Rambling Russ: My Life, From There to Here

2020-12-31T11:28:00.046-05:00

Rambling Russ: My Life, From There to Here
Illustrated by Brad Hall, www.bradhallart.com

© Copyright 2010, Russ Kelly, Liberty, SC, USA. All rights reserved.

Exerpts from my forthcoming book......

A Funny Thing Happened on my Way to Old Age......

The Cookout. Read about his friend Herbert Bartholomew Tallmadge, the worlds foremost used casket salesman, and the "explosive" cookout at their modest adobe commonly referred to as the Taj Mahal of Foxwood Hills.

Adventure.......

Truck Driver in Iraq & Afghanistan. If you're into challenge, adventure, are highly patriotic, and want to earn a lot of money, then perhaps this is just the job for you.

Journey From Childhood to Old Man.....

Hobo Junction. "Clackety clack, clackety clack. I hear the freight train coming up the track!" And thus began the summer I turned sixteen. It was to be my second big adventure, with lots of challenges and many life's lessons learned.

Nostalgia.......

Dawning of the Computer Age. A nostalgic look at the early years of computers in science and business, beginning in early 1960's. Vacuum tubes, tons of air conditioning, forty pound tape reels, all to handle a payroll. Only the largest businesses and government agencies could afford them.

Opinions, of Which I Have a Few, & Other Stuff......

The Story of "Rosie". Get Down! Go Away! Get out of Here! The Pit Bull was charging at warp speed. Perhaps to bite my head off! Maybe to merely gnaw on one of my extremities. I was not prepared for events that followed.

Contact Rambling Russ....

eMail Russ to his Yahoo.com mail server: Send to RamblingRuss and name of mail server. (Yahoo.com). eMail address presented this way to prevent harvesting of mail address by bot mail harvesters.
_

Thoughts on the Origin of Life on Earth

2011-01-02T20:35:00.001-05:00

Russ Kelly
January 2, 2011

Note: This is a profound subject, at least for this blog, certain to cause debate and disagreement. Your comments are encouraged by posting comments at the end of the article. No names necessary, and you don’t have to sign up as a Google© user to comment anonymously. Comments are encouraged and welcomed.

Whew! What a profound subject. And why does it belong on the blog of an old and simple man? Well, it invites debate and discussion. Maybe it will give you pause to consider and reaffirm your own beliefs. Or perhaps open your thoughts to new and controversial ideas. Controversy breeds serious debate. And serious debate fosters knowledge and understanding. We cannot keep at arms length the issues that might be controversial, or with seemingly impossible to determine answers. Shucks, it’s just plain fun to explore the seemingly unexplainable.

I’m keeping this simple, a look at the origin of life on earth. A much more manageable subject than talking about the origin of life period. For instance, if we believe in Creationism, we do not have to bother ourselves with the answer to the origin of the Creator. Who created the creator? That simply does not matter. And it’s good thing since the origin of life anywhere cannot now be answered, nor will it ever be answered, at least in this life. It’s struggle enough to think about the origin of life on earth.

One thing I feel strongly about is that we know far less than what we think we know. (Here I am with this simple mind, getting profound). Our base of knowledge and understanding is blindingly thin. Yet each generation with all it’s wisdom and knowledge, assumes they know most things. At least the really important things. The simplest reminder of this is realizing it was not too many years ago when everyone knew that the earth was flat and that you would fall off the edge if you sailed out into the ocean too far. Our body of knowledge is continuously expanding, yet will forever remain infinitesimal relative to the body of knowledge available. It will always be thus. We’re sort of like the early computers with 4,000 bytes of memory and trying to cram them full of the entire body of knowledge of mankind. It’s a tough fit.

I believe I posses an open mind. To me, anything seems equally plausible and possible. I can only form my own opinions based on my life’s experiences and the small body of knowledge that I possess. A mighty inadequate way indeed, to surmise about the origin of life on earth. But never being one that is easily dissuaded from such arrogance or undertakings, I won’t let my meager experience and knowledge dissuade me from exploring this subject, and arriving at my own opinions on the topic. After all, even the most wise and intelligent person on the planet today is not really all that better prepared than me to think about and posit answers to such deep questions. Our most educated and learned theologians, medical experts, psychologists, biologists, and scientists of all persuasions cannot agree on the most probable answer to this question.

My nature is to be logical, to think of probable solutions and answers based on pure logic and laws of probabilities. I guess that may account for my fair success with computers even though possessing a meager education. With logic being my persuasion, there seems to me to be only three possible answers to the origin of life on earth. Or perhaps some combination thereof. For example, I do not believe we can discount the effect of evolution and the theory of the survival of the fittest. We do evolve in physical characteristics just as surely as we evolve in our knowledge and understanding of science and our history. But, our primary and true origin was either that we were created by intelligent design, or else we seemingly magically materialized and evolved, or else we were repopulated. What?! Repopulated? That’s a new one for most people to consider. Remember, I’m merely suggesting the only ways that life could have formed on earth, not suggesting an answer at this point.

Let’s examine intelligent design (Creationism) without getting into specifics of one religion or another. I think that almost all of the world’s major religions support the idea of intelligent design, though some in different form than others. It supposes that this answers all questions we have about the topic if only we have faith. In other words, if we don’t understand it, don’t worry, pure faith that it happened is sufficient reason for us to accept and not to worry about the details. It is an all-inclusive answer, one that is hard to argue with, and it has a certain grand logic to it. It’s an easy answer. One problem I have with it is this. If we were created by a Creator, who created the Creator? When did our Creator’s existence begin? And how? And I am left wondering, did a Creator actually do the design and build for literally millions of life forms, each with an incredibly complex array of different functions, abilities and compositions? And in seven days at that! How is this possible? This is asking a lot of my faith, so let’s examine the other possibilities as well.

We suddenly and randomly materialized and evolved is the other commonly held belief for the origin of life on earth. But the laws of probabilities here elude me entirely. Too many millions of variants of life forms, each incredibly complex. I understand why certain species would need the life characteristics that they have and which make them unique, but it is asking a lot for mere laws of probability to explain how this is obtained through pure random chance in the relatively short existence of the earth. In other words, evolution is based on billions of random accidents. Maybe one life form would be more probable and believable, but all of these thousands of life forms with such differing characteristics? The randomness of it boggles my mind and frankly, I cannot believe that random chance and laws of probabilities could produce such results. At least in the relatively short life of planet earth (a tad less than four billion years by most informed estimates).

And this leads me to the only other possibility for life on earth that I can think of. Repopulation. But, from where? The answer to where will likely never be known, but we can speculate a bit. Space is filled with “black holes”, and one likely explanation for these “black holes” is the collapse of solar bodies and entire solar systems. One black hole is thought by many respected scientists as containing many millions of solar bodies and solar systems. Some may contains portions or the entirety of other universes. Let’s hypothesize for a moment, and pretend we’re in the year 3011 rather than in the year 2011. And let’s assume we are very advanced as a civilization, where space travel is almost a ho hum event. Since space travel is already almost an ordinary event, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to presume that in another thousand years, our space travel abilities will be quite advanced. And let us also suppose that our universe is in eminent danger of becoming a black hole. It likely happens sooner or later to every solar system, perhaps every universe. When it stops expanding it starts the process of rapidly collapsing upon itself and thus becoming a black hole. It’s timing is very precise and very predictable. We will not be surprised by it. Or let’s even assume that our planets sun is finally giving up the ghost, since all suns eventually do. In such scenarios it is not hard to imagine that the most important and pressing issue facing humanity is the continuation of our species. All other matters pale by comparison. Does it not make sense that we would want to populate a similar planet as our own so as to perpetuate the continuation of our species? And to populate such a planet with all life forms as are found on planet earth? It certainly makes sense to me that a civilization of such advanced age would posses such technologies, and that the most urgent need, facing the destruction of our own planet, would be to populate another planet and create it in as close a fashion as our own with the same animal species, plants, structures, and knowledge. One could argue that there is a lot of evidence to support such an event. For example, what but an advanced intelligence could account for the building of great pyramids and other structures on earth, during the same period and on different continents, and all of the same basic design and each in the same alignment to earth as all others like it around the globe? After all, we didn’t have intercontinental travel or communications back then. Or did we? There seems to be a plan and a reason for these structures and planning. Who but an advanced civilization would posses the knowledge base and the mathematical and building skills for such an engineering feat, the likes of which would be nearly impossible to reproduce even today? And what else explains the drawing on several continents of very similar human like figures, decidedly advanced and different from the local populace, yet in some ways similar to the characteristics of existing civilizations. Some even look very much like current day photographs of our astronauts. What a coincidence! As old as these drawings are, the figures seem even today almost like they are from another planet. And could an advanced civilization from outside our own universe be the higher power and intelligent designer to which most of the worlds religions subscribe? I guess religious scholars and Creationists are likely to shout, “God is not an alien or civilization from another planet”. But is it really sacrilegious to ponder the possibility?

Perhaps there are other explanations for the origins of life on earth, but of course all of them beg the question of the origin of life, period. In our knowledge base of the twenty-first century, all things must have a beginning and an end. But our knowledge base is understandably deficient and weak on matters such as these. I think we can only conclude that anything is possible. All of these possible explanations for the origin of life on earth are equally far-fetched, unfathomable, and yet each, with an open mind, is possible and answers the question about the origin of life on planet earth. Each of these in themselves are almost inconceivable, which makes any of them from the vantage of distant analysis, equally plausible.

I really do believe in a grand scheme to life on planet earth, and a superior being and intelligence, a power greater than all of us. I do not believe in the mere randomness and happenstance of strictly evolution as being the likely answer, although I realize that evolution does play a major part in the form and function of all life. To me, the mathematic probabilities of the sudden random creation by accident and the evolution of the different species of animals, each evolving in it’s own way, just boggles the imagination. Of course the other explanations do also. But that leaves me only with intelligent design as a likely explanation, with the source of the intelligent design much in question. Is it a pure single higher intelligent power, or is it maybe something else? We’re left to believe what we believe. Or not to believe at all.

© Copyright 2011, Russ Kelly, Liberty, SC, USA. All rights reserved.

Posting of your comments on this topic are encouraged. No names are necessary, you may post below, your comments anonymously.

More humor, adventure and opinion from Rambling Russ

_

The Story of “Rosie”

2010-12-06T08:06:00.008-05:00

_

GET DOWN! GET AWAY FROM ME! GO AWAY!

And thus begun my introduction to “Rosie” in June of 2010.

We had just purchased our retirement home. A bit in the country, but not too far away from civilization. We were moving in when a bit of panic set in. Across our yard was a fast moving Pit Bull. A big dog, all sixty-one pounds of her. Obviously young and rambunctious. It was obvious that with her energy, she was a good sixty-seven years my junior, and I was no match for her.

I’m not a big dog person. We’ve always had pets, but nothing of this magnitude. Besides, I’d read and heard all the stories of Pit Bulls. As far as I knew, she was headed my way to bite my head off. Or perhaps she merely wanted to gnaw on my leg or arm. Maybe both. I didn’t like the looks of this situation at all. I was defenseless if there was an attack by this wild Pit Bull on the loose, and I was uncomfortable to say the least. “Get down! Get Away from me! Go away!” But the Pit Bull wasn’t listening!

My neighbor, I’ll call him Derek for this story, heard my loud protestations and slightly salty sailor language, and he came out of his house exclaiming his surprise at “Rosie” running loose. He led her to a big heavy chain in his backyard and attached her to that chain. I looked around and wasn’t really very excited about the prospects of peace and tranquility at our new home. A quick look at Rosie’s environment and I quickly surmised that perhaps she might be running loose and terrorizing others and myself for years to come. A heavy eight-foot chain, a flimsy plastic doghouse much too small for her, and a not very stimulating area for her to stay in. Hidden behind the house, and nothing to keep her attention or interest satisfied. Besides, she frequently wrapped her chain around bushes leaving only a foot or two of slack in the chain. Guess I’d try to escape as well. I was resigned to my misfortune, and determined to stay away from her and simply try to ignore that she was even around. But bordering on our property, with no fence or bushes between us, it was going to prove difficult to do.

Over the coming weeks and months, Rosie was not much of a problem. She didn’t bark or disturb us in any way. Derek never directly abused Rosie, indeed, he seemed quite fond of her. But he didn’t spend any time with her and he was occasionally away for days at a time without any provision for Rosie’s care. He was not feeding her often, perhaps due to a lack of money. Whatever the reasons, Rosie had wretched conditions for living, and Helen and I felt really bad for her.

It was getting hard to ignore Rosie’s occasional whining, looking for attention or her owner. We started checking on Rosie daily to make sure she was OK. Often, she wasn’t. Helen traipsed through the yard and the rough terrain to check her food and water dishes. This was fraught with perils for falling and perhaps breaking an ankle. Things were not going well if Helen was going to keep feeding and watering that dog daily.

I’m occasionally out of state on a retirement job, and Helen’s “Rosie” responsibility was growing. On one of Derek’s absences, Helen saw that again, Rosie had no food and no water. She fed Rosie. A hearty portion. And Rosie was so hungry she woofed it down, and then promptly threw it up. She was getting listless and dehydrated. That was the moment we decided that Rosie was our responsibility to provide daily food and water to. Frankly, I was pretty reluctant about this whole affair. I didn’t want to be involved. We didn’t need yet another responsibility. And I know what happens when we find a dog or cat in need. We end up with another dog or cat. With a Yorkie, a Toy Pom, and a fiercely independent cat in our family, a Pit Bull certainly was not in my plans.

Helen bought a big bowl for her food so she wouldn’t have to eat off the ground. And Helen and I, and our son Jimmy started visiting with Rosie daily, just to provide some company to her. And with Jimmy being a chef, he was able to frequently bring huge bones to Rosie. Rosie was starved for attention. And with our daily caring for her, we learned that she was one really wonderful and well-dispositioned dog. She had obviously never been abused in any fashion, just simply neglected. And kept on a chain in dismal conditions. Much to my dismay, she was worming her way into our hearts.

We decided it was time to step in and see if we couldn’t improve Rosie’s conditions. Since Derek sincerely liked Rosie and knew that he could not feed or care for her, it did not take too long for him to agree to the idea of Helen and I finding a nice home for Rosie. He gave written permission to that effect, and our search for a suitable home for Rosie began.

About this time, we noticed some male dogs starting to hang around our yards, attracted to Rosie. Now we’re pretty certain that Rosie has not been properly indoctrinated in birth control and pays no attention to such matters. It was of concern to us that she might have a litter of puppies that would be hard to place, and where Rosie would not be properly cared for during a pregnancy. It would also make it impossible to adopt Rosie out. Mainly though, we did not want to see puppies of any kind born into such a neglected environment, so we volunteered to pay for the spaying and getting Rosie’s shots.

And there we met Wanda. A wonderful lady with a big heart for animals. Helen found a place to have Rosie spayed. The Humane Society of Anderson, SC, and we met Wanda there. I loaded Rosie in my Jeep, and Derek, Rosie and I headed to the clinic. I spoke with Wanda about our predicament of finding a good home for Rosie. And Wanda went to work.

Apparently Wanda has quite a long list of caring animal lovers, and those that come to the rescue of animals in distress. Helen and I received many emails inquiring as to how Rosie was doing. But we couldn’t find anyone able to take in a large Pit Bull Terrier. But Wanda is not easily deterred.

She inquired as to whether a fence might be placed at Derek’s. That really wasn’t a viable option for a number of reasons. But Wanda is not to be easily deterred. She then inquired in her most pleasant but devious manner as to whether a fence at our yard would do, since Derek had agreed to adopt her out. Geez! I hadn’t even considered this angle. First, being close to retirement, we don’t have funds to put in heavy duty fencing for a big dog. Besides a big dog was not in our plans. I never thought in terms of big outdoor dogs.

But alas, Rosie had already done her part. During my feeding forays to her domain, that little turkey had weaseled herself right into my heart. Helen and I talked it over. For at least fifteen seconds. And we decided that if we had fencing to keep Rosie safe, then perhaps we could become big dog lovers as well.

Wanda found fencing donations. And then we met Patrice from Pawsitive Effects in Anderson, SC. Patrice has lots of volunteers that do the labor in putting up fencing. And as I was to discover, a lot of labor is involved indeed. Lots of hours and work, in rain and dismal conditions. We had lots of volunteers here doing the work, and they brought toys and water pails, and leashes, and a wonderful doghouse! Finally, Rosie was to have not only her own yard, but also a real doghouse of her own! And not a moment too soon for it has gotten dreadfully cold, wet and windy. Now Rosie has her own abode, suited to her large size, and well bedded with lots of cedar chips by the volunteers. And they covered the yard in straw. These volunteers did one heck of a job. Everyone contributed time, money, and lots of work to rescue this one beautiful dog from the chain and the conditions she was in.

Rosie, happily domiciled in her new home, is now one excited dog. She races around her yard not quite believing that she is no longer on a chain. As she runs she throws her toys in the air and catches them on their way down. She spends a lot of time gnawing on a large rubber bone, and then buries it in her yard to dig up later when she wants to gnaw on it some more. But one of her favorite things is to jump onto the top of her doghouse where she proudly sits surveying her fiefdom. She is quite proud to be Queen of the domain. Her fenced yard is nearly adjacent to the fenced yard we have for our Yorkie and Toy Pom. They’re quickly getting used to each other and now spend time chatting with each other across the fences. Rosie is just outside our rear deck and the sliding glass doors to our family room, so she is able to watch and be part of our activity. And she has the whole neighborhood to watch from her yard. Lots of activity to keep her interest.

But her favorite activity is to swing. I’ll take her out of her yard on a leash, and we go sit in the front yard swing. She can spend hours there. And I about get slobbered to death. She lays quietly, head in my lap, then stands up and slathers me with a big old dog kiss, all over my head and face. Until I make her lie down again. I guess a little dog slather once in awhile can be a good thing after all.

My point of this story is simply this. Every event in life has a reason, a lesson, and some humor. The lesson here is that there are so many caring people who devote their time and energies to the care of animals. They deserve our support and our volunteering where possible, and our donations so that their good work can continue. The Humane Society of Anderson (click here to contact them) and/or Pawsitive Effects of Anderson would be a good place to start. The other lesson I learned is that a big dog can be a lot of fun and bring much enjoyment to any home with a yard. Everyone thinks about little dogs, even medium sized dogs. But don’t rule out the larger breeds. And don’t pay a lot of attention to the stories you may hear about the risks of Pit Bull Terriers. It is all in how they are raised. Because of their size, there are some evil-minded people that will abuse large dogs simply to make them fierce. Too bad there are folks like that in the world. Perhaps a ten-foot chain on such people would be a suitable reward for their misdeeds.

© Copyright 2010, Russ Kelly, Liberty, SC, USA. All rights reserved.

Rosie – Before Adoption

Rosie – Volunteers putting up her fence, and Rosie in her new home

UPDATE: Day 5, Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Rosie is still very much excited and playful. She gave me a day of real concern though. She had been so rambunctious, jumping onto the top of her doghouse, running around, then in mid-afternoon of day three she became lethargic. It was a cold and windy day, and rather than going into her dog house to stay warm, she built herself a “nest” of straw in the corner of her yard, lied down and hardly moved. She wasn’t playing. I thought perhaps she had pulled a muscle jumping onto her doghouse, had indigestion, or perhaps an infection. Or maybe there was something in her doghouse that she was anxious about. Like maybe a raccoon, spiders, a snake or even something more evil. I got on my hands and knees and wiggled myself as far in the doghouse as I could get and felt around every inch. I saw nothing. I felt nothing. And no nefarious critters or insects attacked me. I watched Rosie closely, going out to check on her often throughout the day and night. Each time I went out she would come up to me, stand up and give me a big hug, but she didn’t seem very enthusiastic. Then she would again lie down in her “nest” and sleep. Mid-morning the next morning, all of a sudden she jumped up from her nest, jumped around the yard a bit, jumped onto her doghouse to survey her surroundings, and was again her usual rambunctious self. Maybe she just had a case of moving anxiety and simply needed to get comfortable with her new home.

Today, Rosie is more active than ever. It’s funny, but her tail, which used to stay down a good bit, is now straight up in the air with a curl, all the time. Sort of like a radio tower with a twist. A bit less cold today, so families are walking around the neighborhood and on the street, close to Rosie’s domain. She let’s everyone know who is the real boss around here with her mighty throated barking, all the while her tail thrashing the air until I’m afraid she is going to take off, straight up in the air like a helicopter. She is probably intimidating until the neighbors get used to her, ‘cause with her size and jumping around with energy, she looks like she could leap over the fence in a single bound. Heck, she looks like she could jump over the trees the way she jumps up and down and bounds onto the top of her doghouse.

“Duke”, our Yorkie, and “Bentley”, our Toy Pom (I call him Little Red Fox), let me know when they want to go out into the yard to play. They go to the door and bark at me. It’s less of a question of “can we go out” – it’s more like a demand. And it’s more frequent now. When they’re let out, each time, they head straight to the gate of their yard, which is the closest point to Rosie’s yard, turn their heads back to me as if to say, let us out of here, we need to check on Rosie. I open the gate and they head straight to Rosie. They both promptly mark the fence at many points (where does all that water come from?), as if to make a statement as to who has what territory around here. They rub noses through the fencing a bit, and then Bentley usually engages Rosie in a game. She will run at full speed to a point halfway around Rosie’s yard, and wait until Rosie, at full speed, jumps and gallops up to her. Rosie doesn’t run, it’s more like a horse gallop with a lot of jumps into the air and kicking of her hind legs. (Maybe she thinks she is a wild bronco bucking horse.) Then Bentley is off again, running to the other side of the yard, and again waits for Rosie. A few times around the yard and Bentley tires of the game and wanders off. Bentley and Duke always seem to throw a backward glance to Rosie before they go back into their own yard as if to say “see ya later big girl!”

Rosie & Bentley checking each other out

Bentley & Rosie playing "chase me around the pen"

Rosie loves to pretend she is "Snoopy" while surveying her fiefdom from atop her doghouse

Rosie & Rambling Russ on the swing

A little dog slather isn't such a bad thing!

UPDATE: Rosie's Christmas message, December 24, 2010

Rosie has been taking speech lessons, but she hasn't learned to write yet, and her Internet knowledge is very limited. So she asked 'ol Rambling Russ to thank everyone for making her Christmas a happy one, and she wishes for everyone a very MERRY CHRISTMAS! Woof woof!

Rosie surveys her fiefdom

Rosie shares her dog house

UPDATE: Rosie is soooooo funny. January 25, 2011

Usually, twice a day when I feed Rosie, after she chows down a bit she then jumps up on the roof of her dog house and barks lightly, asking me to get up there with her. So I get up there and we sit, sometimes with her head in my lap, sometimes sitting up straight beside me, listening intently to my conversation with her, and an occasional Irish ballad. About once a minute she puts her face in front of mine and proceeds to give me a good slathering. Well, it's the best she can do for doggie affection.

But today, it's different.

It's raining, and Rosie is spending most of her time inside her dog house. She came out to eat a little bit, after first hugging on me as if to say "thank-you", then she goes in her dog house, pokes her head out, and tugs lightly on my pants leg trying to pull me inside her dog house with her. She doesn't give up... she keeps trying. But I'm sure I wouldn't fit. Would I? ;>)

UPDATE: Day 68, February 10, 2011

Rosie climbs, she leaps tall fences, she’s “Wonder Dog”
(But she still can’t read USA Today)

The last two months have really been interesting and challenging with Rosie. That’s because she is just shy of matching the adventures and talents of “Wonder Dog”.

Rosie decided she wanted to widen her horizon beyond the confines of her fenced yard. So, she did what any half-way intelligent and determined dog would do…. She learned to climb fences. Every time she was put in her yard she would wait until we went inside, then she would climb her fence and come knocking on the house door and asking to come inside, all the while wagging her tail furiously as if to say, “see, I’m smarter than you are”. Well, I was out of town so my wife Helen and our son Jimmy installed a dog electric fence. Just enough juice to surprise the dog, but not enough to cause lasting emotional and psychological problems requiring intensive doggy psychological counseling and analysis, and time on the couch explaining to doggy doctor the trauma in her life. That solved the problem for a while, but Rosie is not to be deterred for long.

After accurately and careful analyzing the situation, it did not take long for Rosie to conclude that the electric wire was not across the gate, so she started going through the gate. Not unlatching it mind you, but merely climbing up and over. Jimmy found a way to solve that problem, but it was not to deter Rosie for long.

After much consideration Rosie concluded that if she could leap onto her condo doghouse in a single bound, then a four-foot fence would be no match. And it wasn’t. Soon she was taking mighty leaps, going right over the four-foot fence with room to spare.

Well, not wanting a dog, no matter how smart, to out smart me, I quickly set about adding two feet of fencing to the top, and pointing it inward (I got that idea from the prisons—and no, I’ve never been inside one, but I watch a lot of CSI Miami). When we put Rosie inside her new Soledad Prison East, she was soooo funny to watch. She spent about two hours scopeing out her upgraded digs just to see where the vulnerabilities were. I’m sure she was certain she would find one. She started at the gate, and she looked up and down that gate, and from side to side, and not finding a weak point she moved down the fence a few feet. There she again sat down and looked up to the top of the fence, and from side to side and studied it for a few minutes and not seeing any apparent opportunities for escape at that section of fence, she moved on down the fence a few feet further. She continued this inspection of the fence for the entire perimeter. After some time, she gave a disdainful look at us, and then went into her house to pout. She only goes into her house when she is cold, wet, sleepy, or mad. She was not cold, wet or sleepy. She was definitely very unhappy with us.

Knowing how badly she wants out of her fenced in area, I became determined to this year, fence in about one-half acre in the back yard to run in. But I’m learning all the tricks she has for getting out, and it will be a fence that even “Wonder Dog” won’t be able to breach. And with that much room to roam, she’ll likely not be that inclined to try and get out anyway. (OK, I’m unreasonably optimistic!)

In the meantime, we’re giving her more freedom by taking her out of her fenced area about mid-morning each day, and letting her be on a cable until late in the day. She loves that freedom from fences and doesn’t seem to mind the cable one whit. I guess being on a chain for the first two years of her life conditioned her to preferring that to a fence. And now, I spend at least two hours a day with her. We sit and chat and talk about events of the day. And we spend a little time reading although frankly, the crossword puzzles seem to be beyond her comprehension. At least for now, but she’ll learn. Rosie insisted I put in a swing for us to sit on while we contemplate the meaning of life, and there we sit while I enjoy my coffee and we enjoy each other’s company. And read a few novels.

Rosie is starting to learn a few good manners. The first to be taught was not to gnaw on our hands, noses, ears, legs, feet and fingers. She is encouraged to instead give “slathers” to show appreciation rather than a gnaw on our extremities. Stay, sit, and heel are next in her lessons. This is like raising a teenager all over again, only harder.

Rosie loves chicken

Rosie swings

Rosie is a hugger

© Copyright 2010, Russ Kelly, Liberty, SC, USA. All rights reserved.

More humor, adventure and opinion from Rambling Russ

Sailing The Ocean Blue

2010-11-26T16:28:00.000-05:00

_

In the late 1970’s Fran and I lived in southern California, in the college community of Fullerton, about thirty miles east of Los Angeles. It was a laid-back life style, allowing a lot of time for the pursuit of personal interests and fun. Weather being what it is in that region, popular pastimes for active young adults included skydiving, ocean sailing, flying, sail planes, and the social scene. Except for a brief attempt at skydiving, my passion for leisure was ocean sailing. It was a beautiful area for it, the weather nearly always cooperated, and it was the best stress reliever ever invented for busy young professionals. No matter what your occupation or how stressful your job or life may be, once out on the water in a sailboat, your mind and time is occupied full time by manning the sails and handling navigation. When sailing, there is no time for thinking about work or other matters. And it slows you down to a snails pace, for nothing is done fast in a sailboat. You slow down, relax, and concentrate on your sailing, that’s it.

I had a small interest in a Cal 25 sailboat that to me was the absolute perfect size. Large enough to have stability in the ocean, accruements of a galley, berthing and a head, and yet not too large to single hand. Anything larger and it would have required two or more sailors to handle the sails. The Cal 25 with a fore sail and main sail seemed to be the perfect boat for me, and it handled fantastically well in the ocean swells, although admittedly, I never rode out a storm in it. Only one thousand of that particular model of sailboat were made, from 1965 to 1972. I loved that boat, and at least two weekends a month would find me on it for the entire weekend.

The boat was docked at a club in Long Beach Harbor, and the club had berths for a hundred or more boats. It had complete shower and rest room facilities much as the large RV parks do. On any given weekend I might simply sail around the harbor, up the channel and along the coastline. The coastline at nighttime was especially beautiful with the skyline of Los Angeles, Long Beach and beautiful (and expensive) coastal communities. It never ceased to amaze me the amount of wealth in the area as evidenced by the thousands of homes right on the coastline, each of which would cost probably several hundred times my annual salary. “Where does all this money come from and what do they do” I would muse as I sailed by these palatal estates. They were far too numerous to count, but surely numbered in the thousands. Perhaps even tens of thousands.

In the harbor I generally used sails, but going up the channel and certainly within the club docks and while going to ocean side restaurants and lounges I would use the small outboard motor. I loved motoring up the channel because of the beautiful scenery and indescribable estates. To get into the channel one had to go under a busy highway with a drawbridge. I’d motor up to the drawbridge, give the required air horn signal, and motor in circles while sirens and horns blared from the drawbridge, traffic was halted and the drawbridge raised. Then, once the masts would clear, under the bridge and up the channel I’d go, more horns and sirens from the bridge, the drawbridge would close and traffic would resume. Most motorists were not happy when this was done during rush hour, but ship traffic had priority, even if it was just a little twenty-five foot sailboat.

I often spent entire weekends on the boat. Sometimes staying around the harbor, sailing up the channel, docking at seaside restaurants for lunch or dinner, and enjoying the camaraderie and fellowship of fellow sailors. Other weekends I would sail to Catalina Island, about thirty or thirty-five miles away. Depending on the time of year, it could be a severe clear day with the island clearly in view the entire trip. Sometimes it would be an overcast day with very limited visibility and not knowing how accurate your journey was until you got right to the entry to the harbor of the island. Or hopefully you did. If you were not careful with your navigation, you could miss the harbor by a long shot. Really bad navigation and you’d miss the island entirely. For most of my trips I was right on the money, with the entrance to the harbor directly in front of me when I was close enough to see through the overcast. Actually, this required some excellent compass navigation skills, reading the winds, timing your legs and keeping up with where you should be given the speeds, winds, and times on your legs. An easy task if you go in a straight line, but sailing is not about straight lines—it’s always tacking into the winds, a zigzag course to take advantage of the winds and get you to where you wanted to go.

Frequently while sailing out of the harbor at Long Beach, I would pass the Glomar Explorer on its way out or back in, or perhaps just anchored in the harbor. This was a strange looking ship built by Howard Hughes for some deep secret military work. It was billed as an exploration ship to find new sources of oil or other stuff, but the real purpose was commonly known to be much different. I believe it was built in a hurry to recover the Russian nuclear submarine that sank somewhere. The U.S. wanted to be the first there with an ability to recover that submarine and bring it to the surface for our intelligence purposes.

You meet really interesting folks around harbors. One young fellow I met and spent some time with while listening in fascination to his stories had quite a gig. He simply went to China or ports in Asia, and bought up old Chinese Junkers. Then he would spend several years restoring the original beauty of the mahogany decks, cabin and other structure of the boat, and when finished, he would sell it for a gain of a million or two dollars. These were very big junkets, and required a crew of many to sail. But rather than hire crews to spend months at a time on the junket, getting it ready for sailing and then sailing a transoceanic journey, he trained volunteers that wanted the experience and perhaps entry to the U.S. to be his crew. But, and here is the really interesting part, he chose only young, all female crews, and every one of the crew members could probably win any beauty pageant they entered. This fellow had probably the most interesting way to make money of anyone I ever met. Sort of a Hugh Hefner of the high seas type.

