76 Al Bolin A Good Man and a Good Boss

I’ve had a number of good bosses over the years but none much better then Al Bolin. I’m not sure if Al really needed me or for that matter even wanted me, I think it was done more as a favor to Sandy’s grandmother, Bina. Sandy was Bina’s favorite grandchild, and because of that she prevailed upon Al to give me a much-needed job.

Al was a good man and always tried to keep me busy even when there was no work. I can remember him giving me busy work just so I wouldn’t miss a paycheck. I was willing to do anything he asked, even to pulling nails out of used lumber and stacking it.

I can remember him inviting both Sandy and me over for a big waffle breakfast Sunday morning and them he would ask me to go out with him to hang a screen door. He had emphysema quite badly so I was needed to actually do the work, while he would stand there and tell me what to do. The best part was that I got paid for four hours when in fact it probably only took two and both Sandy and I got a lovely brunch out of it as well.

Al was old school and very honest in his dealings with his men and the people he worked for. He was very fussy and wanted everything done properly and correctly. As I had never done construction work before Al was quick to notice my incompetence with a hammer. I remember one day when I was doing my best to pound in a nail, he came over and grabbed the hammer from my hand saying, “Gimme that hammer, I’ll show you how to use it, you swing just like a woman.” “Give it to me.” He then took a nail from his pouch and proceeded to demonstrate the correct technique, bending the nail over on his first swing. With that he shouts, “These cheap Japanese nails.” And then he walks away.

The work was varied but consisted mostly of small jobs such as, renovations, and carports.

Besides me, there were only two other guys who worked for Al on a regular basis; both however had difficulty controlling the bottle. Jim was very good at finishing concrete but his home life was mostly a shambles. Jim never let it interfere with his work even though he showed up at work once with his face so scratched that you would have thought he had been attacked by a mountain lion. It seems that even though he was married he had gotten into a fight with some woman in a bar and she had taken exception to whatever was on his mind at the time.

Charles on the other hand had been laid off several times as he was caught drinking on the job, and because of that, I was able to later take over his position as truck driver.

It was Charles job to drive the old Diamond T work truck, which I then inherited. It was a stick shift without synchromesh gears and boy was it a challenge to shift.

I never learned to shift gears without grinding them, as I left before I had mastered the technique for a job bucking trees for a friend of my dads, named George Egolf. George was a salmon fisherman who had a falling contract with GMG Logging in the off-season. So soon it was off to the rain forests of the central BC coast, and would you believe it, living on a floating logging camp in Boswell Inlet.

In a way I was sad to leave as Al Bolin was a positive part of that period of my life and I appreciated his support and kindness to me, a penniless student and to my wife Sandy. I often think of Al who died shortly thereafter of his emphysema, and of his good wife Hattie, who befriended Sandy by having made her wedding dress.

75 Sunday Morning Breakdown

It was one of those lovely fall weekends when Sandy and I decided to visit her mom, Erlyne. Erlyne was always a lot of fun and we had a good time visiting her and Sandy’s little brother Steve.

The weekend fairly flew by, as they always seem to, when you are enjoying yourself, and before we realized it, it was early Sunday morning and we were already entering the town of Pasco well on our way home. We had barely slowed down on entering Pasco when the clutch went out without any warning. There was no sudden noise, or vibrations, or anything, it just meant that with the gas peddle to the floor, we still coasted to a stop.

What a bummer to break down early Sunday morning in a small town in the middle of nowhere. I figured our chances of finding somebody doing business were pretty slim, especially on the weekend. But miracle of miracles at the nearest filling station we were told of an auto wrecker who fixed cars.

He was quite happy to tow us over to his shop where he immediately started to work on the car. He was an all right kind of guy but I always feel kind of queasy at those kinds of places because of the type of characters that can be hanging around. There was not much to do in the little town of Pasco on a Sunday morning in ’62. Most things were closed, as everybody was probable in church, so we just sat there in their grungy waiting room while they repaired the clutch.

What worried me was that we really had no money. Except for a few dollars in our pockets there was virtually nothing in our bank account in Walla Walla. We just sat there with a hollow feeling inside, thinking about how we were going to pay the bill. We finally decided that all we could do was to just write him a check for whatever the amount. What really had me worried was that he charged $5 an hour, and at the time I thought what an outrageous amount, especially when I imagined what the final bill would be when he added on the cost of the new clutch and the tax. After five hours he finally broke the sad news that we owed him $50 for his troubles.

With a sinking heart Sandy wrote out the check and as she handed it to him he looked us both squarely in the eye and said, “Your check better be good because I am also a Sheriff and I’ll come and get you.” And he then hauled out a Sheriff’s badge. We both looked him squarely in the eye and I said, “Yes sir! We have never written a better check.”

Don’t get me wrong we have never written a bad check before or since, and we weren’t sure of the exact plan, but figured we could somehow get funds into the bank before his check cleared the bank.

God honors those that honor Him, and even though I have not always been faithful as I should, I’m sure God honors a person’s faith such as it is, because, Monday in the mail was a check from Sandy’s grandmother for $50.

74 Having Our First Baby

Earlier I mentioned the passion of the moment can derail the best of intensions and I must confess that when Sandy said that she was expecting our first child I was not taken by surprise, even though psychologically I was not completely ready for the event. It had nothing to do with liking or not liking babies, but it was uneasiness around anything having to do with pregnant women and babies. I also think there was a certain fear around the impact it might have on my studies and the ability to finish college.

I like to think that I supported Sandy, as a good spouse I took her countless times to the doctor’s office for her prenatal checkups. I must say as I look back upon my support it may not have appeared as selfless and as loving as it could have been.

