A Pointed Feeling

A Pointed Feeling

The night Stephanie was born, it was very warm. I think it was close to 60 degrees. And it was January. During her birth day the wind was blowing and a front was going through lowering the temperature. I was in the waiting room.

At that time fathers were not allowed close to the birthing area and I was out on a bench in the hall. I sat there, walked around, slept, and waited and waited. When finally they told me I was the father of a little girl, I was all excited. They told me I could come over to the window and see the baby. I had to view the baby through this thick glass which was between me and a sterile room.

I walked over to the window and was shocked. I saw this little baby and it had no forehead. It was just a pointed skull sloping down to a nose and the skin had a blue cast. I had an idea what a baby should look like but this wasn’t it. They later explained to me that this was not uncommon. The skull was very flexible making birthing much easier and the blue cast is from the baby’s adjustment to being in the real world.

Jobs in Colorado

Jobs in Colorado

In 1969 Mary and I took off on an adventure. I had always felt that I had an attraction for the mountains. I suppose it was a combination of Saturday morning TV westerns that I watched as a kid and the romantic notion that living in the western mountains was somehow the culmination of American life. I had also had an experience in Colorado when Dad went there to train with the 10^th Mountain Division of WWII. Mom and I went out there to visit him and although I must not have been more than two years old that experience put some kind of mark on me. I don’t suppose I remember it but with the stories that Mom would tell and the photos that we had, it seemed like a real experience to me.

Mary and I were teaching in Indianapolis and I was not pleased with my performance. I found that I was not a teacher. I was not able to express myself verbally as I felt internally. I decided that I would like to become a wildlife biologist. In my mind this would be more of a solitary occupation and I would not need to have the verbal skills as a teacher might. I did some research and found that one of the best schools for such a study was Colorado State University in Ft. Collins, Colorado. So on to Colorado.

In the summer of 1969 we purchased a VW van, moved in with Mom and Dad and I overhauled the van and Mary worked at the Holiday Inn in Crawfordsville. (The story of the trip is another adventure). We had no particular destination in mind other than the eastern slope of the Rockies north of Denver. We saved enough money to get us there and to be able to spend about a month looking for a place to live and find a job. We also had enough to get back to Mom and Dad if necessary.

We arrived in the late summer and began our quest. We came into the foothills through Loveland. We drove south to Boulder looking for a place to stay and finally ended up back in Loveland were we found a weekly motel like room. I began to look for a job and found one in a trailer factory in Loveland. We then moved into an apartment.

At that time it was pretty easy to find a job although there was not much income. I think I made about 5 or 6000 a year. About a $100 a week. Our rent was $90 a month. We had a new car payment of $112 a month. (the car was a 1968 Triumph TR250 that I had just bought the year before not knowing I was going to have this adventure. The car was also back in Kingman in storage in the back of Dad’s garage.)

There were hundreds and hundreds of people with the same idea as us. The area was being flooded with people moving into the area. At that time the Ft. Collins area, which was about 10 miles north of Loveland, was one of the top five fastest growing areas in the country. So jobs were being created but there was a lot of competition for each job. People were moving there with families but could not find suitable housing. I remember one man who had 4 kids and he was living in a travel tent while trying to save enough to get a permanent place to live.

My job at first was to do mostly semi-skilled labor such as doing what I was told. So what ever they told me I would do. I did a lot of repairing screw ups. Walls for the units were put in place with an overhead mobile hoist. Sometimes the walls would be set on the wrong side of a layout line or would just be set a little bit off the mark. If the mistake were caught immediately the wall would be reset. But if the unit was traveling on down the line and it was suddenly found that a cabinet set or a bath tub would not fit were it was supposed to, then I would come into action. We had a BMF hammer. That was a Big Mother F*ckin’ hammer. It was a 16 pound sledge hammer that we used to move a wall. You would place buffering block of wood against the wall and hit it with the BMF hammer. The wall did not resist the movement. The BMF hammer was used only for small movements usually only 1 or 2 inches.

Another repair we often performed was the too big opening for an electrical outlet. We had three sizes of electrical receptacle covers. The normal one, a slightly bigger one for slight mistakes and the huge one for BMF mistakes. If the guys who cut the holes for the electrical outlets screwed up, then we had to come in and change out all of the cover plates in that room.

As I worked there I had several ideas about making the assembly more efficient. I would tell them to the supervisors and sometimes the ideas would be implemented. I was beginning to be noticed and would probably have been moving into management if it had not been for my big mouth. Often several of the people on my shift would go after work to a bar and hang around, drink and flirt with the waitresses. One evening I got into a political discussion with the production manager of the plant. I don’t remember what I said but that sort of cooled things for my management career. Then shortly after that a few of us were with another upper management person drinking and eating pizza. I got sick and threw up in his car. That pretty much put me on the black list. Then one day at work I had to go to the bathroom and the boss would not let me go. So I quit.

Now I was without a job. But it didn’t take long to find another. I found one in another nearby town. I think it was in Greely. The Loveland factory produced very well built units and they were double wide. Built mostly with regular building materials as you would build a site built home. The factory in Greely was just the opposite. These units looked much better when finished but they were junk underneath. The exterior walls were built with some sort of bracing construction of 2x2 lumber. The floors were not built to withstand much of a load. These units had a raised area of about 6 inches in the front. A sort of breakfast area raised above the kitchen. One time I hopped off the raised area onto the floor below (about 6 inches) and went through the floor. That was enough of that. I could be a party to that kind of deception. I quit.

Looking again. There were many trailer factories in the area so I went to another in Berthoud. Their product was somewhere between Loveland and Greely. I don’t remember why I left there.

I had many jobs in Colorado. Getting a new job became an adventure in itself. Mary was substituting in the school system so we had some more income. Oh yes, during the time I was working in the Loveland trailer factory, we bought a filter queen sweeper. We were living in the mountains in a cabin that didn’t even have carpet. Talk about selling an icebox to an Eskimo. The selling factor for this sweeper was the fact that we could make a lot of money setting up demonstrations. I think it was $10 for each appointment and $35 it a sweeper was sold. The sweeper was very expensive especially for someone who didn’t have much income. I think it was over $200. Of course we bought it on payments and Mary said we could make a lot of money with this. So we tried to get appointments set up for the demonstrations. Of course we hardly knew anyone there so how could we get appointments set up? We ran an ad in the paper saying something like ‘Would you like to make over $10 an hour? Call blah blah for details.’ Anyone who watched a demonstration also got paid. The demonstration was about 45 minutes and you got $10. Ten dollars an hour was big money back then. One of the first calls we got was one of the people in upper management. He called and began giving his qualifications for being worth $10 an hour. We took down his information and didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want him on the list because the name of the person who set the appointment was used when the appointment was confirmed and I didn’t want him knowing it was me that got him into this situation. It was also embarrassing to listen to him tell us why he should have the job.

The sweeper thing didn’t turn out to be the money maker we had hoped. Mary quickly gave up on it and I soon petered out on it too. We were stuck with the payment and no carpets.

Many other jobs came along. I worked in a feed mill for one day. This was a place where my job was to make rolled oats. Raw oats were steamed and then passed between two rollers that smashed them flat much like Quaker oats. These oats were mixed with other things including molasses think and then bagged into feed sacks that weighed about 80 pounds. I stacked these bags on pallets to be sold to ranchers coming in to purchase horse feed. I think the job started at 5 in the morning. I was to prepare the orders for the day and then when the ranchers came to pick up the feed, I was to help them load it. It makes me hurt just to think about that job. I think I took this job because I got off about noon. When I got home that day I called and said I would not be back.