Not too many really fascinating tales to tell about my sailing, nothing too unusual happened during my two years of ocean sailing. No severe storms at sea, no broken masts or capsized boat. Nope, pretty mundane although there were the interesting moments.

On one trip to Catalina I thought I’d see how much wine I could consume (no laws against drinking and sailing, at least back then). Well, it was quite a quantity, and frankly, I’m surprised I found the island at all. When I got there and sailed up to the Harbor Master to get my assigned buoy for tying up, they quickly saw there could be a problem with me navigating around all those multi-million dollar boats with my little Cal 25 considering the condition I was in. So, one of them jumped aboard and navigated me to my assigned buoy, tied me up (the boat, not me), and left me to sleep it off for the night.

In the harbor at Catalina, you did not have shore docking, you tied up to buoys in the harbor and used water taxis to get between your boat and shore. There were excellent restaurants and nightclubs with loud music ashore so it made for a pleasant respite before beginning your journey back to the mainland the following day. Even staying on the boat was fun if you had an ample liquor closet, as you enjoyed the warm winds while sitting on deck and listening to the sounds of music wafting across the waters. Finding your way back was much easier even on really overcast days because frankly, it’s danged near impossible to miss the entire western seaboard of the U.S. You can hit it with your eyes closed. However, you might be so far off you don’t recognize if you’re south of the harbor or north of the harbor, then you’ve got some sailing to do to get yourself back on track. The easiest thing would be to stop in at some seaside restaurant or facility and simply ask where you were, but it really never happened to me. Today, with GPS, it would be quite simple to navigate to the exact point where you want to go. It was more fun and more challenging back then when you had to rely on your wits and your ded (deduced) reckoning skills to get where you wanted to go.

The boat had berthing, a galley, and a head (restroom for landlubbers) below decks. The ocean being a big place with lots of water, generally sufficed for routine needs while sailing alone, at least for guys. But one day, I was with “Sunshine” (Kathy), my then four or five-year-old daughter. I had to use the head. I looked to the horizon in all directions and saw no other boats in sight. I lashed Sunshine to her seat, put the tiller in her hand and told her to hold it in exactly that position no matter what happened. And I went below decks to visit the head. I could tell things were going well as the keel and pitch remained as expected and there was no shifting of direction. Sailboats have “right of way” rules on the waters depending on direction of the winds and the sailboats. When two sailboats are on a course to occupy the same space at the same time, the one with the right of way remains on course while the other boat alters course.

As I returned to the main deck, satisfied with my brilliant solution to the needs of the moment, I saw another sailboat flying past immediately off our starboard side, mere feet away, and the captain of the sailboat had his hand clenched in a fist, waving wildly in the air, and he was screaming obscenities that surely could have been heard on shore, many miles away. That language would make the most hardened of old salts blush. And there sat my “Sunshine” holding tightly onto the tiller, a big smile on her face, proud of her being the Captain of the moment. A close call neatly averted by my great little five-year-old Captain of our boat. I was proud of her. And greatly relieved that no harm had come of the incident.

After leaving southern California and moving to South Carolina, I switched to “stink pots” (power boats) on mighty Lake Hartwell with it’s one thousand miles of shoreline. After sailing on the deep blue sea with it’s massive swells and great winds, sailing in a lake, no matter the size, just doesn’t have the same appeal.

© Copyright 2010, Russ Kelly, Liberty, SC, USA. All rights reserved.

More humor, adventure and opinion from Rambling Russ

_

Dawning of the Computer Age

2010-11-21T12:34:00.000-05:00

_

To anyone born after 1960, computers have been an everyday part of our life, performing tasks, and generally, but not always, and making life easier and more rewarding for each of us. They’re the great equalizer—young and old, rich and poor, prosperous country and third world poverty, all use computers to enrich lives in a myriad of ways. But perhaps the largest benefit of these ubiquitous of inventions is the all-encompassing excuse it provides all of us for our own human fallibilities. We merely excuse away anything that goes wrong with a lame comment like “the computer made a mistake”. Who’s to argue the logic of that? It can’t be proven, at least not reasonably so. Sometimes we tell them to do stupid things, and the computers blindly oblige. But that's really not their fault. Like a really good and well-trained pet, they merely dote on our every command, and in an effort to win our praise, willingly, and with eagerness, comply with our every whim. Sometimes too eagerly. Press "Enter" and wham! Your angry missive with copies to the whole world is instantly sent. No going to the mailbox and retrieving it before the mailman picks it up. All too often, we wish computers weren't quite so fast!

Computers were not always this way. I know. I spent forty years living daily with computers. Mostly writing software, or designing systems. Or advising companies on what they need and how much they needed to spend to do it. Hopefully with me. They call that consulting, but that's what consultants do. They collect information and recommendations of subordinates within an organization, repackage it and put a new spin on it, add a bit of their own knowledge base, and present a recommendation to management. It is a safe way for companies to operate. If things go wrong on expensive decisions, they can blame their consultant who has long since moved to greener pastures to sell their recycled ideas to another company. And when things go well, they can lay claim to their own brilliant insight and efforts. Today, company's call that a "win win". In earlier days we simply called it a wise decision. The company wins if they win, and they win if they lose. And everyone forgets who the consultant was anyway.

A funny thing about consultants. To be a consultant you have to travel long distances. Otherwise you are merely a contract worker. In the eighties, while living in South Carolina, I had clients in New Jersey. And every Monday morning I was on a flight to Newark, and on Fridays I was on a flight back home. I always ran into the same folks in the airport clubs. Other consultants, doing the exact same type of consulting work I was doing, were flying from New Jersey to Greenville on Monday mornings and back home to New Jersey on Fridays. It seemed to me that we could simply have swapped clients and everyone would save lots of travel expense. Not to mention the wear and tear on the consultants. But life isn't always so easy. Companies measure the value of their consultants by the distance they travel.

Today, when we think of computers, we think of a two-pound (or less) laptop with wireless connectivity that can instantly bring forth the planets entire base of knowledge about mankind. Even palm-sized computers seem to have limitless power and connectivity. In 2010, I’m carrying around a company Blackberry Curve cell phone. A few ounces, yet I can communicate by voice or text with anyone, anywhere in the world, and find local businesses using Internet Yellow Pages. Even get GPS maps to get me there. Impressive. Sometimes. But these laptops, desktops, palms, and servers, are a recent phenomena. Before the PC's, derived from the term "personal computer", we had microcomputers. Same thing, only a little bigger. But IBM wanted to distinguish themselves and their microcomputers as something different, something personal. So they coined the term "personal computer" and the name stuck.

Before microcomputers, we had Heath Kit and other home built computers. These were fun days when everyone with a few bucks could buy in and join the computer revolution. Well, maybe it wasn't such a cheap buy in. As I recall, my first computer purchase was a TRS-80, as large as I could get it--all of 16,000 bytes of memory. And it set me back a little over five grand (this was in early 1980’s). And it did not even have hard disk storage, not available then on microcomputers.

The early microcomputers, like the Tandy (Radio Shack) TRS-80, used a language called Basic, and they had limited capabilities. Earlier computers were strictly machine language. The first information storage devices were simply reworked tape recorders. Not very reliable, and maddeningly slow. The largest microcomputer had 16k of internal memory. That's 16,000 bytes, or characters (a letter or a number or special character). Soon came faster tape storage. I bought one of the first such devices, called an Exetron Stringy Floppy. Them came hard drives. More memory and larger capacities led to more sophisticated software, and more things that you could do. Your communications was still limited to a 300-baud modem with a cradle that you set the telephone headset in. It was called an acoustic coupler. Didn't matter. We did not have much communicating to do back then. This was in the mid-seventies. Our communicating, before Internet days, was chiefly using message boards. We'd leave a message, and we'd wait for others to leave a message for us. Very public. Then along came the Internet. First for government and academia, then large commercial users, and finally to you and me. And a whole new world opened. The Internet allowed almost instant access to all the knowledge of the world, along with all the hoaxes, scams, half-truths, fabrications, and myths. You had to learn how to filter the true from the phony. No easy task.

Before the microcomputers, we had mini-computers, then servers, and before mini-computers, we had only mainframe computers. Mainframe computers still exist in large commercial enterprises, and for doing really big time stuff like forecasting the weather, launching a space flight, and communicating with thousands of employee terminals and laptops all at the same time, and without regard to time-zones or country. Today's mainframes are most likely to communicate with servers, which in turn communicate with the users, much like a traffic cop.

Arranging grains of sand on the beach

Mainframes got their real start with IBM's 1401 computer, a punched card oriented system, circa late fifties and early sixties. It took a very large room to hold it. And about forty tons of air conditioning. Really. The main storage for information was punched cards. Tons of them. 2,000 in a box, 10,000 in a carton. And sometimes those boxes, or decks of cards were dropped. Then we had to start reading the holes in the cards to put them back in order. Most cards did not contain printing, you had to read the holes. And there were multiple holes in each column to make it interesting. Putting together a box of dropped cards was frequently an all night affair, and about as much fun as reading tea leaves. It was a bit like trying to arrange grains of sand on the beach. When the cardpunch jammed, we had to get into the innards of that beast and perform surgery. You almost had to be a mechanic to remove the jam, and a very strong one at that.

Punched cards, for an early storage medium, were pretty versatile. And the information could be updated. Here’s how. Typically, one card might contain the name and address of one person. And you made it fit, probably allowing 20 characters for the first and last name, 40 for street addresses, and twenty characters and spaces for city, state, and later, the zip code. Obviously you couldn’t simply punch new holes in the card, but, if the information changed, you simply changed the whole card. When it was the middle card in a ten thousand card deck, this was not done by hand. You’d read the deck in and let the computer find the errant card, and once found either stop while it punched a new card, or simply offset the card in the reader and punch a new card to replace it. Different techniques were used to accomplish what you wanted. Sometimes it was simply easier if there were lots of changes, to merely punch a whole new deck of cards with the updated information, and trash the old deck. We threw away a lot of trees back then. Until magnetic tape came along, eighty column punched cards were prevalent for holding the programs, and the information that needed to be stored. Univac (Sperry Rand) used a unique ninety-column card with round holes.

In the 1950’s and 1960’s, there was also paper tape. Slow, didn’t hold much information, you could not update the information, and it had a propensity for tearing. Repairing of torn tape usually resulted in lost information. By the early 1960’s, with the advent of the “third generation” of computers, paper tape quickly faded from the scene.

In the early nineteen-sixties, the only other external storage was magnetic tape. They had come down in size, from several inches wide and about forty pounds each, to a mere seven or eight pounds per reel and only one-half inch wide. And being 5600 bpi (bits per inch) density, they did not hold very much either. It took several bits, seven or eight depending on parity (even or odd) to form a single letter or character, so capacity of the tape was very limited.

After tapes, drums came on the scene. They held a lot of information and were very fast. They were also very large, and sounded and acted and shook like a large clothes washer on an uneven floor. And from the drums evolved the hard disk drives. Huge devices, that today (2010) have evolved into itty bitty things (that's about the best size description for them), about the size of a penny, and that hold forty or more gigabytes of information. Almost unfathomable to this old man.

Early computers were big, sometimes requiring several rooms to accommodate all parts of the monstrous computer. Frequently the tape operator would not even see the computer operator during the shift, with all communications between the two on an intercom or by Teletype. When magnetic tape came on the scene and replaced punched cards, every government agency in Washington started reading all their millions of cards and putting the information on tape. I remember one job we had, to move all the records of the Bureau of Fisheries from cards to tape. Millions of them. It kept our computers running day and night for months. I didn't know you could keep that many records about fish. There must have been a lot of interesting fish stories in there. I always suspected that the agency was not really all that interested in having fast access to their records that warranted moving the records from card to tape. Nope, there was a more nefarious plot behind this effort. I think they simply wanted the space that those hundreds of thousands of boxes of cards occupied. When all government records were put on magnetic tape, they probably doubled the amount of office space for the real function of government, hiring people and building empires.

We likely doubled the size of government in the sixties, merely by getting rid of punched cards and the storage space they occupied. And when government wanted to expand again in the sixties, we did it again. We invented microfiche and moved all the papers onto magnetic filmstrips. And the size of government again doubled to fill the space previously occupied by paper. As everyone knows, in government, you occupy it or you lose it. Having unused space is akin to having unspent money in your budget at the end of the year. Not only do you lose it, it gets reduced for the following year. And can you really imagine a government agency growing smaller and using less money? Horrors! What an idea. I guess the bottom line is, you can thank the “computer techies” for growing the government to the gargantuan size it is today.

The third generation of computers, in the early nineteen-sixties, came in sizes of 4k, 8k, 16k and finally, the huge 32k version. It largely replaced the vacuum tubes, with transistors, but it still generated lots of heat. It needed a huge room with forty-tons of air conditioning to keep it cooled down. If it got too hot, to prevent damage to the computer from the heat, little vanes dropped down underneath the memory processing units, shutting off power to the system. This was not a popular thing to happen in the middle of customer demonstrations or in the middle of a ten-hour sort, so we started holding up the vanes with rubber bands. Sort of like letting your car run on "hot" and hoping it doesn't give up the ghost in the middle of Manhattan during rush hour. Sometimes, on real cold winter nights, we could merely open some doors and windows to the outside to assist with the cooling. How quaint, office buildings with windows that actually opened and let in fresh air. What a novel idea that was.

Strange and unexplainable things frequently happened on these early commercial computers. I was in a federal marketing division in Washington, DC. Computers were so super expensive that we ran them around the clock. With one of our computer operators, working nights, we were getting incredibly bad results. In the mornings we were always surprised at the strange results from this employee's computer operation. She was operating our very latest and most powerful computer. We were proud of the work that the computer could do. And a marvel of engineering it was. It had a counter top and a display panel with several dozen flashing, lighted buttons that were used to display what was happening in memory, and by pushing on them, to control the operation of the computer. It was so gee whiz futuristic it served as the backdrop for many high tech science fiction movies and documentaries of the time. Our night operator was talented and capable. And miraculously endowed. As was tradition at the time, all hires were based first on brains, second on looks and lastly, on what today companies call human relation skills. Back then we just called it the ability to get along with others. Anyway, our night operator, and I'll call her Betty for this story, was bright, talented, and had a great personality. And oh yes, did I mention that she was marvelously endowed? Well, I was tasked with finding out just what was going on during the night shift that gave all these problems and strange computer results. Well, with what I must admit was superior detective work, and hour after hour of observation, it became abundantly clear to me what was causing all these malfunctions and strange results. It seems that as this marvelously endowed beauty was operating the computer, she placed the operating instructions on the console top, and then would frequently lean over the counter to write results and read further instructions. As she did so, her marvelous endowments and those dozens of push buttons tried occupying the same space at the same time. She ended up punching her own special codes into the memory of the computer, and strange computations were the result. I never saw a happier computer. As I say, it took many hours of observation to correctly surmise the culprit in this case of improper information handling.

It was the nineteen-eighties before display terminals were widely connected to mainframe computers. This allowed everyone with a terminal, looking much like a large television, to tap into the computers information for viewing. Information was entered into the computer using the cathode ray tube (CRT) terminals. Good-bye keypunches and key-to-tape. These were called on-line applications. I developed the first on-line application for a large apparel manufacturer in North Carolina. They were excited about it. No more punched cards. Instant information. But it took lots of training of the order processors. I enjoyed the training more than writing the software because of the interaction with real live people. It's hard talking to computers. Besides, everyone thinks you're daffy when you do. Unless of course you're a consultant, then it's expected... you're merely eccentric and communing with the computer.

All of this client’s customer call centers were miles away from the main computer, and where I hung my hat. To assist me in my training, I installed and ran special software that would let me visually watch any particular operators screen and keyboard movements, even though miles away. I had a frantic call one day from an operator. From her description of the problem, I knew exactly what she was doing wrong (ever notice where “techies” always assign cause?), but decided to have a little fun with it. While she stayed on the phone, I had her go through the motions on her computer terminal while I observed from my office. At the appropriate point, I exclaimed, "aha, I see what you did wrong! You pushed the F2 key and you should have pressed the F4 key. Not only that, your dress is too short!” "How do you know that?" an astonished operator asked. "Why because I can see what you are doing. Aren't these computers great?" I replied. An even more astonished operator then asked, "Can you see all of us in the room? Can you see me if I turn my display off?” I forget my reply, but I never did let on that no one could watch what was happening at his or her office merely by looking at a monitor in headquarters. As far as I know, she probably still believes that the computers are watching her. I really need to tame my sense of humor someday. Maybe later. Much later.

Computers have come a long ways from when I chose computer technology as my profession back in the early nineteen-sixties. Today we use powerful laptops, palms and all sorts of intelligent devices, direct descendents from the early mainframe computers. They give us abilities and information not even dreamed of in Buck Rogers comic book days. But, they still offer lots of opportunity for misuse and harm. And new forms of malicious and illegal activity are invading our homes and offices through the Internet every minute of the day. Identity theft, hijacks, spyware, malware, and more. Now we need to better learn how to ferret out the important and truthful, from the ridiculous and harmful. Come to think of it, in that regard, computers are not really much different than the local library.

© Copyright 2010, Russ Kelly, Liberty, SC, USA. All rights reserved.

More humor, adventure and opinion from Rambling Russ

Visit to the doctor

2010-11-07T16:34:00.000-05:00

_

Note: this was written in 2008. Things are changing fast in the health field, and all of this may sound so very quaint and odd in just a few years.

I had a recent visit with my physician a few months ago. To me, that's recent. You see, I just don't visit doctors unless it's something really important. Like uncontrollable bleeding from a head wound. Or broken bones. Important stuff like that. For the first sixty years of this old man carrying around these ancient bones, I'll bet I didn't visit a doctor more than half a dozen times. Excepting for the required company and military physicals. I make no bones about it, to me, going to the doctor ranks right up there with walking over a bed of hot coals. At least with walking on coals, there is an end in sight. Not so at the doctors office.

Cough. Snort. Sneeze. About an hour of it, that's what you're exposed to in the waiting room of all doctors I've visited. Doesn't matter what time your appointment is for--you're going to wait at least an hour in the waiting room before you begin your actual journey to see the doctor. And during that hour you'll be entertained with the sounds of death just around the door. The grim reaper is seen lurking, just waiting to strike you with the latest in maladies simply by your mere presence in this petri dish of bacterial innovation they call waiting rooms. No escaping it, it's all around you. The waiting room is packed, because everyone else also is waiting an hour or more beyond their scheduled appointment. That's the way the system works. So you read old copies of Readers Digest, Home and Garden, and National Geographic. They must get discounts on these magazines, 'cause you'll never find Road & Driver, Popular Mechanics, current weekly news magazines, Sports Illustrated, or any of the other really good magazines. At least not in the waiting rooms I’ve been in. Perhaps it’s a part of their preparation routine—get your mind numb and anything they do to you will be more pleasant than your wait.

I once thought I could beat the system. I knew I would not be seen for an hour after my appointed time, so I showed up an hour after my appointment. Thought I could breeze right in, sign-in, and breeze right in to my actual time with the doctor. Not a chance. I wasn't there at the appointed time, so the front office Angels of Torture took me right off the list. No one was going to beat them at their system. I think they all get their training at Podunk Airlines where overbooking and poor scheduling are the game of the day.

Mostly I guess it is a matter of business economics. It seems that actually spending time with a patient is now considered quaint and unnecessary. Everything now is scheduled based on a business model. Doc's are allowed "x" minutes per patient. No one has yet been allowed to discover just what "x" represents in terms of time, but I think it is on the order of one-half of the time required. These numbers are probably state guarded secrets. So, if the front office schedules eight patients in an hour, you'd better hope each of those eight are no more complicated than a common cold. Of course some of the patients are difficult and demand more of the time than what is allocated in the schedule. Why I hear that some patients even ask questions. How inconsiderate. Surely they know that interrupting the diagnosis with a question just slows down the doctor while they are keying information into the computer. Many use the two-finger type method anyway. And if an answer is provided you, that really slows things down. My advice to speed things up is not to talk. Don't ask questions. I simply hand the doctor a piece of paper with my complaints neatly typed on it since most doctors are fairly fast readers.

Once I had concluded that arriving an hour after my appointment was not a technique that would improve the timeliness of my visit, I tried some different strategies. Once I billed a doctor for my wasted time in the waiting room. After all, I could have been out billing clients and earning money excepting for my wasted time due to inefficient scheduling at the doctors office. That didn't work. Five years later and I'm still waiting payment. What do I have to do? Turn it over to a collection agency? Years ago, I decided there was a reasonable limit to my patience, and exposure to all those little invisible bugs floating around in the waiting room. I'd wait for an hour and fifteen minutes after my scheduled time, then I'd walk out if not seen by then. My next visit, exactly one hour and fifteen minutes after my appointment time, still cooling my heels in the waiting room, I walked up to the desk and intoned in my most exasperated manner that since they were obviously too busy to see me that day, I had other better things to do with my time and for them to call me when they had time to actually see me. Well, they must be awfully busy because after several years, they still haven't called me.

If you've been to a doctor in the last few years, you'll notice the latest game of "make the patient think they're being seen". Doctors, at great expense, have built extra exam rooms in their office complexes. Well, these exam rooms are nothing more than holding pens, sort of like holding pens for cattle. Somewhere around one hour and thirty minutes past your appointment time, they call your name. Now, the real game begins. It's intended to make you think that real progress is being made and now you're really close to being seen. Wrong. They start you off in one staging area with a weigh in. Then to a different area for your blood pressure and temperature. Then you're put into the holding pen. A neat little room with perhaps artistic renderings of your inside anatomy. That’s enough to spoil your day. Perhaps some gross pictures of what you'll look like in just a few years if you don't take drug “X“. Always some rubber gloves in a dispenser on the wall, some little doodads they stick in your ears and nose, and probably a sink. After some time in the holding pen, you're perhaps moved to another holding pen. That's merely to give you the impression you're really making progress. Wow! It impresses me! Finally, somewhere between one and one-half hours and infinity past your appointed time, the doctor walks in. And wouldn't luck have it, by then you've either forgotten what you came in for, or the cold or flu has run it's course and you're already cured.

I had to buy roses for my doctor once. My doctor was a wonderfully trained, and was up-to-date on all the latest medical thinking and technologies, and she was a real delight. I'll call her Dr. "C". On one of my visits for nothing more serious than a routine physical, after the usual hour and half of waiting past my appointment time before being seen, I thought it might be important for her to know my feelings about these unnecessary waits and extreme delays. I thought perhaps she didn't know, and if she did, then surely she would remedy the problem and starting the very next day, all patients would be seen exactly on the times they are suppose to be seen. Alas, things don't work that way. The doctors aren't the cause of the problem. Unless you think that spending the required time with your patients is a cause of the problem. No, the real culprit is in the system. Insurance companies and government agencies dictate what doctors will get on any given medical diagnosis code. And exactly how much time that entails. You either have to become part of the system and play the game their way, or maybe take up a different occupation, like used casket sales or something. Anyway, Dr. "C", much to her credit, simply was a good listener. Didn't argue the point. Besides, what's to argue, with reality on my side? But I could tell that it did not exactly make her day. Seeing that she was close to tears after my tirade, I felt so bad about it I took a few roses to her on my next follow-up visit. She showed restraint enough not to throw them at me.

My latest tactic to beat this "wait in the waiting room and get sick while wasting your time" dilemma is two-fold. First, avoid going to the doctor at all costs. If I have bones that are broken and protruding, I'll make an exception. If I'm unconscious and someone drags me there, I'll make an exception. If however, by some rare circumstance, under duress from my wife, and I am forced to schedule a visit with my doctor, I'll schedule only as the first patient in the day. I may have to wait weeks for the appointment, but it will be worth it. Any patient after the first patient of the day is almost certain to be seen later, much later, than scheduled. The later in the day you’re scheduled, the greater the wait. And I'll never schedule an appointment late in the morning. Let's say that you schedule an 11 AM appointment. The schedules will almost certainly be running at least an hour late by the time your appointment arrives. Then it's noon. Guess what? Your chances of being seen by a doctor, or even the temperature taker or blood pressure taker, are nearly zero from noon to about one-thirty. Oh, you may get shuffled around from office to office to give the appearance of progress, but don't be fooled.

Quite by accident, I did find one nearly fool proof method of being seen quickly in a doctors office, even when you don't have an appointment. I don't recommend it except for the bravest of souls, and those willing to quickly go under a knife. And that's a pretty stiff price to pay for a quick visit with the doctor. Here's how it happened with me.

In 1999 I experienced severe lower back pain. This was an exceptionally busy year for me, working on technology issues in readiness for the year 2000 rollover. The pain was so severe however, that I had to see my doctor. After tests it was determined I had herniated discs in my lower lumbar area. He suggested conservative treatment, which simply meant lots of painkillers, a back brace, and avoiding any lifting or other strains on my back. After a few months, the pain had grown so severe that not even heavy doses of pain medicine were unable to relieve it. And my system was no longer tolerating the heavy dosage of the strongest pain medicines.

On a trip back home from Atlanta, with Helen driving since I was in too much pain to do anything except curl up in a ball and grimace with the severity of the pain. It kept getting worse, and totally unbearable. Instead of taking me home, she drove straight to the doctor’s office. No matter that we didn’t have an appointment, we weren’t going anywhere until I had an examination and treatment was given. No appointment, and the waiting room was filled. Not a good sign for relief from the pain anytime soon. I was accepting of that, I mean, what can you do? Besides, I was in far too much pain to be engaged in conversation about my pain with anyone.

I had discovered over the prior month or two, that there was one body position in which I could get some moderate relief from my pain. And that involved laying down on a very hard surface, extending my arms straight out, laying slightly on my right side, and pulling my left knee nearly up to my chest. It was the only means of pain relief I ever found, and believe me, I tried everything. I received many visitors in our home in this manner, stretched out on our living room hardwood floor, face down, arms extended and my knee almost compressed into my chest. I’m sure my conversations were very interesting and coherent.

So here I was, in the doctors office, in severe pain, and knowing my only option for getting some relief from my pain, I did what I had to do. Frankly, I would have lain down on a bed of hot burning coals at that time, my pain being so severe. But there was no bed of hot coals to lie on, so I did what any reasonable person would do. The waiting room had a nice hard tile floor, a perfect opportunity for me to get some relief. Right there in the middle of the waiting room, with patients all around probably thinking that I am out of my mind, I lay down and got myself into my pain relief position.

It was less than a minute before the office staff and nurses assisted me to my feet, dragged me into an exam room, and my beloved doctor, one Dr. Ashton, came in and examined me. I was immediately admitted into the hospital, had a hemi-laminectomy, which I refer to as my miracle operation, and recovered from my back condition. Into surgery in extreme pain, out of surgery with never so much as a twinge of pain in my back since.

So, there we have it, the perfect solution for being seen promptly at the doctor’s office. You simply have to be willing to go under the knife. I don’t recommend it unless you’ve been waiting at least two hours or more.

© Copyright 2010, Russ Kelly, Liberty, SC, USA. All rights reserved.

More humor, adventure and opinion from Rambling Russ

_

Bee's

2010-11-03T17:50:00.001-04:00

_

Summer, 2010. I’m getting old and don’t like getting in fights so much anymore. Especially if I’m destined to lose. But one recent fight, I just couldn’t avoid. Score fifteen for my opponent, zero, zip, nada for me.

Our son Jimmy and I had a fight with a bee nest one day, and it was a sight to behold. Actually, I guess it was a yellow-jackets nest and they’re even meaner. It was a ground nest, the kind you just sort of stumble on by accident.

Jimmy and I lost the fight, yellow-jackets won. Jimmy found them and upset them greatly by running a hand mower over their in-ground nests. Quite by accident mind you, but the yellow-jackets didn’t note the distinction and did not care whether it was by accident or by design. They were mad! Jimmy came flying into the house loaded with the little buggers clinging on every square inch of his body. The little rascals were trying their best to give him a piece of their mind. He got somewhere between ten and fifteen serious stings.

Well, I didn't think that was very nice of them, so I set about to show them who was boss around our homestead. I put on my hat. I put on a long sweater. I put on a nose and mouth mask. I put on safety glasses. I even had on my steel-toed safety boots. I figured I now had the advantage. And I set about to dispatch said two nests of yellow-jackets.

Illustration by Brad Hall, www.bradhallart.com

They were still fighting mad over Jimmy's indiscretions. I could see them swarming and hovering over their nest, and discussing the indignity of it among themselves. I took that mower and I ran it right over their nests and figured those revved up churning blades would quickly dispatch them. And surely the noise would drive them crazy. Guess I sort of didn't think it through as to what would happen when the mower was no longer directly over their nests. When I moved the mower, smugly satisfied with the brilliance of my plan and it’s execution, out of their nest they came with a vengence. They gathered in formation, then made a beeline (or is it yellow-jacket line) straight for me. Ha ha ha, I fooled them I thought! I'm protected. Bring ‘em on, we’ll show them whose boss around here. Then, as they landed all over me, from head to foot, I realized those little suckers could sting right through a loosely knit sweater. And then, it suddenly occurred to me that hey, most of my neck, ears and face aren't covered. The yellow-jackets discovered that at about the same time, and boy did they take advantage of that fact. These were aggressive fellers, and the pain of their stings lasted all night long for both Jimmy and myself. It was two days before the pain really left, and stingers were still coming out of me for days after that.

Jimmy and I finally dispatched them with lots of shock and awe. Not having any much preferred diesel fuel readily available, I used the first thing at hand. Lots of gasoline and a match will really do wonders. It was an inferno. It reminded me of a war zone. Kaboom! It's really a wonder that the gasoline flashback didn't burn my mustache off. But those little buggers were finally dispatched for good.

© Copyright 2010, Russ Kelly, Liberty, SC, USA. All rights reserved.

More humor, adventure and opinion from Rambling Russ

_

Peanuts

2010-10-30T05:40:00.002-04:00

_

All of my adult life I’ve enjoyed the amenities, opportunity and adventure of flying. I’ve enjoyed it so much, I later became a pilot myself.

My first flight was on a DC-3 turbo prop airplane in the late 1950’s. I was pampered and I was instantly hooked on air travel. During the next four decades I eagerly awaited every opportunity to fly, and there were many. While working in computers, my flying experiences were frequent, typically flying two or three trips a week. Later I flew all over South America, Latin America, and through Europe to the mid-East. In the twentieth century, flying was thrilling and an enjoyable adventure. You stretched out, lit up a smoke (cigars were frowned on), had free cigarettes handed to you, plied with a free drink or two, enjoyed an excellent meal (complete with linen and silver, none of this plastic tray or utensils), and before you knew it, you were at your destination. It sure beat all other forms of travel! And the flight crew was attentive and attended to your every whim, the female stewardesses were stunningly attractive and smiling, and the service both on the ground and in the air was superb.

But, something happened. First, deregulation of the airline industry led to austere measures in order to be competitive and profitable. Under regulation, fares were regulated so airlines had to compete based on their level of service. They went to great measures to keep you off the other airlines by offering better service then everyone else.

After deregulation, they competed strictly on price. Following the terrorist attacks of 9-11 and the subsequent security measures, flying was changed forever. For the worst. Much worse. In the twenty-first century we have uncomfortable seating, your knees are scrunched up into your belly and your elbows invade the space of the other passengers, you can’t get up to walk around and socialize, there is nothing to eat—no snacks and no meals, the service is surly, lots of delays (frequently sitting for hours on the tarmac), frequent over-booking and kicking your nice customers off flights, and extra charges for everything from peanuts to our luggage. What a sad downfall for a once proud industry.

