Armstrong Cleaners

I took this photo in early June of 2012. It's a suite of shops at 4018 State Line Road in Kansas City Kansas.  Roughly 28 years ago I was driving with my mother and when my car passed this building, she said.

"Oh, that so that's where it was."
"What?"
"That's were uncle Clovis had his dry cleaning store" she said.

Clovis was her uncle Clovis Armstrong. Clovis was one of those uncles no one talks about. From what I know of Clovis, he was terrible drunk.

So I asked mom, "Clovis had a drying cleaning store?"
"Yes," she said.  "He wasn't drinking during that particular time. But then he married that woman. When he and she started having problems, he started drinking again and lost the business."

Mom told me a little more about Clovis. He was a World War 2 veteran and a hopeless alcoholic. When ever he'd get drunk he'd go home to his mother, who would take him in, allow him to drink and berate him for being an alcoholic.

My mother died in 2002. Going through her papers, I found a business card that said. "Armstrong Cleaners 4018 State Line, WE 7200 "Not How Cheap but How Good." On the back of the card was the slogan "If our work pleases you tell your friends, if not tell us. To please you pleases us."

Look at the picture, reading the slogan on the business card, it seems to me that Clovis' sad ghost still wanders.

Capitano Tedeschi

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Armstrong Dry Cleaners copyright by Jamie Jacks July 9, 2012. Photograph: Shops on State Line Road copyright July 9, 2012 by Jamie Jacks