The Recollections of Grandpa Bob
(08-14-2022 Version)
(Or as Laem (Karl’s wife) says: “It’s All about You, Bob”)
Mother told me…..
All my grandparents were immigrants from Russia where their ancestors had been immigrants to Russia from Germany. The Fischer Grandparents came over on the ship Carolina Wilhelmina which my aunt Carolina was named after. Mom worked in the restaurant of the Yellowstone hotel in Lemmon, SD prior to marriage. The got married during the great depression. Mom would often mention how times were tough then. Mom’s mother died when I was three and mom took care of her younger brother and sister for awhile, who were not much older than I was. One of her favorite sayings was “We didn’t have a pot to piss in nor a window to throw it out of.” I don’t think she actually said, “piss.” But that’s what she meant. They had me in South Dakota and then headed west, staying briefly in Browning, Montana. We picked hops in the Yakima valley along with the migrant workers. I say “we” because I was told that I picked hops too, even though I don’t remember it. Then WWII came and dad got a job in Portland, Oregon building Liberty ships. The workers were told that some of the ships broke apart and sank rather than having been torpedoed (as many were). It was thought to be the welds, but it was found that the metal was too brittle, and the ships were then reinforced with a riveted strip the length of the ship. Still, over 400 were sunk, mostly from being torpedoed. We lived in Vanport, Oregon, a city built by the government for the shipyard workers. The name is a contraction of Vancouver and Portland. It was built exactly like the housing quarters on a military post. I do remember asking mom something about going to church in a movie theatre. There were no churches in town, all the different faiths took their turns at the theatre. We lived in a four family unit. The city was racially segregated and we lived near what was called the “Negro Quarter.” There was a lot of racial tension then and the police were over often for that or something else. The police were called the “Green Hornets” because of their green uniforms. My brother was born there in 1945. We had split shift schools because of overcrowding. We learned two things – nap taking, and the names of colors. I still can vividly see in my “minds eye” a sheet of paper with a bunch of unrecognizable colored shapes and one extremely bright orange circle. We also made a “model” of the town out of gray paper – every building was painted gray. My parents both thought they were very fortunate to have the wealth of two jobs. Mother worked as a scrub lady in the schools. Another scrub lady hit her over the head with a mop and cut her pretty badly – I never found out why. Dad bought a relatively new car for a few hundred dollars and we packed up & left for Tekoa, Washington as we had relatives there. Exactly one wee after we moved, the entire town was destroyed by the floodwaters from a ruptured dike. I remember newspaper pictures that mom saved showing only roofs. Everyone said that my dad was psychic, but he said that it was just time to move on.
Around 1944 or so, Dad made me a complete farm set from wood with hand carved little wooden animals. He was very good at carving. He called it whittling. I also had some store bought rubber toy trucks and a metal manure spreader. Dad carved me a “Buntline Special” wooden gun that I didn’t like because of the longer than normal barrel – I was such an unappreciative brat. It was quite detailed and he made a real leather holster for it and a relative of Dads put an authentic silver buckle on it, complete with rawhide thongs. For Christmas I got a solid wood B17 and a store bought Lincoln log set. I had a tantrum at a store in Vanport so mom bought me a solid cast aluminum pistol (Army .45) that later broke in half when I dropped it on the sidewalk. I had a wooden rifle with a bolt action that showed a bullet when the bolt was pulled back. I had some cheap plastic cars too. Plastic was very brittle and came marbled or mottled in many different dull purplish colors. Dad said that plastic and aluminum wouldn’t be used much anymore after the was (WWII) was over. Dad built me a model railroad – it had one store bought building – a church. One Christmas I got Engineers boots, another I got a leather jacket.
My Gandy Dancing Dad (Circa 1946, or so)
Dad got a job as a “Gandy Dancer” – railroad trackbed maintenance person. They don’t exist as such in North America anymore and I don’t know shy. I never saw a train wreck until after they abolished the gandy dancers (they had ‘em – I just never saw any). I’ve seen several since, with the last one being near Lacrosse on Christmas Eve 1997. (I just had to update this (Jan 16, ’98). The item I ordered hadn’t arrived yet, so I called the mail-order company for a status. My package is on a derailed train in Spokane – no shit.)
My first recollection of Tekoa is a home that had no road to it, except the railroad. There was a noarrow wooden footbridge over the tracks to get to our place that we loved to stay on when the steam locomotives passed under us so that the smoke enveloped us. Our yard was pretty big – about 2 acres and had quite a few fruit trees on it. We rented. We had electric lights and a radio but no other electrical appliances and no ‘phone, although most people in Tekoa had all the modern conveniences of the time. Mother had a wood cooking stove (Majestic) that she was pleased with. There was a 2’ x 3’ (2/3m x 1m) deep hole right next to the house that was filled with water and was used as a cooler. The kitchen sink was huge and I think it had plumbing at least to outside. It had a hand pump attached for well water. We had cold running water at least, even if you did have to prime it & pump it yourself. Incidentally, the pump had to be “primed” because the gaskets were made of leather and shrunk when they dried, so you poured water down the pump to wet and swell the leather. Mother had a big elongated copper tub that she heated water in for our weekly Saturday baths. Sometimes we would bathe in the kitchen sink too. The toilet facilities were in the back about 50’ or 60’ (20m) from the house. We used catalogues and old magazines mostly. In the winter I used to thank God for making me male whenever I had a nature call(because males didn’t have to go all the way to the outhouse). Mother took me to witness a calf being born & explained all about it. Dad took me with him to catch a neighbor’s cow& milk it.
I got “the big head” (my head swelled to more than twice normal size) and had to go to the hospital for awhile. I knew it was serious because Dad came with Mom to visit, and they looked worried. They brought me a toy Cat (crawler tractor) that had extremely detailed moldings and rubber treads that moved. They had previously told me it was way too expensive, so I knew something was amiss. I later learned that Mom & Dad were told I might die and that’s probably why they were so serious. (I think it’s possible that this is the reason that I have so much trouble with chronologic events, and also what erased some of my childhood memories that my Uncle John has helped me with.)
We move to a nicer place (Circa 1947, or so)
Our next place was much nicer. It was right in town and had cold and hot running water. The wood-cooking stove (Malleable brand this time) heated the incoming water and stored it in a tank. Isn’t it amazing that I can remember the brand names of the wood stoves – I think it’s because Mother was so pleased to have a good stove like her mom had – and the name was on it in big letters. Of course the stove wasn’t always on, so the water wasn’t always hot, but conversely sometimes the water was scalding hot.
My job was to split and stack the firewood and bust up the chunks of coal into useable sized to fit in the stove. The coal was delivered in large chunk – about 1 foot (1/3m) diameter. Most people had coal cellars that opened to the outside by stairs, and coal furnaces. We had the kitchen stove and a pot bellied stove for winter heat. After the low-grade coal was burned there were many cinders and “clinkers” (large glassified cinders) left over that I had the honor to carry our. Sometimes we (us kids) would take a gunny sack and walk the tracks picking up small pieces of a better grade of coal that had fallen off the coal tender of the locomotives. We’d also collect discarded beer bottles and sell ‘em to the tavern for a penny. About this time period, they came out with Margarine and it was white – but everybody mixed in yellow dye. The dairy farmers had gotten a law passed to make it illegal to sell it already colored yellow but that law was soon repealed in most states. Mom got an electric washing machine that had a large button with which to release the wringer if you hand got caught in it. She had had her hand mangled as a child by the reins from a team of horses that bolted and she apparently didn’t want a hand crushing repeat. W had an outhouse here too, but the neighbors across the street had indoor plumbing.
Swallowed up by a cesspool
A bunch of us kids were playing on the neighbor’s lawn one day when the ground opened up and sank with me into an old cesspool. A cesspool is similar to a septic tank but made of wood and the wood top was only a couple of feet (2/3m) below the grass. I was completely covered from head to toe with a slimy, stinky mass of gray sewage sludge. I was afraid of dying the most ignoble death of drowning in shit because none of the kids would help me out. Finally, an adult came and pulled me out and hosed me off and I lived happily ever after.
This place was about a mile or so (1.5km) from school and I ran home for lunch every day, except that sometimes I’d take a sack lunch in the winter. My school was Mt. St. Josephy’s Academy; a Catholic grade school. There were at least two grades in the same classroom together. They closed the academy and we went to public school in the 7th or 8th grade. We should have been promoted one grade – we were all that advanced.
Before the academy closed, I used to like to go to the hobo camps for some unknown reason. There were at least two semi-permanent camps that I knew of; one on the Milwaukee RR and one on the Union Pacific RR. They’d always invite you in and usually offer to share whatever was cooking. They’d sometimes tell pretty good stories. Once in a while I’d bring a can of food. Mom got upset when she found out & forbade me to go anymore, so I cut back a little.
I remember that it was extremely cold a few of the winters of my youth. Everyone had a sled. Wed build bid bonfires and sled all day and into the early night. We would drag our sleds over graveled roads to polish off the rust that the runners got after the previous winter. Sometimes it was cold enough, long enough, to ice skate. We didn’t get to skate often, but enough so that we were good enough to be able to jump over a barrel. Seems like we could usually skate some part of the winter. One year my Dad & a bunch of others had to blast an ice jam in the creek to prevent the bridges from being washed away.
