72 Rubber Gloves Anyone

The life of a married student is tough enough with studies but finding a decent job added greatly to the stress. It was my miss fortune to land a job at the Blue Mountain Infirmary, a care facility run by the county for the destitute and out. The care was proper enough but the condition of the residents was in many cases quite extreme. My need for work was critical to our survival and as they were not lining up for the position of orderly I was immediately put to work. The training consisted of one day of on the job (pardon the pun) training. This meant tailing the retiring orderly around for one shift and then you were on your own.

To give you an idea of the duties of my job, when I got home for dinner following my first shift I couldn’t eat the delicious beef stew that Sandy had prepared for me, it was then she realized it was far better that I was the one working at the care home. It is amazing how a person adapts, as it was not long before I could figuratively eat my lunch with one hand while doing the paper work with the other.

I will never forget Grandpa Greene who used to wander the hall with a fly swatter in his hand. When asked what he was doing he would always say, “I looking for anything that harms man or beast.”

Without fail at least once a week poor old Grandpa Greene would get “the treatment,” which consisted of a layer of milk of magnesia poured over a shot of cascara, called not very imaginatively, the “black and white.” This had the effect of blasting anything loose, and it worked very effectively. The following morning, there would be Grandpa Greene standing by his bed with his long johns on the floor around his ankles, and doing his best to clean himself from the waist down.

The remedy of course was to place him on a wheeled shower ring and hose him off under the shower. Attending to his room was a different matter, however.

I never did find out why they continued to treat the poor old man this way, unless some nurse had a perverse delight in doing so. A much smaller dose would have done the job, (pardon the pun again) with much less climactic results and trauma to the poor old man.

This turned out to be my initiation for over the next few years as an orderly I became one of the best rear gunners of the white brigade. Give me a pair of rubber gloves and a set of orders and I would take on anyone.

71 Give Me a Break Richard

The spring of ’64 had arrived before I knew it and I had not yet lined up a summer job. Who should show up a few days before classes were over but Richard Williams an acquaintance of mine from my Laurelwood days. He had found a job falling trees for Web and Lewis, two gypo loggers in Idaho. It was out of the small town of Fairfield not far from Mountain Home Idaho and in a little valley called Camas Prairie. Because it was at the five thousand foot level the main industry was hay farming. Even though Fairfield was the largest town in the county it only had a population of about four hundred people. This meant that it did not yet have a bank, but it did have a small grocery run by a friendly guy by the name of Joe Baker where you could buy most anything. Most of the houses in town however had the traditional out house at back.

So began another summer in the woods falling trees, but this time with a partner who it turned out did not have what was needed to pull it off. Richard had bought a brand new power saw but it takes more then a new saw and a falling contract to make any money. You have to be able to keep your saw running, plus fall the odd tree, and Richard was challenged on both accounts. Richard did cut the odd tree but how to operate a power saw and keep it running was beyond his capability. He was always running back to town to get some needed supply that he had forgotten, or fix his saw. We finally changed our financial arrangement to reflect his incompetence as a faller.

I realized that it would be a mighty long summer with just Richard as a roommate so after work that first Friday I was out of there, and racing for College Place and the love of my life. I didn’t stop until I was snuggled up beside her in College Place, six hours later.

Sunday morning however I loaded her and the kids up in the car and put the few things we had in a trailer and off I went back to Fairfield. You should have seen Web’s surprise when I showed up with the whole family Sunday evening looking for a place to put Sandy and the two kids. He didn’t boot us out but it was obvious that we now had to find another place to stay.

Well, we had arrived, but where to stay? The town of Fairfield had no places for rent, but we at last found a house, that by today’s standards would not be rentable, but believe it or not, someone rented it to us. There was a large hole through the floor in the living room where the previous occupant had chopped wood, the house was beyond description, but it did have a bathroom, which most of the houses in town didn’t have. After a few trips into Mountain Home for stuff to fix it up it became just about livable. When you are young and in love, livable as a term has a totally different meaning then when you are fifty.

We finally had a place but we also had Richard, whom Sandy was not to tickled to board, but poor Richard needed some place to stay and Web was not to happy about him staying with him, so Sandy relented and Richard moved in with us.

It seemed most of our earnings went to buy food at Joe Baker’s grocery store, that is when we occasionally got paid. The difficulty was that even though Joe was “an all right kinda Joe,” he didn’t trust us enough to give us credit, so it was sometimes nip and tuck as to where the nest meal was coming from.

One of the funniest things of the summer was when Richard after work one Friday decided to get his haircut at Sam the Barber’s. As Sam’s shop was right next to the pub and there wasn’t a rush for haircuts in Fairfield, Sam had a convenient place to spend his downtime. When Richard walked in for a haircut that Friday, it must have been an extremely slow day for Sam. One look at Richard’s hair after Sam’s attempted efforts and you actually felt sorry for Richard, I swear if a rat had chewed it off it would have looked far better. Richard’s only hope was to plead with me to at least try to even it up so he wouldn’t be embarrassed to go to church the next day. I must say I didn’t do too bad a job; I may have missed my calling.

It was a very busy summer without much time for play as we arose by 4:30 or 5:00, usually starting our saws by 6:00 am, stopping only to fill our gas tanks. I treasured the thirty minutes I took off for lunch. I ate for fifteen minutes and napped for fifteen minutes and then it was back to work.

It was not unusual for a snow squall to come flying through as we were working at 6500 ft elevation. What made it scary was that many trees had lightning scars and several times each week a thunder storm would go roaring through our cutting area. If one came to close, I stopped cutting until it moved on, as I didn’t want to incur the wrath of Thor, the god of thunder, and get lit up because my saw was in some tree that wasn’t to be cut.

The pay was good but the trees were very small and limby and we worked like dogs to get what little money we made. What dealt the final blow was that Web and Lewis folded up in August just after Richard and I had quite and we never got paid for about a third of our summer’s wages. This put the plan for another year of college on hold, so it was back to work, but this time it was back to GMG Logging where the living was easy and the pay was good. But it rained like crazy.

