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.  

A THANKFUL OLD MAN

This is a short version of a story I read and can relate to.  It happened during the Great Depression when money and food were scarce.   I don't know who the author is.

The old man and his dog sat by the fire in his cabin on a cold Thanksgiving night.   His wife had passed away recently and loneliness now filled most of his life.    He had lost his faith and did not give much thought to a Thanksgiving dinner.   He thought about baking some sweet potatoes with biscuits for dinner as he had some stored in his root cellar along with some onions and carrots.    There was a knock on his door.  It was the two neighbor boys asking to come in and get warm by the fire.   They told the old man he was invited over to their house for dinner if he could bring some of his sweet potatoes as they had very little food, except some chickens and greens.   He had the boys fill a bucket with the potatoes and they took off for home telling the old man he did not need to dress up as none of them would be.    The old man did put on a clean shirt on with his overalls, put a jacket and hat on before walking through the woods for about a mile to the neighbor's cabin.   When he entered the cabin there was the pleasant smell of food cooking.  During the dinner there was pleasant conversation and the boy's father reminded the old man they had not forgot how he helped them move some firewood a few months earlier.   The father also told the old man he was welcome to have some of their hen chickens as they could not afford to feed all of them.   The old man started home with a large gunny sack containing the hens as he made his way through the woods.   He got to thinking how he could sell some of the eggs in town for cash.   While walking on this clear cold night he looked up to see a full moon and became thankful for what he had as he started regaining some of his faith.  

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."

THE PERPETUAL QUESTION WE WERE ASKED AS KIDS

What do you want to be when you grow up?   I remember being asked this question in my early years in grade school.   It seemed to be the first question an adult would ask when you first met them.   If you answered, " I don't know" they kind of frowned at you like something was wrong with you?   In my later years in grade school and high school my answer was, 'I want to be a farmer or do forestry work and that seem to satisfy them.   In my working years farming and forestry was actually what I did.  

If I had it to do over again I would say, "I don't want to grow up, just let me be a kid for now.  

FIRE SEASON 2023

The grass is starting to turn brown and my rainfall for May was only 0.84 of an inch when the average for May is 2.58 inches.   The NWS reports a little over an inch of rain in Roseburg for May.  That has to be a record low, while last May of 2022, I received 4.58 inches which must have been a record high.   This all leads up to the beginning of fire season starting June 9th.   Already there has been the smell of smoke at times either from the Canadian fires or a fire west of Eugene.   There is even a small fire in the Layng Creek drainage on the Cottage Grove Ranger District, which was considered the asbestos forest when I worked there from 1988 to 1995.   The last measurable rainfall I recorded was for May 11th and there is nothing in the seven day forecast.    What will this fire season be like and can we survive until the Fall rains? 

THE END OF A LONG WINTER

Yesterday I made the drive to Eugene to close Celia's credit union account and distribute the remaining funds to her two daughters.   On my return trip I left the freeway at Creswell and drove east on Cloverdale Road, then turned south onto to Sears Road which goes along the eastside of the Coast Fork of the Willamette River all the way to the Row River Road east of Cottage Grove.    There was only one other car on the road during my drive.   It was the first real spring-like day this year with green fields, cattle grazing in lush pastures, old logging equipment in a field now overgrown with blackberries, the old Hemmenway Dairy now with vacant barns and the other scattered farms along this 12 mile route.  Driving this route was like going back 30 years when I worked for the Forest Service on the Cottage Grove Ranger District with all the log truck traffic delivering their loads to all the mills in the vicinity that are gone now, the smell of the manure from the dairy, and the many Sunday drives that Celia and I made on this road when we lived in Cottage Grove, especially to the Cloverdale Chapel on October 7, 2000 to get married.  Yesterday was a good day and I do believe this long winter is over. 