Learning to Drive
I used to stay with my older cousin Lyle and we’d love to go to his granddad’s place and ride the young calves. The only real drawback was falling off (which we always did) onto an ever-present cowpie or two. Lyle would often do some useful work too, like setting irrigation pipe, and I’d help. When he got older (still pre-teen) he would supervise the Mexican migrant sugar beet workers. One day as we were driving back from town with a load of food and supplies for the migrants, he saw some irrigation stuff not working right. He told me to drive the old Ford pickup home as it was only about a mile or so. I drove all the way in first gear. I knew how to shift and about where some of the other gears were, but I was afraid of lurching and jerking like I did starting out. Driving a vehicle without a flywheel and not jerking is nearly impossible when you’re not experienced. I don’t think I ever drove a vehicle that you had to adjust the spark advance on when changing speeds (Lyle did), but I did get bad blisters from hand cranking an old Ford truck. Once we both got “fired” and kicked out of a farmer’s field where we were picking beans for money and had to walk home because I got caught pulling them out by the root (much faster that way). Once we got to go with Lyle’s dad; (my Uncle Lester) to the woods where he was logging. He used a team of horses to skid the logs – usually two at a time and Lester would ride on the logs, but he wouldn’t let both of us. Uncle Lester also did custom bodywork, and we hung out there a bit. He was quite the artist with an acetylene torch – that’s what they used to shape the cars with. They would “lead-in” areas they wanted filled – no “bondo” or fiberglass back then. I remember once when Uncle Lester was towing a big truck and his wrecker’s front wheels came completely off the ground when he started out.
Fluoroscopes
At the local shoe store they had a fluoroscope machine that the kids (adults too) liked to use to see their foot bones. It was essentially a real time x-ray machine. They’ve long since been discontinued because of the radiation hazard.
Rotten apple fights
One spring, when the creek was high, we built a raft (not elaborate) and floated down part of the creek – we couldn’t go very far. In the spring & summer we would have our bow & arrow fights. We’d either choose up sides or the kids on the north side of the RR bridge against the kids on the south side. We’d make the bows from willow branches usually, because of availability mostly, and the arrows from “thousand bark” because of their natural straightness. No one eve got hurt much except for someone’s new leather jacket and Ted McClain had to go to the doctor for an arrow in the ear, which could have been serious, but wasn’t. I remember someone had a little red wagon piled high with arrows. When the apples were over-ripe we’d have apple fights (apples grew wild everywhere). When we all got older, we had BB gun fights, but they were “safe” because we all wore goggles. Seems like the BB gun fights only lasted one or two years and we grew out of them. We also would shoot pigeons off the Milwaukee RR bridge and sometimes make a fire, cook & eat ‘em. None of the younger kids followed our example, probably because TB was starting to catch on. We would listen to “Howdy Doody” on the radio every Saturday morning. It was easy to visualize the program in our “mind eye” and was just as good as TV is today. In fact, most situation comedies would do just as well on the radio. Close your eyes and just listen to one for awhile and you’ll see. TV was pretty bad when it first hit the Spokane area – much of the time it was a test pattern. Even when a show was on, it often went off the air for one reason or another at first. It rapidly improved though. The best show was a local variety show put on by one of the heating oil companies. I can still hear their jingle: “when you need coal or oil, call Boyle.” The sets were very expensive too. All brands had the same size black & white picture tube (about 12” (1/3m) at first because RCA was the only one that made picture tubes for awhile. TV sets were quite unreliable for many years because of the vacuum tubes, so TV repair shops sprang up everywhere. Also, because of the vacuum tubes, they took awhile to warm up before they’d work.
Old farmhouse demolition fun
Then we moved again to a similar house and stayed there a short time before my dad bought the place I now live in (as of 1-26-98). It had been abandoned for several years and had 4’ or 5’ (1.5m) saplings growing all over the yard. One of the first things I helped my dad with was putting in the plumbing for city water & hooking up to the sewer. We celebrated by pushing over the outhouse & filling in the hole.
My dad had only a third grade education, but learned carpentry well enough by reading second hand books to build his house and work for pay as a finish carpenter. He learned plumbing and electrical the same way He couldn’t afford a circuit tester – he’d just wet his finger and touch it. Dad was quite talented in many respects. He could “roll” a cigarette with one hand. He used “Bull Durham” brand tobacco – it came in a drawstring pouch. He was good at designing things, especially machinery and designed a Pea Loading machine for the seed company he worked for. We (my dad & uncle) also tore down a could of farmhouses for the lumber to renovate (nearly re-build) our current houses. We (my cousin & I) would swing, not unlike monkeys, through the rafters knocking boards off as we went. Several times I accidentally stepped on nails. It took effort to pull my foot of the nail, mostly because of the shoe. Dad would yell at me and send me home for iodine. The iodine hurt. Oh, we also had to remove the nails from the boards & straighten them out so that they could be used again later. Not quite as bad as in the “olden days” when they burned down the house to recover the nails. I was so proud of my bedroom when it was finished. It had real linoleum on the floor and a light fixture – not just a hanging light bulb. Mom & Dads’ room never got fixed. The wall are still thin paperboard today. At night you could hear the mice running through the walls fairly often – they’re filled in now with insulation.
They tore down the Catholic academy years later & my dad & I salvaged some of the bricks – I would chip the mortar off. One year I climbed up to a hawk’s nest and stole away a young fledgling while the parents were gone. The youngster put up a good fight though. Anyway I took it home and tried to train it to be my falcon. Dad said that I would have to have it on my arm day and night until it was “broken.” Mom even made a little hood for his head. I lasted through a day and night and the next day but the second night I put him (her/it) in a cage and went to bed. The next day I took it back where I got it & turned it loose. It’s probably just as well, as the next door neighbor raised pigeons.
Pea Roguening
My first real job for wages was Pea Rogueing. I doubt if it’s done much anymore. Update: Judy Cohn has informed me that it’s still done. I also checked with Larry Heaton & he said that it’s still required & done in the Columbia basin. I did it every summer for four or five years. My first year, at age eleven (1948), I worked at F.H. Woodruff, a seed processing and storage warehouse (grain elevator). A truckload of us kids (all males) would be taken to a farmer’s field a few weeks before it was ready for harvesting. We’d form a line with about 15’ to 20’ (5+m) or so between us and walk through the thick green pea vines looking for vines that weren’t normal. A line of experienced older kids would follow, spaced farther apart, looking for the rogues we’d miss. The rogue pea vines would be pulled out root and all, and we’d carry them to the end of the field. They’d get pretty darn heavy before the end of the field was even in sight sometimes. We used 1-gallon (3.81L) glass jugs for drinking water. They had a burlap covering so that they could be watered down for cooling, which was done as often as practical. We drank a lot of water. Some rogues were very unusually shaped, but there were a few types of rogues that were common enough to have been named, such as Christmas tree, rabbit ear, and purple blossom. When I was fourteen, I walked behind and got the “big bucks.” I thought the pay was very good then – for kids, but it only lasted a few weeks of the summer. I “retired” from pea roguening at fourteen. The next season the kids struck for higher wages. They got it – eighty-five cents an hour. After that they hired all girl crews until pea rogueing vanished some years later. One summer I also did some haying – bucking bales. That’s where you pick up a bale and throw it up onto a truck. Hot, itchy, hard work to be avoided at all costs.
Stepped on a bear
I was picking blackberries out the cove road (the other side of Tekoa Mountain from our house) and put some tree limbs over some pretty beg blackberry vines to get further into the patch without getting eaten up by the vines. Somehow when I stepped on the branches I disturbed this black bear. I took off like a shot out of the blackberries and ran like hell. When I looked back, I saw the bear running like hell too, in the opposite direction. That’s when I discovered that bears can run about as fast as horses.
Skiing in “bear trap” bindings (Circa 1952, or so)
When I first learned to downhill ski, the binding were quite similar to the ones used today for cross-country skiing (cable). The boots were called ski boots, but were just modified hiking boots with the heel grooved to accommodate the binding cable. I suppose they were actually cross-country boots. The downhill skis were wider than cross-country, solid wood, and we had no steel edges at first. We installed steel edges by screwing on 8”x1/4” (20cm x 6.4mm) interlocking metal strips. Of course, we had to cut out a recess on the edges to accept the strips. Ski improvements seemed to come as fast as computer changes do today (1990-2000). The next year safety bindings were available (2 brands!). We put ‘em on. They were simply a spring-loaded post that released you foot during right or left pressure, but still used the old-style boots and cable bindings. But they were still a great leap ahead. Next came good boots, every bit as fffo as the ones used today, but made of leather. Everyone hated them at first because the soles wouldn’t flex like the old-style boots and they were hard to walk in. It seemed like every day a new binding was coming out, and pretty soon the cable disappeared completely.
