Abilene, The End of the Chisholm Trail

After driving at speeds as high as 80 mph through Kansas on my way to catch a plane back to New York, I almost got a speeding ticket for going 25 miles per hour in a 15 mph zone at the Wichita International Airport. It’s the airport Terry Loewen allegedly wanted to blow up, for which he was arrested last week. Our run-ins with the authorities were separated by three decades, but the convergence of activity there provides reason to recall travel to Kansas.

A mostly flat state with rolling hills in the eastern portion near Wichita, Kansas was “dry” back then. That meant you couldn’t buy liquor for on-premises consumption in any restaurant. There were no saloons, either. Drinking was a purely social affair, done either in your home or country club. Or, in the case of executives from Duckwall-ALCO, a chain of variety and discount stores based in Abilene, in the friendly confines of the chief executive officer’s office.

I had gone to Abilene to do some off-the-record training, to learn some of the hands-on details of retailing. After visiting with several vice presidents during the day, my last interview was with Bob Soelter, the CEO. Bob was among the nicest gentlemen I ever met during my retail reporting career. In fact, the whole executive team were friendly, good people. Our meeting lasted a little past 5 pm when in walked the rest of the executive team. It was time for their daily “shoot.” One of them opened the door of a cabinet and took out a bottle of whiskey. For the next 30 minutes they casually discussed the day’s events, both internal and external news. 

Abilene, they told me, was once a big-time town. When the railroad came there after the Civil War, it was the destination point for Texas cattle drives. Red River, the 1948 western directed by Howard Hawks, starring John Wayne and Montgomery Clift, dramatized the first of those epic endeavors from south Texas along the Chisholm Trail. But Abilene, Kansas, soon lost its attraction to Texas cattlemen. As the railroad pushed deeper into Texas, the ranchers found in their own state a shorter transit point to eastern and northern markets. It was meant as a compliment, but the new railroad junction that stunted the growth of Abilene, Kansas, was named Abilene, as well. 

Abilene, Kansas, has one other historic footnote in our nation’s history. Dwight D. Eisenhower lived in Abilene from the time he was two until he graduated high school in 1909. The Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum in Abilene is the burial site of President Eisenhower, his wife, Mamie, and their first-born son, Doud Dwight.

Having had a warm and educational experience during my training exercise, I sent one of my new writers there for retail indoctrination the following year. Charlie Humphrey looked like a gnome. Short, wiry, with a full, bushy, reddish blond beard, Charlie was soft-spoken and at first meeting, quite shy. Another point of interest about Charlie was that he and his then wife, Deirdre, had been featured in a magazine article about couples who were the same size and thus able to share androgynous clothing.

The last thing Charlie wanted was to draw attention to himself, but as he arrived at Duckwall-ALCO’s headquarters he saw that was not going to be possible. Outside the main entrance a huge billboard announced, “Welcome Charlie Humphrey, Chain Store Age.” He gingerly entered the front office, not wanting to call attention to himself, but the excitement of his visit preceded him. As soon as he told the receptionist who he was, she shouted to any and all within earshot that Charlie Humphrey had arrived. That brought out several vice presidents, including the head of personnel who told him matter of factly that the group had already assembled and all they’d need was about 20 minutes of his thoughts on the state of retailing.

Whoa! Charlie had been on staff for all of a week, and though he had previously covered the automotive aftermarket, he hardly considered himself an expert on retailing. He had, after all, traveled to Abilene to learn, not teach. There was, however, no way to get out of this command performance in front of newly promoted assistant store managers from across the chain. 

After he returned to New York Charlie told me he did his best to recall some of the trends he had read in a few of the recent issues of Chain Store Age. He did not embarrass himself, the magazine or our company. Charlie would eventually be named my executive editor and then chief editor of one of our company’s other books before becoming a key executive at Ziff and CMP Media. Unlike many other variety and discount store retailers, Duckwall-ALCO, now known simply as ALCO Stores, continues to operate, with more than 200 stores in 23 states, mostly in the Midwest.  

A Stark Morning, A Night Without Pain, A Message from Beyond

It was a Stark morning ...

No, that is not the opening line of my Great American Novel. Rather, it was how I spent the better part of the waning hours of the a.m. on Friday. As is my custom in semi-retirement, when I wake up most mornings I turn on the TV to see what’s playing on Turner Classic Movies. Programmers had set aside today as a tribute to Joanne Dru, not an actress I have followed but she did appear in some notable films. First up for me was All the King’s Men, the 1949 movie adaptation of Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name, a not so veiled telling of the rise and assassination of Huey Long, the 1930s populist governor of Louisiana. 

Broderick Crawford played Willie Stark, a hick who takes on the corrupt establishment, but in his ascension to governor becomes as corrupt as those he displaced. It’s a portrayal that earned Crawford an Academy Award and reminded me that the late James Gandolfini’s portrayal of Tony Soprano shared many of the same acting traits as Crawford’s Stark, an ability to show ruthlessness and a vulnerable side. Both actors also scored leading man’s roles despite their portly shapes and less than glamorous profiles.  

(Spoiler alert) After Stark was whacked at the end of All the King’s Men (a fate we are uncertain befell Tony Soprano), I wandered down for breakfast and decided to watch TCM’s next feature, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. I get nostalgic watching westerns as they were my father’s favorite movie genre. I’ve probably seen She Wore a Yellow Ribbon a dozen times, but it’s a great John Ford movie, with perhaps the best John Wayne performance as U.S. Cavalry Captain Nathan Brittles serving the last days of his 40-year military career on an army post in the Southwest. About two-thirds of the way through the movie the location was identified—Fort Stark! 

