128 The Summer of ‘57

The summer holidays for me were always a time of excitement as I always looked forward to our trips south to visit family and friends. The summer of ’57 after my junior year at Laurelwood Academy was one with some anticipation and maybe a little apprehension, as my dad had taken a job in the romantic Chilcotin country of BC. Even though our house had not yet been moved to Vancouver Island, I knew it meant the close of my life as a “gypo” logger’s son. I had known all along that at some point in my life I would have to leave my island home but this made it abruptly final. My Read Island life, as I had known it was now a thing of the past, and I felt sad and cast a drift.

So that summer I found myself workings in a “gypo sawmill” run by the Robson Brothers. If my dad was a “gypo logger” their operation had to be for sure the “gypoist” sawmill I have ever seen. This was back in the days when little sawmills were thick all over the interior of BC. You could easily find such a sawmill from the plume of smoke that rose from its beehive burner.

All sawmills took care of the waste wood and sawdust from their operations by using a beehive burner as a method of waste disposal but because of the poor design of the Robson Brothers’ sawmill it required someone to grab the waste slabs as they came off the head saw and physically drag them onto the chain belt that carried them into the top of the burner. This was heavy work and very physically demanding, as you had to keep up with the head saw.

A further challenge was running up the slab chute every time a slab got stuck. It was extremely onerous when it happened over the burner where the heat from the roaring inferno sent up clouds of ash and very hot smoke, which would singe your eyebrows and make your breathing difficult. This happened so often, that it made slab removal a real challenge.

I particularly remember one day when my nose started to bleed and I found myself in a real dilemma. I was thankful that someone noticed my predicament and in a few moments gave me time to take care of it.

I eventually got used to the job but I hated the evenings sitting alone in my little trailer. It made me feel like a quitter but that did not stop me from getting a job a few weeks later at Dan Basaraba’s sawmill. His was a much bigger mill and a far better operation. He didn’t have work for me in the mill but I was given a job lopping tops. Lopping tops was the pits, but camp life after work was fun as there were plenty of girls and guys in the camp, some were students like myself.

The bunkhouse had bunks with only a mattress pad on a solid wooden base to sleep on, and no running water. We were given a galvanized washtub to bathe in once a week, and it sat in the middle of the bunkhouse floor. The bath water was heated on the barrel woodstove that heated the room. All of the houses in camp including our bunkhouse were made of rough unpainted boards form the mill and insulated with sawdust.

Times were primitive; and we worked nine hours every day except for Saturday and a half day Friday. What made it all worthwhile was the food. It was said that the Ukrainian cook was gay but that sure did not affect his ability to cook. Boy did he ever make the best tasting jalopies that I have ever eaten. When the dinner bell rang everyone rushed to the mess hall to dive in. I never ate so much in my life, I ate till I thought I would burst.

I still remember the weekend’s rodding around in the back seat of Gerald Odenbaugh’s ’56 pale green Mercury, full of kids, and with my arm around Ina Hoppe in the back seat. Ina went on to marry Johnny Urema and they had a boy and a girl and still live in Williams Lake. I remember Johnny for the special fudge bars he used to buy by the case, and if you treated him right, you might beg one off of him. He also had a cool tape deck, which we used to fool around with. It was a reel-to-reel deck and a real novelty back in those days.

The best part of the summer was when the gang had a good-by party for me. Twilla Basaraba put it on mostly for Jim Burgess her boy friend, but they also included me. Jim happened to be away for some reason the evening of the party, so I received all of the attention. That was good. But I left a day or so later with a sad heart because of all of the friends I had to leave, but I also had a bit of an ache for Ina, which I followed up with a single post card but nothing more. It was a summer I will always remember with fondness because of the friends I made and the part they played in enabling my life to continue in a new direction.

It was now back to Laurelwood for my last year of boarding school and what lay beyond.