During 2010, I had occasion to fly a once proud and respected airline from the U.S. to Canada. A fairly long flight involving two legs and one change of planes. And the trip was anything but a pleasant one. I should have expected the worst as I entered their boarding area and saw this huge sign declaring “This is a Service Free Zone”. But I ignored it. And after the flight, I resolved that in the future, for any trip of less than say about ten thousand miles, it would be far more comfortable, and probably just about as fast, to travel by car.

To protect the airline’s identity, and perhaps avoid a lawsuit as well, I’ll call them Canada Podunk Airlines. They, like all the other airlines, are cutting corners and trying to save money and generate income from every conceivable source. It caused me to ponder their financial predicament and much to my surprise, I thought of many opportunities they were missing to improve their profits. It was obvious that based on the level or service, or lack thereof, they surely must be in dire financial straits. I of course thought it appropriate to convey these solutions of mine to the airline, so I fired off the following missive to them.

Illustration by Brad Hall, www.bradhallart.com

--------my e-mail letter to Canada Podunk Airlines-----

To: Vice-President in Charge of making more money
Canada Podunk Airlines

Dear Sir or Madam,

I had the opportunity recently of being one of your customers on two flights out of Atlanta, Georgia, bound for Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

It is with sadness that I note the dire financial straits you must be in. Flying for many hours on your fine planes, when I was refused my customary single bag of peanuts to serve as my breakfast, lunch and dinner, unless of course I paid a two dollar "peanut fee", I could only conclude, you must be in very severe financial circumstances. For what other reason would you charge me for a handful of peanuts to which I had grown quite fond of on prior flights? And charge me again for a simple little pillow on which to lay my tired head during flights of many hours. Or decline to hand me a small blankey to cover my cold shivering body. And the fee for my luggage seemed a bit over the top to me.

I was sad that such a once magnificent airline could suddenly fall upon such difficult financial times, so I resolved to do my part and think of ways to help you out of this most unpleasant situation.

I quickly concluded that there are many opportunities for income that apparently have been overlooked by your pencil sharpeners in green visors. I'd like to share some of these opportunities with you.

You can garner a small fortune simply by installing some quarter slots, just like they have in Laundromats.

It seems to me that most folks would be willing to drop a quarter in the slot in order to recline their seat. Maybe even maximize this opportunity by charging a quarter for each notch backward the passenger wants to recline. And if the passenger wants to recline the whole way back, all four inches, why charge them a buck! That is sure to garner great income for you.

Tray tables are another money generator possibility. Charge a quarter, again using these little quarter slot devices. And if they want it pulled up close to their person so as to actually be useful, well, charge them another quarter.

An obvious money producer is to charge a lavatory entry fee. A few quarters for each visit surely would produce great income. Maybe even charge another quarter for the paper, and a quarter for a squirt of soap doesn’t seem unreasonable when your needs are urgent.

And here is pure brilliance, for it guarantees income. Charge the passengers for oxygen during the unfortunate times when oxygen masks drop from the ceilings. Add a little incentive here--maybe have your pilots randomly drop those little buggers right out of the ceiling, and watch everyone scramble for quarters, furiously dropping coins in the slots! Maybe even use shared oxygen masks, and charge extra if they want one of their own.

I think you get the idea. There are plenty of other opportunities, like charging for seat cushions that actually float during the unfortunate times in which you ditch in the Hudson River. And maybe charge more for senior pilots with more than a few months of experience, that sort of thing.

And here, is the best idea of all. When you have delays that cause the plane to stay on the tarmac and your polite, courteous crew holds all of the passengers hostage for a few hours, charge an extra hundred dollars or so for those that want off the plane in the first three hours. I'll bet you'd have lots of folks wanting to throw those “C” notes at you.

There are many other revenue producing opportunities of course, but I think you get the idea. I’m ready and willing to come in and discuss these ideas with you at your convenience, for a fee of course. Now if I could only get there, without paying a King’s ransom in extra fees.

Respectfully yours,

Rambling Russ

------------ end of ltr ----

_

Adult Years

2010-10-24T10:19:00.002-04:00

Illustration by Brad Hall www.BradHallArt.com

When I was in my twenties and thirties, one of the favorite things I liked to do was to take my kids, my niece Pam, or maybe some neighborhood kids, out for a snipe hunt. It was easy, and you didn’t travel far. Just about any house with lots of bushes would do. That, a few rocks, a brown paper bag, a stick, a dark night and lots of imagination, would do. I’d get a big brown paper bag, and unknowing to the kids, I’d put a few rocks in it. We would go search for a good-sized stick, one big enough to give a good whack to any snipes we might encounter. Then our snipe hunt would begin. We’d use that stick to beat and poke around the bushes, and then with great fanfare, and a lot of pretend effort and poking around in the bushes, with me nearly buried entirely in the bushes, I’d bag a snipe. I’d hold up that brown paper bag, and it would be shaking and carrying on in my hand, and with those rocks, the kids just knew I’d been successful in bagging a really big snipe. I’d explain that I couldn’t open the bag and show it to them because they are fast and clever little critters, and would probably jump right out and land on one of ‘em. The snipe hunt would continue for a half an hour or so, or until I’d bagged maybe three or four snipes. Then, Fran would make a big deal out of preparing rock and snipe stew. The kids would find a big rock, and in the pot it would go, along with the snipes in my bag, and after a good bit of stewing, we had our snipe stew hot and ready to eat. I’m not sure what Fran put in the pot to be the snipes, but whatever it was, it was good and snipe and rock stew became one of the kids favorites. Snipe hunting was lots of fun, and I recommend it to all young parents.

Fran and I were moving from Minneapolis to Los Angeles. The movers had packed our meager belongings and hauled them away in one of those big moving vans. And Fran, several months pregnant with Kathy, and I, were at last on our way, driving, and taking our time along the way to enjoy the trip. Fran had to use the restrooms a lot, something to do with her pregnancy I guess. But restrooms were not always available, especially considering it was not yet tourist season. We almost had the roads to ourselves. “Russ, you need to stop when you can find a rest room” I heard Fran plead, just as we reached the very epicenter of nowhere. Well, I watched and waited for some road sign that would point us to a public rest area, a service station, restaurants, or even an outhouse, for things were now getting desperate. Finally, we spotted a road sign, with an arrow pointing to some, name long forgotten, park. In we wheeled. It was a pretty good-sized park. We found the restrooms, and much to Fran’s relief, she quickly scurried inside. Now this park was at least one-hundred miles from anywhere. I don’t think we had passed a gas station or restaurant on the road for at least an hour or two. This was remote. And there was no one else in the park. It looked like big Grizzlies could come out from behind a tree at any moment. It was filled with trees, and the sunlight really didn’t get through the veil of the tree canopies very well. It was one spooky place. Well, my perverted sense of humor got the best of me. Fran in her haste, had left her purse in the car, and this was long before the era of cell phones, and there was not a pay phone in the place, at least that we had seen. A pay phone wouldn’t help anyway, unless you had a dime to make a call. Wouldn’t it be funny if I just drove around and parked in some spot where I could observe her reaction as she came out of the restroom, and no car or husband in sight? It seemed funny to me, so off I drove. But I couldn’t find a place to park to observe the fun without being spotted. So I drove some more. Then, it being a big park, I actually got a bit lost in there. It took me a good half an hour or more to find my way back. I was giddy with delight at the tale of terror Fran would relay to me, knowing surely that she would get great merriment at my little bit of fun. I guess Fran wasn’t in a playful, cheerful mood that day. It really frightened her when I had disappeared. She worried about big bears coming out from the forest. She worried about snakes and spiders. And as minutes turned into a seemingly endless time, she thought back to the stories she’d read about husbands leaving their wives. And she conjured up these images of me tooling down the roadway, delighting in my newfound freedom. And here she was without a purse, and not even a dime to call, assuming she could find a pay phone, and absolutely no one in the park to give this poor, six-month pregnant and deserted wife, assistance. By the time I returned, she was most definitely fearing the worst. Of course, pregnant women have a propensity to do that anyway. And when I drove up with that big old grin on my face, laughing at the merriment of it all, it just somehow didn’t have appeal to her. She let me know in no uncertain terms what she thought of my perverted sense of humor. It was a long quiet trip for the rest of the journey to Los Angeles. I think she has not forgiven me yet. Maybe I should work on taming my sense of humor a tad.

For about a year in Los Angeles, I worked for a company with a chemical division, and one of their many products was a green lawn paint. It was used for many years, and until the advent of Astroturf and other artificial grass, to keep the grass looking green and fresh on the baseball and football fields. It was a popular item, especially in the southern California area and other southern states, where all grass fields turned brown in the summer from the heat, regardless of how much watering you did. Green lawn paint solved the image problem of brown grass playing fields, especially for national TV audiences. Well, I figured it would work just as well for my small home lawn, and it did. Every three or four weeks, I would get up early and start painting my lawn green with that paint, and since lawns are very small for most homes in southern California, it didn’t take long. You had to be careful though, least you get any of the lawn paint on the concrete driveways or sidewalks. If you did, you had to hose it off in a hurry or else you’d have green edges on them, a dead giveaway that perhaps there was a very good reason for having the greenest lawns in the neighborhood. It kept our lawns green, year round, and they were the envy of the neighborhood.

Fran and I were very popular as a visiting center for friends from southern and eastern U.S. We lived just a very few short miles from Knott’s Berry Farm, Disneyland, Japanese Deer Park, the ocean, and many other attractions of sunny and warm southern California. I went through each of those parks so many times that I finally took to handing over the keys to our car and a hand drawn map and telling our visitors how to get to these attractions. I must have had every square inch of Disneyland memorized I had been there so often. One day, we had some friends in town for a visit, and we took them to Japanese Deer Park. That is one neat and fun place to go, and less frequently visited than our other usual tour haunts. We were having a good time. The skies were blue, the day was warm, very warm, and there was the usual crowd of tourists going through the park. I was really enjoying it, and Kathy and Dan were loving it as well. But their enjoyment was really only beginning. Out of nowhere, several big birds started swirling around. They were huge, and I have no idea what kind they were. All of a sudden, I feel and hear at the same time, a loud splat, and gooey stuff running down the sides of my head and on my forehead, from something that had fallen directly on the top of my head. It was big, and messy, and smelly. I think it must have been elephant dung, but it couldn’t have been because it fell from the skies. As luck would have it, the nearest restroom facility was about a 15 or 20 minute walk, all the while swearing at those birds and doing my best to look a good sport and dignified, as much of a sight as I was. I’m sure I was the biggest attraction of the day for many of the parks visitors. I know that I added immeasurably to my kids enjoyment. Our visiting friends did their best to stifle their laughter. And I never went back to Japanese Deer Park. Those birds may still be there, and I don‘t want to take a chance.

Things are often sort of phony and pretend in southern California, and my apologies to anyone that might be reading this and living in that area. But it is a different kind of life. A lot of emphasis on what looks right without distinctions as to what makes them look the way they do. For example, when we decided to move back to the Southeast, we got ready for selling our house. And of course that included curb appeal. One Saturday morning I got up extra early, and proceeded to spray paint the house. It was a pretty good sized home, but it only took me a couple of hours because I work really fast. I didn’t use the best of paints, I wasn’t going to be living there, I merely wanted the place to sell. It was the cheapest paint made, and I suspected that in the first good rain, it would all wash off. But, being southern California, a rain wasn’t likely to happen, at least any time soon. Perhaps it still has not rained there to this day. Anyway, the house was painted, and it looked pretty nice. I’d already cleaned the pool and it was sparkling blue and looked refreshing and inviting, and I had painted the lawn green, and it looked luscious. I stood back and looked, and it seemed to lack that final touch to really call it ready for an open house. “Aha”, I thought, I know what this house needs, and rushed off to the local stores to get what was needed for that final touch. I got back home and proceeded to plant these beautiful flowers of all kinds and colors. All along the front of the house, and a ways from the walkway to the entrance. I didn’t want them too close and too noticeable, after all, plastic flowers up close lose some of their appeal, besides not smelling pretty. But from a distance, that house looked great. I just hoped it would not get a close inspection. It didn’t. Like all homes in southern California in the seventies, it sold quickly and at a price that was far greater than we had paid for it just a brief five years earlier. Amazing what cheap paint, lawn paint, and plastic flowers will do. Not to feel bad for anyone though. I visited the house a few years later, and it was on the market again, but at a price several times what we had sold it for. Housing market in the suburbs of Los Angeles was absolutely crazy then, and would remain so for years to come. Until the bubble, and the economy, came crashing down. But I was out of there by then.

Fran and I moved to Greenville from Los Angeles, after a brief two or three month stay in Atlanta. Greenville, SC is the home of Bob Jones University, a well respected, but pretty proper religious school that produced a lot of teachers, preachers, and religious administrators. It was not a cheap school, and in the 1970’s, it had some pretty rigid rules of student conduct. No holding hands, no walking together too closely, and absolutely no kissing! But one of the most notable things about Bob Jones, was the requirement that the students get out in the community and carry “the message of salvation” to the sinners of the city. So just about every time that you visited Main Street in Greenville for shopping or business, you would be confronted with sidewalk preachers from Bob Jones, spreading the word of God, handing out leaflets, and preaching to no one in particular but to everyone within earshot. This had gone on for years and the community had become used to it, but with the growing population and the popularity of Greenville by folks moving in from the north, the papers soon got filled with letters lamenting the fact you couldn’t walk downtown without being preached at. It was becoming more and more of a nuisance to many, and somewhere in the late seventies or early eighties, the practice of preaching on the corners ended.

Soon after Fran and I bought our house on Ridge Springs Drive in Greenville, SC, we had quite a commotion in the laundry room. There was a horrible racket in there, things banging around, things crashing to the floor, a real melee in there. I looked around and counted heads. All kids and the wife were accounted for. It was with great trepidation that I inched the laundry room door open to see what was going on and I saw this huge furry beast just a carrying on and running and crashing into things. I didn’t want that monster in the laundry room, and I knew we needed to take care of the matter least our clothes would never get washed. I pondered, and I thought, and finally it dawned on me what I should do. I would call the fire department, after all, don’t they get kittens out of trees? Surely they would know what to do. So I dialed. Some burly voiced fireman answered the phone, and I explained my dilemma. I told him how we had a furry beast running around in the laundry room, and it looked like a furry dinosaur to me. I guess it was a quiet evening for them because soon, sirens blaring and lights flashing, a big fire truck rolled up in front of our house. I led a team of firefighters to our laundry room, curious as to how they would handle this emergency. I was concerned. I didn’t see any guns or Billy clubs on them, just big old axes. They entered the room, and emerged moments later with one mad raccoon by the tail. They were beside themselves with laughter, tears were nearly coming out of their eyes. And they were singing something like “We slay dinosaurs” as they rode off into the night.

Every child deserves a tree house. A big tree house. Well, I’ve never been much of a carpenter, but I wanted a nice big tree house for Kathy and Dan. We had the perfect tree for it at our house in Greenville. A big ‘ol tree at the far end of the yard, just the perfect place for kids to hide from parents and have club meetings with neighborhood friends. Not being too handy with tools, I decided that perhaps at least the floor of the tree house should be professionally done so a whole passel of kids wouldn’t come tumbling out through the bottom. That would invite much commotion, especially from my wife. And I wanted a shingled roof as well so it would be rainproof, or nearly so. I hired John, one of my friends and a carpenter, to climb up in that big old tree and build a sturdy frame with a good floor, and a roof with shingles. He did a great job of it, but I wanted sides, a door and windows, and knew that I could take over from there. At least it was not likely to fall out of the tree with a dozen kids inside of it. I did something that I rarely, if ever did, I called in sick to my office, and set about spending the day putting sides on that tree house and painting it forest green. And nailing steps to the side of the tree so the kids could climb up into it. It had an open door, and one or two large openings for windows. And when I finished, I stepped back to look at my piece of art and realized it was missing something. The final touch. So I went to the paint store for another can of paint, this time a bright yellow, and I took my paintbrush and painted a great big old happy “smiley face” on one side of the tree house. Now it was complete. Kathy and Dan loved it. It became their place to have meetings with friends, and to sulk or cry when unhappy with parents, friends, or events of life. Everyone needs a tree house with a happy and cheerful smiley face on it.

When Kathy and Dan were young, they had a pet. They always had pets- dogs, cats, hamsters, the usual fare of childhood. But this was a different kind of pet, their first Parakeet, and they named it Rainbow. They loved that bird, and it would speak a few words, although it’s vocabulary was very limited. It had sort of a unique coloring and design that would later prove very problematic for me. Fran and the kids went to Charleston to visit family for a few days, and I wasn’t able to go with them, so I had the responsibility for our cat, our dog, and Rainbow. Perhaps I didn’t take my job seriously enough. Someone, probably me, had apparently left the door to the bird cage unlocked, and I guess Rainbow got out. I’m not sure of the exact events, but what I do know is that in the evening while watching a little TV, our cat came in with a proud look that only cats can have, but she looked funny. Something was wrong. And what were those feathers sticking out of her mouth? “Did you find some feathers on the floor or something” I asked while stroking her. I decided to check out just where she might have found these feathers. I checked on Rainbow, and much alarmed, discovered her door open, and she was gone. Needless to say, I searched everywhere for Rainbow. I never found the least evidence of her. Other than those feathers in the cat’s mouth, and the cat’s look of perfect contentment. She was now curled up sleeping in her favorite spot in the recliner, perfectly content, and obviously well fed. I accepted the inevitable, then set about on my diabolic scheme to never let word of this tragic event get out to the kids. The next day being Saturday, I set about on my plan very early in the morning. I started my trek to the pet stores, looking for a parakeet that looked exactly like Rainbow. Well, Rainbow was a bit unique in color and pattern, so I trekked through every pet store in Greenville. And frankly, there are an awful lot of them. I finally found an acceptable substitute for Rainbow. The same colors and nearly the same pattern. At that point, I wasn’t too concerned about the vocabulary. I could tell the kids that parakeets frequently get amnesia and have to be retrained. Well, the kids came home a day later. First place they go is to check on Rainbow. They commented on how quiet Rainbow was, he just wasn’t talking like he normally did. Probably got a cold I replied feebly, certain that my secret would get out. But the kids accepted Rainbow, feeling sorry for how sick he’d gotten while they were gone but happy that they were now home to take care of him. For the next several years they were just simply in wonder about how a parakeet can change so much when they get sick, but never doubting that it was their Rainbow. They never had any luck in getting him to talk again like he used to. Many years later, after the kids were adults, I let them in on my long held secret. I don’t know if they have forgiven me ye for this parakeet sleight of hand. Well, who said being a parent is easy?

Our house on Ridge Springs was beginning to look a tad derelict on the outside, and a stain or paint job was in order. It was a traditional brown stained shingle house, and Fran and I wanted something a little different. We went to the paint store and we examined the many colors available to us. She wanted something more in line with an earth tone or something, whatever that is. Hey, I’m just a husband. Now here is what we learned about picking out paints. The colors look much different inside a store and under fluorescent lighting then they do in the natural light of day. Much different. Anyway, we got the required number of gallons, and the paint brushes and arranged to have our house painted while we went to the beach for a few days. We had a responsible, hard-working high school boy do most of our yard work and chores, and we entrusted him with this important job. We knew we could count on him to get it done before we returned. He was not to disappoint us. When we returned from the beach, it was evening and the moon was full. Now it seemed to me that as we drove onto our street, there was a strange glow. I know there was as soon as we drove up to our house. We stared in disbelief! That earth tone that we so proudly picked out to be different from every other house, certainly lived up to it’s expectation. It was a fluorescent orange, and with the light from a full moon, it was a glowing orange sight to behold! Our neighbors were worried. They wondered if they were going to have to put their home up for sale. Fran and I were alarmed. The kids had great merriment. In any event, a house has never been repainted so fast in the history of home renovations. Within one day, the house was repainted, and in the traditional brown colors of other homes in the neighborhood. And the neighbors breathed a sigh of relief.

Some folks dream a lot, some very little, or at least they don’t remember the dreams. Some even dream in living color and enjoy surround sound. Me, I guess I’m average. Sometimes I remember me dreams, but mostly I don’t. But, according to Helen at least, I do lots of talking in my sleep. She tells me of the time I carried on a fifteen-minute conversation with President Clinton’s wife Hilary Clinton, and their daughter Chelsea. At the time, being the President’s wife, she was heading up a task force to draft legislation for universal health care, an unpopular topic at the time. In any event, in my sleep, I was carrying on quite a conversation with Hilary, in an elevator, about why her brand of universal health care wouldn’t work. I guess I was successful ‘cause her health care proposals went down in a ball of flames and that was the end of it. Until President O’Bama. And speaking of President O’Bama, apparently in one of my dreams, I picked him up on my bus, in Houston, and we had quite a conversation according to Helen. I had lots of other interesting dreams and conversations, meeting with many notables of the day and carrying on great debates with them. Sometimes my dreams were about flying or trucking. Helen tells me she would listen with great interest as I launched into the latest of my night time adventures, and once captured an entire conversation on her recorder. My feeling about dreams is this--the brain is a lot like a big computer with lots of memory. And the memory gets filled with lots of information, most of which once used is just so much garbage. When this happens with PC’s, we frequently have to purge the memory to make space for more information. Sometimes this is automatic by the built in software, and sometimes we have to restart our PC’s to purge the memories. The minds are the same way, and our way of purging our memory cells frequently manifests itself in the form of dreams or nightmares.

There is a lesson in the following story, I’m just not certain what it is. I had my own company most of my adult life. And it always involved computers, high tech gear, office supplies, purchased software, and the like. When Helen became involved in the business, with her background she naturally gravitated to watching the financial side, keeping the books and handling the money flow. That was her background and her inclination by training. I always tried keeping her informed about upcoming purchases, but not always. One day, not having enough wastebaskets in our office, I actually bought one, and without her knowledge or approval. But hey, it was only a twelve-dollar trash can. And it was a high tech looking gray plastic beauty. Or so I thought. Apparently she had other ideas about what trash cans should look like. I caught grief on that trash can for probably the next fifteen years. And she camouflaged the real reason (the looks of the thing) and concentrated how I shouldn’t be spending money without her knowing about it, since the money side of things was her responsibility. Gads I took the grief for that. Year after year I was reminded of my financial folly. Funny, I could go out and spend $5,000 on a new PC or piece of technology that I needed for my work, forget to tell her in advance about it, and the most that came from Helen was a weak “I wish you’d let me know about these things ahead of time” and that would be the end of it. But a twelve-dollar trash can that doesn’t fit in with a particular office décor, well, I just don’t know what to think of it, or what lessons or conclusions can be drawn from it. Maybe the lesson is for husbands--don’t buy trash cans.

I’ve always enjoyed playing cards, beginning in my teenage years, and continuing to my older years (now 68 years young). Pinochle is probably my favorite card game, and I especially enjoy partnership pinochle. It was greatly enjoyable while living in Southern California, for my wife Fran and myself to visit my sister Carol and her husband Art, and it always involved an all night card playing marathon. Art and I would team up against Carol and Fran, drink our beers, talk and chat and just have lots of fun. Now that I’m sixty-eight, while at home I enjoy Hand and Foot, Oh Tish, and cut throat pinochle with my wife Helen and our boy Jimmy. Somehow, the card gods seem to always be ganging up on me. I get the longest run of really horrible hands and it gets right discouraging at times. Especially if their hands are running hot. A few months ago, I saw a hand that in all my years of playing I had never seen before. Statistically, it must be astronomically improbable to ever happen, but Jimmy got all eight aces dealt to him, a feat that is never accomplished. It’s worth two thirds of an entire games points. It’s unheard of. But even more ironic, Helen was also dealt five nines and had no meld, so she was allowed to call for a new deal. You can imagine Jimmy’s dismay, and my relief!

And speaking of the unusual, I’ll never forget my short stays in Dubai, U.A.E. while coming home from Afghanistan. Wherever you go in the mid-east, you probably will go through Dubai. That is the playground for the rich oil sheiks, and the normally rigid Islamic laws are loosened up a lot, or at least everyone looks the other way as the rich oil sheiks from nations all over the mid-east come and do their partying, drinking, carousing with the women, and in general, being the playboys with unlimited amounts of money to spend. I think the only cars they must allow in Dubai are the Mercedes and comparable high end luxury cars, because that’s all I ever saw. The opulence of wealth is everywhere… in the airport, the buildings, the grand scale of everything. They’ve built these palm-shaped islands in the Gulf and filled them with super expensive homes like you’d find in the Hamptons or in Palm Beach, except larger and grander. Dubai has a huge shopping mall that would take days to really explore, but one feature is a snow-covered mountain for snow skiing, right there in the mall! Not a tiny snow covered hill mind you, but darned near a big mountain. One hundred and twenty or thirty degree’s outside, and folks are busy snow skiing inside. They’ve built the world’s tallest building. Everything is on a grand scale, and there must be more concentration of wealth in that city than anywhere else on earth. They’re also becoming a medical center for the wealthy of the world. The finest hospitals with the most advanced equipment, technologies, and most highly trained and skilled doctors and surgeons. People come to Dubai from all over the world for medical care.

I’ve never been up in a hot air balloon, and I think it would be great fun to do sometime. Almost made it up once. Unknown to me, Helen had arranged for a hot air balloon to carry us away from Pretty Place, where we were married on a mountain top, to parts unknown, to then be picked up and chauffeured to our wedding reception. Alas, the winds and weather did not cooperate so that part of the wedding plan didn’t get carried out. Darn!

On our wedding day, I saw the “testy” side of Helen. Things were not going her way, and no, it had nothing to do with me. We found out on the afternoon before the wedding, that the piano at Pretty Place had been stolen, so our piano player would not have a piano to play our songs on. This created a bit of poor reaction on Helen’s part, and she showed her less than happy side. A couple of other things were going wrong as well, so she was able to show to me, that at times, she can be unhappy and a bit “testy”.

Talking about testy during weddings, when my daughter Sharon was married to Thom, they had a grand wedding all planned out. They were married in the same Catholic Church in Washington, DC that President Kennedy had laid in wake after he was assassinated. A beautiful church. Now, if you don’t know Sharon, you have no idea how she plans everything to the nth degree--no room for surprises with her. And everything was going just as planned, until…. The limousine arrived to take Sharon, Thom, Helen and myself to the Washington monument for wedding pictures. It arrived. It was long. It was driven by a properly attired chauffeur. It was a very hot summer day. The chauffeur held the limo doors open for us, and we climbed in. And it was then that he told us, “sorry, the air conditioning doesn’t seem to be working today.” Those were not the words that Sharon needed to hear. She’s dressed to the hilt in her fancy wedding dress, we’re all dressed up in our tuxedos and finest wedding clothes, it is a hot and humid day in Washington, and the limousine air conditioning isn’t working. Not good! Sharon rearranged some of the rides using the other limousines, and I think she had a few words with the driver and with the company about sending that car to use for her wedding. I would have hated to be on the other end of that discussion.

When Fran and I lived in Taylors, South Carolina, Kathy and Dan were young kids in grade school. On week-ends I usually took them a few blocks away to a really neat ice cream parlor that had a gazillion flavors of ice cream. Frequently we’d have several of the neighborhood kids with us. They played old time songs on the piano, there was a banjo and harmonica player, and it was grand fun. They had an ice cream concoction that was called something like “Mount Helen sized super duper serving with about one-thousand different flavors” or something like that. Maybe I exaggerate a bit, but that thing was huge. I don’t know of anyone that could possible eat all of the ice cream on that special, but the kids saw the picture of it, and they pestered me for it every time we went in. We’ll eat it all they would say. Sure. Well, one evening I let each of them order that whopper of an ice cream dish, and delighted for the next few hours as they stuffed themselves then turned slightly green, and finally admitting that perhaps they really couldn’t finish eating all that ice cream. Funny, they never asked for that again. Kathy was at the age where she was so young, I hated letting her go to the ladies room by herself. Generally I found a young mother and they always consented to take Kathy to the powder room if she had to go. One evening, I couldn’t find anyone, so I let her go by herself. She apparently had great fun, and she had a big smile on her face when she came out. I didn’t think much of it until the next patron used the powder room and came out exclaiming, “somebody has papered the whole restroom with toilet paper!” Now I wonder, who could that have been?

Well, ice cream parlors are not the only thing to get papered with rolls of toilet paper. One morning when I went out in our yard to get the morning newspaper, there was toilet paper everywhere. Over the house, over all the trees, bushes and everything growing or standing in our yard. It was a mess. Since Kathy was the only middle-schooler in the family, we assumed it was her friends that had the fun of papering our house. It was funny, but boy it sure took us a long time to get rid of that toilet paper. Some of it may be hanging from high tree branches to this day.

When girls get in high school, there is a lot of rivalry and pettiness. Generally over boy things. And Kathy was no exception in getting caught up in the sometimes horrid behavior of young ladies. Before the age of cell phones and car phones, if you were out running around and needed to call someone, you stopped at a public phone. There were public phone booths on nearly every corner, just a little booth that was big enough to stand in and able to close a door to block out the street sounds. They contained phone books, and generally some written messages scribbled on the walls about who to call for a good time. One day, miles from our house, I stopped to make a call, and as I was dropping the quarter in the slot, right there in big black permanent writing was a message… “for a good time, call Kathy” and it listed our home phone number! Needless to say, I stopped what I was doing and called home to call Kathy and see what was going on. Fran answered and allowed as to how yes, there had been some strange phone calls of guys calling to talk to Kathy. She of course hung up on all of them, wondering what was going on. I talked to Kathy on the phone, and yes, she was mortified, and explained how she was having some kind of girl disagreement or issues at school and they had taken it to the level of going to phone booths and writing these messages to get at Kathy. She must have gone to every phone booth in town, with a big black permanent marker, and marked out every such message she found. I never asked her how many she found, but eventually the calls stopped so she must have found them all. Ah, teenagers. I’ll never understand them.

I heard a knock on my door. An insistent knock. I was divorced from Fran, and living at Hidden Lakes apartments. I had started dating Helen, but not yet all that seriously. I had met her son Jimmy, and maybe her son Clay briefly. I answered the door. “Can I live here?” was the question that greeted me. It was Clay. “Well, you can stay here for a little while I guess, you can use the guest bedroom downstairs”. I figured that he’d had a bit of a tiff with his dad over some issue, and after a few hours, or maybe a few days at most, he would go home. But he didn’t. And Helen and I continued to get more and more serious about each other. We finally got married and I got two new wonderful stepsons in the bargain. I couldn’t love them more if they were of my own blood. Great kids. Doesn’t mean we didn’t have some typical adult/teenager issues between us, because we did. But we always worked everything out and the boys and I have enjoyed a relationship of respect and love that is remarkable in it’s depth. I’m a lucky guy--five really great kids. Three that I fathered, and two that I have been a nearly a father to. Plus a nearly adopted daughter that is the mother of my grandchild Destiny.

After Helen and I dated for a short while, we were almost inseparable. We really connected, and enjoyed each other’s company. One evening as I was picking her up at her place, she hands me a small overnight bag to put in the car. “Well, I guess this avoids the awkward part of the evening where I ask if you would like to come back to my place for a night cap” I said. We laughed. It was such a natural thing. And, since I had an extra bedroom, no one should talk or think we’re up to anything improper. Sure. I used to sing a lot when I was around Helen. Silly songs. My favorite was “Welcome to my world, won’t you let me in?” She always laughed when I sang it. She didn’t tell me for sometime that the actual words of the song are “Welcome to my world, won’t you come on in.” Oh well.

