuals prowled Linda Hall Science Library’s open stacks, reviewing patent and research narratives. The prowler – searchers often sought laboratory-based confirmations for theories, petitioning local professors to turn some students loose as if those pupils resembled orangutans in need of fresh intellectual beach balls.

Brooklyn thus had suggested Racer meet with someone he described as Dr. DeShario to field the dentist’s regarding lead content in baby teeth. Brooklyn advised Racer to negotiate reimbursement for his time and supply costs.

Years earlier DeShario had apparently secreted himself in a university laboratory where he repurposed a Meeker burner in order to finish a prosthodontic false teeth project. Perhaps from this quasi-laboratory experience DeShario emerged as a public health campaigner. Given perennial worries surrounding mercury amalgam toxicity, dentists like sometimes favored broader dialogue that included other heavy metals, lead in particular.

It is unlikely the dentist’s appearance attracted many adult patients. Beyond being clean-shaven, his were wardrobe chaotic choices, garish striped sport coats paired with plaid bell-bottoms.

To his credit the weird ensembles sometimes comforted crying children.

At the Racer-DeShario meeting, the dental doctor recounted how he had filled several file drawers with children’s shed teeth, bonused by the same kids’ report cards and other records. DeShario shared with Racer a series of Pittsburgh-based reprints that he claimed supported a thesis that high lead levels portended poor school performance, oddly including an off-topic article, documenting how short-statured individuals possessed normal intelligence.

While Racer found this mildly interesting, he steered clear of potential unpaid orangutan – beach ball traps, carefully differentiating interesting as opposed to reimbursable. During a second conversational lap he re-directed, limiting the project to a dozen tooth specimens. Feigning astonishment, DeShario countered with an uncompensated proposal involving four hundred specimens. Ducking that orangutan - beach ball, Racer proposed forty specimens, explaining that Office Lady would invoice DeShario for five hundred dollars payable to their special projects account. The two men shook hands on five hundred dollars for analysis of forty specimens. Later that afternoon Racer penned a comical note: Messrs. Jarrell & Ash will work hard for $500.

Dr. Wozniak nearly avoided the worst of that July’s heat, spending each day, and many nights, too, secluded in the air conditioned university hospital, repurposing an empty waiting room as a sleeping dorm. A gym bag containing clean skivvies

paired locker room showers spared additional restless nights seating in an un-air conditioned apartment.

If the hospital waiting room doubled as a dorm, its vend area became a lounge, one featuring four machines dispensing hot coffee, candy and gum and a small selection of questionably-dated sandwiches. Thus on a hot Friday night while many Kansas Citians sought air-conditioned comfort along its 12th street, two doctors spent their evening in a stark vend area.

Tossing a handful of patient charts onto the least filthy table, Woz nodded to a seated African-American physician, likely there eating dinner. While they had encountered one other at a house staff meeting, neither remembered the other’s name.

Woz proceeded to squeeze successive coins into a vending slot, one requiring six nickels, persuaded by an ad suggesting the device dispensed steaming hot coffee. Past five, the machine serially rejected his sixth coin, repeatedly sending it to the change slot. Woz’ new companion chuckled and handed him a straighter nickel before introducing himself. Dr. Les Miles.

Thank you, my name is Brian Wozniak, general medicine and toxicology. I’ve seen you at staff meetings, aren't you a surgeon?

Yes, a urologist.

Well, I haven’t referred a patient to urology lately but nice to meet you.

Newly-introduced Dr. Miles countered. Toxicology, you don’t hear that much here. Are you involved with industrial cases, I ask because we followed a series of males in the South, some of whom developed bladder cancer following textile manufacturing’s use of blue jean azo-dyes.

Well, poison control doesn’t turn away calls, even industrial ones.

Recently we acquired some industrial hygiene expertise, a field related to occupational medicine. But you’re the first local physician I’ve met here with occupational medicine experience.

Dr. Les continued. I practiced at the VA’s Tuskegee hospital; the link between blue jean azo-dye cancers and textile manufacturing was hotly contested. We attempted to build trust where little existed.

Woz found Les’ words carried a ring, shortly posed a second question. Did you also train in Alabama?

No, I’m from New York, New York City.

You are! Me, too, 108th street, Brooklyn.

Les chuckled. Almost Heaven, 122nd and Harlem for sure!

Woz posed a question. Where did you train?

Les. Columbia in New York City and medical school at Howard in D.C. Near war’s end, I was commissioned in the Army Medical Corps and trained in urologic surgery at VA Tuskegee.

How about you?

Woz. I completed undergraduate and medical school at NYU before medicine and toxicology at Bellevue. Once qualified, I answered an ad for a university post and adapted to toxicology in the Midwest.

Les asked Woz if he ever made it back home, sensing regret in the answer.

Not enough.

Same.

Woz reached past work. How do you infuse New York City into your Kansas City life?

Les. Impossible but Kansas City is a nice place. Monday nights, if not on duty, I visit 18th and Vine for the jazz jam. Any hobbies you’re neglecting?

Well, I’m a H-A-M radio operator so I visit those frequencies and I also own a nice bicycle but haven’t had time to ride it.

Well, for now, both of us are consigned to the vend room, its twentyfour hour guys!

Appreciating Les’ sense of humor, the Woz summed. Hey, I hope we run into each other again. Thanks by the way.

Les recognized that Woz had thanked him for more than a straighter nickel. If Kansas City had previously seemed a desert, Woz’ encounter with Dr. Les Miles made it seem less so.