This story always made me giggle and wonder, but my father swore it was true.

The event took place at his Grandma Franklin’s house on east 14th Street in Kansas City. She lived in a rambling two-story house. The dining room, where Thanksgiving was held, was lit by an old gas light fixture. All the leaves were in the old oak dining room table (it’s now in my dining room), and there was room for everyone.

In those days, there was no radio, there were no football games. But the family members enjoyed one another’s company. My dad said this taught him early that while he was an only child, family was important.

The After-Dinner Surprise

But this one particular Thanksgiving gave my father a special surprise. “This was when I was quite small, and her toilet was ‘out back.’ Grandma didn’t have much as far as possessions went, but she was high enough on the social ladder to sport a two-holer,” my father wrote in his Post Scripts column. The outhouse was neat and clean except for occasional wasps and flies, and it always contained a catalogue for wiping. “I seem to recall that Grandma always reached the harness section about this time of year,” Dad wrote.

A grape arbor connected the back porch of her home to the tiny outhouse. In the summer this provided shade to and fro, but the leaves were dead by this time of year.

As my father wrote: “Nature called, and I made my way to that secluded shanty, never for a moment aware that I was about to be subjected to one of the most harrowing experiences of my life. I went inside, lowered my freshly washed and pressed overalls and sat down on the smoothed boards. This required some delicate balance since my backside could have easily slipped through the opening…

It Really Was an Alligator

“All of a sudden I heard a strange sound–a sort of a flapping around. I spread my legs to peer down into the depths. There, just a few inches away from my loins it seemed, was an alligator. So help me, it really was an alligator!

“I didn’t bother to retrieve my overalls which fell into a crumpled heap on the floor as I rocketed off the seat. I flew down the cinder path beneath the grape arbor in record time and breathlessly told my mother and grandmother what had occurred.”

Needless to say the outhouse was off limits for a while, while the two women investigated.

Escapee From ‘Medicine Show’

Eventually Dad’s grandmother learned the alligator, a baby, was an escapee from a “medicine show” owned by someone up the street. Medicine shows in those days were traveling exhibits, usually a closed-in carriage pulled by horses, that peddled patent medicine. They usually had entertainment, including–in this case–an alligator, to help draw in the crowds. The show’s owner quickly came and retrieved his escapee in likely a not-so-pleasant way!

“From that time on, no matter how festive the day nor how carefree I felt, I never sat myself down on Grandma’s facility without taking a good look first,” my dad wrote.