We’d mostly ski at Mt. Spokane, but occasionally to other fairly local places. Our other favorite place was Rossland, BC. Gary Lyden and I pooled our resources and bought a pair of jump skis. We thought, “here we go again,” they had no steel edges, and used those damned cable bindings. They were wider, longer, thicker and heavier than downhill skis too. Jump skis never improved as long as we skied. I never got better than mediocre at jumping either, but Gary’s dad took 8mm home movies of our jumps anyway. We watched them intently in hopes of improving. Gary improved & continued skiing even after he broke his neck. Last I heard he still skis.
In the summer we’d water ski – mostly with Him McGreevy (Father Jim now). We’d all take turns of course. One time, after we were done for the day, I attempted to ski up to the boathouse dock and jump up on it. I was going too fast and hit the boathouse on the other side of the dock. It was made of corrugated metal and made a tremendous noise. The boathouse was only dented a little. Only my pride was hurt at all.
My first “real” job
My 16th summer (1953) I worked on Ted Bruce’s farm driving truck during harvest and plowing after. I got room and board plus eight dollars a day – sunup to sundown. Good, easy money. I was cutting peas with a little Fordson tractor on a steep sidehill when it started to tip over, so I had to turn downhill. Make a little mess. Don’t know why I mentioned it. I was thinking about another time when I got my spring tooth harrow plugged up and when I got one of the springs freed it hit me in the mouth knocking out a couple front teeth. I still have the original gold bridge – excellent dentist. Be sure to remove it when I croak. Mostly I plowed with a D$ Cat (crawler tractor) and a 4-bottom plow. Top speed (with no load) was about 5 mph (8kph) – very boring. I’d start my day with a big breakfast – usually steak and half a dozen eggs. Then drive out and pull the rope on the gas pony (starter) engine for the diesel (the small gas engine would warm up the diesel engine & then be used to start it – no glow plugs like they use today). While the diesel was warming up I’d grease and fuel the Cat. They didn’t use any kind of enclosures in those days, so you got so dirty from the constant dust that you needed two baths (few people had showers back then) to get really clean. Did I mention how boring it was? I once awoke to see my Cat (crawler tractor, remember?) climbing a telephone pole; it got about 3’ or 4’ (1m) up before I woke up and popped the clutch. The diesel engine alone makes an awful racket, not to mention the squeal and clatter of the treads, but it jus seems to drone on and on and lull you to sleep. One interesting thing did happen though. I was plowing this field just like it had been plowed dozens of times before. All of a sudden, the ground opened up and swallowed the tractor with me still on it. The plow prevented the tractor from going very far into the hole. I shut her down and climbed out for help. It took two D6’s (larger Cats) in tandem to pull it out. Turned out it was an old homestead’s abandoned well that even the farmer (Ted Bruce) didn’t know was there.
High School stories
First of all, I freely admit that I was the “class asshole” – a polite euphemism would probably be a “class clown” – the kind of guy that I would not tolerate in any of my future classes whether it be as an instructor or as a student.
That said, there were some good moments too, in which I had a little harmless fun.
“Hot soldering iron”: One time in Ag Shop (I think that’s what they called it – we learned the basics of soldering, welding, etc.) I painted the tip of my soldering iron bright red-orange and when the instructor came in, I tossed it to him.
“Fake weld”: I was unable to make a weld that wouldn’t break when beaten back & forth, but I could easily make a “good looking” weld. Instead of welding the separate pieces of metal together, I took a single piece that was the length of the two pieces and ran a welding “bead” around the middle. The instructor praised me for having the strongest, most unbreakable weld in the class. I did tell him what I’d done, and he made me do it again until I got it right.
Wood shop: Johnny Eckhart cut off the tip of his finger…Otto Tanner & I rushed him down the hill to the Medical Clinic, which was only a couple of blocks away. We brought his finger tip too, but the doctor just threw it into the waste basket.
Stump ranching in Idaho
My 17th summer (1954) my friend, Gary & I worked on his dad’s stump ranch in Idaho. That’s acreage that has been completely clear-cut (logged off) and only the tree stumps remain. Once they’re cleared off it’s called farmland. Anyway, we would use bulldozers (crawler tractors w/blade) to push out the smaller stumps and shove them to a burn pile. We’d use dynamite (red stumping (nitro-cellulose)) for the larger stumps. No permits were needed to handle it at that time. I’m not sure a permit was even needed to purchase it either. We used a small wooden stick to make a hole in the dynamite to receive the blasting cap because we didn’t have a brass tool and couldn’t use anything steel (sparks, you know). If we couldn’t dig a big enough hole under the stump to hol a few sticks we’d crimp a blasting cap on a short fust, stick it into half a stick and blow ourselves a hole. One time we did that on a large stump and a cavernous hole opened up. We looked at each other and without saying a word we knew what to do. We go a bunch of sticks and crimped a cap on a real long fuse and packed that hole full. We lit the fuse and ran like hell. When it went off it looked like slow motion – pieves of rro and stump spiraling up through the air then towards us. We were about twice as far away as we needed to be, but it was still spectacular – way too many sticks!
One time I got my Cat (bulldozer) high-centered (stuck) on a log, and I can’t remember how we got it off, but it was embarrassing. One time I got my Cat
We both tried chewing tobacco that summer and spit the juice out the pickup window to see if it would take off the paint like we were told. Sure enough, it did. I had to quit chewing as it made me puke too often. One day, for some reason we had to quit stumping for awhile and go to a wheat field and “top” thistles. That’s cutting the seed containing heads off with a big scythe (exactly like the grim reaper uses). And let me tell you, that’s hard work. When harvest time came, we quit stumping and I had to pull a tag-along* combine with “my” Cat on some pretty steep wheat fields. I caught hell from Gary’s brother, Gene (who was punching header*) for not being able to turn very well going down steep hills. I tried to tell him the brakes were shot (which they were) but he just kept shouting, “Just turn left to go right,” or some nonsense. Who does he think he’s talking to? I know how to drive Cat, I thought. Then it finally dawned on me what he was talking about. With the weight of the combine pushing me from behind, if the left clutch were pulled, the left tread would go faster and I’d turn right like he said. How could I be so stupid to not think of that myself, I thought. Oh, well…
One night we heard this blood curdling scream and Gene knew what it was as he grabbed his rifle (250/3000 Savage lever action) and we all ran outside – it was a cougar right in the yard. First (and still only) time I’ve ever heard one scream. Gene never got a shot off. At that time there was a bounty on cougars.
After school started (you could start a couple weeks late if you worked on a farm back then) I worked for Clarence Aebly after school was out for the day. I drove his garbage truck and collected everyone’s garbage in Tekoa – different areas on different days. Clarence had no restrictions on what could be put in the trash or how big the trash can could be – many customers used 50-gallon barrels. Sometimes the barrels were so heavy that they couldn’t be lifted, and I could lift a hell of a lot back then, so I’d have to tip the barrel over and shovel its contents into the truck. The truck was an old International with one of those turn signal arms – the precursor to the modern-day turn-signals. The dump bed was raised by a hand crank.
By the way, “punching header” was a term used for the guy on the combine that adjusted the cutting head – “tag along” is pretty much sel explanatory in that it was not self-propelled, it was pulled.
Got Lost
One time I went deer hunting with my cousin, Lyle & some of his friends in the Sellway-Bitterroot Wilderness area and got lost. I shouted, fired three shots and all that stuff, but it didn’t work. I foolishly tried to get to the highest point to see better. After about an hour or so of just wandering around aimlessly, I came back to within a few meters (20’) or so of where I started out. Now I realized that I was actually lost. I wasn’t too concerned because I had a rifle for food and water was easy to find. It was a clear blue-sky day, but that didn’t mean anything to me at that time. My plan was to find a stream, follow it to a creek or river until I got out. When my trickle turned into a stream, I was so elated that I started running down hill, jumping over fallen logs. I quickly came to my senses and quit running – I didn’t want to bust my butt and not be able to walk out. I saw a contrail way up and was upset as it was ruining my wonderful experience. How could I really be lost with all these signs of civilization? I walked all night and came out on a forest service logging trail in the morning. I wasn’t “out of the woods” yet; I had to get back before they started a search party or die of embarrassment. Should I turn right or left? I think I flipped a coin. It didn’t matter, after a few hours a forest service pickup came by and took me to camp where they had already started to form a search party. I didn’t get razzed until years later.
A beautiful sight
That reminded me of another time when I went deer hunting with Uncle George & Cousin Butch up near Chewela. Upon awaking with the sunrise, we found ourselves literally on top of our area of the world. A vast sea of fog covered the earth and came to withing just a few feet/meters of us on all sides and, as far as I could see to the horizon in any direction, only a very few other peaks showed their heads above the fog. Slowly the rising sun burned off the fog and revealed the rest of the earth. Priceless.