70 Logging in the Blue Mountains with the Bees

My summer employment was not always what I wanted it to be but the summer of ’66 was especially interesting. I was able to find work with a gypo logger who was logging in the Blue Mountains just over the state line in Oregon. George Manson was a small town logger, who happened to be looking for an experienced faller just when school was out for the summer. I was quite happy to start work for him as soon as my last test was completed. Gypo loggers find wood wherever they can get it, which means they move around a lot from one small private sale to the next.

My job was to start falling trees as soon as we hit a new show so the skidder operator, Ron McCoy could immediately start hauling them out to the landing with the John Deere skidder. George bucked and then loaded the 16-foot logs onto a logging truck to be hauled to a stud mill in Walla Walla.

The part I liked just as much as falling was helping Ron clean up when the last tree was on the ground. George had an old Allis-Chalmers 18 tractor and he let me run it until all the trees were finally hauled to the landing. I remember some areas were so steep that I had to reverse steer down the hills. A steep slope also made it very difficult to turn around. To keep from sliding and maybe rolling the tractor, it was necessary to pivot around the nearest stump. I can still remember coming down some of the steep slopes with five or six full length trees sliding into the back of the tractor, and me, desperately trying to prevent it from jackknifing. It sometimes got a bit scary.

We usually think of danger when falling trees as coming from the trees themselves or maybe getting seriously injured by the power saw. One day however just as a tree I was felling began to fall I felt a sharp stinging sensation down my neck and took off running the opposite direction from the tree as I realized I was standing on a wasp’s nest. I ran madly through the woods as I could see the wasps following me in the sunlight. Just as I had stopped thinking I was safe I got another sting. Altogether I receive three yellow jacket stings and I never found the nest.

A few days later we were working in a different area and it seemed that half the trees had a wasp’s nest somewhere near by. I still remember when Ron ran into a nest with his skidder and a number of wasps actually attacked the skidder. I will never forget watching yellow jackets trying to sting the dozer blade. They also went after Ron and stung him seven or more times, and as he was allergic to their stings we had to quite for the day.

It seemed George had an unwritten protocol about bee trees. If bees happened to be in a tree that was felled the operation came to a sudden halt while he and Ron gathered round and the faller cut out the nest while the bees in the meantime were wildly buzzing round by the thousands. My only defense was to open the needle valve and make my power saw smoke as much as possible. Why I never got stung I will never know.

It was fortunate for me that Ron was the actual honey robber designate. Here would be Ron sitting there with his shirt open at the collar, his shirt sleeves unbuttoned, and bees crawling all over his head, face and arms while he calmly reached in and pulled out big pieces of honeycomb. Why he would do that when he was allergic to their stings I will never know. Come to think of it, I guess I do know; he never seemed to get stung from bees. It was not until things had settled down a bit that George and I would go in to get some of the booty.

Over the years until I finished my education I worked for many gypo loggers and one thing that was common among most of them was how to get reliable help. It was not that loggers as a whole are lazy or undependable but many of them had a serious drinking problem. I felt sorry for Ron McCoy who’s wife had left him with his new born child because he only lived for booze. His life completely revolved around booze. He always kept beer in the door pockets of his Ford pickup and would crack one open the minute we jumped in after work. I used to ride to work with him and most of the time he smelled like a brewery. After spending his nights in a pub until closing it was anybody’s guess as to what woman he had gone home with for the night. This sometimes made it difficult to know where to phone so I could roust him out so we could get to work on time. One morning on the way to work we ended up in the ditch. I felt fortunate neither of us got hurt. On looking back I suppose I was foolish for riding with him.

George was a crusty old logger, but I liked working for him even though I wished I had asked for more money at the beginning of the season. I really couldn’t complain as treated me OK and before I knew it, the summer was over and I was back at college.

69 Just about Having Fun at Rosario Beach

The lot of all Biology Majors at Walla Walla College was to spend at least one summer at the Walla Walla Biology Sta. at Rosario Beach, on Fidalgo Island in the San Juan Islands. It was a great place to spend the summer and would have been the perfect place to holiday except for the classes, which sort of messed up the whole experience.

Don’t get me wrong I still enjoyed the experience, (a little) but I must be honest, it was not as relaxing as a week at the local beach, especially with a wife and two kids and what with trying to get the last of my studies out of the way so I could graduate in August.

The two classes, which I was taking, were enjoyable because one was on flowering plants and the other on the study of invertebrates.

The flowering plant course meant that we had to go on a couple of field trips, one up to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic Mountains and the other to Cascade Pass up the Skagit River near Ross Lake. I found pressing and identifying various plants was a lot of fun and quite interesting.

Invertebrates on the other hand are a unique group of animals that inhabit the seas and most if not all fresh water. As part of the course we were out in the station’s boat dragging for them one sunny summer day in the San Juan Islands. This particular day we had just pulled the drag up to take a look when suddenly Prof. Watson grabbed the drag and without warning flipped it over, giving me a smack in the mouth. In doing so he broke off the corner of my left front tooth.

The experience was of minor importance to the professor who I thought was a bit uncaring at the time and seemed quite indifferent to the discomfort and inconvenience he caused, not to mention the pain he caused in getting it fixed. It is experiences like these that hopefully mellow us and give us the grace to forgive and forget, and I hope I have.

Even though college had been a struggle I looked back on my experience with satisfaction, especially Rosario Beach as it was the final event before graduation and the beginning of a new chapter in my life. Soon I would be working for the Federal Forest Service, at the Pacific Forestry Center in Victoria, BC.

68 Gimme an A, But I’ll Settle for a B

College for me was always a means to an end, which meant I had to work hard at keeping my grades up. What made it even more challenging was working at least 20 to 30 hrs a week so the family could survive.

One course that I found interesting but particularly challenging was Biochemistry from Prof. Chambers. Prof. Chamber’s way of grading was to have three exams during the quarter, followed by a Final. I only got 67% on the first exam but resolved to study harder for the next one. I really started to panic when I only received 75% on the second exam and learned that the third exam was cancelled. It meant that the chances for getting a decent grade all hung on how well I did on the final. Based on my currant record I felt it was hopeless.