Joanne Dru might have been the featured ingenue in both movies, but to me it was a Stark morning.

The Great Experiment Begins Saturday Night: That’s when Gilda and I will end the day on a new Sleep Number bed that can adjust each side to the firmness desired. 

Five years ago Gilda’s back ached. Our bed was too soft for her. We bought a Tempurpedic foam mattress. Her back pain went away. Mine started. Some days I couldn’t get out of bed without hoisting myself aloft on the frame of our iron bed. Gilda attributed my lower back pain to lack of exercise. A reasonable hypothesis, except that my back rarely hurt when we’d travel and slept on non-Tempurpedic beds.

My constant, constant, nagging finally paid off. Two weeks ago she agreed to try out the Sleep Number (it didn’t hurt my case that my brother and his wife have been sleeping on such a bed for the last 10 years). The bed comes with a 100-day trial period. I’m really hopeful a softer bed will alleviate much if not all of my pain, while Gilda can keep her side of the bed as firm as she desires. Without back pain I might even be enticed to exercise more, though let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Message from the Beyond: Another inanimate object signaled me the other evening, but I didn’t pick up the cue. I’ll spare you details of the issue under consideration, but it was provocative enough for me to want to send an immediate complaining e-mail to the members of a synagogue committee with whom I serve. Each time I hit “send” on the iPad the transmission failed to go through. One of the email addresses was wrong, or so the iPad said. 

I had a choice. Either wait till the next day to inquire about the right address or simply strike the offending address from the list of recipients. I chose the latter, only to find out a short while later I had misinterpreted the issue. I wasted no time sending my apologies to the committee, also explaining that “perhaps my iPad was being protective and suggesting I shouldn't send it (the first e-mail) out to anyone. As someone who believes inanimate objects have sent messages to me in the past I apologize for missing the signal.”

For those not familiar with my belief in inanimate object communication, here are a few examples: 

The day I was giving my Chevy Vega to my brother-in-law after 13 years of loyal service, the muffler fell off and the car barely trudged a few blocks without stalling out; 

On my last day of work, as I walked up Park Avenue under the protective cover of a large umbrella given to me by one of the hotels we used for our large retail conference, a wind gust blew the canopy inside out. As I struggled to right the umbrella, the metal shaft broke in two, leaving me the handle and about three inches of shaft. The decapitated handle hangs above my desk at home, a constant reminder that even if people sometimes don’t know when to say goodbye, inanimate objects do;

As I was considering a temporary position in Cleveland shortly after retiring from my employer of 32 years, Gilda handed me an article from The NY Times, “36 Hours in Cleveland”. Was the article telling me to go after the three-month position, or was it saying that 36 hours was more than enough time to spend in the lakefront city. One thing is certain, however. Another inanimate object was sending a message.

Politics and Some Old Fashioned Values

Michele Bachmann’s politics might not be my cup of tea, but at least she seems to have the credentials of someone who has served the public for many years. She also appears to be no slouch when it comes to intellect, though I would question some of her conclusions.

What I don’t understand, however, is why politicians like her always insist they are not politicians? More curiously, why do so many voters swallow their swill?

The other day, when announcing her candidacy during an Iowa stopover, Bachmann asserted, “People are tired of politicians.” Okay, if that’s the case, why is she running? She is a professional politician. Anyone who is a three-term congresswoman is a professional politician. How can anyone who knows her think she is not a politician?

Michael Bloomberg was not a politician when he first ran for mayor of New York City. Now in his third term, Mayor Mike is definitely a politician. Rand Paul was not a politician when he ran for the U.S. Senate from Kentucky last year. If he seeks re-election in 2016, or heaven help us higher office, he no longer should be able to claim the mantle of an outsider.

Bachmann appears to be as scripted as they come. She’s chock full of sound bites, an impressive quality in this era of fly-by news coverage and casual listening by the electorate. That’s why it was all the more humorous when she misspoke at her Waterloo, Iowa, campaign launch by saying both she and John Wayne hailed from that small Iowa town. In case you haven’t heard, she got the wrong John Wayne mixed up with the conservative, Hollywood icon. John Wayne the actor was from a different Iowa community, Winterset. John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer, was from home town of Waterloo. Perhaps she'll turn her faux pas into a clever retort by saying she will serially kill government, program by program.

Oh well, in any campaign there are bound to be gaffes, like when Sarah Palin couldn’t remember the name of any newspapers she read, or lauded her foreign affairs expertise because she could see Russia from her porch.

Palin is the protagonist of a new documentary premiered Tuesday in Iowa designed to right the wrongs that have besmirched her political career. The Undefeated is said to portray her two and a half years as governor as among the most fulfilling of any full-term chief executive of Alaska. I haven’t seen the film, which Palin did not commission. But you have to wonder why the documentarian chose the name The Undefeated. Palin, did, after all, lose her last election in 2008.

According to Human Events, a conservative Web site, filmmaker Stephen K. Bannon “said he titled the film The Undefeated in part because Palin fights for 'the values that she stands for and represents -- the American spirit that is found on the frontier -- and those values cannot be defeated.’”

I’ve seen lots of Westerns in my time, many starring John Wayne. While they deified individual accomplishment, self-reliance and a refusal to give in, they also contained some themes that were decidedly un-Republican: bankers often were shady characters; land- and cattle barons along with railroad tycoons were selfish aggrandizers, willing to pay hired guns to do their dirty work; to get ahead, homesteaders and townspeople often had to band together in a sort of collective socialism; prostitution was an accepted, at least tolerated, social norm; a good lawman was one who enforced gun control over the citizenry. No one declared their Second Amendment rights when Marshal Dillon or Wyatt Earp demanded they put down their side arms.