OBSERVATIONS

OF PEOPLE AND EVENTS

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IN THE LIFE OF BOB CHURCH

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ONCE KNOWN AS ROBERT CHURCH

The people who read the following pages should not feel that they have to read every word. These observations will be about numerous events and numerous people. wrote a few words about No one will know everybody mentioned but if I have tried to put things in some kind of everybody they still would not know them. I order and tried not to write about events more than once. The table of contents has been a big help. Using the spell checker and the grammar checker has been a big help and made things easier. However the people who created the grammar checker worked and lived in a have. different world than I They never worked around the people in the jazz world or people in the railroad industry. And I doubt if they had much contact with people who quit school after the fourth grade. change "who" to "whom" the The grammar check suggested several times that I decided not to make the changes anymore. changes were made two or three times. Then I The word "whom" is going to disappear from the English language anyway.

Table of Contents

1-Life in Denver The First Eight Years 5 Life At Bug Point 11 Dove Creek 17 Mom 19 Dad 20 Sis 24 FIVE YEARS BACK AND FORTH Wilson Mesa Moab 37 Stacking Hay and other activities 40 Moab Without Money 41 Moab 1941 42 Monticello 51 Post Script to Monticello 52 Arriving Vancouver 55 Getting A Job 58 Railroad Stories 65 The Tragic Side of Railroading 66 Life Away From The Raillroad 69 Medical Report 70 Family 71 Washington D.C.FIRST VISIT 72 Lodges 73 Jury Duty 75 Columbus Day Storm 76 The Eruption of Mt. St. Helens Have Known 77 Some People I 79 Politics 81 THINGS HAVE CHANGED AROUND VANCOUVER 83 Observations and Random Thoughts 84 A Change To More Pleasant Thoughts 87 SOME PLEASURES OF LIFE 88 Jazz Big Bands 91 The Frontier Room 93 Jeannie Hoffman AND OTHER YARNS 94 Bonnie Carol 95 The Patische and other stories 96 Marianne Mayfield AND OTHER THINGS OF INTEREST 97 Jazz and Photography 98 Jazz scene and the Golden Years 101 Jazz at the Zoo Jazz at Cathredal Park Jazz at Pioneer Square 103 Jazz Parties at Otter Crest Salishan and Skamania Lodge 106 Jazz at Centrum Port Townsend 107 Current And Past Local Jazz 109 Vandi and Family

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The First Eight Years Life in Denver and Moving to Bug Point

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According to my birth certificate I was born in the rural part of Weld County, Colorado seven miles have no memory of that event but I northeast of the town of Eaton Colorado on June 17, 1926. I have always assumed that the information is correct. The date the local registrar received this information was September 15, 1926, nearly three months later. My earliest memory is of hearing some talk about some missing rabbits just after we moved from the address on West Virginia Street to the house at 131 West Dakota Street both in Denver, Colorado. Years later my mother said she had turned the rabbits out because they were not being taken care of. The place on West Virginia was a row- house. My mother and I went by there in 1935 when we were in Denver for a visit with my Grandpa and Grandma Osbaugh. The house on West Dakota was a two-story yellow stucco house with the wood trim painted a forest green. There was an unpainted board fence about six feet high around the back yard. There was a large unpainted building out back that was called a garage even if we did not have a car. There were two small buildings about six feet high that were used to store coal I jumped off of one of them and sprained assume. I an ankle. The bedrooms for the young people were on the second floor and I remember Charles screaming because he was hearing noises and thought people were coming to get him. It was decades later Vern told me he had been sneaking out of the house and making those noises. remember being in bed scared because I thought I I could hear the sound of marching feet of people coming after me. It was several years before I realized that I had been lying with my ear on my arm and the regular beat I had been hearing was my pulse. The reason we were afraid that people were coming after us was that this was close to the time the Lindbergh baby had been kidnapped. Charles Lindbergh was a world- wide hero when his baby was kidnapped and people were worried that every baby or child in the United States might be kidnapped. This fear was passed on to children. Sometimes it was not done on purpose but the Lindbergh baby must have been talked about a lot. Our parents would send us to a Sunday school that was a long distance from our house. I do not think getting there on time was a big concern of my older brothers or of me. One day when I happened to be there it was announced that the class would be holding a party in Washington Park the next week and that ice cream would be served. We were at Washington Park the next week and I went to the area where they were serving the ice cream. The man doing the serving asked a different man if I was part of the class. The missed out on the ice cream. second man said I was not so I One day we went to Washington Park and the police brought me home because my family and I had become separated. On a different day I waded out too far into the water and was in over my head. Vern tells how Gertrude and they happened to look over and saw a hand holding glasses sticking up out of the water. Gertrude came over and pulled me out of the water saving my life that day. There is something in my memory about water in my face and if my memory is correct I had gone under twice before Gertrude kept me from going under for the fatal third time. On still a different day there was a great to do or fuss and people were getting out of the water like something "terrible" had happened. What had happened is that some black people had entered the lake on the backside of the lake. I guess the people thought the black pigment would come off in the water and get on them. This is the way things were in those days. The Good Heart Laundry was two blocks from our house. They painted their trucks yellow with

big red hearts painted on the side .1used to spend a lot of time around their garage. A couple of the drivers really liked was a miniature van that was made by used to take me for rides in their vans. But the vehicle I and one somebody said they cost ten dollars. the Austin Automobile Company. I wanted I asked my dad to buy it for me and told me the first time he found ten silver dollars rolling up a hill he would think about buying that Austin for me. He never did find ten silver dollars rolling up a hill. The closest theater in our neighborhood was named the Webber Theater. One movie my mother took me to see was the original Frankenstein it scared me and I wanted to go home. But she wanted to see how the movie came out so se stayed. When it ended a cowboy movie came on so I was ready to stay. I thought I could see the bullets the cowboys were shooting but it must have been the worn out film. In a different movie I saw the actress with the great name for a comic actress Zazu Pitts. My favorite scene had another character telling her to "beware beware." Her character would ask "Be Where? Be Where?" This was repeated in the movie several times. Sometime later somebody in our neighborhood pointed in the general direction of the Webber theater did not have any idea in the world what they were talking and said something about the red light district. I about. We did have a radio and a Victrola record player with a spring motor that had to be wound up with a crank to play the records. The first song that I ever liked was titled "Show Me The Way To Go Home" line an the liked was "I had a little drink about hour ago and it went straight to my head. " One morning I think Earl's fingers had been caught in a car door and we went to the hospital. The never knew if they were in pain or screams of other children coming from the other rooms were scary. I were afraid they were going to be in pain. On some trip to the hospital in Denver somebody noticed something odd about my left eye. My eyes started wearing glasses when I were checked and I was four. They said I was "cross eyed" The pupil in my left eye would come to the bridge of my nose when I did not have glasses on. For my left eye they had a very strong lens that made the pupil look like it was looking straight ahead. Nobody ever checked to see if I could see anything out of that eye. There is an eye condition called strabismus or roving eye, I am not sure of I had it or not. If an adult has had normal vision then develops this condition they have trouble with double vision. But in my case the brain disregarded the weaker image. In school when people saw me without my glasses they would ask what I was looking at. My right was looking straight ahead while my left eye would look like I eye would look like I was looking to my right. We moved too often to get proper treatment. I remember my mother telling me one night I was going to be five the next day. One faint memory is of going with my mother to some office in downtown Denver, I think she was trying to get money to buy food. I know we were poor but I have no idea how my parents were able to feed us and keep a roof over our heads. One night we were out some where on the streets in Denver, there was a lot of other people out and somebody was making a speech in the distance. We must have been two or three blocks away. Sometime later my dad came home and said Roosevelt had been elected. A few months before this I had started first grade. People had warned me to look out for cars. As long as a car was in sight I would not take a step off of the curb. It did not make any difference the direction the car was moving. I am not sure if somebody finally came along and walked across the street with me or

not.

The teachers wanted to get rid of dandelions so they told us how beautiful dandelions looked when they were burning. It seems like the principal Mrs. Boyd came by our house with concerns about us having shoes to wear. Learning to read must have been easy for me, some of the books I brought home in the first grade were really third grade books. Facing our house from the street to the left was a brick house where Mr. Bruce lived. We would see

him coming home from work. He had dark hair that he parted on the right side. He wore a white shirt with black pants held up with suspenders. He had a lunch pail in one hand and a cane in the other. On the house to the right a collection of people lived who were not exactly the law and order type. We were there one day and one of the women had a big cut near her elbow. Some man in the house had thrown a butcher knife at her. When we moved away from Denver somebody sent my mother a penny post card saying that within two or three days after we left the police had backed a paddy wagon up to their front door and took them all to jail men and women both. have no memory of who lived next door to them, but in the third house was the residence of the I Childers family. They had two sons Eddie and Sam living at home. Another son Harry was on the Denver police force. Later he would be the chief of detectives for the Denver police for decades. will Again I have a faint memory of people wanting glass bottles for some unknown reason. As I mention from time to time this was in the prohibition years. On up the street from the Childers' place was the house where the Barrs lived. The Barr boys all had fought with was a year younger than me but he white hair and we all had somebody to fight with. The one I had no choice I had to was the aggressor. One day he caught me crawling through a whole in the fence. I fight back and one of my first blows landed on his nose and caused it to bleed. This sent him running home screaming. Gertrude ran around with and fought with Eileen Barr. The houses on West Dakota all had front porches but our house did not have a front yard. said I did not want to Sometime after the fight with the Barr boy we were all going some place and I go any further. The youngest Barr boy picked up a piece of glass or a rock and threw it at me hitting me in the back of the head. When we arrived home somebody noticed that the back of my head was bleeding. think we used their toy The Montgomery Ward store was four blocks from our house and I our as playroom. department I have a faint memory of going to a hill above Montgomery Ward where there was a lot of discarded appliance boxes. We went to see one man who was living in one of those boxes. The only thing he had of value was a stove poker and when he turned his back we swiped that. For the Church family the method of transportation was walking or riding on the streetcars. The streetcars had a high center of gravity and would sway from side to side. Some of the seats were covered with material that looked like woven straw and were very hard to set on. In those days cars still had running boards for people to stand and ride on. With the running boards and headlights and taillights and rear bumper a car could haul as many people outside as it could inside. think the phrase "turning the motor over To get an automobile engine started a crank was used. I (A crank was a special tool needed to get automobiles started. It was made of cast with a crank was used. iron in the form of a "Z" one end would fir into the drive shaft on the car. Then the tool would come out of the car for a few inches and turn a ninety degree angle then about two feet further there was another right angle. This second turn would be used as a handle. Sometimes wood would be added to make the crank easier to hold on to) If there was another person there they would adjust the "spark" and the "choke" at the proper moment and the car would start. Sometimes the motor would backfire and give the person doing the cranking a broken arm. People became very good at fixing flat tires because they would have a lot of experience. Tires were not expected to hold air. The inner tubes were made of thin rubber that any bump or thin object could rupture causing the air to come out with a resulting flat tire. No driver who was thinking would leave home without a good inner tube repair kit and a good tire pump. The repair kit held several patches a scraper and glue that had to be heated. There used to be a policeman that would walk by our house and greet me with, "How are you? you old stick in the mud?" One day I beat him to the punch and my family thought I was awful for asking him that same question. My dad had a job at Gates Rubber Company until the depression came along and jobs were lost. The
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first time jobs were cut Daddy's job was not cut. But he told them to cut his job and keep the man who had just been laid off. He did this because he had never had trouble finding a job. Now is the time for a" mild" under statement. IT WAS THE WRONG MOVE. It was the depression and there were not any jobs. My parents wanted to move out of the area where we were living. Daddy was unable to get work and Mom was afraid her children would be getting into trouble. had a dream one night that think. . I Daddy left to go someplace and was gone for about three weeks I he would be home the next day. He was home the next day, we learned that we would be moving. If have no memory of hearing it. anything was said about where we would be moving. I This move would include the Church family and the Haley family and two single men. The Church family consisted of Frank and Myrtle with their children Gertrude, Charles, Vern, Earl, Robert and Frank Jr. The Haley's had one daughter named Myra. The single men were Bill Bennett and August Pagosi or Fregosi. When it was time to move Daddy showed up with a Hudson Truck and the loading started. There lot to load and things were loaded very high on the truck Daddy would be driving. The day we left we was a got off to a late start and did not get very far out of Denver before it was time to stop for the night. If memory serves me correctly we stopped near a town named Castle Rock. remember is at the foot of Wolf Creek Pass, there was a river nearby and a small The next stop I stream close to the highway about three feet wide. People were fishing in the river and other people were putting brown bottles into the stream. A number of the brown bottles were blowing up. They could have been making root beer but this was still prohibition time. understand it when somebody mentioned about prohibition being the law of the land Of course as I the usual reaction was "Oh Really", decided the one wearing a leather head- band on There were two men both wearing cowboy hats. I wearing a "Deputies" hat. man was wearing other hat and the a "Marshals" his hat was Later on we stopped near the Rio Grande where there was a lot of mosquitoes. Daddy had a big load on his truck and he was a slow driver so we spent a lot of time waiting for him to catch up. There was a settee in the back of Haley's truck where Mom and the Church boys rode. Gertrude and Myra Haley must of have ridden up front with Mr and Mrs.Haley. The two single men must have been riding with Daddy. There is a different stop that remains in my memory. We were standing near some trees when a woodpecker decided it wanted some of my shiny auburn red hair for its nest. The way it attacked me I thought I had done something wrong. The next stop that comes to mind is a dumpy little town later we would learn it was Dove Creek. do not remember what else Mom made lunch for us, the lunch included crackers but I

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BUG POINT The next year and a half That late afternoon just before sunset on July 8, 1933 we stopped to talk to some man who was working behind a barb wire fence. This mans name was Harry Rogers and we had arrived at our destination Urado or as the people living there called it Bug Point. While Daddy and Harry Rogers were talking the rest of were watching scores of tawny colored creatures that were about ten inches high when standing on their hind legs. While standing on their hind legs they were barking at us with a yip-yap shrill bark. One by one they would bark at us from a vertical position then get down on all fours and scamper into the burrows. When one quit barking there was dozens of others that kept up the chorus. We had just seen our first prairie dog village. That night we had our evening meal with the Harry Rogers family. The first name of Mrs. Rogers has been forgotten for a long time. Their oldest daughter Anita was the same age as Gertrude, the youngest Judy Mae was my age or a year older. They fed us cornbread with buttermilk to drink. They also had glasses of clabbered milk to eat. This don't eat clabbered milk was something like the yogurt of today. This clabbered milk was not to my liking. I yogurt these days either. As we were eating the moon was coming up. It was a full moon and to my eyes it looked as big as a house. When we got to Bug Point we found there was not a house to live in. There was a building called a granary that was put to use as living quarters. The tents were also used to live in. The first time it rained water came through in thirteen different places. My mother was not very happy with the place she was living. The brothers slept in the tents while Gertrude and Myra Haley lived in the back of Haleys small truck. The one they had ridden in on the trek from Denver. A day or so after we arrived at Bug Point we learned about the icehouse of Harry Rogers. To have assume the other farmers in the area had a building with thick walls and ice for summer Harry Rogers and I without windows. In the wintertime they would go out on their frozen pond and cut holes in the ice and bring large pieces of ice into the house and bury them in the sawdust. This sawdust slowed the melting process. Within the first week after we arrived there Gertrude was out riding a horse. She was riding bareback and had me get on behind her. The horse was running down a slight slope where water had been standing earlier in the year. But the water was gone and there was dried hard mud where the water had been. The kept going and landed on the hard ground. horse saw something that spooked it and stopped. Gertrude and I hurting. Somebody my Dad and me into Dove Creek where it right drove arm was She hurt her back and my had a broken arm. was found I Harry Rogers was supposed to be a preacher of some kind so we found ourselves going to Sunday hated. . I also wore an overcoat that came was sent to Sunday School wearing short pants that I School. I would go inside of the building and sit against the rear wall. It must down almost as far as the pant legs. I must have started wearing bib did not have any pants on at all. This did not last long, I have looked like I

overalls.
The school at Bug Point was painted yellow with one door in the rear and one door on the side. There was a heating stove for burning wood in the middle of the room. The teachers' desk was at the front of the room. am not sure if it The boys' body-waste facility had the famous four letter words written all over it. I have forgotten it. ever saw the girls I had doors or not. The term bathroom does not apply here. If I This school was used as a Sunday school and church on Sundays, as a dance hall on Saturdays and on Tuesdays or Fridays for Literary night. One late summer Sunday afternoon there was a large man with sandy hair conducting church

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services. He had a severe case of hay fever. His nose was running and his eyes were watering. He asked for and was given permission to take his light brown suit coat off before starting his sermon or talk. He told us how the world was full of sinners and God was going to destroy the world. The first time he had used water but this time he was going to use fire. This destruction would be coming soon. To an eight- year old boy soon means soon. When we left the building that evening it was close to sunset and part of the sky was red. thought the destruction had started. I started to have my doubts and have been After two or three weeks the world had not been destroyed I suspicious of preachers every since. On literary night the people were able to display how cultured they were.. Some people recited poetry. Later others gave readings, others staged debates and other people sang. One young couple liked to sing love duets. Anita Rogers and Gertrude would sing duets some times. For the dances they usually had three musicians. They were two fiddle players and a guitar player. The musicians were paid out of a collection that would be taken up. If they made two dollars for each person it was a lucky night for them. On one Saturday each month at the dance it would be "Pie Social Night" the young ladies would bring pies they had baked to be auctioned off. The young men at the dance would offer a bid for the pies. The top bidder got to eat the pie with the girl who had baked it. The identity of the girl who had baked the pie was supposed to be a secret until the bidding was over with. think chickens are not was out by a pond saw a chicken swim across it. I One rainy morning I do not have any idea in the world how deep the supposed to be able to swim but that did that morning. I water was she could have been wading very fast. . One morning there was a band of about ten Indians under a tree not far from where we were living in the granary. Daddy went out and was able to talk to some of them. A few weeks after our arrival, there was "a parting of the ways" with Harry Rogers. We found ourselves moving down the road a piece where we would be living in two tents while Daddy built a four room log house that would have a wooden floor with a tar paper roof and large windows to give us good lightening. One afternoon Gertrude asked Mom to sing the song "Redwing" it was about some indian princess. We rode to these social affairs in a wagon that did not have rubber tires or springs to absorb any bumps. The wheels were wooden with iron rims. We felt keenly every bump on the road the wagon went
over.

When we would be coming home in the daytime the boys would recognize two curves before we got home and jump off of the wagon and run ahead. Mom never did recognize these curves she said they all looked alike to her. After we moved down the road to the tents Harry Rogers went some place and the Blasingame family moved onto his property a few weeks later. They had a son and a pretty blonde daughter named Pasadena. often to what Most of the people in the area referred to her as Pasadena damn your name Blasingame. I happened to this pretty girl with the unique name. remember On a different trip Harry Rogers came back with some farm products. The only product I is a gunnysack full of peanuts. do not know if they were connected to each other or not. I Two things happened at the school that I cannot remember which event happened first. One night just as people were arriving for literary night they saw somebody running into the trees when they went inside they found the heating stove full of books and other books strewn all over the floor. It looked like somebody had tried to set the school on fire. On a late fall or early winter day Daddy was chopping wood for the school when some young men who had been drinking came by. One of them fell off of his horse and fell where Daddy was chopping wood. Before this shortly after we moved into the tents some men from the federal agricultural department were in the area. They bought a milk cow from the Reed family. They did not have a use for the cow so they told the Reed family to have her butchered and share the meat with their neighbors. They found two tall
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am not sure why I trees with large limbs or branches and brought the cow out where somebody shot her. I was. They referred to the cows lungs as "lights". was there while she was shot and cut up but I It did not take very long before my parents knew a lot of people in the area. In that part of the United States at that time people who lived two miles away were thought of as close neighbors. think his name was Bill and her name Among the first people my parents met was the Reed family. I was Emily. They had one daughter Orly and two sons Orville and Hughlyn. They were thought of as the rich people because they had a car and a radio. We were at their house one night to listen to the radio but Mr. Reed kept changing stations. It was like somebody nowadays with a remote control and they are determined to use it. We were living in the tents when Hughlyn had traded a phonograph record for an old white horse. I had to trade was a sled that had come out from Denver with us. The wanted that horse but the only thing I trade was made and the horse was mine. The water for the horses was at the bottom of the nearby canyon. The horse was taken down there but on the way back up it stumbled and fell and was not able to get back on its feet. It never got on its feet again and lay there for about three weeks dying. While it was dying the stench was awful. We could hear the wild animals waiting for the horse to die. One night Gertrude wanted to go some place but when she heard a mountain lion scream she decided home was the best place to be. Going back on the trade never occurred to any of us. It did make me more cautious about business transactions, A few days or weeks after the house was started Earl and Junior took lunch to where Daddy was moving logs with a team of horses. After Daddy ate lunch and went back to work Earl and Junior started home. Earl was ahead and happened to turn around to find Junior was not in sight. Word got out very quickly about a three-year old boy who was missing. The people for miles around joined in the search. Those people with horses could cover more territory while the people on foot could look closer. Just before sunset a high school girl Genevieve Rose found him. A short time later her brother Glen was there. In the five hours he was missing he had covered about five miles. Not bad for a three year old. . Later Junior was telling Daddy about some animal he seen. Daddy said it could have been a black bear. become about directions in the Bug Point area. The school The more I think the more confused I house building was the social center of the community so that will be used as the starting place. This will give us an idea of where people lived. The Reeds lived about three quarters of a mile to the southeast. Between the school and Reeds there was a small house with black tar paper on the outside, any teacher from out of the area would live in that house. The Wilson's lived about two miles south of the school and about half a mile north of them their son Vern lived with his wife Laura. The Wilson's had another son John. do not know. They may have been more but I Vern and Laura Wilson lived in a small log cabin that had a dirt floor. One day Vern Wilson was talking about digging up an Indian grave he had found. Whether it was legal or not did make any difference to him and the moral part was never considered. The tents the Church family lived in were about two miles west of the school. We lived on the other side of the canyon from the school. There was another family that lived further down the road from us. Harry Rogers lived about two miles north of the school. There was a farm between the school and Harry do not remember if anybody lived there or not. Rogers place but I This farm is where some of the girls had there fight one afternoon the only girl that I know was holding her pen I fountain that had several different colors. involved was Anita Rogers because was The Jennings place was north of the Rogers place, the George Plymate place was west of the Jennings place and the Roses and the Tuckers lived still further north next to another canyon. There was a man named am not sure where he lived. There was other Griffis or Griffith who was reputed to be the local bootlegger. I people living in the area but their names have gone from my memory if they were ever there. This country was very close to the state line so I do not have any idea who lived in Utah and who lived in Colorado. The last place we lived before moving into Monticello was close to the state line also I

would cross it several times each day while working traded the sled for the white horse we were playing with "stick horses" A stick horse was Before I any tree branch that we could hold the big and in front of us and straddle it and have the small end touch the believed that some of my stick horses could run faster than the other stick horses. ground behind us. I It was at Bug Point that Earl started drawing. He started out drawing the heads of horses. One night Daddy came home with a new sorrel colored mare with a white star on her face. She had a six month old bay colt the mare was named "Socks" and the colt was named "Belle" or "Bell". At one of the dances we were told that the roosters crowed at four in the morning. We were told they did not crow at three forty five or at four fifteen but at four a.m. exactly. We owned some few chickens, one of them was a white hen that one morning had her brood out and picked up the straggler. The next was headed back for the chicken coop. They went around a corner and I thing I knew this hen was all over me attacking me with her wings and beak and her talons, whatever you want to call those weapons. This hen was not wet but she was sure mad. One thing learned early was to give the back end of horses a wide berth when walking around them. When they heard a noise or even sensed that something was behind them they just kicked. The teacher the first year at Bug Point was Minnie Tucker. When they write in books and for movies and television about old time school teachers they must of had her in mind. She wore long sleeved blouses that buttoned up to the neck with pearl buttons. She wore her hair in a bun and must of have worn glasses. did not have any problems with her. She had a reputation of being very strict but she was good to me and I She lived with her parents even if she was close to the retirement age. We went to their house once. Her mother was confined to a wheelchair. Her father Norris Tucker was an old time cowboy who had been hurt in an accident and could not separate his legs. So he rode horses with both legs on the same side of the horse. That did not slow him down he still rode hell-bent-for-leather. He wore corduroy pants and a leather vest and a hat he had owned for a long time. When he was riding he also wore leather chaps, To get to school from the tents we went down into the canyon and out the other side and followed the trail for the two miles to school. People never worried about a seven or eight year old boy walking two miles by himself. The only wild animals we would see were chipmunks. The other wild animals would see us or hear us and keep their distance. We had been warned to watch out for snakes so when I was coming home from school one day I looked down. Between my feet and saw what I thought was the trail of a large snake. I started running as fast could to get out of the area. Later I as I learned what I had seen was the trail of a log chain that was on one of the horses running loose nearby. Everybody brought their lunch from home we usually had baking powder biscuits with potted ham. I suppose we may have traded lunches with the other children from time to time. At bath time water was heated on the cook stove and then poured into a galvanized round tub. I am not sure about the sire but I think it was about thirty inches in diameter and about eighteen inches deep. One day Gertrude was taking a bath and needed some more hot water and wanted me to bring it in. When I took the water in she was all hunched over so I did not see anything even if I had wanted to. Vern worked at the Jennings' place for a while we went there one day for some reason and they showed us where they had fixed a bed for Vern in the corn crib out in the barn. Mr Jennings chewed tobacco so both ends of his mustache were stained yellow with tobacco juice. They had a daughter Grace who was about thirty-two but her mind had stopped developing when she was two. Charles must of have been out working someplace but I do not remember where. Vern talks about a girl Dorcas Hall and a boy Leo Williams I have no memory of either one. There is a faint memory of a pretty girl with dark hair named Elizabeth Griffis or Griffiths the daughter of the alleged bootlegger in the area. One nice day some of the older girls decided to play hooky in place of going to school. When Gertrude returned to the tents that night she was spanked with a piece of stove wood. They had played hooky on a

Friday so they knew they would be punished Monday morning. Gertrude wore her rabbit fur brown coat but was made to take it off to receive her punishment. If my memory is correct none of the boys from the school were involved. have different memories of how the switches for the punishment were obtained by Minnie Vern and I

Tucker. They are both good stories so both will be told here. Verns' version says that the Reeds furnished a fresh supply of switches every Monday morning. My version is that Charles was sent out to cut a switch to punish Gertrude. This presented him with the dilemma of if he cut a small one he would be sent back out to cut a bigger switch, but if he cut a big one it would hurt his sister more. The actual punishment has long since been gone from my memory. One day Charles had drawn a caricature of Minnie Tucker on an envelope in the corner where the stamp goes. He was told that he would receiving ninety-three switches for this but something happened and he did not, One of the young men who were with the girls when they played hooky was John Wilson. John Wilson and Genevieve Rose married later and when we lived in Monticello years later they lived next door think it was a good thing that Gertrude and John Wilson did not marry. She would of have had a to us. I worse than she did. The Rose family found them selves in deep trouble after we moved away. The father Dave Rose was suspected of selling whiskey to the Indians a big "no-no" at the time. The officers came in the night to make the arrest. Glen Rose woke up and saw men with guns in his house and opened fire. The officers returned fire and Glen Rose was shot in the leg. Late he was sent to prison for assault on a federal officer. They had him under armed guard at the hospital in Moab. We played in the woods a lot and tried to smoke the bark from cedar trees and chewed the pitch or resin from the pinion pine trees and pretended it was gum. The pinion pine tree also had a pi-nut seed in a hard shell with a good tasting center. The shells were hard to break and if somebody tried to bite them and the shells went down medical problems could follow. The shells did not dissolve in the digestive system but caused problems all the way. am not sure about Earl were hoeing While we were playing Daddy Gertrude, Charles, Vern and I weeds in the bean fields. The rattlesnakes were a constant threat. One day Gertrude and Anita Rogers working together killed a rattlesnake four feet long. At harvest time the beans were stacked and sent through a thrashing machine. . One day in the field near the thrasher Judy Mae Rogers found a Kangaroo rat. The family living further down the road from the tents we lived were very nice people who would us visit often. One night they were getting their family ready to go home and it was discovered that their two year old girl was missing. She was found about an hour later in some bushes. She must have started home and got tired. On a different visit their baby got hungry. . The mother reached into her dress and pulled a breast out and the baby started its meal. The mother saw me looking and just smiled, my eyes must of have been the size of dinner plates, . understand Minnie Tucker had told Gertrude that she The school was for grades one to eight but I the books she needed. if could Gertrude her get would teach We had left Denver with two dogs, a white Spitz dog we called Bonnie who seemed to bark all the time and a beautiful black dog we called Queen. We were told that Queen was a Belgian police dog that had been turned down by the Denver police for their use because she was too mean. We kept her on a chain but did not have any problems with her. On the trip from Denver to Bug Point she gave birth to a litter of pups. We kept one of the pups that we named Wolf. We were very fond of Queen and Wolf both but they both disappeared while we still lived at Bug Point. The sources of water at Bug Point was the water we hauled from the Reed place and the water we catch in rain barrels as it came off of the roof. To iron clothes Mom would put six or eight flat irons on the cook stove and when they got hot enough she would attach her interchangeable handle and start ironing clothes. When the flat iron she was using cooled down she would switch to another iron and keep on with her pressing. One late afternoon we went to see some people named White who had two boys about five and six
9

years of age. These boys showed their riding abilities by jumping on the backs of pigs and riding them like do not remember bucking broncos. The country around Bug Point was almost flat with a few rolling hills. I any large hills. There was a canyon by our place and a canyon by the Rose place and the Tucker place. think the bottom strand of wire was about eighteen There was a lot of barbwire fencing around the area. I inches from the ground with the middle strand about the same distance from that and the top strand another eighteen inches higher. We were in the wagon one summer day and Daddy stopped by someplace to get a set of harness. Some man had come out from Denver and gone back and wrote to Daddy saying the harness belonged to Daddy. The man who had the harness did not want to give it up so there was an argument. Daddy finally put the harness in the wagon and this man took it out and Daddy put it back in and this man took it out again. The argument was not going anyplace so we left. Later Daddy showed the letter to the local deputy George Plymate and Daddy got his set of harness. In the meantime the log house was still being built. The logs had to be squared so they fit together as snug as possible. They were squared with a broad-ax with a process called hewing. To fill the spaces between the logs mud would be applied, whether any straw was added to the mud has been forgotten. As the house neared completion there was talk about a party and a dance. There was a party at our house but the dance was held at the school. A sister of Harry Rogers had heard about the dance and was furious because she did not believe in dancing. It turned out the house had been built on her property with an oral agreement and Daddy had nothing in writing. All of his work was for nothing. So one early December morning we were evicted. Everything we owned was put on a wagon and we headed for Dove Creek. think Harry Rogers and his sister had every thing From the perspective of more than sixty years I planned before we ever left Denver. It was one way to get a house built for nothing. had the part of a toy soldier We went back at Christmas time to take part in the school program. I wish I could remember the name of the nice young lady with a popgun. We stayed with the Reed family. I who had replaced Minnie Tucker as the teacher. She was the one that wanted us to come back to Bug Point for Christmas. In the meantime one of the single men who had come out from Denver with us August Fregosi or Pasgosi had gone back to Denver and joined the navy again. August was a good man who referred to himself as a "Damned Dago". There was some man who had been working for Harry Rogers for along time but had not been paid. So he brought suit and the case went to court. The other single man who had come out from Denver with us Bill Bennet was put on the witness stand. He said he had been working for Harry Rogers even longer than the man who had brought the suit. He was asked how much he had been paid he said he had been nothing and further he had not expected to be paid. The other man lost his case right then. The court decided he had been working for his room and board. After we moved away we were told that the wife of Harry Rogers and youngest daughter had left him and moved in to Dove Creek for a while until Mrs. Rogers died in a house fire. We were also told that he started carrying a pistol whenever he stepped out of his house. Gertrude was informed that she could live with some elderly man, living in Dove Creek. That she could live with him while she went to the local high school. For a lot of people in that part of the nation and at that time an eighth grade education was considered sufficient. Gertrude wanted more and to their credit Mom and Dad wanted more for her.