CABIN FEVER

It is now the first of March of 2023 and we all have had our fair share of winter weather and confinement to the house due to snow and icy roads, better known as cabin fever.   This got me thinking back on my younger days when I worked for the Forest Service in Orleans, California living in a small house that was half trailer comprising of the bedroom and kitchen all attached to a wooden structure that made up the bathroom and a small living room.  I guess you could call it a shack, all for $70 a month.   I was a full-time employee and I think the only single employee working on the Orleans Ranger District, except for most the seasonal employees that had 180 day appointments or about six months of work before being laid off.   The winter months of 1971 to 1974 could be lonely with no seasonal employees to hang out with after work, no woman in my life while most the other permanent employees were married and had families.   The days of winter were short, the weather could be dismal and Orleans did not offer much entertainment or social events, except sitting in one of the three taverns drinking beer with the local Indian population that were not too friendly when they had a belly full of beer.   This led me to drinking at home in the evenings and usually consuming poor quality cheap wine, the kind that had no cork in the bottle.  Having consumed a good portion of this stuff sleep was not a problem.  My reading material consisted of monthly subscriptions to Mother Earth News, The Alaska magazine and a few others.   On weekends outdoor activities such as fishing or hiking were limited due to the rain and snow at the higher elevations.  I did have a dog for company by the name of Herman, a black mutt male that I found as a puppy wandering lost along the highway one weekend.   Sometimes after heavy rain storms the highway out of town would be closed due to landslides up to a week or more.  This would prevent the delivery of the basic essentials to the local market, including beer and wine.  Sometimes panic would set in after going to the market and seeing very little available on the shelves, especially beer and that cheap wine.  

By spring time it was a relief to see some of the seasonal employees return, people to go to the tavern with or into Eureka or Arcata on the weekends.  In  January of 1975 a new receptionist was hired by the name of Christine, we were married in August of 1975 bringing an end to those lonely winters.

 

CELIA AT THE CABIN

 This picture was taken on 2/5/2011 at the cabin where Celia did many of her paintings.   She was taking a break and enjoying her favorite can of beans.  My kind of woman!

A COLD MORNING

So far this is the coldest morning this winter at 22 degrees.    The coldest I have recorded here is 9 degrees.   The coldest place I have ever been was at Fall River Mills in northern California in the winter of 1972 when it was minus 25.  A few of us went over there from Orleans to go duck hunting and stayed in an old ranch house with a gas heater.    When we went outside to hunt we could only stay outside for 20 minutes before our noses started to go numb.   By noon we called it a day and went in to Fall River Mills to get something to eat at a restaurant.  The high for the day was zero as we started the long drive back to Orleans with no ducks.     

WORKING IN THE POISON OAK

In the summer of 1972 the seasonal fire crew of four people were put to work clearing the roadside brush leading into the Bluff Creek Guard Station on the Orleans Ranger District of the Six Rivers National Forest.   This work was done with hand tools and the brush was piled in a Forest Service pickup to be hauled off to a burn pile.   Most of the brush was blackberries mixed with poison oak.    Nobody on the crew was familiar with poison oak.    It was a hot day and some members of the crew had taken their shirts off as they gathered up the brush and put in the bed of the truck stomping it down.   The next day these people were human blisters in need of medical attention.  

HOOPA BLUFFS

 Of all the highways and roads I have traveled the most dangerous I can recall is California State Highway 96 between Hoopa Valley and Weitchpec, where the Trinity River meets the Klamath River.   A section of this portion is called the Hoopa Bluffs where there is a vertical rock face above the highway and a vertical drop of a few hundred feet straight down to the Trinity River.  There was a series of curves through this section with a few guard rails in some spots.   Beyond the guard rails it was straight down to the river.

When I lived and worked for Forest Service in Orleans between 1971 to 1977 it was necessary to travel this highway to seek medical attention at a clinic in Hoopa Valley or do serious shopping in the big cities of Arcata and Eureka, or just to get away to enjoy the civilized world.   On many return trips it was dark and without knowledge of this section could prove to be fatal.   If you missed a curve here there was no time for prayer as you plunged toward the river below.  

VETERANS DAY 2022

 This is a day I reflect back on the many people in my life that served in the military, especially those that saw the horrors of combat.   Of all the family members that served in WWII and the Korean War none ever spoke in detail about what they experienced.  When I was in the Army from 1966 to 1968 I was spared from going to Vietnam due to an injury to my arm during basic training.   Because of the injury I spent 9 months in an orthopedic ward at Fort Hood, Texas, including 4 months as a patient and 5 months as a hospital corpsman waiting for further orders from above.   During my time as a corpsman I worked on that orthopedic ward where most the patients received their injuries from Vietnam, mostly from land mines.   I do not remember any of them ever talking about their ordeals.   Most the home town boys that served in the military when I did and ended up in Vietnam have passed away, some from alcoholism and others from depression related to PTSD. 