I also worked as an insurance agent, in an antique store, in a furniture factory, building Shakey’s Pizza Parlors, Taco John, worked on a ranch, I did some substitute teaching, I applied for a position as a reporter for a small paper but I didn’t get it. I would have liked to have had that experience.

The furniture factory was a real treat. I was looking forward to working there. The owners were German and I had heard that they were master craftsmen making furniture that was very much in demand. I arrived at the facility early and they showed me around. They had a very heavy accent and many of the people could not speak English. Apparently the owners were bringing Germans in to work in the factory. When they were through with showing me around, I was put on a radial arm saw to make repetitive cuts for furniture parts. As I worked the saw began to make an extremely loud scream. It was deafening almost to the point of pain. I shut the saw down and the supervisor came running over to see if there was a problem. I told him about the scream of the saw blade and he sort of laughed and told me to get to work. I thought he might give me some ear protection but they didn’t have any. I went back to work.

At the break I had to go to the bathroom so I ask where the bathroom was. One of the workers who could speak English told me that we had to go outside on the railroad tracks. Well I did and went back in and finished my work. When quitting time came I went home and called the state and told them about the working conditions at the furniture factory. I hated to do it but they were taking advantage of the all those immigrants. The place was closed down.

As an insurance agent I didn’t have the heart to close the deal. I was hired by MFA. I forgot what that stands for. They sent me to school in Missouri along with 3 other new agents. The school was a couple of weeks and it was in the winter. On our way back (we drove) it got very cold and I got sick. So after I was well again I began to work. Making cold calls to get appointments was the first order. I had to make a certain number of calls each day and then I could do whatever I wanted. I began to get appointments and make presentations. I even sold some policies. The call that did me in was an old lady. I made a presentation for some kind of insurance and she said she wanted it. I was with a trainer and he pulled me aside and told me that I should offer her these other types of insurance. He told me if I offered it she would buy it. I told him I couldn’t do that and we walked out. I quit that job the next day. I did this for about 6 months and I was just starting to make some money but I just could not take advantage of that old lady. I did buy a set of eating utensils from her. She was selling things in order to go live with a relative. We still have that silverware set.

At Taco John I made $1.25 per hour and all the tacos I could eat. Needless to say we had a lot of tacos. Tacos piled high with meat, lettuce, tomatoes and cheese. Boy were they good. I think I would have worked for no money. The manager was a drunk and was seldom there. Employees were taking home huge packages of meat and other food. The restaurant was about to go under. When I started I began to take care of the food and to inventory food purchased and to correlate it with the food sold. This was not a highly accurate inventory but it was easy to see what was happening. In the next few weeks most of the people who had been stealing food left. But I couldn’t get the manager to hire new people. Sometimes I had to call Mary to come and help me out during busy times. The store began to make money and soon was the most profitable for the stores that the owner had. One time I had a drunk come in and ask for the hottest taco we had. I fixed him a hot taco and he just poo pooed the heat of that taco. I then fixed him one with a special hot sauce that I had never used that was kept out of public access. He took a bite of that one and practically went into a fit. He left with his burning mouth. I finally got tired of tacos and left.

I worked as a laborer for a commercial builder for a time. I mostly helped put up forms for basement walls and foundations. The forms were sheets of plywood. There was a spacer between two sheets to keep them evenly spaced. Bolts then went through the plywood to keep then tight against the spacer. The forms were aligned for the proper arrangement and concrete was poured into the forms. My job was to take a large tool that vibrates and push and pull it up and down in the fresh concrete to get the bubbles out and to make sure all the form was filled. I don’t remember the weight of the vibrator but it was heavy. One job we had we to build a Shakey’s Pizza Parlor. When that job was finished I went to work for Shakey’s.

At Shakey’s my job was to make the dough. They had a huge mixer that stood on the floor and was about 5 feet tall. I would make a large ball of dough. The dough was run through two spaced rollers onto a long table and a cutter was used to cut a pizza dough crust. I don’t remember leaving this job or how long I was there.

I am sure there were more jobs but these are all I remember. You can check back at a later date to see if I have remembered more.

You Never Know What Lurks Behind Those Trees

I went to the lake the other day for the first time this year. I wanted to see the damage done by the winter. I decided to drive a new way and as I was driving along the road enjoying the scenery I came upon this. As you can see it is a tree across the road. Now I am no dummy and I have seen a lot of westerns where there is a tree across the road in front of the stage coach. The driver gets down to move the tree and out jumps the bandit and whacks him over the head and takes all the valuables. Being that there are many trees along this part of the road, there are plenty of places for that bandit to hide. So I sat in my car for a while surveying the woods to see if there was any movement. I saw nothing moving so I got out of the car and slowly walked toward the tree still looking into the woods and spinning three hundred and sixty degrees a couple of times just to be on the safe side. I bent down and put my hands around the tree and pulled upward. To my dismay nothing happened. I was unable to lift the tree. As a matter of fact I could not even budge the tree. I would not have thought it to be that heavy and I thought at least I would be able to push it aside enough to get past it. But I couldn't. So I got back in my car. There wasn't enough room to turn around. The hill went straight up on the right side and down on the left side. I had to go in reverse down the road until I got to a place where I could turn around. I made it and didn't get whacked either.

Going to Colorado

Going to Colorado

We were married in June of 1968. I had been teaching at Arsenal Technical High School as was Mary. We went back to our teaching after spending the summer being married and going to Canada (taking Sid to school and a 2^nd honeymoon). The school atmosphere in that spring of 1968 was turmoil. We had experienced the killing of Martin Luther King. Then Bobby Kennedy was killed a short time later.

I decided that teaching was not the area I wanted to be in. I had previously thought about wildlife biology and now wanted to pursue that road. I did some research and determined that Colorado State University located in Ft. Collins, Colorado, would be one of the better schools for that study. I contacted them and they confirmed that the program was available so we began to think toward moving to Colorado.

When we decided to move to Colorado (we decided in the spring of 1969), we had about $2000 to work with. We didn't have any place that we needed to go. We were just going to go and see what happened. We had no jobs, knew no one out there and didn't know what was going to happen when we got there. I was going to hold back enough money to get us back to Indiana should we be unable to find suitable living conditions in Colorado.

We had to buy supplies and "the van." The van was a 1961 VW bus that I bought in Indianapolis for either $1000 or $1500. It had a 36 or 40 horsepower engine and could do almost 60 MPH if you had a tail wind. (I’m not kidding) I took it home (to Kingman) and overhauled the engine and painted the exterior. I did this in the summer of 1969 and Mary worked at the Holiday Inn in Crawfordsville. We lived with Mom and Dad.

When the time came, we loaded the van with what we felt was necessary. Our other possessions we had left with various relatives. Tents and other camping gear, camera and a few clothes and books is what we took. Dad gave me an emergency road light in case we had a break down. The light was to place behind the disabled vehicle to alert oncoming traffic of a problem. I guess he didn't have much confidence in our journey.

Well he may have been right. As we drove away I noticed that the weight distribution was not the best. The van seemed to be top heavy. When I hit a bump you could feel an unnatural rocking of the van. But I went on. We got to Main Street and turned left - west - toward the great open area of Colorado.

We drove along State Road 234 west out of Kingman for about 2 miles. I then felt and heard an unnatural bumping and wobble. At Old Harry Ratcliff's place I pulled over to the side of the road. I got out to see if I could tell what the problem was. Sure enough I could. One of the wheels was about ready to fall off. I had apparently forgotten to tighten the lug nuts. What a dummy! I was sure glad that it had happened this soon. I walked to Old Harry Ratcliff's house and called Dad. "Dad, my wheel is about to fall off."