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DOVE CREEK The Next Year and a half. The first house we lived in after moving to Dove Creek was shared with a Dr. Collins who was retired. Dr. Collins did not have a car but used horse and wagon. One Sunday afternoon along with his wife he had been invited out to dinner. As they approached the house on their return trip he jumped out of the wagon and made a frantic rush for the outdoor toilet. He did not quite make it and needed clean underwear. He told us later that he had been eating rabbit for dinner and the left hind leg just kept running. In those days the morning meal was breakfast, the mid-day meal was dinner and the evening meal was supper. There was another retired doctor living in the area who had a nice looking buggy to go with his horses. . When he went someplace with his wife they used blankets wrapped around their legs to stay warm. When Gertrude learned we were moving to Dove Creek she was there to greet us when we arrived. This house did have a piano but none of us played it or even touched it. The first people we met after moving to the Dove Creek area were the Randolph children. I think their oldest was a girl named Elizabeth, then a boy they called Junior, then a Harmon, followed by a Gerald if have forgotten. Mrs. Randolph was a Blackfoot Indian. there were others I We never lived in Dove Creek but in three different houses in the area. The houses were not that great but better than the houses we would live in for a long time. think the first house in the Dove Creek area that we lived in was owned by somebody named Butts, I the second house was the Kissling place the third house we lived in was owned by a sister of Fendell and Noel Sitton. My memory about what events happened at what house is not clear. The school year had started before we moved so the teachers were furious. The grade school was divided into two rooms. Thelma Simmons taught the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades. The other teacher Pearl Smith taught the first, second, third and fourth grades. Vern was allowed to stay in his grade the other three were demoted almost at once. One very dark day I was trying to read what was on the blackboard and may have been squinting when Pearl White thought I was making faces and almost slapped me. Her dislike of me was instantaneous I felt the same about her. She is the only teacher I ever hated. For some reason I can not remember if Earl had any trouble with her or not. In January Gertrudes' birthday was coming up and I thought there would be a big party. I was telling all the kids at school to come out. I did not know anything about invitations and preparations I thought people just came to the party. When it was Valentines Day Pearl Smith wanted to decorate her room so she had her students cutting out little red hearts and pasting them on paper chains. The paste was sticking to my fingers and I was not meeting her production quota so me she made me stay after school. She told the other pupils the next day how I had been sniffling and crying. On other days and it could have been every day we would have an inspection. Two or three of her favorites would inspect the others to see if they had washed their necks or behind their ears or cleaned their teeth. When spring came and the ground thawed the schoolyard was a sea of mud. Some pupils did not put their overshoes on and tracked mud into the schoolhouse. The teachers did not like this and got mad at everybody. I did not like to play in the mud so I stayed on the porch that was about eight feet square. The privies for the boys at Dove Creek were even worse than the one at Bug Point, it was supposed to be a "two-holer" but there would be" body waste" on the seat. The less said the better. Nobody wanted to use the filthy disgusting place. In southwest Colorado in 1934 and 1935 an improved highway was one that had gravel on it. The others just had ditches on each side for the water to run off. The heavy trucks coming through Dove Creek

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made deep ruts. These ruts made good places to walk because the mud was packed down. The state of Utah would put gravel on their highway but of course they stopped at the state line.. After we moved to Moab and Gertrude was living in Price she had a chance meeting with Pearl Smith know I did not want to see her and neither did Earll who was living in Price with her husband Bud. . I think it was the first house in the Dove Creek area where Earl became very ill and was delirious for a while, we thought he had pneumonia. Gertrude made a trip into Dove Creek with Daddy and when he was ready to come home she was gone. There is much more written about Sis later. It is about time that something was mentioned about "Mother's Oats" in every box of cereal there would be a piece of chinaware. It would be a saucer, a cup, a bowl or a dinner plate. That was our source for dishes for years. For a long time those were the only dishes we had. In addition Mom kept the empty boxes and would use them to cut out make believe furniture. She made very small sofas and chairs and tables. We also kept the wooden spools to make toys with. Mom would take a small piece of soap and attach it to the spool with a rubber band. This rubber band was put through the spool. Then a short pencil or a match would be used to wind the rubber band up and then the spool was placed on the floor so we could watch the rubber band unwind while the spool moved. One night Daddy came home with a lot of magazines so we all had reading material. I think I was eight at the time but I was already an avid reader. The reason we all read so much was that we did not have a radio to listen to. The day we moved to the Kissling place we had to contend with some goats we owned. These goats were all over the road and we could not quite catch them. Vern got so mad that tears of frustration came to his eyes. The fact that it was a bitter cold day and our fingers were freezing did not help. We were moving to what was called the Kissling place but Bill Kissling and his family lived in a small house about half a mile away. The house we moved into was a large four room house with a full front porch. . For some reason the house was down hill from the corral. There was a rock building that was supposed to be our hen house. .. It was infected with lice. There was a well with a windmill but I do not remember getting any water from it. A well was being dug by hand close to our front yard. Bill Kissling was digging a well also but he was using dynamite. Shortly after we moved into the Kissling a lot if not most of our chickens were missing. The oldest Kissling boy Tommy said that they had taken them. The subject was never pursued. We had some old silverware knives that had loose handles. These knives would come up missing and when we ate at the Kissling place these knives would be on the table. Nothing was ever said about the knives either. The Kissling children came to our place to play a lot. They usually got there just before noon and went home just after supper time. .. The second son liked to eat the clabbered milk we did not care if he ate it or not because we thought of that milk as hog feed. When Mom baked bread she kept some dough for what she called fried bread. The youngest Kissling boy Willie would want some and his mother would say "Just give him a little piece" and Willie would reply "I want a big hunk Ma". The oldest boy Tommy liked to sing. The second son Lear caught a baby prairie dog one day. This baby prairie dog must of have been about three inches long but it did have sharp needle like teeth and promptly bit Lear.on a finger. Baby prairie dogs do not make good pets. The fate of the tiny prairie dog is unknown to me. On some trip into Dove Creek Junior acquired new shoes, Bill Kissling told him they were his knew "kicks so he felt honor bound to kick everybody in the shins A few weeks later he was in Dove Creek where he heard the famous four letter words and for a while he was the foulest talking five year old boy around On one trip in to Dove Creek Bill Kissling had drank some booze and was feeling the effects when he got back to our place. He fell on his face in our back yard and claimed he had tripped over a corncob.

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I am not sure where we were living when Daddy rode into town and was using an Indian blanket for a saddle blanket. When he was ready to come home the Indianblanket was missing. We had a cow that was due to give birth, Junior came running in saying this cow had just had a blue calf. There was a draw or ditch close to our house that we played in a lot. The banks must of have been eight to ten feet high. The side closest to us was slanted so we could roll or slide down.that side. of the draw. The Church children and the Kissling children explored up and down this draw. Except in spring run off time there was not any water in this draw. We played hide and seek a lot. For some of the children counting to one hundred was a real challenge. They had the same challenge when we played "kick the can" . I don't know if it applied in both games or not but whoever was "it" made the rules as to what was fair. For example the person would say "No fair trading hats" quickly followed by "And no fair trading back". If they saw somebody they would say "I spy" and name the person and this person would come in and be a prisoner. If a person who had not been spotted could sneak in and kick the can all the prisoners were free to run and hide again. If the person who was "It" wanted to end the game they would yell something like "Olley Olley Ox all in free". There was another game we played called "Annie Over". In this game there were two teams or sides. They would play on opposite sides of a house. One team would throw the ball over the house and yell "Annie Over" . If the team on the other side caught the ball they would come around the end of the house. Their object was to take the first team by surprise. They would throw the ball at the throwing team anybody they hit with the ball became a "prisoner". I am a bit shaky on the details because the ball did not make it over the house that often. We went barefoot most of the time so we had a lot of slivers and stickers in our feet sometimes there would be a stone bruise. One day we were out and found a pond, it was early in the spring and we were supposed to stay out of the water. One of the boys had entered the water the water waist deep so he was made to go to bed and cover up to his waist. , Another boy had entered in up to his knees he was sent to bed and told to cover up to his knees, still another boy said he had just put his foot into the water, he was ordered to stand by the bed with one foot under the covers. The last boy said he had gone in up to his neck so he was put to bed with the covers up to wish I his neck. I could remember which one of them was myself, thought of myself as being sensitive, my brothers thought of me as a crybaby. In those days I In the fall of 1935 arrangements were made for my mother and me to ride into Denver with Fendell Sitton and his wife. The name Hazel comes to mind but I am not sure. When we arrived in Denver Fendell Sitton was looking for the speed limit signs. It was not long before a police car came by and the officer rolled its window down and signaled Mr. Sitton to do the same. He then informed Fendell Sitton that Denver had a twenty-five per hour speed limit. There was not any ticket issued but Mr.Sitton felt he had been singled out. When we arrived in Denver we got on a streetcar and headed for my Grandpa and Grandma Osbaughs house. They were living at a place called Wheatridge it was close to the city of Golden, Colorado. Aunt Mae was living there also. Among the first questions asked my mother was "Did you know Huey Long was dead?" Mom replied that she did not know he was alive. They said Mom had been out of touch too long. The big sports story in the paper was the fight coming up between Joe Louis and Max Baer. It was world-series time, my Grandpa Osbaugh knew somebody who had a crystal radio set. We went to his house and put on headphones and waited for the broadcast. The crystal radio involved some kind of crystal and something called "cats whiskers". The encyclopedia mentions something called the coherer and the crystal detector whatever they are It was time for new glasses for me and after I received them we went home on the train at least part way. It was my first train ride. We were sitting in the coach when I thought the cars on the next track were moving but my mother said we were moving. We got as far as Pueblo Colorado where we were to change

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trains. Some woman and Mom were talking when a train pulled up out front and Mom said she thought that was her train. The other woman assured her it was not. A few minutes later they both double-checked and it was our train. But by this time it was leaving. I was upset but Mom was not there was a hotel near by we spent the night there. Mom bought some bread and lunch meat so we could eat. The next morning we got on the train and went as far as Alamosa Colorado. I think this trains route went into the state of New Mexico for a few miles. The next time after we changed trains we rode on a narrow gauge railroad. This railroad went through the mountains with lots of hairpin curves. We could see the head end of the locomotive as the train had gone around the switchback curve that was similar to a "U" turn.and was heading back in our direction. The scenic view was spectacular. This train took us to Durango Colorado. Our next transportation was a rail post office truck. It was a truck for hauling mail that had rail wheels so it could run on the railroad tracks. The wheels were not the large wheels used for box cars but smaller wheels about two feet in diameter. They had room for a few passengers we rode in this to Dolores Colorado. We caught a ride with a mail driver who was driving a stake truck. We rode with him to Dove Creek where we just had the six miles to walk home. I imagine my brothers must of have had a field day in the month long absence of their mother. We had started playing cards at Bug Point, games like "Pitch" and "Big and little Casino" by this time were also playing the card game "500 Rummy". We also played a lot of solitaire card games. Poker for matches would come later. The card games pinochle and hearts would come later also. Our reading of magazines continued. We read Argosy magazine and various western magazines. None of them had the covers on. Earl and I were reading the same book once and of course arguing about it. Mom told us we could read one chapter each then would have to give the book up. It did not take log before each of us would skip the last two pages in a chapter and thus we were always in the middle of a chapter. At either the first house or the third house we lived in around Dove Creek some wheat was soaked in water for two or three days. Then it was heated and some milk and sugar were added. It was eaten as cereal and was not bad at all. To light up our house at night we used kerosene or as we called them coal oil lamps. A good lamp with a clean chimney put out about the same amount of light as a forty-watt bulb. The lamps fuel reservoir would hold about a pint of coal oil. A brass burner would be attached to the top of the lamp. A tightly woven piece of cloth called a wick would have one end in the coal oil then a tiny bit would be put through the burner. The osmosis process would begin and the top of the wick could be lit. If the wick had been lit before the kerosene would be ready to be lit up. There were tiny gears or cogwheels that could be used to raise or lower the wick. The burner also had brackets to hold the chimney in place. The wick had to be raised to a precise point to get the best light. If the flame got to high the carbon got on the lamp chimney and the chimney got black. These chimneys or globes were made out of thin glass and were very delicate and one drop of cold water would cause them to explode. We also had lanterns with thicker glass that were not so delicate but out less than half of the light a lamp would. Some people had Coleman lamps that used white gas. These Coleman lamps had mantles that had to be pumped up with a tiny pump. These mantels were made from very delicate cotton cloth and were very easy to destroy. To cool us off in the summer we had some kind of concentrate that water was added to and then placed in a jug with a gunnysack around it. This jug was then put down a well until it was cold One winter we missed a lot of school because the snow was so deep. We had a sled that my Dad could have used to take us to school every day. For our second year of school in Dove Creek Pearl Smith and Thelma Simmons were gone. The kind lady who replaced her promoted me back to the grade I should have been in. I do not remember her name
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either.

Daddy came home once and told us about a city election in Dove Creek for the office of mayor. There was one man who had mental problems that was around town a lot. Some of the other men thought it would be funny to vote for him as mayor. Enough of them thought it was funny that he got most of the votes. Daddy said some people were trying to talk him out of becoming mayor. This is another instant know the object of their humor wore white coveralls. The name where the outcome is unknown to me. I am not sure. Rudy comes to mind but I While we were living at the Kissling place there was a red headed man staying at our house. His name was Russell and he had a major drinking problem. He told us about drinking so much one time that he went blind. One Friday night he went out with some people he knew and when he came back he knew he was in big trouble. Two or three days later a car from the sheriffs office drove down the road near a field he was working in and waved at him to come over. He did and was placed in the car and hauled off to jail. We got word a few weeks later that he wanted his clothes. Daddy got somebody to drive us to Dolores where the jail was. By the time we got there it was suppertime so the guard had gone to eat. We went to the back of the jail where the clothes were passed through the bars. never did know how or why we knew that man named Russell. We did not see him or hear from him I again. We had two animals at the Kissling that did not take kindly to thunderstorms. One was the dog Bonnie who would run to the Bill Kissling house and hide under their bed. The other was a white horse we owned named Blondie who would just start running and keep on running until the thunderstorm was over with, This will be talked about later but Gertrude had run away. We did not know where she was for a heard talking from the front room and kitchen. . Gertrude had returned with her while. Early one morning I husband Ernest Lincoln Johnson. They brought some apricots and a fruit that was a cross between an apricot and a peach called a peach cot for Mom to can. They also had news that Ernie had a brother Don who was working and living in Peru. Don owned a ranch on a place called the Wilson Mesa. The Wilson Mesa was in the foothills of some mountains east of a town named Moab Utah. The decision had been made before I woke up to move there. remember from Dove Creek besides the Randolph and Kissling children are Buster The only people I Weise and Sam Crane. Plus the Sitton girls Helen and Virginia, who was called Jackie,and their cousin Robert. Helen and Jackie had an older sister. Jackie Sitton wore striped overalls.while she was in school.. Helen came to one of the dances when we were living in Monticello a few years later. She was pleasant but by this time she was in college studying languages and her father Fendell Sitton was making lots and lots of money. He had owned a grocery store and by the middle forties the mining craze was in full swing in San Juan county. Mr. Sitton loaned Daddy money when he knew Daddy would not be able to pay him back. Buster Weise was a tall kid about five foot ten when he was in the third grade. .Sam Crane was about the same height as I was At the last house we lived in before moving to Moab we knew some people who had strong religious feelings and did not believe in card playing. One day we were playing cards and they drove up and were out in front of the house. A big effort was made to pick up the cards but we were still sitting in the same place It thought we had fooled nobody. I looked we had just picked up a card table and I also thought that because they did not play cards there was not any reason for us not to play cards. We lived in this house until school was out then Fendell Sitton sent a truck and driver out and the truck was loaded up and we moved to the Wilson Mesa. The Reed family I wrote about at Bug Point could have spelled their name Reid. The Kissling family I wrote about at Dove Creek could have spelled their name Kisling. I failed to
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include the sister of the Kissling boys. Her name was Ruth and she was about three years younger than me. As we moved from place to place in southeast Utah the place we moved from became a closed chapter.

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MOM

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My mother was born December 22, 1897 in or near McCook Nebraska, she never talked much about her school days and growing up days. She lived on farms and went to work in the fields at a very early age. Her formal education ended after the eighth grade. Maybe the reason she never talked about her childhood was because Daddy was always talking about his childhood and very seldom gave Mom a chance to say anything. Late in life she did write a few things about her mother and her own life. Mom wrote that when her mother was getting ready to bake they would have a good fire going. They would stick their arm in the oven and could tell if it was the right temperature to bake bread or bake cake. Mom used to bake the best tasting applesauce cake I have ever tasted she used the meat from English walnuts. She baked the cake in muffin form most of the time. When she took them out of the oven and as would devour about six of them. soon as they were cool enough to handle I She told in her history about a corncob doll and playing baseball in school. Nor did she ever mention that until she was seven they had lived in a house that had two rooms only with a sod roof. think back and I As I am not proud of this I think we must have treated Mom like an unpaid servant in her own home. We felt imposed on if we had to bring in firewood or help with the dishes. When we were living on the mesa somebody got word to Mom that her friend Faye Titus was having medical problems. Mom walked the mile and a half to her house to take care of her. Faye Titus was bleeding profusely Mom got the bleeding stopped and stayed there for three or four days until Faye Titus could take care of herself. Faye had learned she was pregnant earlier that year but had not told her husband or her doctor, think when they came to get Mom Faye Titus had just had a miscarriage. A few years later when I we were living in Moab Faye was sick again and Mom took care of her for several days. Mom never talked about her health problems but I know she had surgery within a few weeks after we

moved to Vancouver. When we eating our oatmeal and milk Mom never did eat the oatmeal and milk. This lack of calcium had its affect in her later life. One year just before Thanksgiving Day I was sleeping up stairs and found Mom on the kitchen floor. She had mopped the kitchen floor and did not wait quite long enough for it to dry. An ambulance took her to the hospital. When they took X Rays they found she had a broken hip. Her roommate was a lady named Mrs. Ledbetter who had survived the concentration camps in Europe. Mom never did fully recover from this broken hip That did not keep her from buying one hundred pounds of English Walnuts and cracking them and mailing the walnut meats out as Christmas presents. She would work day after day for weeks at a time every year doing this. After she fractured one of her vertebra she stopped working with the walnuts As she grew older her bones became more brittle, one morning getting up from the breakfast table she felt a sharp pain. She endured this pain for two days before she had me call the doctor. The doctor ordered her to the hospital where they found that while turning that morning she had cracked one of her vertebrae. A few years later she was living at home and was coming out of the bathroom when I heard a loud noise. I found her down in the hall and tried to get her up. She said it hurt too much and to just leave her there. I called my brother Frank and he came down. It was obvious that I could not take care of her so the decision was made that Frank and Mary Lou would take care of her. But she did not want to go and fought like a wild cat. She spent the night with Frank and Mary Lou then the doctor arranged for her to go the hospital. . This time the examination showed she

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had a broken arm I think the reason Mom fought so hard was that she felt she would not be coming home again. She right she never did return home. was Mom did not stay in the hospital very long. Arrangements were made for her to go to a nursing home. By this time she was not eating much and the nursing home people starting talking about forcing her
to eat.

They were going to do this by putting a tube down her throat. I spoke to her doctor about this and he called the nursing home and left orders that they were not to do that without his permission. The impression I have is that the people who run nursing homes do not want their patients to die in their care. But they do not concern themselves with how much pain their patients are going through. They made arrangements to have Mom sent to Doctor Strong's office where they took X-Rays... I was in the doctors' office later and he showed me the film from the X-Rays. Her diaphragm was causing pressure on her stomach and it was a fraction of its normal size. As a result it was full after Mom had taken a few bites. The doctor said there was nothing he could do without major surgery and that would just cause Mom to have more pain. It was decided that Mom had suffered enough so she checked out of the nursing home and went to Frank and Mary Lou's house. She did fairly well until bedsores developed and her condition went down hill and she died the day before her birthday. Mom never wore any makeup of any kind whether she did not believe in it or felt the money was needed some place else I do not know. She did not have much of a social life until she joined the Mormon Church. After thanksgiving of 1996 I found a letter from Dads' sister our Aunt Alice. She had written the letter in 1959 she was referring to Sis as Gertrude and had gone to Greeley Colorado to get a copy of her birth certificate. She also mentioned the Daughters of the American Revolution and said that my brothers and myself were eligible to join the Sons of the American Revolution. I do not know how my brothers feel but I have never had any desire to join this group. To this day when I lose things in this house or find them in unexpected places. . .1joking blame "Moms Ghost. "

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Daddy Daddy was born in Elmira, New York on September 17, 1889. The nearest large city to Elmira is Buffalo, New York. Elmira is the final place of rest for Mark Twain. When we were growing up my dad talked about the writer Mark Twain a lot of the time. We used to have a claw hammer that Daddy said Mark Twain had given to our Grandfather Church. My father went through the tenth grade in Elmira New York before his family moved to Colorado. His older half brother Jay was living in Colorado already. was talking to a man in Portland who told me that there was a big It must have been in 1994 that I celebration honoring Mark Twain every year in Elmira. He also said the scenery around Elmira New York was beautiful. Before Dad married he worked around horses a lot. He "broke" horses for riding and work in harness. When he was "breaking" a horse to work in a team of horses he would take a long rope and use it to train the horse. He would make a loop and tie it to the nose of the horse then tie the rope to one of the front legs of that horse Then this horse would be hooked up next to a team that was pulling a wagon. When the horse being "broke" tried to run Daddy would pull on the rope and the horse would fall on its nose, have no idea of Daddy used to talk about breaking horses near a town in Nevada named Tonopah. I how long he worked there. He could look in a horse's mouth and know if it had reached a certain age. I think a certain tooth comes in when a horse is four years old. have no knowledge of how long this job lasted. Later he drove a stagecoach for a while again I He smoked "Bull Durham" tobacco, he rolled his own cigarettes. The way this was done was by putting a small amount of tobacco into a cigarette paper and making one edge of the paper moist and then wrapping the paper around the tobacco. The people who were good could make a nice round cigarette. "Bull Durham" tobacco came in a cloth-sack about three inches high. The tobacco looked like something that had been swept up from the floor. There was another brand of tobacco in a slightly larger cloth sack named "Old North State". He did tell me about some young ladies getting on the stagecoach he was driving carrying camp cots.. They did not want to have to lie on the ground while servicing their clientele. He also told about a marquee that invited men in to see "bare skin and hair" at show time a girl came out holding a bear skin with all the hair still on it out in front of her Dad worked at the vanadium mill in Monticello for about two years before we moved to the northwest. The plans were to live in Camas Washington but there was no place to live. As a result Vancouver became our home. He was hired at the aluminum plant and stayed there until he retired. He made several friends there. The one that lasted the longest was with Johnny White. After Dad retired Johnny White used to come .by and play cards for hours at a time. After we moved to Vancouver Dad's sister our Aunt Alice offered to pay the initiation fee if he would join the Masons. Daddy checked into it. They rejected him for membership they told him he should of have become a member when he was younger. He never did have money for any lodge dues. His money was spent on food and keeping a roof over our heads. Dad was quick to take offense and even quicker to tell the other person off. He would say "I got the thought of him" . This was fine but it would cause his family economic satisfaction of telling him what I

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hardships.
My father died on June 16, 1961 he had been in poor health for several years. When we returned home after his funeral there was some ladies from the Mormon church cooking a meal for us. I could feel the presence of Dad. His presence in the house was very strong.

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SIS With the help of Mom.Vern.Verna and Debra My sister was born on January 17,1919 in Greeley, Colorado. She was given the name Gertrude Myrtle Church. She was born at home during the deadly flu epidemic. When the doctor arrived he was reported to have said it was nice to be someplace where things were going right. There was a lot of moving that I will not go into. One place they lived Gertrude and Charles rode to school on a pony. This did not work out so Mom started teaching them at home. When I was born they had a" boarder" by the name of Bruce and my Aunt Mae was living there also. One night at supper Bruce was complaining at length about the food and acting like it was killing him to eat it. Gertrude who was seven at the time spoke up and said "Bruce if you do not like it, you do not have to eat it. " The rest of the meal was consumed in silence. Two years later in 1928 my family was moving from Greeley Colorado to Scottsbluff Nebraska via wagon. Whether it was covered or not is unknown to me. Anyway my younger sister Anna became ill and by the time Mom flagged down a car and got to a doctor Anna was dead. The loss of her only sister broke Gertrude heart and she cried for a very long time. While she was growing up she never got over this loss. While we were living in Scottsbluff Nebraska,Vern had ear trouble and had to have surgery. I think they said it was because of an infected mastoid. Gertrude and some of her friends came to see Vern while he was in the hospital. While we lived in Scottsbluff my dad worked in the sugar beet factory. Next we moved to Denver Colorado where Daddy was hired at Gates Rubber Company. There was money for the children to go to a movie every week. As she was the oldest Gertrude was the one in charge of the money. There was even enough money to buy popcorn. Vern reports that for some reason the popcorn never got to him but he never really cared because he did not care for popcorn anyway. On his way home from his first day at school, A teacher stopped Vern and asked him where he lived. For some reason he was unable to tell her so she was about to send him back to school. When Sis came along with her jump rope and took Vern home. Every day when Daddy came home from working at Gates he would be greeted by a kiss from Gertrude. The older boys had to kiss him also if they were going to get their penny for that day. Vern did not like to do it because of the tobacco smell coming from Daddy. My parents bought Gertrude tap dancing shoes and paid for her to go to tap dancing school. She became a very good tap dancer and could also dance the Charleston. But she would not come straight home from her dance classes so Mom made her quit. Like most pretty girls at that time she wanted to go to Hollywood and become a movie star. I think she was about five foot six inches and a brunette. She always liked to dance and had good balance. Daddy used to tell about the time Gertrude saw a mouse in the kitchen and was able to balance herself on the back of a kitchen chair. Sis told Verna later that she had loved the Fred Astaire and Ginger Roger movies and wanted to dance like Ginger Rogers. She showed good taste because I still like the Fred Astaire Ginger Rogers movies. Gertrude got into the habit of running away early in life and would be found and returned home. She would tell Mom that if she had a baby sister she would not have to run away. Gertrude was a headstrong girl that my parents did not know how to handle. Very early it became a matter of wills. My parents used spanking but it did not work with Gertrude. There was one man who drove a Stanley Steamer who started coming around. He gave Vern and Earl a ride once but his main reason for was to see Gertrude. He took her to some place called Cherry Point to see some car races. He was very late bringing her home and Mom was very angry. I don't think he ever came back, Mom may have told him not to come back. The report I was given that he was about thirty two years old and she was fourteen.
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The Stanley Steamer was an automobile that ran on steam like a steam locomotive. Exactly how the do not know. steam was produced to convert to power I at Byers Junior High in Denver when we moved to Bug Point. eighth grade Gertrude had finished the The school at Bug Point was a grade school only. Minnie Tucker agreed to teach Sis if she could get the know things went well for a while, books. As far as I Then one warm day Gertrude and some other girls decided not to go to school. They were seen with some men but late that afternoon she returned to the tents we were living in. Daddy had her lay down on his lap and spanked her with a piece of stove wood. They had played hooky on a Friday and when they returned to school on Monday they were think there were four girls besides Sis. punished. I There is no point in repeating the details reported in the Bug Point part of this. The next fall some elderly man had agreed to let Gertrude live with him while she went to high school. A few months later we moved to Dove Creek where we shared a house with a retired doctor. It was not very long after her birthday party, that did not happen, when she was in Dove Creek with her Dad but was not to be found when he was ready to come home. She was found and returned home Mom asked Daddy what he was going to do about it.. She said Sis heard her crying and was his girl and it was up to him. He took her into a room and closed the door. I pleading saying she would never do it again. She was still punished. She confided in Charles and Yern a few weeks later that she did want to live with our family think Charles hid it someplace for her. anymore. She packed her suitcase and I She went into Dove Creek with Daddy and again when he was ready to come home she was gone but this time she was gone for good. do not remember the letter but I Vern says our parents got a letter from her saying she was married. I do remember waking up one morning and hearing her voice. She was there with her new husband Ernest Lincoln Johnson. The decision to move our family to the Wilson Mesa and Moab had been made. Ernest and Gertrude took part in the activities for the young Mormon adults. If my memory is correct she was in some of the plays put on by their mutual improvement association. Ernie and Sis also liked to practice the latest dance steps. The lack of money was still a problem for the two of them. .A problem that stayed with them all the time they were married. In the summer of 1937 our cousins Kenneth and Donald Church came to the Wilson Mesa for a visit. was out herding cows when they arrived. Earl came out and got me Ernie and Gertrude came with them. I had been told there was a lot of walked right by my cousins because I so I was able to come to the house. I new reading material in the house. had seen my sister pregnant. Her baby was not born in Moab but was born in That was the first time I Price, Utah. They had moved there after Ernie had been offered a job there. On November 7 1937 Gertrude gave birth to a daughter. This girl did not become the Verna Lenore Johnson later Coy we all love for some time. Her parents were having a hard time agreeing on a name until Sis heard her daughter called Pumpkin once too often. This is good a place to tell about a sad part of our lives. Ernest and Gertrude were coming to Moab on a regular basis then one spring day we learned that Gertrude would not be going back to Price with Ernie.and they would be separating. We were devastated cried when I found out. because we thought the world of Ernie and of course she was our sister. I Gertrude worked as a waitress in Moab for a while. One of her coworkers was a man named Gus Hurst. The uniform she wore at work had a fall length-zipper in front and Gus kept trying to pull it down. think she thought we were all against her. Aunt Alice was She moved to Denver and for a while I writing and telling us negative things about Gertrude and her actions. Whether these things were true or not does not matter. . They will not be repeated here or at any other time.

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went there to They tried in December of 1940 to save their marriage one more time. Daddy and I they party Christmas had and Sis Eve few On for a a days. them with stayed and checked have my eyes asked Dads permission to drink a glass of wine. But their marriage was over with and Sis returned to Denver. They both married other people later. When Sis returned to Denver she got a job as a waitress where she met a college student Dorsey Holtkamp. Dorsey and my sister were married in 1942. Shortly after she had returned to Denver she had written and asked us to address her mail to don't think my parents ever M.Johnson. We learned later she had changed her name to Marianne Johnson. I took the cowards way out and called her Sis. accepted the change and kept on calling her Gertrude. I went to see her in November of 1943. On April 19 1943 their son Kurt was born. Vern and I she thought she would never see her crying Sis because was We were sitting in a car someplace and daughter again. I invited myself for a month long visit to see Dorsey and Marianne and their seven year old son. They took me to a movie to see the new singing sensation Mario Lanza. They also introduced me to the latest card game Canasta my sister would turn into a different person when we were playing that game. Dorsey was always a very bright person with several degrees but Marianne would treat him like a complete idiot. Dorsey was involved in some research project involving rats. He would take Kurt with him went with him once or twice. It involved holding a rat while an electric think I sometimes to hold the rats, I still do not know. did not know then what he was doing and I current was passed through it. I he could so pursue his career. moved back east they Dorsey completed his education and When they moved back east we kept in touch with letters. She would write and tell about what kind of car she was driving. And about the phonograph records she was buying. She liked the big band music from the thirties and forties. She wrote once about playing the piano and said she was practicing on some work by Chopin. There was a KODAK bellows camera that was used to take pictures at Dove Creek and on the mesa. This was referred to as Gertrude camera. We had a chiffonnier that was considered Gertrude chiffonnier. she also had the brown fur coat it must have been made out of rabbit fur. And wrote and told her. The three of them with Verna By the year 1955 my Dads health was not good so I Bay. Coos drove up from came out and I We had a great visit with Sis and her family. My family was in touch with a red haired girl Maxine Steele who Sis had known in Moab. Maxine was married to Gus Hurst and by the Sis came out Gus and Maxine had several children. Maxine gained weight each time she was pregnant and never lost the weight back. Marianne had a hard time believing the pretty redhead from high school had let her self go. The last thing we heard from Maxine was that Gus had left her. wonder if Sis knew about her condition. If she did We were all concerned about Dads health but I she did not show any signs. That November Verna took a trip to Idaho and married Donald Coy. They returned to Idaho later when she was eighteen and got married for the second time. The first time she was almost eighteen. worked in Medford for four months and then returned to Coos Bay. It was a few weeks That fall I later that the letter from my sister arrived telling me of her health problems and telling me she was dying. In the letter Sis said she had had more happiness than most people receive and she did not want people to see her as she looked then but wanted to be remembered the way she looked the last time they came to Vancouver. do not know if she told Dad or I called home and talked to Mom and told her that Sis was very sick. I was working. She had just received a phone call not. It was not long before Mom called one night when I from Dorsey saying Sis had died.

