Dodge City, Kansas Mafia 1944

ONCE AGAIN, my father takes us back to early memories of Dodge City, Kansas with a family story.

This story takes place on the small farm we lived on when I was growing up.  My brother Ken, was 7 years younger than I was and after my mother went to work, when I was about 14, I became the guardian of the younger sibling until one or the other  parent arrived home from work.  So you can imagine the limited control I had over an active 9-11 year old. 

      My brother had a friend named Richard who lived a couple of blocks away from our place.  They were classmates and were life long friends.

The biggest game on the planet then was how to trick or in some way allude the older brother.  There were various schemes in the "cat and mouse" game that played out.  As a result of the desire to be free from any restriction whatsoever, the two friends formed a secret society.  The name escapes me now if I ever knew it, but it was definitely secret.  It was a bit on the shady side, more mafia than anything, except we had never heard of the mafia. 

     On the farm we had a wooden structure that served as a brooding house for small chickens.  This building had a small room at the rear which became the meeting place for the secret society.

Since big brother had the responsibility of looking into these things, I had inspected the place which had a table and some chairs and in the middle of the table was the tell tale mafia "candle in a bottle", which was used during the secret meetings.  Things like chopping a hole in the garage roof were discussed there, but that's another story.

     One evening while relaxing with my father in the yard by the house where we lived, I looked up and saw fire in the window of the secret meeting room.  I ran to the door or the brooder house and opened the secret room and found the secret burlap sack curtains on fire from the secret mafia candle.

I grabbed the curtains and threw them out the door and thus saved the brooder house from certain destruction.  Evidently at one of the secret meetings the candle had been placed in the window and ignited the curtains.  I believe that the secret meeting place was off limits to the secret society which met there from that time  on.

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Picture of Park Street Farm in Dodge City, Kansas. Now almost surrounded by town of course.