Dad brought out the floor jack and lifted the van and got the wheel secured enough that I could drive it back to the garage. The lug nuts were somewhat damaged as was the wheel and the hub. But Dad was able to get them repaired enough that we would be able to continue. By this time it was afternoon and so we decided to wait until tomorrow to leave. Anyway I wanted to repack the load and put the heavier things lower in van in order to lower the center of gravity. And we didn't have to be any place in particular at a specific time.

The next day we said our goodbyes again and off we went. The van felt much more stable and things went much smoother the second leaving. We camped out along the way. I slept under the van and Mary slept in the front seat. We had a Coleman stove and a Coleman ice chest to keep some food in. We cooked at roadside parks and ate whatever we could buy along the way. The weather was good as I remember. I kept a journal but it has been lost to the ages. I think it was in the things that were stolen when we moved into the Dana house.

I don't remember the route we took but we came into Loveland, Colorado. My ultimate goal was to get a master's or 2nd bachelors degree in wildlife biology and I had talked with Colorado State University about doing this and they were encouraging. Loveland was close to Ft. Collins (where Colorado State was located) and we thought it might be a good location. Our first view of the mountains was not awe inspiring until I realized the formations in the distance was mountains. I thought they were clouds for a long time but finally realized the difference.

We came into Loveland and drove around. We drove along the foothills south to Boulder and north to Ft. Collins looking for a place to stay that we could afford and that had a vacancy. This took a day or two but we found a motel like place that was called "The Pines" or something like that. It was in Loveland and that was good. We settled in and I began looking for a job. I was able to find a job rather quickly working in a trailer factory. I was making about $100 a week. We were able to find an apartment to move in and after a couple of weeks bought several items at a second hand store. We actually still have some of them. The table beside my bed is from that second hand store.

Our ties with Indiana had not ended with our move. I had bought a new car a few months before our move and I stored it at the garage in Kingman. I also had a payment of $112 per month on that car that was now on blocks stored in Kingman. Talk about planning! We both had payments to make on school loans. We had rent which was $90 a month. We had utilities, gas and of course film for the camera. I figured a tight budget and we had $7 a week toward food. We also had entertainment money which we used to go to a show about once a week. I think we saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Patton while we were in Colorado among others.

One of our budget meals was a pork shank that I cooked in the pressure cooker. For some reason I thought it was a good meal when cooked in the pressure cooker. When it was finished there was a gelatin layer about an inch thick in the bottom of the pressure cooker that almost gagged me. I took out the shank and put it on the table and about all we could do was laugh at our situation. We could not eat that thing.

We went to Rocky Mountain National Park quite often as it was nearby and I went out just walking around the area. Mary found a job substitute teaching and then full time teaching. I had several jobs as I would quit one if things didn't go the way I thought they should. One of our intentions was to use the area where we settled as a base and to travel around the west and enjoy the area. I had forgotten about the reins of work so we didn't do the traveling I wanted to do.

Kid's Grow Up

Kid’s Grow Up

It’s funny some of the things a person remembers. People have traumatic experiences and don’t remember them and others have traumatic experiences and can’t forget them. Inconsequential events for some reason take on a significance way beyond their meaning and torment us relentlessly.

A parent strives to make their children independent and it is only natural that kids want to be independent. But at the time they start to show some of that autonomy, it often strikes hard at parents. We see them shake the need for us and even though we are prepared to tolerate this aspect of our responsibility it is a shock when it happens.

I can still see the faces of my kids when they decided that it was no longer necessary for them to give me a kiss when they went off to school. We were living on Mulberry Street which was just a short distance from their school. They walked to school each morning and I would usually fix their breakfast and make sure they had all their stuff. Each one would give me a kiss and away they would go.

The kids were pretty close in age and in camaraderie and would get together and figure out things. I think they got together and decided that it was time for this kissing thing to go. One morning we did our routine and got to the door and I bent down to give them their kisses. Each one turned away from my face and that was it.

I was not prepared for that reaction but I did not let on. I just stood up and walked out the door with them and watched them go off down the sidewalk. The farewell kiss was suspended.

Like I said it is strange what our memory puts aside to torture us. This is one of the memories that decided to haunt me. It will roll through my subconscious from time to time without warning reminding me how fleeting can be the things we cherish.

Driving Past the Bowling Alley

Driving past the Bowling Alley

Shortly after I got my license I was driving around town. We had a 1951 Kaiser at that time. Dad had been a Kaiser dealer and that was the remnants of that era. Kaiser stopped making cars about 1955 and I got my license in 1959. Of course I had been driving quite a bit before that so I knew how to drive. Or at least I thought I did.

The evening hang out for Kingman was the bowling alley. Herschel Bennett ran it. Herschel was a little old man who knew how to please the kids and older people too. Everyone hung out there. It was a typical store front building with big windows in the front and building attached on either side. There were benches in front and the older guys would sit out there telling the stories of the day. There was a grill inside and Herschel served grease burgers. He would grill those thin burgers, toast the bun and pile it high with onions and pickles and it was a yummie. You could sit at the counter, in a bench or at a table. At the rear of the building was a bowling alley. I don’t think it was a full size alley but it was all we had. He also had pin ball machines.

It was cool to burn rubber when you drove from the brick street and turned left to go past the bowling alley. It was done for years. Someone would turn that corner and step on the gas and the tires would squeal. The old guys sitting out front of the bowling alley would shake their heads and wonder what this world was coming to. One night it was my turn. I turned that corner and stepped on the gas squealing away.

Dad didn’t go to the bowling alley too often but that night he was there. I didn’t look over to see who was there I just continued on down the street. That was the process…just drive up and down the streets seeing what was going on.

I got home later in the evening and Dad was home. He asked me what I had been doing and I told him that I had been driving around. He told me he was sitting on the bench outside the bowling alley. He told me how he told everyone what a good driver I was. In fact he said it was about that time that I came squealing around the corner.

It was hard to get away with anything in a small town.

Another time at that same intersection, I was stopped at the brick street waiting to pull out onto Main Street. I was looking at the bowling alley to see who was there and I pulled out and crashed into another car. I hit it right in the side. No one was hurt. It didn’t even ding my car.

Dad had to fix the other car. We didn’t turn it in to the insurance or report it to the police.

Another time Earl Newnum was driving a John Deere tractor around the block and was stopped at the brick street waiting to come onto Main Street. He revved up that old tractor and took off and flipped the tractor. He shattered his leg but he and some other kids pushed that tractor back upright. He always walked with a pronounced limp after that.

The older kids with cars would stop in front of the bowling alley and rev up the engine and pop the clutch and peel out. Sometimes a couple of cars would line up and take off pretending to drag race. They would drive off for a couple of blocks. One time Darrell Gilliland who had a 1956 Ford and someone else, lined up front bumper to front bumper. That would be facing opposite directions. They started going down the street that way. Right down Main Street. Darrell was going in reverse. Bumper to bumper. They kept going faster and faster. They went all the way through town to the town boundary. I don’t know how fast they were going but it was probably 60 or 70. Crazy.

That was the conversation around town the next day.

The Old Coal Furnace

The Old Coal Furnace


The old coal furnace called for more fuel. I looked at it and knew. I knew that soon Dad would be looking at me with the nudging look. Go get some coal the look would say. Dad was a man of few words. I hated that big old furnace. It was about 8 feet long, 6 feet tall and 5 feet wide. It was a monstrosity. Always calling for coal then letting out that scream if it got too much. There were dials and gauges on the top of the thing. It was a steam boiler.