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was working in Coos Bay and Medford and tried to looked up to her very much as an adult while I I hoped would meet with her approval. conduct myself in a manner that I When she knew she might die she let it be known that her favorite song was "Springtime In The Rockies" and that she wanted to be buried in Denver. know still think of her at times and wish she had known her grandchildren and great grandchildren I I she would have loved all of them. wanted to believe it was not true and that she was still alive. It was a long time When my sister died I that way when they lose a loved one. feel knew a lot of people before I

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FIVE YEARS BACK AND FORTH Wilson Mesa Moab 1936 = 1941 Daddy and Junior moved to the mesa ahead of the rest of us. The rest of the boys were in school. When school was out everything we owned was loaded on to a truck. Fendell Sitton sent a truck out and our stuff was loaded and we headed for the mesa. It was a long trip up a winding mountain road. When we arrived at our new home we found a it was a house in two parts. .The first part had been built as a log cabin the second part was built as a storage type place. There was a fireplace in the first room and the room was probably about thirty feet in each direction. It did have a dirt roof. There was a board ceiling that was supposed to keep the dirt from the roof from falling through. When it rained though mud would come pouring down where we were trying to eat. The other part of the house became our sleeping area. The log cabin part had one window on the north side and one on the south side each about twenty inches in both directions. Daddy made arrangements to have new windows brought up and enlarged the openings so the new windows would fit. For the animals we had a log structure called a barn although there was no roof. There was a corral, a chicken house and some distance away a pigpen. We may have built the pigpen not sure. There was also a large walk in potato cellar. One morning Junior who had just turned six told his dad that he wanted to taste coffee. Daddy put some in a spoon added some sugar and Junior tasted coffee. He spit it out at once and gagged and retched. do not think he has tasted coffee again. To this day I should mention that the coffee Daddy made was the strongest coffee anybody ever made. I The first day on the mesa we heard about Junior's new friends and within a week here they came .they two children with white hair riding a white mule they did not have a saddle. The oldest was six years old Lonnie had a high pitched nasal voice the youngest the four years old Narlene had a low pitched voice liked Narlene as an adult. I that sounded like an adult mans. Narlene always had adult type things to say. I always thought Lonnie was a pain. When they wanted to go some place. They would lead the mule to a fence then climb up on the fence and then get on the mule. Even before Lonnie and Narlene arrived Mom had a visitor it was a person known as "Aunt Jane" she was the mother-in-law of our neighbor " Skeeter" Stocks. She was sixty-eight years old and walked bent over and her hands shook. But Mom had not heard her story so she told it to Mom and told it and told it. The man who owned the ranch next to us had been involved in a tragedy some time before we moved there. He had been convicted of manslaughter after killing a man in a fight. Marve Turnbow was married with three or four children. His wife was very upset with the thought of the children growing up with a murderer for a father. She obtained a gun and pointed it at her children and ordered them to go to the basement. She then shot and killed them one at a time. Aunt Jane was telling how they were pleading for their lives. This terrible event must of have happened at least twenty years before we moved to the mesa. never did learn what happened to the woman that murdered her children. By the time we moved to I the Mesa Marve Turnbow had a daughter who was nineteen in his second family. In his second family he had two daughters and two sons. He was killed in a car wreck before we moved from Moab. The first summer on the mesa we went up to some park where they had nice green grass and some Quaking Aspen and cottonwood trees. Ernie and Gertrude were there along with other people from the mesa. We rode up there in a wagon but when it was time to go home a neighbor Bruce Turnbow wanted to walk home so I walked with him. He had his" twenty-two" rifle with him. While we were on the way home he shot a jackrabbit, when this rabbit was hit it jumped in the air, it made a loop-de-loop turned some somersaults and went through all kinds of contortions. After it died we looked at it, we saw ticks and

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festering sores all over it. We did not touch the dead hare. On the way to the get together we passed some mountain roses. These roses had a sweeter scent than the roses in Vancouver and Portland do. Maybe the mountain roses are lonelier than the domestic roses. Across the road from our house there was two ponds, one was for household use and the other was the horse pond. We used to pretend that we were swimming in the horse pond. We did more of a dog think the water was about twenty inches deep. Later we would go to a neighbor's pond that had paddle. I deeper water. In both ponds there were tiny creatures we called water dogs. We never did get a good look at the slimy things but when the ponds dried up the creatures would disappear. When the ponds filled with water they would be back. made my first trip into Moab. We stayed at We had only been on the mesa a short time when I Ernie's house where he had fresh tomatoes and other good things. Ernie lived in the back half of his house was introduced to a wonderful thing and rented the front out to the Hoffman's. That was the time that I had eaten fresh think it was the first time I named Mayonnaise I put it on everything especially pancakes. I
tomatoes.

Ernie must of have owned about a quarter of a block he had several fruit trees and grapes and space for gardens. The population of Moab was around eight hundred and fifty people. I think it was in 1937 that the book"Tom Sawyer" came into our possession. We read it that summer and every summer we stayed on the Wilson Mesa. Two white haired boys that lived across the street from Ernie were in and out of reform school. One night they swiped a coal bucket from Ernie' back door and tried to sell it to the Hoffmans.who lived in the front of the house. The Hoffmans told them to put the bucket back, the sale was not made. . A few years later these two boys were in Arizona and decided to steal a car, the car had just been abandoned by some bank robbers. The police chased the twelve and fourteen old boys in a high speed auto race before they discovered the bank robbers were not in the car was One day I was supposed to unlock something and get something out or put something away. I was telling Ernie and Gertrude that "it given a lot of keys and it took quite a while to find the correct key. I tried. " Gertrude said "I sure hope so",she meant a person would have to be pretty dumb to was the last key I keep on looking after they had found the right key. did not have a tax One morning a storeowner Mr. Peterson would not sell me a pencil because I token. I did not know it then but those tokens could be found on the ground all over Moab. The neighbor boy Toby Day saw Junior at the water tap out front and jumped on him. They had not argued Toby saw Junior with his back turned and jumped on him. When Mom told Junior to fight back he was able to fend for him self Toby's older brother Butch lost his life at Iwo Jima in the war against Japan in the Pacific would walk by a large building of yellow brick. One Between Ernie's place and downtown Moab I evening I was walking with with Ernie and Gertrude, as we walked by this building Ernie said that building was the school. thought it was the jail. Ernie said that he used to feel that way too. I told them that I To get to school from our house in Moab we would walk one half a block make a right turn walk one block then cross the street and it was one more block to the school. When it was time to start junior high we were a few days late. In the sixth grade we were shown a movie about the evils of dope. It was about dope fiends and how don't think they even used the term drugs. dope of any kind would turn a person into a dope fiend. I Of course alcohol was the drug most people used but that was not mentioned. The movie had gone through too many projectors and was very grainy and kind of silly but it must have worked because I have never used drugs. We would come home for lunch every day. My mother would receive a check for twenty-five dollars every month. That covered the cost of the five dollars rent on the house bought groceries and we could see
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one movie a month. My mother never went to the movies but the boys did. have no idea of what A few years later Charles and Vern got jobs doing janitorial duties at school. I hours they worked but the pay was six dollars a month. Earl went out for football one year, he did not play much but we were very impressed when he brought his game jersey home. It was a brilliant red with pure white across the top. His number was number nineteen. 19. was supposed to go to started junior high school I asked some other classmates which room I When I and they told me to just follow the crowd. In the afternoon we were in the classroom of Mr.A.P.Hadlock. He had discovered the day before that the students did not know the multiplication tables as well as they should. So that day we had a test, when it was over he asked those who had missed fewer than ten to raise their hands,next he asked for those who had missed fewer than nine. When it got down to one or none my told him he looked at his class roll and did hand was still up. He asked me what my name was and when I not see my name. wanted to do After the class was over he had me stay and we had a long talk and he asked me what I with my life. He was the first teacher that ever showed any interest in me as a person. He would have me help him grade tests and help him in other ways. He taught at Moab for two years only. But every time I am very grateful for the way he treated me as a have talked to him. I have ever been to Salt Lake City I

person. never had any problem with him. When some of the boys Mr. Hadlock did have a quick temper but I wanted to show how tough they were by hitting girls he would invite them into the gym and they would both put on boxing gloves. went to see Mr. Hadlock at the Z.C.M.I, store where he was Later on a trip into Salt Lake City I selling ladies shoes. When it was his break time he took me to an athletic club where he had a membership. think it was the Deseret Club or something like that. We undressed and went into the shower, then we went I into the steam room, then we went swimming and then another shower. It was in the second shower when was not sure, he then told me that man knew one of the men in a group near us. I Mr. Hadlock asked me if I have ever showered with a governor. was at that governor of Utah, Herbert Maw .That is the only time I to Lake and the went City up campus of the University of Utah where was in Salt A few years later I he was teaching a class to people working on their doctorate. After teaching at Moab for two years he lived think both degrees were earned at the in California working on his masters degree and his doctorate. I University of Southern California or U.S.C. The other high school teachers will be described as follows Wayne McConkie a big red headed man taught shop and physiology and had a violent temper and would throw his text book at anybody that was not paying proper attention. Earl Stout taught music and had a sour disposition. He told Earl Brown to leave one day and as Earl was leaving he tried to kick him in the rear end but missed and kicked him in the back of the head. He did tell us that if certain notes were played in a certain order it would cause a certain cello string to break. He played those notes one day when a cello was in the room and one of the strings did break Glen Merrill taught math but his main job was as the coach. Only the boys had a coach the girls did not have any teams that competed with other schools. Mr. Merrill was a calm man that never let anything bother him. H.B. Evans taught Biology. Chemistry and Agriculture he was a small man who did not get violent but liked to ridicule and embarrass his students. Alice Hepworth was from Caspar Wyoming and taught English. Miss Hepworth told us she was a cousin of the famous New York giant pitching star Christy Mathewson. The art teacher was a pretty woman Miss Peale and the typing and shorthand teacher was a Miss was in. Madsen. There was a Miss Boyle who taught the civics class I was When I started the seventh grade it meant it was time to take band. The instrument I to to it I in did blow know how make sound let alone the horn. a not proper baritone the learn was to given
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note.

The idea of playing the different notes so we all had some idea about musical keys must have never occurred to him. Mr. Stouts daughter Dorothy could play saxophone, Marjorie Lou Christensen could play saxophone think Don Baldwin played trumpet, Dallas Rowley had a and piano, Colvin Taylor could play drums and I neither listened musical ear but the rest of us had zilch in the way of musical talent. At that time in my life I did hear, to much music or liked what I Dallas Rowleys' older brother Jack had been playing with some dynamite caps a year or so before they came to Moab, he was missing a couple of fingers. My memories of junior high are not that great, nothing real bad happened. My athletic abilities were was always the last one chose when it was time to certainly knew why I as limited as my musical abilities. I was at bat or catch the could not hit the ball when I never felt bad about being picked last. I choose teams. I ball in the field. was picked third or fourth. If there was going to be a spelling contest I started going to the I the knew were Mormons so I of most boys the scouts boy joined When I have never gone back. went that one school year only, I Mormon Church. I the Colorado River one of the scouts George Dalton overnight hike down The scout troop went on an agreed to go with him. We decided that he had to be back in town in time to go to church. For some reason I rainy morning. We put our morning. miserable cold was a It the four in started home between three and sleeping material down on a side hill but the water was running in a stream. After a few minutes of this we walked on into Moab. On cold winter mornings we took turns getting up first and starting the fire so the others could get up in a nice warm room. have a note here that says "Privacy is a word in the dictionary or something other people have. " I have no idea. Why I put it down I In Moab we used coal and wood both for fuel. My mother told me that once she had some unusable flour so she just dumped it on top of some stove wood. When the wood was burning real good the flour caught on fire and blew the lids off of the stove. The Titus family had for breeding purposes a "jack" or a "jackass". When it started to bray it would make a strange sound that sounded like a rusty gate. This was before the hee-haw sound came out. Skeeter Stocks owned one horse that had" moon-blindness". The horse could not see a thing in full moonlight. It would just stand motionless until the morning and daylight came. Skeeter Stocks formal name was Archibald Stocks but the story was that when he was born somebody looked at his size and said "He ain't no bigger than a damn skeeter". " The name stuck, his son Tom has been the mayor of Moab for a long time Skeeter used to tell us about a New Hampshire boar hog he owned that would get very aggressive and mean. This hog stood about four feet tall at the shoulders. It had a ring in its nose. When it acted up Skeeter had a hay derrick near by and he said he would snap a hook onto that ring and get a horse and just pull the hog up in the air by its nose Skeeters wife Ola told Mom that some Moab ladies were discussing how long Skeeter and Ola had been married before their first daughter Toots was born. Skeeter chipped in and said "nine months and twenty minutes. We could not depend on rain to water our crops so we used irrigation. Daddy would be out early in the morning making little dams and removing little dams so the water would go where he wanted it to. Each ranch was supposed to receive a certain amount of water. The people up stream were only allowed to have sluice gates so high this source of water ended as the summer wore on and the snow quit melting. had very poor depth perception. Neither I nor any of my With the problem with my left eye I had moved to the other side my teacher's thought about having me bat from the other side of the plate. If I

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good eye would have been able to follow the ball as it crossed home plate. do not remember any class being difficult for me. My only My grades were usually "B" or "B + I was always placed with the good readers. problem was my handwriting. I read "Alone" by Richard Byrd, "Gone With The Wind" by Margaret Mitchell In the seventh grade I and "Wind Sand and Stars" by St. Expury. This book was over my head. I also checked out Adolf Hitler's did not understand it either. "Mein Kampf" but I The book "Gone With The Wind" was thought of as racy and was in hot demand there was a waiting read it in one weekend. list and people were only supposed to keep the book two weeks. I The librarians Mrs. Schaeffer and Mrs. Somerville tried to talk me into reading books written for boys. There were some books about boys having all kinds of adventures but they did not appeal to me. One of the things people in Moab did for fun was for a bunch of high school and junior high school students to steal watermelons. They would steal more than they could eat. They would drop them on the curb and eat the hearts only because they did not want to be bothered with the seeds. The grown people would raid people's chicken coops and steal their chickens and have a big chicken feed of some kind. Maybe don't know. a barbecue I When school was finished in the spring we would move back to the mesa for summer. Every time we moved to Moab or back to the Wilson Mesa another piece of furniture would be broken. The canyon near our house on the mesa got very deep just after it passed our place. When it did rain the water would come down the canyon with a roar. The depth of the water in the bottom of the canyon would rise about fifteen feet sometimes. Most of the time there was not any water at all. Before these cloudbursts there would be thunderstorms that would be something to behold. There would be gigantic bolts of lightning that zigzagged across the sky followed by loud claps of thunder that snapped and crackled. There would not be a time lapse between the lightning bolt and the thunderclap. This meant the lightning was very close. If sound travels at seven hundred feet a second and we heard thunder at the same time this would indicate the electrical discharge was within seven hundred feet. If the weather was good the mesa was a great place to sleep out doors at night. There was a sky full of stars and we would see numerous falling stars.. From our house we could see approaching storms from the south. The clouds would turn into beautiful lavenders and deep purple in color with the occasional thunderbolt Every summer there would be a big party on the mesa attended by everybody that lived on the mesa at the time. In the morning two or three people would take a pack horse or two and head for an ice cave up on the never got to go on this trip so I cannot tell anything about it. The people who did go would mountain. I come back in the afternoon with ice and snow. The snow and ice would be packed around a metal container and the boys would start turning the crank on the ice cream freezer to make ice cream. Sometimes it would take hours before the ice cream was ready. There would be cakes and pies to eat also. The adults would play cards until about one in the morning. I was so tired that I usually just went to sleep. It seems like the parties were held at our place most of the time. And there could have been more than one a year. The last year on the mesa "Skeeter" Stocks told Charles that the parties were not meant for the young people. I guess we were supposed to turn the crank to freeze the ice cream and then vanish. Some people by the name of Young lived on the mesa south of us this mesa was called the "South Mesa". But the Young family never came to our mesa and we never went to theirs. When cars came up from Moab they would come around a curve two or three miles from our house. If we were looking we could see them come around the curve. If the air was just right we could hear the cars just before they came in sight. The nearest railroad tracks were about twenty miles from Moab but sometimes late at night if conditions were just right when the train whistle was blown the sound would echo down the canyon and could be heard in Moab. On very rare occasions we would be in the rocks above Moab and could hear people talking in our

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back yard about ten blocks away. To get to Moab from our place we had three choices, number one could be travelled by foot or horseback only. We had to go to the Titus place and enter the canyon. This trail covered some very difficult terrain. There was not any water on the way. After a fourteen mile hike there was a trail into the Moab valley near the Milt Johnson place. The Wilson Mesa was named after the Wilson family. While we lived in Moab three of the brothers were living there. One of them Billy at one time was chased by some Indians the fourteen miles from the mesa to Moab. He had to contend with the heat from the sun and as it reflected from the rocks and sand and of course no way to get water in addition to the Indians hot on his trail. The second way to town was via what we called the wagon road. We had to go almost to the Skeeter Stocks place before going down into and out of Slick Rock Canyon and follow a road that was impassable for cars. About half way to Moab there was a spring where we could.get water. I think there was two troughs for the animals to drink from. There was a huge canyon across the road from this spring. The canyon was on all the maps those days as being "Nigger Bill Canyon" the current maps have it as "Negro Bill Canyon". Anyway after nineteen miles the road passed the Moab city graveyard on the way into Moab. The graveyard and the city dump were very close to each other. Very near the place on the wagon road where the water was located there were numerous rock formations that looked a lot like the rock formations in Arches National Monument. There was one in particular that looked like an ice cream cone balanced on its small end. But the county or state decided that the road needed improvement so they were using explosives and the rock came tumbling down. We think it did because it was no longer visible. There was one formation that looked like the head of a calf and one that looked like the head of a grown bovine. These formations varied in color just like those in all the sandstone monument type formations in the southwest. The third way was called the car road. From our place we would have to go through the Turnbow place take the road past the South Mesa cross two bridges and finally get down to the main highway near an area called "Poverty Flats" seven more miles and we were in Moab this route covered thirty one miles. One evening a man my dad had met was sitting in our front room telling my mother about his wife. I think he was telling Mom that his wife had died. He told Mom that he had been married to the prettiest trick rider in the state of Montana. Vern and Earl were out in the other room laughing because this same man had been telling Daddy just hours before this how he had never married. His name was in the paper a few days was going by the courthouse when he was being placed in a car for a ride up later and a few days after that I north to the state prison. Something about writing checks with no money in the bank. The reason we would be late starting school in Moab so much was because heavy rains would sit in just as we were getting ready to move and the truck could not get up the mountain to move us. After three weeks or so of rain the blue sky looked beautiful. My mother had to make do with what she had. She used empty flour sacks for a lot of things. She made cottage cheese, we used a small glass churn and helped make butter. think animal fat but I She also made laundry soap by using a combination of wood ashes, lye and I am not sure. On the Wilson Mesa there were numerous whirlwinds some would be small about ten feet high and others would be more than a hundred feet high. The whirlwinds were miniature cyclones. The larger ones had a lot of force and usually had a lot of dirt and brush going around and around. It used to be fun to look up at the white clouds and pretend that we were seeing animals and faces. The faces we thought we saw were the ancient Greeks or the founding fathers of our country. We also used to stand near the canyon's edge and shout and wait for our voice to echo back to us. knew that going to college was out of the question. In high school I
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The city of Moab is in the Moab valley very close to the Colorado River. On both sides of Moab there are towering red sandstone rock cliffs. During the summer those rock cliffs act like a reflecting oven and catch the suns rays then reflect them onto the valley floor. During the summer people who had work to do outside would get up before dawn and do their work and by ten o'clock were looking for a shady place to lay down. When school was not in session a lot of the students would go for walks or hikes up around the slick rocks. There was one huge rock that looked something like a lion's back so it was called "Lions Back". The doctor for Moab was a Dr.Allen but one year we had a second doctor for a few months who had ideas of his own. For the elderly he prescribed long walks. The trails from Moab valley to the top of the surrounding hills would have a large number of elderly people out walking the trails climbing up to the hills. In the spring there would be a school hike for the grades seven to twelve. One year they put us in trucks and took us out to the Arches National Monument. In the book provided for visitor's comments one of the daughters of the man who owned the local telephone company had a very risque thing to say about the area. had never seen one of the famous four letter words with "ing" added written in such pretty delicate I feminine handwriting. Another year we hiked up past the graveyard and went up Mill Creek to some special place I guess. As we were hiking up hill through the graveyard somebody tried to get me to pull them I was short winded anyway and just barely made it up there. The nearest big town to Moab was Grand Junction Colorado,one year there was some kind of interscholastic competition. One of the students from Grand Junction was a black kid that his classmates called "Snowball" . In the five years I went to school in Moab he was the only black person that ever came into our school. There was a traveling carnival that had a black boxer who would take on all comers for three rounds. never got to see because I The carnival also had a female "adult" act that I was not an adult am not sure where this should fit in but there was one movie that gave a good indication of how fast I the different people read. There was one character called "Jackass Brown" and when people laughed we knew how fast they were reading. There was a movie with John Barrymore and Joan Davis that had the building because the people saw the movie on television, it was not very funny. Joan Davis played the were laughing so hard. When I part of a female football quarterback and John Barrymore played the part of a college professor. In the big final Joan Davis is on the field with her team when a big windstorm came up. This windstorm was blowing the football everywhere and Joan Davis had problems keeping her football pants up. I went to a lot of movies over the years at Moab but this one had the people laughing the most. Somebody edited a lot of it out so the movie would fit in a certain time frame. The Spanish or Mexican population was the object of bias and discrimination in Moab. We had one boy in our grade that took advantage of it though. He would sit in the back of the room and never write down anything when it was time to take a test. At the end of the school year he would have nothing but straight "Fs" in everything and we would assume that he would not be promoted. But when the word came that he was being kept back he would go to his sister who was a good student in high school. She would in turn go to another sister who was married to a county commissioner, Lon Robinson, who would then go to his daughter Faye Titus who would then go to her friend Helen Knight who was the school superintendent. And when school started in the fall this student would be with us. His name was Benny Garcia, after his high school days were over he had the habit of writing checks, the fact that he did not have enough money in the bank to cover never bothered him. I was told that he had an uncle who would make the checks good. But this good uncle died and Benny kept on writing the bad checks. With no uncle to cover for him he was arrested and sent to prison. The Wilson Mesa was a good place to listen to the radio. We were up in the mountains and the clear channel stations would come through great. We could pick up KOA from Denver, KSL from Salt Lake City.

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had forgotten the KVOO from Tulsa,Oklahoma,KRLD from Dallas,Texas KNX from Los Angeles. I powerful stations that broadcast from across the border in Mexico. These people could not broadcast from The United States because they were facing criminal charges but they would broadcast across the river from the United States in Mexico. Some "doctor" had a cure for everything, he thought that tomatoes and oranges were a health risk. think from around Chicago, In the summer we started hearing radio broadcasts from different hotels, I they were playing great swing music. The first band we heard was the Harry James band. We did not know it then but Harry James was just getting started. Earl enjoyed the swing music also. really liked. had heard since we left Denver that I It was the first music I do not remember anything about the music I used to go to sleep by the musicians at Bug Point but I itself. One of the wild animals around was the porcupine. One night one of our dogs was chasing one and got over a hundred and fifty needles in its nose and mouth. We had a cow that chased a porcupine and got a nose full of quills for its trouble. It is my understanding that when a quill enters the victims body the barbs make it very difficult if it does not prevent the quill from being pulled back. Porcupines do not throw their quills but use a slapping motion with their tales. The part of Utah we lived in had lots of sagebrush and thistles and a ground plant we called morning glory. There was also a grass that we called June grass. The thistles became tumbleweeds when they matured and died. The morning glory and the June grass would take all the nutrients out of the soil and the crops the farmers planted would not flourish. These unwanted plants would take root almost anywhere. In a wheat field or in a potato field it did not matter. In addition to the hay crop on the mesa we also grew potatoes We did not have a" potato digging" machine but used a plow instead. This meant the potatoes had to be dug out of the dirt by hand went on our Boy Scout trip, we were on the mesa. But the rest of In the summer of 1939 Earl and I the troop decided to raise money for a trip to the Boulder Dam as it was called then. Now it is known as the Hoover Dam. They had all kinds of money raising projects Earl and I came down a day or so before the troop was to leave. Each patrol had its own storage box. The first night we went up in the mountains west of Monticello where we stayed for a couple of days for a boy-scout jamboree of some kind. The Boy-Scouts from Blanding and Monticello were there also. Then we loaded things back on the truck and got as far as Bluff,Utah where we spent the night. Then the next morning we headed west into the Natural Bridges Monument. We were there for a couple of days then headed south again. We stopped at a place named Mexican Hat at the time one family owned everything there including the lodge and the garage, He also had a business taking people for rides down the Colorado River. The Goosenecks of the San Juan River were very close. After this we crossed the Painted Desert in Arizona heading for Tuba City Arizona. As we crossed the desert Indian women would be out herding sheep .The Indian women would drop to the ground with their face in the sand when they saw or heard our trucks. They may have thought that by hiding their face in the sand that they became invisible. They would not move as long as we were in sight. Out there in the middle of the desert an Indian boy flagged us down and tried to talk to us. But he was not speaking English and nobody on the truck spoke any Navajo there was a gross failure to communicate. He tried to jump on the back of the truck but some of the scouts back there kicked him off. We arrived in Tuba City that night and a different Indian boy came around this one spoke English and was friendly. But he did mention that he was looking for something to steal. That night we heard a talk about the history and customs of the Hopi Indians. Tuba City Arizona is on the Hopi Indian Reservation that is completely surrounded by the Navajo reservation. As far as I know it still is.

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The next morning we headed for the north rim of the Grand Canyon. We stopped at two viewpoints for about twenty minutes each a few minutes later our truck driver Reed Lance stopped his truck and got out to talk to us. He had agreed to take the Boy Scouts troop to the dam but had ordered a new truck and was anxious to go back and get it. So he gave us a discouraging talk about going across the hot desert. Then he asked for a vote on who wanted to go on and who wanted to go to Salt Lake City and then go home. The votes to go to Salt Lake City and then go home won. After Reed Lance got back in the cab of the truck our scoutmaster Morris Johnson told us that we had voted wrong. Why he did not say anything before the vote was taken I do not know. We then left the Grand Canyon National Park and spent the night in the Kaibab National Forest. I think at that time they allowed deer hunting in the park every seven years. We headed north again and spent a night in Zion's National Monument National or Park. think we did our sightseeing in about ninety minutes. After Zion's we stopped at Bryce Canyon I The next night was spent in Richfield Utah we stayed very close to a barn where a man had some racing horses. The next stop was Salt Lake City where we spent two days and nights and then headed home. There were back were about thirty of us in the two rooms that were rented. When we got back to Moab Earl and I on the mesa shortly. have mentioned he used to make strong black coffee. Once in a Another story about Dads coffee as I the mesa and Daddy would offer him coffee and he would have on be up Ernie's would brother Milton while a couple of cups. At different times his son Rolla would be on the mesa and he would be offered coffee and he would accept. One morning they were both there and Daddy offered coffee and they both said "No thanks we are Mormons we don't drink coffee." That fall we learned that there had been a big fuss about the trip so the scoutmaster and his assistant both quit and most of the scouts just quit going. On the first of September Nazi Germany invaded Poland and World War Two was on The next spring Vern finished his senior year early and joined the Civilian Conservation Corps better known as the "CCC". After his basic training he was sent to the CCC camp near Zion's National Park.. When school ended we moved back to the mesa, our radio batteries were out when Nazi Germany made its move through the lowlands and Belgium. When our radio was working again the first news we heard was that France had agreed to surrender That December Daddy and I were in Salt Lake City in Ernie's apartment. Gertrude was there also they were making one last try to save their marriage but it was not to be and Gertrude headed back to Denver. They both married other people later switched from "bib" to "waist" overalls At a certain age a boy It must of have been on the mesa that I think the age of change was eleven or would quit wearing bib overalls and start wearing waist overalls. I shoe school of in style and on the farm. One pair of shoes was wore the same could have twelve. We been it supposed to last a year. We wore shoes worn out at the toes a lot. When we moved to the mesa we were going to have a small dairy operation. We owned several cows and thought we were in business but the year before there had been an invasion by grasshoppers. The people living there had put out a lot of poisoned grain. The poisoned grain killed the grasshoppers but was still around when my dad arrived with the cows they ate the poisoned wheat and died. Several years later we lost a dog to this poison, this dog must of have dined on some small bird that had eaten the poisoned wheat. This small dog named Tige was white with brown spots and was very quick and able to do something most dogs cannot do. This dog had the ability to bite mules on their hind legs. Mules kick with one leg at a time. Tige would switch from leg to leg and would bite the leg that was on the ground while the other was kicking the thin air.
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In 1940 or 1941 Lonnie Titus and Junior were having words of disagreement when Lonnie was getting ready to hit my brother. Junior got in the first punch and gave Lonnie a bloody nose. Lonnie rushed home to his mother Faye Titus. When Faye saw what had happened to her precious son she was furious. She went looking for the culprit at once. She looked all over Moab trying to find Junior. He was hiding under a rack in our landlords back think it was built to keep hay off of the ground. yard. There was about ten inches clearance under this rack. I that, nothing was ever said about the bloody years Titus for after family We remained friends with the nose incident. don't remember seeing him again after the day he shot the think Bruce Turnbow joined the navy. I I know he never came back to the mesa rabbit. As far as I His younger brother Dix had a burro that he kept in Moab and on the mesa. Dix and his friends were very mean to this poor animal. The donkey took the abuse and then started fighting back. It would approach a person like a big shaggy dog wanting to be petted. Then when the person tried to pet it would whirl and try anticipated the ruse. . to kick. It tried to do that to me on the mesa but I Two of my classmates were Bruce Williams and George Dalton. George was a natural born leader was in Salt who unfortunately had some kind of intestinal infection and died in his mid teens. The last time I Lake City I spent some time with Bruce and his family. have ever seen. To put a pack saddle on it Skeeter Stocks acquired the most cantankerous mule that I all four legs had to be secured and the head secured also so it could not bite. My mother noticed how this mule acted and did not want it around. For some reason my dad traded for this mule. When Mom found out about the trade she just walked out of the house. There was a couple of small bottles of Black Flag insect poison open on the kitchen table. It was an hour or so before we knew she was missing and started looking. When it turned dark they lit a lantern and kept on looking. Around ten o'clock they gave up for the night and went to bed. The next morning about six she came walking in. Earl told her that we were worrying about her. She think she had just walked to told him not to worry. Nothing was ever said about where she had been. But I the bottom of the canyon and kept on walking until it got dark. And then just stayed where she was until it got light and she could see her way to come home. The mule was only kept a short time then traded away. More than any other place we ever lived the people of Moab seemed to have a fixation on sex. In the fifth and sixth grades and in junior high and senior high dirty jokes were told at lunchtime, at recess, before school, after school, on weekends, at school activities. think the young people were telling dirty And the adults were telling their share of dirty jokes. I jokes making sure adults did not hear them. At the same time adults were probably telling the same jokes making sure the young people did not hear them. There was a road on the edge of the school grounds where trucks came in to bring fuel to the school. It was a road where numerous children walked every day. At least once a month there would be a used birth control device there. When we were herding cows there was a small hill with a cedar tree that provided shade. Sometimes I would draw lines in the dirt and break off twigs and make believe that it was my ranch think this has been entered some place else but can not find it right now. When it was time to take I the cows to pasture or bring them in at night the cows would decide which cow was first, second third and so forth. Also the Wilson Mesa was a great place to see beautiful sunsets that would of made beautiful photographs. would take off all my clothes and get on my horse and pretend that I Once in a while I was a wild Indian. Faye Titus told Mom that sometimes she went skinny dipping with her son and daughter at a pond on

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if one of the pigs felt the need to get rid of body waste. It would get up and go to one corner and do its business and go back and lay down. Cows will not stand up to go and get rid of body waste they just let it
out,

It used to be fun to play out in the heavy fog. We played in the body of a very old car also. There think it had a steering wheel. was not any wheels or motor but I think At the time we owned two kerosene automobile lamps. They would hold about a pint of fuel. I they were made so people could see the car. They could not have provided much light for the driver. Sometimes in summer we would sleep outside under the stars and two tall cottonwood trees. One night there was a thunderstorm and cloudburst. The boys would have slept through it but our parents came was standing outside to bring the boys and our bedding inside. We usually slept in the raw so that is how I there when my mother told me to get some clothes on. It was an every night thing to hear the howling of coyotes but it was a rare occasion if we saw one. Once in a while we would find a dead chicken that we assumed a weasel had killed. Two or three summers later we owned three turkeys one male and two females. It must have been August one nice afternoon when the shadows were getting long. The turkeys demonstrated their courtship ritual. They moved around in a circle about seventy five feet in diameter. The male would take a few steps and inflate his breast and then retrace his steps. Then he would do it again but the second time he would go a little bit further. This ritual continued for about thirty minutes. We used our shadows as a way of telling time when the shadow became short and was due north that meant it was noon. When the shadow was straight east that meant three in the afternoon. When the shadows reached a certain length that indicated it was time to bring the cows in for the day. One fall my only way to get to Moab was to ride in a space made for me on the top of a load of hay. They left two or three bales out and had me get up there with some coats for the ride. My dad was a little stayed up there. The road wanted to get started in school so I worried and wanted me to climb down but I was crooked and the driver had been having trouble with his lights. We crossed the bridges at Mill Creek think we made it to the highway before the truck lights went out. and Horse Head Creek and I Somebody came along so the driver had him drive just ahead of the truck until we got to Ernie's place. The truck was left there and the driver walked about five blocks home. During the summer Earl and I used to herd cows a lot, we rode either Socks or Belle. Earl trained Belle to be a cow horse. She was a good horse to train. Belle became a good cow horse that could anticipate where a cow might want to go. Then she would prevent them from going in the direction Belle did not want them to. Between the house and the pasture there was a very large hill. There was a trail between the hill and the canyon that we would use to take the cows to pasture and bring them in at noon and at night. The cows had their own sort of "pecking system" . They would have battles to determine which cow was to lead. The cow that lost the fight for first place then had to fight for second. How many fights that happened depended on how many cows there were. Once the order was established the cows would take their place. When a new cow was introduced she had to fight to establish her place in line. Quite often Belle would be ridden without using a bridle. All we had to do was lean a little bit in the direction we wanted her to go. If we were herding cows she knew which way to go anyway. We had one pig that had long wavy red hair. When the decision was made to butcher it I was able to find some chore a long distance away. etched my initials into some soft sandstone. I The last summer on the mesa I never did get to go back to see if they had been washed away in the next flood or were still there when the soft sandstone became hard

sandstone. The canyon we lived close to on the mesa was different from the canyon at Bug Point. If my memory is correct there were a lot of huge boulders in the canyon at Bug Point the name of the canyon was Monument Canyon. The canyon at the mesa had solid sandstone sides or walls. We called them slick rocks the canyon had a crude vulgar name but the name Slick rock Canyon will be used.
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We had a year old mule colt that would be tied up in the barn. If they had need for its mother for work. This barn did not have a roof but had very high walls. If a simple knot was used this mule would use its teeth to untie the knot quickly and jump over the fence and join its mother before they had gone half a mile. When my dad lived the live of a bachelor he baked a lot of sourdough bread. When the bread was baked part of the dough was kept and used as a "starter" for the next time he baked bread. They kept the sourdough starter in some of crock-pot. was never good at milking the cows Sometime around 1940 or 1941 1learned how to milk a cow. I but I got by. The power to get our radio to work came from a large battery that was known as an "A" battery and two smaller or "B" batteries were used to supply power to the radio that we used. Also there would be an aerial and a ground wire. And of course tubes from four to sixteen. Our radios usually used eight tubes. Tubes would burn out quite often. They were the ones that did not light up when the set was turned on. I have no idea in the world what the function of the different tubes were. There used to be arguments about who would sit by the control and decide what and whom we would listen to. The same argument continues in modern times this time it is about who gets to hold the remote control. When we moved to Moab for the winters the radio stayed on the mesa with Daddy. Sometimes I would go over to the Bruce Williams place and listen to the radio program "Gang Busters". would stand outside the house of our neighbors the Owens family, and listen to the A few years later I Joe Louis fights. There was room for a driveway between the two houses, when we first moved the Day family was living there .later the Nielsens lived there for a while and still later the Owens family and other families lived there also. In a town the size of Moab there is not much to do. Some people watched football practice sometimes we would get so close that we would interfere with the practice. There was one jovial man with unkempt hair that would show up on a regular basis. We all liked him because he was easy going and was fun to be around, We found out later that his name was Kenny Beach. Football season ended and basketball season began. The first basketball game there was this neatly dressed friendly person that we could not figure out who he was. About half time we recognized Kenny Beach but none of us had ever seen him with his hair combed. Once on the mesa we were all gone and had failed to fill the wood box. Mamma made supper just like she always did but instead of putting it on the stove she put it on the table. She had baking powder biscuits and potatoes and peas. From then on there was always wood in the wood box. It was the last summer that we lived on the mesa that Mom convinced Daddy that we should all have Sundays off. think it was the fall before when we were taking a milk cow to Moab when we stopped at the spring I tried to hold it but the rope just ran through my hands and on the wagon road. The cow started to run. I skin from of removed all the the palms my hands That was the only time I have ever had rope burns. When Earl and I were listening to the music at night we would read a magazine called "Song Hits" that one summer they announced a song writing contest. I think first prize was three or five thousand dollars thought that if ten thousand people sent in three dollars of course there was an entry fee of three dollars. I each for a total of thirty thousand they would not mind giving three or five thousand away. Somebody gave us a puppy in Moab it was an Australian Sheep dog. When we got it was very sick and Earl and I fed it medicine with a spoon. It must have worked because it grew up to become a good sized dog. When we came home it would jump in the air and bark. As time went by it had a severely damaged eye some missing teeth and a large bump on its nose. One day it was chasing a horse and disappeared for a while. We figured it had been kicked unconscious. We took the dog to Monticello with us but when we moved up here to Vancouver we gave the dog to
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some friends. We had named the dog Wolf. Frank Jr was thrown from his horse and landed on a rock and sprained his elbow. There was somebody on the mesa to drive him to the doctor. He must have been in a lot of pain

