Judy Mizer Barnes and the Davenport Years
Tue, 08/20/2024 - 3:03pm
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By:
Lonnie Whitaker
I do not recall a time when I didn’t know Judy Mizer. Certainly, my first recollections of her are before kindergarten in Davenport, Iowa.
After World War II, our fathers, Loren Mizer and Jack Whitaker, Sr., went to work for Merchants Transfer and Storage, an Allied Van Lines agent, in Davenport. Both fathers became long-haul truck drivers of the orange Allied tractor-trailer rigs. Old school, double-clutching knights of the road in the days before air-conditioned, sleeper cabs.
Whenever I hear the song, “Six Days on the Road,” made famous by country singer Dave Dudley, I think of them barreling down a winding highway in the days before interstates looking forward to the next truck stop and a hot cup of coffee. I paid homage to Uncle Loren, with a truck driver character in my novel, Geese to a Poor Market.
I suppose it was inevitable our families connected. Loren and his wife Frances had a daughter, Sharon, and son, Chet, close to my brother’s age, and Judy, who was a grade behind me. Our older siblings did not care to hang out with Judy and me, and we became inseparable pals. All the kids referred to each other’s parents as “Aunt” or “Uncle.”
Weekends, holidays, and summer vacations were often joint family affairs. On Friday nights, when the dads were in town, our parents would meet friends at Jack Davey’s Tap and Woody’s Tavern—Judy and I knew the telephone numbers of our parents’ two favorite joints.
The families frequently had picnics at Fejervary Park, a 75-acre park in Davenport, where we would venture off exploring. Judy, a blond-haired, precocious little cutie, would invariably connect with some other family who found her adorable and offer us snacks. Her hashtag could have been “gregarious as a child.” Or, as I recently smiled and told her younger sister, Tamie Coontz, “born with an opinion.”
When Judy was four- and I was five-years-old, Mom and Aunt Frances enrolled us both in tapdancing lessons. Perhaps, they got the notion from watching the popular TV talent shows of the time, such as Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour. Nevertheless, as comedian Norm Crosby, the master of malapropisms, might have said: it was a plan of “questionable dubious.”
I do not recall being consulted on the matter, but I do remember being confused at the lessons. The instructor kept repeating one basic move: “Hop, one, two.” This involved, as one might expect, hopping up from the floor with one foot, followed with two forward brush steps with the opposite foot.
In no time at all, Judy and I were included in a class dance recital. It was awful. Have you ever felt out of place in a group because everyone else knew the rules and you did not? That pretty much sums up the experience. We were on the stage with other more experienced kids in front of all the parents, and the only move we had was “hop, one two.” For the record, I am sure Judy performed better than my feeble efforts. After all, she had latent talent. As a teenager, she was a high-stepping majorette in the Birch Tree High School marching band.
My consistent complaining and obvious lack of talent overwhelmed Mom’s desire to see me on a TV talent show, and she withdrew me from the class. Judy stopped about the same time. In fairness, Mom may have simply been searching for a way to redirect my excess energy and had no interest in being a “stage mother.”
That wasn’t the end of our “Fred and Ginger” days. Our parents belonged to a supper club that featured a weekend dance band. For a “night on the town” our families would go there, and after a dinner of Swiss steak and mashed potatoes, we enthusiastically joined other kids in a “conga line” for the Bunny Hop, a dance made popular by bandleader Ray Anthony in the early 1950s.
Stockcar races were popular, and Judy’s Aunt Doris’s husband, Willie Croft, built and raced stockcars. On weekends, our families often headed for an oval dirt track on the outskirts of the Tri-Cities (now, the Quad Cities) to root for Number 22, the Croft Special, an old thirty-something chevy coupe that he raced.
Judy and I often talked about Aunt Doris, who had a rawboned physique and athletic strength. We loved Aunt Doris, but at different times, we each received comeuppances from her. Judy claimed to have been slapped once because Aunt Doris thought Judy had failed to say “Aunt” when she addressed her. Judy always professed innocence.
Generally, one fierce look from Aunt Doris would instill almighty fear. Once when I was about five-years-old, I stayed with her for a day. She sent me to the corner grocery store to pick up some item for her. As the grocer gave me the change from the purchase, I spied a plastic toy and purchased it with the change.
When I returned, Aunt Doris asked about the rest of her change. I started squirming and offered some excuse. “Don’t you story to me!” she said. [“Story” was her word for a fib.] She gave me “the look,” and I fessed up and showed her the toy. She sent me back to the store to return it and get the rest of her change. Obviously, I have not forgotten the lesson.
Given the closeness of the families, I suppose when Mom and Dad decided to move to Missouri, it is not surprising the Mizer family decided to move, too, even though they had no prior connection with the Ozarks other than a summer vacation there with us. Interestingly, the Mizer family lineage never strayed far from Shannon County afterwards.
In 1956, the middle of my third-grade year, the two families, kit and caboodle, arrived in Shannon County, a mile west of Montier. Sharon, brother Jack, Chet, Judy, and I began classes at the two-room Montier schoolhouse.
For a short time, both families lived in my grandparents’ farmhouse. It was a beehive. The dads were mostly on the road, but with my grandparents, two moms, five school-age (city) kids, no indoor plumbing, and an outhouse, getting ready for school each morning required military precision. Instead of a powder room, we took turns at a washstand with metal basin a few feet away from the kitchen table. Somehow, the situation did not seem unusual to me.
After the sixth-grade, I moved to Willow Springs and indoor plumbing, and the families saw less of each other. Still, for several summers our mothers reconnected for camping trips on the Jacks Fork near Alley Springs.
When I was in junior high, Judy visited us in Willow one weekend, and Mom could hardly wait to take her to Hannah’s dress shop at Harris and Main Street (across from Ferguson’s clothing store) to buy her a couple outfits. Mom would have adopted her given the opportunity.
Two years ago on Memorial Weekend, while I was paying my respects at the Montier Cemetery, a pickup, which had been at the back of the cemetery, stopped 30-yards away before exiting at the gate. The passenger-side window rolled down and a woman yelled at me. “Is that Lonnie Whitaker?” It was Judy with her beloved husband, Jack Barnes. Although we had stayed connected on social media, I had not seen Judy in nearly a decade. She and Jack were there distributing flags to veteran’s graves.
This year was a tough one for Judy, who spent the last fifty days of her life in hospitals. Last October, however, I would not have anticipated that when she surprised me by showing up at my book signing event at Bailey’s Chevrolet. We talked and laughed for two hours about Davenport days, the Montier School, and the people we knew.
I am grateful I got to see Judy and her daughter Beverly Barnes Ledgerwood during her last hospital stay at Barnes-Jewish hospital in St. Louis. She has passed away, but her memories remain. Now, I imagine, if there is a kitchen in Heaven, Judy is there baking her famous pies and showing others how to make noodles the way her mother taught her.