If you take a look at one of my pictures around 1999 and look at a picture of then Vice-President Dick Cheney, we look almost identical. I have a picture of President G.W. Bush sitting next to Dick Cheney in a Cabinet meeting, and I put that on my desk. Folks would walk by, see that picture, look at me, and say “that looks just like you in that Cabinet meeting!”. With that said, when President G.W. Bush was running for President the first time, he came to Clemson, SC for one of his campaign speeches. Helen and I were pretty tuned in to political events at the time, and eagerly attended. We arrived just minutes before the event was to begin, and the place was packed. But there was a section that was roped off near the stage. When Helen and I came in, we were escorted to that area, and were ushered into that special roped off area. I can only conclude that the event handlers probably thought I was his running mate Dick Cheney and that’s why we were shown to the special seating. Behind me came a lovely young Afro-American lady. Being friendly, I engaged her in some conversation. I asked if she had been to any other Presidential campaign events. She replied that she was at almost every one of his appearances. Aha, a real political groupie I thought. We bantered some more in pleasant conversation and then G.W. Bush appeared and gave his speech. Afterward, I joined the crowd at the foot of the stage to get an autograph. G.W. Bush gave me a long, awkward look before signing the program. I guess I still have it somewhere. Turns out that the young lady that I engaged in conversation was Condelesa Rice, our future National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State. At that time, hardly anyone had even heard of her, or knew much about Dick Cheney. Strange and interesting times. And Condelesa Rice turned out to be one of the most effective administration officials and Secretary of States in the history of our country, in my opinion. I often wished she had run for President.

© Copyright 2010, Russ Kelly, Liberty, SC, USA. All rights reserved.

More humor, adventure and opinion from Rambling Russ

_

Tag On The Toe

2010-10-07T11:36:00.000-04:00

Illustration by Brad Hall, www.bradhallart.com

It was a clear, but dark and moonless night. The ribbon of black asphalt highway offered little contract to the flatness of the terrain. Traffic was moderate, and the highway was an evil one. Straight, four lanes, running through farmlands and small communities. Sometimes the speeds were 65 mph, and sometimes it was 45. Wide grassy medians, well-marked and adequate left and right turn lanes in some areas. High-speed, with only a low, metal guardrail separating traffic, and with no turn lanes, in other sections of the highway. It seemed like every time the road passed a farm, there was a break in the center guardrail that allowed farm traffic to exit or enter the highway to either direction. On a dark and moonless night, it was a receipt for disaster.

And then, it happened!

But first, a flashback. Perhaps you’ve seen the results of a high-speed rear end collision. Probably you haven’t, you can only imagine. I’ve seen it, and it makes you want to throw up. It happened on an Interstate highway in the mid-west. I was going east, and the accident was in the westbound lanes. I came on the accident probably no more than one or two minutes after it occurred. Vehicles on fire. Great smoke and confusion, but deadly silence in the night. No police or emergency vehicles there yet. Construction zone. Probably driver inattention. Perhaps distracted by adjusting the radio, or eating a snack, or using a cell phone. Whatever the reason, at great speed, a car went right into the back of a stopped vehicle in the construction zone. Pushed it right into, and under, a tractor-trailer. The vehicle looked to me to be not much larger than a breadbox, all scrunched up like that. It turned out, it didn’t start at that size. It was a mid-sized van, and it contained four teen-age girls. Three killed instantly. One hospitalized in full body cast for months, and paralyzed for life. Her injuries were so severe, she was misidentified for months. As I said, it’s a sight you never again want to see in this lifetime. It makes you want to throw up. And it brings home the reality that the highways can be deadly places. It’s not a place to be for those with a cavalier attitude about the risks they face.

As a commercial driver, first of tractor-trailers driving great distances over-the-road, and later as a commuter line, tour bus, and employee force bus driver, I’ve adopted a set of habits that help reduce the risks and keep my passengers and me safe. One of these is the “ten second scan”. It’s not my invention, it’s taught in the better commercial driving schools. It means that ever ten seconds, you’ve checked mirrors on both sides, rear view mirror or “look backward” camera if you have one, your instruments, and the road ahead. Every ten seconds. It’s called situational awareness. Know what’s behind you, what’s beside you, and what’s in front of you. All the time. And not just what’s immediately in front of you, but way up the road ahead of you. Two miles ahead, or more, if conditions permit. That way you’re anticipating events, rather than always reacting to unexpected events. Change your visual scan routine. Occasionally look briefly at interesting sights along the way. You want to be alert, not become dulled by a never changing routine. A side benefit of this ten second scan, is that your head is constantly moving, and others riding with you know you’re alert and not dozing off. I hate riding in a vehicle where the driver stares intently just at the road immediately in front. You don’t know whether they are dozing off, and you can pretty well bet they’re not very alert. As a passenger, that makes me uneasy.

And then it happened!

I look back at this as the moment in time when I saved at least two lives. Not a doubt in my mind! Here I was, tooling along in the 55 mph zone, 4 lanes, opposing traffic separated by a guardrail with breaks in the guardrail but no turn lanes. Drivers wanting to turn left against opposing traffic, had to stop in the left, high-speed lane. It was dark outside and my ten-second scan alerted me to an impending disaster. I knew I had a high-speed vehicle coming up from behind and on my left. The vehicle was probably doing 70 mph because he was coming up fast and I was doing the speed limit. Ahead of me I saw the vehicle that was stopped in the left lane, waiting to make a left turn. I saw it, but apparently the driver overtaking me on the left didn’t, because the driver was not slowing down. Perhaps they were distracted. Perhaps they just weren’t paying attention. But we were only moments away from a disastrous rear-end collision. I quickly pulled my bus all the way onto the right shoulder and completely out of the travel lane, and slowed fast and hard. I wanted to provide as much room as possible for the driver behind me to swerve and avoid. If he woke up in time. Perhaps my sudden maneuver caught the attention of the driver, for at the last moment, he swerved right, into the lane the bus was occupying just one or two seconds earlier, and the car missed the left turning vehicle by mere feet. A rear end collision, one vehicle stopped and one traveling at 70 mph is not a sight I want to see anytime soon. Fatalities were the certain outcome.

As I brought my bus back into the travel lane and passed by the left turning vehicle, I observed a second serious error that would have made the rear-end collision much worse. The left turning car that had stopped waiting a break in traffic, had his front wheels turned left, ready to dart through the traffic at his first opportunity. That would have been deadly, because a rear-end collision would have pushed him into opposing traffic. Then it would not only be a high-speed rear-end collision, but a high-speed head-on collision as well.

There were plenty of driver errors on this incident, all of which were narrowly avoided. The driver coming up behind me was traveling much too fast for conditions, and certainly well above the speed limit. And the driver was not aware of what was happening, probably due to inattention. Perhaps impaired. And the left turning vehicle made two critical mistakes. First, you should never turn your wheels when stopped for a turn, until you can make the turn. If you’re hit from behind, you do not want to be pushed into on-coming traffic. Secondly, the driver was not paying attention to traffic coming up from behind. If they had, they would have observed a high-speed vehicle coming up fast in their lane and with traffic in the right lane that would prevent the vehicles from moving over or swerving. As soon as they spotted the risk of the situation, they should have stepped on the gas and gotten out of there with hazard lights on, and as quickly as their car would take them, and live to make that left turn another day. Don’t be so stubborn and set in what you’re doing, even if totally legal and right, that you’re going to ignore risks to yourself. Maintain your situational awareness at all times.

So there we have it. A high-risk highway under poor visibility conditions due to darkness, two inattentive drivers, each of which is making potentially deadly mistakes, and you have the making of one huge accident with almost certain fatalities. Everyone involved in this incident, is presumably walking around today, carrying on their lives in a normal manner, when by all probabilities, they should be on a slab in the morgue with a tag on the toe, marked “DOA, inattentive driving”. They should be there, excepting for one very attentive driver, simply following the “ten second scan”. My moment where I saved two or more lives.

While I’m on my soapbox about safe driving, here are a few more safe driving tips. Maybe you’re familiar with all of these, but a moment to think about them again never hurts. And, if you have teenage drivers, or soon-to-be drivers in your family, this should be must reading. Then I’d give them a quiz on it. The life you save, may be your very own teenager. Or your neighbors.

Drive safely and minimize your risks. Sounds obvious, but too often ignored. There are risks every time you drive, some beyond your control. So why add to the risks? You have to drive defensively to minimize your risks. Check your vehicle often, especially the tires. Follow the traffic flow in heavy traffic, neither faster nor slower. Be courteous to others, even if they‘ve just irritated the bejebers out of you by some crazy thing they‘ve done. Don’t drive beside or close behind or in front of tractor-trailers--their braking is different than yours, and the truck tires sometimes propel chunks of rubber from recapped tires at a high speed and with great force. Don’t be distracted, it’s easy to take your eyes off the road while adjusting temperatures, tuning the radio, or using a cell phone. A few seconds of inattention can put you right under the trailer of that big rig just ahead of you. Or you may drift off the road or into an adjoining lane.

Keep a minimum of four seconds between you and the vehicle in front. Six seconds is better. In poor road or weather conditions, and in construction and school zones, slow down. Don’t get impatient, others will be out of your way soon enough. Never speed in construction and school zones. If there is a breakdown on the side of the road, move over a lane. Same for traffic stops or other emergency vehicles.

If you go off the road, slow down and bring yourself back onto the pavement only after your vehicle is slowed. Use gentle braking if necessary, but don’t ever try to bring it right back onto the pavement at a high speed. You might be lucky and get by with it, but chances are equally good that you won’t.

Don’t be in a hurry. If you wanted to get to your destination earlier, you should have left five minutes earlier. If you start late, avoid the temptation to speed up and pick up some time. Speeding doesn’t get you there much earlier. Never drive after drinking or taking medications that make you drowsy or groggy. Never ride with any other driver that is in any way incapacitated, including sleepiness. Never drive when sleepy. Sometimes a fifteen-minute power nap is all you need to keep you alert and awake for a few more miles.

Know the laws. Sounds simple, but laws vary state by state. For example, almost all states allow right turns on red after stopping. But don’t try that in New York City or you’ll be paying a hefty traffic fine. And what happens when that intersection light is out? In most states, out of order lights at intersections are to be treated as four way stops. But you have to be careful--that big old tractor-trailer bearing down behind you may not realize there is an out-of-order traffic light, and other drivers may not realize they are required to stop. And who has the right of way at four way stops? In most states the rule is, simply stated, first come, first served. Watch the other vehicles at and approaching the intersection. You proceed in the order of your arrival. If two or more cars arrive and stop at the same time, cars to your right have the right of way.

Pay attention to details, know the status of your cars performance by watching the gauges using the ten-second scan. When you stop for breaks, glance under the vehicle when you return. Are there leaks of fluids? Look at the tires. Do they appear to be properly inflated? Know where every vehicle is, not only in front of you, but also on both sides and in back. Use your mirrors. A lot. Look in them every ten seconds using the “ten second scan”. Watch the road ahead. Are there brake lights? Merging traffic? Obstructions? Speed changes? Knowing all of these things at all times is called situational awareness. Driving is mostly 99% routine broken up by brief moments of sheer terror. Sometimes you have only a fraction of a second to react, so be prepared. You can’t swerve if you don’t know what traffic is around you, and you know that only if you’ve been paying attention. And if you want to head for the shoulder or off the roadway, you’d best have thought about it beforehand. Is the shoulder soft from rain? Is there a curve just ahead? Is there an embankment, barriers or obstructions? The time to know these things is before you experience those infrequent occasions where split seconds matter. And sooner or later, they will happen. At all times, leave yourself an out. Leave space for you to go somewhere--a shoulder, another lane, off the road, wherever you have to go to get out of harms way in an emergency. This means you also leave some distance between you and the car in front whenever you stop--at a light, in a construction zone, in traffic congestion. Never leave yourself totally at the mercy of others, where you have no control over how things turn out.

Gas stations are especially risky areas with cars going in all directions, moving when you’re not expecting them to, and kids jumping out of cars and running into the convenience store. Pets may also be an issue. Before you jump back in your car and start off, look around and see what others might be doing, or getting ready to do. And look for the least risky way out of the station. Why risk turning across four lanes of oncoming traffic if there is a roadway with a traffic signal running beside the station?

On trips, take frequent short naps. And always pull into a safe place to catch a quick nap anytime you feel the least bit sleepy. Don’t worry about an alarm or what time you have to start again, your body will wake you when you’ve had enough rest. Sometimes a short fifteen-minute nap is all it takes to keep you alert and awake for many more miles.

Always drive for your passenger’s comfort, even if no one else is with you. No “jump starts”, no hard stops. Anticipate and avoid getting into tense situations. Slow down when traffic is braking ahead, don’t wait until the last minute and then brake hard. If your passengers, or pretend passengers, are comfortable and not tense, you’re probably driving just right. And believe me, there is nothing that will tense your passengers up more than following too close, or driving too fast for road conditions. As a passenger yourself, you appreciate it if you’re not on the edge of your seat for the entire trip, gripping hard any available handhold or the dash. Be considerate of your passengers. You’ll get there just as fast, and a whole lot more refreshed and relaxed.

Maintain good vision. Driving with glasses or vision that are not 20/20, or nearly so, is taking unnecessary and dangerous risks. This is so obvious, but a lot of folks ignore it, to their peril.

Be polite and courteous to other drivers on the road, even if you think they are an idiot. Courtesy really is contagious. An act of courtesy by you often results in an act of courtesy by them to another driver. And courtesy helps avoid accidents and incidents.

Look far up the road, not just in front of the car. You’re looking for lane merges, brake lights, deer and other animals along the roadway, and “alligators” in the road. Alligators are trucker’s slang for tire recap remnants in the roadway. Trucks often use recapped tires on the trailers, and these have a tendency to peel away and leave themselves in the roadway. Hit them directly and you may find yourself thrown into another lane or off the roadway, or at least having suspension or alignment issues. Recaps at night are especially hard to spot and require your constant vigilance of the roadway well in front of your car. If you see a car ahead of you briefly put on brake lights or their hazard lights, it probably means they encountered something that you need to be closely watching for. Did they swerve to avoid something, or move over a lane? Be tuned in to other driver’s signals.

Don’t out drive your line of sight. If you can’t stop in the distance you can see, you’re going too fast and it’s only a matter of time and miles until your number comes up. This is especially critical in poor visibility conditions such as very heavy rain, fog, and dark rural roads with on-coming traffic where you have to keep your headlights on low beam. Can you completely stop before hitting that pedestrian walking along the roadway? The bicycle rider with little visibility? The stalled car still partly on the roadway? Think about it.

A final tip to reduce stress and minimize risks. Never be in front of or in the middle of the pack. It seems like everyone wants to be “up front” as though that was going to improve their opportunity to hit the green lights or keep other drivers from slowing them down. Not so. Slow down a little bit and fall to the back of the pack and you won’t have vehicles swerving around you, cutting you off and coming too close, simply to get to the front of the pack. You’ll still hit all the green lights and get there just as fast, but without any of the risks or stress of closely packed driving. This tip served me exceedingly well as a commuter line driver to New York City (twice a day during rush hours) where I avoided all kamikaze taxis (my term for them based on their driving habits), yet I nearly always hit all the green lights. I was thankful everyone else wanted up front in the pack, and amazed that no one else seemed to have discovered this neat little tip.

An accident free record is merely a matter of getting the best odds by minimizing your risks, and being a careful, defensive and alert driver. Do these things and you should make it to old age without ever having an accident. Ignore them at your peril, you’re merely raising your risk factor and the laws of probabilities will catch up to you.

© Copyright 2010, Russ Kelly, Liberty, SC, USA. All rights reserved.

More humor, adventure and opinion from Rambling Russ

_

Presidents of My Time

2010-09-25T13:32:00.002-04:00

Illustration by Brad Hall, http://www.bradhallart.com/

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-1945)

Roosevelt was President when I was born. Widely credited with bringing us out of the great depression of 1929 through 1942. However, there is much debate among economists whether the vast and far reaching programs actually reduced the length of the depression, or prolonged it. As the saying goes, stack all the worlds economists end-to-end and they still can’t reach a conclusion. These were the years of World War II. He started the Manhattan Project that developed the Atomic bomb and is widely credited with ending our war in the Pacific. Since I wasn’t really into the politics and events of the day during my first few years, I don’t have any first hand knowledge. I’ll give him a pass.

Harry S. “Give ‘em Hell” Truman (1945-1953)

He was widely known as the haberdasher from Independence, Missouri. Feisty, he made momentous decision to use the atom bomb in Japan which is believed by most historians to have ended our war with Japan, and saving thousands of American forces lives by preventing the need for prolonged conflict and invasion of Japanese mainland. I don’t remember a lot about him. But I did like his "give 'em hell" attitude.

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961)

Here’s the first president that I remember well. I remember the campaign against Adlai Stevenson. Adlai was loved by the media and the intellectual establishment, and was often thought of by the rest of us more normal folks, as “Egghead” Adlai. Eisenhower was the hero of WW-II as the Commander of Allied Forces in Europe. As war broke out, he rose quickly from an uneventful career as a relative unknown Colonel. He was extremely well liked by almost everyone. Always smiling and seemed like a real gentleman--like everyone’s grandfather. His campaign button was the “I Like Ike” button. Portrayed mostly in the press as a “do nothing” golfer. He loved golf, and the press always played up the fact that he always seemed to be playing golf. Ah, life should be so simple today. But, during his administration the Marshall Plan was created and implemented, resulting in the rebuilding of Western Europe into a global powerhouse.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1961-1963)

An engaging fellow, but I always felt he was way too inexperienced to lead, and I had a real problem with his nepotism, installing his brother as Attorney General. I was pretty patriotic and felt everyone should keep a picture of their President, whether you agreed with him or not, hanging in a prominent position in your home. And I did, even though I wasn’t particularly fond of him. His escapades with starlets were legendary although not widely reported on, and I felt his personal conduct was especially un-presidential.

The first ever televised Presidential debate was between Kennedy and Richard Nixon, President Eisenhower’s Vice-President. I watched the debate, and I was surprised when the press proclaimed Kennedy the victor in the debates. He was not nearly as well versed on affairs of state, nor was he as persuasive as Nixon. But Nixon looked tired while Kennedy looked fresh, and the press widely favored Kennedy, a northeastern establishment politically connected Senator. This was the beginning of the press being so blatantly biased toward a Presidential candidate, and the press and national news media was to make a huge difference in elections from then on.

In my opinion, his most notable accomplishment was moving the country into a leadership role for new technologies at a time we were falling behind and other countries were beating us into space. Early in his Presidency, perhaps during his inaugural speech, he promised that we would land a man on the moon and return him home withing this decade. Starting from scratch, that was a monster of a promise. With an emphasis of a Manhattan Project scale (developing the worlds first atomic bomb in WW-II), darned if we didn't do it, and a year early at that. It set the U.S. as clearly the leader in space technologies. From that came many other technologies--the minaturization of electronic devices, Velcro, medical advances, computer, and a plethora of other technologies with wide ranging uses.

I was very distressed after his Bay of Pigs fiasco because of the promises made to them by Kennedy, and then broken. He had given assurances to the freedom fighters in Cuba that he would support them, including use of our military assets with fire power and bombings, during their attempt at an overthrow of the leftist Fidel Castro regime. Well, the freedom fighters attempted the overthrow and were jailed or killed when the attempt failed because America did not lift a finger to help them after all the assurances and promises that we would. To me, this was a dark moment in our history. Then President Kennedy darned near got us into World War III in the blockade of Cuba to keep Soviet nuclear missiles off that island. I agreed with the blockade, never-the-less, it was a highly risky move. Kennedy got us involved in Viet Nam, although not to the degree that it was a disaster, during his term. It is reported that it was his intention and aim to get us out of that morass.

His assassination was a dark moment in our history, and one of the two or three times that I remember vividly exactly what I was doing, where I was, and all events happening at the time that I learned of his assassination. I was deeply saddened. Because of his ties, through the widely popular movie starlet Marilyn Monroe, to the mob, and his broken promises to the Cuban Freedom Fighters, there seemed to be no lack of suspects with the necessary motive and resources to have him assassinated.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1963-1969)

Felt by many to be little better than a crook! He won his very first local election after counting ballots that included the names of dead people in the local cemetery. He was the consummate politician, always cutting deals. He had a “guns and butter” strategy and spending went out of sight as he implemented Kennedy’s programs for poverty and integration while at the same time getting us heavily engaged in Viet Nam. He, along with Defense Secretary Robert “Whiz Kid” McNamara micro-managed the war in Viet Nam, frequently going so far as to pick individual targets for bombing or engagement. Viet Nam turned out to be America’s largest defeat in our history, not because of a lack of ability or resources to win the war, but because of political decisions made by Johnson’s administration and by the President and the micro-managing of military affairs. One of the happiest days of my life is when I watched his televised address in which he announced he would not seek, nor would he accept another term as President. I called everyone I knew.

Richard Milhous Nixon (1969-1974)

Nixon by most accounts, was a great foreign policy leader, and spent most of his first term in office concentrating on our international policies. He opened the door to China and over the decades since, that has been proven to have been a great policy for our security and trade. As with many presidents, he had a tendency to be course at times. Frankly, he got caught up in a two-bit burglary by subordinates and political party operatives at the Watergate Hotel, and that ultimately led to his downfall. Frankly, when compared to the actions of Kennedy, Johnson and many others, the Watergate affair was almost a non-event. But, the press didn’t like Nixon. He was after all, not from the eastern intellectual establishment. I felt really bad about what happened to him with impeachment hearings and his resignation from office, and after a few months, I sent a short letter to him in Whittier, California and thanked him for all that he did for our country, and that I for one, truly appreciated it. He sent me back a nice little hand written note thanking me for my courtesy, and I have that stored away in my box of memories stuff.

Gerald R. Ford (1974-1977)

Nixon’s Vice-President, he automatically succeeded him as President when Nixon resigned. A truly nice and honorable man, but again, received really bad press because he was a mid-westerner and not from the eastern intellectual establishment. He pardoned Nixon which was the right thing to do, first and foremost, because it was the right thing to do, and secondly, to get us past the long national nightmare we’d experienced with the impeachment hearings and resignation. The press had a field day with that and most agree that the pardon was the chief reason that Ford lost his election to the Presidency.

Jimmy Carter (1977-1981)

A peanut farmer and Governor from Georgia. Really intelligent, very religious, and I thought these two traits would likely give us one great President. But Carter had a really mean spirited side. But his high intelligence, probably one of the most intellectually intelligent to ever occupy the White House, could not overcome his weakness in leadership, his tendency to micro-manage, and his lack of logical and instinctive reasoning abilities that led to some real disasters, including many unfortunate military actions, and his inept handling of Iran in the 333 day hostage event. Besides his lack of leadership and management, he presided over horrible oil policy, a severe recession, high unemployment, and a record setting inflationary cycle all at the same time. He was not up to the job in any way and lost his first re-election bid. Went on to do great things with Habitat for Humanity but continued to meddle in foreign affairs to the dismay of all following Presidents. Was often critical of Presidential actions, no matter the party, and simply became a pain in the back side.

Carter taught me one very important lesson. Being the most intelligent does not mean that they will be able to translate that intelligence into either good policy, or good leadership. President Hoover was also one of our most intelligent Presidents. It seems that common sense, leadership and communication skills, and an innate sense of what is right for America trumps intelligence every single time.

Ronald Reagan (1981-1989)

The “great communicator”. He had a way of reaching the every day person on the street. He always gave uplifting and inspirational speeches. He was a trusting grandfatherly type. He was instinctively trusted by most. Press was not too hard on him even though he was a westerner, a cowboy if you will, Hollywood actor, and former Governor of California. I lived in California when he was Governor, and was unimpressed. I wasn’t too excited to see him as a Presidential candidate. By most accounts, he presided over wise policy and is widely credited with the collapse of the Soviet Union, our most feared foreign power at the time with policies contrary to U.S. interests. Judged by most historians in a really short time to be one of our best and most effective Presidents.

George H.W. Bush (1989-1993)

He was a long time Washington insider, ex CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) head, VP under Reagan, and a truly honorable man with the courage of his convictions. Led us to victory in the first Gulf War, and then had a controversial quick withdrawal. He’d accomplished the stated goals of the Gulf War, and that was to get Iraq out of Kuwait. He could have gone all the way to Baghdad, but since the original purpose was achieved, he did not. I consider that the smart and honorable thing and a decision that leads other foreign powers to trust U.S. military might and foreign policy aims. As a Texan and an oil man, he was not particularly liked by the press.

William Jefferson Clinton (1993-2001)

Clinton was great for the common folk, personable, and smart. He could have achieved great things. Unfortunately, he let his messed up personal life and peccadilloes alter history. He had to spend so much of his time defending and explaining himself that his real accomplishments would go unnoticed and he would never achieve his real potential. He presided over the best economic times with budget surpluses and relative tranquility around the world.

George W. Bush (2001-2009)

In his youth he was a bit on the wild side. In answering a reporters question about his youth, he replied “when I was young and stupid, I was young and stupid.” It’s one of my favorite replies to explain our youth, for frequently, especially among many young men, young and stupid seems to explain a lot of things. It certainly resonates with me.

In young adulthood he turned his life around, married a wonderful young lady and school teacher, had children, became a committed Christian, and enjoyed great successes in business and in sports management.

Early in his presidency, he was tested with our response to the horrible tragedy of events following “September 11th”, the infamous terrorists attacks on the World Trade Centers in New York city, the Pentagon, and the failed attempt on another probable target of the White House or the Capital building. His response was swift and certain by going after the terrorists in their base of operations in Afghanistan, and in swiftly changing government agencies and security practices. His policies and actions almost certainly is the reason that there were no further terrorist attacks on American soil during the remainder of his two terms in office.

There was much controversy surrounding his actions in going into Iraq. Intelligence of all of the worlds major intelligence agencies, without exception, indicated Iraq had or was soon to have weapons of mass destruction, intelligence that later was probably proven to be incorrect. In any event, we ended up in a long, costly war in Iraq that the public soon tired of.

At the same time, nearing the end of his second term, the U.S. economy went into a tailspin, and with it, the economies of much of the world. It became the most severe economic crisis since the great depression, and unemployment reached levels not seen since the depression. The mood in America was sour and much of the public turned against him.

Barrack Hussein O’Bama (2009-2012?)

January 2009: O’Bama is our first elected Afro-American elected as President, and there is great hope for him. He is a great communicator. In fact, his future was obvious after he gave a keynote speech at the Democratic Party convention in 2004. What an inspirational and impassioned speech! He is by all measures, one of the most intelligent individuals to reach the office of the President. But his experience and leadership is painfully thin and untested. My opinion is that his high level of intelligence but lack of experience in business and in Washington is going to lead him down the same path as Jimmy Carter. That would be a real disaster. We all wish for his success for lots of different reasons--great for race relations, smoothing of our ruffled foreign policy feathers, and we all need relief from the horrible economic and employment news. But whether O’Bama is able to deliver, we’ll just have to wait and see.

May 2009: Well, between the massive government bailouts, taking on more debt in the first 100 days of his administration than all previous presidents in our country’s history combined, the takeover and ownership of 51% of General Motors by the federal government, massive restructuring and government controlled healthcare, government dictates and management decisions of large corporations and financial institutions, I guess we are now a largely socialist form of government. Add to that a very shortsighted approach to intelligence gathering and the war against terrorism, and events do not bode well for a free and capital oriented nation. I guess our next presidential election will be mostly about whether U.S. citizens want a socialist or capitalist form of governance.

October 2009: It seems my prediction at the beginning of his term, that he would follow Jimmy Carter as being highly unpopular, have proven true. Massive new programs, entitlements, spending, debt, record unemployment levels, record home foreclosures, and near national health reform have driven his popularity to record lows. Just how bad it has gotten was recently hammered home when on the stump at a fund raiser, they had to lower the admission price to a mere fifty dollars to get as much attendance as they could. Even with that, only 450 showed up for the 650 seat auditorium. No pictures of the crowds by the press. It must have been a huge embarrassment for him. Most politicians in his party are running far away from him during their mid-term election bids. My prediction is for a single term presidency.

My favorite Presidents of my time.... Truman, Nixon, Reagan, G.W.H. Bush, G.W. Bush.

My least favorite Presidents of my time.... Johnson, Carter, O'Bama

© Copyright 2010, Russ Kelly, Liberty, SC, USA. All rights reserved.

More humor, adventure and opinion from Rambling Russ

Show Me The Money

2010-09-19T17:24:00.011-04:00

_

What do a janitor, hobo, migrant farm worker, window washer, radio host, scrub nurse, fire fighter, programmer, war zone convoy truck driver, tour bus driver and commuter airline pilot have in common? Darned if I know! I have no idea how the commuter airline pilot slipped in there, but the rest are just a few of the adventures and interesting jobs Rambling Russ has experienced over the years.

Lets face it, jobs are about making money. Show me the money, and I’ll give you my time and talents.

It is said that we spend about one-third of our lives working. For many of us, it’s more like fifty percent of our time is spent earning money. But it doesn’t have to be work, it can be a lot of fun. Anything we spend that much time doing, we’d better enjoy it or we’re going to end up one grumpy old man (or woman). It is also said, that most of us are in careers not by choice but by opportunity. We “fall” into our first job, and that’s sort of where we stay. That was probably more true in the old days when the majority of workers were in blue-collar work. Now everyone goes to college and chooses which field they’re going into before they graduate.

Since I started working to earn money when I was eight, and being a bit impatient to move ahead and to try new things and enjoy new challenges and adventures, it means I’ve had lots of different jobs, and many different types of occupations. While I spent the majority of my working years in the computer field, after all, it was a highly paid career, most of my fun was really spent in other occupations, mainly driving. For some reason, I really enjoy the fun and challenge of that.

Occupations I’ve had include janitor & dishwasher, window washer, typist, newspaper delivery, migrant farm worker, stable hand, roller skating cop, pin setter, fire fighter, sailor, medic, operating room scrub nurse, taxi driver, administrative assistant, security guard, concession worker, programmer, U.S. Congressional Campaign Manager, professional speaker, radio show host, author, newspaper columnist, car relocator, federal government contract employee, driving instructor, dump truck driver, truck relocator, convoy truck driver in war zone, National Park Service road crew worker, transit bus driver, New York City commuter line driver, tour bus driver, oil exploration, sales, and arbitrator. Sounds like I just couldn’t hold a job. Actually, I was one of the best in each of the jobs I held excepting security guard, sales, and campaign manager. More about that later.

Illustration by Brad Hall, www.bradhallart.com

My First Job

For my first job, I started at the top. Sure, but I was only eight at the time. I was the schools assistant to the janitor. I worked two hours every evening, and for this, I received a free school lunch. Funny thing, I also washed dishes in the cafeteria at lunchtime, and for that I also was paid with a free lunch. Guess I should have eaten twice as much! I knew about this redundancy, but I didn’t look at it as being simple minded, I simply enjoyed working. Guess from my earliest years, I've gotten my sense of self worth through my work. Not just working, but doing it better than anyone else could possibly do it, or was willing to do it. I loved the praise and the accolades of a job well done.

I really enjoyed my first job. I swept floors and emptied trash, and cleaned up the teachers smoke room (how quaint, bet there aren’t any of these any longer). About two hours each evening, then home to my chores of splitting kindling or peeler cores, or hauling wood in to the wood box, or whatever mom said to do. No homework back then. Probably because it was a rural environment, all school kids had loads of chores to do at home, whether on the farm or in the city. On Saturdays, it was about four hours working at the school. We waxed and buffed the floors. I enjoyed running the buffing machine. After about two hours, we took a 15 minute break and I was treated to either a Mounds or Almond Joy candy bar (they were much bigger back then, and cost a whole lot less!). For my Saturday work, the janitor always paid me about 50 cents. But hey, that's back when 50 cents was worth 50 cents!

Window Washer

I started working early in life. My family did not have much money and our allowances were small. If I wanted money to spend for essentials, like comic books, soda pop, or movies, I needed to earn it myself. Besides, I enjoyed keeping busy with jobs. I've always enjoyed working and much prefer working than to sitting around or doing non-productive things.