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STACKING HAY AND OTHER ACTIVITIES

But there was work to be done on the mesa. We had alfalfa hay to cut and put up. There would be a first cutting and a second cutting. When the hay was as high as it was going to get Daddy hooked a team of horses up to the mowing machine and the hay was mowed down. A day or so later Charles would hook a team of horses to a hay rake and the hay would be raked into neat windrows. Then Vern and Earl would come along with pitchforks and put the hay in little piles. This was called shocking and the piles were called shocks. After the hay had laid in the field a certain amount of time it was time to stack it. The first thing done was to get a large derrick pole at the spot where the haystack was to be built. There would be cable rope or as they were called then "guy wires". These guy wires would be secured from four directions to keep the main derrick pole erect. Attached to the derrick pole was a yardarm. When it was time to make the stack a driver with a team of horses would take a sled type vehicle called a slip to the field where the hay was. On the slip was a "sling" this was in two sections each section had two wooden cross pieces that were connected by a device that had a snap. The hay would be loaded on to a sled like thing called "the slip" and brought in where the hay stack was to be built. When the hay arrived at the stack a pulley attached to the yardarm via cable was attached to a ring. There was a big horse that would be used to raise the hay up a short distance where a snap with a rope could be attached. The hay would then be raised and placed where the stacker wanted it. The stacker would then yell "Bust it" and the person on the ground would give a strong yank and the sling would open up and the hay would drop where the stacker wanted it. This work would be repeated all day long. Sometimes it would be my job to lead the horse that pulled the hay into the air. could be wrong in some details. can but I This haying process has been described as well as I it was time to bale it. The hay time the of for proper stack had been the amount hay in After the would be taken out of the stack and placed in a baler. The baler would compress the hay. This would involve the use of a team of horses hooked up to some kind of device and the horses would go around and around something like a merry-go-round. will not put a date on it. The three families, the Church This haying was done twice every year so I family, the Stocks family,and the Titus family all worked together. They would start where ever the hay got ripe first. If the hay is stacked before it is ready later spontaneous combustion can set in. It does not happen very often but sometimes when the fire that has been smoldering is exposed to the open air will start blazing. The family having their hay stacked had to cook the noon meal for everybody working on stacking the hay. The father of Faye Titus was Lon Robinson at that time county commissioner. That helped her husband Bun get a job with the county. They would hire a man to do his work on the ranch. His name was David Perkins we were told they were paying him twenty-five dollars a month. That was big money in those

days.
On some trip into Moab, it must have been in 1939 Daddy came back with a man who had been in the CCCs. He was a native of the Bronx New York. On the first afternoon we were in a wagon when one of the team of horses pulling the wagon neighed. This man then asked what this horse was laughing at. He told us about life in New York City and he also told us about a new sensational girls singing group. . He said their name was the Andrews Sisters and they were very big names for a while. They made a lot of hit records with other big name stars, made several movies and many personal appearances. Gertrude came down from Price for a visit and was to catch a ride back home. She had Verna with her and had to come back to our house three times to change diapers before her ride showed up. am not sure. Ernie went someplace out in the country with think this is in some place else but I I Verna when she was small. She had to "go" so was taken to an outdoor privy. When she did not appear for a while somebody checked. She had been looking for a handle or button so she could flush. As the sixth grade school year came to an end we were given permission to work ahead in our world

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When we had toothbrushes we used salt water, we did not have toothpaste. The local dentist Dr. Ballinger was supposed to look at the teeth of all the school children. But he knew the Church family did not have money to pay for dental work so he just told the schoolnurse that my teeth were too dirty to examine. There was a story about a local man coming in with a toothache that was driving him crazy. As he got there Dr. Ballinger was leaving and told the man that he was going on a two-week vacation. The man objected and said if you will not take care of my tooth there will be a fight. Dr. Ballinger threw one punch and knocked the man out. He then told the man's companion to bring the man back in two weeks. Ralph Miller the owner of one of the grocery stores in Moab used to come to our place on the mesa friends and use our house as a base to go deer hunting. some with had signed up to take an advanced course in mathematics. To be honest it was a In the fall of 1940 I repeat of eighth grade arithmetic. The course was taught by Glen Merrill who had been the football coach. . There were five students in the class. Two juniors, two sophomores and me a freshman. We spent more time talking about football than we did about math. All the other students were on the football squad. That year Tommy Harmon was playing for Michigan and was in the papers and magazines all most all the time. He was in the newsreels a lot too. Tommy Harmon wore a light tear away jersey. Several times during the season some opponent would grab his jersey and wind up with a handful of fabric. He flew a fighter plane during the war and was shot down but was able to make his back to the American lines. On Mondays we would not even open our books while we talked about what Tommy Harmon had done the previous Saturday The high school football team had been on a trip and stopped for a rest near some store. All the team members went in and swiped as much as they could. There was a legend around Moab that a certain mantel clock that had not been used as a time piece for years would start ticking when one of the local citizens was about to die. am not sure but I think the clock was in the home of Milton and Ruth Johnson. I The school photographer in Moab was named Harry Reed. When it was time to take our class photograph for the seventh and eighth grades he would arrive about noon. We would stand on the front steps looking into the sun. Then his head would go under a heavy black cloth. It would take him a long time to would be squinting when he snapped the shutter. The pictures focus. The sun would hurt my eyes and I never considered myself good looking but this from each of the two years show me making an ugly face. I made it worse. Harry Reed had a movie camera and would take movies of the local people playing and then show them on his front lawn in the fall On the mesa Skeeter Stocks kept us supplied with venison the hunting season meant nothing to him. smell deer meat these days it does not smell Until I had eaten more venison than beef. When I was sixteen I

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Moab Without Money Moab did not have a street numbering system if somebody was looking for a house they would be to told go so many blocks and turn and go so many blocks then count the houses. For some reason there were not any rattlesnakes on the Wilson Mesa. I think it was too cold for them. They could stay warmer on the sandstone rocks on the canyons around the mesa we had bull snakes and garter snakes and a few black snakes. There were also some gray lizards about three or four inches long.
Once in a while we would see a small green and yellow lizard. The Titus family owned several mules. People who have never been around mules have a hard time believing what mules do. There was one mule they called Boob. When he came to a closed gate he would use his nose to move the wire loop up over the post so the gate would fall down. Or it would get down and am not sure how the mule would act if the gate was squirm under the gate or it would jump over the fence. I open. Sometime while on the Mesa or in Moab we acquired a wooden washing machine. How it worked has long since been forgotten by me. I am not sure where this fits in but we were on relief in Moab that meant we were given commodities such as cheese and oranges. For some reason we used to get a lot of canned salmon also I grew up thinking salmon was a poor person food. The worst part was clothes they gave us clothes that were all the same so when you saw somebody wearing clothes like the ones you had on both knew the other was on relief. My eighth grade class had a marshmallow or weenie roast that I did not go to because I did not have had been when I told her that I did not have the the money. Marjorie Lou asked me the next day where I money she said I should have come anyway. But I had heard snide remarks about other people who came to events without paying. My first teacher at Moab was named Rena or Reba or something like that. I think her last name started with Sart but I am not sure. She was not too bad even if she did call me Fanny. The teacher in the sixth grade was Mrs. Sarah Keener a German lady who taught us about the evils of Hitler. Even she did not know how evil he was. It was in the spring of 1937 that I learned about a Moab tradition. The class leaders would pass the word and everybody would could afford it would bring a bag of peanuts to class. Then when the teacher was writing something on the blackboard all the bags of peanuts would be opened and thrown at the teacher. This was known as a "peanut shower" . This was the beginning of a class party other refreshments would be furnished by the teacher. Ernie Johnson like most people in Moab did not have a refrigerator. He kept his perishables in a cooler under a tree in the backyard. The cooler was a cupboard with a washtub on top and burlap on the back and sides. A washtub full of water was kept on top with a hose running to keep everything moist and fresh.

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MOAB 1941 think it was a short time later that Sis had her name changed from Gertrude to Marianne. I I am not sure if she changed the Myrtle part or not. She wrote and asked us to address her mail to M Johnson but did not say why. Later she said she was afraid of hurting the feelings of her parents. Sometime about that time the decision had been made that we would not be returning to the Wilson Mesa. Before the end of the school year two separate things happened in Moab , I read the Jack London book named "The Sea Wolf" . It tells us about this terrible sea captain named Wolf who spent a lot of his time in his cabin because he was suffering some illness that caused severe headaches and was taking his sight his sight away. In the spring of 1940 the second grade teacher noticed at recess time that one of her students stayed at his desk and did not go out to play with his class mates. She also noticed him fumbling for his pencil instead of just picking it up. The boy was loosing his eyesight and nobody had noticed. His name was Bobby Williams the younger brother of my friend Bruce Williams. Bobby lost his ability to see, then he lost his ability to hear and then his life. A a year later I was in St.Mark's Hospital in Salt Lake City a few weeks after reading the "Sea Wolf" by Jack London In this book the villain is a sea captain named Wolf is very cruel to his crew. This man would spend a lot of time in his cabin alone. He was suffering from terrible told one of the nurses about both of these events and asked her if she knew headaches and going blind. I what disease these two people could have had. She did not know what the disease could have been. In the spring of 1941 after the end of the school year Daddy and I went to Salt Lake City where I was to have an eye operation so I would not be cross-eyed anymore. was in bed in the hospital a nurse named Gladys Engman came in and saw the name Robert When I Church on my chart and asked if people called me Bob. Up to that time nobody had but I said yes and have been Bob every since. The song they were playing on the radio that week was "Your Are My Sunshine". In sports Joe Louis knocked out Buddy Baer in the seventh round. Later on that summer there were a lot of stories in the papers about how Germany was building up its army and getting ready to invade Russia. I never did understood how Stalin could claim he was surprised.

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MONTICELLO In the spring of 1941 my parents knew we would not be going back to the Wilson Mesa. Arrangements were needed and made for us to live some place else. Daddy made a deal with a person named Claron Bailey. He owned some property east of Monticello and the two of them were to buy some dairy cows and we would be selling cream. should I was not involved in the deal but when Clarons' wife Sue said that they were both full of it I have wondered. Between leaving Moab and arriving in the Monticello area was the stay in Salt Lake City. They was in St. was no longer cross-eyed. It did not help the vision. The week I operated on my left eye so I Marks Hospital was when Germany invaded Crete. Just before we left Salt Lake Germany invaded Russia, for about two weeks the local paper had stories that Germany was assembling armies on the border. When we arrived at the Bailey place with our household furnishings from Moab we found there was no house only a wooden building with out a roof. returned to Moab and then on up to Salt Lake City for my eye operation. Shortly after my arrival I went to the Bailey place for a day or so and then to Salt Lake or if we left from I have forgotten if I out. school was Moab when When we first got to the Bailey place Charles was all ready there and a young man from the neighborhood Joe Murray was there. They tried to scare us by making sounds like wild animals. But we had heard their footsteps as they by. crept Most of my memories of the year and four months after coming back from Salt Lake City involves horses. We had a pretty black mare with a white streak down its face. When we had some place to go and made a turn this horse would come up with a terrible limp. We would slap its rear end with the reins a couple of times and it would lose its limp. was riding Belle in from the field where they were doing some plowing. I On a different occasion I was carrying two cans that were empty but could hold five gallon cans. When those cans were new they had held lard. All at once Belle started going faster and faster and the cans were banging together just as we were got rid of the cans realized that the cans banging together were scaring that horse. When I entering the trees I she quit running, We did not stay at the Bailey place long our next move was to the Grayson place where there was a house with a roof. As a matter of fact there were two houses. One had a front porch a kitchen and a cellar. There was another room besides the kitchen the way in to the cellar was behind a door in the second room. The other house was about a hundred feet away and had three bedrooms and a large living room with a fireplace. The Grayson place was near a large hill that after we moved to Vancouver we learned had a name. The name is Paiute Butte. The soil had a lot of clay in it so when it rained the mud would build up on a persons foot wear for two or three inches all around. There was a corral and people coming in from the road had to come in through a gate. This gate was about a quarter of a mile from the house and could not be seen from the house. But we could hear the gate squeaking as it was opened and then squeaking again a short time later after the people had driven through and were closing it. There had been a barn at the Grayson place but the lady who lived there before we did felt sorry for the cold chickens and while trying to keep them warm one night she burned the barn down. There was a supply of old Time magazines at the Grayson place that were full of stories about lynchings and other unspeakable acts. There was one story about a Negro in a house that the people set on fire. They were going to wait until after the fire and go in and get parts of the black mans body for souvenirs. The article said they would

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wintertime.. . He signed a contract with Daddy that Daddy was to come to Post City three days a week and take the mail and deliver it on the way up to the post office at Summit Point. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor we did not know anything about it until the next day Monday afternoon. The batteries for our battery radio had run down and the radio was not working. I think it was Mr and Mrs. Grayson who came by in their car and told us. A few weeks later we received a letter that Vern had written that morning before the Japanese had attacked. He was stationed at Ford Island at the time. He did not mention anything about the attack so I assume he mailed it very early in the morning before they even started censoring. It was not long before the mail route was my job on Mondays. Wednesdays and Fridays I would saddle up and put a pack saddle on a packhorse and head out for Post City. Each mailbox had a little cloth bag with their mail in it. I would pick this mail and take it to Post City. I would take any mail for the people on the route and put in their mailboxes. On some mornings it was very hard on the horse I , was riding,for example,in one stretch.there was water on the road about twenty inches deep that had frozen almost solid. This frozen mess went from fence to fence and we could not go around it. This ice was not strong enough to support the weight of the horse but frozen hard enough to prevent the horse from walking through. For every step the horse would have to pull each of its legs up through the frozen muck. I would dismount to make the going a little easier for the horse. The next morning I would saddle up again and head for the Summit Point post office delivering and picking up mail as I went. For the most part it was routine I usually took a pack- horse just in case one was needed. think that I The post office at Summit Point was located in some bodies house, I think the lady in the house was
the postmaster. Sometimes coming back from Summit Point I would find a five- gallon can of cream to go out. I would have to find a rock or piece of wood that weighed as much as the can of cream so the load on the packhorse would be balanced. That year I even learned to tie the "diamond hitch" but I could not do it a year later. This is a way of securing the panyars to the packsaddle so the pack animal cannot dislodge its load. That is why you see pack animals running free with out halters or lines to make them stay close. Sometimes it would be ten o'clock at night before I got home but my mother used to bake wonderful bread. And I would think about that bread when I was out in the cold. I was in the saddle about sixty hours a week With snow on the ground and a Ml moon some nights it would be easy to see because it was so light. Sometimes with the clouds moving in the sky it would seem like the clouds were still and the moon was moving. The same almost hypnotic feeling that I used to get watching a small stream and feeling the water was motionless but I was floating in space. On Sunday evening I would take Junior down to where he was staying to go to school. Then I would

be looking for bits of bone. The house that had the kitchen included a large front porch where we kept a cream separator. When the milk was brought in from the corral it was poured into this separator. The cream part that contained butterfat went into one container the rest went into a different container. That fall arrangements were made for Earl to stay with Claron and Sue Bailey while he went to school in Moab. Arrangements were made for Junior to stay with the Redshaws during the school week and come home for the weekends. They could not make arrangements for me so I missed a year of school. When the snows were about due our mailman, June Pehrson, .decided that he did not want to be driving to Summit Point. . The roads other than the federal and state highways were not maintained in the

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go down Fridays to bring him home. One clear cold day I got there early. And was waiting in the house when one man was talking and he said. "It's really not cold, it just feels that way." It had snowed the day before and a strong wind was blowing across all that cold snow. The wind had twentyfive miles of snow to be blown over. The weather people were saying that it was warmer when the felt colder when I knew that I was out in the wind. The wind chill factor was wind was blowing. However I never mentioned. felt then and still feel that when it feels cold it is cold. The fact that I I had one fingered mittens was a big help That fall a brother of June Pehrson and a friend wanted to stay at our place while they went deer hunting. . We let them stay in one of the bedrooms also furnished them with wood and I think they used two of our horses. They were in Monticello where there was a small package for us. They brought it out but wanted the fiftyeight cents postage due that they had paid before they gave my dad the package. . Ever June Pehrson said they were a pair of chintzy cheapskates It was a big "thrill" when the snow in my overshoes would melt and then freeze again causing sores avoid all kinds of "fun" that involves playing in the snow on the back of my legs. I Before we moved away from the mesa we had acquired a team of buckskin horses, One mare and one gelding. They were very well trained. If you wanted to back a wagon into a spot all you had to do was say "back" and they would back straight back. On one nice morning I was going from the Grayson place to some other place driving them and feeling very good. I was standing up and started to sing "Oh What a Beautiful Morning. " when the horses said "Whoa" and stopped and almost threw me out of the wagon. heard "Oh" they thought I The year I missed school we cut down a lot of cedar trees for fence posts. When we had enough for a wagonload we would load up and head for the highway. There was a man named Pat who owned a little store where we made the interchange of the mail. He had an area where we could store the fence posts that is where the name Post City came from. Pat was a fine man of slight stature but he did have a face that looked like the face of a primate. He married to one of the Finch girls. There was a Norine Finch who I have not heard one word about since was high school and her brother Emil who after his basic training in the army was sent to southern Europe and do not know if they ever found him or not. The last I heard he was missing in action. dropped out of sight I We used to spend a lot of time looking for surveyors' markers so we would know whose land we were on. The eighth day of September 1942, was the day I started school in Monticello the first teacher I met was Zenos Black. The first thing he did was to have us pass a piece of paper and write down our names. When I wrote down Bob Church it worked great because none of the people had known me as Robert Church. The first class I had under was called General Science. My seat assignment was in the front row and he stood directly in front of me. He spoke in a slow clear voice and not paying attention was not an option. Every Friday we would have a test of twenty questions, it was not too hard to go through the chapter and pick out twenty things that might be in the test. When school started on about the third or fourth day of school most of the student body was gone. The only people in class were the newcomers to Monticello, it seems they had their own tradition. It was called "Sneak Day" On a day selected by them the freshman class would "sneak" away and go hide. When the upper class people found out about this they would go looking for them. How hard they looked for the freshmen or if they even cared I have no idea. The high school had a big scrap drive, the school was in two teams and brought all the scrap metal they could find to the school yard. The school at Monticello was a big change from Moab. It was a lot smaller and ran on a smaller

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budget, Moab was in Grand County and Monticello was in San Juan County. The Denver and Rio Grande Railroad ran through part of Grand County. The taxes from the railroad paid for Moab schooling. Monticello only offered one mathematics class a year. One year it would be Algebra and the other year Plane Geometry. Earl needed the one math class to graduate from high school. He was admitted to the was ready. class, I was not because the class was full by the time I When it was time for the first report cards Mr Black who was also the principal in addition to being the science teacher.the math teacher and coach was talking at an assembly and said the grades would not be very good. There would only be one "A" in the school. sat in the front row and he stood in front of my desk. I That good mark was mine because of where I had to pay attention to what he was saying. During the Christmas holidays he was offered the job of County Superintendent of schools and took it. His place was taken by two people, one of them the man who had been in charge of the schools Lloyd of his daughters. Alene Hansen Jones a woman who had majored as a dietician in college and would one and have loved to spend the rest of the school year just teaching about that. While he was teaching the science class Mr.Black had established a policy that if you had an average of ninety or more on the weekly tests you did not have to take the term tests One morning as we were leaving for school a severe snowstorm came up that made it difficult to see. My glasses fogged up and then froze. We finally made it to school but we were a few minutes late I went to should have started earlier. see Mr. Black for a tardy excuse and was denied. He said I The woman that replaced him was named Alene Jones she kept the. same policy. At the end of one thought it would be rounded out to the next whole number 90 and I term my average had fallen to 89.6 and I would be automatically excused, Mrs.Jones did not quite see it that way and was going to make me take the
test.

However she had already excused one of her pets Geraldine Redd who had an average of 89.5. told her I Mrs.Jones said she did not have to excuse me from the test, I knew that but if she was going to be fair that if she excused Geraldine Redd she had to excuse me. After a five-minute discussion she said I would not have to take the test The most important thing that happened during my sophomore year was when I signed up to take shorthand. I could read it easily. One of the girls in the class was a never could write it but for a while I have ever seen. She is one of the nicest people senior Margaret Robson who had the most beautiful red hair I value her friendship to this day. have ever met and I I When they started talking about people who had real class they had Margaret in mind. Margaret married Ted Bronson in 1946 after Ted returned to Monticello after serving in the C.B.s. For the younger people the "Cee Bees" were construction battalions that built airfields and harbors and highways on the islands in the Pacific. They were a very important part of the navy. Margaret has a good friend a lady who was known as Anna Laura Hyde in high school,she married a man named Ted Broderick after high school. She was two years behind me in school but she was always very nice. I made a trip back to Monticello in 1962 that I will talk about later. I was in the home of Ted and Margaret when Margaret told me Annie was working in a doctor's office half a block away. I went over and the office was foil and we could not talk but Annie had become an unbelievably beautiful woman. For my junior year in high school they did not have anybody to coach or act as principal so they hired Tom Jones who ran a service station across the street from the school. We pretty much ran all over him. In my second year at Monticello I signed up for plane geometry they said a student should have algebra first but it was no problem for me. In the fall of 1943 Vern came to Monticello on leave from the navy his ship the U.S.S. Enterprise was
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went to undergoing repairs at Bremerton Washington. The Enterprize had been involved in a lot of battles. I Denver with him to visit Dorsey and Marianne and Aunt Alice and to have my eyes examined. She knew an eye doctor who had "different" ideas. He gave me a supply of pills about the size of quarters that had a could not see the screen went to the movies I certain amount of strychnine in them. The next spring when I clearly with my glasses on but did fine with my glasses off. Just for the record coffee with sugar tasted the same to me as those strychnine pills. was kept out of school for a couple of days to help with a road grading job Daddy had At times I drove the horses. Sometimes it would be four horses so for a contracted for. He ran the grader blade while I could drive a span of four horses. while I If we had a heavy load to go down hill we would hook a team to the back of the wagon and use them to act as brakes. Dorsey and Marianne were living at Longmont Colorado at the time. Sis had to stop at some store had forgotten Dorseys last name and could not tell him my and some man asked me "Who is that woman?". I sisters name. saw two movies that made deep impressions on me. The first was named "The Sky's On this trip I The Limit" starring Fred Astaire who played the role of a Flying Tiger pilot back from the war. That was rather ridiculous but it did have two songs by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer. The two songs were "My still like and admire their artistic work Shining Hour" and "One For My Baby". I And I still like Fred Astaire. . The other movie was "Stormy Weather" the headliner was Bill Robinson the dancer, but to me the did not know a black person could be that beautiful, and the other stars were Lena Home who until then I ever saw in had never seen anything like him. He was the first black man I liked was Fats Waller. I person I having intelligence all. at sign of any show to allowed that was a movie ever saw that portrayed them as anything but superstitious It was the first movie about black people I idiots. Harold Arlen wrote the title song for this movie also "Stormy Weather" . got on the train and then found out there were not any seats and the air we were At going home time I breathing was awful. Some of us went to stand between the cars in the blinders to get some air. After this we could not stand going back to the regular car. changed trains and had a seat to stood up from Denver to Grand Junction Colorado where I I Monticello. bus back a to caught I where Utah Thompson had my first experience with "deja vu" . It was strange things that were While living in Monticello I to seemed be happening again just like the song says. But there was this eerie happening for the first time knew what he was going to say feeling about it. It happened once in Coos Bay. Somebody was talking and I before he said it Earl joined the navy right after high school in 1943 he had his basic training in Idaho then was sent to somewhere in the Pacific. When we moved closer to town so we could go to school in Monticello the house was another disaster. Mom had put some ashes out one day that were too hot and we had a very difficult time putting the worked at Coos Bay as I fire out. The snapping sound of the flames made a deep impression on me. When I would walk by a service station and the pennants would start flapping in the wind they would sound just like those flames would startle me. In 1943 Daddy got a job working in the vanadium mill that made us eligible for company housing. think there was water for the kitchen but So we moved into a house that had two rooms with electric lights. I we still had to use an outside toilet. I was lucky enough to be able to listen to the radio and have control over what station to listen to. My choice was KRLD in Dallas Texas that played a lot of swing music. was a junior brought some reading material. It was the first lewd One of students in the year I had ever seen in print. I had seen the words written on walls and heard the stories. pornographic material I

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found a magazine with almost the same retired on a slow Saturday afternoon. I Forty years later just before I had read forty years earlier. The people who write this stuff run out of ideas very quickly. stories in it as I The part of the state we lived in was sparsely populated so it was used to train bomber pilots for low level training. Sometimes we would be out and the planes seemed like they were only fifteen or twenty feet over our head. During Earls last year in school he took a class in speech. The speech class put on plays and Earl usually had the lead role. He also played alto-saxophone in the high school dance-band. There was a short play that let him use both talents. It was something about a hotel catching on fire and one of the characters was determined that the fire department knew a very important person was saying there was a fire. Later on Earl picked up his sax and started playing "I Don't Want To Start The World On Fire". Twenty-two miles south of Monticello is the city of Blanding, Utah Most of the people who lived there were Mormon with the exception of the hispanic who were Catholic. The political power was with the Mormons. They did not have a movie theater but showed movies in the recreation room at the Mormon Church. This kept the Catholics from seeing any movies in Blanding. The Catholic religion at that time forbid them from entering a house of worship that was not theirs. Selling beer in Blanding was a big no no. But they could drive to Monticello and buy it. Then they could drink it and toss the empties out the window on the way back to Blanding, There is another story sbout Blanding telling how at one time the name of the town was Grayson. . Then a man named Blanding became a citizen and found out that he had a short time to live. He did not have any children but told the town leaders that if they would change the name of the town from Grayson to Blanding. He would leave money in his will to build a library or something like that. When he died there was no estate to fund the library. It was assumed the town leaders were too red faced to change the name back. did not know was a senior told me that I A bright young man Harold Allen a freshman when I anything because I was not a Mormon. read a lot The book "Of Human Bondage" by Somerset Maugham made a big impression on me so I of his books. Decades later when he died it was revealed that he had been a practicing homosexual for years. He was still a good writer. Another book that impressed me was "Native Son" by Richard Wright a black writer who wrote with a lot of power and emotion. was reading the stories by Will James. He wrote wish I knew if it was Moab or Monticello that I I is book he known for is "Smokey The Horse". I The never most about Montana. about the west mostly knew if there was a real Will James or if that was a pen name. One street in Monticello had a wooden sidewalk. While we were living there they were replacing the wood water mains with iron water mains. The elevation at Monticello was seven thousand feet the "Blue Mountains were east of town. The weather became very cold very often. When we moved into the company house there was a steep grade to inhaled some freezing air in my lungs was running down this grade when I walk to school. One afternoon I should not run when it is very cold. that taught me that I had a major problem with cold sores that would cause big ugly scabs to All through my younger life I tried a lot of remedies none of them worked very long. My body chemistry appear all over my upper lip. I quit having them. must have changed because I They had a party telephone line on the mesa. The Titus family and the Stocks family had a phone but we did not. talked on the phone. My junior year in high school we were hiring a was seventeen the first time I I dance band for our prom. It was my job to call the band director at Moab and offer the job to his band. The band was composed of people going to school in Moab. Marjorie Lou Christensen and Dorothy Stout had been classmates of mine in Moab were in the band. Sally Taylor who had been a year behind me was also in
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had when she was in junior high. liked Sally a lot better as a high school girl than I the band. I talked to Marjorie a year or so later at even talked. I I don't think Marjorie Lou and Dorothy and I Thompson Utah we were both catching a train. She was on her way to college. Later she taught school for a few years. The last time we talked her husband was working in a grocery store and she was staying home think we did talk about her being a mother raising her children. .1 do not remember how many she had but I .it was a nice conversation. Ronnie Kerby came down with the band she did not play but acted like she was glad to see me. heard her grandmother Stella telling Ernie that the two of them should get My first time in Moab I and she was a damn fine person. nice he a person was along because In the eighth grade Bonnie had the habit of saying "bust" when she meant burst. Mr. Hadlock handed her a dictionary and told her to look up the word bust. She looked up the word and said "I never said that. " She was told that she had and watched her choice of words after that. went to Salt Lake job seeking. They sent me out to the Clearfield Naval In the summer of 1944 I Supply depot. They hired me and arranged for me to stay at the Ogden arsenal. When the bus arrived at the was told to walk to a certain building. I went to gate all the new comers had to get off. A few minutes later I the wrong building and walked into a barracks full of Italian prisoners of war. One of them was able to tell should have gone. me where I They used to let the prisoners go into down town Ogden, they would send one American soldier with about ten Italian P.O.W.s. One afternoon there was a tall red headed man who had been a captain in their army. caught the Bamberger.a 1944 version of light While working at Clearfield my draft letter arrived. I rail, down to Salt Lake and met the others from Monticello. They put us in a truck and took us out to Fort Douglas. They gave us little cloth bags for our valuables and told to take all our clothes off. The clothes guess. Then there was a lot of hurry hurry hurry. One officer drew blood from my were hung on a hook I was sitting there for. did not know he was through when he asked what I arm. I When they looked in my right ear they found a build up of earwax that took a long time to get out. was rejected and sent me back to get dressed They checked my heart and a short time later told me I and I went back to Salt Lake then back to work. She was not supposed to tell me but that fall Claudia Young, who was working in the selective service had a heart murmur office in Monticello told me I was separated from most of the others in my group When I was going through the draft process I was paired with an Indian young man who was very scared. When they because I was still in high school I machine he was trembling he was so scared. X-Ray had him stand in front of the They found a build up of earwax in my right ear and removed that. It took them about forty-five minutes and was very difficult. They also checked my heart somewhere in the process and someplace else had failed the physical and was free to get dressed and leave. somebody told me that I was full of vim and vigor. returned to Monticello where I When it was school time I There was a new lady Lucy Lewis at the soda fountain who was very nice. She was six years older was a person. was and we never dated but she at least acted like I than I settled The principal thought I was a disruptive force and wasn't sure he wanted me in school but I down and we got along fine There was a dance almost every Friday at school not being a dancer there was no point in me going. I stayed home and listened to the great music on KRLD out of Dallas Texas. They played the music of Bob was in Crosby,Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Lil Greene, Pinetop Smith and the King Cole Trio I

