Remembrances of Growing Up in Raytown
By Mary Lee Baker Griffin
My mother grew up on Murkin Road, which is now 75th Street. Her grandfather built the house in 1887. It was recently torn down. She often told the story about when she was with her grandmother in a horse and buggy going home after shopping in Leeds and were on what is now 75th Street. Her Grandmother, looking around at what was nothing but farmland told her, “Some day this will all be in Kansas City.” My mother considered, what now is obviously very prescient of her grandmother, a little bit crazy.
Murkin Road was named for my great grandfather when he donated to the county to oil the road. Apparently, they told him they couldn’t oil the road because there were no funds. I think he donated $3.00 or so.
Some of my first thoughts of growing up in Raytown are of hot summer days roaming the woods, playing in the Little Blue River, walking the railroad tracks which were a mile or so from our house, and playing in the dum beside the railroad tracks looking for treasures. Looking back, we had such freedom compared to boys and girls today. We would leave home to go wandering and Mother would tell us to come home when we hear the 5:00 o’clock whistle, referring to the daily whistle at Unity Farm that was blown at 9:00, 12:00 noon, and 5:00 o’clock. The 5:00 o’clock whistle always blew too soon.
One time my brothers, sister and I wanted to go fishing in the Little Blue. Of course, we had no fishing gear, so my mother made poles for us out of small tree limbs. She made lines for us out of string, fishing hooks out of safety pins and helped us dig up worms. Imagine our surprise when one of my brothers actually caught a fish! It was a happy day.
I remember when I was in first and second grades, we sometimes went to the Raytown Café for lunch. I always had a hamburger, and the bun was always grilled along with the hamburger, which made the inside of the bun wonderfully crunchy. My parents bought the restaurant when my father came back from the war. The later sold it to Mr. and Mrs. Mansfield, who eventually relocated to the corner of 63rd and Blue Ridge, across from the library.
I started third grade at Stormy Point and had a great teacher, Mrs. Agnes Houston. I loved Mrs. Amelia Lockwood, my sixth grade teacher. We walked two miles to and from school, sometimes in some pretty good snowstorms as well as rainstorms. Stormy Point was a two-room schoolhouse with grades one through four in one room and five through eight in the other room. One row of desks made up each grade. I can remember the aroma that filled the room when we opened our lunches, which we ate at our desks.
In the sixth grade, the schools were consolidated, and I went to sixth and seventh grades at Raytown Grade School. The wonderful thing about this is we got to ride the school bus and we had a cafeteria! School lunches were 25 cents. These two things were a really big deal for me. Times change however. When my children got older, riding the school bus was an embarrassment.
All in all, Raytown was a very good place in which to grow up.
(These are excerpts from Mary Lee’s full story. Her full story along with many others are available at the Raytown Historical Society Museum)