I started washing windows when I was in the fourth grade. A local donut shop needed someone to wash all their store windows each Saturday, and they checked with the local grade school to see if the school principal had a recommendation. My name immediately was put forth since I was known to do such a good job on my school janitor and dish washing jobs.

Each Saturday, I would go to the donut shop and spend about three hours washing all the windows. It wasn't just the front windows, it was also the windows in the back room where the donuts were made. Small windows, up very high, at least for a little kid like me. I'd climb up on chairs, and stand on equipment or vats full of boiling oil, and scrub away on those windows. It was hard getting all of the gunk off the windows as the flour, steam and oil from the bubbling vats of hot oil and donuts below made quite a mess. I was very careful not to slip and fall into one of those hot bubbling vats of donuts in oil. If that had happened, I guess I would have been the original “dough boy”. I was paid about two or three dollars, and the store owner always gave me a bag of donuts to take home to the family. Probably only about half the donuts made it all the way back home. Maybe only the donut holes made it, I don't remember.

When I was twelve I washed windows professionally. My stepfather Dale was a professional window cleaner and owned his own company. He also provided janitorial services. And that's where I learned how to really wash windows like a pro. Dale was a perfectionist, and a less than perfect job simply wouldn't do. I spent many Friday's after school and on week-ends earning money this way. I always considered window washing as my backup profession, one that I could always fall back on to make a living. It was with one of his customers, a local prominent attorney, that I learned my first political lesson. The attorney was always running for one office or another. I asked Dale, “why does he keep running, he never wins?” And his reply was "ah, he doesn't want to win, he just wants to keep his name out before the public, it's great for business. He's getting free advertising." Lesson learned.

In the ninth grade I thought it would be a great idea to start my own small window washing business. Cut out the middleman and be my own boss. I got several businesses to let me handle their window washing chores. I sold them on the idea that clean, fresh windows would likely bring in more business and make them more profitable. Each Saturday I'd make my rounds and wash the windows. Only one little problem--I didn't have a car, nor did I have a driver’s license, although that fact would likely have been missed by me. So, I got some lumber and wheels, and built a little trailer to attach to my bicycle. And away I would go, complete with my trusty old one speed bike with trailer, pails, squeegees, chemicals, sponges, rags and other assorted tools of the trade. Lots of hills around Grants Pass, and a one-speed bike with a trailer loaded with a lot of stuff sure built up my leg muscles.

I washed windows off and on for a number of years in my childhood, and it earned me some much needed spending money. It was likely the source of my substantial savings that allowed me to buy a one-half interest in my very first car. A buddy and I bought a car, a Model A no less, for a grand total of $50, split equally between us, and that was likely the sum total of my vast savings. The Model-A ran great but did have a little radiator issue. It simply could not go past a stream of water without needing a fill up. Out we'd hop, scoop up water with an old coffee can, fill up the radiator, and away we'd go. At least to the next stream or water source.

Typist, Newspaper Delivery (and other stuff)

In high school, I had a Saturday job typing envelopes and letters for Welcome Wagon. It was dull, repetitive work, but since I was a good typist, having practiced since I was probably about nine or ten, the work was easy for me and an easy way to earn some much needed spending money.

At about nine years of age I had a newspaper route for the Grants Pass Daily Courier. It was an early morning route, and I mean early. The paper had to be delivered before customers got up in the morning and had their breakfast. In those days, about 1950, everyone subscribed to either a morning or evening paper. I forget whether Grants Pass had an evening paper or an evening edition of the Courier or not, but if they did, that was not my pleasure. Nope, I got up early, headed off on my bike for the pickup point about two miles away, then ran my route along the Old Fruitdale Highway and along Park Avenue. My bike was a very old rusty bike, and strictly a single speed. When I got it for Christmas, it didn't even have a seat. "Be careful", my parents admonished me. I'm glad I was careful least I started singing Soprano. Eventually I got a seat. But gears, why they were for the rich kids bikes. That was a rather recent invention back then, and gears meant you had three speeds. No such thing as ten speeds back then.

I'd load up on papers and away I'd go, up the hills with a very heavy load of papers on a single speed bike, and it was really tough. One of the worst jobs I ever had just because of the physical demands. My route was probably four to six miles long. And on weekends I'd have to go around and collect the subscription money. Occasionally someone would just simply not pay after I had delivered the paper for a week or two, then it was on me and it came out of my meager earnings. First time in my life to learn about deadbeats. Life's lessons sometimes come hard.

The route didn't last too long, probably only three or four months because it was simply too hard for a little nine year old to be doing. Maybe if I'd been a year or two older or had a three-speed bike it wouldn't have been so difficult. In any event, I decided I never again in life wanted to deliver newspapers. And, I never did.

In middle school (called Jr. High School where I grew up), I had a few lawn mowing customers along Park Avenue, which ran along the river. It was the upscale area of our town and had large expansive lawns. I enjoyed it, especially the yard of a locomotive engineer whom was out of town most of the time. But I did love hearing his stories when I was fortunate enough to mow his lawn on the rare occasion he was in town. By the size and elegance of the place, I was convinced that railroad engineers must make millions of dollars a year, and the idea of the work and money really appealed to me. It’s a wonder that I never went for it. Guess the military and then marriage sort of interfered with my plans.

Hop Picker and Migrant Farm Worker

About the least fun jobs I've ever had, was picking stuff. Whether hops, strawberries, beans, or anything else, picking is not fun. It is long, hard, back-breaking work. I don't know how anyone could do that for more than a season or two. It's good experience when you're young, just to learn how tough work can be. But for the migrant farm workers who support their family, it's simply beyond my comprehension. My hats off to 'em.

All of us kids, my brothers Larry and Lyle, my sister Carol, and myself, all picked hops as teenagers while growing up in Grants Pass, Oregon. We had many hop yards, and it seemed to be a rite of passage, at least in our social economic strata, to pick hops during the summers. It is long, hot work, and the only saving grace is that hops grow on vines and much of the picking is done standing up. Perhaps they now have machines that pick the hops. I'm pretty sure they do. But back when we were kids, you picked from early morning to late afternoon, putting the hops in big burlap bags, and after it was filled, carrying that heavy laden bag to the weighing point and having your bag inspected and weight determined. Of course they checked to ensure you put only hops in the bags, and not filling the bag with leaves and vines, dirt or rocks, and things other than hops.

Besides hop picking, we would get jobs picking beans, strawberries, lettuce, potatoes, and other vegetables. Some of these things weren't picked so much as they were dug out of the ground. Horrible hard work to be doing all day. Back breaking because it was all stooping.

Also read “Hobo Junction”

Skating Rink Worker

On Saturday and Sunday afternoons, after doing school janitorial stuff on Saturday morning, I would work in the local roller skating rink. It paid a couple of bucks plus all the roller skating I could possibly want. Back then, you had skates that attached to your shoes. Only the rich folks could afford to rent shoe type skates that you actually wore, and there weren't too many rich kids around that could afford those. So my job was to sit in a booth and affix those skates because it is a chore that simply could not be done on your own. Little cranks clamped down the skates to the shoes, and straps across the top were suppose to hold them on. That was generally good for a little while, but almost always, at least for the active ones, they'd come off and have to be reattached. After everyone was in the rink and had their skates attached, then I'd put on a white cap with visor, a whistle, and roll around the rink trying to maintain order and essentially being the roller skate speed cop. And scraping up the gum that ended up on the floor. Sometimes you'd ignore it and watch all the exciting action as skaters hit fresh gum that caused massive body pileups. What fun! After skating was done, I'd have to detach the skates from the shoes, using that same little crank, put them away in their proper size bin, then sweep and clean the skating floor and rest rooms. I enjoyed the cleaning of the skating floor because I drove a great big old (for a little kid it was big) sweeping machine that was comparable to riding a huge riding mower today. Except that instead of cutting grass, it swept and buffed the floors. We didn't have much grass growing on the floors.

Bowling Alley Pin Setter

For a few months I worked at a bowling alley setting pins. No, we’ve not always had automatic pin setters, why that’s the easy way. Back when I was young, it was all done by hand, and it was hard work. We sat on a ledge that kept our bodies and feet out of harms way, or at least that was the theory of it. Occasionally pins would go flying so hard and out of control they’d strike us, usually on the legs, and ouch! It really hurt. A lot. Each pin setter handled two lanes, lifting the bowling balls and returning them in the return chute. We cleared the alley and channels of the toppled pins, and correctly positioning and spotted standing pins. After just a little while, the back would ache badly. It really was back-breaking work, the constant stooping, lifting of heavy bowling balls, the occasional hits on the body from flying pins. Only the young and strong were able to handle it for very long. Needless to say, I never considered this as a career occupation.

Riding Academy Stable Hand

After I left home for my big adventure at sixteen, I rode the rails as a hobo and then picked beans and other vegetables around Portland, Oregon. And lived in cheap flea bitten motels eating just one meal a day, and lots of peanut butter. I wanted to move up! I saw an ad for a stable hand posted in the transient worker district of Portland, Oregon and it caught my attention. After all, at that age, three square meals a day seemed pretty important to me, and this job provided free room and board. What could be better?

I rode the city bus out to the area of the riding academy, hitched rides to get closer, then finally walked the last mile or two. I was young, I was strong, and probably appeared not in quite full control of my senses. Just what they needed. They mentioned the three squares a day and something about pay, and that was good enough for me. I signed on.

I was provided a small room in the stables. Actually, it was not really bad, assuming one doesn’t mind the sights and smells of lots of horses sleeping shoulder to shoulder with you. The room had a small bed, a clothes hangar, a dresser and a picture of some famous horse on the wall. What more could I want?

My responsibilities were mainly to feed and water the horses, to brush them, to ready them for riders, and of course to keep the stables clean. Wasn’t bad, especially considering that a large part of the business for the riding academy was giving riding lessons to the young ladies of well to do families. “Ain’t life grand!” I thought. I was surrounded by more pretty and well-mannered young ladies than I’d ever before seen in my young life. Of course they rarely paid attention to me other than the polite and brief greetings and conversations, but I was in heaven. Now this was a career field I might enjoy! Alas, school beckoned which for the moment seemed to escape my attention, but then my father sent word to me that he was going to send the police to come get me and send me home. That got my attention, so I duly headed home but for what purpose I’m not certain. I mainly just played hooky from school and ran around with the other rabble rousers around town until I could get into the Navy as an underage recruit.

Forestry Service Fire Fighter

Every summer in Oregon, there were employment opportunities for strong and able bodied high school males to fight forest fires, of which we had many. Most set by lightening, some by accident, and occasionally some were intentionally set. When there was a forest fire, which was often, all you had to do was show up on the fire line and one of the crew chiefs would write down your name, when you started, and send you off with a shovel and other tools to build fire lines. This was a job opportunity available to all able-bodied males, so there was no distinction if you were merely some high school kid, or an adult with a family to feed. So the pay was regular adult wages. And since they needed these temporary firefighters, the pay was good. More money than I ever saw on any other kind of job. Money to buy cars, take girls on date, buy whatever you wanted, and to get in trouble with. The firefights would usually last a few days. During that time you’d be on the fire line, climbing up steep mountains, and clearing fire lines in hot weather, near really hot burning fires, day and night. You’d get to sleep a little bit, usually on the ground and with no sleeping bags or anything, but mostly, it was just hot, grueling work. The best part was when they brought the lunch meals to the fire line. Then you could sit down and have a carton of milk and a few baloney and cheese sandwiches, and some fruit, before getting back to work.

Because of the relatively easy way to make some quick money, some industrious but badly intentioned and less scrupled folks had a habit of setting an occasional fire simply so they could sign on to put the fire out. Probably, this was most frequently done by high school boys. It was a poor rural area and most of these workers were in dire economic conditions, so I’m sure the temptation was great. Usually they got caught and suffered the consequences. I’m not sure what the consequences were, but I’m sure it was a pretty hefty price to pay for the benefit of a little work.

During one summer, I applied and signed on as a permanent, but seasonal fire fighter. That meant dependable pay. We lived in military style barracks, about ten of us, and had three great meals a day served to us. I had to buy a pair of logger boots and couldn’t afford them, so I got some used one’s somewhere. The size was a bit small and they pinched my feet, but otherwise they did the job for me.

Sometimes we’d be awakened in the middle of the night to go fight a fire somewhere. Lots of lightening strikes and they usually set off fires. And we also responded to rural house and structure fires. We’d pile into the back of the fire truck and away we’d go, horns blaring, lights flashing, sirens on sometimes. It was the best part of the experience for me, for we just sat there and enjoyed the experience of riding outside in a siren blaring vehicle going at great speeds to some exciting adventure.

When things were slow and we weren’t fighting fires, we’d clear fire lanes. Usually not everyone was involved in this, with most of the crew staying back at headquarters to respond to any call that might come in, and to occupy their time they would pick up litter around the barracks and generally just do busy work. I hate busy work and litter picking up, so I always volunteered to go out and work on the fire roads. No one else wanted to since it was a lot more work than doing busy work around the barracks, but I’ve never liked sitting around. No adventure in that. Working on the fire lines did not involve a lot of hard manual work, it was usually pulling a cat or grader into a remote area and operating that to clear the fire roads in case they were needed. It was always done in beautiful remote areas, and it always gave me an opportunity to operate some equipment that I otherwise would never be permitted to do. Since this was off-road work, no licensing was required, if you could operate it, you could do it. So I had some good lessons in operating bulldozers and graders. It was extreme fun for me. There’s just something about operating big and powerful vehicles that move mountains! A boys and toys sort of thing.

I considered being a forestry fire fighter as a career. It was fun and an adventure. But if I did it, I wanted to join the “smoke jumpers”. These were the guys that jumped out of airplanes onto mountain and other nearly inaccessible places, and heroically put out the raging infernos. Now that seemed like a real adventure to me. Besides, they made a lot more money, and best of all, they seemed to be quite admired by the young ladies. When not jumping out of planes and fighting fires, from my observations, they seemed to always be in the company of lovely lasses. What a job! I could handle that.

I’m in the Navy Now!

When I was barely seventeen, and well below the legal age to enlist on my own, I convinced my mother it would be a good idea for me to join the navy, and all I needed was her signature giving me permission to join. Mom has always pretty well supported me in whatever I’ve wanted to do, and this was no exception.

No matter that I had not finished high school. I figured I could catch up to that later. And in fact, I did. While in boot camp I took the high school GED and passed with flying colors and now for all practical purposes, I was a high school grad. Now wasn’t that simpler and easier than sitting through all those boring classes? I got my diploma a full year earlier than my classmates, a considerable achievement considering that after my freshman year of high school, I was more often seen hanging around town, swimming, at the pool hall, or some other place of interest, rather than school. I don’t know why, but I’ve always hated sitting in classrooms. Other than math, I never found an interesting topic. And the girls weren’t paying that much attention to me, and I didn’t have the money to date them if they did. So what’s the purpose of sitting around being bored when you could be out having fun, earning money, and enjoying an adventure?

I was in boot camp in San Diego for several weeks, and then was sent to their hospital corpsman school at the Navy medical facility in San Diego. I figured that occupational specialty would prepare me for some land assignments somewhere, much preferable to bobbing around in the middle of the ocean somewhere.

My first assignment after school was at a blimp squadron in Brunswick, Georgia. My first experience with the south! I was intrigued, while also being astounded. I was not expecting on the bus ride from California to Georgia, to see interaction between races and cultures. I know that around Grants Pass, Oregon, I’d never been exposed to different cultures. That was an all white town, going so far as to make a widely popular and nationally recognized afro-American leave town before sunset when she once appeared for a benefit performance. So when I saw Afro-Americans, later referred to as blacks (called Negroes in the 1950’s and 1960’s) having to sit at the back of the bus while the whites rode up front, it astounded me. And in the bus terminals the fountains and rest rooms were marked either “white only” or “Negro only”. And restaurants were strictly for white or blacks.

The blimp squadron was at Glenco Naval Air Station where we also had a fighter squadron. It was one of only two blimp squadrons still being used by the navy, and the blimps were used for coastal observation for submarines. During this time, Cuba was a free nation and we enjoyed good relations with Cuba. There were a number of military flights each week and every weekend going to and from Cuba, and we were able to catch rides on these flights on a space available basis. Didn’t cost us a dime. Unfortunately, I saw no urgency to taking a flight to Cuba and constantly put it off. Until I was transferred, and by then, it was too late. So I missed my opportunity to go to Cuba.

While in Brunswick we did the normal corpsman things, like holding sick call and occasionally admitting an ill or injured seaman for a few days. More serious cases were taken by ambulance to the navy medical facility in Jacksonville, Florida. We enjoyed these trips because depending on the urgency, we might be permitted to run red lights and sirens. One pitch dark night on our way to Jacksonville, on a two lane rural highway (no Interstate then), we came over a small bridge that was elevated, one of those that go up and over quickly. Just as we crossed the bridge, doing about 70 mph, we caught sight of something in the roadway directly in front of us. At first it looked like a log lying across the highway. Too late to stop or avoid it, we ran over it. Turned out, the last thing we saw before hitting it, was that it was a big old alligator. Or perhaps it was a crocodile. At that speed, we didn’t have time to get a good look. No harm done to us. We bounced slightly into the air, came down with a thud, and continued on our way, sirens blaring and lights flashing. I never did ask the patient what they thought of it. It was a mentally distressed patient with episodes of violent behavior, and I wasn’t having much of a conversation with them anyway.

After Brunswick, I went to operating room technical school at the Naval Medical facility in Bethesda, Maryland. I actually really enjoyed that experience. Learned a lot of things. And I would spend much of my spare time stitching up oranges and stuff, and practicing tying sutures with one hand, and studying the art of suturing wounds. It was a challenge, and I became very good at it.

After training in Bethesda I was assigned to the world’s largest military barracks, Bancroft Hall at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Great duty, and as I was the single OR tech, I had responsibility for the fun stuff, like assisting or actually doing by myself, suturing of wounds, and keeping the small surgical room ready for use in an emergency. We also provided the medical function at all academy sports games when greats like Joe Belino and others attended.

During the summer and fall, it was always inoculation time for all the midshipmen, and we’d line them up and give shots all day long, day after day. In those days we used needles that had to be cleaned and autoclaved then used again, indefinitely. At least until they got so burred that they could no longer be used without inflicting great pain. Then a new invention came along for mass inoculations--an inoculation gun.

To stay busy during quiet times at the academy, I was the main volunteer to drive the midshipmen to appointments at the medical facility in Bethesda. I enjoyed the driving and getting away from my normal duties, and I did such a fine job they rarely used anyone else. My favorite vehicle to use was a new Plymouth that had a push button transmission on the steering wheel. I don’t think they were manufactured for many years.

While in Annapolis, I mostly lived off base rather than using the barracks. More comfortable, and I enjoyed getting off base and doing other things. These other things included being a taxi driver at nights, being a surgical scrub nurse for the local hospital on week-ends and nights, occasionally going to Greenwich Village in New York city, which at that time, was the place to be. Especially for a young single like myself. I also went to Baltimore a lot, dropped in to the USO in Baltimore a few times, and there I met a lovely young lady named Margie. From then on it was constant time with Margie, having dates and drives and going fun places. Eventually she agreed to share her life with me. More about that later.

When I wasn’t working extra jobs, going to Greenwich Village, or hanging out at the local VFW having cheap beer and listening to “the way it used to be” by the old timers, I’d go square dancing. I really enjoyed it, I met a lot of girls, some of whom I dated, and after the dances, we’d all go out to eat and drink a few beers. Sometimes we’d be in the mood for “King Tut” in which you consume vast quantities of beer. I usually won.

I had some friends, a retired Navy Captain and his wife, that I met while square dancing. They took a liking to me, perhaps pitying the lot of a lowly sailor far from home. In any event, they frequently invited me to their home on the Severn River, and many weekends were spent on the water after they told me to take their boat out and have fun. It was just a small boat with a little motor in back, and was used by them for some pleasant fishing and pleasant boating on the Severn River. I loved taking it down the beautiful path of the river, and would often take it all the way out far into Chesapeake Bay. Well, it wasn’t designed for that purpose, it was not meant to meet the challenges of rolling waves and such, so I had some exciting times in the bay. Everything worked out OK, ‘cause I’m still around. Small boats in big waters really isn’t recommended, and I wouldn’t suggest anyone else do it unless you are in possession of only half a brain.

From the Naval Academy I went to Fleet Marine Force Corpsman school. Actually being a part of the navy, marines get all of their medical care from navy doctors and corpsmen. At school we learned how to treat battlefield wounds and such, dressed up in marine uniforms with the only difference being the fact that we had on navy insignia, and we did lots of marching, running, marksmanship practice, and basically played war games. I loved the long marches, probably because I had such strong leg muscles and endurance because of my miles and miles of walking and bicycling all my life, and my mountain hikes and work in the forestry service. Frequently, after a long and fast paced twenty-mile march I‘d get smart and shout out something stupid like “that was fun! Let‘s do it again!” Needless to say, it did not endear me to many in my platoon. But I was merely being smart alec about it after watching many of the supposed tougher macho marines sit pooped and exhausted, and some not even able to complete the march at all. Us navy types were always anxious to point out to the marines that we could hold our own against them any day of the week.

We were called “Doc’s” by the grunts, and with our history of saving their lives during all the conflicts and wars, they had the greatest respect for us. A navy Corpsman never bought a drink when a marine was around because they always insisted on buying. That was fine with me.

I was an E-5 or HM2, so that was a NCO rank that gave me a lot of easy duty. I had my own private quarters and my duty nights consisted of strapping on a 45 and being the NCO in charge of a particular area. Once in awhile I’d jump in a jeep and make rounds of my assigned domain of barracks, warehouses and other structures. Although I had been trained and knew how to use the 45 pistol, I often wondered what exactly would I do if I saw an intruder breaking into a facility? Or a fight on base? Guess I’d have called the MP’s while I observed from a distance, and then fill out a myriad of reports. Anyway, duty was good. Went on a Mediterranean cruise and we had landing exercises after climbing down these rope nets from the ship deck into little flat bottom landing craft that would take us ashore where we’d jump out, run through some water, and yell “Geronimo” or something like that.

On the Mediterranean cruise we were packed armpit to armpit on a little flat bottom ship called an LST or Landing Ship Transport. Those flat bottomed boats never saw a wave they didn’t like. They’d go up, and they’d go down. It never went straight, level and flat a day in it’s life, even in calm harbor waters. Eating was a challenge with meal trays sliding all over the place, silverware flying, and drinks having an orgy in the air. Almost everyone, excepting myself, got sick, at least for the first few days. I never did. It was like an amusement park thrill ride for me. I’d get up front on the bow of the ship, and stand there for a long time just experiencing the thrill of the roller coaster ride which was especially eventful on the bow.

When getting off the ship after hitting port, it would take days before you got your land legs. For the longest time you’d walk with sea legs, expecting every step you take to be off balance. It’s just a real unnatural feeling.

While back on base in Camp LeJeune, attached to 2nd Marine Division, Company “C” as I recall, I would occasionally have to go over to the medical facility to help out as scrub nurse. Since this was a marine facility and the “doc’s” (corpsmen) had to operate with long periods of independence and without any supervision, all of the medical staff was anxious for the corpsmen to do as much as they were able on their own. This included surgeries. On minor wounds and surgical procedures, we didn’t need doctors present, that was simply what we were trained to do. But in the operating room, whatever we felt capable of, we were allowed to do, under a doctor’s watchful eye of course. This gave me the opportunity to once perform an appendectomy, with the medical doctor acting as my assistant, and to also delivery a baby, again under the watchful eye of the doctor. And a lot of other, less dramatic surgeries. I frequently assisted the surgeon while someone else was scrub nurse. Then I would hold retractors, and do a lot of the suturing. All of these were uneventful, except perhaps to the patient. But they were unaware of who was who or what was going on anyway.

I was going to make the military my career, indeed I even reenlisted before my four years were up. But, it didn’t quite work out the way I planned. I’d gotten married to Margie, and we were in Jacksonville, NC, home of Camp LeJeune and the 2nd Marine Division. Margie really wasn’t very happy there, after all, she was a Baltimore girl, and Baltimore was where she wanted to be. And these were days when a few of my Marine buddies and I would go out on occasion and see how many beers we could drink and how much hell we could raise. For the most part, we got home in one piece. One night was different though. It was the Army’s fault. A few doughboys showed up in town, in uniform no less, and had the audacity, and nerve to come to our favorite Marine watering hole. That didn’t sit well with any of us. Words were exchanged. Fists were engaged, and soon the whole place was ablaze in a melee of the highest order. It was a sight to behold, and to experience. But, it led to my first serious trouble in the military. A few days later, Navy Intelligence called on me. And two of my Marine buddies. They had questions. We had insufficient answers. Beating up on doughboys was not an acceptable course of action, at least not when you’re concurrently tearing up the local pub and scaring the locals. Long story short, I was given a choice—go before a military board and face almost certain demotion, loss of pay, and a horrible black mark on my record, or take a General Discharge under Honorable Conditions. It’s a step down from the usual Honorable Discharge, but has no real effect as all benefits and privilege of honorable service stayed with you. I was still entitled to the VA home loans and educational benefits, VA health care, and other benefits. Well, I didn’t like the prospect of facing a military hearing with the almost certain outcome, and Margie would rather see us living the civilian life in Baltimore anyway, so I took the discharge. And thus ended my military career. It was such an embarrassing episode in my life, I told everyone I was discharged because of back problems.

Operating Room Scrub Nurse

While in the military and living off base while stationed at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, I worked as a scrub nurse at the local general hospital on nights and week-ends. I was an OR (operating room) tech in the Navy, so this was a natural part-time job for me. Hospitals were always in need of people, and there were different employment standards and practices at the time. I doubt that it would be allowed today, not being an RN.

Being nights and weekends, most of the surgery was of the unscheduled type. Lots of orthopedic surgery to fix injuries from falls and accidents. An occasional appendectomy, and the more than occasional exploratory surgery. Back then (in the early 1960’s) there were no MRI’s, ultrasounds, and all the fancy diagnostic equipment we think of as commonplace in the 21st century, so if something was wrong and the available diagnostics couldn’t identify it, frequently the only available option was to open you up, and look around inside for signs of tumors, tears, ruptures, leaks, and other sundry malfunctions that might account for your medical condition. I guess it was akin to a car mechanic opening up the hood and handling all the hoses and belts, looking for leaks, cuts, tears and abnormal wear. Just sort of poking around to see what is wrong. Frequently the cause of the problem would be found, and the problem repaired or some poor part, like maybe a gall bladder, removed. If the problem was too severe for the general surgeon to handle on the spot, the patient would get sewn back up and rescheduled with a specialist or special operating team.

Taxi driver

For a few months while stationed at the U.S. Naval Academy, I spent nights and weekends as a taxi driver. It required a commercial drivers license, but not a difficult one to obtain. You merely went to the highway department and took some tests and presto, you could drive taxis.

Most of the income was derived from tips, so you hustled to get as many trips as you could, and to give the best service possible. Working late at nights and into the early hours of the morning, most of my trips were to or from the bars and restaurants. Generally, a little inebriation was a good thing for tips, but too much as they were likely to get sick. Then you’d have a horrible clean up job to do. I kept paper bags (no plastic bags back then), for the occasion.

For the good tips, it was important you know where you’re going, to get there directly and quickly, and to know the locations of all the places that folks wanted to go. That meant studying maps of the entire area so you’d have a good feel for where all the streets were. Of course you could get radio help from dispatch, but the radio coverage area was relatively small and if you got more than a few miles away you were out of luck. No cell phones back then. Of course you had the occasional customer, generally the very best tipper, that didn’t know where to go, they just wanted you to take them somewhere where they could meet up with young ladies of the evening. So, all of the houses and bars catering to such interests were of course in every taxi drivers arsenal of important information. Back then, there were no drugs, at least that I’m aware of, so we never had the drug buy problems, or going off to drug infested streets with fares. There were no gangs, at least around Annapolis, so gang activity also was not a problem. But, there were problem areas of the town, places where as drivers we just hated to go late at night. We’d simply pray that our taxi wouldn’t have a flat or breakdown in those areas, and we got out of there as quickly as possible.

Administrative Assistant

When I got out of the navy, Margie and I moved back to Baltimore, Maryland. I had to get a job fast. With my experience, training and interests, it would have been a natural for me to go into EMS or become a Physician’s Assistant. Only problem is that at that time, there were no EMS departments or PA programs. Ambulance service was generally provided by local ambulance companies or by hospitals, and it was almost entirely a low tech get ‘em to the hospital fast type of operation, and paid barely a minimum wage. So I looked around.

I was pounding the streets of Baltimore looking for a job. I saw an ad in the paper where they needed a male administrative assistant. And yes, back then you could hire based on age, looks, gender or any other reason you wanted. I headed off to this company, a steel fabrication and window blinds manufacturer, in the industrial part of town. I sat in the lobby, dutifully filling out my application. Some young big wig came down to the lobby area and started chewing out the receptionist, also serving as the HR representative, about where the applicants were for the job and why had they not hired someone for him yet. He looked around the lobby. I was the only one there. He asked the receptionist if they had given me the typing test yet, to which she replied, “he can type 65 words per minute”. Well, that seemed to satisfy the main criteria, and after a very brief interview, I was hired on the spot.

The pay was meager, even for the times. Generally, acceptably paid middle class workers were making in the neighborhood of about one-hundred dollars a week. I started at ninety. And I’ll never forget my first pay raise after six month--a dime an hour. I knew then that this would not be a career job for me.

My work week was forty-four hours, average for the early sixties. We worked every Saturday morning for four hours. Well, it was still less hours than what I was used to in the military, so I didn’t mind. I did not become aware of the forty-hour workweek until I went into computers.

My job consisted mainly of taking phone orders from my contact at Bethlehem Steel Corporation, typing them onto our production form, and getting them to manufacturing for production. Then I’d communicate scheduled dates and deliveries with my contact at Bethlehem Steel.

I remember two things vividly while I was at the company. The first was the assassination of President Kennedy. I can remember exactly where I was in the office when I heard the news, remember what I was doing, and everything else about the moment. It was so unbelievable, and the moment etched itself permanently into my memory cells.

The other major memory of the company was an event that resulted in my getting into computers, which at that time, were just starting to be used by the largest businesses. An order for Bethlehem Steel, our largest customer, got screwed up. It was such a bad event that the only two people in the company that could have screwed it up, myself, and my counterpart in production, were marched into the Chairman of the Board & CEO’s office and confronted. He very bluntly asked the two of us, “who did it?”. Well, I knew damned well that I’d done my job, and that I kept logs of when I take orders and take them to production. My counterpart responded that it wasn’t his fault; it had to have been mine. Well, there was no proof one way or the other, so the response of the Chairman was simply “if this ever happens again, you’re both fired!” Well, I don’t like having my career determined by someone else’s performance, so I knew at that moment I would be going somewhere else to make my fortune. I simply didn’t know where. But the event simply made sure that when the opportunity arose for a career change, that I was ready for it.

Security Guard

While living in Baltimore, being married and working at a steel fabrication company, money, as with most young couples just married and starting out, was always a concern. Margie worked as a dental technician, but that added income was at risk when she became pregnant with Sharon. We did not have insurance of any kind, probably very typical for young couples in our situation during the 1960’s. If you had medical issues, which usually are rare when you are young, you simply paid as you go. But, if you were having a child, then the doctor had to be paid in full before the delivery, and same for the hospital. If there were complications of any sort, that would be billed to you, but you were expected to pay quickly. No extended payment plans back then.

To replace the income lost when Margie quit work during her pregnancy, and to pay the doctor and hospital for the delivery, I took a second job, at nights, as a security guard at a local resort area on a lake. It lasted from late evening until about four in the morning, so there was not a lot of time for sleep in my life. It was a lot of walking, and the real reason for the security was not to operate as a detriment to crime or to apprehend anyone, it was principally to ensure that nothing was on fire and no intruders broke into the resort structures, especially the ones where guests were sleeping. I used a “Mickey Mouse key” which simply was a key that turned metal clock thingamajigs at various points on my rounds. This way they could tell at what time you made your rounds at that particular point. Complete rounds of all locations at the resort were expected several times during the night.

