Always moving (part four of a series)

Our next move was just up the street to an old, two-story house owned by the same landlords, who now became our next-door neighbors.  Nothing really changed with this move:  same neighborhood, same school (North Kansas City), same Missouri River, still within walking distance.  We were back to an outhouse, but there was running water in the house, at least.  No hot water, but still, it beat carrying a bucket outside to a pump as we always had before moving to the city.  I don't remember much about this house except that I had a cat I sneaked inside after school, while both parents were still at work.  My mom was allergic to flea-bites, so she soon figured out what I was doing and banned the cat forever from the house.

And now we come to another move my mom left out.  Maybe it was because she ran out of room in her personal history book.  I wouldn't even have been able to figure out when this move took place if it hadn't been for a headline I looked up on newspapers.com:

The night of the tornado, my dad was at work, but Mother and I (and my cat) took cover beneath a concrete bridge near our house on North Antioch Road.  So we had moved away from Harlem before this took place.  We may as well have stayed in the house, since the tornado hit the Ruskin Heights area of the city, nowhere near us.  

I believe when we first moved there I was still attending North Kansas City, which was so overcrowded that they were having split sessions with half the students attending in the morning and half in the afternoon.  But then the brand new Northgate Junior High opened, NKC school went back to full-day sessions, and I went to a brand new school building.  That's where I was going to school when the tornado happened, because I remember taking the newspaper to Northgate school with me, showing everybody the pictures of tornado damage.

I'm pretty sure we lived at this property for the better part of a year.  I remember a Christmas there, and I recall spending time at a creek in either spring or fall that ran behind the house.  There were no neighbors nearby.  With Daddy working nights and Mother working days, I spent a lot of time alone, which was the way I liked it.  I never had an after-school social life and I didn't have friends I called on the phone.  I think my poor mother worried about my lack of a social life, because she was always trying to push me into situations where I would perhaps forge some friendships.  If there were new people at church who had a daughter around my age, she would invite them to our house for Sunday dinner, and later perhaps invite the daughter over after church for the afternoon.  She signed me up for church camp a few times.  Later on, she even tried to set me up with a "good church boy", inviting him over frequently.  I took to heading to my room when he showed up, because I had no clue what to talk about with the guy and I had no feelings for him whatsoever.  

Among the peculiar things I associate with the Antioch Road house is the fact that I remember that's where we lived when I started to develop breasts.  I know, too much information.  (Cliff was reading this entry and started laughing.  I asked him what was so funny and he answered, "I'm reading about you starting to grow your retirement package.) 

The next entry will find us moving back to Harlem.