After class one day I asked one of the guys what to expect on the final exam and he said, the test would be on Kreb’s Cycle, the same as it is every year. Well, I took him at his word and studied Kreb’s Cycle, which is the metabolic pathway for all higher organisms.

When I say I studied Kreb’s Cycle, I mean I studied Kreb’s Cycle. Ask me about anything else and you might get a wrong answer, but not on Kreb’s Cycle. Sure enough on the black board test day, were five questions all on Kreb’s Cycle, and on Prof. Chamber’s desk a stack of blank sheets of paper. After grabbing a handful I sat down and wrote steadily for at least an hour. When finished with all of the questions answered in detail, I had twenty pages of formulas and equations and the metabolic pathway written out in detail. After placing the last dot on the last page, I walked to the front of the room, laid all twenty pages on Prof. Camber’s desk, smiled and walked out, I knew I had aced the test.

What surprised me even more was when the grades were posted and I received an overall grade for Biochemistry of 80%, this gave me a B. My curiosity got the best of me so one day I went to see Prof. Chambers and he told me that he had dropped the exam with the lowest score because of the one missed exam. Sometimes the “god of good grades” smiles on us poor mortals and even the most unworthy of us reap the benefits. I’ve heard of some students committing suicide over a B grade, but to Bob Betts it was just fine.

67 I Remember When

November 22, 1963, at 12:30 Central Standard Time is a time that everyone remembers. They not only remember where they were, but what they were doing, and maybe even the type of day it was.

In my world it was a bleak Friday and I was peering at an embalmed tomcat in a lab stinking of formaldehyde. I love cats but I am not crazy about dead tomcats stinking of formaldehyde. What’s more it was eating the very skin off my fingers, the formaldehyde, not the tomcat, and my eyes and nose burned like they were on fire from the fumes. I was giving my best shot this time, as I had attempted the same course some two years earlier, barely getting out of the class before the bailout deadline. This bothered me somewhat and I had determined to make a go of it come hell or high water. My eventual goal, which I never managed to attain, was to enter dental school at Loma Linda University. So here I was, with nothing better to do on this dreary Friday afternoon, then wile away the hours over a dead cat in the hopes of passing the next lab test.

As my focus was solely on the tomcat and identifying some particular protuberance on the femur of the cat’s hind leg, along with its obtuse sounding name, it is a wonder that I even twigged to the import of what I heard on a student’s radio as he walked by just outside the lab. In fact if the window hadn’t been slightly ajar because of the noxious fumes, I would have missed probably the most important news of the decade.

It was quite a shock when the full impact of John F. Kennedy’s assassination hit me and completely took my focus off what I was doing. As sad as the story even today makes me feel, when my mind goes back to that horrific day and the impact it had on society and perhaps even the world, I realize more then ever, it is up to us to strive to make the world a better place and share the message of love and acceptance that the good book teaches.

I did pass the anatomy course with a better then average mark, but it would not have satisfied those on the admittance committee of the Loma Linda School of Dentistry.

66 Jay Rasmussen

Living in Sittner Hall with four hundred guys means that life is never really dull, in fact to keep things from getting too out of hand it is best to establish certain boundaries of trust and decorum. Picking your friends wisely even in a dorm where a majority of the guys come from respectable homes means you still might have a practical joker listed among your friends.

It wasn’t far into the year that Jay Rasmussen had established himself as the number one practical joker of Sittner. It was rumored that Jay at a party had spiked the punch with methylene blue so everybody’s pee had turned frighteningly green. The list was long, but the real clincher that resulted in payback was Limburger cheese carefully hidden in a heat register, and the resulting stench that took days to locate.

Payback time had finally arrived and the perfect opportunity now presented itself, he had taken a weekend leave and wouldn’t be back till Sunday evening. They worked in shifts wadding newspaper up into balls and throwing them into his room. This continued until the room was filled to the ceiling, the last remaining paper balls were thrown through the transom above the door so the space behind the door was also completely filled.

What a surprised look on Jay’s face when he finally arrived late Sunday evening and could hardly open the door to his room. Where the boy’s dean was while this was going on as it was on the main floor just down from the lobby, I don’t know. But when he finally heard the racket and found out what had happened he was not any to pleased. He called for volunteers to help Jay clear his room of the tons of paper. I remember there must have been a foot and a half of paper for fifty feet or more down the hallway even past our room, before they finally got Jay’s room completely emptied of paper.

The trash chute to the incinerator got so hot from the burning paper that I thought the place was going to catch on fire. I can’t say that it put a damper on the practical joker but payback is still sweet.

65 First Date And then?

The freshman year at Walla Walla fairly flew by and it seemed like spring had suddenly arrived with all of its madness. With the longer spring days and the scent of blossoms came an overwhelming desire to do something about it. The change in the air was also apparent to Wally who decided to take his Chevy out for a spin. Two guys cruising the strip, (if College Place had a strip) was OK, but why not invite some girls to liven things up.

It was with some trepidation that I asked Sandy to come along and Wally asked his girl friend Carol. How the time flies when you’re having fun. Before I knew it, we had dropped the girls off and the Chevy was back in Grandma Shell’s garage and we were walking back to the dorm.

Wally ended that year deciding not to carry on at Walla Walla the next year. It was a good thing, because he would have been stuck with a big fine as he got caught when he packed up to go home, the boy’s dean put two and two together and squeezed the truth out of him because he never left to get his car the last weekend of school. It worked out well for Wally however as he went on to renew a relationship with his hometown sweetheart Geri, and they got married about a year later.

I on the other hand realizing that I had discovered something that was worth pursuing, I remember working like crazy to get my work done so I could be with Sandy. It might be sitting across from her studying in the library, taking walks in Kiwanis Park, or anywhere for that matter, just as long as we could be together, and it was also a thrill just to hold hands.

That summer would have been a real drag except for one bright spot when my cousin decided to take a carload down to Seattle for the Hydroplane Races on Lake Union. Once there he lent me his car and I drove the thirty miles to Puyallup. Here Sandy was staying in a little trailer beside her grandmother, Bina’s. This mean that I didn’t have a place to sleep so I slept on a swinging love seat that Bina had by her front door. This was just the beginning that the little swinging love seat played in our relationship, as I slept on it enumerable times thereafter. Who knows what might have happened without it, as I hate sleeping on cold hard ground.