heaven. The cartoons of the day played a lot of jazz on their soundtracks. At some movie they were showing a newsreel and had just finished the sports showing people doing the "high-jump". They were showing the arts and were showing some ballet dancers. Those dancers were going as high in the air as the people doing know nothing about ballet but do the high jumps and they were doing it from a standing start. To this day I
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admire and respect what ballet dancers do. used to see movies about people out in the desert with very little water and they would be suffering. I I wondered why the cameraman taking the pictures did not give them a drink. . Mr. Jensen was speaking out even then about the injustices that were being done to JapaneseAmericans. Mr. Jensen was our high school principal my senior year, Just a week or so before school was out in 1945 there was a pickup with a canopy parked across the street. First we noticed it was full of Japanese children then we noticed there was a padlock on the rear door. guess they thought Japanese children were a threat to the national security. I On a different day a teacher Lucy Wood heard some Mexican kids talking in their native language. She scolded them and told them to speak English while on the school grounds. did not have much to lose and I did not lose much because I We played poker quite a bit after school I did not win either. was not a very good poker player and have not played poker since. Later in did learn that I But I gambled a lot besides playing poker and was broke all the time and he died who man Vancouver we knew a broke thinking he was a good poker player. Monticello did not have its own doctor but shared one with Blanding. My tonsils needed to come out had it done under a local. They had me sit in a metal so it was agreed to do the operation in his office. I chair and Dr. Bayless sat down in front of me. They "froze" the area then put a small wire loop around the tonsils then they then snipped whatever was attaching the tonsils to the body The operation took about forty -five minutes. When it was finished they had me lay down for about an hour was fine. or so. A neighbor lady drove me home and I Junior was not so lucky, he had his tonsils out about three weeks later. They gave him ether and he was out for quite a while. A few days later he was up and chasing some sheep for some reason the scab over his tonsillectomy had not healed and broke loose. Junior started bleeding profusely and swallowing the blood his stomach was rejecting the blood and he was vomiting the blood. There was not a doctor in Monticello at that time the nearest doctor was in Blanding twenty-two miles away. The doctor was reached and he drove up from Blanding. He forced a string through Junior's nostril and put a pad on it and then pulled the string back out of his mouth. This stopped the bleeding after he had lost a couple of pints of blood. got a job at the local vanadium mill. People told me that recovered from my operation I When I vanadium was used to harden steel. A major by product was uranium oxide. After different processes the oxide would arrive at a certain point in liquid form. The oxide would be pumped into a form called the press. The press consisted of forms about four feet square and about thirty feet in length. Air would be forced through this in turn would force the water out. The oxide that was left would then have to be scraped off of the sides down onto a metal floor. Later it would be shoveled into a truck. Uranium oxide was yellow, the color of sulphur, very heavy and very slick, was shoveling The shovel handles would get very slick but the oxide would want to adhere to the shovel. I this oxide when the whistles blew announcing that Japan had agreed to surrender. was walking by the entrance to the mill when a whistle blew the radio had just On May 8 1945 I announced that Germany had surrendered. A few months before school was out two men Jim Westphal and Lee Brady came with Daddy to the northwest with plans to move to the area. Jim Westphal moved to Medford and we came to Vancouver. Lee Brady had a heart attack and died before he could make the move. just carried water never had to "stick" the hog and kill it I I used to be drafted to help butcher hogs. I and scraped hair. "Stick" is a term for finding the main artery located in the throat of a pig and piercing it with a sharp knife so the pig will bleed to death. Lee Brady was not a Mormon. He told us that when his family first moved to the Monticello area the Mormons did not want them there.
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They drove some cattle through his crops one night and when they came back the second night he fired his rifle in their direction. They never came back. When it was time to dismiss the school at noon the teacher would look at the clock on the wall in the room that general science was taught in. Sometimes on nice days when the teacher was out of the room the clock would be adjusted so we could get out early. My final test in high school was in a class called American Problems. The test had been mimeographed and called for answers of one word. We were told to wait for a signal and then we could was done and my high school days were done. start. Fifteen seconds after the signal was given I I spent the summer working in a mill then headed for the northwest. My parents had already moved or were moving. The first summer in Monticello Earl found work and was gone most of the time. He worked think he worked in a mine some. . someplace in Colorado I My best friend in Monticello was Bill McGough we kept in touch for six years or so after high school then must have lost each other's addresses. . The population of Monticello when we moved there was between six hundred and seven hundred don't think they even counted the Indian population. Later when the white people people. At that time I learned that the useless land they had forced the Indians to live on contained valuable minerals and oil they were treated better. To be fair the attitude of the entire United States in racial and culture matters has changed since my high school days. When we were ready to leave Monticello we still had a few horses left we just turned them loose so anybody that wanted them could have them. They may of had some value but the people knew we were moving away and did not have to offer us anything. When we were in the Dove Creek area Daddy borrowed some money from the government to buy The loan was repaid after we moved to Vancouver. Bill McGough my high school friend joined the navy right after high school and was stationed in Tacoma Washington. He married early and fathered twins, their marriage was a very short marriage. The way Bill told the story he was "slapping" her around one night when she told him how many of his friends heard his mother was raising she had had affairs with. Strange as it sounds he got custody and the last I them. Bill's brother Russell called us from Portland he had just been drafted and was passing through but somebody called and he had to go eat. The next thing we heard about Russell he had died in Oklahoma have no idea where she is. where he was living. Their sister Dorothy went through nurses training and I

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Post Script to Monticello

This concerns a secret that I attending school in Monticello. have kept since the fall of 1942 when I We were living in a house, owned by Frank Halls, east of Monticello. We had a magazine named "Flying" that had been checked out of the library. While I was looking at this magazine a letter fell out. This letter was written by hand covering one full page. In the letter the writer told of his feeling of horror seeing his cousin and best friend laying on the floor dead knowing he had just killed him in a fit of rage with a piece of stove wood. The letter was signed with a did not know Earl read the letter also we had no way of knowing if the letter was true or not. name I The act of reading the mail of other peoples is something I should not have been done but I was a knew at all times who the letter writer was. The person never thought I voracious reader at the time. I showed any signs of violence and there was not any way of asking if he had killed his cousin and best friend. He went to high for two years at the same time I did but we did not have any classes together. I never thought of him as a murdered just as somebody going to high school at the same time I was. For two years in a row the Thanksgiving holidays turned into very sad occasions at Monticello High think it was in 1943 that several students got into a car driven by E.J. Bartel and headed for Dove School. I Creek Colorado. I have no way of knowing if it was snowing when they left but when they were close to Dove Creek they ran into the corner of a flatbed truck that was parked on the edge of the road. The person driving the truck had motor trouble and parked it. I have no way of knowing if there flares out or not. Anyway E.J. Bartel did not see it and hit one corner of it. A lot of people were hurt, a sophomore boy Dick Bustos was killed instantly, another sophomore a girl named Donna Harrel lived a few minutes but was dead before help had arrived. The funeral for Donna Harrell was held in the high school gym. It was very sad walking by her casket. Memories of her being in study hall a few days earlier were very strong. Donna was a pretty blonde who had a younger sister that looked a lot like her. Donna was the first person I ever saw in a coffin. Dick Bustos, and I am not sure of the spelling of his last name had lived out in the east part of the county so his funeral was held out there. Some students from Monticello were trying to find the location of the funeral. They stopped a car going the opposite way and asked for directions. He told them to turn around and follow him and he would take them there, but by the time they found a safe place to turn around he had left and was out of sight. The news on the radio said that Phyliss Gray had died from her injuries but she had not. She did have a nasty gash under one eye that left an ugly scar if it was not removed. The following year the high school principal and teacher Lloyd Hansen had left town to go deer hunting. When his horse came back without him a search was started. It did not take long to find his body. Lloyd Hansen had been superintdent of San Juan County schools for a long before he traded jobs with Zenos Black. When I wrote about Bug Point I had forgotten about him coming to our school showing us some wooden fans some students in some other school had made.

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ARRIVING IN VANCOUVER
On the train from Salt Lake to Portland one man was talking about being in the war in Italy. He mentioned swimming the Arno River and said he had only had to point his pistol at men under his command once. These men had not wanted to do what he had ordered. Somebody asked him if he was from West Point. He said no, that he had been commissioned an officer on the battlefield. It was meatless Tuesday the morning I suppose they had them in Monticello arrived in Portland. I did. but eating breakfast out in Monticello was not a thing I arrived in Monticello. At the employment Hunting for a job was tops on my thing to do when I could do. If they had asked about all the fiction I had read or what I agency they asked me what I had would have been fine, There was nothing that I learned in high school I had learned in high school that was marketable. The first job in Vancouver was as a stock boy in the Post-Exchange at a place named Camp Hathaway. Camp Hathaway was located on the Vancouver Barracks grounds. I hope nobody ever asks could not tell anybody where it was. exactly where because I My job was to keep the shelves stocked and act as a janitor. Camp Hathaway at that time was as a debarkation point where the men in the army coming back from overseas would be processed .in preparation for return to civilian life. It was also an embarkation point where the men going overseas would make their last stop before getting on troop ships and sail for their appointed posts. Some of the people coming through the debarkation port had been through a lot of combat and had seen some horrible things. They had been in invasions and saw a lot of their comrades killed. One soldier told me that they used to be off shore and watch the naval bombardment and think that nobody would be left alive to offer opposition when they landed. But he said that when they went in the enemy would be there. The troops were remarkably well behaved considering what they had been through. Across the road and down about a hundred and fifty feet from the Post Exchange store where I worked there was a canteen where they sold beer. One forenoon one of the men wanted a beer he had the money so that was no problem. The time was about eleven thirty and the man running the canteen did not want to open until noon. The soldier did not want to wait twenty minutes for his beer so after a few minutes walked behind the bar and drew his brew. This made the man running the canteen mad so he called the military police. They came but no thought this man had been overseas for years and to make him wait a few more minutes action was taken. I for his beer was uncalled for. They processed about eighty five thousand people in a very few months and that was the closest there was to trouble at Camp Hathaway in that period of time. It was interesting to watch the difference in the troops going overseas and the troops coming back acted. The people going overseas the officers would be in one group and the enlisted people in a different group. The people coming back from overseas would be together in one big group. That job only lasted a few months. Dad got a job at the aluminum plant and the housing people found an apartment for us. There was not a refrigerator so we used blocks of ice. When the iceman walked in it was a man from Moab by the name of Gus Hurst. He had married Maxine Steele a girl from Moab.All the apartments looked the same the stove and the ice box was in the same place in every unit. One night when Earl was with us for a few days after his discharge from the navy he had walked into the wrong one and sat there for five or ten minutes before he realized he was in the wrong unit. A short time later Daddy was gone for a few days and when he came back there were some angry

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words between Dad and Mom. Dad came into the apartment with the idea of moving to Wenatchee Washington. By this Mom had enough moving and said no and that she was going to file for divorce. Daddy told her she would not be able to support the kids. By this time Frank Jr. was the only minor. Mom told him that if the sheriff got after him he would have to have to pay support for his family. Things did calm down a few minutes after this. argument and nothing else was ever said. Mom did start handling what little money we had. was in bed and they both of them thought I I was asleep. know what I This dispute has never been mentioned to anybody but I heard. The next major event was the Vanport Flood in 1948 we had to move on very short notice a woman I had met in 1947 Pat Turner came down in her Volkswagen bug and hauled us up to our new apartment on McLoughlin Heights. I met Pat Turner and Darlene Haines Lumsden both at Kimms Business college, Darlene and I still exchange Christmas cards. Pat Turner has long since gone out of my life. I sent her a birthday card in 1952 and told her that if she wanted to write that was fine but if not that she had my best wishes. The card never came back so I assumed she got it. We lived in so many different apartments and one house in Fruit Valley that I have lost track of what happened where. In one apartment our coal supply was not lasting long. In the building there was four units, two up and two down. We had one of the downstairs units. The people living across the hall told us that the people living above were stealing our coal. The people living above us told us that the people across the hall from us were stealing coal. They were both correct they were both stealing our coal. We had noticed they never seemed to buy coal. We bought a padlock and they started buying coal. Another tenant who was living across the hall from us in one of the apartment buildings had the annoying habit of borrowing things off of our table while we eating. Still another woman Mrs. Calvin lived in one of the units in the building as we did. When we moved to a house on the heights she kept coming. She was still coming around after I went to work for Southern Pacific. She would show up with her two children talk for a very few minutes and then have some place she told Mom that Mrs. Calvin was just using her as a free baby sitter. had to go. She would leave her children. I The next time Mrs. Calvin arrived with her kids Mom told her she didn't feel like watching the kids that day. Mrs. Calvin never did come back. The next source of employment was the California Packing Company at the time they owned the Del Monte label. The people working in the cannery in Vancouver canned cherries,plums pears. My job was helping on the "box pile" this would involve stacking boxes coming out of the plant on a did this one canning season. conveyor belt on the box pile. Boxes would come out by the hundreds, I think I The next season they gave me a job in the warehouse where I stacked canned fruit. Another year two of us trucked boxes of pears to the women running the peeling machines. The boxes of pears would be stacked five high and we would have to almost run to keep up. I had to keep a supply of pears for either fifteen or eighteen women peeling pears. The times when I worked in the warehouse and trucked pears to the peelers were mixed there are no exact dates. We had a union and when work was slow we were supposed to be called in seniority order. I was at work and saw a man with less seniority had been called before me. I called the union about it and that put me on the bad side of management. There were three men talking to me, one I had thought of as almost a felt sold down the river, the second was a wise-acre that I did not like anyway. The third was the friend and I had a better future than working in a cannery during the season. Both of the plant manager who said that I gave up on Del Monte then but was able to get a job with two men mentioned first had been my foreman. . I the Southern Pacific later. This was in 1951. About three or four years later word got to me that the" wise" guy had been fired. It was a special

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feeling when I passed him on the street in Portland. He was out of work and I had a good job and we both knew the others situation and we both knew that the other knew. I never felt so smug and nasty in my life. In 1947 I became old enough to vote. My first time to vote was in 1948. . Thomas Dewey came through Vancouver on a train. Three or four of us took positions away from the depot and as the train passed we followed the tracks and got up close when he came out to speak. I do not remember one word he said. I was looking at his teeth they looked like he had never seen a dentist in his life. The only term that comes to mind is dingy. When I was in Salt Lake City and later when I would go by restaurants with a sign was in Portland I in the window saying that colored trade was neither solicited or wanted. I did not even was so naive that I know what they were saying. One place in Portland that had the sign was at the corner of Broadway and Salmon streets. This was very close to the Broadway Theater and also very close to Amatos night club The spell checker for this computer program does not recognize the word lynchings . They want the word lynches used of the word lynching. That way they can pretend it only happened once. . The Broadway Theater was the locale for the premier of the movie "Canyon Passage". There was a big crowd out front in the afternoon. We were entertained by an actress Peggy Ann Garner and by some others. That night those of us inside saw the actress Joan Bennett, the comic Lou Costello and the songwriter Hoagy Carmichael. The husband of Susan Hayward was there also but she had stayed home taking care of their new twin boys. It was mentioned in the paper a few days later how Peggy Ann Garner had complained bitterly about having to "entertain" all those people. It was not a good career move on her part as far as I know she never made another movie. The movie was average but it did have one song that was number one for a while. The name of the song was "Old Buttermilk Sky."

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GETTING A JOB 1951 had a telephone installed in our house on the heights that we were renting from the housing In 1950 I authority. That turned out to be last place we rented. After I was hired by the Southern Pacific Railroad. Dad and Mom started working with some real estate people trying to buy a house. It took about three years before they found a place they could afford. knew said the railroad might be looking for clerks. Another friend Ed In the fall of 1951 a man I had my physical Staley from a business college drove me to Union Station in Portland and waited while I had a job. Then he gave me a ride home. and different interviews and when the day was over I The next night I was on the train to Eugene and then the railcar I was in was put on a train to Coos did and was Bay. We arrived at six in the morning and the people on duty told me to come back at eight. I had a job. sent to help in the warehouse. For the thirty-five years that followed I The conductor on the train out from Eugene had been working for the railroad for forty-five years. I hired out. thought that was a long time but it has been forty five years since I My first job with the railroad was in the warehouse and I pushed a hand truck just like I had at the did not have to work that hard. was used to going at top speed but was told that I cannery. I rode with people up the coast to Portland but it would be at night. I Coos Bay is on the coast and I saw the ocean. made that trip three times and lived at Coos Bay about four months before I The next August the billing clerk had been drafted and his job was coming up for bid. I thought that I clerk to going bid and said The and the chief on was me not want it it. I could do on that job. They agent did had just hired a high school friend of the chief clerk and they wanted him to have the job. The agent told me had the chance to tell the man who had hired me this that he was going to disqualify me the first chance. I and he said they had to give me a fair chance. It was a struggle but I made it. had completed my probation period and was a full union member. By this time I The agent was a strict old time railroad man who was very hard to please. Even after he had retired and died clerks would not bid on jobs at Coos Bay because of his reputation. After he retired we got along fine,. The probation period at that time was ninety days. Any time in that ninety days the agent for any reason could decide the new hire would not work out. He would call the Portland office and they would give permission to terminate. Several people came and went who were smarter than I was. It was my good fortune to have a job passed my probation time. that did not require much thinking while I The duties of the new job were to sign bills of lading, go to tariffs to determine how much the railroad would charge to haul the freight to its destination. We worked with small shipments that came through our warehouse and carload shipments. The small shipments were known as less than carload and moved at "class" rates. The carloads moved at

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"commodity" rates. The tariffs were like a price catalog to determine how much the railroad would charge involved going through the following procedures. The shipping order would show what was being shipped and where the shipper wanted it to go. Some shipments were too small to fill a boxcar they were called a"less than carload" shipment" . There were classification tariffs that were checked to before we knew what the class the shipment would move under. Then a different tariff would be checked to learn how much to charge to haul that shipment to that destination. These were known as class rate tariffs. The carload shipments would move under commodity rates and each commodity had its own tariff. For example plywood and lumber moved under one tariff, gasoline and oil would move under a different tariff as would grass seed, canned-goods and so forth. One company shipped a lot of ferns and other forest plants called "evergreens "(a highly perishable commodity) special refrigeration charges would also apply in addition to the freight charges. If the shipper wanted the car to stop for partial unloading or any other reason there was a charge for that each station had
56

its own stop charge. There also separate tariffs for each commodity for each section of the country. To make things harder the rate clerk had to go through all the increase tariffs to determine the correct final rate to assess so the correct freight charges could be collected.. This could involve checking two or three increase tariffs. At that time the transportation companies would submit to the Interstate-Commerce-Commissions the rates they were proposing to use. These rates could not be used until approval was received from t he "ICC". I was working in 1952 and most of the rates had been established before the war. After finding the basic charge the rate clerk had to go through all the increases tariffs to determine the correct rate to assess. Each tariff would show on the front cover when the rates would go into effect. If any changes were to be made they would be in the supplements to the tariffs. Sometimes before the rates became effective there would be twenty-five supplements out changing the different rates. After checking everything the rate clerk would then check the footnotes. Sometimes the footnotes would indicate the rate just checked did not apply in that case When the rate was checked and the rate clerk knew that this was the rate to use then the "route" had to be checked. The "route" meant the different railroads the shipper wanted his freight to move over. There were a lot of railroads and not all railroads had a physical connection with all the other railroads And certain railroad chose not to let certain rates apply over their railroad. Once a person becomes a rate clerk they develop a sense of self-confidence and feel they can learn almost anything. At that time the Southern Pacific interchanged traffic with the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad in New Mexico. The tariffs showed Santa Rosa as the junction but the "Equipment Register" showed the junction as Tucumacari it took me a while to learn that they were different names for the same place. Another publication in the office was called "The Official Railway Guide" the most important thing we had to remember about it was that it did not have any official standing. There was one tariff that used the playing card symbols for footnotes. These symbols would be either Spades ,Clubs ,Diamonds or Hearts. At the end of the day we had to prepare a report showing how many cars had been billed to each destination and how much revenue was involved and if the shipments had been prepaid or were moving on a collect basis. These daily reports of revenue were referred to as "abstracts, "the management in San Francisco insisted that they would be done on a timely basis. Until somebody decided that they could reduce the amount of people working if they did not do those abstracts so word went out that we did not have to do them anymore. . worked a lot of hours on my own time and corrected my own mistakes. It was difficult but I In the summer of 1953 my eyes were checked and I told the doctor that I felt my vision was too bad to drive. He said my vision was good enough to drive and if there was any question the authorities could ask him. Not too long after this I went to a used car lot and bought a six cylinder 1950 Ford. A man I worked received my learners permit and did a lot of practice driving before I with went to the car lot with me. I even tried to get my drivers' license. took my test there was trouble with my parking but the man passed me anyway and I When I got my drivers' license. Later he told me that whenever a high school boy took his first test they would not pass him. It didn't matter how well he had done. They just wanted to take him down a peg. In the fall of 1954 the clerk who had been drafted was coming back to take his job and so Iwould be out of a job. But things worked out fine. In the Medford Oregon area they grow a lot of pears and in the fall they ship a lot of pears. The railroad needed more people to handle the increased business. There was a vacancy for a revising clerk

57

position so I put in my bid and got the job. revising A clerk did the same work as a rate clerk except it paid more. The pear season lasted four months but before it ended Don Ryan called from Coos Bay and said that my old job was available. So on Christmas morning I had finished my work at Medford. I had a week of vacation coming to spend with my parents in Vancouver. After breakfast I headed north just as it had started to snow. I had never driven in snow and I did not have any chains or knew how to put them on if I did. Studded tires were something I had never heard about. drove at a steady gait and made it to Vancouver. I When I went to work back in Coos Bay there was a lot of unfinished work on my desk that it took me quite a while to get it done. It was a short time after moving back to Coos Bay that I received the letter from Sis telling me of her health problems. Don Ryan and I worked the afternoon shifts together and worked long hours. He was a big help to me. Don had joined the marines just after Pearl Harbor when he was fourteen and been in on the invasion of Guadalcanal when he was fifteen. After the Guadalcanal battle he was wounded on another island. Don had been on the North Bend Oregon police force before coming to work for the Southern Pacific. had lived in the northwest for six years before getting a job at Coos Bay and I I thought I had seen it rain as hard as it could. During the first year I lived in Coos Bay I realized I had not seen anything yet. If a person leaves their raincoat in their car they can get soaked to the skin if they have to walk more than forty feet. There is so much salt in the rain that a topcoat gets stiff from the rain. A collection would be made whenever somebody was retiring to buy them a farewell present. The man working as warehouse foremen would refuse to donate. When it was time for him to retire the people in the office decided to get even with him. On the last day he worked they sent word out to the warehouse asking him to come into the office. When he came into the office he was ready to argue. Then the Agent gave him a nice silver watch with some engraving on the back. The man working his last day almost came to tears when he received that watch

58

RAILROAD STORIES
To keep the railroad going there were telegraph operators working around the clock. They worked with the dispatcher and gave train orders to the conductors and engineers. The train orders are written instructions to the train crew usually handed to the conductor and the engine crew usually given to the engineer these instructions tell the crews what they will be doing. The orders will include information about other trains that might be working in the area. If the trains will be meeting some place the time and place of the meeting will be stated exactly. If one train crew is ordered to put their train into a siding to allow another train to pass they must obey or follow the train orders exactly as the train orders read. The people who work on train crews and also on switch crew must carry watches that are very accurate. The train orders must be typed with complete accuracy they also compare train orders to make sure both sets read the same. Somebody had a member of the family who was very ill and had to go home. This left two men to share 1 the work-load twenty four hours a day seven days a week. The one with the most seniority worked from six a.m. to six p.m. the other man worked the night shift. After two weeks the night man Clarence Maclntyre was feeling the stress and one night a switchman asked for a battery for his lantern. His lantern needed a six- volt battery, in those days these batteries came in cardboard boxes that were glued shut with the forerunner to super glue. Maclntyre was having trouble getting the box open and got a pair of scissors. The scissors promptly broke and Mac who was already mad and frustrated almost lost it. We had an area outside of the work area for the public it was about thirty inches by forty feet and on the end there was another twenty feet. When the scissors broke Mac picked up the box of batteries and threw it as far as he could, picked it up and threw it again and again and again and again. He must have thrown that box of batteries twenty five

times.
Not a one of the people in the office said a word because we were afraid he would have a complete breakdown. Don Ryan told me years later that Mac lived until he was ninety. Maybe it pays not to keep things bottled up inside. One morning a year or so later I was looking out the window an engine crew had just came on duty. I noticed that the fireman was pulling himself up by his arms and not using his leg at all and mentioned it to the telegraph operator. He told me that the fireman had an artificial leg that apparently had not been noticed when he took his physical when he was hired. . The last I heard this fireman Larry Phillips had been promoted to engineer. . He was in trouble with management because he was drinking too much. Before they quit running the passenger train between Coos Bay and Eugene one bank would transfer money via the post office department or railway express. The train included a car used as a post office. The bank would send the money to the depot under armed guard a policeman would get out of the car and stand there with a submachine gun. The money would be placed on a baggage cart taken inside and the door closed. The police would then leave, the door on the other side of the building would then be opened and the baggage cart rolled out to the train and the money loaded into the car. Sometimes people died in the Coos Bay area who had made their homes in other places and the funeral home would bring their bodies down to the depot to send home. We had to help put the caskets in the railroad cars. The most difficult time was when a bomber from Canada crashed a short distance from Powers Oregon and the bodies were brought to Coos Bay for shipment to their homes. Don Ryan told me that the Canadian Air Force had sent an investigative team to the area to recover bodies. The bodies were not intact an effort was made to make sure that the coffins did not have the parts from more than just one victim. Some of the legs and arms had been severed from the bodies. These officers had to call the victims' families and ask about scars and other identifying marks.
59

There were ten of them that I had to load into a boxcar they were in closed coffins but I still do not go to accident scenes and do not have any desire to see anything like that. The switchmen, brakemen, conductors who work out and around moving engines and railroad cars must work in a very dangerous and too often deadly work atmosphere. would have loved to hear more of. Somebody was talking to a There was one conversation that I retired doctor about some railroad derailment and said. "That was the time you had to amputate a mans leg never heard. under water. " The doctor said it was, how he did the operation I The railroad tracks were maintained by manual labor. These men worked as a group that were called " Extra gangs." The railroad would provide living quarters in railroad cars called outfit cars. One payday night one of the workers came into the depot and told me what happened. The cars were parked next to the water on the log dump spur and one of his co-workers had fallen in. The man in the office said he was about to jump into the water. When he said he said to himself "Man you've got your new suit on" so he said he just turned his flashlight on and told the man in the water he was okay. As far as I know the man got out all right. Railroad people have a language or slang or lingo of their own. "The switch crew had gone to beans so the herder had the hostler put the goat into the rips and opened the gate and let the pig in. " This means that the switch crew was eating and a switchman who worked by himself had a round house worker put the switch engine into the repair yard where it would be out of the way. Then a switch was moved and the tracks lined up so the" piggy-back" train that was just arriving could come into the train yard. Car inspectors as part of their duties are required to look at the undercarriages of railroad cars. They do this looking for anything that might cause trouble later. To see what they need to see they set low almost on their heels. Somebody someplace noticed this and said the car inspector looked like a toad. Since then they have bee known as car toads. Switchmen belong to the Switchmens union and wear a button with a big "S" they are known as "snakes". Locomotive engineers are known as Hogheads some of the large locomotives are known as hogs. Yard clerks are known as mud hops because they have to check and write down car numbers in all kinds of rainy weather. A telegraph operator that was having trouble with arthritis had started working with knitting needles to keep his hands as flexible as possible. In his younger days he had been a very good boxer but he was sixty-five and that was behind him. But when a brakeman who was about thirty challenged him, it took the older man about ten seconds to dispose of the loud mouth. There used to be a major lumber company that operated their own trains beyond Coos Bay. Their sole function was to haul logs. About dinner time one evening a motorist had driven by their train and noticed one of the rail cars was on fire. Just then the conductor of that train called in and wanted to talk to the operator about train orders. I told him his train was on fire. His response was "I'll take care of the God Damn fire just give me the operator. " When my job was coming to an end in Coos Bay and I knew Iwould be going to work in Eugene. There were news stories about a series of holdups in the area. One morning in Eugene at the change of shift the state police were there. One of the switchmen saw them and started running and reaching for his gun. He was killed in the gun battle. A Southern Pacific employee had been the bandit.. There was one clerk in Eugene who rushed around and acted like he was doing the work of three people. On his nights off his relief did the same work and spent one third of the night in the lunch-room. The first clerk would fall asleep with his eyes open. Another train clerk would come on duty at 7:30 in the morning I would go off duty at 7:55 in the morning. We were together three days a week only. We had our vacations at different times. But in the two never saw him do anything but clean and polish his glasses. was at Eugene I years I My work at Eugene was the same as it had been at Coos Bay except there was more of it and had tobe
60

WORKING AT THE RAMP

When I did not need to know anything about rates but had started working at the "piggy-back ramp I to learn about the inter-modal system. This included the special inter-modal rail-cars,I also had to know the different railroad tracks the different trailers and the paper work. We had to know the length and height of each car and the type of hitch or stanchion on it. We also had to know the different trailers that could be loaded on cars the different railcars. Some of the railcars would have to be switched to the rear of the cut of cars because they could not be "spotted" at the bumper. Also some cars would come in backwards and they needed a special switch. When I started working at the When I bid in the job at the Brooklyn Ramp in 1961 it was almost like starting in again. Then a long trailer was forty feet trailer was considered long but later forty five foot long trailers were being used. When drivers were backing a forty-five foot trailer into a dock next to a forty-foot trailer they would back in too far and cause damage. I mentioned to my supervisor that the length of the trailer should be stenciled on the front end. He agreed with my idea and called the main office in San Francisco. The trailers built after that had the length stenciled on the front end. The ramp had eight tracks for loading and unloading trailers from rail cars.. Four of the tracks had a ramp for cars of one height the other four tracks would be for unloading cars of a different height. The cars also had different kinds of "stanchions. " The higher cars had stanchions that had to be brought to a vertical position with an air gun the others had a device that could be pulled up with a "hook".that was part of the
tractor.

This information had to be learned quickly along with knowledge of the different kinds of trailers. To make things worse a man in France had developed a special kind of" piggy back" car. His name was Clejon there was a series of cars built to his plans. These cars were called "French Cars". The trailers that were to be loaded on these cars had a pair of wheels that were more like small rail wheels or castings about three feet apart. The railcars did not have a place for the tires but had a high center for the trailers and tractors to move on. .. It was his idea to have a large pair of bearings mounted on the rear axles of trailers then the bearings would line up on the high center of the car and the driver could back the trailer down the track. Some of the tractor trucks had these "Clejon" wheels. ..This has been described as well as I can after I completed it came to me that nobody will ever care. Somebody else had a "great" idea. Most of the trailers had landing gear that had to be lowered or raised with a crank. But there some trailers that had automatic landing systems,In order to haul these trailers a special clamping device was developed. They came in two parts and had to be used in pairs. So there was
four parts to a set. I never did know the official name but they were painted a bright yellow so they were called yellowjackets but more often daffodils All up and down the tracks different parts of this device were laying on the ground and we never knew how many we had available to use. The "daffodils and the "Clejon" cars did not last long. Before going home on my graveyard shift I would call the office in San Francisco and give them a report on everything. . I made it a point to report a precise number of the daffodils so they would think I had counted them. The clerk I was giving the report to knew what I was doing but did not care. My shift at the ramp was the graveyard shift and some of the duties were to call the head office in San Francisco with the daily reports. One lady working in the head office insisted that we call it San Francisco and would resent it if we referred to the city she was working in and lived in as "Frisco". Some other people from there would be in our office and refer to it as "The City" to take their pride down I would pretend I did not know what city they were talking about. My favorite person to talk to was a man named Charley Law This man Charley did not have a high opinion of his superiors. One night just as he was coming into the building some friends of his came by.

