RIDING AMTRAK

For our honeymoon Celia and I took the Amtrak train from Eugene to Seattle to visit her older daughter in October of 2000.   Over the years that followed we took it three or four more times to Seattle.   It was always an adventure and usually never on time.   The trip from Eugene to Seattle involved 9 stops, including a 20 minute layover in Portland to switch trains.   Since the rail lines are own by freight trains, such as Union Pacific and Burlington Northern/Santa Fe,  Amtrak had to yield to freight traffic and sometimes that involved sitting on a siding waiting for the freight trains to go by.   It usually was a six or seven hour train ride depending on stops for freight trains, which is about the same amount of time it takes to drive it.   The big difference was no stress from driving and the biggest thrill was looking out the train window and seeing all those poor souls stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on the Tacoma/Seattle freeways.  

MY FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH DEATH

My grandparents on my dad's side of the family came to visit us when we lived out in the county near Willows, California in 1951 or 1952.  I was six or seven years old.   My parents and grandparents were out in the kitchen enjoying a drink, probably some sort of mixed drink.   I remember it being dark outside when there was a knock on the door.  It was a telegram delivered by Western Union to my grandmother.  It was very uncommon to see an adult cry back in those days or show any emotions, except maybe anger.   After my grandmother opened the telegram she went into the living room by herself and started crying.   I walked up to her and asked what was wrong and she told me her sister in Canada has died.   Without giving it much thought, I told her we are all going to die sometime.   For some reason that brought a smile to her face.  Years later, when I was older she reminded of that and how she thought it gave her a little joy during a sad time.  

THE PIZZA BAKING SHEET

When I lived in Eugene from 1991 to 2000 I had a round aluminum pizza baking sheet.    I believe it was past down from the years of my first marriage.   Over the years it became dented and beat up from much use, even turning black.   Most the pizzas baked on it were home made using BOBOLI Pizza Crust.  Toppings consisted of using left over veggies or whatever else looked good from depths of the refrigerator.   Luckily I don't remember anybody ever getting sick from the toppings that may have been used a little beyond their expiration dates.  Every time the baked pizza was cut using a round pizza cutter more dents appeared in the baking sheet.    My daughter had a friend that occasionally ate dinner with us including a few pizzas.   On one occasion the friend asked, "is that a hub cap you bake those pizzas on?"  

THE ASHLAND POET

Every year during the week after Christmas my family gets together in Ashland for a few days to celebrate the holidays.  My son and his family come up from South Lake Tahoe, my daughter and her family come down from Portland and their mother comes down from Salem.   One evening this year my son, his wife and grandson Connor were kicking a soccer ball in the park near the center of the city.  I was off to the side watching when a young woman walked by me asking how I was doing?   She may have been 40, well dressed and did not look homeless.   She was carry a bag of poems and asked if I would want to buy one as she was trying to collect enough money to buy a pizza for her boyfriend and her self.  I became a little suspicious, but I asked her to read one.   The poems were written on brown paper that I think was cut from brown paper bags.   She took one of the poems from the bag and recited to me.   As she started it reminded me of my loss of Celia and brought tears to my eyes.  I don't recall all of it, but it started out--searching in solace for what we've all lost.  Not hearing those haunting sounds, not alone in our souls...  I do have the little brown papers of the poems but find it hard to read.   I told her it reminded me of the loss of my wife, she was very sympathetic and gave me a second poem.  I gave her $20 in hopes she would buy the pizza and hopefully not drugs as she walked off.    In some ways she made my day and I hope I contributed to hers'.  

 

BROWN AND SERVE ROLLS

Remember brown and serve rolls?   I believe they are still available in the stores.  Originally they may have been produced by Wonder Bread back in the 1950's, just guessing on that.   I'm sure some of you remember Wonder Bread, the good old white bread with our bologna sandwiches.

My mother always had these rolls available for Sunday night dinners or during the holidays.    After she spent a good part of an afternoon preparing a big meal for whatever the occasion was she would place the rolls on a baking sheet and in the oven they went after she had  put the food on the table and trying to round up us six kids.   My dad usually had a big chunk of  beef of some sort on the barbecue and would bring it in the house as we all sat down to eat.   Soon we could smell those brown and serve rolls burning in the oven as mom ran into the kitchen to salvage what she could.    The tops of the rolls were black and mom would make the best out of what was not burnt.   This happened on a few occasions and became known as the Black and Serve Rolls.  

