Western Massachusetts was a beautiful area of the state. The city of Springfield was not as big as Hartford, but it had a number of well known companies and many travel agents. Eastern decided to open a Springfield ticket office in the Sheridan Hotel. This way I now had my own office as well as two tickets agents, who could give me some backup office help.
Just before my official takeover of the Western Massachusetts area, Helen gave birth to a son on September 23rd 1955. It was nice to have a son. It's not that girls aren't very special, because they are. I love my daughters very much and would never change them for anything. I guess it's just that every father would like to have a son. So, here was our son. What to name this new arrival? Helen decided upon Raymond Kirby Kitchener, to be called Kirby. So now we had three little "Ks" Kathy, Karen and Kirby. Kirby was just as fair haired and blue eyed as his sisters. The girls loved him and he became the center of attention in the household.
I enjoyed working out of Springfield. There were some very good travel agents in the city, and sales were progressing nicely. I was able to get ATP card sales to many top companies, including Massachusetts Mutual Insurance Co., Stanley Home Products and the Breck Corporation. It was a rather long commute every day from Windsor Locks to Springfield, so it was decided in 1958 that we sell the Connecticut house and buy one in Springfield. Helen was in charge of finding a home for us. She fell in love with a very old three story house on Magnolia Terrace, in Springfield. The house was located about a block from a beautiful public park and only a few blocks from the elementary school. I remember that about that time, Hip Lloyd gave Kathy a black cat that she named "Tinkle". She became the family pet and Kathy used to drag it with her wherever she went.
It was late November 1958. In December, Eastern Airlines pilots went on strike. Captain Eddy Rickenbacker said that all management personnel would be kept on the payroll for an unspecified time, subject to the strike being settled. No one thought that the strike would last long. I thought that it would be nice to have a Christmas party for the twenty or so Hartford and Springfield office employees who were not working. Most of them came, and it was a nice party. In January, I joined their ranks. As the strike dragged on, I decided to get a job in the men's department of the local department store.
When we purchased the Springfield house, I had the heating oil tank for the furnace filled. It took 500 gallons to fill it. In early January, I had to fill it again. The very old steam furnace in the cellar, consumed oil almost as fast as I could fill the tank. I learned a lesson: big old houses may look great from the outside, but you better have deep pockets to keep them going. The one positive thing about the house was that the three little Ks liked it. In the spring, Kathy learned to ride a bike, Karen learned how to make mud pies (which she called mushy gushy), and Kirby, who was only three liked to play catch with the girls.
The strike had been settled in late January and I was back at work, but I decided to continue to work part time at the department store in order to keep the furnace fed. By midsummer, we had been able to sell the beautiful old house on Magnolia Terrace, and purchased a Cape Cod style house on Short Street, in Westfield. Air travel continued to grow and I was finding more airline sales representatives calling on "my" travel agents and commercial accounts. Many of these sales people were representing foreign airlines. One particular sales manager I kept running into was Dolf Bulterman. Dolf was District Manager for K.L.M. Royal Dutch Airlines, in Boston. He was a nice guy: we would frequently have lunch together when we met up on the road. Since we were not competitors, we would often share information on what was going on with various travel agents.
I remember the winter of '59 very well: we had so much snow that on many occasions I couldn't get to work, as the snow was so deep on Short Street that not even the snow plows get through for a couple of days. To this day, I am reminded by my children how I fell off the roof into a snow bank, while trying to get the snow off the roof. During the following that summer I built a large rabbit hutch in the back yard. I bought several large rabbits for the children and gave them the task to feed them and keep them clean, a responsibility that they handled well.
One of my monthly sales trips was to go north from Springfield, Massachusetts on route 91, to Northampton, where I would visit agents and make a call on Smith College. From there I would continue north to Greenfield, where I had an agent; then I would pick up the Mohawk Trail west to North Adams, where I had two agents and a couple of commercial accounts. Next I would head south to Pittsfield, in the Berkshire Mountains. In winter or summer, this was a beautiful scenic trip. At one time my father came for a visit with us and I took him on this day trip. He enjoyed it so very much; I will always remember that day in 1959.
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