Thing We Love: Overalls

After coming across the great photos from yesterday's post, I've become slightly sentimental about growing up in the Midwest. In my warped mind, instead of thinking about riding my bike through the streets of Mission Hills and playing in the yards of the huge mansions, where all of Kansas City's elite live, I like thinking about class trips to Dustin Dolginow's family farm for hikes down to the stream and playing on huge haystacks. I like daydreaming about a little Hollister perched on a bar stool eating livers and gizzards at Duke's, my Aunt's bar in Benedict, Nebraska, a town with a population of 278 people. I like to think this is how we spent our childhood -- in overalls and playing in the water.

May Day, May Day!

Pembroke Hill, the school where we spent our first formative years, knew a thing or two about tradition. It came into being when Pembroke Country Day (a boys' school started in 1910 where our grandpa spent a few years) and Sunset Hill (a girls school just South of the Plaza started in 1913) tied the knot, shook up the sexes, sent the young kids to the girls' campus and the older ones to the boys'. This great sugar-spice-and-everything-nice-meets-hammers-nails-and-puppy-dog-tails-union occurred when I hit first grade...and what a shake up it was. Luckily, they kept many of both schools' long-standing traditions, namely: May Day Field Day. For the May Day component, which started at Sunset in the '20s, the littlest kids dressed up as Robin Hood (thank god, for those fancy KC parents they didn't follow through with that sealing from the rich bit...), the 3rd through 5th grade girls (like Porter, above, in 3rd) threw on custom made ribbon skirts and danced with a hoop of flowers, while the 6th grade girls, in the same costume, braided the May Pole with boys dressed in tennis whites. Afterwards, we'd strip down to our little white gym shorts and reversible red/blue shirts and Field Day would begin. Oh, the 50-yard dash! Such bitter competition. Such fun.

Things We Love: Badminton

One of our favorite things in Kansas City are the gigantic versions of sport's strangest projectile with the funniest name -- the shuttlecock -- strewn all about the lawn of the big art museum. These are the real thing, made with real feathers so they can fly!