62

I
I

They had a few drinks together then Charley came on to work. He was flying high when it was time to take the report. As I gave him car and trailer numbers and the shippers name and the consignees name and the destinations he would interject a lot of "yippies h boys hurrahs and other remarks". I often wondered if the report was readable later. Charley was having a lot of back pains and missing a lot of work. He missed so much work that he was terminated. They thought he was faking his illness. The union got his job back for him and he went to a different doctor where they found he had cancer of the spine. Charley Law was dead in about two months After I worked at ramp for a few weeks one of the clerks who was supposed to be working Saturday called in sick so I was called to work his shift. There were two clerks working the day shift at the ramp the other clerk had more seniority and the higher pay but I knew from the start that if things were going to be done right it was up to me to do them Back to the Portland ramp. It was up to the load out clerks to determine how many men were needed to do the work each day. We would then call the truck dispatcher who would call in the two man crews when there was work for them to do. We also hauled used autos from California for the Gypsies. The railroad wanted cash for their freight bills. The charges were usually close to six hundred dollars. The gypsies would first pay the bills with twenty-dollar bills then decide to pay with one hundred dollar bills then back to the twenties. I never touched the money until they were all done. Then as I counted the money I put it in an envelope and sealed asked one of them one morning if their it. If they were planning a fast count of some kind it did not work. I Romany language was written down anyplace and he said it was not. Two events at the ramp stand out. The first event was "the keys in the shopping bag event" and the second event involved the lost motorist. The Southern Pacific used to bring the new cars of General Motors in to the Brooklyn Ramp where they would be unloaded from the tri-levels and bi-levels. When the autos were driven off of the rail cars they
were parked and the keys left in them, they were parked in rows with five cars in each row. Sometimes the unloading crews would take long coffee breaks and leave the autos there with the keys in them. The only cars anybody could steal were the rear cars in the rows. On the night in question a member of the security forces took action. He had a shopping bag and proceeded to remove the keys from the autos and put them in the shopping bag. These were brand new autos with no way to know what keys went with what autos. It took two days or more to get the keys back in the right autos. A few months later there was a man driving crazy in our yard when he made a circle and drove onto our ramp and drove down the track on our" piggy-back" cars until his car became high centered. I called the city police when the officer arrived I walked with him down to where the car was and the driver got out of the car. The policeman asked him if he knew were he was the driver replied that he was on the freeway to Hillsboro. They had to call a second wrecker to get his auto removed from the rail car. Several years later a clerk working the graveyard shift at the ramp who did not know this job as well as he should have. The Yardmaster came down from the tower got in his auto and drove a mile to the ramp and told the clerk "I just wanted to know what an idiot looked like. " The Southern Pacific Inter-modal ramp in Portland was referred to as the Brooklyn Ramp. We were at the end of the line so any new ideas were tried out at the Brooklyn Ramp first. One man tried to develop air guns portable ramps and find somebody to manufacture them. He was paid a ten thousand dollar finders fee when he found somebody to manufacture a "Piggy Packer" to unload the trailers from the rail cars. We had to know when trains would be arriving so arrangements could be made to have truck drivers on hand to unload the trailers. It only took a few weeks for me to learn that the "Piggy back trains" would take twenty two hours from Fresno California to Brooklyn, twelve hours from Dunsmuir and nine hours from Klamath Falls. On rare occasions a rail car that would be on the train according to the computer would be on the train when it

,
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I

63

arrived. There was a program in the computer that let me know what the conductor had written on his delays slips. The delay slip would have the information showing that the car had developed mechanical problems and been left at some siding. The delay slip is a form filled out by the conductor telling what the train crew was doing from the time they went on duty until they went off duty. When they went off duty they would "OS" whatever that means. Keypunch machines were installed and we had to learn how to use them. One clerk avoided learning how to key punch for four years The day he sat down at a keypunch machine his picture with a date on it was taken. There was a sign on the wall showing when the keypunch had been installed. This clerk never did understand that we were making a point about how long he had delayed learning how to use the keypunch. The photo was put on a wall next to a sign saying when the keypunch machines had been installed. Later when we moved to computers we had to teach ourselves how to use the different programs. The company sent two men up to teach all of us but they spent their tirrie teaching one woman and the rest of us were on our own. The man working from twelve o'clock midnight to eight in the morning never did even see them. Another clerk saw them twice but the nice looking woman saw them a lot. We had supervisors come and go but they were glad to pass the decision of calling for more help on to us. When new supervisors arrived for a while they would come to the ramp on Saturdays and Sundays, then just Sundays then they would just call. One Saturday our manager who had one boy and one girl both preschool age. The other clerk in the office answered the phone and the two children wanted to talk to him. They asked him who else was in the office. When he said Bob Church they wanted to know what I was doing. He told them I was eating lunch might save them a piece of cake. and if they hurried down I did not have any cake in my lunch but their dad came to the ramp and when he drove up That day I they jumped out of the car and practically tore the door off coming after that cake. was working the day shift and they needed somebody to work the afternoon load out Sometime later I job I was having car trouble and wanted to go home. The manager and his assistant said they would fix my would stay and work. car if I gave them some money and they went to an auto parts store and bought some parts and fixed the I
car.

A co-worker Casey Powell used to work on my cars a lot also. It was a sign that you were going to have a busy day when as you arrived for work and were getting out of the car people were asking coming to the car with problems for me to take care of. One Monday morning there were a lot of trailers in the yard and the part of the yard where loads were parked was full. Some loads were being taken to our empty yard. The assistant manager in order to make room was having one crew load out empties. The problem was he did not have a list and was just pointing. Some of the trailers he pointed to had just came off of the train. They had to reloaded about six to twelve trailers after I realized what they were doing. For a while the drivers doing the loading for the evening trains would come to work at noon. One driver would come into the office and tell me that I was the homeliest man he had seen all day. Then on Fridays he would tell me that I was the ugliest man he had seen all week. My response would be that in that did not have to worry about losing my looks. case I Working with the truck drivers we were not allowed to order them around. Our duty was to inform them about what we would like them to do. We would put up lists telling them what work needed to be done. About a year and a half before I retired they had an employee who was on special assignment conduct a seminar on avoiding injuries to the back. They told us how to lift properly and to use our legs and save our bags. I will get back to this shortly. To make it possible to load and unload trailers from the rail cars they a steel plate about thirty inches wide and about three feet or five feet long would be on the ends of the inter-modal cars these would be laid

64

down so trailers could pass over them. It was part of our work to put these plates down and pick them up. We called them bridge plates. We were given instructions about how to do this without causing injury to ourselves. The only problem was that to do it the way we were instructed to we would have to be standing on thin air. wanted something done. My favorite response was "A while Quite often the drivers would ask when I ago". turned it In the spring of 1986 the railroad was offering "buy outs" to people if they would resign. I came back from vacation in September they had made some changes in my job and down at first but when I thought I did so I did not have any choice. I bumped another clerk and put in for the buy out. It said that I was accepted and on the twenty eighth of October 1986 my thirty-five years as a Southern Pacific employee came to an end The supervisor that ordered the changes in my job was a hyper energetic type who reminded me of the bird Winchester in Peanuts. One of my duties was to notify the customers when their trailers had been unloaded from the train. Some mornings there were a lot of them so speed and accuracy were essential. The trailers usually had four would set up a rhythm of the letters then do the numbers three and three. letters and six numbers to report. I would notify on six hundred trailers before lunch. Sometimes I The Cotter Company had a very nice lady Linda answering their phone, while she would be trying to was supposed to we became friends. She quit her job and opened up her own Italian locate the person I retired. . Her restaurant served lots of delicious food. Linda has two restaurant Giuiseppes about the time I daughters and the restaurant Giuiseppe's is doing very well. There was a lady named Laurelle or something like that whose name just would not come out of my had to call her. My voice system would go into a sort of power surge type and my voice system when I speaking system would fail in the same manner. I doubt if any mother has ever looked at her new baby with the hope that when the baby starts talking that it stutters but it is nothing to worry about. It is not an indication of mental ability. retired I was working a lot of overtime and not looking at my paychecks as A few months before I was working a relief job and getting different rates of pay. One day I should have. I close as I looked at my pay stub and it showed me working a particular job on a Saturday and making around one hundred and sixty dollars that day. This was straight time pay a lot more than I was making. After this I checked my pay stubs going back for a while and found that I had been overpaid in the amount of a little over sixteen hundred told my supervisors about it and even called the payroll department about they said they would dollars. I did retire I was about six hundred correct the error they then underpaid me about a thousand dollars. When I dollars ahead. But they only paid me half of what my unused sick pay was worth so I considered us even. . did. I There was a woman who had a higher opinion of her self than I had been retired about a year when I was out driving when the thought came to me. I will never have to speak to Bonnie Carmin again. I am sure she feels the same about me

65

THE TRAGIC SIDE OF RAILROADING had known at Coos Bay was When I was working at Eugene a switchman named Val Frazier I working in the Southern Pacific yard in Portland. In railroad talk this was known as the Brooklyn Yard. One morning there was an article in the paper saying he had been killed in accident while working. After bidding asked what had happened to him. The only response I received was that he the job in at the Brooklyn Ramp I had been cut up pretty bad. really do not know there was a conductor called It could have been before or after this happened. I Mac. One night he was in charge of a train crew doing some switching at some plywood plants in and around Springfield Oregon. The head brakeman came into the office asking the clerk if he had seen the conductor. None of the train crew had seen him for quite a while and concerned. Within a few minutes the trainmaster K.E.Gwinn drove up and got out of his car and came into the office demanding to know why all that garbage was out there by the tracks. This "garbage" had been the conductor" Mac. "This man had been a husband, a father, a son,.a brother and a hard working railroad man and friend to many. When the frail human body is caught between a railroad wheel weighing several hundred pounds and a railroad track it does not have a chance. Under those circumstances all human bodies are frail. When a train crew is working it is normal for the conductor to come into the yard office and do his paper work. It is also normal for the train crew to be working with twenty cars at a time. So if a person for some reason lost his footing and fell on the track that means he was run over by eighty heavy steel wheels. And if the crew was switching back and forth he was run over by eighty wheels several times. hear or read about people playing around railroad yards or This happens too often that is why when I tracks it bothers me. There is a statement that is included whenever rail workers are told what trains to watch out for. "Other trains may be moving at any time, in either direction".

66

LIFE AWAY FROM THE RAILROAD

was driving from Eugene to Coos Bay on the Oregon coast highway when I One fall night I could just barely see its taillights. When it very heavy fog. There was a vehicle ahead and I encountered had the weirdest feeling that I was the only person on earth. speeded up and the taillights went out of sight. I My headlights bounced off of the fog and my dashboard lights added to the odd feeling. There must be a do not know what it is. I had to keep going so nobody would drive into word to describe that feeling but I me from the rear. arrived My first time on a plane was on a DC-3 from North Bend Oregon to Portland. By the time I could have arrived as fast on the Greyhound bus. at the house in Vancouver I My first flight on United Airlines was to Denver about twenty five minutes out from Denver a tiny assumed it was a rivet. As the plane was getting ready to piece of something white went by my window. I also told her that this was my first land I told the stewardess about it and she said she would report it. I didn't think the other one counted. flight. I flew to Vancouver BC for a weekend, there was a stop in Seattle so the plane A year or so later I spent more time going up and down then it did in level flight. The next year I drove to Port Angeles Washington and rode the ferry to Victoria BC. The year after did the tourist bit on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. This area has fantastic stayed in Port Angeles while I that I scenery. drove with Mom down to Moab we stayed with Faye Titus and her family for a few days. One year I I drove with Mom and Mrs.Titus to Monticello for lunch. While we were in Monticello somebody told me that Lucille Douglas was living near by. Lucille had went to her house and she think while she was a junior in high school. I married a man named Bill Cash I told me where Margaret Robson Bronson was working. I had a nice visit with Margaret and she invited me to come to her house the next night for dinner with her family. think two of her sons were there and it was a very enjoyable evening Her husband Ted and I returned to Moab we went to Milt Johnsons' house where one of Ruth Johnsons daughters When I went Berdine was living in a tiny house on their property. Berdine had been in the same class as me when I to school in Moab. While bringing me up to date on classmates she told me that two of them were living went to her place and she nearby. One girl Peggy Stocks was married and was living about a block away. I was on her way to her parents' house. We talked for the two minutes it took to go from one house to the other and she went in and the conversation was over. Another girl Aileen Pray lived across the street from went to see her. She came to the door and we talked for about ten minutes. She never Milt Johnsons so I asked me in. They are both part of my past. called Don Baldwin who had been in my class also and talked to him for about ten minutes and I found out where his cousin Marjorie Lou Christensen was living and what her married name was. would have talked to her. had known it was Dons sister Mary Jane that answered the phone I If I stopped in Price Utah and called Marjorie Lou on the phone. She was On the way back to Verna's I very nice to talk to. A man who had been in my class at Monticello was working in Moab. He was telling me about the troubles this man Cash had brought on himself. He had been accused of writing checks without enough money in the bank to cover. To make things worse he wrote to the person he had given the checks to and wrote something might happen to your said. "If you do not drop those charges on those bad checks I

children. " This classmate was Byron Eastin we checked out the nightlife in Moab that didn't take long. We went to the Elks but could not stay because Byron was from Moab and was not a member. Only people from was from out of town did not matter. out of town could be guests, the fact that I When we started school in Monticello Byron gave Earl a hard time for some reason. Earl did not take
67

too much and one day in the boys' rest room he put Byron on his knee and spanked him. It must have been a good thing for Byron because he started acting more like an adult. I spent a few hours with Byron the last time I was in Moab.

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The last night we were in Moab Mrs. Helen Knight who had been the school superintendent when we lived there came over and we all sat out on the lawn and had a good visit. We spent time with Verna on the way to Moab and on the way back The next trip I can think of was to New Jersey to visit Yern and Betty and their family. They drove me down to Washington D.C. We visited the Lincoln Memorial, saw the Jefferson Memorial and the capitol building and we waited in line to ride the elevator up to the top in the Washington Monument where I got my of first view the White House. On the way back to their home in New Jersey we stopped at some caverns in Virginia or West Virginia. The air was extremely hot it was like being hit by air from a blast furnace. My next trip back east I stayed with Kurt and Judy for a few days then went to Washington D.C. for a few days. I was on the backside of the White House and put my camera between the iron fence bars and took was going through the White House as a tourist I was thinking of all the unimportant people pictures. When I in the nation that me of all people was in the White House. The first thing after arriving in Washington was to find the office of our congresswoman who at the time was Julia Butler Hansen. They gave me passes to visit congress. They gave me a pass for the house side but also for the senate side. The first time I went to the capitol they had a lady conducting a tour. She was very informative but wanted to see was the Supreme Court. After going to the entrance I the place I saw a sign that said "fifteen minute line" . "The people in the "fifteen minute" line were moving well but the people in the other line were not moving at all A lady in the slow line struck up a conversation with me, for some reason, maybe she was just trying to be nice. She said the people in the fast line could only stay the fifteen minutes but the people in the other line could stay as long as they wanted once they finally got in. The chief justice was Earl Warren the other justices' I remember are William Douglas, Abe Fortas, . Thurgood Marshall, and Hugo Black. One justice Hugo Black was so small that all you could see of him was his bald-head sticking up over the bench. We watched the Supreme Court in action for a while then went down and ate in the cafeteria. There room for lawyers that had some pictures on the wall so we went in and took a look. People knew large was a we were not lawyers but did not care. We did not try to join any conversation After that we went to the capitol building. We both had" passes" so we wandered all over. We were even in a cloakroom just off the house side. As long as we did not bother anybody we were free to roam. I can't remember whether it was that day or the next where I was down in the "bowels" of the capitol building where they have a scale model of the capitol building. They are more concerned about security now and I do not think they allow people to just roam all over the place. The Smithsonian has numerous buildings for displaying their thousands upon thousands if not millions of historic items. Their displays are arranged into "bays". The semi-precious and precious stone bay is breath taking. The further back you walk the greater value the stones or gems have. entered was I The first building I think the "Natural History" building. About thirty feet inside there is a something like a room divider about forty-five long and about twenty feet high. To see the exhibits you walked around the museum for two hours or more I walk around either end. After I had forgotten about the room divider and could not find the exit. After several tries I took a flight of stairs down that led to the had something to eat then went out the exit on that level. cafeteria. I The next trip back east Vern and Betty took me down to "Historic Williamsburg ".It was a great trip but very hard on Vern I should of have shown my appreciation more for them taking me on that trip. After getting to our

68
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motel the fire alarm went off in the middle of the night for no reason at all. Williamsburg has a lot to offer but we just had one day and could only see a part of what they offered could barely wait to go started going to Hawaii on vacation the first trip over was great and I When I time arrived the last around noon and on a Monday. I I times but was over many lost track how have I back. was ready to come home Tuesday morning I stayed at the same place every time the Kalia Hotel. There was an odd optical illusion that would I occur in their bar. They had an aquarium with a few fish and sometimes in the afternoon if the light was just right the fish would vanish from view. was drinking a was drinking a lot of beer but one Sunday after noon I The first few visits over there I had paid bottle of beer and having a hard time drinking it because of the taste. Then it dawned on me that I had done all the tourist things I wanted to do. did not want to. I for the beer but did not have to drink it if I There was one day that stands out in my memory. One special tour service Hawaiian Air Transport Service called "HATS" offered something special. The special was a chance to visit six islands in twelve hours. We had to be in the lobby of our hotel by 5:30 for the driver to take us to the airport. The plane for the tour was late so we stood around for about forty-five minutes. When we got on the plane it was something like a DC-3 if it was not one of those planes. As soon as we were airborne a two-gallon thermos was pushed down the aisle for us to pour our coffee. They also passed a box of Danish rolls. That was our continental breakfast we had been promised. They could of have served it while we were waiting for the plane. We spent the day ascending and descending and getting on and off busses. We were even on a river craft for a trip up some river and were on the same craft for the return trip. We were on some pretty island with lots of green shrubbery It was raining lightly as we were leaving at thirty miles an hour the only things worth seeing were seen by looking out the back window of the bus. The bus driver/tour guide told us we were free to take all the photos we wanted to. was at the space center in Florida and the driver said the same thing. This On a different vacation I was in Florida for a visit with Kurt and Judy for a very enjoyable time I was on the wrong side of the bus. I returned home. visit. Their marriage came to an end after I had spent a few days with them in Ohio. After my stay in Ohio I had Before my visit to Florida I gone on down to Washington DC. They took me to a night- club in Dayton Ohio and we went to the Air Force Museum near there. Judy's parents took me to see some harness racing. Judy told me how their son Karl had got his hands on some orange crayon and proceeded to color their hardwood floor orange. When Judy discovered what he had done she did not spank him. She set him down with some think Karl was about three at the time cleaning fluid and some rags and told him to clean it up. I

69

Medical Report had tried to smoke a certain amount each day but was smoking more and more I By May of 1959 I decided to see how would be smoking as much as ever. On the morning of May 12 1959 I the next day I have not smoked since. long I could go without smoking. I told my picked up the phone to make a call and could not hear the dial tone. I In the fall of 1984 I stopped at a phone booth and could not hear would report the outage. I mother the phone was out and that I put the arrived home my mother said there was nothing wrong with the phone. I that phone either. When I receiver to the other ear and could hear fine. went to the doctor. The nurse was going to irrigate thought it was a build up of wax in my ears so I I the wax out except there was no wax. My doctor sent me to an ear doctor across the street. had a blood vessel pressing against my ear. He This doctor after a brief examination thought that I had to wait until the next day. They found that my blood was sent me back across the street for more tests. I too thick and put me on blood thinning medicine "Coumadin?" They also had me going in every six or eight had missed a stroke by a narrow margin. hours to have some blood drawn to see if it was thinning. I The doctor told me that if my blood count did not change they were going to put me in the hospital. tried to shut it off with my right hand but could On February 25 1985 when my alarm clock went off I twisted around and shut the alarm off with my left hand. not use my right arm. I would not be in to work and why. The man on the phone said it called the railroad and told them I I was probably a "pinched nerve." called the doctor's office they said they would fit me into their schedule. My brother Frank When I drove me and after a brief examination my doctor referred me to a specialist. We went out there and it did had a small stroke. not take them long to find that I had someplace to go in my They gave me some pills to take and sent me home. The next morning I used my left hand to place my right hand on the gearshift. Then when I had backed car. When I was ready I used my left hand again in the same manner. out of the driveway I The specialist wanted to do surgery to see if there were any potential strokes in my future. They had me go to the hospital where they ran an isotope through my blood system and took photos was cleared to go home the next day. as it went through the back of my head. Everything was fine and I had bursitis. Everything was fine and I told him about my sore arm and he said I That night I went back to had the stroke they made me take some more time off. work for a few days then when they found I sides of my groin had been growing. In September of 1992 it hernias both of on Over a period years was working on getting out the mail to absentee voters was time for surgery on the right side. At the time I for four campaigns so the surgery was delayed until after election. My doctor ran into problems because I was bleeding so much and had to call in help. Somehow the artery to my right testes was cut and so that was removed. When the nurse woke me up in the recovery room she could hardly wait to tell me that. They had me stay overnight but everything was fine. A few months later the doctor who had come to the rescue did the operation on the other side. Things went fine this time.

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FAMILY When Beverly started school it was my privilege to walk with her so she would know the way. Beverly was eager to learn how to read. The first time she read for me she did well except there were some words she could read on one page but when the page was turned could not read the same words. Before she started school she liked to make up skits and would tell Gary what to say. A year later it was Gary's turn to start at the same school I walked with him and that night I asked him if he knew the way to school and where he was supposed to turn. He said, he did that he was supposed to turn where the dog was out barking. was working out of town I Beverly has heard this a thousand times but here it is once more. When I could. I must have started bringing little gifts with me. At the same time a came to Vancouver as often as I think he brought presents man Dad knew that we called Morris was spending a lot of time at our house and I had some place to go and Beverly came in and wanted to know was in town I also. One Saturday when I told her that I would be bringing her nothing she just would be bringing back for her. . When I what I came back she came running in to see what I had brought her. smiled. . After about an hour or so later when I had not brought her anything she was furious. If she had known any swear words When she realized that I she would have used them that day. Gary liked to assume different identities and pretend he was somebody else. One day he wanted to be Jeff, another day he wanted to be Jimmy, on still a different day he wanted to be Corky. It made him very called him Jimmy. happy one day when I Joanne wanted to go with anybody that was leaving in a car. If she did not get to go she would bang her head on the sidewalk .She would hit her head so hard that I was afraid she was going to hurt her self. Joanne was a very sociable young lady who would have supper with her grandparents and then go up stairs and eat with her family. If her family had eaten first she would eat with her grandparents also. Joanne knew when she was hungry, she had adults around her that would say she could not be hungry because she asked her if she could say please. She had just eaten. One day she wanted something from the table and I said say it and so she said please that is the first word I heard her say. nodded her head. I Mary Kay was about four months old when something happened and her tiny hand formed a fist. Dad and Mom had a wooden cabinet that they did not want their grandchildren to get into so they wired it shut. Beverly and Gary both tried but could not undo the wire. Joanne came down and was able to undo the wire at once. met her. They took My sister's son Kurt and his first wife Judy were living in Ohio the first time I me to a nightclub in Dayton and also to the Airforce Museum just outside of Dayton. lost the only bet I placed, one horse that I Judy's parents took me to see some harness racing. I thought would finish last won its race Judy told me about her son Karl had found an Orange Crayon and marked up her hardwood floor. She did not get mad she got some cleaning fluids and some rags and had her son set down and clean it up. At that time they were living in Lebanon Ohio a small town about half way between Cincinnati and Dayton Ohio. The airport that serves Cincinnati is in Kentucky. After a few days with Kurt and Judy she caught my flight for Washington D.C drove me to the airport where I

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WASHINGTON DC FIRST VISIT

was in Washington my attention was focused on the White House. The White House is of While I course located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This is just two streets over from Fourteenth Street where they had the riots after Martin Luther King was killed. Washington D.C. is a great city to visit but the sight seeing should not be done after dark. It was dangerous to walk by the park across the street from the White House The Ellipse in front of the White House is the starting point for distance measurements in the United States. I was on the sidewalk on the backside of the White House sticking my camera between the iron bars joined the line noticed a line of people at one of the gates. .. I and taking photographs. That same morning I is through a White House the enters it person a the White When House. I and a few minutes later was in hallway. . The people from the National Parks are in charge. One man was giving me a hard time saying I was wearing a dark blue suit in Washington D.C. in was sweating too much, but he let me in anyway. . I was going through the "Red Room", the "Blue Room" the July. It was not a good choice in clothes. As I thought came into my head., that of all the people in the Dining Room" the "State and Room" the "East United States it was me that was in the White House walked over to was able to observe the Supreme Court in session after checking my camera I Later I where some people were waiting. They were in two separate lines, a sign said one line was the fifteen minute line. A lady started talking to me and said the other line was a better line to wait in. The" fifteen minute" line means the wait is only fifteen minutes but you are only allowed to stay fifteen minutes. The people waiting in the other line have to wait their turn but once they are allowed in they are allowed to stay as long as they wanted. If something funny is said it is all right to laugh but the use of pencils or pens is forbidden. This is the Supreme Court that had Earl Warren, Abe Fortas, William Douglas, Hugo Black. do not remember. Thurgood Marshall and others I had just met and I went down to the After we left the Supreme Court chambers the lady who I the for of various people lawyers is aside There room a eat. set to portraits with something cafeteria and had we went in and looked around. . We had no right to be there but nothing was said. We both had passes so after walking around in the Library of Congress for a while we walked over to the Capitol Building where we just wandered all over the place. We walked into a cloak- room just off of the house floor where congressmen and lobbyists were talking. We did not have any business being there but were never challenged. The Smithsonian is located in Washington D.C. with their collections that are almost over whelming. entered was the Natural Science and History Building. When a person comes in think the first building I I from the street there is a wall about twenty feet high and forty fifty feet long. If a person spends hours in there looking at the breath taking exhibits by the time a person wants to leave they might have forgotten spotted a short flight of stairs about that wall and have a hard time finding their way out of the building. I went down stairs and ate and used their door to get back out onto the streets. I going to the cafeteria. I think they have fifteen or twenty buildings and it would be easy to spend two weeks in each building. The precious gems and stones bay is a spectacular place to visit. Each viewing area is referred to as a bay. The next time I went back east Kurt and Judy were living in Hollywood Florida. They took me to rode the bus up to space center. some nightclub in Miami Florida to see some singers. A day or so later I After we arrived at the space center they put us on space center busses and gave us a grand tour. They took us into a building where several space capsules were stored on top of gantries and into a different building where somebody was getting into a capsule. We assumed that he was training for weightless flight. We also saw the huge tractors they use to haul the gantries around with. These gantries were about as tall as a tenwas on the story building. At the last stop we were told that we could take all the pictures we wanted to but I wrong side of the bus and it was going too fast.

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LODGES

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requested some am not sure why now but I The Elks Lodge was a big thing in Coos Bay and I entered the information on the form they wanted and after an member to get me an application form. I was accepted and became a member. interview and a vote by the members I had board and room. The husband Ray There was a couple living in the basement apartment where I did. His wife Tammy would tell us about having dinner at Berger had joined the Elks a few weeks before I might be joining the Elks. did not tell her that I the Elks and thought of herself as a very important person. I The first time she saw me in one of the hallways at the Elks Lodge she all most went into shock thinking that a nobody like me could be accepted into the same "prestigious" organization as her husband. Ray was a pharmacist and they moved to Portland where he had his own pharmacy for a while. But he got him self in deep trouble handling drugs and lost his license. For a while numerous crime stories in the papers would mention his name. went to the Eugene "Elks Lodge" once and to the Portland moved away from Coos Bay I After I did not want to spend all my idle time talking decided that I Lodge once and to the Vancouver Lodge once. I for decided that was stupid dues about four years before I kept paying my quit going. I to old white men so I was two years behind in dues and and quit sending the money in. The treasurer sent me a letter saying I member. The money was never sent so they as I a sent them some money was going to be dropped unless I probably dropped me. Before this a car salesman in Eugene had talked me into joining the "Moose Lodge" . The night we were being sworn in as lodge members they had us take a long oath. The man giving the oath said that when he said his name we were supposed to repeat our own name. Some man two or three rows ahead of me was so drunk that he did not know his own name but repeated the name of the man giving the oath. When my was no longer a Moose. The Moose could not find anyplace to pay my dues so after one year I year was up I Lodge did get me started donating blood. The Red Cross in Vancouver send me a letter dated June 14 1982 saying I had donated ten gallons of blood.
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Jury Duty

My one and only time on a jury involved a man accused of shooting another man in a tavern as a result of an argument over a handgun. The defendant had claimed he owned a certain antique handgun and the other man said he was a liar because that gun had not been manufactured that year. They also gave the defendant a bad time because of the long feather he was wearing in his hat. As the argument continued he said he was going to come go home and bring the gun back with him. This argument was taking place in a tavern. Somebody in the tavern called the defendants' wife and told her to hide the gun. This man got very angry and was making threats. His stepdaughter who was about twelve called 911 and said her Daddy was going to kill somebody. The words "He has a gun " were spoken as he came in the front door when he arrived back at the tavern He missed with his first shot but shot the man in the right shoulder with the second shot. The bullet made a hole about one half inch in diameter. After he was arrested he said he was glad he had shot the man and if they would let him he would go back and shoot the rest of them. A writer from the newspaper and a photographer came into the room where we were waiting. Some of the people on the panel allowed themselves to be photographed. The bailiff asked the judge if that was all right. He said "Hell no. " the judge called the paper and talked to the publisher, the photographer was called in to the publishers' office when she returned. The publisher took her camera took the film and held it up to the light and put the film in the trash basket. The people on the panel were called into the courtroom one at a had made a point had been photographed. My response was that I time and questioned. They asked me if I not to be photographed. knew they were was selected to be on the jury the prosecuting attorney asked me if I Before I my religion would said not until that moment. They asked me if I planning to ask for the death penalty. I said no. This penalty was never have never joined a church so I keep me from voting for the death penalty. I this question came up while I was would vote if I do not know, even now how I mentioned in the trial and I am not going to be on a jury again. on a jury. Of course with my "short term" memory the way it is I The defendants' wife testified on his behalf and she thought he had fired in self-defense. She seemed like a nice person. His stepdaughter also testified under court order. There were some tears shed after she testified. By the time she was questioned on the witness stand we all knew he was guilty. The jury can talk about anything in the world except the case before them while the trial is going on. Somebody on the jury said that after the daughter testified that they had cried because they knew by this time they might have to convict the man and harm her and her mother neither one had done anything wrong. The girl talked in a hushed courtroom with the lights turned down, After the case was turned over to the jury we went back to the jury room. One mans name was suggested as jury foreman. There was not any objection so he became our foreman, The defendant had claimed the rifle had been fired the first time by accident. We tested the trigger pull and learned that it took a determined effort to pull the trigger. spoke up and reminded There was a group of three people discussing the case among themselves. I the foreman that we were a jury of twelve people not a jury of three people. He agreed so we sat down at the table. Each juror was given an opportunity to speak. Some of them did not have very much to say but they had their chance. None of the jurors interrupted any of the other thought we were acting jurors. When we went into the jury room there were eleven votes for conviction. I voted no the first time. One of the jurors had to get a message to her baby sitter. too fast so I The man was convicted on the next vote on the First Degree Murder charge. There were two other charges that we had to discuss and vote on. We were told the judge had gone to dinner so we went to dinner also. It was a short time later that we let the court know we were ready. The way the story was printed in the paper it looked like we had stalled our deliberations long enough to get a free meal. met a lady named Dianne Allen who told me she worked at the Holland The first day we were called I

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did and have been going there every since. Restaurant and invited me to come by. I walked on the picket line with A few months later the waitresses at the Holland went out on strike and I . them.

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The Columbus Day Storm

On Columbus Day in 1962 the Pacific Northwest was hit by the now famous Columbus Day Storm. About two in the afternoon I was in downtown Vancouver and got caught in a very hard rainstorm. I took shelter in a bank doorway. After the rain I bought a paper and went home. The head lines in the paper said there was a big storm coming. , I thought the storm had come and gone. For some reason I looked out into the vacant lot next door and saw the top third of a pine tree. That tree had been near the corner of our house. About that time power was lost to most of the northwest.. I had a radio of a transistor and couple the radio stations had their generators going and were able to keep broadcasting. The windstorm was very destructive and a number of people were killed. We were living in old twostory house with a large cherry tree out front. That house at the time had a stairway that had to be entered from the outside. The cherry tree fell and hit the house just over the staircase Frank and Mary Lou and their family had been in Portland when the storm hit. They returned home and saw the tree on top of our house. Beverly became very frightened when she saw the tree on the house. She had seen the movie "The Wizard of Oz. " And thought her grandmother was trapped under the house. The tree had fallen so quietly that we did not even hear it. I drove to work that night without any trouble. I had my transistor radio with me. I went out to the ramp tracks and pulled any debris off of the tracks. Everybody that was living here at that time has there own personal stories to tell. . This storm put a great fear into the hearts of anybody who was living in the area at the time. For fifteen or twenty years after the windstorm every time the news mentioned a potential storm their switchboard would light up like a Christmas tree. A cold chill of apprehension would go up and down a person's spine. Since I moved to the Northwest there has been several earthquakes and numerous floods and high waters but none of them have caused the fear this one storm did. The news about the possibility of and later the eruption of Mt. Saint. Helens did not cause this much fear.

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The Eruption of Mt. Saint Helens

When Mount Saint Helens erupted on May 18 1980 it made headlines around the world. The possibility of an eruption had been known for a long time but only a few people were worried about what might happen. One volcanologist was being interviewed on television and said that the very spot they were standing on could be in danger if the mountain blew up. There had been signs of the impending eruption for several months and ash had fallen a few times. The news media met a man in his late sixties named Harry Truman who said he was not going to leave. They decided that he was "crusty" or "colorful" and maybe both and was on the news a lot. He said the "damned mountain" was not going to blow. I think he thought that the television stations would send in one of their helicopters to save him if the need came up. But when it happened there was not any warning and they think his lodge was covered with about two hundred feet of mountain. I was at work at the Southern Pacific ramp in Portland on the Sunday when the eruption happened. At first it was amazement and fascination but the mood became somber when the bodies of some children were spotted in a pickup. At first as the death toll rose the "official story " was that these people had made unauthorized entry into the danger zone. Later with two possible exceptions it was learned that none of the people that died that day were in the red zone. Dave Johnson the volcanologist and Reid Blackburn a photographer for the paper may have been in the red zone. Several days later I was driving across the Interstate Bridge on the way to work about seven in the morning when ash started falling. My windshield wipers were not able to keep my windshield clean so very quickly it looked like I had a wet white sheet on my windshield. I could not see where I was going. I thought was off of the highway to the right but when I I got out of the car I found out that I was in the left hand fast lane. The only thing that kept me from driving into the oncoming traffic was a traffic island about four inches high and about ten feet wide between the southbound and northbound lanes. It only took a few minutes to clean the ash off of my windshield so I could go on to work. After that had a small coffee can filled with water and some rags in the trunk of my car but was never out driving I when ash fell again. Mom worked very hard cleaning up the fall out from around our place while I was working, She put it into several containers. We still have a pail full of what looks like and feels like fine sand in the house.

