Tom Vosper Plays on the Kansas State University Campus

My grandma Rogers, on my mom’s side, owned a large three-story house on Laramie Street. in Manhattan, Kansas. The house was located just a couple of blocks from the K-State campus in one direction and a few blocks from sorority houses in the other. Her house served as room and board for girls attending Kansas State University.

Grandma made her living taking in girls year-round, which included summer school. She had a woman who helped her with cleaning and cooking. It was a big chore taking care of twenty young women, feeding them three meals a day. The two of them served up wonderful meals, so good in fact, that some girls complained about gaining weight. Grandma made an excellent house mother, watching over her girls like a mother hen. The girls had to adhere to rules, and one was a nighttime curfew.

I have very good memories of summers I spent with my grandma. I believe I stayed with her during summers from age seven through eleven. I remember I was there in 1951, the year of a horrible flood, which was not at all a good memory. The Kansas River spilled over its banks and flooded all of downtown Manhattan. I remember walking on Poyntz Avenue toward downtown until I reached the edge of the rising water then had to briskly retreat to avoid getting my feet wet. It was one heck of a flood which caused massive destruction to Manhattan and other towns in eastern Kansas, especially Topeka, Lawrence and Emporia. Yes, the great flood of 1951 was a bad one indeed!

Now then, the good memories. Some of the girls who stayed at grandma’s took me to various places when they had time. Specifically, I remember them taking me swimming in the city park pool, the zoo, movies, tennis courts, Aggieville, and Pillsbury Crossing. The swimming pool, zoo, movies, and tennis courts don’t need much in the way of explanation, but I need to tell you about Aggieville and Pillsbury Crossing.

Aggieville is a community just off KSU’s campus. I thought of Aggieville as a place students went to have fun after classes and on weekends. After home football and basketball games hundreds of students would congregate there to party. It was, and still is I think, just a miniature town that has almost everything college kids need and want – a movie house, restaurants, bars, clothing stores, drug store with soda fountain, bookstores, and snack shop. So, when the girls took me to Aggieville, I always had a good time. I can’t think of when the girls didn’t treat me to an ice-cream cone or a sundae from the drugstore soda fountain. We generally walked from grandma’s house to Aggieville and back.

A few times the girls took me to Pillsbury Crossing on Deep Creek. Located a few miles southeast of Manhattan in the Flint Hills, this beautiful clear creek meanders through the hills. It pours over a long section of flat limestone rock and then spills over a beautiful three-or four-foot waterfall. It was a wonderful place to cool off on hot summer days. College students gathered there at Pillsbury Crossing to have a good time. They’d drive their cars directly into the creek which is less than a foot deep. Beneath the clear water is flat limestone rock which is easy to walk on barefooted. People like standing in the cool clear water.

So, when the girls weren’t keeping me entertained I had to come up with something on my own, like playing around on KSU’s campus. What a fantastic playground for me and a few other kids. It seems to me that kids had the run of the campus without getting escorted off by anyone with a lot or little authority. I’m thinking we got away with so much because it was during the summer when there were so few students on campus.

I believe it was Fairchild Hall that had an encased spiral slide attached to one side of the building for a fire escape. We kids were always barefooted which helped us get the traction needed for climbing up the spiral slide with a pocket of sand. When we reached the top and regained our breath, we prepared for the exhilarating ride down. We knew to get a maximum rush, which means maximum sliding speed, we needed to scatter the sand under our butts and then push off. God, what an absolute blast! The downside was that in early summer the bottoms of our feet were tender and therefore we’d get an enormous blister on the pad of each foot from climbing up the slide.

I believe Fairchild Hall also had a nice museum on the second floor. It was full of so many exhibits I loved looking at. For instance, human brains crammed in jars, soaking in formaldehyde. All kinds of birds indigenous to Kansas that had been worked over by taxidermists. Indian artifacts collected in Kansas that were associated with various Indian tribes. My favorite exhibit by far was the collection of live poisonous snakes that called Kansas their home.

I remember various rattlesnakes, a copperhead, and cotton mouth water moccasin. They each had their own little cage with a clear plexiglass top to make viewing each of them possible. When no one was around, I’d antagonize them by tapping on a cage, sometimes more than a tap. Whatever it took! There is nothing more boring than watching snakes sleep.

I befriended a man who worked in the museum and fed the snakes little white mice. I believe he fed them two mice per week, and I got to watch him occasionally. He asked me if I noticed the snakes always started eating the mice headfirst. I told him, “Yes I had noticed that.” He wanted to know if I knew why. “No, I don’t know,” I answered. He told me they do that so they can use the tail for a toothpick.

If I got bored with the museum and sliding down the fire escape, I’d go to where student veterinarians were doing some on the job training with various animals. One day I was able to observe an eyeball being extracted from a Hereford bull. What I remember most was what a bloody mess it was. Yuck!

The vets kept several cows with portals in their sides in separate pens. I’d see them unscrew the cap to the port hole and reach inside the cow’s stomach, several chambers I guess, and pull out some contents that they deposited into labeled containers. I learned that they were going to study the specimens in the lab to see how certain feeds were being digested. Watching what the futures vets were doing was always so interesting.

Ok, those are some of my favorite experiences as a youngster visiting my wonderful grandma Rogers in Manhattan, Kansas, home of KSU. I’m thankful that I had such a great time during my childhood. I also thank my mom, Minette and my dad, Pete, for letting me go stay with grandma.