Aztec, NM Truck Ride
I took a truck ride with Floyd Cavender (1958?) to keep him company to a place near Aztec, NM, carrying a load of telephone poles. By the way, they have an annual “Kuntz Days” celebration in Aztec – a Kuntz helped in founding the town or something like that. Anyway, after we dropped off the telephone poles, we went to Salt Lake City to get some salt. Floyd let me drive through Salt Lake City and the streets were kind of foamy from the rain and I assumed the pickup in front of me would move when the light turned green – which he did, after I ever so lightly tapped his bumper. It shot him out into the intersection and, luckily, he took off and never looked back. Floyd thought it might be better if he drove for awhile. We put the side racks on and loaded up with salt. Floyd did let me balance the load by shoveling salt from one area to another so that we’d have equal weight distribution over each axle in preparation for being weighed. I remember that Floyd had told me more than once that the engine was still in its “break-in” period from being overhauled. I don’t know what hill we were going down (I’m sure Floyd does) but he calmly said something like “well, the engine better be broken in now,” and he unwrapped the tape from the Jake brake handle and gave it to me. I was not concerned. Floyd seemed to be calm and cool. I had no idea we were in any trouble until years later. He dropped me off in Tekoa and didn’t say anything. The next day he and Ann (his wife now) took the load to the Ridpath hotel in Spokane for their air conditioners and then he quit his job. We had lost our brakes and had to rely solely on the compression (Jake) brakes. Had I known at the time, I ‘d have been scared shitless too.
Some of my better Army memories
Before I went to basic training (1959), I was in a holding company. They begged us almost daily to sign up for OCS – Officer Candidate School. After basic they never asked again. Anyway, they also wanted volunteers for a psychological experiment. Yup, I thought it would be better than KP (Kitchen Police) and it was. It turned out to be very interesting. They (civilians hired by the Army) didn’t tell us, but the purpose was to see in what manner and how easily we could be swayed from our beliefs (brainwashed). We did the usual, boring things you could imagine, but some of the stuff was interesting – like sensory deprivation. The had me wear black clothes and a blindfold in a room with thick walls specially built to prevent any light from entering (actually, it’s impossible to shut out all light). After about an hour they’d ask (via microphone & speaker) what I could see. They’d ask again about every hour. That only lasted for about ten contiguous hours with no meal break. I only did that for one day, but others did it for a long time. I may have been given LSD during this period, but I really don’t think so. I do believe others were though. The other thing was being in an all-white room with bright light. I assumed the mirrors were two-way. I was told to lie on the bed as much as possible, but that I was free to roam the room. The room was about 8’x12’ (2.5mx3.5m). I think it was a converted cargo container. After awhile a voice from the speaker started talking about the Red Cross, asking me yes/no questions to see how much attention I was paying. They announced the lunch period and that there would be something in the refrigerator to eat – usually a sandwich and always mild (ugh). These were about ten-hour days too, but afterward there would be a short quiz. This regimen lasted about a wee or more. After only a few days you were unsure about the beliefs you had (of the Red Cross or whatever the topic) when you first started. The voice got progressively more negative each day. I only did those two interesting (I think) things and then it was time to go to basic. I never found out if there was anything else that happened to the others.
This is definitely not a “better memory,” but rather one of my most shameful memories. I took part in a GI shower to a guy named Katz by not stopping it. I could never look him in the eye after that. They used the same stiff bristled brushes that were meant for scrubbing the floor.
OK, here’s a “good” memory: during basic the CO (Company Commander) called in each recruit and he asked me if I had any problems. When I said, “No,” he said that everyone has problems and that I should tell him mine. Not wanting to irritate the guy, I said, “well, they do mispronounce my name.” The next few days I got called a lot of names, the nicest being “pussy.” After basic I went to electronics school and then to radar repair school. One time I was tuning a Klystron (small microwave oscillator) in class and got too close, and it blew the top of my head clear off – at least that’s what it felt like – 300 volts DC. We lived off base (married). I still had to come in for KP (Kitchen Police) almost weekly. The early bird got his choice of duty with DRO (dining room orderly) supposedly the best job and “pots and pans” the worst. You’d have to be there by three AM to get DRO, so I’d get there last at four and get post and pans. It was easier for me to work hard and be ignored than to constantly be yelled at like the DRO’s were. The regular cooks and cooks helpers would have to pitch in and help me scrub pots if I was too slow, so they’d “encourage” me to speed up at times. Before long I got good enough at it that I’d have nothing to do. I was absolutely flabbergasted the first time they let me take off and go to their barracks for a short nap until they needed me. After awhile they’d even get someone to clean the grease trap for me too. The moral of the story is “work hard and you’ll get recognized faster than by tooting your own horn and screwing off.” Or something like that.
In 1960, after a year or so of radar school (at Ft. Monmouth, NJ), I was sent to the Army airfield to be an air traffic controller. My first day there I asked to be reassigned to duty more suitable to my training. So, for punishment, they took me out of the tower and assigned me to the flight line where I would service the aircraft (refuel etc.). Even though this was nowhere near what I had been trained for either, it was fun. We’d have to taxi the aircraft to and from the pumps and their tie-downs or hangers. There were mostly single engine recon planes (L-19 Birddog) and the larger Canadian built (and named) Beavers, Otters, & Caribou’s (photo[1] is of the actual aircraft – you’ve probably heard of ARPA – they’re responsible for the “ARPA-net” – what we now call the Internet). I’ll bet you didn’t know that we were in Viet Nam that early, did you? Hell, we were there earlier than that. Anyway, there were choppers and other twin-engine craft, one of which was an R4D. An R4D was Navy nomenclature for a C47 (DC-3 gooney bird). The Army was using the R4D as a test bed for their new SLAR (Side Looking Airborne Radar).
Then they got their first OV-1 Mohawk – a twin turbo-jet. They were showing off doing barrel rolls close to the runway and augured in[2], making a huge white ball of fire. For the both of them we found a toe and a helmet part with some brains in it for burial. They got more Mohawks in and one time they gave a show for visiting West Pointers. A Mohawk flew over and took visible light and infrared pictures of the West Pointers in the bleachers. They the loudspeaker asked the Cadets to leave the bleachers and after they did, another Mohawk flew over and took pictures of the bleachers where they had been. Awhile later they passed out photographs and you could distinctly tell that it was Cadets that had been sitting in the empty bleachers. Taking clear photos of objects that had been there is commonplace now, but this was done in 1960. Incidentally, years later my brother Dick flew a SLAR equipped OV-1 Mohawk during his 2nd tour in Vietnam. Dick started out as an enlisted Green Beret, then was a Warrant Officer, then finally a Commissioned Officer driving the Mohawks.
One evening when almost no one was around (small airfield, remember) I taxied out onto the runway in an L-19. I gave it full power and headed down the runway. It started to lift off before I thought it would and I wasn’t mentally prepared for it, so I shoved the throttle back in and taxied back. I never tried again. Incidentally, years later Connie & I took lessons, and she soloed before I did.
My sons Karl & Kraig were born in Patterson Army Hospital at Fort Monmouth in 1960 & ’61. Incidentally, years later, my eldest son, Karl & his family were stationed in Germany for awhile. They loved it there too[3]. (When did they finally “tear down that wall[4]” – when was German East/West re-unification[5]?) Continuing on; I finally got an assignment at the Army’s Research & Development Laboratory Support Battalion. For awhile I got to work directly with the scientists. That was very interesting, because back then the Army (Defense Dept.) had the very latest electronic gizmos. They were testing small portable Doppler radar sets that were so sensitive that they could distinguish between a man or a woman walking. They were powered by Nickel Cadmium batteries and, according to the scientists, had a high failure rate after being charged. That’s when the Army (and then the world) learned of the “memory phenomenon” of the NiCad batteries and discharged them completely before recharging. They didn’t have KP nearly as often at the lags either, but they did have parades – they would have a parade for any reason – they’d have a parade for a sergeant retiring. Yup, “Dress right, dress – tallest to smallest, left to right, front to back.” We did look good though – we ought to have – lots of practice; they had a parade nearly every weekend. I can still hear ‘em calling all the companies to attention, starting with, “BaaaTaaaLeeeUuunnn!” (repeat for each company, each platoon, each command).
I went to instructor school and then to the factory where the radars were built and then went all over (just a little of Europe & Eastern US) on temporary teaching assignments. I was so settled in that I even joined the Fort Monmouth pistol team. I had to agree to be the team bus driver and go to truck driving school to do so, and so I learned to drive 6X6’s and big rig 22 wheelers. Got pretty good with the .38 revolver in rapid fire but could never hit anything with the .45 even though it was perfectly machined and accurized.
The Army was begging people to become helicopter pilots. I seriously considered it as I’d be instantly promoted to Sergeant (E-5) and be at least a Warrant Officer after graduation, but they wanted me to extend, and I wanted out. They were gearing up for Vietnam. I made E-5 a little later anyway.
[1] Photo in original hard copy. Will update in the future with photo, when/if one becomes available.
[2] To crash catastrophically. www.merriam-webster.com
[3] Dad had TDY (Temporary Duty) in W. Germany. He remembered cramming into a Karmann Ghia with his buddies (he was young, remember) traveling and skiing in the Alps, especially Garmisch, W. Germany. - Karl
[4] President Regan’s speech at the Brandenburg gate: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
[5] November 9, 1989. On December 23rd West Germans were allowed visa-free travel.