 

THE DUMP

The other day I made a trip to the Oakland transfer station or as many of us call it "The Dump".  My memories drift back to my younger days growing up in Willows, California in the 1950's and 60's.   We used to load up the old pick up truck and make the drive to the county dump once or twice a month.   The dump was a series of pits where the county had dug up gravel over the years to rock and pave the many miles of county roads.  Afterwards the gravel pits, maybe an acre or two in size and 40 to 50 feet deep were used as a place to dump trash.   As we would back up to the edge of the pit along with other county residents we could see all kinds of debris thrown in the pit, including tires, appliances, furniture and God knows what else in addition to household garbage.   Fires smoldered in the pit as a toxic smell of smoke was in the air.  There was a man that looked like he had been raised in the pit that started the fires and rummaged through the debris.   He was small man in dirty clothes and with very dark skin.  There was a shack off to the side where I always thought he lived.   Not sure if he was paid by the county or what?   There were no fees for dumping there and nobody ever questioned us on what we were putting in the pit.   

Some time in the late 1970's open pit burning was banned nationwide and landfills came into existence.  The word recycling was not part of our vocabulary until the 1980's.  

14 HOUR DAYS

 This song brings back memories of farm life back in the 1960's operating some of those old combines in northern California harvesting barley, rice, safflower and milo corn.   Then in my later years working on a grass seed farm near Harrisburg, Oregon operating modern combines in the 1990's.  The one thing that never changed was the long days, many were 14 hour days.   

THE LOSS OF AN OLD FRIEND

I received an email from Judy Barceloux, the wife of my old friend Alan Barceloux, informing me he passed away August 12th. Alan had been fighting stage 4 lung cancer for the last five or six months. Alan and I had known each other going back to our days as Boy Scouts in Willows, California in the late 1950's. We had many adventures together exploring the Mendocino National Forest during the summers in our high school years, including backpacking through the Middle Eel Yolla Bolly Wilderness Area. We spent some early mornings hunting ducks and geese in the rice fields south of town during the winter months. In 1966 Alan enlisted in the Air Force for three years during the Vietnam war at the same time I was drafted into the Army for two years. In the Fall of 1969 Alan and I shared an apartment together while we both attended Lassen College in Susanville, California under the GI Bill. Later he attended Chico State University then took over the family auto parts business of Baceloux Brothers Auto Supply in Willows and worked at the NAPA Auto parts store in Orland until he retired. No doubt we drank our fair share of beer together over the years. We kept in touch by email and in many ways Alan was like a brother to me. Whenever Celia and I were visiting family in Chico we would enjoy a meal and have a few beers with Alan and his wife Judy. RIP old friend!

8/16/2022

A TERRIBLE ACCIDENT

Baker Brothers Land & Stock Company was a large family farming and ranching enterprise in Glenn County, California.   They raised rice, alfalfa, barley, sheep and cattle.   The three brothers that owned and operated the business were John, who was the general manager, Deak, the rice dryer and storage manager and Willis, who supervised the labor force of about 12 full-time and 10 seasonal employees.   John had two sons that managed the livestock, Deak had a son, who was the lead mechanic and Willis had a son, who was a pilot. 

In the summer of 1962 John Baker and his son Jack were returning from their sheep ranch in the western foothills of the Sacramento Valley.   John was in his Cadillac car and Jack was following in his pickup truck on their way back to the company headquarters east of the small community of Artois, north of Willows along Highway 99w.   They were traveling on County Road 35 going east and John stopped before crossing Highway 99w with Jack right behind him.   Just beyond the highway going north and south is the Southern Pacific rail road going parallel with the highway with no warning lights or cross arm to stop traffic.   There was only the railroad crossing X sign.   According to Jack, who saw it all, said his dad crossed the highway and looked away from the direction he was driving to wave at somebody he knew in a passing car and ran directly into a passing freight train killing him instantly.   His car was carried down the track a few hundred feet and was a total wreck.   I believe John Baker was 60 years old at the time of his death.   His son Jack eventually took over as general manger at the age of  33 or 34.   

In the summer of 1964 I worked seasonally for Baker Brothers under the direction of Willis Baker doing tractor work, harvesting barley and rice in the fall of 1965 before being drafted into the Army in February of 1966 at the age of 20.    