At regular intervals the pop off valve would activate and the steam would shoot out. The pop off valve was a whistle and it would scare the pants off me when it let off that high pitched whistle. I took this as a slap in the face. I would think ‘if you didn’t release that steam you would not need so much coal.’ Dad would look over one more time and I would go. Go to the coal pile, load the wheelbarrow, roll it back to the furnace and throw the coal into the furnace. This was my token job when I was at the garage. Like any kid, I wanted to help my Dad and he would let me put some coal into the wheelbarrow. The chunks of coal were too big for me to shovel and I couldn’t handle a shovel anyway. I would just load them with my hands. I would push the wheelbarrow to the furnace and Dad would unload it. It was all I could do to push the wheelbarrow to the furnace but it made me feel like I was doing my share. The coal pile was in the back room just behind the furnace. I would do this a couple of times and be exhausted. Dad would finish it up. Mom didn’t like it when I did this because I got coal dust all over me.

When we first moved to Kingman, we would get coal from Morgan’s Mine. That was a strip mine just about 3 miles from town. It had some great strip pits. Bullock Pond had some great fishing as did many of the other ponds. The tipple was located on 41. There was a big shovel parked there most of the time. This thing was the biggest piece of machinery I ever saw for a long time. I got to climb into it a couple of times. Dad knew the man that operated the machine. This thing moved by walking. It had “legs” that “walked” it to its destination. When we needed coal, either Dad would borrow a truck from someone or he would have Art Cruea or Bob Siegfried get a load for him. If Dad went I would go with him.

We used coal in the house and at the garage. I always liked the smell of coal. Our first house in Kingman had a coal furnace and our next house had coal stoves. These heaters would occasionally belch out a little smoke. That is the smoke I liked to smell. Mom always hated coal heat because it was so dirty. You would get dirty when you loaded the stove. The burning would create a fine ash and smoke in the house and then you would have to clean out the ash that was left by the burning of the coal and that would be a dirty job. And the burning of the coal would put out a black smoke from the chimney that would make everything around your house dirty. Mom had to be careful when she hung out the wash to dry. (There were no automatic dryers). If you hung the clothes out at the wrong time, they would be black with soot before they were dry.

Dad upgraded the furnace at the garage by putting in an automatic stoker. That was a large container that you would fill with stoker coal. Stoker coal was coal that was crushed into small pieces and covered with some kind of lubricant. The stoker had an auger and was connected to the furnace. The auger was turned by an electric motor and would deliver the coal to the furnace on command by means of a thermostat. Dad would fill the stoker in the morning and in the evening and that would take care of the heating. And then after a few more years he upgraded to gas and took out the old furnace. The removal of the old furnace made a lot more room in the garage but it was kind of sad. You sort of felt like the old furnace was a part of the family. I was glad because Dad didn’t have to shovel coal. He worked hard enough without having that task.

When we built the new house about 1953, we had gas heat. A central furnace with registers throughout the house. That was quite an improvement over the coal stoves that we had at Dan Newnum’s house. But you couldn’t stand next to the registers and get warm like you could stand next to the stove. But that’s progress. It was always so wonderful to stand close to the stove and warm your backside and then turn around and warm your front. You could be outside and be as cold as ice and come in and stand next to the stove and just be toastie. If you were not careful you could get your pants so hot that if they touched your leg it would hurt. That was true at the garage too. The old steam boiler was a common place to gather when it was cold outside. It didn’t get as hot on the outside because of the water circulating through it but it still felt good. That big thing would accommodate several cold bodies.

My Caving Experience

My Caving Experience

I always liked to do new things. I had never really thought about going into a cave but it was a new experience and there were many caves around Bloomington and I had a friend who was a caver. His name has left me but I think it was Thurman Gladden. There were 4 or 5 of us and we decided to go into a cave that Thurman knew and was not too far from Bloomington. We made our preparation got into the car and away we went.

We arrived at the path to the access to the cave and walked the rest of the way. This was through a lightly wooded area and the walking was easy. As I remember it was on a Saturday morning and the weather was OK but a little cool. I don’t remember the time of year.

The entrance to the cave was on a hillside and was just a slit in the ground. If you didn’t know it was there, it would have been easily missed. It was about 2-3 feet high. Not high enough to crawl on your hands and knees. You had to slide on your belly to for a few hundred feet. It was a damp area but not muddy. There was plenty of room side to side but not much overhead.

This first leg of the journey was pretty much a level crawl straight into the side of the hill. At the end of the belly crawl we had to change direction. There was a somewhat round hole going down at a 45 degree angle. This hole was just big enough for a person to fit into. If a person was claustrophobic this was not a journey to take.

We all slide into the downward hole for about 20-30 feet and emerged into a large cavern. It was really magnificent. Just a huge open hole in the belly of the hill. We had flashlights so we just explored this area from a stationary position for a while. It was quite an experience to sit there quietly with the lights off. It was a darkness that was not easily experienced in the outside world. Also the quiet was to be found in the outside world.

We could see where other explorers had been in the cave. There were some markings…some graffiti and some directional. We decided to move about and walked into the cavern. There were several openings from this large room. We took one and began walking. We were able to walk upright with no difficulty at all. We walked for a while and marveled at the formations. However there is just so long that total darkness is a new experience. After deciding that we had enough stimulation, we headed back toward the main room.

We walked for a while. We had not bothered to check to see how long we had walked away from the main room so after a while it seemed like we had walked much longer toward the main room than we had walked away from it. A little conference determined that perhaps the darkness had caused us to distort time so we continued to walk. We walked for a period of time and suddenly felt that we had seen some of these markings before. Now we walked along very carefully observing the markings as we went. Sure enough after a time we came to the same markings. We had been walking in circles.

Panic started to set in. We were lost! How could that be? Thurman finally confessed that he was not an experienced caver but had only been in caves a couple of times. He had not even told anyone where we were. None of the rest of us knew where we were going so we didn’t tell anyone either. Now we were all going to stave to death or freeze to death or something. We finally came to our senses and looked for markings directing us toward the exit. We were able to find them and finally got to the main room.

Once in the main room we were able to find the entrance to the sloping shaft that led to the outside. We started to shinny up the sloping opening. I got about half way to the end and began to hear this howling noise. I suddenly felt that it must be storming outside and the howling noise that I was hearing was water rushing toward this sloping hole. I was going to be washed back into the large cavern and drowned.

It apparently was not water because I was able to reach the opening and belly crawl out to the outside world. What a welcome relief. I was never so glad to see light. I was never to go into a strange cave after that.

A Memory Restored

I have been trying to remember the name of the man who lived down the street from us when we first moved to Kingman since I wrote the story about that. I have thought about it almost every day and finally it came to me. His name was Scott Marks and he was the kindess man. His grandson would visit him and we would play. I am glad I got that out of my head.

Flying through the air

Flying through the air

I use to have dreams about flying over the houses in Kingman. However I am not entirely sure they were dreams. Sometimes I think these flyovers really happened. They did all seem to happen after I went to bed so I suppose that is a good indication that they were dreams. The strange thing is that I could tell you exactly what a house in Kingman looked like from above.

It was really neat to have these dreams. I would go to bed and try to have them. I still at times try to have them and occasionally am successful. I would be at about tree top level just flying around. I could stop and hover. No one ever saw me.

Music Box, Chickens and the Man in the Moon

Music Box, Chickens and the Man in the Moon

Mother and Pa bought the farm south of Rockville in the mid 40s. There was 80 acres with quite a bit of woods, some pasture and the rest in tillable land. Pa had been a carpenter and blacksmith most of his life up to then but he always wanted to have a farm. I don’t know how he was able to purchase the farm but I suppose he got a loan of some type.