(08-14-2022 Version)
(Or as Laem (Karl’s wife) says: “It’s All about You, Bob”)
Mother told me…..
All my grandparents were immigrants from Russia where their ancestors had been immigrants to Russia from Germany. The Fischer Grandparents came over on the ship Carolina Wilhelmina which my aunt Carolina was named after. Mom worked in the restaurant of the Yellowstone hotel in Lemmon, SD prior to marriage. The got married during the great depression. Mom would often mention how times were tough then. Mom’s mother died when I was three and mom took care of her younger brother and sister for awhile, who were not much older than I was. One of her favorite sayings was “We didn’t have a pot to piss in nor a window to throw it out of.” I don’t think she actually said, “piss.” But that’s what she meant. They had me in South Dakota and then headed west, staying briefly in Browning, Montana. We picked hops in the Yakima valley along with the migrant workers. I say “we” because I was told that I picked hops too, even though I don’t remember it. Then WWII came and dad got a job in Portland, Oregon building Liberty ships. The workers were told that some of the ships broke apart and sank rather than having been torpedoed (as many were). It was thought to be the welds, but it was found that the metal was too brittle, and the ships were then reinforced with a riveted strip the length of the ship. Still, over 400 were sunk, mostly from being torpedoed. We lived in Vanport, Oregon, a city built by the government for the shipyard workers. The name is a contraction of Vancouver and Portland. It was built exactly like the housing quarters on a military post. I do remember asking mom something about going to church in a movie theatre. There were no churches in town, all the different faiths took their turns at the theatre. We lived in a four family unit. The city was racially segregated and we lived near what was called the “Negro Quarter.” There was a lot of racial tension then and the police were over often for that or something else. The police were called the “Green Hornets” because of their green uniforms. My brother was born there in 1945. We had split shift schools because of overcrowding. We learned two things – nap taking, and the names of colors. I still can vividly see in my “minds eye” a sheet of paper with a bunch of unrecognizable colored shapes and one extremely bright orange circle. We also made a “model” of the town out of gray paper – every building was painted gray. My parents both thought they were very fortunate to have the wealth of two jobs. Mother worked as a scrub lady in the schools. Another scrub lady hit her over the head with a mop and cut her pretty badly – I never found out why. Dad bought a relatively new car for a few hundred dollars and we packed up & left for Tekoa, Washington as we had relatives there. Exactly one wee after we moved, the entire town was destroyed by the floodwaters from a ruptured dike. I remember newspaper pictures that mom saved showing only roofs. Everyone said that my dad was psychic, but he said that it was just time to move on.
Around 1944 or so, Dad made me a complete farm set from wood with hand carved little wooden animals. He was very good at carving. He called it whittling. I also had some store bought rubber toy trucks and a metal manure spreader. Dad carved me a “Buntline Special” wooden gun that I didn’t like because of the longer than normal barrel – I was such an unappreciative brat. It was quite detailed and he made a real leather holster for it and a relative of Dads put an authentic silver buckle on it, complete with rawhide thongs. For Christmas I got a solid wood B17 and a store bought Lincoln log set. I had a tantrum at a store in Vanport so mom bought me a solid cast aluminum pistol (Army .45) that later broke in half when I dropped it on the sidewalk. I had a wooden rifle with a bolt action that showed a bullet when the bolt was pulled back. I had some cheap plastic cars too. Plastic was very brittle and came marbled or mottled in many different dull purplish colors. Dad said that plastic and aluminum wouldn’t be used much anymore after the was (WWII) was over. Dad built me a model railroad – it had one store bought building – a church. One Christmas I got Engineers boots, another I got a leather jacket.
My Gandy Dancing Dad (Circa 1946, or so)
Dad got a job as a “Gandy Dancer” – railroad trackbed maintenance person. They don’t exist as such in North America anymore and I don’t know shy. I never saw a train wreck until after they abolished the gandy dancers (they had ‘em – I just never saw any). I’ve seen several since, with the last one being near Lacrosse on Christmas Eve 1997. (I just had to update this (Jan 16, ’98). The item I ordered hadn’t arrived yet, so I called the mail-order company for a status. My package is on a derailed train in Spokane – no shit.)
My first recollection of Tekoa is a home that had no road to it, except the railroad. There was a noarrow wooden footbridge over the tracks to get to our place that we loved to stay on when the steam locomotives passed under us so that the smoke enveloped us. Our yard was pretty big – about 2 acres and had quite a few fruit trees on it. We rented. We had electric lights and a radio but no other electrical appliances and no ‘phone, although most people in Tekoa had all the modern conveniences of the time. Mother had a wood cooking stove (Majestic) that she was pleased with. There was a 2’ x 3’ (2/3m x 1m) deep hole right next to the house that was filled with water and was used as a cooler. The kitchen sink was huge and I think it had plumbing at least to outside. It had a hand pump attached for well water. We had cold running water at least, even if you did have to prime it & pump it yourself. Incidentally, the pump had to be “primed” because the gaskets were made of leather and shrunk when they dried, so you poured water down the pump to wet and swell the leather. Mother had a big elongated copper tub that she heated water in for our weekly Saturday baths. Sometimes we would bathe in the kitchen sink too. The toilet facilities were in the back about 50’ or 60’ (20m) from the house. We used catalogues and old magazines mostly. In the winter I used to thank God for making me male whenever I had a nature call(because males didn’t have to go all the way to the outhouse). Mother took me to witness a calf being born & explained all about it. Dad took me with him to catch a neighbor’s cow& milk it.
I got “the big head” (my head swelled to more than twice normal size) and had to go to the hospital for awhile. I knew it was serious because Dad came with Mom to visit, and they looked worried. They brought me a toy Cat (crawler tractor) that had extremely detailed moldings and rubber treads that moved. They had previously told me it was way too expensive, so I knew something was amiss. I later learned that Mom & Dad were told I might die and that’s probably why they were so serious. (I think it’s possible that this is the reason that I have so much trouble with chronologic events, and also what erased some of my childhood memories that my Uncle John has helped me with.)
We move to a nicer place (Circa 1947, or so)
Our next place was much nicer. It was right in town and had cold and hot running water. The wood-cooking stove (Malleable brand this time) heated the incoming water and stored it in a tank. Isn’t it amazing that I can remember the brand names of the wood stoves – I think it’s because Mother was so pleased to have a good stove like her mom had – and the name was on it in big letters. Of course the stove wasn’t always on, so the water wasn’t always hot, but conversely sometimes the water was scalding hot.
My job was to split and stack the firewood and bust up the chunks of coal into useable sized to fit in the stove. The coal was delivered in large chunk – about 1 foot (1/3m) diameter. Most people had coal cellars that opened to the outside by stairs, and coal furnaces. We had the kitchen stove and a pot bellied stove for winter heat. After the low-grade coal was burned there were many cinders and “clinkers” (large glassified cinders) left over that I had the honor to carry our. Sometimes we (us kids) would take a gunny sack and walk the tracks picking up small pieces of a better grade of coal that had fallen off the coal tender of the locomotives. We’d also collect discarded beer bottles and sell ‘em to the tavern for a penny. About this time period, they came out with Margarine and it was white – but everybody mixed in yellow dye. The dairy farmers had gotten a law passed to make it illegal to sell it already colored yellow but that law was soon repealed in most states. Mom got an electric washing machine that had a large button with which to release the wringer if you hand got caught in it. She had had her hand mangled as a child by the reins from a team of horses that bolted and she apparently didn’t want a hand crushing repeat. W had an outhouse here too, but the neighbors across the street had indoor plumbing.
Swallowed up by a cesspool
A bunch of us kids were playing on the neighbor’s lawn one day when the ground opened up and sank with me into an old cesspool. A cesspool is similar to a septic tank but made of wood and the wood top was only a couple of feet (2/3m) below the grass. I was completely covered from head to toe with a slimy, stinky mass of gray sewage sludge. I was afraid of dying the most ignoble death of drowning in shit because none of the kids would help me out. Finally, an adult came and pulled me out and hosed me off and I lived happily ever after.
This place was about a mile or so (1.5km) from school and I ran home for lunch every day, except that sometimes I’d take a sack lunch in the winter. My school was Mt. St. Josephy’s Academy; a Catholic grade school. There were at least two grades in the same classroom together. They closed the academy and we went to public school in the 7th or 8th grade. We should have been promoted one grade – we were all that advanced.
Before the academy closed, I used to like to go to the hobo camps for some unknown reason. There were at least two semi-permanent camps that I knew of; one on the Milwaukee RR and one on the Union Pacific RR. They’d always invite you in and usually offer to share whatever was cooking. They’d sometimes tell pretty good stories. Once in a while I’d bring a can of food. Mom got upset when she found out & forbade me to go anymore, so I cut back a little.
I remember that it was extremely cold a few of the winters of my youth. Everyone had a sled. Wed build bid bonfires and sled all day and into the early night. We would drag our sleds over graveled roads to polish off the rust that the runners got after the previous winter. Sometimes it was cold enough, long enough, to ice skate. We didn’t get to skate often, but enough so that we were good enough to be able to jump over a barrel. Seems like we could usually skate some part of the winter. One year my Dad & a bunch of others had to blast an ice jam in the creek to prevent the bridges from being washed away.