The summer ended but not too soon and I was back at school but with a different point of view. Studies now were slightly less important and were now viewed more with annoyance them before. One blessing that came from the relationship however was my grades in mathematics improved; I now had a math teacher, as Sandy was sharp at math.

It was again in the spring of the year with the longer spring days and the scent of blossoms in the air, when an overwhelming desire came upon me and I asked Sandy the big question and she said yes. I remember it was evening in Kiwanis Park when I got caught up in the mood of the moment and popped the question.

School was out in a few weeks and I still remember as we parted for the summer after spending a glorious day along the Columbia River at Sacagawea Park, how sad I felt. It was now back to work at the college for me, while Sandy again spent the rest of her summer in Puyallup at her grandmother, Bina’s.

Things turned out better then I had hoped. The Boys Dean, John Upchurch had liked my work so much during the school year that he had promoted me to the lofty position of head janitor in Sittner Hall. This meant that I had a summer job; not a great job but at least it was a job. Remember though, I was in Walla Walla and Sandy was in Puyallup a four-hour drive. But it all came together; I was fortunate to find an acquaintance that had family in Puyallup so I caught a ride with him in his old Buick every second weekend. It was a drag to have to travel the four hours there and back, but I sang in my heart all the way, as I had the little swinging love seat to sleep on and the loving arms of a beautiful girl to hold me while I was there.

Summers have a way of flying by and before I knew it I had just about ran out of time as I was trying to fix up an old ’51 Ford convertible that I had paid Graham Kline $145 for. He ran a hard bargain but I needed a car and he had what I needed. Besides it was a convertible and looked really cool. After I painted it all up and re-dyed the top, (I couldn’t afford to fix the broken parking light or take the wrinkles out of the left door) it fit my budget and my pride overlooked its shortcomings.

I still remember the elation I had as I waved goodbye and jumped into my newly refurbished car and took off for Toppenish, my Honey and a life long commitment. A wedding is a wedding, but the statement it makes to you, your family and friends makes it by far the most important commitment of your life.

The wedding is mostly a blur, the reception leaves me with faint memories, but not enough to mention, it is the morning following that merits some mention. I need not comment on the first night of being together but it was when we got up the following morning that I have to speak on. Who should come barging in but all of the family, both sides, thinking they had really pulled a fast one. Our mistake was in not finding our own accommodations. The nice little idyllic cabin in the Cascades was a family friend’s and everyone new we were staying there.

After bidding everyone farewell it was on to Canada for a one week honeymoon and then back to the real world of college, only this time as a married man.

64 Walla Walla Here I Come

The big day came and I was dropped off at Walla Walla College with little fan fare, as boarding school was old stuff after three years in academy.

I ended up in Sittner Hall, the Men’s residence, on the fourth flour, with two friends that I knew from my Laurelwood Academy days. In fact Kenny Zaugg was a real good friend as we had roomed together at Laurelwood. Wally Wacker was only an acquaintance but we soon became very good friend.

The first week at college was known as freshman orientation week, and a time to get acquainted and learn what was expected of us nube’s. The biggest event that week however was when Kenny excitedly introduced me to Sandy Henton, a cute little seventeen-year-old freshman that he had just been dating. I knew from then on that if I looked her way it was more then a passing glance when our eyes met, but for now I chose to ignore the implications that might ensue should I carry it further.

Kenny, Wally and I got along famously but I will never forget the game play every time Wally received a care package from home. These care packages were amazing and if you treated Wally with care and said the right thing he might just give you a taste. Kenny however figured out a strategy that could increase ones share of the goodies. This did not work for cookies, but if a box of squares arrived you were in good fortune. This was the plan. Wait until Wally was in class and look for a larger piece to cut in half. This of course was easier to pull off if his mother had been particularly sloppy when she cut the squares, as it worked best when the pieces were larger and of uneven size. Wally would come in and immediately do his square count. He would get particularly suspicious if he found any that were two small because then there would be a recount and a lot of explaining to do. You might even get pounded or worse miss out on the next legitimate offer.

Wally was one of those freshmen that brought his car to Walla Walla even though it was against school rules for a freshman to have a car. It was a red ’56 raked Chevy Delray, and I thought it was quite a cool car. He would take me out occasionally on the weekends, but the rest of the time he had to keep it hidden in an old garage at his Grandma Shell’s place.

Was it chance or otherwise that Wally brought his car to Walla Walla his freshman year I will never know but it played a significant role in a decision I would later make.

Another highlight was to drive over to Wally’s Aunt Leigha and Uncle Jake Wagoner’s place for dinner after church. They were of German heritage and could his Aunt Leigha ever cook. I remember one weekend when Wally’s aunt asked me if I wanted apple pie or strawberry pie and I said, “That’s a tough decision for a freshman to make,” and before I knew it, I had to eat one of each before I could be excused. My mouth still waters when I think of all the incredible food that I stowed away at those incredible Sabbath dinners. I have never forgotten Wally’s Aunt Leigha and Uncle Jake’s amazing hospitality and of course my old friend Wally for the invite.

I suppose the dumbest thing Wally and I ever did was to go into Walla Walla and buy two rum soaked Spanish crooks and sit in his car by his Grandma Shell’s old garage and puff away on them until our heads swam. I am told that such behavior if one is not a smoker usually results in a person turning green. Why we didn’t I will never know, but when I look back, I really wonder what possessed us to exhibit such behavior.

63 Forest Lambert a Good Boss

Things turned out a lot better then I thought they would as Forest Lambert was still logging on the north side of Read and needed an extra hand so I was able to work for him for the rest of the summer.

The summer went by in a blur but I still remember when Forest had me put the pass chain around my butt to be hauled up the spar tree about sixty feet to readjust one of the buckle guys. Here I am swinging at the end of a quarter inch cable as Forest winds in the straw line and slowly pulls me up to where the guy wire is fastened. That was just the beginning as I now had to fasten my support rope around the tree, unhook the pass chain, and use my spurs to cling to the tree. This freed up the pass chain, which could now be used to pull slack on the buckle guy so I could reposition it. I breathed a sigh of relief when the job was finished and my feet were back on the ground.