THE MENDOCINO NATIONAL FOREST

This is the only national forest in California without a major paved road entering it and no year-around highway crossing over it.   There is Forest Highway 7, a Forest Service gravel road crossing over Mendocino Pass from east to west, but is not open in the winter due to snow.   This road connects state Highway 162 from Willows to Highway 162 in Covelo, a two and half hour drive over 85 miles.   Willows is the Forest Headquarters and known as the Gateway to the Mendocino National Forest.   Hard to believe when Willows is located in the Sacramento Valley with only a view of the Coast Range Mountain to the west some 40 miles away.    One of the most tragic incidents was the loss of 15 firefighters on the Rattlesnake Wildfire in July of 1953 in Grindstone Canyon.  The scar on the landscape from that fire was visible from Willows.   

As a kid I spent many hours looking west at these mountains from our house west of town and wondering what it would be like to see what is over that ridge or up that canyon.   The Willows Ranger District winter office was up stairs in the Willows Post Office, where I got my first  Forest Service map dated 1956.    The District had a summer ranger station at Alder Springs about 45 miles up in the mountains from Willows.    I studied that map until I almost had it memorized.  There were place names on the map that I wanted to explore--Hokey Pokey Ridge, Snow Mountain, Hays Place, Plaskett Meadows, Keller Lake, Jenks Place, Log Springs Guard Station and many more.  

As teenagers a friend and I drove around the Forest in one of my dad's farm pickups exploring different places on that forest map.    We spent 3 or 4 days driving around on forest roads with a 50 gallon barrel of gas with a pump in the pick up bed to keep us going, along with camping gear.   I don't recall seeing many other vehicles, except a Forest Service employee checking camp fires in a campground.   We went as far west as Mendocino Pass and drove more roads than I can remember.    In the summer of 1962 we backpacked four days through the Yolla Bolly Middle Eel Wilderness Area after my dad dropped us off at a trailhead at a place called Brown's Camp.   From there we hiked to a small lake near South Yolla Bolly Mountain.   The second night was with the fire lookout on Hammerhorn Mountain, and from there down to Elk Lake for a night before hiking out of the wilderness to a Forest Service road where we caught a ride with a Forest Service road engineer to a logging camp where we spent a night.  The next day we caught a ride on a logging truck to Paskenta where one of our parents picked us up.  

Over the last few years most of this Forest has been destroyed from catastrophic wildfires, including summer home tracks, campgrounds, Forest Service guard stations, many road signs and other improvements.  The Willows Ranger District no longer exist and was combined with two other Districts of the five original Districts over the years.   Today there is only three ranger districts and the Forest I once was familiar with is gone, except for the memories.    

CABIN ON WOOLEY CREEK

A co-worker and I came across this cabin while backpacking the Wooley Creek trail into the Marble Mountain Wilderness Area in 1972.   We looked inside the cabin as it was not locked and saw beds with blankets on them and dishes in the kitchen.  It was one big room.   We assumed it was being used by a Forest Service trial crew.    Most Forest Service cabins in wilderness areas are not locked and can be used by the public in the event of foul weather or an emergency.   President Hoover was known to have fished Wooley Creek and may have stayed in this cabin.   With all the fires over the decades since 1972, I'm not sure if this cabin is still there.   Many cabins in the wilderness areas have come to disrepair, vandalism or burned down either by wildfires or the Forest Service due to liability problems or to keep squatters from taking them over.  

MY DOG HERMAN

 This was my dog Herman when I lived in Orleans from 1971-77.    He was part Chow and not sure what else, mostly All-American mutt.   I found him as a puppy walking along Highway 96 near Somes Bar.   Later I was told he my have come from a litter of dogs belonging to an Indian family living in that area.   Herman would go to work with me up until the Forest Service put an end to dogs going to work with employees, maybe in 1973-74.  When Christine and I married in 1975, Herman join the family, along with Christine's two dogs.   Herman went with me on many backpacking trips and always in my pickup on road trips.  He became a bad influence on Christine's dogs at times leading them in to trouble now and then.  

On one of our monthly shopping trips to Eureka we left the dogs in the back of the pickup, which had a camper shell on it with open screen windows.   The store we were shopping at was called Bazar's, a large department store with groceries, clothing, hardware and sporting equipment.   While we were in the center of the store we could hear people laughing and gasping as all three of our dogs were coming toward us in the aisle we were in.   The dogs had ripped open one of the screen windows, got scent of our trail, somehow entered through automatic sliding door into the store and followed our scent to the aisle we were in.   It was Herman leading the way as all three dogs were happy to have found us.