The property had an old two story house on it that had not been maintained over the years. The house did have electricity but did not have plumbing other than a pump in the kitchen supplying water from a well. The electricity consisted of an electrical wire with a light bulb hanging down from the center of each room. There was no indoor bathroom. An open front porch spanned about half the front of the house and an enclosed porch was on the side. The enclosed porch had a trap door that went into a cellar. After they moved into the house Pa kept the cream separator on this porch. It always smelled of warm milk when we would enter the porch. There was also some free standing cabinets (we have one of them in the garage now) that Pa made. The egg scales (to weigh and grade eggs) was also kept here also. (The egg scales is in the living room)

Pa didn’t want a two story house because he didn’t want Mother having to go up and down the stairs. Their kids were all gone and they didn’t really need the space so he removed the upper story. I don’t remember how he did it but I do remember feeling that he really must be a great man to be able to remove the top of a house.

The front yard had two big maple trees and we use to sit in the front yard in the summer and cool off under those trees. In the back yard was an outhouse and a chicken house. There was also a large garden. A path went from the back door to the outhouse. On the east side of the house Pa built a garage and barn. The barn had a hay mow, stalls for animals, grain storage area and a place to store equipment. The pasture area opened from the barn. The path out the back door to the barn went behind the garage and along a wooden fence. On this fence Pa kept a ladder that he made in 1943 from sassafras.

I would occasionally stay with Mother and Pa. He would let me ride on the tractor or in his truck or play with the bellows that he had for his blacksmith fire. Mother would let me go with her to gather eggs or get some vegetables from the garden.

On the wall in the living room behind the coal stove hung a knick knack shelf that had a silhouette of a moon cut into it. On the shelf were two plaster chickens about two inches high. I always thought I should get to play with those chickens but I never did. I would lie on the floor looking at those chickens longing to get my hands on them. Once in a while Mother would let me hold the chickens. I now have those chickens in my living room.

The living room at the farm had a bay window. In the area of the window shelf Mother kept the music box. That was another item that I was not to touch. The problem was the music box was easily reached. I had strict instructions not to touch. I never did unless I was told I could. That music box belonged to Mother’s Dad, Winfield Scott Cottrell, who had a store in Coxville. It was a premium that he got for purchasing some goods for his store. He died of pneumonia that he contracted on his way to that store in a cold rain in 1900. I now have that music box.

In the spring Dad, Pa and me and sometimes Uncle Frank or Melvin and Sid when he got older would walk out the back door and go down the fence line on our way to the woods. We would be looking for mushrooms. We would walk through the woods and spend several hours and would usually find a good mess of mushrooms. When we got thirsty we would drink from the stream that flowed through the woods. You would have to find a place where the water was flowing fast and preferably with a rock bottom. By the time Sid started going we had pretty much given up the drinking out of the streams because of contaminants that we had heard about. We would circle the 80 acres and end up down the road from the house. When we got back to the house Mom and Mother would clean the mushrooms and we would have a feast.

Hobo, wipe my butt, a horse in the back yard and banana penis

Hobo, wipe my butt, a horse in the back yard and banana penis

When we moved to Kingman about 1946 or 47 we rented a house from ‘ol Doc Ratcliff.’ This house was a two story home a couple of blocks from town. (about any house in town was a couple of blocks from town) It was the second house from the corner. There was an old garage and a small backyard with a garden. From the front you entered an open porch and went into the entry way. The staircase was in the entry way. Turning to the left from the front and then left again was a room that was the living room. Going straight after the left turn at the entry took you into the dining room. Turning right after entering the dining took you into the kitchen. I don’t remember a bathroom downstairs but there was one upstairs. I don’t remember the bedrooms.

The stairs went up half way to a landing then switched back and on to the top. At the top of the stairs and to the left was a room that was just storage for us. Mom had some curtain stretchers in this room and when she washed the curtains she stretched them so they would not shrink. In this room were some other things that I liked to visit. There was a thick book of World War II that I thought was interesting. Mom would let me look at it when she was doing something in this room. In a can was some kind of wallpaper cleaner that was like a ball of clay. I liked to crack open the lid of this can and smell that cleaner. It probably melted my brain but I didn’t know any better.

Across the street lived Ted Deverter. He had a son named Jack but he was much older than me. He was an adult. Down the street lived another old man named Scott something. He was a very nice old man. He had a grandson that visited during the summer and we played together. Next door were the Ratcliffs. Larry was about 2-3 years older and Sharon was a year older than me. Next door on the corner was an old woman. I think she died shortly after we moved in. That house was not much more than a shack. There was a catalpa tree with its long seed pods and large worms.

We had a Dalmatian dog that was just very gentle. He got hit by a car and Dad had to put him to sleep. We didn’t get another dog for a while.

We had a garden in the back yard. Dad would have the ground plowed by an old man who lived at the edge of town. He would bring a horse and a plow and turn the soil. This was quite a site to see this huge animal in the back yard pulling a plow. When the old man brought the horse up the road you could hear it for a long way. The harness and chains rattling. I don’t know if the plow was on wheels or if it was on a wagon. It didn’t take long for him to plow the garden. That didn’t happen to many times. I don’t know if the old man died or what but later the garden was plowed by a tractor.

In the spring we would get some hobos coming by. Today these men would be called the homeless. They would want to do some work for food. Mom would usually find something for them to do and then give them a sandwich or some other food. If they came by at the right time Mom would have them spade up the garden. We would get 2 or 3 different hobos. After a few years Mom would only give food to one hobo who was her favorite. She would tell the others she didn’t have anything. One year Mom’s favorite hobo didn’t come around. She said that he might have found a job or something.

I had the measles when we lived here. I was so sick. I can still see myself lying on a little bed and being so miserable that I could hardly stand it. As I started to get better the measles settled in my ears and I had such painful earaches it is hard to describe. I don’t know how long my sickness lasted but it seemed like forever. Pa came and stayed with me for some reason. He would move his rough hands over my head.

This house had a coal furnace in the basement. That furnace was in the basement and was huge and it burned a lot of coal. We would have coal delivered and dumped in the coal room in the basement. It would then be necessary to shovel the coal into the furnace every day. The furnace would need to be loaded in the morning and in the evening. The ashes would have to be taken out every day too. You would have to shake the burnt residue into the ash collector. This was done by grabbing a big handle connected to the grate of the furnace. You would shake the handle back and forth and the ashes would fall into the ash pit and then you would shovel them into coal bucket and take them outside and dump them. Mom usually did this and Dad shoveled the coal. Sometimes the coal would not be of good quality and big lumps would be left after burning. These big lumps were called clinkers. Any clinkers too big to fall through the grate had to be dragged out of the furnace into the coal bucket. They were usually hot. You had some remote control of the heat with this furnace by means of a lever located upstairs. The lever was connected to the damper of the furnace by means of a small chain. The damper controlled the amount of air entering the burning chamber. The more air entering the chamber the hotter and bigger the flame and the warmer the heated area.

We would occasionally have relatives visit. Mother and Pa would come by. They lived in Rockville. Uncle Frank would come by. Sometimes we would be gone when someone came by. We didn’t have a phone at this house so they couldn’t call ahead to see if we were home. Billy Sneddon, Dad’s cousin, would come by and if we weren’t home he would always design something to let us know that he had been there. One time he took some pants and a shirt and hung them on the wall of the back porch. He poked something in the neck of the shirt to make a head and put a hat on it. Some boots stuck out of the legs of the pants to make feet. He unzipped the fly of the pants and stuck a banana in there to make a penis. We all laughed when we saw that. I was a little embarrassed because I was sheltered from that sort of thing.