Learning to Drive
I used to stay with my older cousin Lyle and we’d love to go to his granddad’s place and ride the young calves. The only real drawback was falling off (which we always did) onto an ever-present cowpie or two. Lyle would often do some useful work too, like setting irrigation pipe, and I’d help. When he got older (still pre-teen) he would supervise the Mexican migrant sugar beet workers. One day as we were driving back from town with a load of food and supplies for the migrants, he saw some irrigation stuff not working right. He told me to drive the old Ford pickup home as it was only about a mile or so. I drove all the way in first gear. I knew how to shift and about where some of the other gears were, but I was afraid of lurching and jerking like I did starting out. Driving a vehicle without a flywheel and not jerking is nearly impossible when you’re not experienced. I don’t think I ever drove a vehicle that you had to adjust the spark advance on when changing speeds (Lyle did), but I did get bad blisters from hand cranking an old Ford truck. Once we both got “fired” and kicked out of a farmer’s field where we were picking beans for money and had to walk home because I got caught pulling them out by the root (much faster that way). Once we got to go with Lyle’s dad; (my Uncle Lester) to the woods where he was logging. He used a team of horses to skid the logs – usually two at a time and Lester would ride on the logs, but he wouldn’t let both of us. Uncle Lester also did custom bodywork, and we hung out there a bit. He was quite the artist with an acetylene torch – that’s what they used to shape the cars with. They would “lead-in” areas they wanted filled – no “bondo” or fiberglass back then. I remember once when Uncle Lester was towing a big truck and his wrecker’s front wheels came completely off the ground when he started out.
Fluoroscopes
At the local shoe store they had a fluoroscope machine that the kids (adults too) liked to use to see their foot bones. It was essentially a real time x-ray machine. They’ve long since been discontinued because of the radiation hazard.
Rotten apple fights
One spring, when the creek was high, we built a raft (not elaborate) and floated down part of the creek – we couldn’t go very far. In the spring & summer we would have our bow & arrow fights. We’d either choose up sides or the kids on the north side of the RR bridge against the kids on the south side. We’d make the bows from willow branches usually, because of availability mostly, and the arrows from “thousand bark” because of their natural straightness. No one eve got hurt much except for someone’s new leather jacket and Ted McClain had to go to the doctor for an arrow in the ear, which could have been serious, but wasn’t. I remember someone had a little red wagon piled high with arrows. When the apples were over-ripe we’d have apple fights (apples grew wild everywhere). When we all got older, we had BB gun fights, but they were “safe” because we all wore goggles. Seems like the BB gun fights only lasted one or two years and we grew out of them. We also would shoot pigeons off the Milwaukee RR bridge and sometimes make a fire, cook & eat ‘em. None of the younger kids followed our example, probably because TB was starting to catch on. We would listen to “Howdy Doody” on the radio every Saturday morning. It was easy to visualize the program in our “mind eye” and was just as good as TV is today. In fact, most situation comedies would do just as well on the radio. Close your eyes and just listen to one for awhile and you’ll see. TV was pretty bad when it first hit the Spokane area – much of the time it was a test pattern. Even when a show was on, it often went off the air for one reason or another at first. It rapidly improved though. The best show was a local variety show put on by one of the heating oil companies. I can still hear their jingle: “when you need coal or oil, call Boyle.” The sets were very expensive too. All brands had the same size black & white picture tube (about 12” (1/3m) at first because RCA was the only one that made picture tubes for awhile. TV sets were quite unreliable for many years because of the vacuum tubes, so TV repair shops sprang up everywhere. Also, because of the vacuum tubes, they took awhile to warm up before they’d work.
Old farmhouse demolition fun
Then we moved again to a similar house and stayed there a short time before my dad bought the place I now live in (as of 1-26-98). It had been abandoned for several years and had 4’ or 5’ (1.5m) saplings growing all over the yard. One of the first things I helped my dad with was putting in the plumbing for city water & hooking up to the sewer. We celebrated by pushing over the outhouse & filling in the hole.
My dad had only a third grade education, but learned carpentry well enough by reading second hand books to build his house and work for pay as a finish carpenter. He learned plumbing and electrical the same way He couldn’t afford a circuit tester – he’d just wet his finger and touch it. Dad was quite talented in many respects. He could “roll” a cigarette with one hand. He used “Bull Durham” brand tobacco – it came in a drawstring pouch. He was good at designing things, especially machinery and designed a Pea Loading machine for the seed company he worked for. We (my dad & uncle) also tore down a could of farmhouses for the lumber to renovate (nearly re-build) our current houses. We (my cousin & I) would swing, not unlike monkeys, through the rafters knocking boards off as we went. Several times I accidentally stepped on nails. It took effort to pull my foot of the nail, mostly because of the shoe. Dad would yell at me and send me home for iodine. The iodine hurt. Oh, we also had to remove the nails from the boards & straighten them out so that they could be used again later. Not quite as bad as in the “olden days” when they burned down the house to recover the nails. I was so proud of my bedroom when it was finished. It had real linoleum on the floor and a light fixture – not just a hanging light bulb. Mom & Dads’ room never got fixed. The wall are still thin paperboard today. At night you could hear the mice running through the walls fairly often – they’re filled in now with insulation.
They tore down the Catholic academy years later & my dad & I salvaged some of the bricks – I would chip the mortar off. One year I climbed up to a hawk’s nest and stole away a young fledgling while the parents were gone. The youngster put up a good fight though. Anyway I took it home and tried to train it to be my falcon. Dad said that I would have to have it on my arm day and night until it was “broken.” Mom even made a little hood for his head. I lasted through a day and night and the next day but the second night I put him (her/it) in a cage and went to bed. The next day I took it back where I got it & turned it loose. It’s probably just as well, as the next door neighbor raised pigeons.
Pea Roguening
My first real job for wages was Pea Rogueing. I doubt if it’s done much anymore. Update: Judy Cohn has informed me that it’s still done. I also checked with Larry Heaton & he said that it’s still required & done in the Columbia basin. I did it every summer for four or five years. My first year, at age eleven (1948), I worked at F.H. Woodruff, a seed processing and storage warehouse (grain elevator). A truckload of us kids (all males) would be taken to a farmer’s field a few weeks before it was ready for harvesting. We’d form a line with about 15’ to 20’ (5+m) or so between us and walk through the thick green pea vines looking for vines that weren’t normal. A line of experienced older kids would follow, spaced farther apart, looking for the rogues we’d miss. The rogue pea vines would be pulled out root and all, and we’d carry them to the end of the field. They’d get pretty darn heavy before the end of the field was even in sight sometimes. We used 1-gallon (3.81L) glass jugs for drinking water. They had a burlap covering so that they could be watered down for cooling, which was done as often as practical. We drank a lot of water. Some rogues were very unusually shaped, but there were a few types of rogues that were common enough to have been named, such as Christmas tree, rabbit ear, and purple blossom. When I was fourteen, I walked behind and got the “big bucks.” I thought the pay was very good then – for kids, but it only lasted a few weeks of the summer. I “retired” from pea roguening at fourteen. The next season the kids struck for higher wages. They got it – eighty-five cents an hour. After that they hired all girl crews until pea rogueing vanished some years later. One summer I also did some haying – bucking bales. That’s where you pick up a bale and throw it up onto a truck. Hot, itchy, hard work to be avoided at all costs.
Stepped on a bear
I was picking blackberries out the cove road (the other side of Tekoa Mountain from our house) and put some tree limbs over some pretty beg blackberry vines to get further into the patch without getting eaten up by the vines. Somehow when I stepped on the branches I disturbed this black bear. I took off like a shot out of the blackberries and ran like hell. When I looked back, I saw the bear running like hell too, in the opposite direction. That’s when I discovered that bears can run about as fast as horses.
Skiing in “bear trap” bindings (Circa 1952, or so)
When I first learned to downhill ski, the binding were quite similar to the ones used today for cross-country skiing (cable). The boots were called ski boots, but were just modified hiking boots with the heel grooved to accommodate the binding cable. I suppose they were actually cross-country boots. The downhill skis were wider than cross-country, solid wood, and we had no steel edges at first. We installed steel edges by screwing on 8”x1/4” (20cm x 6.4mm) interlocking metal strips. Of course, we had to cut out a recess on the edges to accept the strips. Ski improvements seemed to come as fast as computer changes do today (1990-2000). The next year safety bindings were available (2 brands!). We put ‘em on. They were simply a spring-loaded post that released you foot during right or left pressure, but still used the old-style boots and cable bindings. But they were still a great leap ahead. Next came good boots, every bit as fffo as the ones used today, but made of leather. Everyone hated them at first because the soles wouldn’t flex like the old-style boots and they were hard to walk in. It seemed like every day a new binding was coming out, and pretty soon the cable disappeared completely.
