NBA's Notwitzki & fencing & Naismith

According to the AP story today, Dirk Nowitzki of the Dallas Mavericks got his speed as a big man partially from some footwork with fencers recommended by his basketball coach. That reminded me that the inventor of basketball was also a a fencer and fencing instructor. Here's a photo (from 1926) of James Naismith with some of his students at KU. The footwork helps the fencer score - she or he needs only a touch and not a millimeter more to score - the exact distance improves your chances to score.

a turkey vulture's wind tunnel

I was out on a morning bike ride to Clinton Lake. At the far west end before the boat ramps is a nice gradual descent between the trees. A turkey vulture came in over my head about 15 ft up and soared above me for quite a ways keeping pace just ahead of me (half-wheeling me?). Staying just below the tree tops, the road must be sort of a wind tunnel where this bird was catching a good draft.

The Pan American: to be (served) or not to be

Just finished Wayne's book. Curious to see what Kim thinks of the story as he made contributions to facts about the Pan American Cafe. Nice photo of a Pan American lunch crowd in the book, with grandpa (King Mar) serving customers behind the counter. I need to dig up a good photo of the apartments that were above Pan American (150 N Market, my first home address. Mom and Dad and I lived there my first year).

Wayne mentioned that blacks were served in the back. I remember the sign in front by the counter, "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone." A common sign back them to keep blacks out. The Pan American customers were mostly whites on a business lunch or between work as the book mentions the boom days of the El Dorado oil fields and the aircraft industry. The Chinese population in Wichita of 0.1 % made it nearly invisible and no race relations can be made if you don't see someone to interact. I always wondered if that sign would come back and bite the Pan American owners and cooks.

Still, it was a black and white society right up to the 60s.
I got two traffic tickets about 6th grade - once I was labeled white, then second time Dad was amused see I was labeled black. And then Sam as a high school student leader had to deal with the race riots. Mom and Dad mentioned to me Sam agonized on his proper role and reponse. Do you see i from the black perspective; from the white view? Wichita was still in the B&W TV mode and had yet to discover NBC's Wonderful World of Color. This was a few years before the 1998 movie, "Pleasantville" posing the possibilities of life beyond black and white.

Wayne's World of Wichita

During my lunch break, I happen to walk by the Asian-American History section in the Oread Books (shop) at the Kansas Union. On the top shelf was American Paper Son: A Chinese Immigrant in the Midwest, by Wayne Hung Wong. I was thinking, this can't be the Wayne Wong that my brother, Kim, and my Dad talked about years ago. Then, looking at the photo pages, the pictures sure looked like our family albums. Then, there was a shot of the Pan American Cafe - the downtown restaurant I grew up in and owned (partly) by my granddad, King Mar.

Info on the book is available from the Univ of Illinois Press. I always thought it would be nice to see an account of the Chinese in Wichita. I'm glad Wayne and others with the talent and resources assembled the story.

The photo shows the Pan American (circa 1950).