I had learned to use the toilet by myself at this home. I could use the toilet but I had not learned to wipe my bottom. Mom always wiped my bottom. I could rely on her to do that. I would go to the bathroom and when I was done I would yell and she would come. One time I went to the bathroom and when I was done I yelled for Mom. She didn’t come. I yelled and yelled. She didn’t come. The bathroom was upstairs and there was a window overlooking the back yard. I waddled over to the window and there was Mom in the back yard. I pecked on the window and yelled but she was talking to a neighbor and didn’t hear me. After a while I waddled back to the toilet and learned how to wipe my bottom.

I got my Schwinn bicycle while we lived here and I got a football and a green corduroy shirt that I really liked. I also got some cowboy boots that I wore all the time and when they wore out we could not afford to get me another pair.

The front yard didn’t have much grass but it had a lot of dirt. I built a drive in theater for my cars and a neighbor girl, Karen Harwood, walked by and destroyed it with her foot. Karen was a year older and was friends with Sharon Ratcliff. I had made little speaker posts from sticks and the screen was bigger sticks. I made the humps to put your car at the correct angle for viewing the screen. It really made me mad when she torn up my drive in. Another time she was walking down the sidewalk and a bird pooped on her. She screamed and I was so happy. For years we exchanged unpleasantries.

We moved from this house about 1950 into the Dan Newnum house which was next to where we would end up building our new home.

JUICE STORE

JUICE STORE

In Kingman we had a department store. I suppose it was a typical store for a small town. It was quite large as I remember it but I suppose that in reality it wasn’t. It was a typical old store front building with wooden floors. There was an overhang that covered the sidewalk all along the front of the building. Steps funneled customers into the front door. There was a long glass case and counter at the door as you entered. They had everything that a person could want. There were clothes. All kinds of clothes that a rural farmer might want and occasionally some fancy clothes. They always had these large open tables with short sides. They would pile clothing on these tables and everyone would look through it. People were very considerate in those days. If you unfolded a shirt and looked at it, when you finished you would fold it back. You didn’t just throw it down in a heap. You had consideration for the people who worked in the store, for the store owner, and for the merchandise. You just don’t find that consideration today. And maybe that consideration is not earned by many of today’s store owners. And really, there are very few store owners anymore. Stores are owned by the corporation and the corporation has more important things to attend to than getting consideration. But getting back to my story...They had all of the clothes, you looked at them and when you finished, you folded them like they were.

There were also some food items. I remember the candy. They had those all day suckers...Holloway I think. They were delicious although they would never last all day. I guess that was my first exposure to marketing. I could never understand why they were known as all day suckers. You could get one for a nickel...and it was big but it didn’t last all day.

Another thing that I didn’t understand was why they called that store the Juice store. It had no juice. One day I asked my Mom why they called it the juice store. She said juice owned the store. Now I was really confused. Juice owned the store? What could that mean? I ask her what that meant...juice. She said “Not juice. Jews. J-E-W-S” I asked her what Jews were. She explained that they were people just like you and me. They had a different religion than we did and many of them had a lot of money and they owned stores.

I don’t know that I ever saw the owners of that store. I don’t even remember the name of the people that owned the store and in fact I think that the Jews that owned it in the beginning no longer owned it when we moved there. But because it had been owned by Jews at one time and had been called the Jew Store, it continued to be known by that name.

They had those little paraffin bottles shaped like cola bottles that were filled with some kind of liquid that you could drink. They came in a little 6 pack. They were usually a penny each so the six pack was 6 cents. Can you imagine? A penny. And those all day suckers were a nickel. I always liked to get those little bottles filled with the liquid and drink the liquid and then chew on the paraffin. That paraffin had a great taste when you first chewed it. But after a short while, it was quite a chore to continue chewing. I always prided myself in the fact that I could chew my paraffin bottles longer than anyone else. I would chew them until my jaws hurt.

No More Killing

No More Killing


I got a BB gun probably when I was about 8 or 9. This was fairly common for a son to get a gun from his father in order to learn the sport of hunting. Dad gave me the standard talk about not pointing it at anyone or shooting toward people or things of value. The gun that I had was not the standard Daisy lever action gun but was a pump action. I don’t remember the name of it but it was more powerful but didn’t have the eye appeal of the Daisy lever action. I would set up tin cans and use them as targets. I would make bulls eyes from paper and crayons. After a while these static targets were of no challenge so I had to find new targets. There it was. Birds.

Birds became my favorite fun with the BB gun…killing birds. I wasn’t supposed to kill “good” birds but sparrows, starlings and those kinds were fine. I use to really enjoy that. I would stalk the birds very carefully. I would stand in one spot for long periods of time listening and watching until a bird would move and then I would nail him. I could listen to their song and tell where they were. I tried to get different birds. Not the same kind all the time.

After a couple of years with the BB gun, I did some research, saved up my money and got a pellet gun. This was a single shot gun powered by compressed CO2 and was very accurate at close range. Much more so than the BB gun. The CO2 came in cylinders that you attached to an opening in the gun and the high pressure in the cylinder would equalize within the storage area of the gun. This was good for several shots. The pellets were hollow lead objects that were deadly.

One time I was in the back yard of Dan Newnum's house (the next door house where we use to live) and was watching a bird in the big walnut tree. As usual I was quietly moving around under the tree listening for sounds and watching for movement in order to locate the bird. I then found the bird, took aim and fired. The bird came crashing through the tree bouncing from limb to limb and then the long fall to the ground. It fell right at my feet. The bird was not quite dead. He was gulping and heaving. I suddenly felt terrible. I was petrified. What had I done.

This is when I suddenly realized the value of life and the insensitivity of taking a life. I could not believe that I was doing such things. I don’t know what exactly turned me at that point but that was the last time I killed a bird or anything intentionally. I was probably about 12 or 14.

Dad liked to hunt for coon, squirrel or rabbit and he always wanted me to go with him. I finally went with him one time to rabbit hunt. We walked behind the house into the field at the back of the house. I think that we had a dog with us. I don't think that I wanted to go with him but he insisted and I felt obligated. It was probably the way that his Dad taught him to hunt. We came upon a rabbit that was sitting there too scared to move. Dad raised a shotgun and blasted away. The rabbit went rolling across the field. It upset me considerably. This was after I had given up the killing of birds and I was especially sensitive to this kind of killing. I know that Dad was disappointed but he didn’t make a big deal of it although he at first mocked me for being so sensitive. He saw how upset I was and in his way, he understood. I can still see that rabbit looking at me and then rolling across the field.

Be careful what you say

Be careful what you say

When the kids were young, probably about 7, 6 and 4, I used to tell them stories that were not exactly the truth. It was more like a tease. One story in particular that I remember is about wrestling. They all liked to watch wrestling very much. They would watch those TV presentations and would not believe that the antics were fake. One time they were watching a wrestling show and I told them about the time that I had been in a wrestling match with the star of that event. I told them that he had gone to my school and we were in the same class and I used to beat this star all the time. I would show them how I did it and then I would grab one of them and hold them down on the floor. The others would pile on and we would have a great time.

Then I began to realize that they were believing what I was telling them about my stature as a wrestler. They were telling my stories to their classmates at school. They were telling the kids at school that I could whip any of those wrestlers on TV. I had to tell them the truth and I must admit, I think they were a little disappointed. I was much more careful after that to make sure that they knew I was kidding when I told them a story that was not exactly the truth.

