History – Charles (Chuck) Kensinger

I do not understand

March 22, 2026

I keep watching commercials on television where political candidates are claiming that they will solve all the world’s problems in their first day in office. They are not sharing the plans that they have developed to accomplish these miracles. Pardon me if I have some reservations about the probability of any of these candidates being able to fulfill these promises.

Can Missouri’s Governor or his Lieutenant deport illegal aliens? I thought that was the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security. The current administration is botching the execution of those promises. I do not want to hear the statement “I don’t ask for permission.” from someone that wants my vote.

The 2026 elections are in process. In Missouri we will only be electing all our representatives to Congress. That is the same in every state. We have some positions in our county that are being filled again. None of Missouri’s Senators are up for re-election this year. As things stand, I cannot support any of the current incumbent politicians that support our president.

And I am having reservations with any non-Republican incumbents in the House or Senate. The Government has been frozen twice while they have been in office. I am not naive enough to take one side over the other. They are both at fault for this. Stop acting like two-year-olds fighting over toys.

It is time to gut the house of representatives. My Seventh Missouri District Congressman is a card carrying Trumpite who supports all the terrorism that has gone on across the country. He must go. If you are honest with yourself, yours should as well. We all want to believe the person we voted for isn’t as bad as the others. And yet, the evidence says otherwise.

Donald Trump needs to be removed from office. The convictions that were dropped when he was elected must be re-instated and due process must be followed. We cannot throw innocent people in determent camps, but we must imprison convicted felons until their appeals are exhausted. If Trump is innocent, then we should send him to El Salvador, or maybe Iran.

Time to act is now. No more picking the lesser of two evils. If you know someone supports the overthrow of our government and is too ignorant to admit that is what is going on, dump them with Trump.

The two-party system is not working. Trash it and those that have used it to block a republican democracy for over one-hundred years. Twenty-twenty-six is the year for the next American Independence Day. Make your vote count.

Spencers, Waltons, and Hamners

March 20, 2026

The only name you may recognize in this list is the Waltons. Earl Hamner, Jr. created this TV series that first aired in 1972. I graduated from high school in May of that year. The first episode of the Waltons aired on CBS television on September fourteenth of that year. You can say that my adult life began with this creation of Mr. Hamner.

This was not the first incarnation of this story by the author. “Spencer’s Mountain” was first published in 1961. He had begun his writing career as a script writer. His first short play that was produced was “The Hound of Heaven” that aired January 15, 1953, on The Kate Smith Show.

Spencer’s Mountain became a movie in 1963 starring Henry Fonda and Maureen O’Hara. The plots are similar. The characters are familiar from the Waltons series. This book was the story that John Boy wrote about his family. As writers, we are told to write what we know.

The character John Boy in the original book and movie was named Clay Boy after his father Clay Spenser, Sr. This makes me wonder if Earl Hamner, Jr., was called Earl Boy when he was growing up. He was the first one in a large family to go to college and become a writer.

Most of The Walton episodes were not written by Hamner. He was the Executive Producer and had final say on the scripts. While every story was not his he did make sure they were true to his concept of who his family was. As always, literary licenses were issued as needed.

Many of Hamner’s personal beliefs appear in these episodes. He was constantly exposing problems to those who were trying to take advantage of others. The Ballwin sisters, who were bootleggers, even though they did not know it, were not viewed as criminals. Blacks and orphans were seen as being oppressed.

Walton’s view of World War II was very much the way my mother remembered things as she was growing up at that time. Walton’s was a favorite of hers. She shared with me that many of the news reports of things that were occurring in Europe were viewed with doubt by her family as well.

Many of the story lines resonated with me. John Jr. wanted to be a writer and went to college to study. He was always writing a story or book. The season he purchased an old press and published his own newspaper was especially interesting to me.

The idea of living with grandparents was not that familiar and I was used to having two brothers and a sister at home. I sympathized with the Walton children when they wished they were only children. The different interests and occupations the family chose were as varied as my own. The main variation was that no one in my family became a musician or nurse.

My columns do follow a similar tack that John Boy followed by writing about the family and those things that happened to them. If you are like me and wish that the producers would come up with more family programming like this, at least with our current technology, we can watch these older shows on our streaming services. Happy watching, and I’ll share others that I have watched when they were new.