Did I mention that with both jobs, I was getting very little sleep? After just a few months on this job, I was really super tired one night and I sat down to rest just a bit. Well, I didn’t mean to, but being tired, I guess I sort of dozed off. Like for the rest of the night. I woke up with the sun.

Did I mention the Mickey Mouse key that keys track of where you are and when? Well, it told on me. Not making your rounds was a pretty serious offense, for which I had no excuse. No second chances. Thus ended my career as a security guard.

Drive-in theater concession worker

After my job as a security guard came to an untimely end, I found a second, night job at a drive-in theater. In the early sixties, drive-ins were still pretty popular, especially in the spring, summer and fall seasons. They were of course very popular with the teen crowd as a convenient place to hang around with others, or to woo the love of your life in privacy while enjoying all the advantages of popcorn, hotdogs, candy bars and pizza. Ain’t life grand!

Anyway, I worked in the concession stand making the Pizza dough and flipping it around in the air and kneading it into just the right size, thickness, and shape. I was good, and a sight to behold whirling that pizza dough through the air while wearing my little white uniform and tall white Italian chef hat.

I was working at the drive-in through the time Sharon was born and for probably a month thereafter. Having paid all doctor and hospital bills in full I was able to forever more forgo the pleasures of trying to maintain a second job. Besides, I had a new second job--walking Sharon nearly all night long to quiet her from the curse of colic. I seemed to be the only one that could calm her down when she was having an episode.

Computer Programmer & Software Developer

While working in Baltimore for a steel fabrication company, I became really frustrated at both the lack of earning potential and the outcome of the incident in which two of us were reprimanded. Probably nothing could infuriate me more than being reprimanded for something that I did not do, and I was ready for a change. And opportunity arose that ultimately led to a nearly forty-year career in computers.

The use of computers by business was just beginning. It was to be the golden era of technology for the next forty years. Until this time, computers were so big and so expensive to buy and to operate, than only the very largest firms, banks and government agencies could afford them. But then, along came transistors. It meant vacuum tubes in computers were rapidly becoming obsolete. And in the place of behemoth machines, superior computers with faster speeds and more memory and capability at a much smaller size and cost were taking their place. All of a sudden there was a demand for programmers, folks that could talk with those computers and make them perform the magic of payrolls and general ledger and inventory control. The dawn of a new age had arrived.

Having conveniently forgetting to tell Margie’s family of my somehow forgetting to go to college and get a degree, it was not a surprise to me when her brother called me up to excitedly tell me about an ad for computer trainee’s in The Washington Post. I dutifully went out and bought a copy, and eagerly opened it to find the display ad that covered nearly a whole page. “Trainee’s wanted for exciting opportunities in computers. College degree required.” Whoops, oh well, ignore that last part. Surely they weren’t serious. I called them. I got an application and I dutifully filled it out and sent it back to them. I lied my way right through the academic experience. I figured what the heck, it will take months before they catch up to it, and by then I’ll be in and such a valuable asset they’ll overlook it. You see, this was in a time before databases and telecommunications, and getting college transcripts by mail was a long and tedious process. Besides, most companies had a blind faith in their ability to ferret out the truth in applications during the interview process.

I got a call and was invited in one evening for testing. Several hundred had applied, and it was now down to about fifty. They gave lots of tests that evening, but there was an emphasis on logic and on math. I’ve always loved math, and it was about the only subject in school, other than girl watching, that I worked at and excelled. And the logic, well, that just seems to be second nature to me. It’s not something you’re taught--you’re either a logical type or you’re not. Most folks have logic to a degree, but I have logic in my veins in spades. Apparently I flew through the tests with flying colors, for next they invited me in for interviews. Several hundred applied for the job, now down to about ten.

I drove to Washington, D.C. for the interviews. I was clean cut and well dressed. I was military in appearance and manners. I was observant, and I asked the right questions, and didn’t ask the wrong ones. One interviewer would finish with me, and then I’d be introduced to another. I was having fun. This was a challenge, to see how long I could stay in this interview game. In a few hours they thanked me for my time and said that I would be hearing from them.

In a few days I did hear from them. They said they would like me to come on board and be a part of the team. As I recall, that was the first time I remember money being mentioned. It was a whole lot more than what I was making. They told me about benefits. Why they even had medical and life insurance and disability and retirement and paid sick days, and paid vacations. Whoever heard of all that stuff in a company? Certainly not me. It took me all of two or three seconds to think it over, and to reply in my most controlled and professional voice I could muster, “I accept your gracious offer.” And thus began my career in computers.

Four of us had been selected for the computer training. The others were Joel Epstein, a brilliant and jovial fellow. Also Ed Marks, just left the Air Force as a helicopter pilot. He was to be recalled in a few years to go back into the service as a helicopter pilot in Viet Nam. And Leo Kotchenreuther. No kidding. Last name always got chopped off somewhere in the middle when printing it on checks and other forms. Many years later, his son, not at this time born, would enter John’s Hopkins at age eleven or something like that, graduate with a PhD before he was out of his teens. Genius ran in that family. So there we were, the four musketeers, setting off on our journey into the land of computers.

We spent about six months at headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts. Actually, Lowell, Brighton, and Wellesley Hills. On weekends we’d be flown home to be with our families. While in Boston we were put in first class hotels, given expense reports, each provided a rental car. In other words, treated like royalty. I loved the programming classes. They were really stimulating and logically challenging. I took right to it and wrote many flawless programs in machine language and much to the instructor’s satisfaction. Each of us got high marks for performance, but I got super high marks. They said “look out for him, he’s a natural” whatever that meant. But at the moment, I was might happy to be having such a good time, making such good money and winning such glowing approvals. Ain’t life grand!

After training we came back to Washington, DC, and the Federal Systems Division of Honeywell. During the next few years it would be a race to the finish between IBM, Honeywell, Univac, Sperry Rand, Burroughs, GE, and a couple of others. The playing field became known as IBM and the seven dwarfs because IBM dominated the market. Honeywell and Univac seesawed back and forth in second place. Depended on how you counted the beans.

I rose really quickly, becoming a supervisor within a few months, a manager soon thereafter. I set up new training programs for our division and then I had to do the testing and interviewing and hiring. We were hiring maybe 3 or 4 a month and doing the training right there in Washington. Being a Federal Systems division meant that federal government agencies were our customers. So we liked to hire retired military types, and the more senior the better. Soon I had retired Colonels and Navy Captains working for me while in training, even had a Rear Admiral once. After I spent a year training them, they went into support or sales roles and made a real bundle of money, on top of their excellent military retirement pay. Life was good. It was exciting. It was grand. And it was all on the expense report.

I went on to learn many different computer programming languages, and I was as good at it as nearly anyone, anywhere. Few could hold my match when it came to designating computer applications and writing the code. I counted the languages one time years ago, and it was something like 28 computer languages that I became very proficient in. Actually, I imagine it’s much like learning a lot of different foreign languages.

There were several events in my early career with Honeywell that essentially sealed my status as the wonder kid, at least wonder kid of Federal Systems. And after these events, as far as they were concerned, I could do no wrong. As a consequence, I got by with more stuff than I should have. But let me tell you about these early events.

The first occurred about five or six months after my training, and before I became a supervisor in Washington. The federal government had a large contract to award under competitive bidding, and the computers essentially had to sort IBM 7080 variable length record files. IBM obviously had the inside track. Honeywell could be a fierce competitor on this for not only was the Series 200 line much faster than the monster IBM 7080’s, it was also much faster than what IBM was bidding, the S-360. Only one problem. These were IBM files, which meant IBM parity and collating sequence, but of more complication was the fact that they were variable length records. What a challenge, but surely our software guru’s in Boston home office was up to the task. So the requirements were dutifully sent to Boston to see what they could come up with to beat IBM and get this giant multi-million dollar contract. “Well, that’s a nice contract they said, but we don’t have a product to compete, and to develop one will take a huge amount of time. We can’t do it in the time frame needed.” Ouch. We needed that contract, so to our own and very large Washington group management said, “what can you guys do? The wimps in Boston say they can’t do it”. A week later, back came the reply, “no can do here”. We simply don’t have the resources to do a job of this complexity.” Ouch! We were quickly running out of time and putting ourselves out of the running for this all important contract.

Surely it can’t be all that difficult I mused to myself as I moseyed around and through a few hundred thousand lines of code in our own Honeywell version of a variable length sort. This was merely curiosity to see why everyone thought this was such a monumental job. Frankly, being young, inexperienced, and naïve to such matters, I didn’t see any reason why we couldn’t do it, and within the time needed. After my code exploration, I felt certain it could be done, and without a lot of time and effort.

A day, maybe two days later, I casually mentioned to my boss that I didn’t see what the big deal was in modifying our existing software to do the job and couldn’t understand why our FSMD team in Washington, and especially the home office software team, couldn’t do such an easy task. Looking at me with the most astonished look he almost screamed “easy task?!” Shook his head and walked away, astonished at the naivety of a lowly computer neophyte.

I wasn’t expecting it when he came to me the next day and said he’d been talking to the chief about my comments. He said “guess what? The chief said if it’s so easy, then for you to go ahead and do it!” “And by the way he added, we need it in sixty days and this doesn’t relieve you from your primary job. If you want to do it, do it on your own time at nights and on week-ends.” I was ecstatic! Really.

For the next two months I worked on cigarettes and coffee (yes, we could smoke in our offices in those days). I doubt that I ever got more than two consecutive hours of sleep. But things came together exactly as I thought it would. I found some spots in our software where I could plug in some hooks to I could grab the data, convert it, and feed it back into our system as Honeywell formatted data”. The idea worked flawlessly. Dozens of IBM 7080 variable length record tapes were borrowed from the federal agency. The chiefs and the muckety mucks came into the computer room, to either watch this miracle in action, or more likely they thought I’m sure, blow up in my face. They were astounded. It was done almost before it started. It ran in about ten percent of the time it took on the IBM 7080, which was a giant of a machine compared to our little bitty S-200. And we knew the S-360 being proposed by IBM would be much slower. “That output can’t be right was exclaimed. Impossible!” Send the files over to the federal agency and compare our outputs with their 7080 sort outputs. The results came back the next day. The results were identical. To make a long story short, we bid the contract, we demonstrated, we beat IBM hands down, and we won the largest contract FSMD had up to that point. Ain’t life grand!

Soon after, I was promoted to Supervisor. I started traveling all over the U.S. I was sent on difficult projects to do difficult things. And difficult things awaited me in Washington. Another challenge, maybe even bigger than the 7080 variable length sort.

Another contract opportunity. But this time, the federal agency said something to the effect, “you know, we have all these long computer runs that sometimes takes hours. If our air conditioning goes down or the power goes out, all is lost and we have to start over. We need something with a dynamic restart capability!” Wow, what a challenge. We certainly didn’t have anything like that. IBM didn’t either. No one did. In fact, mass storage devices, in the form of drums had only recently come on the scene. Well, I was intrigued with this challenge, because here you’re not dealing with making changes to one piece of software, you have to be able to accommodate any application written. And no one was able to do it. “I’ll do it” I exclaimed. I don’t know if it was also sent on to the software experts in Boston home office or not. All I knew is that I was full time, 24 hours a day on making this thing a reality. I developed an interface that any existing program with a simple change could plug into, and upon whatever frequency they wanted they could initiate a dynamic snapshot. I had to capture every single bit in memory, every locations parity and word marks, and every buffer and register and internal setting. I had to capture every tape drive status, and the exact point on tape of its location. Same for the card reader, and card punch. And I had to dynamically dump all this information to a drum then go right back to the application as though nothing had gone on. Transparency. And on demand, I would have to go get this information and do a dynamic recovery and return control to the application.

It was a dirty process and not so pretty because of the time constraints, but it worked flawlessly. We got the contract, but I’m not sure if my solution for dynamic checkpoints and recoveries was ever implemented by the federal agency or not. Many years later, much more sophisticated capabilities were built into the hardware and software systems.

Over the years I developed lots of interesting and creative solutions. When PC’s came on the scene, all of the mainframe programmers stayed away from them as being too simple and too much for hobbyists and far beneath their dignity. Frankly, I felt that the mainframe community was more afraid of them, using procedures, techniques, methods, and languages the mainframe programmers had never been exposed to. On my own and to learn the process, I started fooling with the microcomputers and linking them to mainframes. And one day I had the opportunity to land a contract that had a requirement for hundreds of remote PC’s to be connected to the centralized mainframe for sales and inventory control. From then on, this sort of became my specialty.

While I was still with Honeywell, I spent time running things in Atlanta, in the corporate home office in Minneapolis, and finally had a number of computer facilities on the west coast. I ran service bureaus and reinvigorated computer enterprises that had run into trouble. That’s just a fancy way of saying that I would go in and resize and achieve profits where none existed before. Terminating people almost became my middle name. I was to learn lots of lessons about business. One time I decided to close the downtown Los Angeles service bureau and move the operation about thirty miles away to Fullerton, California (well, that’s where I lived. Besides, operating costs were cheaper there.). The lady that did the billing said, “you can’t do that because I live downtown, and I’m not moving to Fullerton, and I’m the only one that can do the billing.” Really? Did I mention that I love challenge? I laid her off with a decent amount of money, and went about figuring out exactly how she did her billing job. It was all in her head. And the billing methods were amazing complex. But I got it all figured out, then I set about to write software that would properly bill our services, and a system for automatically collecting the needed information for billing. And in our first month of billing under this system, revenues jumped 50%. And climbed up from there. I was the hero again.

One day I got a tad too tired of hearing my employees say, “it can’t be done!” What a ridiculous statement. Of course it can be done. Anything can be done. It’s merely a matter of how much effort and resource you want to put on it. Anyway, I had these big 6” diameter buttons made, red letters on a white background, and all it said was CAN DO. And I made all my employee’s wear those badges anytime they were at work. I wanted to change attitudes. A major bank had a major branch office in our office building. A couple of years later, their national campaign was CAN DO. Maybe they got the idea from me. Maybe they just sort of arrived at that on their own.

I had a huge office in downtown Los Angeles at 700 Wilshire Boulevard that I visited once in awhile. Otherwise it sat vacant when I was not there. It had belonged to a Honeywell VP, but it was mine now. And I loved it. Because it had these huge glass windows from floor to ceiling, built in custom furniture, and the darned thing was big enough to have a hoe down in. Butt what really made it neat is that it looked out onto the streets of the downtown financial district. And this was the seventies when all the ladies were wearing micro skirts and in the financial district, the sights of the young ladies was astounding! Scurrying everywhere. I often had senior executives visiting the LA offices that asked if they could borrow my office if I wouldn’t be using it. Heck, I could have made a fortune renting that office out.

During my days with Honeywell, and for many years thereafter, the dress code was strictly black shoes, black socks, dark blue suit, white shirt, and tie, hair neatly trimmed. This was especially true for the major firms in the computer industry, but this dress code lasted for decades later. In the 1990’s the dress code loosened up a bit by having “dress down” and “casual Friday’s” and then the dress code was professional looking casual dress, no ties or jackets. But, all my life it was coat and tie dress, and I guess I’ve tied my tie with a three-in-hand knot perhaps thirteen thousand times. That’s a lot of tie tying! I enjoyed the dress up look, especially since I had just come out of the military, and I was used to it anyway. I like shiny shoes, ties, neatly trimmed hair and to this day cringe when I see shaggy or dirty hairstyles, or a rumpled or unkempt look of employee’s. Grungy dress should be reserved for work around the yard and lounging around in the backyard at home, not on the job. Personally, I would never hire someone with an unkempt, unmanicured look, even if he or she was the most brilliant and talented individual in the world for that job. That’s just how I feel about it.

My experience with running computer service bureaus was interesting and informative, and I learned a lot about product pricing and marketing. We would process payrolls, financials, inventory control, stock market back office (now that’s a complex business!), and the usual stuff that makes businesses run efficiently. Knott’s Berry Farm in California was one of my larger customers, and I always enjoyed meeting with them and getting in a little fun time as well. One of my customers was a large mail order firm, from which I learned a lot about pricing. They would have a new product, without a clue as to what price they should sell it for. I learned that selling price has zero to do with what a product costs to manufacture or acquire; it has everything to do with what a consumer wants to spend for it. Price it too low and it comes across as cheap and worthless. Price it too high and it’s perceived as too pricey and not a good value. There is one “just right” price, and that is going to change depending on market conditions, the consumer audience, the region of the country and other factors. For example, the same watch might sell best at one price in the New York City region, but sells best at a different price in Des Moines. So, you price by what the market will bear. And you determine that price by test advertising. That same watch will be advertised at hugely differing prices in different regions and to different audiences, and you soon learn what the right price was for the most effectively marketing of that watch.

Honeywell finally decided to close down the service bureaus and stick strictly to the computer manufacturing and sales aspect of business. Sort of a back to the core business sort of philosophy. I oversaw the shutting down and transition of the west coast service bureaus, and then had absolutely nothing to do. Nothing. Had a secretary and a huge, well furnished office, but I had nothing for her to do but busy work. With a little patience, I would have been off on a new and grand adventure for Honeywell, but, did I mention that I don’t have a lot of patience? I left the company after twelve fun filled years, and took a brief hiatus, becoming a U.S. Congressional Campaign Manager for a few months before again getting back in my computer harness.

Over the next many years I sort of rotated between contracting myself out under my own company, using a chapter “C” corporation for the best tax and liability advantages, called, appropriately enough Russ Kelly Associates, Inc. It was just me, I rarely had anyone working with me on the contracts. During these years I developed a mainframe electronic mail product that became the hottest commodity of it’s type, selling in twenty-one countries and overtaking IBM’s comparable product as measured by the number of units sold. I undersold it though and didn’t have enough business moxie to pull it off, and WizardMail became one of those interesting solutions of the past. A lot of companies used it for a lot of years though. And a follow on product that I developed called WizardTalk used voice synthesis to read your mail messages to you over the phone. That was for salesmen and others that traveled a lot, and this was before the day of laptops. Great ideas even though they were years ahead of their time. They could have made a fortune for me with sufficient backing and a whole lot more business savvy. Did I mention that I’m more of an innovator and inventor than I am a businessman or financial whiz? One thing I did learn from this, is that in business, you need to get inputs from business experts. Get yourself mentors that have been there, done that. I stumbled along the way by ignoring corporate cultures, and this ended up causing a lot of high-level corporate types to wait for my first stumble that they could then exploit. I mean, I did things like take over corporate space in the middle of the night. Well, I needed it and it was sitting vacant, and besides, I’d already asked the senior V.P. that owned the space if I could use it since I needed it and he obviously didn‘t. He said no. No is not a good word with me, especially if it‘s illogical. In the middle of the night, I simply occupied the space. That was the best time since it could be accomplished without interfering with operations, but perhaps a better reason is that in the middle of the night, I had no interference from a recalcitrant executive not wanting to give me the space. Not a real smart move, although I did keep the space. But I had a new enemy in the corporation. One really does need friends in high places in a company, not enemies.

My most fun and interesting times in computers was during Y2K days when I was pretty much considered one of the world’s leading professionals on year 2000 remediation. Many, if not most of the federal government websites linked to my site as a source of reliable information about the issues and solutions to year 2000 turnover. I had a highly popular website that I kept constantly updated with the latest and best advise related to avoiding year 2000 problems, and methodology. I traveled all over, I gave speeches, I developed some really neat and sophisticated remediation software, and essentially y2k, as it was popularly called, allowed me to have fun in my final years in the computer field. The remediation software I developed allowed me to convert about 15-20 mainframe computer programs each day to y2k compliant software. This was a process that normally took several days for a single program by a programmer. My productivity was astounding on this conversion. As I say, it was fun and I commanded much respect and money during this time. In 2009 you could still Google search a lot of information about me and my y2k activity by searching on Russ Kelly y2k, also Russ Kelly year2000.

In 2000, the massive efforts for y2k conversion were over, companies had spent tremendous sums on technology during the conversion, the economy was going in the tanks, and I was getting old. All at the same time. I went to work for a technology company out of California that was working on defense system conversions. This was undoubtedly the worst job of my career in computers. Working entirely around the methodology and constraints of civil service employees and their large egos. There were an awful lot of really good civil service employee’s as well, but there was more than the usual share of backstabbing and inefficiencies to frustrate a private industry trained take charge, full speed ahead type like me. My immediate superior with the civilian contractor firm was the boss from hell. And I was sort of stuck in my job because of the good money and the dearth of available technology work at the time. In hindsight, regardless of the availability of work, the economy, whatever, I should have left that job as quickly as I became aware it was not going to be a good fit for me. Never stay in a job you hate, it simply takes too much out of you. And the business world has enough really great types of folks to work with, so it is totally unnecessary to work with idiots.

At this point, I should have done what I had done a few times in the past when contract work was scarce. I should have made a deal a prospect simply could not refuse. On those occasions where I found a particular well-suited contract that I wanted to obtain, if things were not coming together for me on a close, I’d make an offer they couldn’t refuse. I’d offer them a week of my time for free, just so they can see how I fit in and what kind of results I could produce. Every single time I was taken up on this offer, I ended up with large multi-year contracts. It was an effective technique for me, and a free week beats another week of calls and pounding the pavement trying to put deals together. Besides, once the week was over and they signed me on for a large project, I billed them for my time for the week anyway. It was always paid and without question.

Then the terrorist’s attacks of 9/11 (September 11, 2001) happened. I’ll never forget where I was and what I was doing when the planes hit the world trade centers. It was not too long before that I had been in New York, and I had taken a helicopter from LaGuardia over to Newark International. On the way, it stops, or did stop, to discharge and pickup passengers at the world trade centers. They were impressive structures. Anyway, I was working at a defense installation in Charleston, South Carolina when news of the attacks on the world trade centers, the Pentagon, and probable White House attack (thwarted by passengers and crashed in a field in Pennsylvania) came over the wires. On base, and almost immediately, heavy concrete barriers were placed anywhere they didn’t want a vehicle to be able to get to. Which was nearly everywhere.

Funds dried up for the project I was on, installing financial applications at military installations, the money being diverted to security issues. The country was in turmoil, businesses weren’t spending money on consultants, and my life was about to take a nose-dive into the turmoil of tumultuous times, perhaps the darkest time of my life. And thus ended my computer career. On 9-11-2001. Actually, my final day on the contract was December 31st of that year, but for all practical purposes, the writing was on the wall September 11th.

During my career in computers, probably sixty or seventy percent of my time was as an independent consultant and developer, and the rest working for other companies. Customers for my private consulting/software development practice generally got me engaged, sometimes with the intention of a brief project for a few months, but it almost always turned into multi-year assignments simply because I was so good at what I did. They all got a lot of “bang for their buck” and I always made a lot of money while at the same time enjoying the freedom of a private practice. My customers included Hoffmann-LaRoche in Nutley, NJ, Tanner Companies in Rutherfordton, NC, Insignia Financial in Greenville, SC, Bibb Manufacturing in Macon, Georgia, and PYA/Monarch (later US Foodservice) in Greenville, SC among others. I also had several national companies that sent staff to my “Seminars of Excellence” series that I ran for a year or two, teaching very advanced programming skills for mainframe programmers. That was a good gig, especially because I would charge huge fee’s, collected the money up front, sometimes months in advance, and incur no costs until much later. It was a great money flow idea, but I’m not cut out to teach the same thing in a classroom over and over. I’m too easily bored, no matter how easy or how good the money.

Companies that I worked for as an employee included Honeywell (in Washington, DC, Boston, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Los Angeles), Abco Distribution, Los Angeles, Daniel International (later Fluor-Daniel) in Greenville, SC, Sirrine Engineering, Greenville, SC, Steel Heddle Manufacturing, Greenville, SC, and Tecolote Research (Washington, DC, Norfolk, Virginia, Charleston, SC).

All in all, computers were a great career for me. I got in at just the right time as transistors came on the scene, and computers were being newly marketed to businesses of all sizes. And I retired from the field as the industry was essentially winding down from its “go go” fun days. When I got in, it was also a time of great opportunity for WASPs (white Anglo-Saxon Protestants), for males in general, and a time when school records and databases simply were not easily available for checking the credentials of individuals. All of these factors worked to my advantage. Today, there are few opportunities for those without the proper credentials, degrees, the right schools, and the right grades. And the field of workers is so much greater as a result of gender equality and EEO.

Life's lessons learned from my computer career.....

1- Think outside the box. Find creative solutions for persistent problems.
2- Have a “can do” attitude, think of ways things can be done, not excuses why it can’t be done.
3- Find a mentor and spend time and effort on making it an effective mentoring relationship.
4- Be mindful of corporate cultures, personalities, and power players. Be darned careful about making enemies because someday, they will get their dues at your expense.
5- Remember, there’s always a version 2, things don’t always have to be the “Cadillac” version the first time around. A half of a loaf is better than no loaf at all. In developing new ideas, concentrate on functionality and reliability. Add “bells and whistles” later.
6- Self promote but be creative, don’t let it look like you are “tooting” your own whistle. Put it in the perspective of new solutions or communicating and keeping everyone informed. If you’re really good, everyone is going to know it without you telling everyone how great you are, but, don’t be shy in accepting or communicating achievements.

Also read “The Way It Was In Business”

U.S. Congressional Campaign Manager

When I left Honeywell, I was living in Fullerton, California, and had plenty of time on my hands. Having received a generous separation agreement, finances were not critical and allowed me the luxury to take my time on deciding on what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. What I settled on, at least for a few months, was to get involved in politics. And what better way, then to run a U.S. Congressional campaign? Didn’t matter that it was for a democrat, nor did the total lack of experience in such matters dampen my enthusiasm.

I seemed to have the requisite abilities to run the campaign, at least for the satisfaction of the financial backers and the candidate himself. I had a lot of senior level executive business experience, I was outgoing and gregarious, I loved the party circuit, I was creative, and I enjoyed long hours, smoozing with the power brokers, and late into the night parties. What more did you need in a campaign manager?

Henry Schultz was a great candidate for the U.S. district seat that included Long Beach, California. He was suave. He was an experienced health care attorney. And he had excellent financial backing. The nation was just getting over Watergate (of Nixon fame), and I believed that the voters in the district would be well served by seasoned and mature professionals, and I promoted him that way. Unfortunately, I read the voters wrong! What voters all over the country wanted, and elected into office that watershed year, was young, attractive, inexperienced leaders--the antitheses of the experienced, and mature professionals.

We had a lot of parties. I did a lot of smoozing of the power brokers. We had a good time. And we suffered a horrible defeat, coming in last in the primaries in a field of probably six or seven candidates. And thus ended my brief career in politics.

Professional Speaker

All of my life I absolutely hated the thought of getting up in front of a group of people to give a talk. It was always a frightening and intimidating experience. In business, I always made sure that I used lots of slides and other visuals so the attention would not be focused on me personally.

After my WizardMail product had achieved a great deal of popularity in the business community and around the world, I was asked to speak at a large convention in West Palm Beach, Florida. The largest groups of businesses to use the product were the banking and the insurance industries. Well, the insurance industry asked me to come and speak to them at their annual convention. I said “sure”, after all, it’s not every day you get a paid vacation on the sunny sandy shores of Florida. They sent me my plane tickets, and away I flew to the convention. A chauffeured limousine awaited me at the airport, ready to whisk me away to the area’s fanciest five star hotel. I was given a big Cuban cigar to smoke on the way. Ain’t life grand!

I arrived at the hotel, and as I entered the lobby, the party of Prince Charles of England was just leaving. That’s the kind of place it was. I went to my suite, and thought about what I was going to say for forty-five minutes in the morning. I wasn’t too worried about it, I knew my subject better than anyone else in the world. And not being of few words, I felt I would not have a problem regaling them with stories and success of using electronic mail on mainframes, especially if they were only smart enough to use my product.

The next morning I duly arrived and I was exceedingly well introduced to the audience. It was a packed room. It had probably two hundred top-level insurance industry executives. Did I mention that getting in front of an audience and speaking usually paralyzed me?

There I was, the cameras were rolling, a newspaper reporter or two waited for me to begin. And they waited. And waited. I was speechless! Everything I knew about the topic mysteriously evaporated from my brain. And I wasn’t using my slide presentation crutches, this was to be pure talking. And the cat had my tongue! I somehow stumbled through what surely was the longest forty-five minutes of my life. I’m not sure what I said, I don’t remember a word of it. I did not get a standing ovation. I’m not even sure that anyone thanked me. I doubt that they made the tapes available for sale to others that could not attend. I doubt there was any article in any of the newspapers.

I left the hotel more quickly than I arrived. No limousine, only an old yellow cab that I had to call myself. No Cuban cigar on the way to the airport. But on my way, I made a vow. I would learn to speak to audiences.

I joined Toastmasters, a speaking organization for folks that wanted to become capable, even proficient, at giving presentations and speeches. And I became very good at my speaking. In fact, I grew to love getting in front of audiences and talking. It was a rush. I became involved past the club level by doing area, division, and district statewide stuff, and holding offices at the state level. I was selected as Toastmaster of the Year twice in District 58 encompassing all of South Carolina. I finally was having fun with my speaking. Bring on the audiences.

By the time 1998 and 1999 rolled around, and all of the work on year 2000 conversion efforts got underway, I was primed for speaking before large audiences. And I was an established expert on the topic, with ongoing almost daily contact with experts all over the world. Folks from countries far too many to count, came to me for advice, and here in the United States, I was frequently asked to speak. I always accepted these invitations. Most of them were not for the money, I simply enjoyed doing the speaking engagements. My airfares and hotels were fully paid. And I was generously plied with gifts of all manner and types, and frequently good-sized checks were presented me, even though not asked for nor expected. I finally was sought after as an informative, and entertaining, polished speaker.

In the summer of 1999 I was contacted by an international data storage firm and asked if I was available to give a series of speeches in the capitals of South America. They wanted me to present year 2000 remediation solutions to all of their clients in South America. Of course I readily agreed. I named a price that frankly, was a princely sum for any professional speaker. And of course they were to pay all costs associated with my travel, including first class airfares, travel while in country, meals, hotels and incidentals. And oh, by the way, my wife had to accompany me and her expenses would have to be covered as well. They readily accepted and I had just a few brief weeks to get my passport and to get a Visa for Brazil. For this, I either had to travel to Miami or New York to visit the Brazilian embassy, or to trust the delivery services and the embassy to take my passport, process the paperwork, and return the passport, visa and all other necessary documents within the short time available. Not wanting to take time off from my clients, along with the costs of travel, I decided on trusting the delivery services and the efficiency of the Embassy of Brazil. The trust was not misplaced as I received everything I needed on the day before I was scheduled to leave.

For the next twenty-one days I traveled to São-Paulo, Brazil, on to Lima, Peru, then to Buenos Aires, Argentina and Santiago, Chile. Then on to Mexico City and Caracas, Venezuela. It was not really in that order, but those are the spots to which I was sent. I was amazed at the distances to and between these places. South America is a huge place! And the size of these cities! Why some of them make New York City seem like a quaint little town. Accommodations and my speeches were all in five start hotels. Everything seemed to be covered in gold, even the dustpans that the immaculately dressed porters seemed to always carry around to dust up the merest speck of dust or debris. Everyone in the hotels spoke excellent English as these were international places. My speeches took about an hour and one-half, and two translators were used each time. They spelled each other about every fifteen minutes. Most of the audience was composed of top-level CEO’s and heads of technology groups, probably graduates of the finest American Universities, and most spoke English quite well. It seemed to be a badge of honor among them to skip the headphones that were provided for the translations, and to listen instead to my presentation in English.