GRANDSON SAM AND HIS HALLOWEEN CANDY

 After collecting his Halloween candy from hitting the streets of his neighborhood, Sam became sick for a few days and did not have a desire to eat any of it, so his parents set it aside.    While Sam was recovering his parent sampled a few pieces of his candy thinking he would not notice what was missing when he felt better.   When Sam did feel better he asked for his candy and sure enough he noticed there was some missing pieces and asked where they were.  His mother had to confess.   Sam became a little upset and with a parental tone told his mother they should have asked him first before doing what they did.  Not bad for a four and a half year old-right?  

MY DOG JACK

It was a late November afternoon in 1989 when I was about ready to leave work at the Cottage Grove Ranger District office and go home to a little house I rented on Lynx Hollow Road north of Cottage Grove.   No sooner than I started packing up my things to head out the door when a woman that worked on the road maintenance crew came up to me asking if I would take a puppy they picked up walking along a forest road where it was beginning to snow.   She knew I had just put my old family dog Corky to sleep because of health issues.   She said she could not take the dog because they already had some dogs.    So I went home with the little black puppy that looked more like a cub bear that I named Jack.

There was a storage room in the back of the house where I left Jack during the day with food, water and a partially opened window as I went off to work.   When I came home at night I let Jack out in the back yard and he had free range in the house at night.   One wall of the storage room had unpacked boxes of items from the house I sold in Gold Beach in 1988.   After a few weeks I noticed Jack was in a corner of the storage room as if something had been bothering him during the day.  One day I saw a wild cat jump in through the opened window and discovered she had a litter of kittens in one of the boxes.   Jack had become accustomed to this wild cat coming and going as she raised her kittens.   Later I discovered the after birth in the box where she had the litter.   The wild cat and her kittens left the house to live in the barn behind the house and roam the nearby fields for rats or other small varmints.   In 1991 I bought a house in south Eugene in order to allow my two children to live with me on a part-time basis while they were in high school and their mother was considering moving out of the area.   Jack was two years old and I constructed a fenced yard with a dog house where he stayed when I was working in Cottage Grove.  Over the next few years Jack went on many hikes, backpacking trips and in the Fall of 1997 went on a  cross country car trip with me to visit a sister living in Indiana.    When Celia and I bought a house in Cottage Grove and got married in 2000 Jack became part of the family.   Jack was susceptible to seizures and in 2005 we had to send him over the Rainbow Bridge due to failing health.  

      

THE ICO"S OF AGING

The Issues, Concerns and Opportunities (ICO'S) of aging can be many, some good and some not so good.  Much depends on how well we took care of ourselves in our younger years, family history, the relationships we maintained over the years and the new relationships we develop.  

With old age and living alone comes a sense of freedom limited by health issues and financial means .  One big side effect of living alone is loneliness.  Over time one becomes stuck in their ways and the thought of finding another partner seems unfair, not practical and slowly fades away.   What Celia and I had together can not be replaced.   Over 20 plus years we grew together, respecting each others routine and accepting the lifestyle we both developed.   That does not disappear abruptly after her departing this world over two years ago, but over time somethings change and I get into my own rut.   Hard to imagine another woman putting up with me now at this stage of life.

Like Katherine Hepburn said, " men and women are not meant to live together, just occasionally visit."

SECOND ANNIVERSARY

Today is the second anniversary of Celia leaving this world.   It still seems like yesterday.   In many ways she is still here in this house with all her decorations, furnishings, paintings and other things she cherished.    It still feels like home to me.    Family and friends are still my greatest support, especially friends who have also experienced the loss of a loved one.   They have given me much emotional support that I will always cherish.   One thing for sure, love never dies.  

THE OLD MAN AND HIS DOG

Recently I went to the Oregon coast to visit my daughter and her family near Waldport where they had rented a beach house.    One morning we went to Seal Rock beach at low tide to explore all the tide pools and the creatures that live there.   There is a moderately steep trail from the parking lot going down hill to the beach.   Once we made it down to the beach I looked back up the trail to see an older man with his small dog on a leash coming down behind us.   I would guess he was around 80 years of age and very attached to his dog as he waved at me.   I waved back as we went down to the exposed rocks covered with muscles and all types of barnacles.   I noticed the old man walking on the upper beach playing with his dog now off the leash running around freely.    About an half hour later he made his way slowly back up the trial with his dog and disappeared into the forest leading to the parking lot.   I wondered if he was traveling in a motorhome, or lived nearby and if he had any family?     Sadly I suspect that dog was his family.   