We’d mostly ski at Mt. Spokane, but occasionally to other fairly local places. Our other favorite place was Rossland, BC. Gary Lyden and I pooled our resources and bought a pair of jump skis. We thought, “here we go again,” they had no steel edges, and used those damned cable bindings. They were wider, longer, thicker and heavier than downhill skis too. Jump skis never improved as long as we skied. I never got better than mediocre at jumping either, but Gary’s dad took 8mm home movies of our jumps anyway. We watched them intently in hopes of improving. Gary improved & continued skiing even after he broke his neck. Last I heard he still skis.
In the summer we’d water ski – mostly with Him McGreevy (Father Jim now). We’d all take turns of course. One time, after we were done for the day, I attempted to ski up to the boathouse dock and jump up on it. I was going too fast and hit the boathouse on the other side of the dock. It was made of corrugated metal and made a tremendous noise. The boathouse was only dented a little. Only my pride was hurt at all.
My first “real” job
My 16th summer (1953) I worked on Ted Bruce’s farm driving truck during harvest and plowing after. I got room and board plus eight dollars a day – sunup to sundown. Good, easy money. I was cutting peas with a little Fordson tractor on a steep sidehill when it started to tip over, so I had to turn downhill. Make a little mess. Don’t know why I mentioned it. I was thinking about another time when I got my spring tooth harrow plugged up and when I got one of the springs freed it hit me in the mouth knocking out a couple front teeth. I still have the original gold bridge – excellent dentist. Be sure to remove it when I croak. Mostly I plowed with a D$ Cat (crawler tractor) and a 4-bottom plow. Top speed (with no load) was about 5 mph (8kph) – very boring. I’d start my day with a big breakfast – usually steak and half a dozen eggs. Then drive out and pull the rope on the gas pony (starter) engine for the diesel (the small gas engine would warm up the diesel engine & then be used to start it – no glow plugs like they use today). While the diesel was warming up I’d grease and fuel the Cat. They didn’t use any kind of enclosures in those days, so you got so dirty from the constant dust that you needed two baths (few people had showers back then) to get really clean. Did I mention how boring it was? I once awoke to see my Cat (crawler tractor, remember?) climbing a telephone pole; it got about 3’ or 4’ (1m) up before I woke up and popped the clutch. The diesel engine alone makes an awful racket, not to mention the squeal and clatter of the treads, but it jus seems to drone on and on and lull you to sleep. One interesting thing did happen though. I was plowing this field just like it had been plowed dozens of times before. All of a sudden, the ground opened up and swallowed the tractor with me still on it. The plow prevented the tractor from going very far into the hole. I shut her down and climbed out for help. It took two D6’s (larger Cats) in tandem to pull it out. Turned out it was an old homestead’s abandoned well that even the farmer (Ted Bruce) didn’t know was there.
High School stories
First of all, I freely admit that I was the “class asshole” – a polite euphemism would probably be a “class clown” – the kind of guy that I would not tolerate in any of my future classes whether it be as an instructor or as a student.
That said, there were some good moments too, in which I had a little harmless fun.
“Hot soldering iron”: One time in Ag Shop (I think that’s what they called it – we learned the basics of soldering, welding, etc.) I painted the tip of my soldering iron bright red-orange and when the instructor came in, I tossed it to him.
“Fake weld”: I was unable to make a weld that wouldn’t break when beaten back & forth, but I could easily make a “good looking” weld. Instead of welding the separate pieces of metal together, I took a single piece that was the length of the two pieces and ran a welding “bead” around the middle. The instructor praised me for having the strongest, most unbreakable weld in the class. I did tell him what I’d done, and he made me do it again until I got it right.
Wood shop: Johnny Eckhart cut off the tip of his finger…Otto Tanner & I rushed him down the hill to the Medical Clinic, which was only a couple of blocks away. We brought his finger tip too, but the doctor just threw it into the waste basket.
Stump ranching in Idaho
My 17th summer (1954) my friend, Gary & I worked on his dad’s stump ranch in Idaho. That’s acreage that has been completely clear-cut (logged off) and only the tree stumps remain. Once they’re cleared off it’s called farmland. Anyway, we would use bulldozers (crawler tractors w/blade) to push out the smaller stumps and shove them to a burn pile. We’d use dynamite (red stumping (nitro-cellulose)) for the larger stumps. No permits were needed to handle it at that time. I’m not sure a permit was even needed to purchase it either. We used a small wooden stick to make a hole in the dynamite to receive the blasting cap because we didn’t have a brass tool and couldn’t use anything steel (sparks, you know). If we couldn’t dig a big enough hole under the stump to hol a few sticks we’d crimp a blasting cap on a short fust, stick it into half a stick and blow ourselves a hole. One time we did that on a large stump and a cavernous hole opened up. We looked at each other and without saying a word we knew what to do. We go a bunch of sticks and crimped a cap on a real long fuse and packed that hole full. We lit the fuse and ran like hell. When it went off it looked like slow motion – pieves of rro and stump spiraling up through the air then towards us. We were about twice as far away as we needed to be, but it was still spectacular – way too many sticks!
One time I got my Cat (bulldozer) high-centered (stuck) on a log, and I can’t remember how we got it off, but it was embarrassing. One time I got my Cat
We both tried chewing tobacco that summer and spit the juice out the pickup window to see if it would take off the paint like we were told. Sure enough, it did. I had to quit chewing as it made me puke too often. One day, for some reason we had to quit stumping for awhile and go to a wheat field and “top” thistles. That’s cutting the seed containing heads off with a big scythe (exactly like the grim reaper uses). And let me tell you, that’s hard work. When harvest time came, we quit stumping and I had to pull a tag-along* combine with “my” Cat on some pretty steep wheat fields. I caught hell from Gary’s brother, Gene (who was punching header*) for not being able to turn very well going down steep hills. I tried to tell him the brakes were shot (which they were) but he just kept shouting, “Just turn left to go right,” or some nonsense. Who does he think he’s talking to? I know how to drive Cat, I thought. Then it finally dawned on me what he was talking about. With the weight of the combine pushing me from behind, if the left clutch were pulled, the left tread would go faster and I’d turn right like he said. How could I be so stupid to not think of that myself, I thought. Oh, well…
One night we heard this blood curdling scream and Gene knew what it was as he grabbed his rifle (250/3000 Savage lever action) and we all ran outside – it was a cougar right in the yard. First (and still only) time I’ve ever heard one scream. Gene never got a shot off. At that time there was a bounty on cougars.
After school started (you could start a couple weeks late if you worked on a farm back then) I worked for Clarence Aebly after school was out for the day. I drove his garbage truck and collected everyone’s garbage in Tekoa – different areas on different days. Clarence had no restrictions on what could be put in the trash or how big the trash can could be – many customers used 50-gallon barrels. Sometimes the barrels were so heavy that they couldn’t be lifted, and I could lift a hell of a lot back then, so I’d have to tip the barrel over and shovel its contents into the truck. The truck was an old International with one of those turn signal arms – the precursor to the modern-day turn-signals. The dump bed was raised by a hand crank.
By the way, “punching header” was a term used for the guy on the combine that adjusted the cutting head – “tag along” is pretty much sel explanatory in that it was not self-propelled, it was pulled.
Got Lost
One time I went deer hunting with my cousin, Lyle & some of his friends in the Sellway-Bitterroot Wilderness area and got lost. I shouted, fired three shots and all that stuff, but it didn’t work. I foolishly tried to get to the highest point to see better. After about an hour or so of just wandering around aimlessly, I came back to within a few meters (20’) or so of where I started out. Now I realized that I was actually lost. I wasn’t too concerned because I had a rifle for food and water was easy to find. It was a clear blue-sky day, but that didn’t mean anything to me at that time. My plan was to find a stream, follow it to a creek or river until I got out. When my trickle turned into a stream, I was so elated that I started running down hill, jumping over fallen logs. I quickly came to my senses and quit running – I didn’t want to bust my butt and not be able to walk out. I saw a contrail way up and was upset as it was ruining my wonderful experience. How could I really be lost with all these signs of civilization? I walked all night and came out on a forest service logging trail in the morning. I wasn’t “out of the woods” yet; I had to get back before they started a search party or die of embarrassment. Should I turn right or left? I think I flipped a coin. It didn’t matter, after a few hours a forest service pickup came by and took me to camp where they had already started to form a search party. I didn’t get razzed until years later.
A beautiful sight
That reminded me of another time when I went deer hunting with Uncle George & Cousin Butch up near Chewela. Upon awaking with the sunrise, we found ourselves literally on top of our area of the world. A vast sea of fog covered the earth and came to withing just a few feet/meters of us on all sides and, as far as I could see to the horizon in any direction, only a very few other peaks showed their heads above the fog. Slowly the rising sun burned off the fog and revealed the rest of the earth. Priceless.