The last fifty years

February 27, 2026

In 1968, when Richard Nixon was nominated by the Republicans for President, his running mate was Spiro Agnew. Shortly after the 1972 election, some charges of impropriety forced Agnew to resign. With the majority of his second term ahead, Gerald Ford was selected to become the V.P. He had been a congressman for twenty-five years.

Ford became the 38^th chief executive and had a difficult campaign against Jimmy Carter, the 1976 Democratic candidate. President Ford pardoned President Nixon before he could even be charged with any crimes from the Watergate Hotel break-in. This was considered by some as the biggest hit on his prospects.

Ford lost to Carter, and the party shift kicked in again. Carter served from 1977 to 1981. During his first term, the Shaw of Iran was overthrown, and a pro-Muslim government took power. The U.S. Embassy was attacked, and hostages were seized on November 4, 1979. The thirty-ninth President lost his second bid for the office in 1980.

The power shifted once again when Ronald Regan defeated the incumbent based on failure to solve the hostage problem and other fiscal problems attributed to his administration. Regan held office until 1989 after winning the 1984 election as well. The hostages were released before Regan was inaugurated as our fortieth chief executive.

“Read my lips, no new taxes” was the campaign promise that convinced many to continue a Republican Presidency under Vice-President George H. W. Bush. His term was from 1989 to 1993. When other Republicans convinced him to sign a tax proposal that Congress passed, the Democrats used it to their advantage.

They nominated Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton as their candidate, and he defeated the forty-first to become the forty-second President. Clinton’s administration featured a joint Presidency with his wife, according to the GOP. She had no official title or authority. They were in the White House from 1993 to 2001.

Do you remember the September 11, 2001, attacks on our country? Muslim radicals hijacked four passenger jets and crashed them. Two took out buildings in New York City, part of the Pentagon building in Washington, D C., and the last went down in Pennsylvania.

When our forty-third President, George W. Bush, the son of the forty-first, addressed us that evening, he launched an investigation to determine how this could happen. We were involved in wars in the Middle East to eliminate factions supposedly responsible for this attack. His administration ran from 2001 to 2009.

Are you getting tired of the constant flip-flop of power from one political party to the other for over one hundred years? In 2008, we elected our first African American President, Barack Obama, a Democrat from Chicago, as the forty-fourth man to hold the office. He served until 2017.

I will not make any comments about the last three Presidents. There are situations that I feel will have to be resolved before we know what should be said without hurting feelings. Both current parties have opposing opinions of what should and should not be commented on. I hope these columns have given you insights into who our leaders have been.

Hoover to Ford

February 16, 2026

A vacuum cleaner to an automobile? No, Herbert Hoover accepted the Republican nomination in 1928 and won decisively. Before he ran, he was the Commerce Secretary from 1921 to 1928. He was our thirty-first President from 1929 to 1932. Often blamed for the Great Depression, it was his predecessors who might have been responsible.

Most of us know of FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the only one to be elected four times. The first time was in 1932. Of course, he was a Democrat. I’m sure that you have noticed that we jockey back and forth from one party to the other. The problems in a particular year often result in a change.

Roosevelt attempted to keep the U.S. out of the Second World War, but his speech on December 7, 1941, put us there. Congress, the President, and the American public had to react to the brutality of the Japanese in attacking our base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He served as our 32^nd President until he died in 1945, when Harry Truman, the Vice-President, became the thirty-third to occupy the office.

Truman is known for ending World War II by bombing two Japanese cities with atomic bombs. These were newly developed, and we succeeded shortly before the Germans and Russians. When Truman ran for re-election in 1948, he faced Republican Thomas Dewey, and most of us have seen the headline that stated Dewey had won. An early case of stating false election results.

General Dwight David Eisenhower was elected as our thirty-fourth President and served from 1953 to 1961. He was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe when the Germans were defeated.

What most of you do not know is that Truman requested Eisenhower run as a Democrat in 1952. He declared to the President that he preferred the policies of the Republican party and they nominated him. His Vice President was Richard Nixon, who ran in 1960 because in 1951 the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, which limited our Presidents to two terms.

Now I can speak from personal knowledge of the rest of our Presidents. There will be some non-historical comments on these men. I remember the 1960 election when our thirty-fifth President, John F. Kennedy, defeated Richard Nixon and served from 1961 to his assassination in 1963. I do not have to look up these dates; they are etched in my memories.

Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as the thirty-sixth President after John Kennedy was declared dead in a hospital in Dallas, Texas. He was re-elected in 1964 and declined to run in 1968. Since he served a little more than a year of Kennedy’s term, he was eligible to seek a second term of his own.

