Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City (and St. Louis)

10-8

I was happy as I drove out of Oskaloosa. It was a sunny morning, and the rolling Iowa countryside was beautiful as the GPS, my faux female companion, led me south and west through small towns and along the perimeter of large farms. Somewhere out there our presidential candidates were having coffee with the farmers and preparing for town hall meetings. Democracy was on the march.

I was also thinking about the two young people I had met the night before--Wes, the reporter, and his girlfriend. They reminded me of Pat and me 30 years ago. Inspired by Woodward and Bernstein, I thought I was going to be a reporter when I got out of college. I got a job at the Record-Courier, a small newspaper in a rural county outside Cleveland, and eventually covered the county seat, Ravenna.

Pat and I married a year later. She was a writer, too, but the only job she could get in Ravenna was waiting tables at a diner frequented by the lawyers and judges who did business in the courthouse nearby.

Pat put up with this because she loved me, and we were young and cocksure that big things were around the corner. In the meantime, she asked the cooks at the diner to teach her how to make pies because she knew I liked them. Pie eventually became the subject of her first book, Pie Every Day, a history of the evolution of pie in America. Two more food books followed, and her latest will be out this summer.

As I drove toward Kansas City, a tune kept running through my mind:

Everything’s up to date in Kansas City.

They’ve gone about as far as they can go.

They’ve got a big theater they call the Burly-Q.

For 50 cents you can see a dandy show!

Gals?

One of the gals was fat and pink and pretty,

As round above as she was round below.

I swore that she was padded from her shoulder to her heel.

But later in the second act when she began to peel,

She proved that everything she had was absolutely real.

She went about as far as she could go.

Yes, sir! She went about as far as she could go.

Not trusting my singing voice, I read this to the audience at the Kansas City Public Library that night. I don’t remember how I squeezed it in. I said something about it showing that Rodgers and Hammerstein reflected the changing attitude toward sex during World War II. When Oklahoma opened in 1943, it featured both "Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City" and "I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No," a song in which a young woman cheerfully confesses her sexual desires.

But mostly I just wanted to start with something fun. Whether it was the song, the food and drink offered at a reception or the lovely auditorium on the top floor of the library, the large audience was friendly and responsive. The size of the crowd was the result of successful promotion by Rainy Day Books, the ACLU of Western Missouri and the Kansas City Library.

Roger, Chris and Vivien at KCPL

Roger Doeren and Vivien Jennings of Rainy Day Books did a brisk business after my speech. Rainy Day is renowned for its prowess at producing author events, and I was impressed by the smooth efficiency with which Roger set up and broke down the bookselling apparatus. Vivien expressed regret that it is so difficult to do successful events for "serious" books. But I was delighted by the sales, and I celebrated with barbeque at Gates BBQ on my way back to my hotel.

The next day, I hit the road for St. Louis. This event, too, was held at a library, supported by a bookstore (Left Bank Books) and co-sponsored by the ACLU (ACLU of Eastern Missouri). But the results were entirely different. This was a branch library, and there were only a half dozen people in the audience. Even the apologetic librarian and the young man from ACLU had other obligations and departed early.

Kris Kleindienst of Left Bank Books had warned me that my event was scheduled at the same time as a reading by a celebrity author. But I couldn’t bring myself to blame Carl Bernstein, the hero of my youth.