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Have Known Some People I

The person I have known the longest in the Vancouver area is Darlene Haines Lumsden. I was going to Kimms Business College in down town Vancouver. I met Darlene and Pat Turner while I lost sent her a birthday card with a note saying I contact with Pat in 1952 after I would like to hear from her but if she did not want to keep in touch she had my best wishes. Pat had a four- year old daughter in nursery school. One evening this four year old told her mother that she had became ill during the day and had gone to the hospital. The people at the hospital had pumped out the little girls' stomach. The girl said she was all right but that the doctor had told her she should not eat any more of her mother's cooking. Pat called somebody at the nursing school to learn what had happened. The person that answered the phone said nothing had happened. The four-year old girl Lucy Pat had made the entire thing up. There was excitement about baseball in Portland in 1948 the Portland Beavers had their first two black baseball players. The first was Frankie Austin who played shortstop. Frankie Austin did not have a high batting average but would usually get a base hit when it was needed. The second was Luis Marques who played in left field. Luis Marquez strength was in his ability to steal bases. If he made it to first base with a hit on as a result of a walk he was always a threat to steal second base and then he was always ready to steal third base. met Ed and Betty Staley a few years later. Ed and Betty were very good to me. Ed worked in I transportation also. We knew what each other was talking about. They are grandparents by this time as most of the people my age are. Their oldest daughter Mary Pat has three children two teenagers and one twelve year old. At Ccos Bay after I started working on the afternoon billingjob I started working with Don Ryan. Don was very helpful and we spent a lot of time together. Don joined the marines a few days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He had some false identification saying he was old enough. At that time he was fourteen, when the marines invaded Guadalcanal the next August he was in the third wave. He managed to survive that long bloody battle. He was shot in the leg on the island of Peileu. . Before he came to work for the Southern Pacific he was a member of the North Bend, Oregon police department. Two years after I started working at Coos Bay I started living with Eldon Snell and Mrs. Gavin where had board and room in their home. After I I worked in Medford in the fall of 1954 I returned to their house to live in. They moved to a different house and Mrs. Gavin started cooking for a lot of people, one of them was Stanley Vandehey who was just starting his career in Education. . Stan had a very successful career in the teaching field and is now retired and living in the Hillsboro Oregon area. Stan and Mary have been married for a long time now. Their oldest daughter Cheryl raises exotic birds, their son Mark is an executive with a traffic planning corporation. Lisa their youngest daughter is living in Alaska. Another man who lived in the same house for a short time was named Frank, if I ever knew his last name it has been forgotten. Frank had been a Master Sergeant in the 101st Airborne during the war in Europe. He told me that they parachuted into Europe the day before D-Day. Later he was in the battle where the allies tried to recapture Holland. At Christmas time in 1944 he was at Bastogne where they were completely surrounded by the German army/ In the fall of 1959 I started working at Eugene, one man I worked with there was named George Moorehead. . George Morehead had been a prisoner of war in the Phillipines. Inl961 1started working at the ramp in Portland. One morning I heard a man named George Damgard talking about his experiences in the notorious Bataan Death March in World War II He said there was not anyway to look at a person and know whether or not this person would survive, He said some of the husky men who looked like they were in great shape were the first to fall over. . As soon

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as they fell they were shot by the Japanese soldiers. . George said some of the scrawny soldiers survived the death march. For the record the last time Dad, Mom, Gertrude, Charles, Vern, Earl, Robert and Frank were all in the same room together was in 1939

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Politics
I was born when Calvin Coolidge was the president of the United States, then in March of 1929 Herbert Hoover became president. About two months after I started first grade Franklin D. Roosevelt was graduated from high school. elected for the first time. He died one month and five days before I Harry Truman then became our president, a lot of people did not like him because he was not F.D.R. I was one of the few who thought he had done the right thing when he fired Douglas MacArthur. In the fifties some Republican was making a speech about how this nation had endured "Thirty years of Truman, treachery and treason. Harry Truman was just another senator until 1944 when he was elected vice-president. As a member of the senate he was the chair of a committee investigating excessive war profits. The war had just been won with a lot of Democrats in key positions as were a lot of Republicans. am not sure but I think the speech was given by Richard Nixon but was written by Pat Buchanan. I That speech made a Democrat out of me. I became a precinct committeeman in 1976 and helped on several campaigns but in 1996 I did not run for the job again. I felt like an outsider the first year and still feel like an outsider today.. The precinct is committee-person expected to donate money and time to everybody that wants to run for office. The people running for office usually hire a campaign manager and depending on how much money is available there might be several people on the payroll. The people on the payroll seemed to have the feeling that they are much smarter and better than the volunteers working for nothing. In the state of Washington every two years people in politics go through a travesty called "caucuses" They are held Tuesday nights early in March. This is of course a winter night, a lot of people have a hard time seeing just where they are going. At every caucus meeting that I can remember it has been raining. The next meeting after I had attended my first caucus I asked why they were held in winter at night instead of Saturday in the daytime in the springtime. The only answer I have ever received is, "Its has always been done like this". For the people who have never been to a caucus there are a few things to look forward to. First it will be raining, and out a few hundred voters maybe four will show up. A few weeks before the time for the caucus meetings are scheduled to begin the members will start hearing and learning about the rules. The rules they want us to follow are written like there will be a hundred people from each precinct. These rules are read at the meetings two or three times. The party officials would like to have them read again at the caucus meetings. I always thought that only one rule was needed. That rule is to be fair, Some of the delegates are teachers some teachers like to read to the rest of us. They will come in and put a sign on the wall and then read it to the rest of us. The people who do attend the caucus meeting usually elect themselves as delegates to the next step in the process the local conventions They have several committees with the same people in charge time after time some people never come to the meetings unless they can be in charge. Sometimes there is talk about all the work they have to do.. They never tell others the names of other people to contact or anything like that. I decided that if they think they are the only people in Clark County that can do certain things I am willing to let them do it. When I never felt that I was speaking for the people in my precinct. was more active in politics I More people have personal computers than attend the caucus meetings. They good get together in a chat room and talk with each other. The party officials could get together someplace and invite people to send them "e-mail" messages. Four or five people out of two hundred does not give an idea of how the voters are feeling yet this is what happens with the current format. In almost every election there is a call for volunteers to help mail out campaign literature Some times the volunteers arrive before the work does. The volunteers have the choice of driving several miles home or of sitting around in the way. I wish they would wait until the material arrives before they call for volunteers

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In 1984 Walter Mondale came to Vancouver before he announced that he was going to run for did not have have one good photograph of him. Several people had conversations with him but I president. I should be the run. president office the of and do not have any thoughts about how would donate For several years the local democrats would hold auctions to raise money. I The donated enlargements I last were of an old high. very selling never the was price but photographs had them mounted, the total cost to me was building in Port Townsend and a fall scene of a waterfall. I about twenty five dollars each. These photographs were being sold in a "silent auction" one lady came to me and said her and looked another lady \ were having a bidding war to see who would become the owner. A few minutes later I think that I was supposed to feel thrilled that they were at the bid sheet and the bid was about five dollars. I even thinking about buying one of my pictures. One year somebody did not bid high enough and wanted to would charge her whatever it cost me, her response was told her that I would charge her. I know how much I that she would get back to me. left some photographs of President Clinton and Mrs. Clinton to be sold the In the fall of 1996 I people thought the price was too high and did not buy them. As far as I am concerned from now on people can cut pictures out of magazines or go to Payless Drug or some store like that and buy their scenic photographs.

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There used to be a roller coaster and a carnival type runway with different kinds of games. There was also a swimming pool and an arena. This arena would be used to stage midget auto races. There would be fireworks on the fourth of July. However the thing that Jantzen Beach was noted for was its "Golden Canopied Ballroom" that featured the big bands of that time. There will be much more about big bands later. There was a place named "The Jug. " .that from the outside looked like a bigjug. A street named "Interstate Avenue" was part of the main highway US 99 W. A different street was then named Union was Avenue but it also showed on the maps as as US99 E they used to connect just south of Jantzen Beach. I have long only there once or twice, There is a street Marine Drive that is also connected there someway but I went there as a passenger just once therefore I forgotten how the cars got from one street to another street. . I am not sure how we got there. My memories of this are mixed. At the place it was located it could not have was there and a great many people were there. been very big but it seems one night I US 99 was the main highway that came through Vancouver was two lanes wide and was named Main Street in Vancouver and the route of all the cars coming through Vancouver. If there was a wreck on the one and only bridge it did not take long before every street in downtown Vancouver was filled with cars trying to return to Portland In "The Columbian" sometime in late 1945 or early 1946 there was a photograph of some people holding a sign saying they were moving from the Victory Hotel to the Bellevue Hotel. It was about five was informed that they were both brothels. years later that I The Victory Hotel was on Fifth Street in Vancouver close to the bus depot where we boarded busses to go Portland. The Bellevue Hotel was on Main Street located between Second Street and Third. There used to be a place called Burchs' at about Third and Columbia. Some parking was under the railroad overpass. At Burchs' they had live entertainment, it was either a piano or an organ behind the bar but above it so the musician had to climb a short ladder before they could play it was strange to see a lady in a dress climbing that ladder. .

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A CHANGE TO MORE PLEASANT THINGS

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One theory of how this universe began is the "Big Bang" . But that leaves a lot of things that are unexplained. For instance how life itself came to be. The way we see colors is a very complex method and could not have developed in a random manner. The way the mind works in conjunction with the way the brain works to me proves we arrived from the big bang to today via evolution with a whole lot of help. It seems like all my life most of the people I have had the longest and closes contact are either Catholic or Mormon. I have never had any desire to join either church When Iwas young the story was that the Bible was the word of God, since then I have heard the Bible was written by Saint Paul or by Saint Matthew or by Moses. I think there is a difference between the Bible being written by God and people claiming they are writing the words of God. I have not found the passages but I have been told that people have tried to justify slavery by what they have found in the Bible. There are just too many things that have happened in nature for them to have occurred without outside help We have had too many great leaders who have been on earth at the same time too often to think it was just coincidence. think that we were all was put in this world by God. I I have trouble when people seem to say in a way. "I was put here by God, I don't know where in the hell you came from. " I have never thought that God should ignore the other three billion people on earth and focus on me to keep me from doing anything wrong. If there is one thing that would prove the existence of a Superior Being or Beings to me it would be music. I think that all music is a special gift from our creator. We may all have our own preferences but I do not think evolution could have come up with music or the other forms of art "The particular of a body depends upon the molecular constitution of its surface by deterring the characters and numbers of the light vibrations which it reflects. " If there were living beings from other worlds there is no assurance that if they were looking at the same things we were that they would see the same things. In the world we live in two and two are four in some other worlds two and two might add to a total of seven. "Philosophers affirm that color is not in the bodies but in the mind; the vulgar affirm that the color is not in the mind but a quality of the bodies. " There is a lot of nonsense about life in other worlds. They have these creatures speaking the same language we do with maybe an accent. Any discussion about any contact with people in space should remain where it started in the comic books. In our world two and two are four. In other worlds two and two might make seven have some copies of a hardcover magazines "Horizon" that was published from 1959 to sometime I in the 1960s. One article tells about the British leaving someplace in the Far East and were preparing to leave running the government to the local people. One of the local people was quite bitter when he said. "You have taught us a lot of things but you have not taught us the most important thing. That is how do we learn to trust each other. " There is another article about some body talking to one of the Dons at Oxford University in England and asked how much learning the scholars from around the world were acquiring. He said that they were usually satisfied that the students could listen to a speaker and know if he was talking sense or nonsense. In an old Funk and Wagnalls Encyclopedia there is a long article about the telephone. The article explains how the voice is changed into electronic impulses on one end then changed back at the other end. The article does not say one word about how emotions or feelings are transmitted. was working in Medford in the fall of 1954 when Esquire magazine published an article that was I asking whether or not Shakespeare had written all the plays and poetry attributed to him. The person who had written the article about him had his doubts. It was his opinion that Christopher Marlowe was the one who had created all those works of literature. . At the time my knowledge of Shakespeare was very limited . We read MacBeth in high school and Ihad heard the word Hamlet and Julius Caesar may have been

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mentioned I did not know it at the time but this question about who wrote the works of Shakespeare comes up on a regular basis. Maybe there is a comet traveling through space and when it comes in to our universe it is time for the question to be asked again. The usual thing is for some "blue blood" to say that a "commoner" like William Shakespeare could not of have had the knowledge to have done this writing. These "bluebloods" have perpetrated a massive fraud for centuries claiming they are bright intelligent people who write poetry and make scientific discoveries. Anytime an ordinary person does something worth while or writes anything extra-ordinary they are knighted. But they are not made knights until the world knows they have done great things. The greatest contribution from Shakespeare was not his plays or poetry but it was the astounding number of words he created. did read all of his The article did get me interested in Shakespeare it took me about six years but I was also working on a have not read all of his sonnets. At the same time I plays and long poems but I correspondence course that should have been finished in two years not six years.

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THE FOLLOWING PAGES WILL BE USED TO TALK ABOUT THE PLEASURES OF LIFE SOMETIMES CALLED FUN AN ATTEMPT WILL BE MADE TO REPORT THINGS IN THE ORDER THEY HAPPENED AN ATTEMPT WILL ALSO BE MADE TO WRITE ABOUT THINGS JUST ONCE WILL BUT THAT MAY BE EVEN MORE DIFFICULT BUT I TRY.

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SOME PLEASURES OF LIFE In 1946 the play "Harvey" was on a nationwide tour and came to Portland for a weeks run at the Mayfair Theater. The name of the theater was later changed to the Fox. .. The star of the play was an old time movie star Joe E. Brown before that he had worked in vaudeville. The play was well received and there were a number of curtain calls. Finally Joe E. Brown was on the stage alone. He brought out a chair and sat down and talked to audience. He told us things that lifted our spirits and we would be laughing and enjoying ourselves and then he got serious and we were all very solemn. Then he would say something funny and we would laugh. He was leading us like he was conducting an orchestra. It was a very special evening. A year or two later the play came back this time with a man named Frank Fay. In the play was the actress Jean Stapleton the same lady that played the part of "Edith" in the television series "All In The Family For a number of years I went to a lot of movies. One movie made and released sometime in the 1950s' comes into mind starred the actor William Powell. I have long since forgotten the name of the movie. The time frame was around 1921. The people that made the movie had their cast dress in the proper period clothes and rented the proper cars. But for some reason the scenes were filmed on the streets of Hollywood. . As the actor and actress were saying their lines you could look out the back window of the car they were doing their acting in and see normal every day activities of a nineteen fifties suburban neighborhood.

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SOME PLEASURES OF LIFE In 1946 the play "Harvey" was on a nationwide tour and came to Portland for a weeks run at the Mayfair Theater. The name of the theater was later changed to the Fox... The star of the play was an old time movie star Joe E. Brown before that he had worked in vaudeville. . The play was well received and there were a number of curtain calls. Finally Joe E. Brown was on the stage alone. He brought out a chair and sat down and talked to audience. He told us things that lifted our spirits and we would be laughing and enjoying ourselves and then he got serious and we were all very solemn. Then he would say something funny and we would laugh. He was leading us like he was conducting an orchestra. It was a very special evening. A year or two later the play came back this time with a man named Frank Fay. In the play was the actress Jean Stapleton the same lady that played the part of "Edith" in the television series "All In The Family went to a lot of movies. One movie made and released sometime in the For a number of years I have long since forgotten the name of the movie. 1950s' comes into mind starred the actor William Powell. I The time frame was around 1921. The people that made the movie had their cast dress in the proper period clothes and rented the proper cars. But for some reason the scenes were filmed on the streets of Hollywood. . As the actor and actress were saying their lines you could look out the back window of the car they were doing their acting in and see normal every day activities of a nineteen fifties suburban neighborhood.

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with a big voice. When it was time for him to sing somebody put a hand on his shoulders and got him squared away and he counted the steps to the microphone and turned and started singing. Opinions varied have always liked him. The way he sings brings out the meaning of the song. about his singing but I When Duke Ellington and his band played at Coquille Oregon a few years later he had different remember the vocalist Jimmy Grissom and the bass player Wendell Marshall and the people in his orchestra I trombone player Quenten Jackson. 1945 After we moved to Vancouver radio station KWJJ was my station of choice because they played a lot liked best was Sammy Taylor who had a taste in music a lot like mine of swing music. The disc jockey that I The announcers or disc jockeys that broadcast from this station played a lot of swing music and some jazz until one night the owner told them that effective the next morning KWJJ would be a country and western think Sammy Taylor was with a different station by then. There was another brilliant but troubled station. . I man Bob McNulty who was a pleasure to listen to. There is one Bob McNulty story that should be told again. He had just played a record by Oscar Peterson on a station that did not want any jazz played on their station. He quickly announced that the piano player on the record that had just played was Francis Craig. One night I went to a concert featuring Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden. The music was great have two memories of that night. Jack Teagarden looked like he had never been outside in his life. but I Louis Armstrong was producing large amounts of perspiration as the concert proceeded. I think he had to put on new suits twice during the contest. The group with them included Cozy Cole,Barney Bigard, Arvel Shaw and Billy Kyle. In 1947 I bought my first record player and started buying records. Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday records were the first in my collection. There used to be a record department in the basement of Wolfs' at Ninth Street and Main in downtown Vancouver The great Billie Holiday was booked into the Civic Auditorium but both of the newspapers, The Oregon Journal and The Oregonian were shut down by a strike so very few people came. Billie Holiday sounded great that night. She brought her long time piano player Bobby Tucker with her. The program said Billie Holiday had been working so hard that she had had to take a year off to rest. She had been locked up for a year for on a narcotics violation. When she went to court she thought she would be put on probation but she was on her way to prison within hours if not minutes. There is an old expression that applies here the judge threw the book at her. The Castle Jazz Band was the other part of a double bill at the Civic Auditorieum that night/ A quick sidebar the drug people spent lots of money and time trying to punish her for using drugs in the meantime drugs were coming in by the tons and nobody cared. think with the Jazz at the Philharmonic. By Eleven or twelve years later she came through Portland I this time her God given talent was gone and people just walked out. A lot of people were crying as they walked out because they were remembering the supreme artist she had been. One writer has written that of all the jazz artists in the 1930s and 1940s Billie Holiday was the best. She had wonderful musical instincts. Some people including me think she should have never became involved with the song "Strange Fruit". Before then she would sing ballads and some songs that were up tempo or fast songs. But the image of "Strange Fruit" was just too strong in her mind and after that she tried to send a message. Before that time she would just sing the song. Eleven or twelve years later she came through Portland I think it was with the Jazz at the Philharmonic. By this time her God given talent was gone and people just walked out. A lot of the people were crying as they walked out because they were remembering the supreme artist she had been. One writer has written that of all the jazz artists in the 1930s and 1940s Billie Holiday was the best. In her early years Billie Holiday liked to sing the current popular songs of the day she was never a blues singer. The title of a book about her is "Lady Sings The Blues" a so-called auto-biography she has been quoted as saying that not only did she did not write the damn thing she had not even read the damn thing. The title for the book came from the song with the same name she had recorded. The truth was something that Billie Holiday did not adhere to at all times.
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The other music on the program that night was the Castle Jazz Band featuring Monte Ballou. The radio stations would play the music of Louis Armstrong, Nat Cole, Coleman Hawkins and other bought a had never heard her voice until I various jazz players but did not play any Billie Holiday records I record album of her music. . would hear songs being sung by a man named Lonnie Johnson who had a very Once in a while I distinctive style that people who heard him people liked. He played guitar at the same time that he was he singing the songs. A lot of his musical ideas can be heard in the music of B.B. King. Lonnie Johnson was also a classical violin player and he played with Duke Ellington for a while. One of my favorite song titles he recorded is "It Aint What You Used To Be Its' What You Is Today" One day I bought the latest Harry James release of a song that was named, "Who's Sorry Now" as recognized the sound of the alto-sax playing of Willie Smith soon as the music started I Before Willie Smith joined the Harry James band he had been with the Duke Ellington orchestra and before that he was with the great, history making, fabulous Jimmy Lunceford Orchestra A lot of people besides me knew how the different sidemen in the bands sounded so we knew when they had moved to a new band. Juan Tizol the valve trombone player also made the switch from Duke Ellington to Harry James.

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Frontier Room
could and went to the Frontier came to Vancouver as often as I When I was working out of town I got a job Room many times and had met Maxine McCloskey, the wife of Todd, one of the owners before I with the Southern Pacific Railroad. . met a young The Frontier Room by the middle of the 1950s was offering big name entertainment, I lady named Marilyn there. We had a lot of conversations and our friend ship that started then still endures. In was boring her. had big ideas and must of have driven her up the wall but she never said that I those days I After her marriage ended she moved to Portland, Oregon and got a job over there. A few months later met this woman from Belfast Ireland who was then working as a hostess at the Frontier Room. Her name is I became friends too,she was born and grew up in Maura McAfee Marchionni a fine singer. Maura and I Belfast and moved to the United States to pursue her career as a singer. She told me that the people running the Miss Universe approached her about entering the contest. She returned to Ireland and won the contest for Miss Ireland. If my memory is correct they wanted a long-term commitment from her. She could not afford to give up her singing career and she was planning to get married to Ron. She gave up her title of "Miss Ireland" . The girl that took her place came in third in the Miss Universe contest. came into the Frontier Room one night and Maura Ron and Maura have two sons and one daughter, I had a feeling that she was pregnant before she passed the news on to me. . had a special glow in her eyes. I She had just found that day she was pregnant. Her daughter is now a featured writer with the newspaper in Tacoma,Washington. thought was great was a tall beautiful black singer named Abby Lincoln a tall One person that I beautiful black lady who dressed with exquisite taste and put on a very entertaining show. After she worked at the Frontier Room she went on to star in a couple movies. She was in the movie A Man Is A Man" with Ivan Dixon. This was about a union member in the south. The roles that Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln played were just normal working people. She had the title role in the movie "For The Love of Ivy" her costars name will be added later. She also made a movie with Jayne Mansfield. thought she was beautiful beyond words. saw her at the Frontier I When I There was a singing-comedy team the Cooper Sisters that used to be at the Frontier Room at least once a year or sometimes twice a year. They were good friends with Maura. Blanche Cooper was the foul mouth funny sister, Audrey was the one who did most of the singing. One week Audrey was sick so Maura sang for her. Maura also knew Audreys' funny lines so she was in that part of the act also. One man worked with some puppets on strings. One of the puppets he worked with was made to look like a goose. He would have this goose lay an egg then he would have the egg hatch and then have the baby duck and the mother. . The actress who starred in my mothers favorite television program "The Beverly Hillbillies" Irene did not see her but I was told that the next Christmas season Ryan worked at the Frontier Room one year. I everybody who was working at the Frontier Room when she was received a Christmas card from her. Most of the people who went to the Frontier Room were well behaved but once in a while somebody would start to get out of line. The owner Todd McCloskey would come out from the bar and set at their table never knew what he said but it only took a few minutes until the ladies would be picking up with them. I there purses and the men would be gathering their change getting ready to leave. The Frontier Room made money from the pinball machines and from card games in the back room. At some tables they would have say six people playing. At different times four of them would be playing for the house. When some official in the state of Washington discovered the pinball machines and card games were involved in gambling and ordered the gambling stopped. The amount of money available to pay for the entertainment was reduced sharply. Todd McCloskey and his partners used the profits from the Frontier Room to start building the Red Lion hotel chain.
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The headliners came and went but the trio playing for all those acts played there for several years. The trio called themselves the Ambassadors with Bob McNeil playing bass, Daryl Kaufman playing piano and John Morehead playing drums were there for a long time. Neal Masson and Chick Colburn played drums am not sure if Herb there later and Jack Murphy played bass for a while and Pat George played piano there. I Hall played there or not. did not get At one time there was an all girl band that had a drummer that looked like Jerry Lewis. I to see them but the "Modernaires" who had worked with Glenn Miller worked at the Frontier Room there was another group that was named "The Axidentals" who were very good also. The great singer Helen Forrest was also booked into the Frontier Room it is my understanding that she was very pleasant to all the people. had a chance to see her. A singer named Loray White was booked in there but she was gone before I She had eloped in the middle of the week with Sammy Davis Jr. This man had been dating a blonde movie star and a story was going around. The story was that if Sammy Davis Junior wanted to live to the next Monday he had better be married the next Sunday. by

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JEAN HOFFMAN AND OTHER YARNS

went to a lot of Sunday afternoon jam sessions they were a lot of fun and I While working in Coos Bay I could. went out in Portland.as often as I was star struck 1953 Duke Ellington did a one nighter in Coquille Oregon a small town near Coos Bay I recognized and remember two sidemen only trombone player Quentin by seeing Duke Ellington again. I Jackson and the bass player Wendell Marshall. The singer was Jimmy Grissom. Harry James featuring Buddy Rich came through Coos Bay.and played for a dance at Marshfield High. It was supposed to be a fundraiser for a group called "The Active Club"they did not draw a large enough crowd to pay the band. Some of the rich people in the club must of have come up with the money topay the band because they played for the entire evening. Buddy Rich even smiled at me as they walked across the dance floor when the band was finished/ came to Vancouver. In downtown had a weeks vacation so I During election week of 1956 I Vancouver between seventh and eighth there was a club called "The Fort" that offered live entertainment. went back was rude and butted in. The next night I The piano player was talking to somebody but I her name out found was Jean to apologize to the lady piano player. We talked for a few minutes and I thought she was a great piano player Hoffman. I was reading the jazz magazine "Down Beat" that had an article about this great A few months later I new jazz trio. It was Jeannie Hoffman trio. They were praised in Downbeat mentioned in Playboy and worked at big name jazz club in Chicago and were working in one of the biggest of clubs in New York City. Then the drummer Bill Young who was Jeannie Hoffman's husband at the time got them all fired. Their know they never worked as a unit again. Jeannie came back to booking agency dropped them and as far as I will not discuss what the drummer Portland and worked in Portland and the San Francisco area for years. I did to get them fired. The firing was justified. A few years later Jeannie Hoffman and David Frisien started doing Christmas Concerts in several places. A bartender named Sue said that when Jeannie Hoffman got drunk she had the foulest language of any of the people that came in men or women it did not matter A woman sitting there who worked for Intel said she did not swear and said she did not use any of what we can call the mild profanity words but she said she used what we can call the strongest profanity word quite often. Her taste in clothes was "different" to say the least, a local piano player thought she had great taste in always thought she would have her clothes in one room where she would take her dog and then go clothes. I another room and would wear whatever the dog brought her. It must of have been in 1957 or 1958 that the musicians in the Coos Bay and North Bend area started having "jam sessions" on Sunday afternoons. The telegraph operator Leonard Davis had Sundays off so we would go together, Leonard Davis was a former drummer who had been in the entertainment business before going to work for the railroad. We had a lot of fun afternoons together. moved to Eugene a few days after I In the fall of 1959 my job at Coos Bay was abolished and I thought it moved there was a notice in the paper about Ella Fitzgerald coming to the University of Oregon. I was pleased and would be for students only. The paper said the concert would be open to the general public I drove to the campus and went to the concert. The Herb Ellis trio was the backup group. They played with exquisite taste the sound system sounded wonderful. It was a wonderful night of Stan Kenton was on tour with his orchestra a year or so after the Ella Fitzgerald concert. The orchestra was scheduled to play at the Civic Auditoreum on some night. The afternoon before the concert they opened the doors up and let members of the fan club come in and Stan Kenton was there and talked to the young people for more than an hour

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BONNIE CAROL AND OTHER TALES

After moving back to Vancouver in 1961 1was able to catch a lot more live jazz in the Portland area went to was "Sidney's,it was owned by Sid Porter the piano player who was sixfoot The first real jazz club I five or seven inches in height and his club was a legend around Portland. He had his piano set up so he could see the people coming in the front door. At that time most clubs had a check- room where men cold leave their hats and coats. And their ladies could leave their fur coats or cloth coats.The lady working the cloakroom was a delightful person named Jessie. Jessie also worked as a cocktail waitress. She used to wear a Baby Ben Alarm Clock around her neck was talking to the lady bass player Bonnie Carol. Bonnie had gone to high One night at Sydney's I moving New York City to pursue her career in music. When we talked she had school in Vancouver before moved back home and was working in the Vancouver Portland area. We had a very pleasant conversation was listening to a radio program. A man and I had found a friend. It was about a week later when I felt I named Doug Baker had the program and he was talking how Bonnie Carol had exploratory surgery and the doctors discovered her cancer had spread and there was nothing they could do to save her. By the time the program aired she was in Vancouver Memorial Hospital. This hospital was about a went to the hospital to see her and kept going back to visit with five or ten minute drive from my house. I saw her was on a enjoyed her company and she seemed to enjoy mine. The last time I her. Because I Wednesday and she talked a lot about life in New York and how the trumpet player Doc Serversen lived were both fond of down the hall from her We also talked about. Portland singer Patti Hart, Bonnie and I Patti. There were usually three or four people in the room visiting with Bonnie Bonnie was a well known as a bass player and people still mention her name when talking about fine bass players The last time I saw Bonnie was on a Wednesday she was out of bed getting herself some beef borsch She said it was keeping her alive. That was the only time she ever mentioned her medical problems.She had The following her private bathroom and a little kitchen with a refrigerator where kept her beef borscht. Friday I called the hospital at noon to see how she was doing and the nurse on duty said her condition was called back that evening around seven and the nurse on deteriorating and she was sleeping most of the time. I thanked the nurse for the kind treatment Bonnie duty then said Bonnie had expired about an hour earlier. I of as a person and as a musician thought well she of was lot left friends, had received. Bonnie a It is my understanding that when Billie Holiday was getting ready to make her one and only trip to Europe Bonnie Carol was offered the job of bass player. By that time Billie Holiday had the reputation of being"difficult" or hard to work for so Bonnie stayed home. The way things turned out Billie Holiday was on her best behavior and the tour was well received. One night at Sidneys the great Herb Jeffries was there and did some singing he sang " Old Man River" at a very fast tempo and had to catch his breath. Herb Jeffries was with Duke Ellington when Ellington had what is considered to be his greartest orchestra the 1942 to 1943 group. He issued a phonograph album that had three records includpng the songs "Solitude" and "Flamingo" know among others. Herb Jeffries version of Flamingo was so good that no other singer has recorded it that I of. drove up from He was booked into some club in downtown Portland in the summer of 1960 and I had the pleasure Eugene to see him The number of people who came to see him that night were very few. I of standing next to him and he said it must of have been the hot weather that was keeping people home.