Richard Nixon was elected our thirty-seventh President and served from 1969 to 1974. He defeated Johnson’s Vice-President, Hubert Humphrey, and was the first President, and to this date the only one, to resign his office. Next time we will discuss the only President never elected as either President or Vice-President.

All Hallows Eve

October 31, 2025

In 1971 I was the Feature Editor for the Hilcrest Herald my high school newspaper. Something I tried was writing stories about historical facts about each holiday. Some were published on page three with other features. Others were editorials and published on page two and one or two made it to the front page.

I do not remember where the one with this title appeared before Halloween. This column is not an exact duplication of it because over the years my files of these published stories have been lost. As any good author is always willing to do, this is a rewrite from my original idea.

All Hallows Eve is a pagan festival that celebrated the dead and the spirit world. Part of that celebration was to dress as the dead and walk around in public on the 31^st of October. There were other times when it was part of the feasts for children to go door to door pulling pranks as the spirits were believed to do. Residents would set out treats to discourage the spirits and the children would accept these for payment.

This was how trick or treating began. Decorations representing the spirit world would be hung from trees and placed on buildings. They also posted many items that were thought to serve as talisman or good luck charms to keep evil away. What we call Halloween was a celebration of the spirit world of the pagans.

That is what I remember from my original article. Today, I will elaborate on things I have learned in the last fifty-plus years. Many Christians have opposed the celebration of this holiday for over three decades. Fall or holiday festivals are rampant at churches.

Trunk or treat celebrations are also popular now. The interesting modern developments to me are the number of businesses and not for profits that provide treats for children and how many young adults dress up and have parties. While some Christians want to tone down the spookiness others are spooking it up.

Remember to stay safe tonight when you are out with your children or grandchildren. Have parties without alcohol or drugs and stay off the roads if you have imbibed. We don’t need any tragedies while families are having fun.

Boomers go bust

April 3, 2025

As the years and the decades increase in your life span, you will notice that references that younger people do not recognize are readily caught by you and your contemporaries. My contemporaries are the kids of the baby boom. There is a lot of misinformation about this generation.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau this group was born between 1946 and 1964. We are 79 to 61 years old. If you refer to those younger or older than this as boomers, you are making an error.

Just to let you know, we are not older than dirt. Our parents were familiar with dirt when they were children. They told us thousands of stories about getting in trouble when they were kids for getting themselves or the house they lived in dirty. Some of us even remember our grandparents talking about dirt before our folks were born.

We do not remember World War I or II, the civil war, or the Roman Empire. We are not as old as God or Jesus. Both have existed for all eternity. We know that you are not as intelligent as we are. Don’t prove to us how stupid younger people are. We try to give you the benefit of the doubt.

Keep in mind that whatever you say to your children about us will come back to bite you in the backside. The generations after you will repeat these fallacies and may someday refer to you as boomers, old fogies, or the ancient of days. We remember using these same phrases on our parents and grandparents.

I look forward to hearing my grandchildren insult their parents the way they criticized us. I remember when I was fourteen and thought that I was smarter than my dad because the highest he went to school was the eighth grade. I hope all of them will get their B.A. as I and their mothers did.

Master’s or doctorates would be even better. I won’t tell them they are stupid if they do not know who or what the Mercury Seven were as long as they don’t roll their eyes when I question who all the current movie stars, TV and music performers are. Even I can identify Lady Gaga. Your children will agree with us that she was just some weirdo.

We hate it that there are a lot of commercials for medications for our ailments, adult diapers, and supplements that are recommended for older people. Keep in mind that in five years the next generation will need to sign up for Medicare and they already can join AARP.

The only way any of you can keep from getting as old as we are, is to die. When President John Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, we were told “only the good die young.” We know that was not true because we see bad people die in their twenties, thirties and forties. It is tragic, but it happens.

I wish you what parents have hoped for their children and grandchildren for centuries. To live long and prosper. We know where this quotation came from. Do you?

Jimmy Carter’s Faith

January 10, 2025

With the announcement of the death of thirty-ninth President Jimmy Carter, we are hearing about the man who failed to be re-elected when Ronald Reagan defeated him. He passed away on the twenty-ninth of December 2024 at the age of one hundred.

I remember when this former governor of Georgia first announced that he was going to run. The question was, “Jimmy who?”. Gerald Ford was then President. He had been appointed as Vice President by Richard Nixon after Spiro Agnew resigned in disgrace.