CHRISTMAS 2022

It's that time of year to be jolly, get into the holiday spirit and overlook family dysfunctions.   In my old age I feel more like scourge this time of year, but getting gifts for the grandchildren saves me from total despair.   One habit I have taken up over the years of living here is to take a picture of the Christmas tree standing in the middle of Oakland, and sending it out by email to family and friends in place of Christmas cards.  Sure saves on postage and a good way to get a response from old friends and distant relatives scattered across the country.   

  

   Merry Christmas from Oakland, Oregon!

YOSEMITE

This story is condensed and revised from a 6 page story I wrote  in 1995 that had some humor in it that only the family would understand.  

 In September of 1995 two of my sisters and I, along with my son and daughter went on a backpacking trip from Tuolumne Meadows down to Yosemite Valley.   This was about a 28 mile hike.  We were over packed with enough food for a month, not well organized and behind schedule.   By 3 pm we approached the wilderness permit booth at Tuolumne Meadows and  noticed a sign saying, "all trails full for the day".  The ranger on duty took pity on us noticing how unprepared and overloaded we looked.   We were given a permit with the stipulation to be at least four miles from Tuolumne Meadows before setting up camp for the night.  In short, they wanted this motley looking bunch out of sight of the general public ASAP.   We found a place to camp before dark, ate our dinner and hung our six food bags, estimated at 75 pounds in a nearby tree in order to keep the bears away.   The next morning we were up with the sun, taking our time preparing breakfast, drinking much coffee and getting an early start by 11 am.   The plan for the day was to push ourselves another five miles to Emeric Lake.   After hiking up hill over Tuolumne Pass, it was all downhill in the Merced River drainage on trails carved out of the granite.   At our camp near Emeric Lake we dug through our 75 pounds of food, ate dinner, hung the bags up and retired for the night.   During the night some of us were awaken by the howling of coyotes.  The next morning was another early start, maybe 10:30 am. after another big breakfast and much coffee.  Our destination for this day was another 5 miles to Merced Lake.   The elevation drop on this day was 2200 feet, mostly in the last two miles.   We arrived at Merced Lake exhausted.   We were required to stay in a designated camp site and we were one of the last groups into the camp leaving us little choice of picking a secluded site.    Some of our neighbors were interesting to watch and I'm sure we were entertaining to them.  There was a man traveling by himself and had the perfect camp with all his equipment laid out just right compared to our camp with everything scattered all over the place.   After eating  dinner we were too tired to wash dishes, so we placed them in metal bear box provided near our camp along with our food bags.  During the night we were aroused by a bear banging on the metal box, probably our box with the dirty dishes.   The next morning some of our neighbors did not look upon us favorably.   Our hike for this day was short with about a 800 foot drop in elevation.   By 2 pm we asked a passing ranger where the nearest camp site might be.  He pointed to to a clump of trees across the river, which was easy to access by walking across the river on a rock out cropping.   This was the best camp site of the trip with a place to swim and good seclusion.    The next day we had a pleasant hike on mostly level trail into Little Yosemite Valley, which is 5 miles by trail from the main valley.   Here there were many people since it was a fairly easy hike up from the big Yosemite Valley, where the lodge, parking lots, and other park tourist facilities are located.   Here again camping was restricted to designated camp sites with bear boxes.   No camp fires were permitted, except at two community sites.  As night settled in, so did the multitudes of people.   The posted rule in this camp was no noise after 10 pm.   We no sooner settled in our tents and sleep started to take hold when people started banging on their pots and pans yelling BEARS!   I looked out of my tent to see flash lights moving through the trees within the camp.   This went on for most the night and I even saw a cub bear run through our camp site.   It was total madness and there were very few early risers in camp the next morning.    After getting our stuff packed up we made the final descent in to the big valley to my sister's car in a parking lot.   We drove back up to Tuolumne Meadows to retrieve my car.   I think we still had 20 pounds of food we never consumed.

It was a trip we would never forget.  

MY DAD THE SCOUT MASTER

My dad took over as scout master after no other fathers volunteered for the job.  The previous scout master had to resign due to the closure of the Sears store in Willows, where he worked and was offered a transfer to a store in another town.   My dad had never been a Boy Scout and received very little training, if any that I remember.    He was given a brief case with Boy Scout manuals, badges and keys to the Boy Scout Hall in town.  Meetings were held once a month during the school year.  The Boy Scout Hall was an old one room building with some benches, a table or two, some camping equipment and a foot locker containing boxing gloves.    My dad enjoyed boxing and watching the Friday Night fights on TV back in the 1950's.    He was known for getting in a fight or two himself  in some of the local taverns.   Except for planning the next camping trip, he usually never had a formal agenda for the monthly meetings, so he would have us put on the boxing gloves and proceed to spend the evening beating each other up.   