I guess the neatest thing about that summer was when we finished up the logging show on Read Island and pulled the donkey down and onto a float where it was towed across White Pass to Maurelle Island.

A donkey is a very large machine with large drums and cables for hauling very heavy logs; it can quite easily pull itself along if its main line is attached to an immovable object such as a stump. It was amazing to watch Forest unloading the donkey, he finally found a place but it had no beach with at least a hundred feet to the bottom. One false move and the donkey was a goner. After attaching the main line to a solid stump Forest opened up the throttle and slowly but steadily the donkey moved off the float and across the water until its front skids finally reached solid ground. Here the challenge really began as the ground sloped up so steeply that the donkey was now, at a forty-five degree angle and it required a four-block purchase to move it at all. It was to steep to walk on, let alone operate, but Forest managed to do both. We all relaxed when at last the ground finally leveled off and the donkey was in its proper place.

Summer job’s are always fun, but the fun doesn’t start till after work, and not until a good shower and a “meal.” The part that was missing in this scenario was the “meal.” As I was my own cook, it meant peanut butter and jam sandwiches most every day and most every meal. Don’t get me wrong; there is nothing wrong with peanut butter sandwiches, but even too much sunshine will kill you. Before the summer was over I had the worst case of heartburn that I ever had in my life.

Forest had set up a ping-pong table in the bunkhouse where we could play table tennis till we dropped. The fifties was just the beginning of rock music and we used to listen to all the early rock tunes such as “Green Door,” “Sugartime,” and “April Love,” on the radio or the phonograph as we frantically played table tennis till all hours of the night. I mostly got beat, but I still thought it was the best part of the summer.

As all summers do, this one came to an end, but that summer’s experience left me very thankful to Forest and his family for the opportunity that they had given me, not just for the money I earned, but for their friendship and the positive mark that they left on my life. I will always be grateful to them.

62 Oh for the Life of a Boom Man

Before I realized it, it was early spring and I had not worked since my dad’s accident. In desperation I took a temporary job with the Town of Willow Point tailing a D8 cat in the freezing rain. Building roads was their way of using up year-end tax money and it gave me a few weeks work walking around behind a cat half frozen, and soaking wet.  Boy was I glad when the money ran out, but now I again needed a job.

It was shortly after this that a friend of the family, Gilbert Joanne, found me a job where he worked on the booming ground at MacMillan and Bloedel’s Iron River Division, just down the road a mile from where we lived. I thought this was a cool place to work as I now worked as a boom-man for MacBlo, the biggest logging company in Canada.

This was the first time I had ever worked in the blue-collar environment of the rough and ready world of a logger. My dad being a Christian never used a swear word at home or in the bush so I couldn’t believe what I heard the first day on the job. The language I heard that first day made the “f word” seem like praise music sung by a choir. I heard more references to various bodily functions and alternate names for the sexual anatomy them I ever dreamed existed. I remember one of my pike pole carrying buddies, who would frequently stop in the middle of a sentence to let out such a long string of cuss words, that when he finally continued, you had forgotten what he had started to say.

The boom-man’s job was interesting as you had to stow the logs, but-top, but-top in a large raft, called a Stewart Raft, so they could be towed to Vancouver by a tug. This meant walking sometimes on very small logs, trying to keep your balance much like a tightrope walker, as many of the logs were very small and the large pike pole used to push and pull the logs into place, had to be used as a balancing pole.

I remember losing my balance one time and falling into the water, try swimming with heavy calk boots that weigh five pounds each. What made the job even more difficult was the smaller logs could not hold you up, so you had to run across them really fast to keep from sinking. One time I ran as fast as I could and finally ran out of logs, I finally had to place my pike pole across the logs to keep from going under.

My friend Gilbert gave me the job of wench operator, which I enjoyed doing very much, as it gave me a sense of accomplishment. There was a certain amount of skill required to know when to crack the throttle wide open as everything depended on timing. If I misjudged in the timing, the swifter and rider logs could not be chained into place properly.

I was fortunate that I never screwed when running the wench, but I was even luckier when I accidentally cracked a big guy on the side of the head with my pike pole and just about knocked him into the water. The only reason he didn’t come after me was because he was probably to dazed to do anything about it. All I can say is that I was lucky that it was not my swearing buddy that I had whacked in the head or it might have turned out differently.

Just when things were going really great and I thought my worries were finally over, I would have to adjust my plans, a strike was called and I was again out of work.

61 The Accident

After arriving back home from Hazelton in late summer and with thoughts of college only a hope, I went to work with my dad who was now working for himself making blanks for “Hollywood Shingles” or “resawn shingles”, as they were called, as most of them went to southern California.

Our supply of cedar came from the local farmers who sometimes had large cedar snags or windfalls on their treed farms. We would cut these into cedar bolts twenty-six inches long and then into a two and an eighth inch thick blank from which four resawn shingles would be cut.

Every couple of weeks, Big Joe, a Chinaman, would come with his flat-deck, to haul them to a mill in Vancouver. This was tough work but it was our family’s only income as my father had not yet begun his new life as a fisherman and it was our only means of support.

The weather had now turned foul as one might expect for late fall and I had given up any hope of attending school. My goal now was to stay home and help dad with the business and hopefully save for the coming school year.

We were now well into November and this particular day was especially cold with the threat of snow. As the morning passed I began to feel quite ill so I took the car and left my dad with Lindley Jacobson, intending to come by for dad after work.

The day passed very quickly and before we realized it, it was starting to get dark. As I was feeling better, my mom and I immediately left to get dad. The weather had been turning worse throughout the day and we were now driving in heavy wet snow with plenty of slush on the road.

We had left late and got further held up because of an accident. There were police and an ambulance attending to an overturned car on the road, because of the slushy snow. They finally let us through and we impatiently carried on to where my dad and Lindley had been splitting blanks. We were very puzzled as no one was anywhere around and we looked everywhere but to no avail. The only thing we could do was to go back home and wait with uncertainty until we could figure out what to do.