I discovered during my first speech, that using my brand of humor on foreign audiences was not going to be my strong suit. Perhaps something was lost in the translation, or perhaps I simply don’t have the ability to regale audiences with humor. Whatever, my humor, laced throughout my speech fell on deaf ears. Nary a laugh, not even a little chuckle could be heard anywhere in the room. Needless to say, I promptly ripped all references to humor from my prepared speech. The only really light moment, the occasion when the entire audience erupted in howls and laughter, was quite unintentional. I was introduced by a Senior Chicoln, pronounced “she cone”. Well, as I am wont to do, I badly mangled my words when I thanked Senior Chicken for the wonderful introduction. The audience erupted in laughter. I asked Senior Chicoln if he cared to accompany me on the rest of my speaking tour so he could do my introductions. Sadly, he declined.

Before each talk I would spend probably one to two hours giving interviews to local press and national trade publications, and giving TV interviews. After the speech I generally was provided a tour of the important local sites, either escorted or the travel arranged by reliable and known travel services. My every want and whim was provided for. A day for travel, a day for speaking and interviews and a day for seeing the sights, then off to a new location. I was living like a rock star, and I thought to myself, gee, I could do this forever. And indeed I could have. I finally understood the lure of the life of rock stars and celebrities of all types. Too bad my fame was to only last the proverbial fifteen minutes. Oh well, at least I had the experience. Ain’t life grand!

One thing I learned during this speaking tour throughout South America, is how technology can change third world countries into world-class powers. Everywhere I went in South America, it seemed that everyone on the street had a cell phone in their ear, talking as they walked, drove, and dined. This was a region hooked on instant communications. The hotels automatically handed you a cell phone when you checked it. It was a way of life. Yet just a few years earlier, there were no phones to speak of in the countries I visited. Maybe in the major metropolitan areas, but certainly not outside of the big cities. Communications was archaic before the cell phone, because the vastness of the remote countryside and the huge cost of landline infrastructure was simply too great for countries of modest economic means. But cellular technology changed all that. With cellular, and in some areas of the world the equally accessible but more costly satellite phones, people and businesses could easily communicate. With each other, and more importantly, with family, friends and business associates scattered across the globe. Easy telecommunications changed the economics of entire countries and continents seemingly overnight. No longer would anyone, anywhere, be in communications limbo, in isolation from the rest of the world.

I had many other fun speaking engagements, but within the confines of the U.S. Perhaps my most enjoyable was speaking at a conference at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho. The day after my presentation some of the professors took me on an airboat ride into the wilderness area on the Snake River. This is a pristine area and anything that goes in has to come out, leaving only your footprints behind. A fantastic outing!

Since these experiences of speaking during 1998 and 1999, I’ve not really had occasion to give any speeches. I guess everything else would be sort of anti-climatic now.

Radio Host

In 1999 I had a weekly half-hour radio program simulcast on Greenville and Spartanburg, SC stations, called Y2K and You. I had a co-host by the name of Pam to add some interest and provide some interaction on the issues. Also, I felt that would assist in building audience in the female segment of the population. The program was about year 2000 issues as it related to families and persons in the listening audience area, and what steps should be taken to mitigate any problems from the year 2000 roll over. I would also take a few questions from the listening audience, and would occasionally have a renowned y2k authority guest, present by telephone interview. It was reasonably popular, however no surveys were ever taken as to the size of the listening audience that I’m aware of. The weekly program ran for about six months, ending in late 1999. It was a lot of fun to do.

Author

I’ve written too many information technology articles, and a few general business articles, that have been published in various trade publications, to list here. During our “down sizing” in 2002, I threw my copies of most of these journals and publications out. They simply occupied too many boxes of useless stuff to continue storing when you have little space for what you do have left.

I also wrote many very large user manuals describing the functionality of a variety of business applications. Things like sales order processing, payroll, master production scheduling, inventory control, critical path methodology, and the like. This is where I developed a style of writing that explained things in very simple terms, because most of the audience that would be using it, frankly, needed it to be simple and easy to use.

In 1999 I authored a book on year 2000 issues called Y2k: An Equal Opportunity Destroyer wherein I discussed the year 2000 roll over issues and how to mitigate the responses. It was paperback, and although well written (of course, how else would I describe it), it was not marketed aggressively and I didn’t sell a whole lot of copies. Probably gave away more than I sold. It did get me in the habit of an almost daily routine of writing. I also learned from the experience to be cautious in the use of editors to put the finishing touches on books. If you get a college English type to edit the final version, the language and punctuation will be cleaned up so much as to be unreadable, or at the very least, uninteresting. Books need to be written the same way that you speak in conversation. Otherwise, it’s simply not you and does not convey your message very well. That lesson was probably the best experience coming out of the writing of the book. It was registered with the Library of Congress.

This memoir about my life, will be the last written work by me. It incorporates everything I’ve learned to this time, which likely, isn’t terribly impressive to anyone, myself included. But, at least I’m having fun with it, and it is a record for future generations that may have an interest in knowing more about their ancestors. To that extent, it has value far greater than the little effort needed to write it.

Columnist

In 2007, I started writing my family and friends by e-mail, about my adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and at Yosemite National Park. I did not have access to use the Internet to send and receive my mail except by “borrowing” a WiFi signal, sitting in my truck outside the front doors of a church, about forty miles from Yosemite. During the week, I’d write a piece of my “weekly epistle” and since I couldn’t send it right away, I had lots of time to reread what I wrote, tidy it up, add additional content, and essentially make it a more refined telling of the adventures of Russ. I tried to be vivid, I tried to tell the funny things that happened. And on my e-mail list was an editor with the Anderson-Independent Mail in Anderson, SC. He later told me he almost fell off his chair laughing when reading some of my mail, and he passed it along to the editor of a newly minted publication called Oconee Today. It was a stand-alone free publication available at all of the local convenience stores, and was also an insert once a week in the newspaper. The editor of Oconee Today did a fantastic job of taking my material, and improving it by about one-thousand percent. Julie Belschner had a wonderful way of putting my material in the best light. We titled my almost weekly column Rambling Russ, and that is what sort of stuck as my moniker ever since. Unfortunately, the severe economic problems in 2009 meant the demise of that wonderful publication, and with it, my column.

Thanks Julie for showing me what a really interesting article looks like. I hope I’ve learned and incorporated just a few of the lessons I learned from that venture.

Car Relocator

I don’t know what else to call it, I simply relocated peoples cars. If someone wanted their car moved from one part of the country to another, and if they didn’t want to do it themselves, they had to hire a moving firm, auto transporter, or someone like myself, to move it for them.

Working independently, I could keep the cost to a very reasonable amount when compared to their other options. I set up an Internet site called LetRussDriveIt.com, described my services, gave a number they could call for a quote, and waited for business. I did not have long to wait. Then one customer led to another by word of mouth, and soon I had all the business I could handle. Most of my car moves seemed to be from Long Island, New York, to southern California or someplace in New Mexico. Frequently I would move cars from the north to the sunny south in the fall, and then they had me move the car back home in the spring. It was fun and exciting for a while, but the part I really came to dislike was the constant flying in the months and years that followed the 9-11 terrorist’s attacks. Air travel became an extreme aggravation, and it simply lost its appeal for me. But, it was a good source of much needed income for a couple of years.

Once in awhile someone would rent a large U-Haul truck, load it up, and ask me to drive it cross-country for them. Typically the professionals that had a lot of stuff to move, but were only given a fixed amount of money by their employer for the move. Anything they saved they could stick in their pocket, so there was a lot of incentive to do it themselves. I moved prominent and renown physicians personal effects into New York, and I moved a professor, the daughter of one of the country’s leading economists, from Clemson, SC to a large University in California. She was a real cutie and she insisted in riding along in the truck, so I towed her automobile behind the truck, and off we went on a very long journey. Huge mistake, she drove me nuts and I felt I might be in need of some real serious mental health counseling by the time the trip was over. It got so bad that I had to tell her to get in back of the truck, among her possessions, or she was going to have to drive herself out there as I was heading home. So, she rode in back, not really a good idea because of the possibility of exhaust fumes, but I felt that was a better risk than continuing to let her ride up front with me. That almost certainly would have led to a bad outcome. Every few hours I’d stop the truck and let her out to run around. Sort of like walking the dog. The rest of the trip was peaceful, but I never repeated the mistake of someone riding in the cab of the truck with me.

Federal Government Contract Worker

I don’t have much to say about my brief sojourn into the misadventures of working as a government contract worker. The federal government, in its Civil Service cadre of professionals, has many excellent and talented professionals. But they also have more than their share of back stabbing, get ahead at all costs, types. You don’t find these types so much in commercial businesses because they generally get booted sooner or later. In the government, it’s nearly impossible to get rid of poor performers, you merely promote them and move them on to some other opportunity in the organization. Then they become someone else’s problem. It’s not a problem because it’s not your money you’re wasting. The profit motive is a pretty strong incentive in business to keep only your best people. That is missing in the Civil Service. And contractors that deal with primarily with federal government contracts, operate much in the same way.

I spent nearly a year working with a large technology contractor that had won a contract with the Defense Department to install financial applications in many of the major military installations. Frankly, it was a behind the times by two generations type of product, but hey, they had the contract and apparently it produced the results the defense department wanted. Within my organization with the technology contractor, I had the boss from hell. And a few types with the federal agency, civil service types, weren’t a lot better, being more concerned at making themselves look good.

My experience with the job came to an abrupt end with the terrorist’s attacks of 9-11. And with it, the end of my computer career. Time to go do more interesting things.

Driving Instructor

You have not lived until you’ve taught a teenager to drive! It’s an experience no one should do without. If you’re so lucky as to avoid this challenging task, count your blessings.

In Seneca, South Carolina, after retirement from the computer industry, I studied a little bit, then went to our state capital in Columbia to meet with a specially designated examiner, talked awhile, took an exam, and presto, I was a state certified driving instructor. My fun was about to begin!

Being a driving instructor, especially for teenagers, is a bit like flying a plane. Hour after hour of pure boredom, broken up by brief moments of sheer terror. Most of my students were teenagers, and most knew the rudiments of driving, having learned from parents, grandparents, and on their own. I merely stretched their abilities and spent a lot of time in the different scenarios they would sooner or later run into. After explaining things in advance, I’d have them practice some of the more difficult and risky driving environments. Occasionally, I would get really surprised. A student would be doing all the right things, and making the right driving decisions, then whamo! They’d pull right out in front of an eighteen-wheeler barreling down the highway. More than a few times I’d have to use the dual control brakes, or grab the wheel from their inexperienced hands, sometimes both.

But, being a driving instructor is a very boring thing to do. Did I mention that I’m easily bored when I have to do the same thing over and over? About six months without new and increasing challenges is about all I’ve ever been able to handle in a job or assignment. After that, I’m bored stiff and begin thinking about other things I can do that would be more interesting and adventuresome for me. So, once boredom set in after about six months of this, I went on to other adventures.

Dump Truck Driver

In my early sixties, I was still trying to discover just what it was I wanted to do with my life after retirement from computers. I knew that I always loved driving, and was drawn to trucks and planes and locomotives. And I knew that being near the end of my working career, being a locomotive engineer or a commercial pilot were simply out of the question. I needed something to do that was more immediate. And what better opportunity then to drive big trucks? I would satisfy my need for change and adventure, and my love of driving and travel. Only problem was, I had no commercial truck driver’s license. No problem. I signed up for truck driving school, and in just a couple of months, I was a truck driver. Backing up big rigs and shifting all of those ten speed gears smoothly was probably my Achilles heel, but that would be overcome with time and experience. The hardest part of my test by the Department of Transportation examiner, was the pre-trip inspection. There we had to know every single component of the truck, under the hood, on and about every piece of the tractor and the trailer, and every knob, dial, and gauge in the truck. I had to explain the functioning of each part, and what I had to look for to ensure everything was OK. I had to crawl under the truck, along with the examiner, to point out all the components underneath as well. The pre-trip inspection takes about an hour in an examination setting, and every new driver hates that part of the driving exam more than anything.

I passed the pre-trip part of the exam with flying colors as I had studied and practiced really hard for this part of the examination, for it’s not an exam you want to repeat. At least if you fail the driving part of the exam you don’t have to go back and do the pre-trip exam over again. The moment of truth arrives. But before the examiner allows his life to be on the line with a brand new trucker at the wheel, they put you through the paces at the exam site. Serpentines, backing straight, stopping exactly on the line while staring straight ahead. All sorts of stuff, and I did it all very well. Only one final part of the exam before hitting the city streets with the examiner, and that is dock loading parking. In this you have to back up about 100 feet then execute a ninety-degree turn of the trailer into a docking area, then stopping within eighteen inches of the dock. Sounds simple, but it’s actually quite difficult for the newly minted driver. You have to stay within lines, you have to be constant, no stopping and starting to figure things out. It has to be done just right. Later on, with experience, it becomes second nature, but this is probably the most difficult part of the test. And I’d been having problems with my distance from the dock. It’s really not all that easy, looking back some sixty feet, to get a good eye ball on the distance from the dock. Hit it more than just barely and it was an automatic fail. But I felt I had a good solution. During my practice I watched careful where the shadows of my tractor and trailer were when I was about six inches from the dock. That technique worked for me every single time. Fool prove way of doing it perfectly, or so I thought. Well, as the saying goes, the best laid plans of mice and men seem to go awry, and so it was for me. My practice had all been during the afternoon. My exam was in the morning. Much to my dismay, I realized the shadows would be of no use to me now. So I went through all the serpentines, stops, and backing up, everything absolutely to the letter. Then I started my dock exercise. I backed that truck up perfectly, turned at exactly the right moment, straightened it out, and was headed straight to the dock with the back of my trailer. How easy can this be I thought to myself. I didn’t want to hit the dock for an automatic fail, so I errored on the side of caution. A little too much so, because when I stopped, put it in neutral, and applied my parking brakes, the examiner and I got out of the cab and walked to the back of the trailer. He looked and threw up his hands in despair. Here I was, a perfect score so far on the pre-trip and other driving capabilities events, and now I left the trailer eighteen and one-half inches from the dock. A fail! So, the next day, back I went, passed all of these tests, took it out on the road, and the first darned thing that happened is that they were doing construction at the intersection just outside of DMV. They had barrels up and it was absolutely impossible for anyone to make the turn with a big truck hauling a fifty-three foot trailer. Well, I started the turn, I watched my mirrors, and I used my air horn judiciously to get the workers scrambling to get those darned construction barrels out of my way. They knew they had no choice other than replacing some very expensive barrels, so it worked out for me, and without so much as a single point off. In fact, it was a flawless execution to what should have been a deal breaker. The examiner was impressed. The rest of the exam was uneventful.

For the first few months after getting my commercial drivers license was as a dump tractor-trailer driver for N.W. White Company in Greer, SC. I loved that job, partly because it was one of the most challenging driving assignments anyone can ever have. Lots of off-road work, backing long distances in very narrow confines with curves, climbing out of the bottom of huge rock quarries on narrow, windy and nearly impassable dirt roads. It was a challenge and I quickly became greatly proficient at both handling the ten speed manual transmission with aplomb, as well as becoming as good as anyone can get, at backing and putting that trailer exactly where I needed it. I loved the challenge of difficult tasks, and I loved seeing how much more productivity I could get than anyone else. I quickly became a favorite of management and dispatch, and was frequently used on the most difficult assignments, and with new customers where we had just one opportunity to show that the company was up to the demands of the project. This was before the use of GPS in commercial environments, so we had to rely on memories and the knowledge of the dispatchers to get us from one unfamiliar location to another. I wrote down all the directions as they were given so that if I ever had to go back, I wouldn’t have to ask anyone, I’d know the way from my notes. I computerized them so they’d be legible and easily referenced. I called my sheet “Kelly’s Cheat Sheet” and other drivers soon started asking for a copy. Soon the company started handing out my cheat sheet to all new drivers. When I visited the company years later, they were still handing out Kelly’s Cheat Sheet to all new drivers.

I made a friend, “JD” and he relied on me a lot. By observation, I quickly learned that he couldn’t read or write very well, so I helped him with his paperwork, or to explain what the days work orders said. And he showed me the ropes and taught me all the tips he knew about this type of business. How to tell one kind of gravel from another, how to load your trailers under the hoppers, how to spread the gravel. He was really struggling financially, so I helped him with a couple of small loans and also bought a CD radio for his truck. The knowledge that he taught me was worth far more than the little bit I spent on him.

A new tractor came onto the yard one day. We had about sixty drivers at the yard, but only about ten drivers that were licensed and able to drive the tractor-trailers. I had only been with the company about three months, and being the new kid on the block, had the rattiest, oldest, and most problem prone truck of anyone. And the turning radius on my tractor was horrible. It seemed to take about two football fields just to turn around. It was really a tough truck to drive in the off road tight driving environment we had. I knew that being new, I had no chance on the new truck, with the unofficial policy being that new trucks went to the most senior driver, and everyone else moving up into a better truck, sort of like climbing a ladder. I knew that at least I’d move up to something a little better than what I had, and I was excited.

I drove onto the yard at the end of the day shortly after that new tractor arrived. And in the yard were the operations manager, the branch manager, and the president of the company who had driven up from Columbia for business that day. They waved me over, and I thought they were simply being polite when they asked me how I was doing, how I liked my job, and how I liked my truck. Well, I alluded as to how I was having a ball with the job, and I loved the job and challenges and the people, but I wasn’t quite so enthused with my truck. Probably something lame like “well, it’s a challenge sometimes.” They laughed. Then they asked me to check out the new truck for them. I told them I didn’t want to do that because once I drove any truck other than my assigned truck, I’d probably just steal it and keep it. “That’s OK” they said, the new truck is yours. Hope you like it.” Like it, I loved it! The funny thing about this event is that it didn’t cause any problems, either for the company, or for me. Normally, going out of the expected seniority system for assigning trucks causes a lot of grief, and sometimes folks get ticked off and just quit over stuff like this. But I had really good rapport with all of the drivers, and with everyone in the company. And although some of the drivers were quietly unhappy and disappointed, everyone respected the decision of the company. A new truck! Ain’t life grand!

I loved that job, mainly because of the challenge, but also because it was never boring. Every day offered new and different adventure and challenge. I likely would have stayed for many years except for one little thing, that being called Social Security. I started drawing social security retirement at age 62, and from then until you reach full retirement age, you are limited in how much you can earn without penalty. I guess that is to discourage drawing social security before full retirement age if you’re still working. In any event, once you reach a very low earnings floor each calendar year, you get penalized by having to return to the system one dollar of every two that you earn, and that’s in addition to the taxes you have to pay on the full gross amount.

I didn’t have much of a choice, I had to earn money in a different way, one that would allow me to deduct the expenses associated with earning the income before considering my earnings test against the earning floor. In other words, I had to work for myself. So I became a truck relocator.

Truck Relocator

This was sort of fun, I traveled throughout ever state in the lower 48 excepting for Oregon. I was on the road, seeing new places, having a real adventure. Too bad you can’t make a lot of money at it, especially if the dispatcher doesn’t take a liking to you. Then it becomes impossible.

Initially I moved trucks, and then would hop on a bus to ride to the next point where I had to pick up a truck. This is called deadheading. It takes a lot of time, by the time you add in taxis and meals, it’s expensive. But most of all, well, it’s bus travel. And if you’ve never taken a commercial bus trip along the east coast, then you’ve simply never lived. In other parts of the country, busses are used by folks of all social economic strata, providing good clean rides, and are frequently the only means of travel between towns of the vast mid-west and west. But on the east coast, bus travel seems to be used only by down and out smelly, badly behaved derelicts, druggies, folks fleeing the long arm of the law, and assorted other misfits. I definitely do not recommend bus travel for the adventure of it anywhere along the entire east coast. If you do go by bus, keep at least one wary eye open at all times, keep your possessions secured in your arms, and try to look as mean as you possible can.

After one dead head experience from New York City area to South Carolina, I decided this was not a good way to handle my deadheads. So I bought a tow trailer, and later put tow equipment directly on my pickup, so that I could drive to wherever I had to pick up a truck, attach my vehicle, drag it behind the tractor, and when I arrived at my destination, hop in my vehicle and be on my way to the next location.

As a truck relocator, I was an independent contractor. I was paid so much per mile, and out of that, I’d pay for all usual expenses such as fuel needed for the move. I became an expert in figuring fuel consumption, and which states in which to maximize my fuel purchases to take advantage of the lower taxes, and which states to avoid because of high fuel taxes. Of course it all gets evened out for the states by a little mechanism they used, called IFTA, but I won’t go into that here. Suffice it to say, I was doing OK by being prudent in my planning and my expenses. As long as the dead heads that cost time and money, were not too great.

For some reason, the head dispatcher at home office took a disliking to me. I never figured out why. Perhaps she was getting advantage from other compliant and favored drivers. Or maybe she just preferred working with the longer-term drivers and not the new kid on the block. I don’t know. All I know is that I started getting really stupid dead heads. I’d deliver a truck to Houston, and then be told that my pickup point for my next move was in Chicago. Now that is a long dead head, and when you figure in the cost of the deadheads, if you have many of those, it doesn’t take long to figure out that you’re not making a lot of money, at least that you can keep. A lot of money coming in, but also a lot of money going out.

After a year of relocating trucks for a large firm out of Tempe, Arizona, I started delivering trucks and forklifts for a truck refurbishing firm in Piedmont, SC. Close to home, and fantastic folks to work for. I had more fun with this driving job then any other driving job I had to that time. I would pick up trucks they purchased from all over the U.S. and deliver them to the refurbishing facility in Piedmont, SC. And I would take refurbished trucks from their facility to customers mainly in the mid-west and along the east coast. Frequently I would deliver forklifts. It was fun, and it was an adventure. Frequently I would have to train the customers on how to use truck forklift mounts, and occasionally I had to teach them how to use a ten-speed transmission. Challenging and fun. And mostly without incident.

One time I had to get an oversized forklift off a straight back truck. A portion of the tires actually hung over the sides of the truck. Exactness was critical. On delivery, after talking with the customer forklift operator, I had confidence in his ability to get the forklift off while I guided him with hand signals. I found an old abandoned rail dock, but couldn’t get into the end of the dock, but I could get in from the side of it. This became especially critical for unloading. No room for errors. I was on the dock, and the forklift operator was following my signals to perfection. And we were unloading that forklift, sideways on the dock. Guess I forgot we were unloading sideways, and consequently the dock was not very wide. I kept watching intently how the unloading was going, giving my signals for minute corrections to the operator, while walking back, a foot or two at a time. All of a sudden, whoosh! I was falling through empty air. I landed about eight feet down on a pile of boulders. Oh did my feet hurt! Along with all other parts of my body. We finished getting the forklift successfully off the truck and dock before my foot became too badly swollen. I think I must have broken every bone in my foot, and for the next two weeks I was unable to put any pressure on the foot. Fortunately for my driving, it did not hurt in using the foot controls of the trucks, but I could not walk. I would drive into truck stops and everyone would stare as this old cripple eased out of the truck and hung onto my cane for dear life, shuffling shamelessly to the nearest place where I could sit down and grab a bite to eat. Probably the only thing more unbelievable to the other drivers might have been had I shown up with an eye patch or a Seeing Eye dog.

Business slowed down for the refurbishing company and after a couple of years delivering trucks, it was time for other things. Like being a truck driver in convoys in Iraq. Iraq, here I come.

Convoy Truck Driver in Iraq

I spend a lot of time discussing my experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan elsewhere in this book, so I won’t dwell on it hear. Suffice it to say that the combination of patriotism, the appeal of again working with military, the challenge, the adventure, and the very good pay, held a very deep appeal to me. I applied for a position with KBR/Halliburton out of Houston. In a few months, I received the call that would take me to my next great adventure. As a convoy truck driver in Iraq, and pump truck driver in Afghanistan.

Life's lessons learned from my time in Iraq & Afghanistan.....
No matter how successful or "important" you become, treat everyone with courtesy and respect, and the way you want to be treated. There is a good chance you can go from speaking to large audiences of business tycoons in the capitals of South America one day, to sucking shit out of holes in the ground a brief few years later. Remember your roots.

Also read “Truck driver in Iraq & Afghanistan”

Road Crew & National Park Service Worker

After returning from the mid-east, I searched the Internet for other opportunities, and applied as a Motor Vehicle Operator at Yosemite National Park in California. I hopped in my truck and left for one of the great adventures of my life. National Park Service seasonal employment is one of the more interesting things you can do, and give you lots of time for hiking and really spending time in some of America’s most beautiful spots. I drove smaller trucks with maintenance equipment, did a lot of crack sealing on the roads (filling roadway cracks with hot oil based sealer), which is very exhaustive and demanding work, filled potholes with asphalt, flagged during road repairs by others, installed snow poles, and anything else that needed doing. I had a lot of fun with it.

Also read “Working at Yosemite National Park”

Bus Driver

After my summer gig at Yosemite National Park I had to give serious thought as to what I wanted to do when I grow up. After all, I was only a mere sixty-six, far too young to be thinking about retirement. Yet old enough that I had to give serious thought about the more physically demanding truck driving jobs. So I had a revelation--”I’ll be a bus driver,” I thought to myself. After all, it’s easy load freight, and for the most part, I’m not going to have to chain or tie down my loads. It’s all inside work. What could be easier?

I spotted an ad for a local transit company and I applied. Already having my commercial drivers license made it an easy decision for them. All they had to do was spin me around town and give me some pointers on busses, and I’d head to the Department of Motor Vehicles and get the passenger endorsement added to my license. And that’s exactly the way it worked. In a couple of weeks I was driving a small, thirty-foot transit bus around the area, and I was darned good at it. Probably the best driver they had, out of probably fifty or sixty other drivers. I take my driving seriously, and further, I love the interaction with passengers. Not a lot of drivers have the all important human relations skills that it takes to be a really good bus driver.

The local transit company didn’t pay very well, and then they tried shaving time from the drivers by reducing the time on the schedule. This was done to improve the bottom line I guess, but when I proved that one leg of my run took thirty minutes by the clock under the best of conditions and challenged them to do it faster, they still scheduled it for fifteen minutes, and that’s what they paid on. I was also very unenthusiastic above the cavalier attitude toward maintenance of the busses, especially on safety related items. They did not have their own mechanics and had to send the busses out for all maintenance issues, so they really dragged their feet on taking a bus out of service unless something like the engine blowing up were to happen. It was all too often their busses were brought to an unexpected stop along side the roadway. So, I continued to look for other opportunities, thankful for the transit bus experience I had gained.

A large and thoroughly professional transit company in Hoboken, New Jersey was looking for seasonal drivers for their commuter line busses into New York City. I jumped at the opportunity. The pay was excellent, all out of town expenses were paid, good tips from the passengers when doing tour groups, and the equipment was well maintained. Besides, they were not the “baby busses” that I had been driving, but the full sized 57 passenger commuter line busses complete with entertainment systems, lavatories, and all the comforts demanded by commuters riding busses into Manhattan every day of their life. On my run, these were Wall Street types, spending about three hours daily on their commute into the city from near Philadelphia and home each evening. And each Sunday, I would take a tour group of Russian immigrants from Philadelphia into Atlantic City for a few hours of fun and gambling. They always tipped well, and they were a merry and happy group. They spoke among themselves entirely in Russian, and I learned a few words of the language. I tried convincing them, unsuccessfully, that I was actually Comrade Rushell, but they didn’t buy into that. It was a fun time for seven months in 2007. I got a lot of accolades from the passengers, and they loved the service I provided. Always on time, dependable as the rising sun, and I kept them occasionally entertained with funny tales and announcements. Academy Bus a thoroughly professional company in every respect, and I enjoyed every moment of my seven months with them.

Life's lessons learned as a bus driver.....

1. Look at difficult people as a challenge and opportunity to "win over". They may become your strongest ally.
2. Think ahead, be aware of everything going on around you.
3. Always leave yourself an "out".

Also read “Rambling Russ a driving force on Broadway & Wall Street”

Tour bus motor coach operator

My maternal uncle Larry Mayberry was a bus driver for Greyhound Lines for his entire working career. He was also a pilot, but driving was his life. I loved visiting with him and riding his bus, and always thought as a child, how neat it would be to do his job. Operating big busses with a lot of responsibility and challenges, and the adventure of travel appealed to me.

In reality, driving tour busses is not really a whole lot of fun. My main problem with it is that you’re always operating at the limits of the performance envelope, and that’s constant risk with a whole busload of people that you’re responsible for. Frequently middle school or high school kids, with their chaperones. On longer tours, like from South Carolina to New York City, you’ll generally start out driving all night. That means you have to get a lot of sleep ahead of time, and get your body acclimated to a nighttime schedule. They when you get there, since your passengers were sleeping all night while you are driving, your passengers are on a daytime schedule to see all the sights. So you have to adjust back to a daytime schedule, and very long days. You really don’t have a break during the day because if you’re in a large city, you simply don’t have places you can park your bus and take a nap. There are very few layover areas for tour busses, and unless you’re lucky enough to be the first there, you’ll have to park in spots where it’s not legal to stand. You have to stay with the bus and move it when you’re told to move it. Sometimes you just have to drive around the city in circles until it’s time to pick up your passengers. Generally, you’ll have half a dozen stops for the passengers, with maybe a one-hour wait each time. And it is critical that you stay on schedule because the passengers generally have set reservations for their events. And staying on schedule in the big cities with their mess of traffic, blocked streets, hordes of pedestrians and other impediments, is a difficult task. So you end up with a very long day, and when you get your passengers safely back to their hotel, you spend another half hour cleaning up the bus and doing your paperwork. And before you start the next day, more paperwork and pre-trip maintenance inspections of the bus. And after a few days of this, when it’s time to head home, you’re back on a nighttime schedule. You do have to squeeze in enough sleep time in between so that you stay legal, but it’s not nearly enough time to be fully alert and at your peak of performance. And its hammer down all the way home, otherwise you’ll run out of legal driving hours. Although there are lavatories on the bus, they’re called “water closets”, you discourage their use except for emergencies, otherwise you have “stink” and dumping issues. So you stop at rest areas along the way, but they are infrequent because the group is in a hurry to get where they are going. Generally a fifteen-minute stop about every three hours. By the time you unload your passengers, and get back early to be there for them getting back on the bus, the driver gets maybe five minutes. Hardly enough time to use the facilities, much less get a much needed breather and stretch your legs. The long trips are grueling on the driver. High speeds up, long days of stressful driving in the big cities, then high speeds back…. It’s simply a recipe for incidents. I like minimizing my risks when driving commercially, and driving tour busses does not fit in with my risk avoidance strategy for commercial driving.

Some customers can be exceedingly difficult to deal with. Of course the tour leaders have a lot of stress on them to be sure everything goes just right. And sometimes they have many personal things going on in their lives and even health issues that would affect anyone. On one trip I had a “control freak” that had put the trip together herself and was determined that it would be successful in every way least it reflect badly on her. She was also suffering at the time from severe pain due to arthritis. At the same time, her mother was in the final stages of cancer, plus as she alluded to me “excuse me, but I’m going through menopause.”. What a recipe for stress. We had a few testy words about her back seat driving, and I offered to have another driver come up and take over. She settled down after that and there were no further issues between us. By the time the trip was over, she stated that it was the best bus tour that she had ever been on. By that time, we were just about bosom buddies. But, these difficult persons can certainly add to the stress of a tour bus driver.

On most trips, you get generous tips. Some are exceedingly generous. And on others, no tip at all. Not because of poor service, but simply because they do not feel that tipping the bus driver is necessary. For example, Wren Middle School, Eastside High, and other middle and high schools always tipped well. Sometimes they even take up two collections they’re so pleased with the trip. But Southern Wesleyan University never tips, no matter how well you do the trip. Most colleges don’t tip, and therefore, I don’t like doing their trips. But, you do the trips you’re asked to do. Sometimes you have to turn down a trip you really want, like to Charleston, simply because you don’t get back in time from one trip to get legal hours off before the next trip. I hate it when I have to turn down trips I like.