There is only two camping trips I remember.   One was up in the hills west of Willows at a country park next to Stony Gorge Reservoir.   The only high point of that trip I remember was crossing Stony Creek, where we all had to hang on to each others arms as we made our way across the swift current in knee deep water.   We may have been returning from the store in the small nearby community of Elk Creek.  The second camping trip was for a weekend on a ranch, I think was in the foothills of the Sierra's.  Some of the other fathers came along.   This ranch may have belong to one of them or was leased, not sure.    What I do remember, is one night the men got to playing cards and drinking whiskey in the ranch house as us Boy Scouts were out climbing around the hills with no supervision most of the night.   I remember climbing up a cliff as rocks from above were roiling down on us.   It is probably a miracle we all survived that trip.    

For a week one summer some of us went to Boy Scout Camp at Camp Lassen, near Butte Meadows.   This camp was operated by a well trained staff with an agenda, including swimming, canoeing, hiking, camp cooking lessons, earning merit badges and learning how to survive in the woods.   We slept in huts, ate in a formal dinning hall and were supervised from sun up to sun set.    There was no chaos in this camp.   By June of 1959 most of us were leaving grammar school and our days in the Boy Scouts came to an end.

LIFE THEN AND NOW

 Most of my ancestors were farmers in eastern Canada after migrating from Ireland in the 1840s.   They raised much of what they ate and traded or sold the surplus to neighbors, the local market, including the grain miller, distillery, and butcher.    They had some milk cows, a garden, fruit trees, butchered their own livestock, chickens, and sometimes feasted on wild game.    Much of the excess fruit, mostly apples were made into cider, the fermented type to add a little cheer to their lives.   Life was not easy as they usually worked from sun up to sundown.    Sunday was usually a day of rest and the only time to socially gather with others at church.  Getting there involved hitching a wagon to horses and traveling over a muddy trail to the nearest settlement 5 to 10 miles from home.   After church and depending on the weather people would assemble for a picnic, men would barter over the price of a cow, talk about their crops and maybe share some of their homemade beverages.  Women talked about when they were expecting their next child.

Women married young, had many children, and spent many hours cooking over a wood stove, washing clothes in a tub, and doing some of the outside chores in addition to tending the younger children.   The older children helped with raising their younger siblings and helped out with the milking, planting, and harvesting of crops.    

Some children never went beyond grade school.   If there was a crop failure or some family's house burned down they were at the mercy of relatives and neighbors.  There were no government social programs or insurance.

Many of the young men took up farming after leaving home, some worked in the meatpacking business, and later between 1900-1910 others went to work on the railroads in western Canada.   Visits to the local doctor were for broken bones, bad cuts, or to the dentist to have a tooth pulled.   Most lost all their teeth by the age of 50 and were fitted with false teeth.   Women usually died before their husbands, probably from exhaustion.   If a man became disabled or too old to work he was retired to a corner room in the house and dependent upon his children for care.  Most men, who were lucky died in their 60's and 70's from pneumonia or heart disease.

Today most of us have some kind of education beyond high school, worked an 8 to 10 hour per day job, 5 days a week, and retired after 30 years.   Our biggest challenge was making it through those years without losing our sanity.    We continue putting up with congested traffic, crowded markets, dodging the Covid virus, and making it home in one piece.   Many of us have not been to church in decades, socially gather at the local Bi-Mart parking lot or visit with a neighbor at the mailbox down the hill.  We have social security, Medicare, and maybe some sort of pension or IRA to get us through our retirement years.   If our luck holds out we might make it into our 80's and hopefully, our children have a corner room to put us into if all else fails.  

 

THE SON OF MOE

My dad had a weakness for dogs.  He would bring dogs home after work.  At times there could have 4 to 6 dogs running around the place.  I'm not sure where many of them came from, could have been strays or farmers with too many dogs, just don't remember. One dog my dad came home with was a Great Dane that inherited the name, Moe. The Mormons were building a church next to our place and Moe would go over and visit them and they called him Moses, so my dad came up with the nickname Moe.  Moe was a friendly dog and at times ventured away from home. We learned later that Moe had a thing going with a female Boxer at someplace on a road near town. It is hard to imagine a Great Dane and a Boxer getting together, but it happened. A few months later the Boxer gave birth to a male pup that looked like Moe.  If there were other pups in the litter I don't recall, but the owners of the Boxer were not pleased with the affair and let my dad know of it.   My dad felt responsible and adopted the Son of Moe, which we called Fritz. Not sure why that name was bestowed upon the Son of Moe.  Fritz had a Boxer face, that only a mother could love, and somewhat of a body of a Great Dane, about mid-size between a Boxer and a Great Dane.  At some point in time, Moe got into the garbage and ingested some poison, and died. Fritz lived a long life and moved to Stockton after my dad got out of the farming business and sold our home near Willows.  This all happened after I went into the Army in 1966.  

