Chess in Kansas City?

I know that people are out there blogging about everything under the sun, but I think I've got a topic that's a little new and different. This blog is mostly for family and friends, but there are bound to be a few people out there interested in Depression-era history, the history of chess, and Kansas City history.

What, you may ask, is all this talk about history? Isn't this a blog about chess in Kansas City?

Well, yes, its a blog about chess in Kansas City, but its about chess my father played in Kansas City from 1937 until 1940 when WW II intervened.

Its all beautifully documented in a chess diary I found while unpacking Mom and Dad into their new assisted-living facility. There, on top of the box for his beautiful ivory chess set that he brought home from England during the war was a faded S. S. Kresge Co. collegiate binder that contained Vol. 2 of his chess diary. I'm starting in the middle and skipping right past Vol. 1 (but we'll get to that eventually). I'm going to gradually scan a few pages a week and put them online until the entire corpus is digitally conserved.

So here's the first installment--a game with the famous Master (Grandmaster IMHO despite never holding the title), Israel Albert Horowitz from Jan. 17, 1940. The match lasted 5 hours and when Horowitz offered my dad a draw it was accepted--he had an early class the next day.

From the scan (200 dpi jpg) you can get a feel for the fragility of the faded old pages and the character of the binder (Model 3070, made in the U.S.A.). The pages are 5½" by 8½" and the pre-printed score sheet shows indications of the time: a misprint on line 13 and, it being just days into the new year of 1940, "39" scratched out.

Just a few pages earlier in the diary, there is a small note at the top of a page, "War ruins chess! (among other things)." Truer words could not have been written and within 12 months, Henry was drafted and Pearl Harbor would be bombed.