Uphill from the Preservation Neighborhood - Kansas City's east bottoms

Life Magazine Historical Collection

CHAPTER 9 UPHILL FROM PRESERVATION Per 1979 I laughed in the morning's eyes.

I triumphed and I saddened with all weather, Heaven and I wept together, And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine: Against the red throb of its sunset-heart I laid my own to beat, And share commingling heat; But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.

In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.

James Lawrence, Hound of Heaven

While Wanda Swearengin may have been downwind of Cook Paint, she was definitely downstream of one hundred years of European-American history. Her Harlem Dutch-derived neighborhood was positioned on the Missouri River’s north bank while the more Belgian-derived Preservation neighborhood sat to the river’s south.

Belgians migrated east of Kansas City’s downtown, meaning their Preservation labeled neighborhood was circumscribed by the river and the railroad yards. Some residents labeled the land as the East Bottoms while others favored the term Preservation. Still others claimed the Preservation label originated with the pioneering Guinotte’s.

The Irish slid in midway between early-arriving Dutch, 1822, and later Belgians, 1850-52. For Indians, distinguishing among Europeans was less important than recognizing they all brought cholera. Preservation’s separation from the Missouri River may have accounted for the neighborhood’s permanence. Unlike many river communities, Preservation wasn’t based on a walkends-in-the-river principle, it was set back by nearly a mile.

Past its humble tool shed origins, combinations of better employment and Speedway lumber corrected many of Preservation’s housing deficits. Lumber wagons departing the failed Million Dollar track first traveled east along Bannister Road before traversing north along five miles of Blue River’s woods and glades. Lumber haulers then evaluated multiple north-south alternatives, Prospect, Paseo and Troost among those. East-west travel included Gregory, Meyer and Brush Creek options. The final stretch placed lumber wagons east of downtown, a mile from Preservation.

Unlike contracted construction projects generating wood discards, these lumber extras migrated from one finished project to the next. A few warped, likely unusable boards had been forwarded sufficiently they acquired nick names, some spoken in English, other in Flemish. Fathers and sons joined other framers, framing became a team sport.

While cholera-infected Europeans and warped lumber may have been acceptable, similar broadmindedness did not extend to diseased cattle. Texas’ drovers originally favored Sedalia as their rail head but mid-Missouri cattlemen objected, fearing for the health of their herds. Kansas’ cattleman likely raised fewer reservations given Kansas’ Kaw Point became a permanent rail head, stretching railroad lines all the way from St. Louis into Kansas.

Set eight miles east of cattle-rail head Kaw Point, Preservation became an eclectic mix of Native Americans, former Europeans, African- and Mexican-Americans and others. While an out-of-towner might have never found, much less favored Preservation, by 1979 its curious mix of residents favored one another.

Among the more favorably disposed was Consuelo Guzman. Consuelo or Connie, as she liked to be called, was Preservation’s de facto matriarch. She and her husband, Capataz, a railroad section foreman were neighborhood role models. His pay stubs supplemented hers, the latter derived from work at the Nelly Don dressmaking factory.

When neighborhood snoops counseled Consuelo regarding the risks of a married woman working outside the home, she reminded them of risks faced by railroad section workers. While separated by nearly one hundred years, Aimée Brichaut Guinotte and Consuelo Connie Guzman shared common issues.

On a Tuesday Connie walked a path earlier created by Belgian immigrants. Alternatively, it had originated with her ancestors who accompanied Coronado in 1541 or even the deBourgmont or Mallet pathfinders, 1724. Native Americans were hardly ever given credit since they had created those trails many centuries earlier.

But even Indians had been preceded by an ice age occurring six hundred thousand years previously, one creating floodable features close to the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers, a place later called Kansas City. Consuelo strode uphill but ironically neared Kansas City's downtown.

An accomplished and attractive woman, she was conservatively attired in a brown flannel dress, one hemmed slightly below knee height. The neat ensemble was complemented by briefly polished oxfords. A seamstress reviewing her chocolate-hued ensemble would have commended the suit’s fit, the product of multiple dressmakers. While their paid output may have belonged to Nelly Don, their private projects meant Nelly Don’s families likely wore Kansas City’s finest garments.