STP OIL TREATMENT

 How many remember the oil additive STP?   It was a thick honey-like liquid used to prevent engines from excessive wear and burning oil, especially old worn-out engines.   I'm not sure if it is still on the market anymore and probably not recommended for these newer engines.   

My dad bought this stuff by the gallons.   He had an old 1940's vintage used White truck (White was the brand name, not the color) used to pull a low bed trailer for transporting equipment.   This truck had a big 6 cylinder gas engine, 5-speed main transmission with a secondary 3-speed gearbox for a total of 15 spends forward.   This truck went through a lot of motor oil and my dad would pour an entire gallon of STP in it at times.       

A MAJOR BREAKDOWN

The hitch behind the D7 Caterpillar tractor had a large pin that attached the chisel plow to the draw bar of the tractor.   There were two smaller bolts on the chisel plow hitch that were used to adjust the tilt of the implement.   Two hydraulic hoses were attached to the hydraulic pump on the back of the tractor.  These two hoses went to a cylinder that was used to raise and lower the implement as it was supported by two iron wheels.   These hoses were made of hard rubber with a steel mesh lining in side, since there was high pressure when the hydraulic oil was forced through them.  A chisel plow is basically a ripper used to break up compacted soil.  This particular implement was 14 feet wide with three rows of rippers offset where they were about 12 inches in width between each ripper that were set for 16 inches in depth through hard compacted ground.   The tractor had a 5 speed transmission and could only pull this implement in second gear, so you can imagine the resistance.   

One hot afternoon the two smaller bolts broke while I was operating the tractor.    The two hoses did not break and were strong enough to pull the hydraulic pump off the tractor when the cast iron housing attaching the pump to the tractor broke.   It happened so fast I did not have time to release the hand clutch and prevent the damage.    

LEARNING THE HARD WAY

Learning how to operate and maintain farm equipment was usually done by the trial and error method.    Very seldom did anybody read an operator's manual or even know where they were at.  Looking back I never remember seeing one.

Many of the tractors made before 1940 did not have electric starters, some required cranking the engine or turning a flywheel to get the engine running.    Most of the Caterpillar crawlers had gas-starting engines to preheat and start the bigger diesel engines.  International Harvester (IH) came out with a diesel engine that started on gasoline and after a few minutes, you could switch it to diesel.   Most of the equipment my dad had was old and used until 1963 when he bought a new IH crawler.   That winter he sent me out to a field where it had been sitting for some time to move it to another field   As I started the engine it sputtered, started for a few seconds then made a clunking sound and quit.   At the time I did not know the water in it had frozen at some point cracking the head causing water to fill one of the cylinders.   When I started the engine on the gas the piston in the filled cylinder compressed against the water bending the rod to the crankshaft.   Once it started the rod broke causing serious damage to the engine.   I was told later that the spark plug for that cylinder should have been removed to allow the water to be pushed out.   How was I to know and who was responsible for not checking for antifreeze in the radiator?

Eventually, it ended up in our shop where we proceeded to take the engine apart.   There were parts all over the place when the IH dealer came to repossess it due to no monthly payments made for the last few months.   They took it all including the nuts and bolts scattered all over the shop floor.   Sure was a good way to clean up the place.

GRANDPA'S TRACTOR

The other day I stopped by the John Deere tractor store to buy some oil and a filter for my tractor, better known as Grandpa's tractor.    There are so many interesting items to look at in the store and outside too.  Tractors of all sizes, utility vehicles, riding lawn mowers, all kinds of implements and attachments for tractors.   I felt like a kid in a toy store, it reminded me of  Zumwalt's Equipment store in the small farming town of Willows, where I grew up in northern California.   Whenever I had any extra money earned from seasonal farm jobs I would spend it on hand tools purchased from Zumwalt's.   Many of those tools from 60 to 65 years ago I still have and use.    When the grandkids were here last summer we all had a good time on the tractor, not sure who had more fun, the grandkids or grandpa.  

Grandpa's Tractor

 A good time was had by all