OOPS

Oops

The preacher was dissatisfied with how little his congregation put in the collection plates on Sunday, so he learned hypnosis. He preached the sermon in a monotone and he swung a watch slowly in front of the lectern and at the end of the sermon he said, "Give!" and the collection plate was full of twenty dollar bills. It worked for weeks. The congregation sat mesmeric during the sermon, staring at the watch swinging, and when he said, "Give!" they gave everything they had, and then one Sunday, at the end of the sermon, the chain on the watch broke, and the preacher said, "Crap!" (from the Prairie Home Companion)

SECOND HONEYMOON

Second Honeymoon


When we got married we went to Chicago for our honeymoon. We were going to take a longer trip later because Sid was going to go to school in Quebec and we were going to take him there. Our Chicago trip was fun but nothing compared to the Quebec trip.

The time came for our Quebec trip and we packed the car. Oh yes, the car we were taking was our Triumph TR 250 that I had just purchased that year. Of course this was a 2 passenger car and there were 3 of us. Not only that, we had all of Sid’s stuff for his stay at school. And we were taking his bicycle. And we decided we were going to camp along the way. I am thinking that Mary probably wondered what she had gotten herself into. But she was newly married and she wanted to impress her new hubby by showing how tough she was; that she was not afraid of any bugs or anything that camping could throw at her.

We took off and we sat 3 in the car. Sid sat half on Mary’s lap. We drove into Canada the first day and drove and drove. We were going to find a place to camp but it was raining and we just kept driving thinking it would stop at some point. It did not. Finally we had to stop because we were all at each other’s throats.

Did I tell you about our tent? We had a 2 man mountain tent. It fit inside a 1 pound Quaker oats box. It is designed to be very light and very efficient. It is sloped toward the feet so that it will with stand the winds that might be encountered on a mountain hike. The head end is less than 3 feet tall. So now we have 3 people in a 2 man tent that is very efficient. OK. So we are in out tent and it is raining.

A funny thing happens if you touch the sides of a tent when it is raining…the water starts bleeding through the fabric. We have 3 people in a 2 man tent trying not to touch the sides but you know this is impossible. We fight this for a while but finally we pack up and leave. We continue to drive.

We drive through the night and we finally drive out of the rain. We are all so tired that we stop along the side of the road and sleep in the grass.

Our trip on to Quebec is relatively uneventful. We drive through some very beautiful country and towns. We stop in a little café to get something to eat and they only spoke French. Sid and Mary tried to order but this was useless. We got something completely different from what we ordered. We also thought that we were short changed but we had no idea if that was true or not.

We left Sid off and Mary and I continued on having considerably more room. We were heading toward Maine. We stopped in a grocery store and got some food and then stopped at a roadside park to eat. We had a wonderful meal (probably bologna and cheese) and looked at the picturesque countryside. There was large barn nearby. We finished our meal and took off.

As we were driving down the road, Mary suddenly said ‘Oh my God!’ I asked her what was wrong. She said she had lost her purse. We reconstructed what happened and decided that she had put her purse on the top of the car when we left the park after eating. We turned around and headed back to the park. No purse. We looked all over and nothing. We drove up the road again looking along the side but still nothing.

This purse had our emergency money in it. Money that we might need if we had an emergency. Now we had an emergency but no way for resolution. The emergency was in the form of travelers checks so we could trace it. Of course Mary’s wallet and her cash, ID and other things you would carry were in that purse. The thing we were worried about most was birth control pills. They were all in the purse. We had to do something about that.

When we figured out that we were not going to find the purse, we went into the nearest town and found a doctor. We told him the story, that we were newly married and how we had brought my brother to Canada for school, that our first night we were in a 2 man mountain tent and it rained all night and now we lost her purse.

The doctor liked the story so much that he said he would give us enough to get back home. He didn’t even charge for the pills.

Now we were on our way. By now it was late and we needed to find a place to stay. Camp I mean. We found a beautiful place on a lake. It was not a commercial camping ground but there were some other campers there. It was a beautiful setting and we had a beautiful night. We got up the next morning and cooked our breakfast. Of course we brought along the Coleman stove. Bacon and eggs.

We drove on toward Maine. When we reached the border we just drove across. When we got into the US the road was just dirt. Actually mud. It looked like a lumber road through the woods…and a bad one at that. I thought we must be in the wrong place. My car was not designed for this type of road. We continued on and it finally started to get better. We were headed for Arcadia National Park.

Arcadia National Park was a very scenic and dangerous place. On the ocean. Cliffs at the ocean edge. We set up our tent and decided to walk over to see the ocean. I had my camera with me. It was a Pentax Spotmatic SLR that I had just purchased that summer. I had sandals on my feet and my camera around my neck. We got near the edge and started to walk over to the edge. We were walking on those huge rocks which were at a slope toward the ocean. As I started down the rocks I lost my footing. It was wet and the sandals gave me little traction. I went down and the slope was steep enough that I just slide toward the edge. Over the edge was a 50 foot drop onto the rocks below and the waves were crashing against those rocks. As I was sliding down the rock I was trying to guard my camera from being damaged and trying to gain some traction so as not to go over the cliff. I continued to slide down not being able to grab hold of anything. It seemed like forever as I slide and my life passed before my eyes. Finally I got to the edge and there was a lip of rock sticking up and I was able to hit that lip with my feet and stop. I received no injury but I did bang up my camera but it didn’t seem to be damaged.

We went back to the tent and fixed something to eat. It was getting quite cold so we tried to build a fire but it was too wet. We decided to go to bed. We had our sleeping bags but had not used them yet. We got them out and zipped them together. As we were zipping them together a pair of panties fell out of a sleeping bag. This is not a good thing with a new wife. I explained that we had loaned the sleeping bags to a friend and she bought that. We slept very well that night.

We stayed at Arcadia a day or two and then left traveling down the coast. We went to Lexington-Concord, saw Walden Pond, and went to Nathanial Hawthorn’s house of seven gables and some other attractions. I don’t remember where we stayed but I am thinking we probably camped out because we were being very careful with our money since we had lost our emergency money.

On we went. We arrived in New York City early in the morning. We just wanted to get through there and on toward home. We were driving along on a newly constructed road and suddenly it ended. There was a great deal of road construction going on at that time and it appeared that they stopped here waiting for a bridge to be constructed. You could see that cars had been driving down the embankment to the road below. So that’s what we did. This put us into an area in New York City that I did not want to be in. I don’t know how we got out of there but we did.

Finally we got home in one piece. When we got there a package was waiting. It was Mary’s purse. Someone had found it along the road and sent it to us. They had taken the cash from the wallet but everything else was there.

Going to the Lumber Yard

Going to the Lumber Yard

In the early 50s Dad wanted to build a house. We had been renting since we moved to Kingman and he wanted to get something of his own. The house that we were currently renting had several acres around it and he was going to buy the land next to the house to build on. It was about 1/3 acre and a typical lot in the town of Kingman.

Dad bought the lot and then started shopping around for materials to build the home. We went to local lumber yards with our material list to get quotes for materials. At that time there was a lumber yard in Kingman as well as Rockville, Wallace and other surrounding towns.

Not being satisfied with the prices he was getting, Dad learned that the lumber in the south was much cheaper than it was locally. So we planned a trip to the south to shop for lumber to build a house. I was about 8 or 9 years old and Sid was about 2 or 3. We loaded up the car and away we went. This is the only vacation like event that I can remember that we all were involved in.

The only other event that I remember from that trip was being in a business somewhere in the south about 1951 and wanting a drink. There was a drinking fountain in the business and I attempted to get a drink. As I was starting to drink the man in the business came running over to me and said that I could not drink from that fountain. That fountain was only for coloreds. I had to drink from the fountain at the other side of the room.