On that Tuesday Consuelo was scheduled to venture past her skill set. While her medical qualifications were thin, Consuelo’s dependability and Spanish language skills recommended her for a newly created part-time medical assisting position.

Nelly Don vice presidents had recently welcomed Kansas City internist, ID Funk, anticipating he could help them reestablish Nelly Don’s in-house clinic. Originally from Philadelphia, Funk was knowledgeable concerning the garment trade and consented to provide low cost office visits on Tuesday and Thursday mornings for about one hundred of Nelly Don’s mostly female employees.

Decades earlier Nelly Don’s workers had benefitted from a similar scheme headquartered at the Lady Garment Hospital, a converted Colonial Revivalist home, one in which a surgeon-nurse couple transformed their spacious kitchen into an operating theater and re-purposed bedrooms as stay rooms.

Given its single toilet, bedpans became a necessity for even the most ambulatory.

By 1979 less dressing-up had weakened Nelly Don’s financial position. Fashion steered hard left toward frayed T-shirts and patched dungarees. Male styles went wide, at times wild, embracing huge collars and broad, often gaudy ties. Nat Nast, a Kansas City fashion icon converted bowling shirt designs into clever fashion statements.

A somewhat chilly reception had accompanied Dr. Funk’s arrival in Kansas City. Beyond medical school, his clinical experience had been acquired on a light cruiser where he served as its medical officer.

While sometimes the butt of an unkind Navy wardroom joke, Funk favored Navy humor over what he perceived as local indifference, perhaps explaining his attempt to make Consuelo comfortable in her new role.

Funk patiently explained the clinic’s chart retrieval and note-ing process, inviting Consuelo to review his earlier entries. Reviewing them, she quickly appreciated predictable features. R. Gutierrez, visit 75 cents, Maria Hernandez, visit 75 cents + 60 cents - aspirin, N. Ramirez, payment deferred, husband an alcoholic.

Within a few weeks Funk had acquired a secondary following, sick or ill individuals who anticipated his Tuesday – Thursday arrivals. As the Funk Impala nosed into the Nelly Don lot, it was greeted by clusters of unofficial patients. Funk fixed what he could, scribbling other doctors’ names and addresses on prescription pad pages, sometimes phoning colleagues regarding these hastily-arranged parking lot encounters.

Since his office hours commenced inside, in less than ten minutes Funk informed the Impala spotters he needed to wrap it up. A traveling man, he hustled later each Tuesday or Thursday to Volker Avenue’s Menorah Hospital. Even short drives sometimes consumed two hours, house-call side-effects.

When Dr. Funk departed, Consuelo resumed her treadle machine duties.

Nearing Tuesday’s end, her steps traced a gentle transition, one beginning on Charlotte street and then traced a downhill path through the north end’s Columbus Park. From park greenery she trekked worn grass pathways adjoining the Northeast Industrial Traffic way, her last hiking segment paralleling Guinotte Avenue.

Their Preservation neighborhood boasted twin landmarks in the form of the Norris grain elevator and St. Francis Seraph church. While the church’s spire didn’t height rival the elevator’s cupola, its Romanesque bell tower cast evening shadows across ball fields just to its east.

An earlier wooden church had been erected on what parishioners believed was Guinotte manor land. Controversy arose when widow Aimée declined to provide church officials with a deed. However, neither she nor her husband, Joseph, had ever actually owned the property.

Thus the wooden St. Francis church structure was unceremoniously dragged two hundred yards to more purchasable land on Wyman, an avenue the city later re-designated as Agnes. In economic terms, St. Francis parish was poor, nearly landlocked by combinations of factories, warehouses and railroads, plus houses of drink and other establishments of an even more questionable nature.

Prior to his assignment as St. Francis’ pastor, Father Jacob chafed at what he perceived as the narrow social justice agendas of senior church leaders. Jacob’s seminary years had been interrupted only twice, once to view Neil Armstrong’s moon landing in July 1969 and a second time to witness the Attica prison riots, September 1971. While he possessed no astronaut-related ambitions, Jacob’s witness to those prison riots strengthened his resolve to provide corporal works of mercy in favor of the incarcerated.