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THE PASTICHE .THE PRIMA DONNA AND OTHER PLACES

My first successful jazz photos were taken at the Pastiche a small club across the street from the Courthouse in Vancouver I have photos of Steve Christoffersen playing piano, Nancy King singing, Chris Conrad and Neil Masson playing drums, Steve Willits playing bass and Quen Anderson playing trombone. Any others have slipped do remember Sonny King in there one night because he was carrying his saxophone in a sack. my mind. I The Pastiche would keep their front doors open while the jazz players were playing. At that time the jail used to think that the people in jail were getting a free jazz concert. was on top of the courthouse building. I had heard him being interviewed on the radio think I I had heard of the name Quen Anderson and I took my first close up photographs of Quen they came out well one of started going to Pastiche. I before I could take pictures that them was better than the others That roll of film gave me the feeling that maybe I and go received made me take more jazz photos would satisfy me and other people,the encouragement I would take a photo good enough to be had hopes that some day I started taking jazz photos I When I thing to say about some of them is that The nicest jazz books. looking at photos in started published. Then I like to take never have. I they are awful. Some photographers have enough influence to "stage" a picture I thinking is musician that the reflect to my photographs room. of want I the back the from my jazz pictures about music not about having a picture taken went into "The Pastiche"she is now a business woman Patty Karspinki was the bartender the first time I and anybody who knows Patty knows she is independent. Rebecca Kirby has been working for and with Patty for a long time. . One night in the Prima Donna the singer Mary Lawrence was asked to sing the Duke Ellington and Bob Russell song "Do Nothing Til You Hear From Me." Mary Lawrence said she did not know the lyrics but somebody at the same table said they did. Mary said that if this person would "feed" her the words she would sing the song. The person said fine and the first words out of her mouth her were "Missed the Saturday night dance couldn't bear it without you." These words are of course from another Duke Ellington Bob Russell song "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" When those words were spoken the drummer Neal Masson exploded and wanted to know what in the hell song they were doing anyway. was talking to two ladies Betty and Darlene about On a different night in the jazz club Prima Donna I said it would be easier to say what took. I photography. The question was asked about what kind of pictures I not any nudes. I pictures photographed had This included and did not take. sports kind of pictures I The music started and we started talking about other things Two hours later when the music had was talking to one of them in the parking lot suddenly out of no where she said finished for the evening I "Bob if you ever get serious about photographing nudes give me a call. have never seen her again could ask for a phone number she got in her car and left and I Before I

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MARIANNE MAYFIELD AND OTHER THINGS OF INTEREST

met Marianne at the Gold Coin in It must have been in the late sixties or early seventies when I wasn't quite sure of their location. When she downtown Portland. She would be working in clubs that I introduced hear her. myself to her and our friendship started I and see went to Coin Gold I started at the She used to come in to the Prima Donna a lot and sing a couple of songs and just make everybody in the room feel better later she worked there. She did the vocals and played bass, Dick Blake played piano and Mel Brown played drums. The trio played great jazz but very few came to see them. Marianne has the ability to make everybody in any room she is in feel better by just because she is in the room. took my first photographs of her. One of them turned out well enough to have That is where I enlarged. followed her from club to club then in 1985 she was working at DJs in Lake Oswego I also met Michelle Colleen a very special lady was working there also. She lives in California now. I and Kelly there also started going there. A few years and When Marianne moved to the "Parchman Farm" in Portland I met Vandi Evans. There will be more about Vandi and her family later. . several waitresses later I wanted to give to her. My first trip to DJs was had a photograph of Marianne the size of a poster that I I placed the picture next to the bandstand and the bartender Ed said she would get it. made in the daytime. I left and before she got there the owner came and decided he wanted that picture. After I confirmed that Marianne Mayfield should have the picture then they could not "find" it. The When I had another one made for Marianne. owner had "borrowed" it and had a frame made for it. I would set at the counter by the Back to Tyrones restaurant, he put on a few concerts at night and I would see. The door might be able to explain what I knew the laws of reflection better I front window. If I into the kitchen had a glass window about ten inches by thirty inches. Somehow whatever was happening in the kitchen was visible in a store window across the street. The first photograph of mine put on display at Tyrones was one of Quen Anderson. had a lot of conversations in one of them he was telling about working in a band that was Quen and I playing the Paramount Theater in New York City. As the band came into view he would be playing a solo but he said his knees would be shaking. Quen worked in the musical groups headed by Georgie Auld and Herbie Fields he also worked for Anita O Day. He was a member of the first band she hired after she started working as a solo act. Quen would follow Frank Rossilino from job to job. Quen did an arragement for Woody Hermanbut had to go to the union to get his money. Woody Herman never asked Quen to do any more arranging. That could have been about the time Woody Hermans manager was stealing money from

him.

had been to Reno a few times and Another reason for me to start taking photography seriously is that I take my chances in the investment field. This has paid off well for really did not have the gambling bug. I me. The jazz of the eighties includes the music of the jazz parties at Otter Crest and other places that will be talked about later. A club named The Hobbit used to bring in national acts also. On one night a man in crutches came in am not sure but I think the great piano player from and gave the people working there a terrible time. I Canada Oliver Jones was the billed attraction. The man on crutches got mad and threw his plate at the waitress. They took his silverware away and was told a few days called the police. He was complaining to the police that he could not eat his salad. I later that as the police were walking out with him he said. "I've got tattoos on my ass do you want so see them?"
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1982 Jazz And Photography could They started having jazz parties down on the Oregon coast at Otter Crest but it was 1982 before I arrange vacation time to be there. had a lot of fun. I heard a lot of wonderful The music was great and my camera was working fine and I music and took a lot of photographs. felt mine was just as good. have spent a lot of time at the library looking at photographs in jazz books and I I have seen photographic work in books and exhibitions admire the work of a good photographer but I I that the photographer should be ashamed of. Tyrone's was a small restaurant in downtown Vancouver that had jazz at noon on Fridays for a while. I would then have it photographed a number of them and would let the owner pick the one he liked best. I had my photographs on enlarged and sell it to him. He would have it framed and put it on the wall so I Tyrone liked who the for a cafe. name man Gary The named a owner was display for a while. My serious interest in photography got started in the fall of 1977 when a lady in a bookstore asked the clerk if they had any books on photography. went to that table and purchased a book and took it home and read it. The clerk directed her to a table. I bought my first single lens reflex might be able to take photographs so I I thought that later I A few months camera. had made my first trip to Hawaii and came back with some photographs that people said Before this I some nice things about. had some Marilyn Goodrich the bartender at the Crossing Restaurant talked to somebody so I was told my price was to photographs on display there for a while. They were for sale but did not sell. I have always felt that if have done better since. I feel that I high. But it was some of my early work and I people felt a photographer was asking too much they were free to buy a camera and a roll of film and a tank of gas and head out and take their own photos had much success taking photographs of fireworks. It took that long It took about three tries before I should use. I used time should be and what film I use and where I should knew what lens I before I have bad pictures of exposure and guessed at the time. It was too dark to see the dial on my watch. I lens and the depth of field of a telephoto tried take waterfalls with pictures to waterfalls all over the place. I is too shallow. This causes most of the picture to be out of focus have donated photographs to good causes and given a lot away to friends. I Some of my photographs are of prominent people in the political life on the local and national scene and I have photographs of some major stars in the jazz field. A man in Russia has or had three of my photographs of the northwest and a jazz saxophone player from took of him London England has some photographs that I had sat down at different Black Jack table and tried to play but the dealers kept On my trip to Reno I giving me orders. They would say "don't touch your cards" or "don't touch your money" or other things of was not going to cheat them out any large amount of money. that nature. I was playing a dollar at a time so I on photography. money quit going to Reno and started spending my I would go into Tymers to buy something and my bill would be around twenty-five dollars they When I had lost or spent around twenty-five dollars at the card tables they would nasty because I would be nice. If I not spent or lost fifty or a hundred dollars

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THOUGHTS ABOUT JAZZ THE GOLDEN AGE

Misbehavin" . In the years starting about 1931 up through the seventies the name Bing Crosby was very big in record sales in the movies and on the radio. He had left his radio program called "The Kraft Music Hall" and was going to be doing another program to be aired on Sunday nights. Somebody It could have been Bing Crosby, came up with the idea of taping the program one night and broadcasting it a few days later. The program would air on Sundays and Bing Crosby wanted to be someplace else on Sundays. There was a lot of talk about this being wrong but the only thing "live" that we see on television is the news and sports. A large share of that is on tape Some artists can play jazz music and classic music, the jazz artist playing classic music does better than the classic music artist does playing jazz. "Downbeat Magazine" has had jazz polls for decades. There used to be jazz polls in other magazines started listening to and reading about also but the one in Downbeat is considered the most important. When I jazz I did not have the expertise to vote in the polls. A majority of the people who do vote are not felt I think the easiest way to become a jazz critic is to appoint your self as an expert. qualified either. I Billie Holiday considered to be one of the two best female jazz singers of all time never won the Down- Beat poll. Her only competition was Ella Fitzgerald. Each one had their approach to jazz singing to
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had a chance to be born again I have said many timed that if I Life has been very good to me and I was born. would select the day I People who love jazz for the most part are very friendly people and are easy to get along with. If there is a jazz event with a lot of people attending the people who arrive early will try to make room for the late comers. Jazz fans will share space while Rock fans will fight over it. Between 1920 and 1945 there was a special time of artistic creativity in the field of "popular" song writing. There were many songs of high quality written before and after this period. However these is no other time of such artistic achievement. These songs were popular with the public in addition to being works of art. Great songs were being written for Broadway musicals and later for the movies. At different times musicals that closed on Broadway after a few weeks or days had songs that are still being heard sixty and seventy years later As these composers and lyrists lost their creative drive there was a decline in the artistic level of song writing. Song writing at one time was meant for the sophisticated and witty now a lot of the songs have words that might appeal to the third grade dropout. The term lyric seems inappropriate for the material being written currently. The United States of America with a lot of help from immigrants from Russia had a special artistic golden age but when it ended nobody noticed. The movies being made and records being sold for the market in 1996 might be making astronomical amounts of money but that does not mean they have artistic merit. Most of the better songwriters were well educated and had attended colleges or universities. A lot of jazz artists have a solid background in classical music. Advertising agencies in 1997 are still using songs written in this "golden period" to sell their clients products. One song "It Had To Be You" written in 1923 is heard quite often. The song "Yes We Have No Bananas" is being used in some commercial. Target Stores is using the voice of Sarah Vaughan to sell their have heard on these commercials are "Good Night My Love" and " Aint merchandise the songs I

compare them is pointless. Sarah Vaughan had her own style also but most jazz fans rate Billie and Ella tops. have not he heard Some people have called Sarah Vaughan a blues singer if she ever recorded a blues song I it Ella Fitzgerald did not" self destruct" as Billie Holiday did. Billie Holiday did not need the help of anybody to ruin herself started buying jazz magazines. One magazine was "Down Beat" and When I came to Vancouver I the other was "Metronome" they both published the results of their yearend jazz polls. I think that if a person has only heard a few players during the year they have no way of knowing who the best player is at the time they vote. "Esquire Magazine" used to have an annual "critics" jazz poll that ceased after 1946. In January of 1947 their "Jazz Book" for 1947 was published. The book should have been about the jazz artists who had just won the poll. Their names appear in the jazz poll listings but most of them are not mentioned again. The book did have a few photographs of a musical group whose leader was known for his drinking more than his playing ability. This man Eddie Condon was white and most of the ignored poll winners were black. Some of the players listed as new stars included such names as Miles Davis,Billy Taylor,Stan De Franco,Barney Kessell Ray Brown and Tadd Dameron Buddy Getz, The jazz world was about to have great changes the jazz artists who would have much influence on the way jazz would be played in the years to come. The jazz critics who had participated in the poll wrote an open letter to Esquire magazine that was published in the other jazz magazines. The letter said that none of the critics would ever have anything to do with Esquire Magazine again. Within a week or two after going to work at Coos Bay the "Eagles Lodge" was holding a dance and read in the local paper that Charlie Barnet had hired one of the biggest names of the big band era. When I I I would be going. It was up one flight of the knew to it public that was Bay open and Coos be would in entered the room they were having a drawing. There was walked up the one flight of stairs and as I stairs I was looking at the number on my out of the box. As I picked they numbers had no response to the first two had no use for, I won a bridge lamp that I ticket they were reading that number as the winning ticket. I did Charlie Barnet I minutes for feet from a a standing away few few But was I and to Betty. mailed it Vern have no idea what her not get a chance to talk to him. The singer was a pretty redhead girl and to this day I name was. The older jazz players are full of entertaining tales even those who victims of cruel acts of racial discrimination have funny stories to tell. One man acted like he was his own servant and would ask for the keys to "Mr.Grants" room or pick mail the for "Mr. Grant" until one day he slipped and asked for the mail for "me" At a different hotel the up hotel people were upset when then found out that a black man had been sleeping in one of their beds. He told them that his black did not come off that they could check the sheets This was the trumpet player Roy Eldridge. The jazz scene in Chicago was controlled by gangsters if musicians did not do what the gangsters wanted them to do they would be dead a short time later. . For some reason jazz fans prefer the traveling jazz musician to the local jazz artists. Maybe we all think that we can see and hear the local artists anytime. Jazz players who were well received while on tour have moved to Portland and have a hard time finding work. This problem applies to other cities also. It would be wonderful if there were enough jazz patrons to make jazz a profitable business for club owners It would also be good to know that students studying jazz could have reasonable hopes of making a living playing jazz in their home area. have a great To keep the clubs going the clubs must appeal also to non jazz lovers. This is why I affection for "squares". They help keep the music alive

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There are times when our creator graces us for a short time with composers and lyricists but also with performers. Two of them at least stayed with us after their best singing was over with. am writing about was Billie Holiday whose self destructive nature prevented her The first person I from keeping the high standards she had set for herself. The other person is Frank Sinatra who did his best singing a long time ago. Sinatra singing at his best was on such a high plateau that it might not be matched by any of the other singers. Sometimes there is talk about whether Frank Sinatra was a jazz singer or not. My personal reaction is. "Who cares?", the question should be. Is he a good singer? Frank Sinatra was at his best singing ballads such as the great song by Gordon Jenkins "Good Bye" or Hoagy Carmichaels song "I Get Along Without You Very Well" and "The Night We Called It A Day" by enjoy hearing him sing the up tempo songs but he is better at ballads, Matt Dennis. I It would also be good to know that students studying jazz could have reasonable hopes of making a living playing jazz in their home area. have a To keep the clubs going the clubs must appeal also to who do not love jazz. This is why I of a great going Some music alive and idea the strong. peoples keep They help great affection for "squares". jazz band is the Glen Miller Orchestra.

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ZOO JAZZ CATHREDAL PARK JAZZ PIONEER SQUARE JAZZ

For several years the Portland Zoo would have jazz concerts on Wednesday afternoons at five or five would drive up there before the afternoon traffic had all the going home thirty. It worked out great for me. I would be able to find a place to park and then go into the zoo and wander around. traffic/ I was able to set up my cameras and get good photographs. My photographs are By my arriving early I of numerous jazz players but also show the changes in the stage as the years rolled by. was polite and bashful and as a result my photographs did not due justice acted like I The first year I made a place for myself down front and still used a telephoto lens to get I month second The to the players. close up photographs of certain players. There would be groups of three or six and there would be some big band music. A few singers appeared also. After the music ended it seemed like a long walk back to the car. It took me a while but It came to me one day. That is the less camera equipment you take in the less camera equipment you have to pack out. thought he was tellng One night the concert has run late and as we passed the lions the male was roaring. I us all to just go home and leave him alone. only remember rain once or twice. We were lucky in having good weather most of the time. I The concert hours were changed. This change would have forced me to be on that highway during do not leave home planning for might find my self in heavy traffic but I peak travel-time. Once in a while I quit going. it. So I For those who do not know Cathredal Park is located under one end of a suspension bridge in understand it northwest Portland. The only way to describe the St.Johns Bridge is to call it beautiful. As I undergrowth including blackberries was growing there unchecked. Some people working together turned this quagmire into a park. They wanted to come and see what they had done. In order to get people to come out in numbers the cost had to be nominal. And what is more nominal then free. Then they thought who will think the idea of musicians came up quickly. The college at Gresham was already putting on work cheap. I the Mt. Hood jazz festival so the decision to hold a jazz event at Cathredal Park was made. . With the exception of big bands the people who play out there are a lot like the groups playing at Zoo Jazz. The people who manage Cathredal Park have the money in their budget to bring in a "national act" . am so tired The national act comes as a "closer" on Sunday afternoon. By the time the big name comes on I just home go I that On the days that are nice and sunny it becomes very hot at the Cathredal Park. The stage is in a low place like a bowl with an open area in front. They have a huge tent covering the stage and a fenced in back stage area. They have refreshment for the jazz players and volunteers and the "in" never went in the gate. am not "in" so I people. I This event is staged in late July so if you set where you can see and hear the musicians it gets hot and uncomfortable. They do have some huge trees that people use for shade. But if you sit in the shade you might miss some of the music. . They have food and beverage for sale along with various other things. They also have portable

potties. Another group stages summer concerts at Pioneer Square in downtown Portland. One night a week take "Max" there and it works great they have a they have jazz concerts timed for the after work crowd. I stop right there. It is a great place to take jazz photographs. had my camera and telephoto lens on and was using my One day I was a few minutes late but I took about six frames that came out very well. monopod. . Nancy King was singing and I The concerts at Pioneer Square have been well staged, sometimes the concrete becomes hard to set on but the price of free is great.
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If it rains or looks like rain the concerts are cancelled. They do not worry about the people but they are concerned about all the electronic equipment. One summer plans were made to have outdoor jazz concerts next to the Columbia in a new amphi theater that the taxpayers had paid for down by the Quay. The promoter was going to bring in natrional known jazz artists. He wanted to start out with a local group to see how it would go before proceeding farther. The first concert went over well and was well received. When the vendors who had furnished the food and beverages wanted their money he could not be located. The money and the man had both disappeared.

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JAZZ AT OTTER CREST SKAMANIA SALISHAN liked the way Ruth Price sang so it was went to was in 1982. I 1982 The first jazz party at Otter Crest I was able to use part of my vacation learned she would be singing at the jazz party. I good news to me when I the first party I After knew I would be small combos. had a lot of fun. They also had a big band and several could or until the promoters did not want to do it any more. coming back as long as I Piano player Gene Harris is a very special favorite with the people that attend the jazz parties in the made. It was reported to could make it and the year that I northwest. He was there in 1981 the year before I to building easy do the this was built on solid rock not moving 1981 was building in the trio his had me that I was standing against the back wall trying to get a picture of the drummer Jimmie Smith but his head waited for about five minutes until he his head was completely kept disappearing behind his cymbal so I behind his cymbal and took my picture. The photograph came out well. A few years later some college students made a class project based on that photograph. They gave the drummer in the picture a new name and a new identification. They made him a legendary drummer who had inherited two million dollars and have a copy of the tape. spent it all on one large party. They put it all on tape I A great male singer Ernie Andrews was also there the first year, Ernie Andrew was and is a very fine heard him at the Inn At Otter Crest. singer that was unknown to me until I had quit reading "Down-Beat" several years ago because the writers were using too many big words I for me. It was very difficult to read "Down-Beat" without a dictionary near by. There was a lot of us standing in a lot of lines while we went to all those "Otter Crest Jazz Parties" . I never did know exactly why. waited in line with the rest of them even though I Some of the people that went to Otter Crest wanted to sit up front while others wanted to sit in the back and others did not care. Some groups of people would work as a team and send people down to get in was always happy to sit in the back of the room. For several years the line and save seats for the others. I room would be divided between smokers and non-smokers. If they had the smokers closest to the door those of us who were non-smokers would have to inhale their fumes as we walked by. If the smokers were seated furthest from the door they would light up as they walked by and we would still have to breathe in the tobacco smoke. The state of Oregon helped us by passing a law that made all meeting rooms like that non-smoking/ There was also a line when it was time to eat. They also had the smoking and non-smoking areas in the dining room. I met the bass player John Heard and his wife Carolyn in one of the lines while we were waiting to was east. John Heard is a sculptor and painter in addition to being a bass player. It was four years before I eight seemed that he to appreciate. pictures gave him about able to take a good photograph of John Heard. I made it a point to say John Heard was in Portland for the "First Jazz" party at the Benson Hotel. I will never bother him "Hello" but he acted like he had never seen me before. So much for John Heard, I again. am not sure if his The piano player Lou Levy was there also playing his own style of quiet jazz. I hair turned gray when he was seventeen or if it turned when he had reached the older age of twenty-two. My first year at Otter Crest was the second year for the Gene Harris trio, at that time Gene Harris had John Heard as his bass player and Jimmie Smith as his drummer. I was told that the year before when the trio had been playing "The Battle Hymn of The Republic "that the floor in the music room was moving with the music. That is "pretty good" if the fact that the building is on solid rock is remembered. They used to have two people playing piano at the same time sometimes. It would be a very wonderful, marvelous, fantastic night when they would have four piano players playing at the same time. should make a was doing this right I They had so many great musicians playing there that if I I will let other people who know more about music than do write about the comment about all of them. I
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musicians. One year they added the great comic Pete Barbutti to the line up of entertainers. Pete was working and "rolling" along with his act when one man in the audience tried to heckle him. Pete took about ten seconds to silence the man and he never said another word. The crowd was on Petes' side anyway. When I want to hear what they have to say not somebody from the crowd. go to see somebody in a club I missed out on the excitement but one year a lot of the jazz party people were able to see a Sea Otter I give birth to a "pup". They were all thrilled by what they had witnessed. They had witnessed the work of Mother Nature at They said that the birds cleaned up after the birth and very quickly all signs of a birth had best. her disappeared For some reason a lot of the music lovers that attend the jazz parties do not appreciate singers as do. much as I The promoters of anything like these jazz parties want the people to have very positive feelings when the event comes to an end. This is done to make sure the people will come back the next year. With that in mind one year they had the piano player Mike Melvoin playing the "Hammond B3 Organ" what ever that is. Most of the musicians playing there that weekend were on the bandstand playing in support of him, The final number was "Every Day" with everybody playing great and the audience was in heaven. It need better words to use but anyhow it went on for a long time and we were all standing their was great I applauding and having a good time when a few people started using the over used word, "more." The do not know what else those people wanted, played their musicians had just completed doing their best I hearts out and Ithought we should enjoy what we had listened to and be happy. The rooms at Otter Crest are built on a side hill so when the patron checks in they are directed to the parking lot and an employee of the "Inn At Otter Crest" comes by in a van to take the persons luggage to was very lucky the person that was on duty was a lady named Jackie. It did not matter what job their unit. I she was working in the years that followed she made my visit a pleasure. After a very successful run at Otter Crest the decision was made to move the jazz party up the road to the Salishan Lodge. It was bigger and held more people but there was still some standing in line There are two more things to write about before this leaves Otter Crest. The first thing is the way we stood in lines. The first line was the one to get into the music room to listen to the music. The people would start getting in line an hour before the doors were to be opened. There would be long lines when it was time to eat our evening meal. A number of people had purchased meal tickets in advance and some of the people working at the restaurant acted like they did not care if we ate or not. They had their money so if we got angry and left they were ahead. was by myself when the hostess said they were not seating single I was ready to eat one night and I would have sat in there for an hour. people. She had me go in the lounge and wait. If she had had her way I five lounge into the about minutes and took me into the came within who there lady another was But there dining room and found a seat for me. The ladies had it worse than the men. They had to wait in line to use their restroom facilities. The room for the music at Salishan was bigger than the room for music at Otter Crest so the lines waiting to get in were not so long. There was some waiting in line to eat but not much. It was at Salishan that my friend Marilyn was able to get away from work and come and enjoy the music. The unit she was assigned to was further away than mine so she would come by my unit and we told somebody this they did not believe me. would go to the music together. When I Marilyn started talking to a young couple from Dallas Texas. Their names are Jeff and Brenda Smith both consider that we are lucky to have them as friends. and Marilyn and I They had some of the same musicians at Salishan as they did at Ottter Crest and some new ones. Bucky Pizarrelli has an expression on his face that looks like he could be every-bodys grandfather. Pete Barbutti was there the second year and some woman tried to show how funny she was and made a fool out of herself.
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They also had jazz parties up the Gorge from Vancouver at the Skamania Lodge. These parties were was lucky my room was just a short walk from the dining not the financial success the others had been. I room and the music room. The music at Skamnia was on the same high level as it had been at Otter Crest and Skamnia The trumpet player Roy Hargrove is becoming well known all over the nation. The bass player bought an arrangement from guitar player Charles Grossman and never paid for it. wish it had been The Skamania Lodge is located only about one hours drive from Vancouver so I more successful. have given up on long auto trips. get drowsy on long drives so I For some reason I

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Centrum Port Townsend

There is another large jazz event held in and around the city of Port Townsend Washington every summer. They start out with an afternoon jazz jam session in a public square in downtown Port Townsend on Fridays' I think. Then on Friday nights they have different musical groups playing in different locations around town. It is very difficult to see and hear the musicians because the locales are all small and very little if any arrangements are made for the people who want to see and hear. The first year I went it was at the last minute some body in a group was not going to be able to go so just followed the other people. That year the afternoon concerts were held in a tent and the seats I went. I were some old wooden theater seats that somebody had taken from a garbage disposal area. They were the hard wood seats with splinters. The people who knew what they were doing brought cushions. The music could remember who was playing that afternoon. wish I was great and I That night the group had decided there was a certain piano player they wanted to see. We had to go down a rickety flight of steps. The place was full and as some people left we would work our way to the front. We had just worked our way close enough to the front when the group wanted to go see somebody else. would not be able to get any pictures at knew that with the film in my camera I At the first concert I did get a few at the clubs but nothing great. the concerts. I There is even more standing in line at "Centrum" then there was at Otter Crest. The second time I went to Centrum it was late again so my seat was in the back. This was fine they just used the was too far away to get any photos even with my 300mm lens. I had good speakers nearby. I camera to look through and get some idea what the performers looked like. They had people scrambling all over the place trying to take photographs. They then decided that only "press photographers" would be had gone with to the second Centrum thing was sitting up front so he allowed to take pictures. The man I handed his camera to one of the "press photographers" and asked him to take pictures. This "professional" did not know how to operate the other mans camera Some of the people that go liked it but do not have any plans to return. to Centrum think it is better than Otter Crest was. I to The second and last time I went the jazz event at Port Townsend the wonderful piano player Jessica Williams was playing at a small Thai restaurant we were there on Friday night there was lots of people there. The bass player Dave Frisien and decided he wanted to bring his daughter back the next night to and hear Jessicia Williams. Dave selected a table with a good view of the keyboard and asked the owner if he could set there the next night Dave Frisien wanted to set at that table so his daughter who was taking piano lessons could see the way Jessica played. The owner said he would save it for Dave. When Dave and his daughter arrived the next night two people were sitting at that table. David Frisien talked to the manager and said that table was supposed to have been reserved for him and his daughter. The manager agreed and said he would ask the people to move. They did not to move so he came back to David and Dave wanted to sit at that table. The second time the owner went back to the couple and said in a polite way the table you are setting at is reserved for these other people. And you will have to move. If my understanding is correct he told them he was not asking them to move he was telling them to move. The people at the table got loud and wanted to argue about it so the police were called. When the police came in the lady who had been setting at the table attacked the lady police officer and had to be dragged out of the place.

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LOCAL CURRENT JAZZ

The talents of the people playing jazz around the Portland area these days are very high. There is so much of it that some of them are playing to almost empty rooms. was in the Jazz De Opus and Leroy Vinegar and Jessica Williams were About three years ago I do could write an article playing at their best. It was the kind of night a writer who has more talents than I five pages long about that evening alone. Leroy has health problems but is still playing a lot with Jessica if she is in town or with Geoff Lee if she is not. The wonderful drummer Mel Brown is usually a part of the trio. Ed Bennett another superb bass player has made Portland his home. Ed has released two "CDs" Ed has very high musical standards. Bass players Tom Wakeling and Dave Captain have very high musical standards also The list of first will stop it here. rate bass players could continue but I leave somebody out it is The list of wonderful piano players in the Portland area is very long and if I not because they do not deserve to be on the list. But if somebody is coming to Portland from out of town here are some possible choices of piano players to listen to. The listener would not go wrong on any of them. George Mitchell Mike Horsefall Bill Beach Daryl Kaufman Randy Cannon Andre Kitaev Steve Christoffersen Randy Porter David Lee Dave Frishberg Jeanne Ronne Geoff Lee Harry Gilligan Jessica Williams Gordon Lee Herb Hall The lady singers on any given night might include Kelly Broadway, Mary Kaderly, Marilyn Keller, Rebecca Kilgore,Nancy King. Marianne Mayfield (if she is here from Hawaii) or Shirley Nanette or Colleen do not know enough Obrien or Alyssa Schwary. There is also some very fine blues singers around that I about to comment about, Cheryl Alex is a flute player who also sings and Colleen O'Brien is a cello player who sings also. If the visitor likes the smooth mellow sound of a tenor sax there are the saxophone sounds of Bob am leaving out. Warren Rand plays wonderful alto Hernandez or Lee Wuthernow. There must be others I sax. If a person is looking for ensemble jazz try and find out where any of the following groups may be working the Allan Jones sextet or a group called Tall Jazz or maybe a big band under the direction of Art Abrams called the "Swing Machine". The piano players on any given night might be working somewhere with a bass player and a drummer. The Portland jazz scene also has guitar players that are a joy to listen. Dan Balmer, Charles Crossman, Dan Faehnle, and Jerry Hahn are all first rate players. The local jazz scene is changing all the time musicians move out of town and move back and there can think of for will always be new people on the scene that have not been mentioned here. The best source I the out of town jazz fan to find out who is playing where is the monthly JazzScene issued by the Portland Jazz Society they can be reached at Post Office Box 968 Portland Oregon 97207. Their membership is only thirty dollars a year. There is even a jazz station that broadcasts from Mount Hood College at Gresham Oregon. They broadcast on the FM band. They volunteer announcers and they play great stuff about seventy per cent of the time. Of course the Heathman Hotel,The Benson Hotel and Atwaters along with several other places might have a jazz on any given evening.

had known thirty five or forty years it was going to This would of have been a lot easier to write if I
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had kept notes. The memories just keep coming back in no particular order. be done and I go back and make entries in the proper places that will The entries below do not fit in here but if I make my table of contents all wrong. did not have any idea what the fates had in was talking to Bonnie Carol I The night in Sidney's that I store for three of the people working there that night. The singer Wayne Keith was the first to lose his life. Sidney had fired him and he was in some tall buiilding waiting for an elevator while he was talking to some friends. He heard the elevator arrive and the doors open and without looking he stepped in but something had happened and the elevator was not there. think before he Bonnie Carol died of cancer a few weeks later. Sidney Porter lived to the year 1970 I died of cancer. After Sidney Porter died the jazz community arranged a benefit to raise some money for his two daughters. started going to Sidneys there was a woman in the audience who would get up and sing When I sometimes. This woman was Nola Sugai who married Sidney later and became Nola Porter and they had the two girls They had most of the local jazz players playing at the benefit for Sidneys' daughters they had music in three or four different rooms. It was one of the biggest jazz knights in the city of Portland for a long time. A few years later the bass player Andre Garand was having back pains and was see a chiropractor without any easing of the pain. The piano player Mary Fields made an appointment with her doctor for Andre Garand. It was discovered that Andre had cancer in his kidneys and he did not live very long. The fund raiser was held for a person who was still alive at the time. ..It was held at a different location and almost as many people came as had been at the fund raiser for Sidney/ At the time of Sidney's death the singer Gene Diamond was their featured attraction. For the next heard Gene sing at several places. few years I Gene Diamond was a handsome person with a fine voice who was almost a fixture on the Portland jazz scene for a number of years. Gene had a lot going for him but he liked to pretend that he had even more things going for him. He would come into a club to work a job for a certain amount of time. When the job was coming to an end he would tell people he was going on a little tour with some famous show business person. Then he would go into seclusion but somebody would spot him in Portland while he was supposed to be on tour. Gene Diamond moved to the Los Angeles area to pursue his career. He used to come back to Portland for visits once in a while. told him I had some good photographs of him. He gave me his address so I The last time we talked I mailed him an eight by ten photo along with a couple of five by sevens and three or four regular size never heard one word from him know he received the pictures but I photographs. I There are at least two people on the local jazz scene who should be encouraged to put their memories on paper. Nancy King has her own special way of looking at things and Annabelle Anderson is friends with so many people in the field of jazz and music. They both have very personal things to tell about the legendary piano player Bill Evans, Quen and Anne Anderson became friends with Bill Evans when he kept his piano in their apartment in New York. Quen and Anne had dinner with Bill Evans the last time he was in Portland and Nancy King spent some time with him also.

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VANDI AND FAMILY

Some people who read this have never seen Vandi. . She is a beautiful woman five foot eight or ten have always thought of her as beautiful but inches tall with long brown hair. She plays piano and sings. I her character is more important than her looks. She puts being a mother above everything else. At the time we met Vandi was married with one boy and one girl and her husband was going to school. Then one night she told me that the next week would be her last at the club. Vandi had been the breadwinner while her husband went to school. Her husband had his degree and now it was her turn to go to college and get her degree. wished her The next week I presented her with a photograph of some red roses as a farewell gift. I well and her children well and even wished her husband well. thought that I I would never see her again but a month later she was back. Her marriage had come to have become acquainted with her son Kika and her an end. We have seen a lot of each other since then and I daughter Ananda. After her divorce she started using her maiden name Vandi Huston again. Vandi is a very special person in my life and having her as a friend has done wonderful things for me. There is an age difference of forty years between u&andi has always been a sheer delight to be am lucky to around and has a great sense of humor and has made me feel better about myselfl tell her that I have her as a friend and she says she is lucky to have me as a friend. Because of the custody arrangements the children spend some time with their dad. They are shuttled back and forth so there is a special bond between Kika and Ananada The first time I watched them Kika became sleepy first and went to sleep first. They were using bunk beds. Ananda wanted to sleep with Kika or out in the front room with me. Kika became sleepy and went to had given her a tea set but she bed first. As soon as Kika was asleep she wanted to play with his toys. I had given Kika. She got the tool box and its yellow plastic key she wanted to play with a toolbox and tools I would unlock the tool box take out the tray and was surprised to see tools in the tool box. She would then close everything up and then she would open things up again and be surprised again, this was repeated about five times and she was amazed every time. She was having so much fun that she forgot to go to the was not going to did not know where her clean underwear was and I bathroom. She cleaned her self up but I touch her anyway. She found a cloth hat that belonged to her mother so Ananda was marching around the house with nothing on but that hat. It was getting close to the time when her mother was due home so I found her on was hoping she would go to bed. . A few minutes later I spoke in a stern manner to Ananda. I decided at that moment that I her bed. She had the sheet pulled up like a tent and was crying her eyes out. I wont speak harshly to her or any other small girl again. When she was running around wearing nothing but that hat I had my eyes on that hat. was watching them one night and they were still up playing long after they should have been in bed. I I going to tell your mother?" Kika replied "You could tell her that we were very very asked them "What am I good and went to bed as soon as you told us it was time to go to bed. " I think it was the same night that Ananda was saying, "I am so happy". Although Kika is only seven years old as this is written in the summer of 1997 he is becoming and will be a very decent human being. He has compassionate feelings toward his sister. He tries to ensure that she is not punished too much and if the family is going to do something for fun that Ananada will be included. write this on Kika ia only seven but is showing signs of becoming a very decent human being as I June 26 1997 there is a serious question about Anandas' hearing it will be the end of July before it will be known how serious it is. Ananda has a different name for me she calls me "Grandpa Bob"

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