As a sitting President, Ford was a shoo-in for the Republican nomination. I’m not a Republican or a Democrat. I have always been nonpartisan. I look at each candidate and decide which I think will be the most effective as our chief executive. I did not vote for either Ford or Carter.

I did vote for Ronald Reagan when he defeated President Carter. It was not because I thought that we needed a Republican. When Reagan was nominated, I decided he was the better candidate of those that would be on the ballot. Most citizens agreed with me.

It wasn’t until after he became a private citizen again that I saw the kind of man that Jimmy was. I read his book, “Keeping Faith” and remembered the man who put Southern Baptists into the spotlight. As a lifelong Holmanite myself I appreciated his spiritual outlook.

Most importantly is the fact that he emphasized his relationship with Jesus more than the fact that he was referred to as a Christian. Christianity is only a religion to some. To President Carter Jesus was his savior and his life. This is why he taught Bible studies every Sunday in church.

The Greek word that we translate as church is ecclesia. It means a gathering of people. Paul and other writers of the New Testament believed that followers of The Way, what would later be called little Christs or Christians, should meet regularly. These are the followers of Jesus.

One of the things that Jimmie always taught was that there were no grandchildren of God. He was a loving grandfather, but he wanted to be sure that all his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren knew Jesus personally. He would not see them in Heaven unless they had a personal relationship with his Lord and Savior.

I ask you to consider if your faith is like that of James Earl Carter, Jr. Have you accepted Jesus as shown in the Bible? Do you have a relationship with Him? Don’t rely on family history or what you mark on a questionnaire to get you into the presence of the Creator God.

On Route 66

August 11, 2022

Here in Springfield, Missouri, we hear about this road that was named here and began construction in 1926. That’s correct. In four years, we will celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the mother road. We have a birthplace of Route 66 festival that begins today, the eleventh of August here in the queen city of the Ozarks.

As with most other events, it has not taken place during the pandemic. If you have never attended, now is the time to plan to be at the parade Friday evening or some of the concerts. You can just go to check out the displays and vendors during the weekend. Do not miss this opportunity. Almost all of us like music, cars, or motorcycles.

My wife and I have gone to the parade for many years. We usually sit on St. Louis Street. Many of the automobiles that are in the parade return each year. Some of the owners bring their cars from other states.

Springfield has become a destination for car enthusiasts from all over the world. Driving the original path of Route 66 is a tradition for many. According to Bobby Troup’s song “Get Your Kicks on Route 66,” runs from Chicago to L.A. and is more than two thousand miles. This song came out in 1946 and was recorded originally by Nat King Cole.

The cities mentioned in the song are Chicago, St. Louis, Joplin, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, Gallop, Flagstaff, Winona, Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino, and Los Angeles. Springfield is not mentioned. Troup and his wife were driving from Pennsylvania to California. They began on Route 40. In Chicago, they changed to 66, and the song was renamed, and the lyrics spoke of the last half of the trip.

Bobby’s first song was “Baby, Baby, All the Time” recorded by Nat King Cole in 1946, the same year “Route 66” came out. Some of his other songs were “Feeling of Jazz” by Duke Ellington, “It happened once before” by The Four Freshmen, “Lonely Girl”, “Meaning of the Blues”, and “Now You Know.”

One of my favorite facts about Bobby Troup is the TV series “Emergency” that he and his then-wife Julie London starred in. This show was filmed and set in Los Angeles. I think it is fun to watch these episodes now and think of how his career began with this song that he wrote shortly after traveling through my hometown.

The TV show Route 66 was first aired in 1960. Martin Milner and George Maharis play two friends who are driving a Corvette. Not all the episodes feature the highway known as Route 66. Milner went on to star in “Adam-12” which was produced by the same people who brought us “Emergency.”

Springfield is considered the birthplace of the mother road because the suggestion of the designation for the US highway that would travel from Chicago to California and travel through Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and end in California was suggested by businessmen in the Springfield area. The first notification came via telegram to them at the Colonial Hotel in downtown Springfield, Missouri.

I hope this background helps you while you enjoy the festival. Get your kicks on Route 66 as you share the things that you like whether it is music, cars, or motorcycles. Stop by the museums and read up on the history. Just because you haven’t lived here all your life doesn’t mean you can’t learn something new.

Charles (Chuck) Kensinger

Walk With a Servant

Tag: History