I never did understand what that was about and as Mom and Dad tried to explain it to me, I still did not understand. To this day I can still remember going to that fountain and the owner coming over to tell me I could not drink from that fountain. I didn’t think it was right then and I still don’t think it is right.

Dad ended up buying the lumber from the lumber yard in Wallace and I had a lesson in segregation.

Two Birds with One Stone

Two Birds with One Stone

The first new car that I bought was a Triumph TR 250. This car was such a pleasure to drive. It handled very well. It had wire wheels with knock off hubs. It had electric overdrive and got very good gas mileage. I bought this car in 1968.

The purchase of this car was made possible because the car I wanted became too costly. My original car was going to be a 1968 Dodge Charger four speed with 426 Hemi engine. This car was around $3600 and this was in the range that I could afford. The average car was about $2500 but this was no average car. I had never even ridden in one but I wanted it. I went to a dealer and got a test drive and I was sold. That is until I found out that my insurance was going to be over $2000 per year. I was stopped in my tracks.

I was driving a Triumph TR 4 at this time and so I continued to drive it. I had just got a teaching position in Indianapolis and so I was preoccupied with my new job. I was starting in the middle of the year replacing a teacher who had become pregnant. My salary was $5800 so the insurance on that Charger would be almost 1/3 of my income.

I was satisfied with my TR 4 until spring. I had met a new girl and I wanted a new car to show her off. Since I couldn’t have my Charger I thought I would consider a new Triumph. I looked at the new Triumph and was completely won over. This was really a driver’s car. In fact I was so anxious to get this car that I signed a blank contract for the purchase of the car. That’s right. I was told that the car would be either $3600 or $3800 (I don’t remember which) and I said fine. Before I could have the car the purchase would have to be approved by the sales manager and he was gone. This was on a Friday and I was ready to get going. We worked out a deal where I would sign a blank contract and he would let me have the car. WOW!

I was from a small town where it was not even necessary to sign a contract. Your word was your signature so it was not of concern to me. He told me something and I said OK and that was my bond. As I think back on this I still laugh.

My girlfriend and I then took off for the country. We went out highway 136 to Jamestown and then took State Road 234 which was a winding road that would be sooooo fun to drive. We stopped at a place where a spring fed into a make shift drinking fountain and got a drink. I took a picture of my girlfriend while we were stopped. We then continued on to Kingman. I wanted to show off my new car and my new girlfriend.

FUNNY FEELING

FUNNY FEELING

This represents a snapshot of the beginning of the end of Dad’s life. This is just my imagination of the events that happened during that time. For some reason I wanted to know what it was like. 1/21/1998


He sat on the edge of the bed. The old man had done this many times before but this time he did not feel the same. This had become a ritual. Getting up in the middle of the night and going to the bathroom. It was 3:00 AM. His wife did not arouse. He sat on the bed for a few minutes. He knew it was not right. He had felt strange earlier in the evening. Hell, he had felt strange for the past 20 years.

He pushed himself up off the bed with his once strong hands. There was not much room between the bed and the wall. The radio was in the corner near the head of the bed. He fell into the radio. This awoke his wife. She asked if he was okay. He said that he did not think he could get up. She got up and walked around to his side of the bed.

"I have a terrible pain in my side." he said.

She had been through this several times before. He had been in sliding health for several years. A working class man, he did not spend much of his life at the doctor's office. He had a heart attack (or so they said) when he was in his early 40's and that had been a cause for much concern. He gave up smoking at that point and did alter his eating habits somewhat. In his early 50s he had an aneurysm on his main aortic artery. That was successfully repaired. Then it was colon cancer, lung spots, severe arthritis, prostrate enlargement, and on and on with the things common to ageing.

He had always dealt with the problem. Always managed to come out of the situation with a new lease on life. This time he just did not feel right. He felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. He felt tired.

"I'll help you up." said his wife.

"Wait. I don't think I can make it yet. Just let me sit here a minute."

She walked over and turned on the light. She came back and sat down beside him. They sat there for several minutes. She could tell he was in pain. He had a high tolerance for pain and so she knew it was pretty severe.

"Where does it hurt?" she ask.

"I don't know mommie. I just hurt all up and down my back and bellie."

He had called her mommie since the birth of their children. Especially when he was emphasizing a point. She liked being called mommie sometimes. It made her feel like she was a part of something. She lived for her children. They had two. Two boys. These boys were now a long way from being children, but she still thought of them as her children. Being called mommie in the tone that was now present meant that he was in a stressed condition.

"Do you want to try to get up again?" she said.

"No."

She looked at him in the light. She knew something was terribly wrong. His color was bad. Gray. She had seen this before. The heart attack he had some 40 years ago gave him this same color. This frightened her.

"I am going to call the hospital." she told him.

He said nothing. She knew his silence was his approval. She went into the living room to call the ambulance service. The old man had never got around to installing a phone jack in the bedroom like she had wanted. She called the ambulance service and then called her oldest son who lived nearby. She went back and sat down on the side of the bed with the old man. She looked at him and knew the pain was severe.

The old man had a great tolerance for pain. He had been a mechanic. He had known his share of mashed fingers and busted knuckles. He worked right through them. One of his most painful experiences was when he was hunting in the woods by himself at night. He had stepped on a large limb that somehow was spring loaded by being entangled in some brush. When he stepped on the limb, it was released and smashed into his scrotum. He lie in pain for sometime and then got up and walked back to his truck which was about 4 miles away. This to him was pain. Of course this was physical pain. His dealing with emotional trauma was different. He would become very emotional when confronted with a condition involving something about his family.

The old man’s wife looked around the room. She looked at the radio in the corner. She meant to wipe the dust off the stand. She looked at the marble top dresser. It had once belonged to her grandfather. He had died young of pneumonia. She wondered if that old dresser had witnessed scenes like this in the past. She looked at the old man again. She put her arm around his shoulder.

She saw the flashing red lights approaching. She knew it would be the emergency vehicle. She hoped the lights would not disturb the neighbors. The neighbors were very nice to them. They had become to know the neighbor on either side not long after they moved here. This home was not their life home. Their life home was in another small town. They had lived in their life home for about 37 years. In the same house. She thought nothing of that statistic. The old man was reluctant to move as was she. But their oldest son wanted them to move closer to him. For convenience. And she could be closer to their grandchildren. But it is hard to leave a place that you have been in for almost 50 years and a home that you have been in for almost 40 years. But they agreed to move and now were content. They had been here about 10 years.

The emergency vehicle stopped in front of the house. She got up off the bed and went to the door. Another car parked behind the emergency vehicle. This would be her son. She went to the door and let the EMTs into her home along with her son.

“What’s going on?” said his son.

“Don’t know. Think I’m constipated.” said the old man trying to joke.

The EMTs came into the room and asked the old man how he felt. He told them he felt tight in his bellie. They took his blood pressure and looked at him in detail. They asked him if he could walk. He said no. This was embarresing to him. He had always been very self sufficient. They went to get a gurney. The old man was then loaded on the gurney and wheeled to the door. His son was standing there and they looked at each other. This was their most common bond. Silence. Neither the old man nor the son was much on verbal proclivity. The old man knew in his heart that this was his time. So did his son.

The EMTs loaded the gurney into the emergency vehicle. The old man’s son and wife told the old man that they would meet him at the hospital. He nodded. The van left for the hospital which was only a few blocks away.

The old man looked at the EMT. He had always joked with his attending persons in the past. This time he just felt tired. He just didn’t feel like joking. He laid on the gurney. He thought about the things he should have done. Did he change the furnace filters this year? He couldn’t remember. What about the oil in the car. He had been putting that off. He should have done that. He wondered if he would ever see his wife and kids again. He just had a funny feeling.