Across his first rectory night, nearby steel-on-steel rail car couplings strengthened Jacob’s mindfulness. The following day he walked door-to-door, business-to-business, encountering Lonnie Proffit, a retired San Bernardino Hell’s Angel, more recently proprietor of a plating shop situated in a former Belgian shed. It didn’t take Proffit long to inquire if a vacant cinder-block property he noticed on the St. Francis grounds might be leasable. Following a five-year California penitentiary sentence, Proffit reinvented himself in Kansas City, founding a profitable chrome and nickel-plating facility.

However prescient he may have been regarding corporal works of mercy, Jacob lacked even a basic knowledge of electroplating. Perhaps responsible for more buildings than they could either use or heat, he warmed to Proffit’s request. Jacob had also received a Department of Corrections inquiry regarding church-provide housing and employment opportunities, further speculating Proffit’s rent checks could correct an underpowered collection plate.

Explaining he needed a few days to consult his parish council, Jacob returned to the rectory where he penned a letter to the Missouri Department of Corrections, proposing parolees could acquire an electroplating trade while being housed and fed. In less than a week endorsement letters arrived from two Jefferson City officials, inquiring when they could send the first electroplaters-to-be. He notified Proffit the parish would offer favorable lease terms should Proffit agree to train these men.

Proffit and his original workers relocated two chrome and nickel electroplating lines within St. Francis’ tin-roofed building. Nearby Preservation residents were neutral about incorporating the Potosi parolees, worried too many would remain St. Louis Cardinal fans.

The only ones arriving with more than prison-stenciled belongings were a young black man clutching a tied bundle of Louis L’ Amour paperbacks and a white male armed with a Harley-Davidson manual.

Proffit and Fr. Jacob met three additional times, primarily to resolve lease and utility payment issues.

While Preservation wasn’t officially announced by a neighborhood marker, a Nicholson avenue firm possessed a similar name, a driveway marker announcing the Preservation Sleeper Tie Company. The family-owned firm originated in 1969 as a supplier of creosote-treated railroad ties, more recently expanding to include pentachlorophenol-treated wood products.

The neighborhood was grateful for the tie-treaters co-location, particularly during mosquito season. Locals claimed the plant’s aroma was more effective in deflecting mosquitos than city spray trucks. Neighborhood parents and even older children recognized the factory’s two lagoons should not be used for either wading or fishing.

Most of the sleeper tie workers originated in eastern Jackson county, others truck-pooling from Ray or even Lafayette counties. Their identities were mostly unknown, excepting that of Thomas Jefferson Williams, otherwise known as TJ. From beginnings as a bridge and building - B&B laborer, TJ had advanced to Missouri-Pacific railroad lead-man and later foreman status before abandoning a promising railroad career to join his chemist cousin in the creosot-ing trade, contributing fourteen thousand railroad dollars to purchase and relocate vacuum processing - creosote equipment.

During their first seven years the Williams cousins operated as partners. But in 1975 a Chicagobased corporate giant purchased both interests. Giant or not, those executives lacked creosote expertise and chose to retain TJ as Kansas City plant manager. His cousin already owned a Lake of the Ozarks cabin, retiring to a new life dominated by seasons, crappie, turkey and deer, respectively.

Viewed endwise, railroad ties measure seven inches deep and nine inches wide, each nearly seven feet long. At dawn each Saturday, TJ’s crew activated big vacuum-side compressors that infused creosote into one hundred ton lots of rail cross ties. Each year of the 70’s nearly three thousand train derailments occurred, catastrophic events sometimes originating in rotted or otherwise defective ties.

Equipment-on-the-ground was a dreaded expression, referring to a train’s derailment. Thus Preservation residents held tie treaters and their work in high regard. If decay was the ties’ enemy, vacuum-impregnated creosote was their ally.

When the big compressors idled late on Saturdays, relative quiet signaled each week’s conclusion. As a rural Roman Catholic, a weary TJ spared himself Sunday wake-ups, attending St. Francis’ Saturday vigil Masses. Given his firm’s one hundred haul-outs, St. Francis’ parishioners afforded TJ a respectful title, Boss Man. For the Guzman’s and their neighbors, Preservation constituted a vibrant industrial landscape.