We hadn’t waited very long before the phone rang and the police told us that there had been an accident. It seems as the weather had turned foul Lindley and my dad had decided to quit a bit early. Not having a car my dad started walking along the highway expecting us to soon come by and pick him up. He had only walked a short distance when a car losing control in the slush, slammed into him from behind, breaking his left leg in three places and just about dislocating his ribs. This sent my dad flying into the ditch, lucky to be alive, with the car sliding to a stop on its side not far from where he lay in agony. Not knowing it was my dad in the ditch we had driven by just minutes after the police had arrived.

We immediately left for St Joseph’s Hospital in Comox where my dad was now coming out of surgery after having his leg set. They had placed a steel rod through the marrow of his tibia to hold the broken piece in place until it healed. We didn’t realize that my dad would be unable to work for over a year, as six month later the tibia had not yet healed and they had to graft bone from his hip to start the healing process.

It is times like these that show the metal that a family is made of, and how a trust in God can sustain and bring you out the other side better, because of what you went through.

60 Hazelton or no Money

It was about the time that I realized selling books was not going to get me into Walla Walla College in the fall, that my cousin Don invited me to go north with him to Hazelton to find a job. Because of the woods closure he decided to go north hoping his older brother Loren could put him to work. His brother was another one of those gypo loggers and ran a “one horse” logging show just over the Skeena River from Hazelton.

It was with anticipation that Don and I took off one afternoon down the island highway to Hazelton. Not really having a job, but hoping one might materialize once Loren saw how eager we were to work, gave us a feeling of anticipated success.

Getting there was not the easiest thing in the world however, as it took two long days of driving. The drive however, was uneventful, except for one unforgettable experience that has stayed with me for these past fifty-three years. If you liked veal cutlets, the little café we ate dinner at in Burns Lake, the evening of our second day, was a place to remember, if you liked lemon meringue pie, the little café we ate dinner at in Burns Lake was also a place to remember, remember not to order the lemon meringue pie, avoided it at all costs. I have never eaten a pie of any kind with a tougher crust in my entire life.

But arrive at Hazelton we did and Loren and his fine wife put us up in their log house just across the river. Loren did not have much work to keep us busy but I remember going out to where they were skidding logs and living in the bunkhouse for a few weeks.

The most memorable event while there was coming down with a bout of the stomach flu and puking my guts out. It really caught me by surprise as I woke up in the bunkhouse one morning thinking I had to let rip a really good fart but ended up destroying my shorts with no water for miles to take a bath in, except the Skeena, which we washed in once a week, whether we needed to or not. It was ice cold and I mean ice cold.

This was just the start of a very bad day, as after I got into town it finally hit me full force and I suddenly had to puke my guts out. Here I am in downtown Hazelton leaning against a building barfing my head off. It was then to bed where I remained for the rest of the day with the chills and the fever.

Work was mostly scarce but Loren did try to keep us busy and I must say I always appreciated his efforts to keep us working. His offering me a job falling trees for a few weeks just before I left helped hone my skills as a faller and enabled me to earn a little money before I left for home a few weeks later.

He was a poor struggling gypo logger but I remember with fondness his efforts to give a kid a job for at least a few weeks during the summer of fifty-eight. The fact that after returning home for a few weeks, I received a check in the mail for ninety bucks, was a real surprise, as I probably ate more then I made the whole time I was there.

59 A Book Salesman I’m Not

My senior year at Laurelwood seemed to fly by and before you could catch your breath graduation had come and gone and I was home for the summer. Home as you might have guessed was not on Read Island but at Oyster Bay on Vancouver Island where our house now sat on its foundation on Fosgate Road, about halfway between Courtenay and Campbell River, just off the island highway.

I am not sure if my decision to work all summer to earn my tuition for college by selling books was in any way based on my Uncle Gig’s success as a book salesman, but the plan was ill conceived at best and as it turned out, the gift of selling was not passed on, at least to me.

Before embarking on such and endeavor one day of training was required which consisted of following the ABC bookman around from house to house, as he demonstrated his selling techniques. It escapes me if he actually sold anything during his demo but far to soon it was my turn to show my stuff. His was the easy part; my part was to actually sell some books. However from that first day till the end of my contract, I only managed to sell about fifteen sets of the Bible Story.

After selling books for a few weeks, going to the door became rather easy but I was never able to relax as each door had its unknown challenges. I remember the time I knocked on a door, which was already ajar. Suddenly from out of nowhere an incredibly large dog came bounding down the hall and leaped straight at me barking all the time. My heart leaped into my throat and I could feel ripples of fear running up and down my spine. I thought I was a goner. I should have realized that it is a growling dog that bites, not a barking dog.

As I was frozen with fright, he hit me squarely in the chest and just about knocked me down. With my knees trembling and shaking like leaf I slowly walked away figuring if I ran he was sure to eat me on the spot. I didn’t breath easy until I was out of the yard and well beyond the fence, and a long way down the street.

To further add to my plight the sets of books were sold one book at a time on a COD payment plan, which meant that only one or two books were sold out of each set before the contracts were terminated. Money was short because of a strike at the Elk Falls paper mill and the loggers were also out of work because it was one of the driest summers on record and the province had called for a closure of the woods. I was not one however to give up easily so I continued to work till I had completed my time and trusted that I could start college with my limited resources.

I was extremely fortunate, that the contract stated that if I put in a certain minimum number of hours I still would get paid a small scholarship. So in desperation I worked the required number of hours and breathed a sigh of relief when the last hour of the contract was finally reached.

58 Who Needs a Doctor?

Today midwives are indeed a rare thing at least in this part of the world. Back in the thirties it was quite common to have a baby at home. Living on Read Island in the early forties might have been primitive by today’s standards but having a baby delivered without a Doctor present was to be avoided.

It wasn’t long after my father had started to work for Mr. Tanaka that Forest Lambert’s wife was due to have her first child. Expecting a baby when you are an hour and a half away from Campbell River and the nearest hospital, adds considerably to the drama. Forest however was the type of person that always appeared so cool and calm that it was anybody’s guess as to what he was thinking.

