As I wrote a few years ago, leaving Lebanon, Missouri, in 1989 was difficult for my brother and I. We liked the schools, had friends and were comfortable. I had just turned 13, Dan was 11, and a few months before that big announcement, we thought we’d be there through high school.
That was the year the old man and mom had decided to build a new home on our property about a quarter of a mile from the Russ store, which closed down last year after decades of providing our rural community with a country store.
Unfortunately, the banker dad was working with stalled, the interest rate on the potential loan doubled, and my father wasn’t going to play sucker. He told the banker off, refused to sign a mortgage and decided it was time to move.
“I remember that it was really tough on you guys,” Dad said several months before he died. “But I felt like we were making the right decision. Lebanon was becoming more violent, there was more crime. And, like I always did, I was getting the itch to move.”
As fate would have it, we ended up in Burlingame, Kansas, 20 miles south of Topeka. That move also shifted the family business from focusing on craft shows in Missouri to craft shows in Kansas. Dad and Mom had already been doing quite a few shows in the latter, including a couple each year at White Lakes Mall in Topeka.
Back in those days, White Lakes was legit. Though it wasn’t all that big, it was the only mall in Topeka and several large stores, including Sears and J.C. Penney’s, were connected to it. There were about 25 small stores inside, including clothing shops, shoe stores and an Aladdin’s Castle arcade (a big deal to a junior high kid).
My parents had started doing two shows a year there, one in the summer and another at Christmastime. When they did the show in 1989, my brother and I spent quite a bit of time there. If we weren’t at Aladdin’s Castle, we were at the Nintendo station in Sears playing R.C. Pro-Am.
My other memory for that Christmas show was that our booth was set up right next to one that took your photo and put it on T-shirts, one of which said, “Ask me about my boys.” Dad, of course, made us take a photo together. For years, you’d see him around Burlingame or at shows with our mugs on his shirt.
That was really the end of the line for White Lakes. The much larger and fancier Westridge Mall opened in 1988 on the west side of town. By 1992, the last summer we did a show in White Lakes, the traffic was mostly older folks getting a workout in walking laps. Two years later, the Aladdin’s Castle closed. Before long, the mall was a ghost town.
By 1990, my parents were setting up at Westridge right after Thanksgiving. What I remember about the mall is how busy it was. Always. When I wasn’t in the arcade in that mall, I had to weave through a mass of bodies just to get back to my parents’ booth. Christmas Eve, in particular, was ridiculous, with people shoulder-to-shoulder from one end of the mall to the other.
It’s sad to walk through the mall these days and think about those times. Westridge was essentially a babysitter for several years, as thousands of junior high and high school kids roamed the walkways, mostly checking out boys and girls, of course. If we weren’t doing that, we were snarfing down giant slices of pizza at Sbarro’s in the food court or watching the latest movies in the theatre.
Mom did the show one more time, before my parents divorced the next year. Dad did a Christmas show elsewhere the next four years before setting up at Westridge one more time in 1997. I was a junior in college, and he hired me to watch his booth a few times. The traffic had already thinned out by that point.
The old man also hired my brother and my best friend, Steve, to help him. I only remember this because he’s still the only boss who has cussed out Steve.
“I got there about 20 minutes late, my alarm clock didn’t go off,” Steve said. “I get to the booth and I can tell your dad is pissed, like I knew he would be. ‘He said, ‘Where in the hell have you been? I hired your ass to be here at 10 a.m. If you do it again, I’m firing your ass.’ Well, I wasn’t late again.”
That was the last time we did a Christmas show in Topeka. By the time I took my niece to Westridge 13 years later at age 6 on Christmas Eve, the mall was a shadow of its former being. There was little traffic, many of the stores were closed, and the food court only had four or five restaurants. These days, it looks a lot like White Lakes did 30 years ago when Westridge essentially wiped it out.
As for the decision to move his boys from Missouri to Kansas? We both met our wives and started our families and careers here. I think the old man and Mom made the right call.