Aztec, NM Truck Ride
I took a truck ride with Floyd Cavender (1958?) to keep him company to a place near Aztec, NM, carrying a load of telephone poles. By the way, they have an annual “Kuntz Days” celebration in Aztec – a Kuntz helped in founding the town or something like that. Anyway, after we dropped off the telephone poles, we went to Salt Lake City to get some salt. Floyd let me drive through Salt Lake City and the streets were kind of foamy from the rain and I assumed the pickup in front of me would move when the light turned green – which he did, after I ever so lightly tapped his bumper. It shot him out into the intersection and, luckily, he took off and never looked back. Floyd thought it might be better if he drove for awhile. We put the side racks on and loaded up with salt. Floyd did let me balance the load by shoveling salt from one area to another so that we’d have equal weight distribution over each axle in preparation for being weighed. I remember that Floyd had told me more than once that the engine was still in its “break-in” period from being overhauled. I don’t know what hill we were going down (I’m sure Floyd does) but he calmly said something like “well, the engine better be broken in now,” and he unwrapped the tape from the Jake brake handle and gave it to me. I was not concerned. Floyd seemed to be calm and cool. I had no idea we were in any trouble until years later. He dropped me off in Tekoa and didn’t say anything. The next day he and Ann (his wife now) took the load to the Ridpath hotel in Spokane for their air conditioners and then he quit his job. We had lost our brakes and had to rely solely on the compression (Jake) brakes. Had I known at the time, I ‘d have been scared shitless too.
Some of my better Army memories
Before I went to basic training (1959), I was in a holding company. They begged us almost daily to sign up for OCS – Officer Candidate School. After basic they never asked again. Anyway, they also wanted volunteers for a psychological experiment. Yup, I thought it would be better than KP (Kitchen Police) and it was. It turned out to be very interesting. They (civilians hired by the Army) didn’t tell us, but the purpose was to see in what manner and how easily we could be swayed from our beliefs (brainwashed). We did the usual, boring things you could imagine, but some of the stuff was interesting – like sensory deprivation. The had me wear black clothes and a blindfold in a room with thick walls specially built to prevent any light from entering (actually, it’s impossible to shut out all light). After about an hour they’d ask (via microphone & speaker) what I could see. They’d ask again about every hour. That only lasted for about ten contiguous hours with no meal break. I only did that for one day, but others did it for a long time. I may have been given LSD during this period, but I really don’t think so. I do believe others were though. The other thing was being in an all-white room with bright light. I assumed the mirrors were two-way. I was told to lie on the bed as much as possible, but that I was free to roam the room. The room was about 8’x12’ (2.5mx3.5m). I think it was a converted cargo container. After awhile a voice from the speaker started talking about the Red Cross, asking me yes/no questions to see how much attention I was paying. They announced the lunch period and that there would be something in the refrigerator to eat – usually a sandwich and always mild (ugh). These were about ten-hour days too, but afterward there would be a short quiz. This regimen lasted about a wee or more. After only a few days you were unsure about the beliefs you had (of the Red Cross or whatever the topic) when you first started. The voice got progressively more negative each day. I only did those two interesting (I think) things and then it was time to go to basic. I never found out if there was anything else that happened to the others.
This is definitely not a “better memory,” but rather one of my most shameful memories. I took part in a GI shower to a guy named Katz by not stopping it. I could never look him in the eye after that. They used the same stiff bristled brushes that were meant for scrubbing the floor.
OK, here’s a “good” memory: during basic the CO (Company Commander) called in each recruit and he asked me if I had any problems. When I said, “No,” he said that everyone has problems and that I should tell him mine. Not wanting to irritate the guy, I said, “well, they do mispronounce my name.” The next few days I got called a lot of names, the nicest being “pussy.” After basic I went to electronics school and then to radar repair school. One time I was tuning a Klystron (small microwave oscillator) in class and got too close, and it blew the top of my head clear off – at least that’s what it felt like – 300 volts DC. We lived off base (married). I still had to come in for KP (Kitchen Police) almost weekly. The early bird got his choice of duty with DRO (dining room orderly) supposedly the best job and “pots and pans” the worst. You’d have to be there by three AM to get DRO, so I’d get there last at four and get post and pans. It was easier for me to work hard and be ignored than to constantly be yelled at like the DRO’s were. The regular cooks and cooks helpers would have to pitch in and help me scrub pots if I was too slow, so they’d “encourage” me to speed up at times. Before long I got good enough at it that I’d have nothing to do. I was absolutely flabbergasted the first time they let me take off and go to their barracks for a short nap until they needed me. After awhile they’d even get someone to clean the grease trap for me too. The moral of the story is “work hard and you’ll get recognized faster than by tooting your own horn and screwing off.” Or something like that.
In 1960, after a year or so of radar school (at Ft. Monmouth, NJ), I was sent to the Army airfield to be an air traffic controller. My first day there I asked to be reassigned to duty more suitable to my training. So, for punishment, they took me out of the tower and assigned me to the flight line where I would service the aircraft (refuel etc.). Even though this was nowhere near what I had been trained for either, it was fun. We’d have to taxi the aircraft to and from the pumps and their tie-downs or hangers. There were mostly single engine recon planes (L-19 Birddog) and the larger Canadian built (and named) Beavers, Otters, & Caribou’s (photo[1] is of the actual aircraft – you’ve probably heard of ARPA – they’re responsible for the “ARPA-net” – what we now call the Internet). I’ll bet you didn’t know that we were in Viet Nam that early, did you? Hell, we were there earlier than that. Anyway, there were choppers and other twin-engine craft, one of which was an R4D. An R4D was Navy nomenclature for a C47 (DC-3 gooney bird). The Army was using the R4D as a test bed for their new SLAR (Side Looking Airborne Radar).
Then they got their first OV-1 Mohawk – a twin turbo-jet. They were showing off doing barrel rolls close to the runway and augured in[2], making a huge white ball of fire. For the both of them we found a toe and a helmet part with some brains in it for burial. They got more Mohawks in and one time they gave a show for visiting West Pointers. A Mohawk flew over and took visible light and infrared pictures of the West Pointers in the bleachers. They the loudspeaker asked the Cadets to leave the bleachers and after they did, another Mohawk flew over and took pictures of the bleachers where they had been. Awhile later they passed out photographs and you could distinctly tell that it was Cadets that had been sitting in the empty bleachers. Taking clear photos of objects that had been there is commonplace now, but this was done in 1960. Incidentally, years later my brother Dick flew a SLAR equipped OV-1 Mohawk during his 2nd tour in Vietnam. Dick started out as an enlisted Green Beret, then was a Warrant Officer, then finally a Commissioned Officer driving the Mohawks.
One evening when almost no one was around (small airfield, remember) I taxied out onto the runway in an L-19. I gave it full power and headed down the runway. It started to lift off before I thought it would and I wasn’t mentally prepared for it, so I shoved the throttle back in and taxied back. I never tried again. Incidentally, years later Connie & I took lessons, and she soloed before I did.
My sons Karl & Kraig were born in Patterson Army Hospital at Fort Monmouth in 1960 & ’61. Incidentally, years later, my eldest son, Karl & his family were stationed in Germany for awhile. They loved it there too[3]. (When did they finally “tear down that wall[4]” – when was German East/West re-unification[5]?) Continuing on; I finally got an assignment at the Army’s Research & Development Laboratory Support Battalion. For awhile I got to work directly with the scientists. That was very interesting, because back then the Army (Defense Dept.) had the very latest electronic gizmos. They were testing small portable Doppler radar sets that were so sensitive that they could distinguish between a man or a woman walking. They were powered by Nickel Cadmium batteries and, according to the scientists, had a high failure rate after being charged. That’s when the Army (and then the world) learned of the “memory phenomenon” of the NiCad batteries and discharged them completely before recharging. They didn’t have KP nearly as often at the lags either, but they did have parades – they would have a parade for any reason – they’d have a parade for a sergeant retiring. Yup, “Dress right, dress – tallest to smallest, left to right, front to back.” We did look good though – we ought to have – lots of practice; they had a parade nearly every weekend. I can still hear ‘em calling all the companies to attention, starting with, “BaaaTaaaLeeeUuunnn!” (repeat for each company, each platoon, each command).
I went to instructor school and then to the factory where the radars were built and then went all over (just a little of Europe & Eastern US) on temporary teaching assignments. I was so settled in that I even joined the Fort Monmouth pistol team. I had to agree to be the team bus driver and go to truck driving school to do so, and so I learned to drive 6X6’s and big rig 22 wheelers. Got pretty good with the .38 revolver in rapid fire but could never hit anything with the .45 even though it was perfectly machined and accurized.
The Army was begging people to become helicopter pilots. I seriously considered it as I’d be instantly promoted to Sergeant (E-5) and be at least a Warrant Officer after graduation, but they wanted me to extend, and I wanted out. They were gearing up for Vietnam. I made E-5 a little later anyway.
[1] Photo in original hard copy. Will update in the future with photo, when/if one becomes available.
[2] To crash catastrophically. www.merriam-webster.com
[3] Dad had TDY (Temporary Duty) in W. Germany. He remembered cramming into a Karmann Ghia with his buddies (he was young, remember) traveling and skiing in the Alps, especially Garmisch, W. Germany. - Karl
[4] President Regan’s speech at the Brandenburg gate: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
[5] November 9, 1989. On December 23rd West Germans were allowed visa-free travel.