Well the day finally arrived and Forest calmly helped Raeco down to their small speedboat and took off for Campbell River. Forest is doing his best to steer the boat while keeping an ear on Raeco who is lying on one of the seats in the back, trying to relax or do anything to give them more time. However her water breaks and she yells out to Forest, “Can’t you go any faster.” Forest throw the throttle wide open but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. The moments tick by and Forest still appears calm but Raeco in desperation is doing deep breathing and anything she can, to keep calm and to hopefully gain a few extra minutes, but to no avail. With Campbell River still ten miles away and contractions coming every second, she screams, “It’s to late, stop the boat and give me a hand.” Forest immediately slams the throttle to the off position and hurries back in time to catch their first child, Edward, just before he lands in the bottom of the boat.

To late for hot water and warm blankets now. Forest does finds a blanket however to wrap Edward in and says, ”Forget the hot water, or the doctor.” And with that he wheels the boat around and heads for home.

I can’t vouch for all of the details of the story but the names, places and events did happen but not necessarily in that way or in that order. What I do no is that Ed was born, but the question still remains, did the manor of his birth have anything to so with him becoming a doctor?

57 Laurelwood or Bust

Boarding school was not the kind of place that it implies. Most kids I know had a good time at boarding school. Some may have balked at attending in the first place, but it would be the exception for them not to continue the following year. The friends made at boarding school stay with you for life.

With that said there is no one that I know that did not look forward to “six-week leave.” As I lived to far from Laurelwood to go home, it was nice to catch the school bus into Portland to do some shopping when it dropped the kids off.

This particular leave I rode the school bus in to Portland, just to look around, and do some shopping with my roommate Don Ringering. It was a Thursday and we poked around Portland for a few hours, and as it was starting to get dark decided to head back to the school.


Laurelwood was out in the country and I mean county. There in fact was no single road to Laurelwood. You could as it were take up to a half dozen or more routes to get there and each of these had at least six road changes.

So here we were on the Sunset Highway waiting to get a ride on the Beaverton Tigard Freeway, which would take us to Farmington Road, which would take us to the Hillsboro Highway for one mile, where we would catch Bald Peak Road, which would take us to Laurelwood Road and to Laurelwood Academy.


After waiting and waiting what seemed forever, we at last caught a ride in a cool looking Plymouth Golden Hawk. This was a hot looking car back in the fifties. A friendly looking guy sat behind the wheel, with a big smile on his face and asked us if we would like to hop in. We didn’t waste any time escaping the inclement night and with the vague hope that he might at least take us to the next road. He was probably in his thirties and it seemed to our amazement quite happy to take us all of the way to Laurelwood. This surprised me as it was quite out of his way. During our ride however, he told us that he worked for some agency that dealt with troubled youth. I realized then that his passion for youth might be the reason for his kindness.


We had a good visit during our ride to Laurelwood, and the ride ended far to soon as I thought the Golden Hawk was a pretty neat car. I noticed later that he came by the school from time to time to visit our English teacher Miss Burton, so there was more to this random encounter and his seeming kindness then met my eyes.

56 Uncle Gig and My Cousins

Being born with a lot of Uncles and Aunts was one of the blessings of having a mother with a lot of siblings.  I always considered Aunt Florence my favorite aunt, but Uncle Gaylord, or Gig, as us kids knew him, was by far my number one uncle.   I remember visiting Uncle Gig and Aunt Laura every time we went south for a summer holiday.  He liked us kids and used to goof off telling goofy jokes and saying and doing funny things to make us laugh.

My oldest memories go back to when he and my Aunt Laura lived in Vancouver.  But before that my Uncle canvassed door-to-door selling religious books off and on for most of his life.  He could sell a book to anyone, and he loved doing it.  Even though he did other things for a living from time to time his love for selling seemed to be his main passion until he passed away in his late eighties.  He could sell the proverbial refrigerator to an Eskimo.  As a matter of fact he used to load his car with books and drive to Alaska, not coming back until he had sold them all, and some I suppose to the odd Eskimo.

He had a strong faith in God and believed that everything that happened was directly the will of God.  Several times he stayed with my wife Sandy and I in the little town of Sidney and went door to door for a month or so at a time.  I remember on one occasion when he missed the ferry because he couldn’t find his keys, but without any hesitation he said it was because God did not want him to catch that ferry.  In the meantime he continued looking and sure enough found his keys in time to leave on the next ferry.

My Uncle had a wonderful and realistic way of looking at life.  One day when we were talking about cars he told me the following story.  He said, “Bob, you know how a person hates to get that first scratch on a new car.  Well I was visiting someone when just as I was about to leave I noticed this little rascal walking all the way round my brand new car with a nail in his hand.”  And I asked him, “What did you do?” And he said, “Well after that, I give every new car a good scratch as soon as I drive it home from the dealer, and then I can relax.”

His acceptance of life was amazing.  Back in the thirties and forties when canvassing, you would be invited to stay at the last house of the day, and of course given supper.  My Uncle was very strict about his diet but he never presumed on his host and ate whatever they set before him.  While staying at our house he would eat anything that Sandy fixed, and never a word of complaint.  Sandy could burn the entree and he would eat it as if it was a gourmet dish.  I remember when a Chinese friend of ours brought over a special Chinese New Year’s delicacy that even Sandy wouldn’t eat.   My Uncle and I ate the whole thing.

One summer my folks dropped my sister Dawna and I off at my Aunt and Uncles to make a few bucks picking berries with my cousins, in the many fruit farms around Laurelwood Academy.  How I hated that summer.  I learned that I was not a good berry picker.  If my life depended upon it I would have starved to death.  Picking strawberries was the worst job I ever had, it just about killed my back.  I could hardly stand up, after even a few hours.

Of my Uncle’ four pretty girls I only got to know Joyce, Gaylene and Barbara.  Betty Lou was quite young and Richard was even younger.  I never really new Richard until recently as an adult and it really wasn’t until he took Sandy and I out for a beautiful brunch in Sequim.