It didn’t seem very long however before the time came, somewhere between midnight and six am, when it seems that all babies begin to knock. Why it is always after midnight I will never know, but of our three children, at least the girls, followed the same uncaring concern for my need of a good nights sleep. My son on the other hand was custom delivered at a precise hour by a doctor who said he wouldn’t work on the Lord’s Sabbath, so with one whiff of some magic potion he arrived at about 4 o’clock Friday afternoon, so I will never know if he would have been just as uncaring.

I awoke suddenly, as it seemed I was being shaking, and I could hear the faint cries of a women somewhere calling my name. As the sound slowly seeped into my subconscious, I slowly came too and realized it was Sandy calling, “Honey! Honey! Wake up! And I answered, “What’s the matter?” Sandy said, “Honey I think its time.” And my response, “Just go back to sleep, maybe it will go away until morning.” And again, after a few minutes of silence, “Honey I can’t wait, we have to go now.” And them my answer, “Are you really sure?” “Yes, we have to go now.” “Oh, alright, if you insist, I replied.

So it was off to the Auburn Regional Medical Center, where the waiting really began, all 19 hours of intense and not so intense labor. I felt sorry for Sandy as I waited by her bedside reading the Readers Digest and caressing her forehead from time to time and sometimes giving her hand little squeezes. I guess what bothered her was that I sometimes showed impatience as she continued to interrupted my reading by wanting my attention. Blame the Readers Digest for having such interesting stories.

Other then at the early stages of labor the husband was persona non grata. Those were the days when the father of the baby was a thing of distain at the time of childbirth, and considered to be a source of contaminant.

I felt relieved when a nurse finally came and wheeled Sandy into the labor room for the final push. My relief was short lived when the hours kept ticking by and nothing seemed to happen. As I was forbidden to go any further and could not see the action, time dragged on and on for what seemed eternity.

Finally about 7:00 pm that evening a nurse came down to the waiting room and told me I could visit with Sandy and see our new baby girl. What beautiful red hair she had, and to think that she had me to thank for it. It is always amazing to see a newborn baby, and just to think that you had something to do with a new life, it is quite a privilege to be party to such a happening.

I have to be careful what I say next. It is interesting to listen to someone when they see a newborn baby for the first time. You hear expressions of “Isn’t he cute,” or “What a beautiful baby,” but in my book they all look like drowned rats. I will say however after five or six weeks most, but not all, start to look much better and maybe even cute.

After a nurse wheeled Sandy and the baby down for the ride home, we had barely taken off when the car sputtered to a stop. Would you know it, we had run out of gas.

What with the hassle of the baby and all, I had not stopped to check the gas tank. Back in the early days of our marriage we were always on the edge of broke so I usually ran our car on the bottom half of the tank. Boy was I relieved when after the hassle of going after gas; we finally drove into our driveway later that Friday evening.

That first night home was a real shocker to my system. Here I was used to sleeping in on the weekends, now it meant never being able to sleep in again, or should I say sleep again, period. Up at all hours of the night, the baby wanting this and the baby wanting that, and should I go on. What with diapers and feeding schedules it was a nightmare. I immediately went into as yet an undiagnosed shock that manifested itself in a rash, all over the front of my body, which lasted for the next several days. I told Sandy it was what I called, “Baby Shock.” I think Sandy thought that I was crazy. I was just thankful that it left after a few days. So it is my word against hers as to whether I was really in shock or just a bit hallucinatory from all of the stress.

I am happy to tell you that I survived that pregnancy and two more, and as long as Sandy was willing to put up with the pain I could put up with the kids. The best reward hands down is the grandkids.

73 Beware the Kissing Disease

I now had a wife and a job, what more could a man desire. To place my education back on the top of my priority list took considerable determination now that I had experienced the pleasures of a new wife. If I was ever to complete my education it had to be well up on my do list. To put it in perspective however, ’61 was before the pill and it was more then easy to compromise your best intensions in the heat of the moment. 

With that said we rented a small upstairs apartment right adjacent to the Walla Walla campus at $35 a month, and I settled into my studies. The apartment was really a living room with a walkthrough kitchen at the top of the stairs and a bedroom with a double bed on large wheels, which every morning was out in the middle of the room. The only other negative worth mentioning was that the landlords turned the heat off when they left for the day and it got quite cold before they returned.

Fall quarter was coming to a close when I started running a fever with a sore throat and chills that never seemed to end. I would wake up in the morning feeling fine but by evening I would have a raging fever. The doctor I saw in Walla Walla diagnosed it as laryngitis and gave me some antibiotics.

I remember Sandy read to me by the hour as I felt to weak to study. After taking the antibiotics for a few days I seemed to get worse so we decided to visit Sandy’s mom’s doctor in Toppenish. Her doctor was a family friend and we wanted a second opinion. We were relieved when she told us it was only infectious mono-nucleosis, but the bad new was that I should take a couple quarters off if I wanted to shake it. Why me I thought, as it was known colloquially as the kissing disease and unless it was when I was dreaming, Sandy was the only person I had kissed. Scouts honor.

After completing my tests for fall quarter we took the good doctor’s advise and spent the next five months living with my folks. Here I was supposed to take it easy but my dad had me out working on his drain field, and digging a basement for the neighbor with his D4 Cat.

Dad’s friend Lindley Jacobson also needed more prawn traps, so what better way to convalesce then while putting together fifty of them for his next prawn expedition up Knight’s Inlet.

In the meantime the swelling in my spleen had gone down and I was feeling fine, but still in need of money. So it was off to Puyallup where Sandy’s grandmother, Bina had lined up a job for me working for Al Bolin a family friend in the construction business there.