I can’t say that I disliked my Aunt Laura but she always meant business and probably was the reason my Uncle kept his feet on the ground.  She was very organized and made us kids toe the line.

When we came to visit we were only there a few minutes when invariably we would be given a task to do.  So it was always best to stay out of the way and be inconspicuous.

One time when we were all quite small my mom and dad were taking Gaylene and Joyce with us after dark.  After riding a while Gaylene said she had to pee.  That was not good.  If you had to take a pee it was not when my dad was driving.  He may or may not stop.  Well this time he finally did, but after much pleading on Gaylene’s part.  We were out in the country some place in Oregon and it was a pitch-black night.  Gaylene hurriedly got out. All is quiet; suddenly there is a squalling like you have never heard before, and then it fades quickly into silence.  Dad got out with a flashlight and with a little searching found Gaylene who had fallen down a steep bank with her pants still around her ankles.  I don’t need to say that she wasn’t “a happy camper.” 

55 Slow Down, You Might Get Run Over

Working at the Door Factory at Laurelwood was hazardous in more ways them one.  The factory had many powerful wood shaping machines and trim saws for shaping the doors.  There was also the lacquering of the panels, which means that fume hoods and various masks with filters had to be used.  If you were not careful you could easily lose a finger or even worse your hand.  Such as the time that Donna Morrison lost part of her finger in a saw.

The closest I ever came to getting hurt was the time I shorted out the glue machine, which really shook me up, but it was no match compared to the first year that I worked the evening shift in the Door Factory.

Don Ringering and I had just gotten off shift at nine o’clock and were leaving the factory having just punched out.  The shortest way up to the Boy’s Dorm was via the loading bay and by a Semi that was parked there with the trailer sticking out to the very edge of the roadway.  The road came very close to the factory as it ran through the Campus.

We both took off running as fast as we could, to see who could be the first one to the dorm.  Don got a head start and off he went past the Semi, across the road, and on up the hill to the dorm, with me not twenty feet behind, running flat out.  The night was pitch black and as I crossed the road, I suddenly smacked into something that stopped me dead in my tracks, and not figuratively.

I realized moments later that I had actually run into the side of a car that was driving by.  I was extremely lucky to only get my arms and hands bruised and fortunate that my leading leg was not broken as the car left quite a lump on my shinbone, which caused me to limp for a few days afterwards.  Don and I could just as easily been hit square on, instead of just getting missed.

A few weeks later I was talking to a friend that I knew at Laurelwood, and after comparing notes she believed it was she who I had run into.  At the time she felt something hit her car, but saw nothing, so went on.  All I can say again is that it must have been an angel.

54 A Hitchhikers Guide for the Brave

Dorm life when you are only eighteen can be a challenge but if your roommate is easy going like Don Ringering was you become good friends.  This was during my second year at Laurelwood so I was very pleased when he invited me to go home and celebrate Thanksgiving with him. His folks lived in the small town of Madras in eastern Oregon where it hardly ever rains and I believe his mom taught grade school.

Don’s folks like mine, did not have much money so to stretch his resources even further we hitchhiked to his home.  We had it easy getting into Portland as the school always took a bus loaded with students into the downtown so the students could make various connections, usually a bus.  Back then it was unusual if anyone flew because of the cost involved.

Our challenge now on this very cold day with a freezing November wind in our face was to see if anyone was traveling to Madras.  Getting out of Portland was not the challenge but trying to catch a ride once we were on highway 26 heading toward Wapinitia Pass, was a different story as car after car went whizzing by and I new we were in for a rough night.  What made things worse I did not have a very heavy jacket and the wind felt like ice.

The spot we were keeping warm on highway 26 was making me uncomfortable and I was getting quite anxious for a ride as we had more then a hundred miles to go and car after car kept roaring by without even slowing down to look.

About this time however an old Chevy panel truck screeched to a halt and Don immediately started to climb in.  One look inside the car and I immediately decided this was not for me, and my concern bordered on terror as I realized Don was serious about catching a ride with them.  Not wanting to be left behind, I reluctantly climbed in and sat beside him on a suitcase in the back, all hunched down.

As with most panel trucks made by GM, this one had only two bucket seats.   In the back were several suitcases including our own and not much else.  What made this scary was that the three men, who picked us up, sat in the two bucket seats.  George the guy in the middle really sat on a wadded-up coat jammed between the seats, in a semiconscious state.  Bill the driver was very friendly and after introducing himself and his two friends assured us that he had not tasted a drop of whiskey that day.  Tom the guy on the right was the most talkative and every fifteen minutes or so would offer us whisky to drink.  When we would refuse he would say, “God bless you my son, never take a drink I am so proud of you.” And this he did repeatedly for the duration of our ride.

As George was too drunk to hold the bottle himself, Tom kept pouring whisky into his sagging mouth until he was totally passed out.

And Bill repeatedly assured us that he had not been drinking as he was the driver and a driver should never drive while drinking.  But as he was traveling the speed limit and didn’t seem to weave too much I felt we might still escape this adventure alive.

This was soon to change however as Bill finally caught up to a large Semi that was struggling to make the summit at Wapinitia Pass.  I could see that Bill was beginning to get a little antsy and I knew at any minute he would pull out to pass.  My worst fears were realized when he finally pulled out in a vain attempt to pass the Semi but he could no more then just keep pace with it.  After what seemed like eternity, he finally made it half way up the length of what seemed to be the longest trailer that I had ever seen, when suddenly a big Semi shot around the corner coming straight at us.  My heart was in my mouth, my knuckles were white and my breath completely stopped, but Bill was still holding to his course, the eternal optimist, with more faith then a saint, believed that he could still make it.  The diminishing distance between the approaching truck and us was a thing of terror.  I had at this point resigned my self to our impending doom, when Bill suddenly realized that his love for booze was worth staying alive for, dogged the brakes just in time to duck behind the Semi, and escape sudden destruction, as the Semi went roaring by.

What happened after that was so anticlimactic that I really don’t remember too much of the weekend.  In Don’s home church there was a preacher putting on a revival, which leads me to believe that God is never to far from any of us, especially in times of potential calamity and He enjoys the many opportunities to intervene in our lives.