So, the bottom line is, tour bus operating is not my favorite thing to do, mainly because of the hours. The pay is decent, and the tips generally good, but not enough to compensate for the effort you have to put into it. And the risk factors on some of the trips are simply greater than I care to take.

Looking for Oil (Seismic Crew Bus Driver)

This is my favorite job of all time. Adventure, challenge, excitement, easy work, good pay, and great benefits. Surely, the best retirement job in all of America. It’s my final job before really, really retiring probably at age 70 or 72. It’s so much fun, maybe I’ll never quit!

CGGVeritas is the world’s largest seismic testing company, using a fleet of helicopters, air boats, ships, busses, trucks, vibrators (I call them “thumpers”), all terrain vehicles, and their most important asset, thousands of trained and dedicated workers to do some of the most difficult of jobs in some of the most hostile of environments. Ice roads, deserts, cane fields, mountains, swamps and oceans in over seventy countries are the stomping grounds for this world-class company. In the U.S., the bus fleet is a new concept for them. All of the projects that are being worked on are in remote areas, frequently mountainous, and frequently under very adverse conditions of heavy snow and ice. It’s “off road” work much of the time, and the roads we do travel are frequently old, poorly maintained winding and narrow rural roads. And sometimes, no roads at all. For drivers, it requires an expert hand at the wheel and exceedingly good judgment about where that bus can and cannot go while transporting the company’s most important assets, it’s people.

These are not ordinary busses. Nope. These are busses on steroids. They sit about four feet above the ground, have four wheel drive, a huge brush grill on the front that I call the “moose catcher”, comfortable reclining seating, video screens, and are a real sight to behold. Other drivers stare. The eighteen-wheel truck drivers stare--this is the first bus they’ve seen where the driver is further up in the sky then they are. They’re envious, and I wish I could listen to the CB chatter that must go on. Every time I stop for fuel, at least a one or two, normally macho males, will come over to look over this “bus on steroids”. Sometimes I have to open the hood for them. And none of them have ever before seen a bus with four-wheel drive. On rare occasions, a local constable or county sheriff will get behind a bus, turn on red lights and sirens to get the driver to pull over, all so they can see first hand this strange new vehicle in their midst.

Each project normally runs from a few months to a year or longer. We stay in great motels, sometimes former resort type of motels. And as bus drivers, we’re not allowed to do anything except drive the bus. Since I have a Class A CDL, I frequently help out during the day by moving one of their trucks or doing whatever else I can to be helpful. But, for the most part, we drive the workers to the field in the morning, head back to the motel for the day, and go pick them up in the evening. Seven days a week, for four weeks, then we’re off for two.

With really great people, team spirit throughout, professionalism, the latest equipment and technologies and being with a world class leader in high demand makes for the perfect retirement job.

Also read “The Farmers Daughters”

Sales Jobs

I am totally incapable of selling blankets to freezing Eskimos. It’s just not in my nature to sell. I’ve had lots of sales aptitude tests by prospective employers to determine my ability to sell, and I always come up with high marks indicating a high potential for success in sales. That was chiefly due to my high need to achieve, tenacity, and my high need to “win” in whatever I do. And my high desire level for success. Yet I just hate selling. The two downsides for me are my intense need to see immediate results from my efforts, and the fact that I just don’t like having to convince people that they need and must have whatever it is that I’m selling. The logical side of me says that if they really needed it, they would already have come to that conclusion and would already have it. Sales success and logic don’t really reside comfortably with each other.

I’ve only had two sales jobs, both short-lived, and I didn’t like either of them. When I was a teenager, I sold magazines door to door. It was cold call stuff. They would pick us up at a central point, deliver us to the neighborhoods, and we’d spend all day knocking on doors and convincing people to buy magazines that they probably didn’t want and certainly didn’t need. Although I was surprised that I made a decent amount of money from it, I hated door-to-door selling, and I quit after about a month.

The other sales job was selling computer services after I retired from developing computer software. I was hired mainly for my contacts, for I knew every decision maker in every company in the entire region. Only problem is, I was the new kid on the block, and all the accounts that I knew well and could easily walk in and talk solutions with, were already assigned to others. So I was left with all new accounts and ones with a low probability of need at that. And it was cold calling. I was miserable at it, and don’t recall making a single sale. I quit after about four or five months.

Volunteering Jobs

It is exceedingly important to give back in life, especially when life has been really good to you. Probably even more important if life hasn’t been good to you. If you pick a volunteer job that you enjoy, it will add immeasurably to your enjoyment of life. And, you’ll learn a lot.

One volunteer job I had was as an arbitrator on new automobile cases for the Better Business Bureau. A program was set up so consumers could choose arbitration to resolve new card disputes. The dealers and automobile manufacturers were bound by arbitration decisions, but the consumer was not. However, once in arbitration, if the consumer didn’t like the outcome and pursued other legal recourse, the decision of the arbitrator usually stood, and that was pretty well understood. Anyway, I would hear disputes between car buyers and representatives of dealerships or the manufacturers. Usually, these were “lemon” cases. After hearing all parties and considering the evidence of contracts, receipts, and occasional witnesses, I’d write up my decision regarding the matter. For my work with the BBB on arbitration, I was nominated for and received the Greenville (SC) volunteer of the week award. Really not too impressive I guess when you consider there were 51 other awards for that year, but in reality, there are thousands of volunteers working their hearts out for good in the community, and each one of them probably merit’s the award.

For about a year, when I was in my sixties, I volunteered as a “go fer” in the emergency room of the local hospital. I figured that with my medical background, it was a natural fit for me. Besides, that was the area most in need within the hospital. It’s a busy place and for some reason, most volunteers just don’t like being around all the traumatic events of an emergency room. I enjoyed it and got a lot out of it. Was mainly running specimens to labs, escorting admitted patients to their rooms, helping in cleaning up the ER rooms, that sort of thing. I only stopped this activity when we moved out of the area.

Another volunteer job I had was to drive a van for a low-income housing project. I really enjoyed this as I had so much independence to do it the way I felt was best. I set up scheduled trips to local budget shopping areas, grocery stores and medical offices. I’d take them to fun places as well, and during the Christmas season I took several trips for them through the most beautiful areas of Christmas lights in the area. Many of my passengers were wheelchair bound, and I took special care to ensure they always felt welcome. The van had “lifts” for wheel chair access, and tie downs to secure them properly inside the van. I really enjoyed doing this because I loved the interaction with the passengers. They had a great time and this provided a wonderful, and free means of meeting their transportation needs.

© Copyright 2010, Russ Kelly, Liberty, SC, USA. All rights reserved.

More humor, adventure and opinion from Rambling Russ

_

Hobo Junction

2010-08-02T14:57:00.002-04:00

_

“Clackety clack, clackety clack. I hear the freight train coming up the track!” And thus began the summer I turned sixteen. It was to be my second big adventure, with lots of challenges and many life’s lessons learned.

The words of this hastily made-up ditty played over and over in my mind all day and all night at Hobo Junction. Every town with a railroad track passing through has a Hobo Junction. Or at least that is the way it was back in the nineteen-fifties as I was growing fitfully from innocent childhood to wandering & adventuresome teenager. I could not escape the lure of unknown places and adventures drawing me close, much as the whirlpools and eddies of the fitful Rogue River engulfs naïve and unsuspecting victims. There’s something magical about the sound of a train roaring swiftly down the tracks, the wailing blare of it’s horn as it approaches crossings, and the deep throated roar of the massive diesel engines as it climbs steep mountain grades. And the clackety clack call to explore challenges and far away places while you eagerly embrace the crescendo of wheels on the rails. “Clackety clack, clackety clack, I hear the freight train coming up the track” -- the words race vividly through my mind to this day as I listen to the passing of trains. If I can’t live on the river, or at the side of an airport runway, then a railroad track will do.

I grew up in a rural railroad town in southern Oregon, and trains were always a fascination and allure that seemed to call me--“come explore, see where I go.” The trains ran through town. They traveled over the river. And they traveled along the sides of our mountains where rail beds had been gouged out of solid granite. You could see, hear and smell the trains from nearly everywhere you went. As trains passed by, I always stopped and watched, and experienced the moments, letting my mind wander as to the mysteries of where they came from and where they were going. I wanted to simply jump on and see where they would take me.

In the early summer when I turned sixteen, the temptation became too great for me to resist. I had to find out first hand what it was like living a life on the rails. I had at most a couple of bucks in my pocket, not much to last for very long, especially considering that I would have to eat. No matter, I knew I would figure something out.

Hobo camps are usually found on the outskirts of towns, frequently on uphill grades where trains really slowed down and struggled to make the grade. Always away from the train yards, for that’s where the “bulls” would find you, chasing you away and threatening you with gunshot and maybe a night in the local jail. “Bulls” worked for the railroads, and that’s all they did--keep the hobos away from the rail yards, and to the best of their ability, off the freight cars.

In the hobo camps you’d always find a small fire and probably some coffee in an old scorched can, and maybe some mulligan stew, made of anything that was found nearby that was edible. Find a vegetable or two to throw into the mix and you could help yourself. The mulligan stew pot never went dry.

On a brisk morning or evening, the coffee was better than anything most folks can imagine. There should be a store selling the stuff with sidewalk café’s and calling it “Hobo Coffee” or something. It’s easy to make. It takes a coffee can, burned black from a lot of use is best. Into the can you pour water from the river or nearby stream, and put the ground coffee right into the water. Now here’s the secret part for settling the grounds. No filters, no percolating, just boiling water with coffee grounds in it. But, in the bottom of that can you put a big stone, straight from the grounds of the hobo camp, preferably not used before. For some reason, that big stone settled the grounds and they would stay near the bottom as you poured your steaming hot coffee straight from that can into whatever cup or container you had. No Styrofoam back them. Respectable hobo’s had their own tin can that was treasured and guarded and always on the ready. They were normally attached to you through your belt loop, if you were fortunate enough to have a belt. Otherwise, the clothesline rope you used as a belt.

When riding the rails, dropping in on a hobo camp was the only socializing and conversations one would have in an entire day. Hobo’s live a lonely life, generally preferring it that way. Conversation would be about where the “bulls” were really being tough that particular day and likely to have you locked up. Or where on the line there might be an opportunity to earn a few bucks picking beans, hops, or maybe where some temporary labor was needed, usually in agriculture. Most hobo’s don’t have a lot of training to do a whole lot of anything that takes special training or skills. Once in awhile though, you get a real surprise and run across a hobo that had been riding the rails for years, but you can tell they have a lot of education and experience. For whatever reason, they’ve dropped out on life and prefer to live the secluded life of a hobo. It was always fascinating to run across someone so well educated and perhaps having left jobs as a doctor, teacher, lawyer or other profession, for reasons known only to them. I suspect a lot of the reasons had to do with the law. But you’d really have to draw out every nugget of conversation from them, for they lived in their own world and didn’t share it easily.

But life as a hobo is not lived simply at Hobo Junction. No sir. Why any self respecting hobo has to come and go, hopping aboard trains and going to where only the train engineer knows for sure. To be a hobo, you’d better learn how to jump on and off the trains, and how to keep from getting busted by the “bulls”. How to learn where the trains are headed so you’ll have some idea where you’re going. And how to survive. I could see this was not going to be an easy task for an inexperienced teenager. I eagerly looked forward to the challenge. And the adventure I was certain that I would have. Better get on with my learning. I’ve spent enough time in Hobo Junction asking and listening, and learning everything I can. Guess I’d best start finding out how you get on these rascals. Looks sort of dangerous to me.

And thus began my adventure and journey at hobo junction and on the rails during the summer I turned sixteen.

Illustration by Brad Hall, www.bradhallart.com

The first lesson of life as a hobo is learning how to hop on and off the freight cars. They usually were moving, for the hobo camps were normally away from the switchyards and “bulls”, usually on an uphill grade where the trains would struggle trying to make the grade. Learn well, for a mistake could easily, and sometimes did, result in severed limbs and occasionally death. It’s easy to loose your grip and fall back under the freight car, something no self respecting hobo wants to do. If it happens, you’d best be very quick to roll off the track. No stopping this train. To hop on you must spot the freight car you want to hop aboard. It will have fully or partially open doors, or maybe it will be a flatbed, but that makes for a windy ride. Once your chosen freight car draws alongside, you run along the tracks, pacing yourself to the speed of the train. You grab hold of the trailing door edge with a grip strong enough to bend steel, and with a final hop and skip you give a final big hop and swing your legs up mightly and into the open door. At least that’s the plan. Miss and hopefully you’ll fall with great embarrassment alongside the tracks, probably to wait for the ribbing you’ll be getting, and the next train. Getting off a moving train was easier. You simply judged the speed and sort of hopped off prepared to have your legs in gear and moving to match the speed of the train. Occasionally you’d misjudge and end up flat on your face in the track rock bed. That hurt a lot. And you certainly didn’t look very pretty for a long while. You’d wash your face with the first water you could find, and prepare for the ribbing, hoping that perhaps no one noticed your eventful entry to Hobo Junction.

Hobo’s generally head south in the winter and north in the summer. They largely follow the crops because that’s about the only way to make a few dollars to survive on. Hobo’s don’t need a lot of money, just a few bucks for food once in awhile. Perhaps an occasional pair of shoes, shirt or pants, maybe even a belt, coffee, and smokes. Every hobo smokes, and cigars are the preference. They are mostly honest and non-violent loners. At least that’s the way it was in the fifties. We weren’t that far out of the depression and the war, and being a hobo became a way of life for many that in better times would never have given it a thought. By the time you’ve ridden out the depression, you were so engrained to the hobo life that it was simply easier to remain a hobo then to try and reenter society and find a real job and give up your freedoms of going where you wanted, when you wanted, with not a responsibility in the world.

After I had watched for a few days how to master the art of hopping on a moving train, I screwed up my courage, looked for an appropriate empty boxcar on the next train, paced myself to the speed of the train, got an iron grip on the open door, took a final hop and leap and slung myself aboard. There, that wasn’t so bad, and I had a great satisfaction knowing that I had mastered hopping aboard a moving freight train. I was on my way. But where to? I had not a clue, other than knowing I was headed south.

After a day or two, of really enjoying the experience of riding an open box car, with my legs dangling over the side, I wound up in southern California. Coming from southern Oregon, it had been a thrill of a ride. Scenery like you can only imagine, or see perhaps in some Ansel Adams photographs. The tracks followed rivers, and went through canyons, and through long tunnels. For most of the journey, no other signs of civilization, just you and a long train in front and a long train behind. Once in awhile you’d see someone walking along the top of the cars, looking I’m sure for the free riders. There were metal ladders up the ends of the cars, and also down the sides on some. But, until you had a break in the boxcars, you didn’t have to climb up and down the ladders, you merely gave a little hop and jump to jump just a few feet to the top of the next boxcar or tanker. When you got to flatbeds, you’d have to use the ladders. As long as you stayed out of sight, you really didn’t get bothered by whomever it is that walks the top of the train. We assumed it was the bulls, but more likely it was merely one of the engineers watching for hot wheels which occasionally would get really hot and send out sparks that set fires along the route. If it got hot enough, it would lock up the wheel entirely, then the train has to stop.

I spent the summer riding the rails between southern California and Wenatchee, Washington. Southern California since I was told that’s where there were good looking young female hobo’s because of the beaches and the sun. That’s what I was told, and I set off to find them. I’m sure all the hobo’s in the camps had great fun with me telling me this wild tale which I eagerly bought into. There were no young hobo girls in southern California, not even any older ones, I was merely sent on a useless wild chase. But what the heck, as a hobo, time and distance are sort of meaningless. What else better do you have to do as a hobo, then to chase a dream?

Wenatchee, Washington, on the Columbia River and north of Yakima, was an area of vast orchards, and they always needed workers to pick apples. I spent the summer picking beans, hops, apples, and anything else that grew and people ate. I wasn’t very good at it, certainly not like the migrant workers that had spent years doing this, but it was enough to survive on. If you survived the back breaking labor. Picking fruit and vegetables is bone wearying back breaking labor. It’s a good insight as to how not to spend the rest of your life.

At one point, with just a few dollars in my pocket, I decided to “upgrade” my living style by getting out of the hobo camps and into a hotel room. It had to be in the “tenderloin” district of town since that’s where the temporary labor pools were, and you could always hop on a farm bus and be taken to the fields in the early morning and brought back late at night. Having only a few dollars, I decided to invest mostly in paying for a few days at the hotel, and with what was left, buy the food I needed. As I recall, the room was only two dollars per night, one bathroom per floor, but it was clean. No showers, just a tub. After paying for a few nights in advance, I had much less than a dollar in my pocket. Later on, I was to try and save some money by “down grading” my accommodations. Now where do you go from a two dollar per night room? To a fifty cent flophouse. That only lasted a few nights. Teeny tiny rooms, filthy mattresses, cock roaches and rats all over the place. And the groans, snores, throwing up, the sounds and smells of a mass of humanity thrown into small and filthy quarters along with bugs and rats biting you didn’t allow for any sleep, unless you were in an alcoholic stupor, and that was not the case for me. A few days gave me all the education I needed on how far down you can go in life.

With less than a dollar in my pocket, how was I to eat for a few days? I decided to buy a jar of peanut butter, and each night for the next week, I would simply eat a few spoonfuls of the peanut butter for my only meal of the day. And I survived. Later on I made enough to buy one meal a day at a tenderloin area restaurant that catered to the migrant workers. It looked to me that the best deal was the spaghetti dinner, so that is what I had every night for the rest of the summer. Or at least until I took a job in some horse stables outside of Portland.

As a groomsman at the stables, I was fed three fantastic home cooked meals a day. Had a small room inside the stables and there I groomed horses, shoveled manure, prepared bedding for the horses, and simply did what stable hands do. Actually, I quite enjoyed it because it was a riding academy, and all the rich girls in the area seemed to be taking riding lessons there. Their daddy’s, or perhaps a chauffeur, would drive them up in their Bentley’s, and I’d get their horse, saddle it up, and assist the girls in getting on the horses. The job was much to my liking and much flirting went on but of course nothing more since those rich and beautiful young ladies loved to flirt but wouldn’t be caught dead with a stable hand. Especially a smelly stable hand.

In the late fall I decided I had enough of that particular adventure. The owners of the stable worked hard at convincing me to stay on, telling me I was the best stable hand they‘d ever had. I probably was, for I worked hard at doing my job exactly as it was suppose to be done. It was my first experience with a real and permanent job, and the lesson of it was that if you do your job really well, you’ll always have a job. It was a valuable lesson for me. I was tempted to stay on for the food was great and the girls were pretty, but instead, I decided a military life might be more to my liking. I returned home and mentally prepared to enter the Navy. In those days, if you did not volunteer to join a service, once you turned eighteen you were drafted into the Army. And I wasn’t all that keen about walking. I’d had enough of picking fruit. And riding rails, being a forest fire fighter, a janitor, a window washer, and a stable hand. I’d certainly had enough of school, or so I thought. Time for a new challenge and adventure.

More humor, adventure and opinion from Rambling Russ

ps... feedback please. Help me monitor interest by clicking on funny, interesting or cool below. Thanks.

_

My Turbulent Teens

2010-06-21T11:23:00.002-04:00

Russ on "Lady", 1952

Photo from private collection of author

I was eleven, nearly twelve, and my idyllic life was flipped upside down on a dime. I was enjoying life to it’s full advantage. We’d moved into a new, modern house just two years earlier, I’d made lots of friends in the new neighborhood, I was popular in school, life was my oyster. Then the word came--mom and dad were getting a divorce.

Dad always had a wandering eye, at least that was the rumor. He was young, good looking, and with him getting married just barely out of high school, perhaps he just never had a chance to grow up. I won’t speculate about causes, and it wasn’t ever discussed with me. This much I do know, he had an irate husband hunting him all over town with a six shooter strapped to his waist. And my father was wise to go into hiding, location unknown even to family. And it was more than once I caught dad in a most affectionate embrace with this man’s wife. So, perhaps there was a good reason for all the commotion.

My sister and I were the only kids living at home at this time. My oldest brother Larry had joined the Army and was serving in Germany. And Lyle had run away from home and was likely in either Portland or San Francisco. I‘m not sure anyone knew quite where he was, or when, or even if, he would be back. I guess I knew, he told me his plans in advance, and made me promise not to tell anyone he was leaving. And brothers don’t break sacred blood promises. Sometimes we’d share secrets then seal the secret with a “blood pact”, scratching ourselves to draw blood in the process. Then that was a very sacred secret never to be shared with anyone else. So, I wasn’t going to give away his secret about leaving. Besides, with Lyle gone, it was just me in that large bedroom that previously held three of us brothers.

Mom, having married right out of high school, had no occupation or training for one. Back then, women did not work outside the home. But my sister and I were going to be her responsibility while dad pursued his interests. About the only thing an untrained woman could do to earn money back in the nineteen-fifties was to be a waitress. And that’s exactly what mom did. I remember her first job, at a truck stop near the Redwood Highway as it leaves town. Without experience, they were taking a gamble on her--she really had to prove herself. And prove herself she did. If she was going to be a waitress, she was going to be the best waitress this planet has ever seen. I remember her enthusiasm and excitement when she came home and told us she got the job. But Carol and I were still two mighty scared little kids. Where were we going?

It was during this time that I had probably the most painful day of my life. We were in a cheap little apartment, we didn’t know what the future had in store for us, and we were struggling mightily. And mom told us there was a really important court proceeding in a few days. You could tell she was really worried about the forthcoming experience, not knowing what to expect or what the outcome would be. But what Carol and I did know, is that our future was in the balance. Where would we live? Would we be sent to a state home? Would we go live in some other families home that takes in stray little kids and works their fingers to the bone? And worst of all, would Carol and I be separated? It was a scary time. The day of the hearing arrived, and I sat in class. I remember it so vividly. I wanted to cry so bad, but I was not going to shed a tear if my eleven year old life depended on it. I was like a zombie in the classroom all day long. I did not hear a word that was spoken. I did not move from my desk. I stared straight ahead, oblivious to all that was happening around me. And when the school day ended, I trudged home warily and with great trepidation. I wanted to hear what the future held for my sister and me, yet I was afraid to hear. Mom sat us down, and she could not contain her enthusiasm and good spirits. And suddenly, the weight of the world was off my shoulders and I knew that all would be well.

Over the next several years, we moved often. We moved to where mom could get work to support us, and even to get ahead and move on up in life. Through her hard work, determination, ungodly hours and pure tenacity, things got better. Much better. She even bought a duplex having the savvy to know that she could rent one side out and we’d essentially have free living accommodations by living in the other side. It turned out that mom was savvy as a fox when it came to matters of money and investments. Combine that were raw tenacity, and her unflagging enthusiasm for work as a means to get ahead, and failure simply was never in her plans.

Because of our many moves, I learned a lot about moving. Good thing since I’ve done so much of it throughout my life. Being the “man of the house” it fell on me to do the heavy lifting and making sure the move was uneventful. But we had so many moves, it really had an impact on my personality and my interaction with others. In grade school I was always the popular one. Never met anyone I didn’t like or could not win over, and I can’t remember any serious disagreements with any of them. But as a teenager, with the constant moves, I knew that any friends I made today I would have to say good-bye to tomorrow. So I stopped making friends. I withdrew into myself. I didn’t want interaction with anyone. One day I remember really well because the teacher decided she was going to do something about my staying in the room at my desk when everyone else went outside during recess. I would just sit there and “think” or maybe doodle. Whatever, I didn’t feel like playing with the others or having a good time. Life was sort of sucking for me, but hey, life sort of sucks for most teenagers. On this day, teacher wouldn’t let me remain in the room during recess. She forced me outside to play. So outside I went. And I found myself a quiet spot along the fence at the far side of the playground, away from everyone, and that’s where I spent my recess. Funny, I don’t remember the name of a single school friend, adult, or teacher after the sixth grade. This staying at arms length from everyone pretty much followed me through most of my adult life, with the only effort at letting anyone into my world was when, from time to time, I became interested in a young lady that caught my fancy.

Russ with guitar, age 11

Photo from private collection of author

One particular dreary day during my parents many confrontations with each other has really stayed with me. Most of my parents discussions with each other were done without my sister or I being present, so we were not aware of any disparagement between them. And I don’t recall either of them ever being critical of the other in front of us. Maybe they did, but I don’t recall it. But one confrontation sticks with me. We were all poor. Dad didn’t make much money. I don’t even know if he made support payments for us kids. No one shared those details with us, but I doubt that he sent support for very long. Anyway, I bounced a lot between living with dad and living with mom. I thought it was about my convenience, and what was best for me. But one conversation that was held in my presence brought home the reality of the times, of the dire financial straits that everyone was in. Essentially, they argued about which one had to take me, with each claiming they couldn’t afford me so I would have to live with the other parent. Well, I was a growing boy and eating like an elephant I am sure, but that was a horrible revelation to me, that it was all about money. I felt really devastated. But, as with most of my disappointments, I bounced back quickly. I learned during this time how to live as a chameleon, adapt to whatever environment you’re in and make the best of it. That has served me well throughout life.

One day, while staying with dad, he caught me smoking a cigarette. His idea of how to handle the problem was to make me chain smoke an entire pack of cigarettes, deeply inhaling each draw on the cigarette, the strongest brand he could find. I guess he figured this would be good aversion therapy, with me likely getting so sick I would never want to even look at a cigarette again in my lifetime. Good idea. Too bad it didn’t work. I didn’t get sick, I enjoyed the exercise, and my smoking was never again an issue.

When I was about thirteen, mom bought a duplex near Medford, Oregon. It was called the tri-cities area, and it is where I attended Crater Lake High School. I started opening up a little by then, trying to make friends, and flirting with the girls which by then, I had a profound interest in. I especially remember this one little girl that lived just up the street, and she was just then beginning to develop a really cute figure. I was falling in love, but she would have none of it, being really pleasant and nice to me, but definitely keeping her distance. There was another girl in high school that had a huge, huge crush on me. I hardly knew she existed though. It’s funny how some girls can be so appealing to a young man, but other, equally pretty, smart, and personable girls simply don’t get your chemistry going. I wonder why that is? Mom’s duplex had a nice yard and was on a quiet street, and I was starting to get settled in and enjoying life again. Normalcy was returning to my life, and I was enjoying it. I had to take on a lot of responsibilities for doing the guy things around the house. Mom was still waitressing. One of the guy things I had to do, was to paint the entire duplex. This was my first really big, and important job. I took a lot of time doing it, being as careful as possible, and I did a darned fine job with it. Painting was not, and is not, one of my favorite things to do, but I really felt good at how nice that house looked when I was done.

Russ on 14th birthday, 1955

Photo from private collection of author

During the summer I turned fourteen, I went to stay with Uncle Ransom on his small ranch out in the desert between Palmdale and Lancaster, California. It was remote. The house sat on a hill, and was primitive, with a western theme. Cowboy boots and stetsons scattered about, mounted deer heads hanging from the walls. It was remote. And primitive. No city water out here. There was a big windmill that pumped water into a huge water tank on the hill, and that in turn was plumbed into the house with gravity flow. You had to carefully adjust the pumping so that when wind was available, you took advantage of it to get water in the storage tank. But if there was too much wind and you forget to adjust the pumping to turn it off, you’d overflow the tank. You don’t want to forget important chores like this in the remotes of the desert. No hot water except by heating on the stove. No bathroom, so baths (at least weekly) was accomplished in a big wash tub. There was electricity, and the outhouse was out back.

My uncle was a firm and tireless task master. Most likely the only reason he wanted me to come visit for the summer had nothing to do with me, it had to do with the fact that he needed some free ranch labor. He had a lot of fencing to do. He showed me how to dig the holes, how to line up the posts to be exactly the right height and perfectly straight and in line with each other, and firmly affixed in the ground. Apparently I didn’t learn these lessons easily, for after one day of back breaking labor putting in a long line of fence, when he came home from his job on the assembly line at Lockheed, he inspected my work. I was beaming, for I was proud of what I had accomplished. It was not to his standards however, and so he had me pull every post out and do the whole thing over. And so went my summer with Uncle Ransom. There were some fun moments though. Occasional riding of horses through vast expanses of rolling hills, just me, the horse and the warm morning wind blowing gently and removing the humidity of the day from my sweating body. And I spent many fun hours on target practice with rifles and pistols.

A really interesting lady lived in the hills behind Uncle Ransom’s place. She was fascinating and had many stories to tell about her life, and I loved spending time at her place any time I could sneak away from my chores. She nearly adopted me for she absolutely adored me. On our first meeting she looked at me with a look of astonishment on her face. She couldn’t take her eyes off me. And no, she wasn’t a young lady, she was a very old lady. But she was fascinated with me. I had to ask her, “what is the matter? Why are you looking at me like that?“ She explained that every time she saw me, she saw a large corona around my head. Now that’s the first I’ve ever heard on that subject. What’s a corona? To this day I still don’t understand that phenomena and don’t know much about it, or whether I even believe in the experience. But to her, it was very, very real.

There were gazillions of rattlesnakes in that part of the country, and I learned a lot about them. In those hot temperatures, they could not survive long when exposed to the direct sun. About eight minutes at most. So I knew that if you saw one and it was in a sunny area, that little critter was well on his way to a shady area. And while they travel, they can’t strike. They strike only when curled up. They love cooler places and the shade, so you learned to walk really carefully around rocky areas and where there was a lot of shade. I ran across more than one rattlesnake during my months at the ranch. One time with a shovel in my hand. Bad luck for the snake. Off came it’s head. It was a big rattler, and I kept his rattles as a souvenir for a long time. One of the things I really hated most about being at Uncle Ransom’s, even more than the back breaking chores, is that there were absolutely no girls around. Zero, zip, nada! It was a girl devoid area. It should be mapped as such and avoided by adolescent boys at all costs. Why in the dickens would any guy in his right mind ever choose to live and grow up in such an area? If I was growing up there, I’d run away from home for sure.

Uncle Ransom broke wild horses, and built most of his horse reputation with Quarter Horses. He had a well earned reputation throughout the area for his talents in this regard. He continued to break wild horses until late in his life, and probably broke every bone in his body at least once or twice. When he was in his eighties and a ranch hand working on a ranch, he met his match. While breaking in a really wild horse, he was thrown off, broke some bones and damaged internal organs, and he never recovered. He died doing what he loved, breaking wild horses until a really wild one broke him instead.

Guns were simply a part of the lifestyle of western ranches. Several times a week I would take a rifle and have target practice out back. I became quite good at hitting the mark with every shot, and surprisingly, at least to me, I had a good eye and touch for being really good with it. This was later to prove valuable during basic training and while training with the Marines. I’m simply a good marksman. But guns are not something I do, or have any interest in. I’ve got a small caliper pistol stored away somewhere. Never been used except for some target practice years ago right after I bought it. It’s a legal gun, properly registered, and stored away out of the reach of kids or others. Stored away so securely, even I forget where it is.

I was about fourteen when mom married a man named Dale. I really liked him, and we got along great. He had been married before, but didn’t have any children of his own. He supported his mother and had a small window cleaning business. It was probably the busiest window cleaning business in the area. He was a worker, and a perfectionist. It matched my style, and we got along great. He taught me to drive, hunt, and took me on my first small airplane ride.

Dale was a private pilot, but he had not been flying for a few years. So, with a new family and a step son that really liked and respected him, he had a renewed interest in flying. Off he went to brush up on his flying skills. And when he was ready, away we went for a ride in the wild blue yonder. We drove out to the airport, and climbed into an old high wing plane. I think it was probably a Cessna 150. Anyway, we taxied out, zig zagging down the taxiway since that is about the only way you can see straight ahead while on the ground with a tail dragger. To the end of the runway, full power, and off the tarmac we literally jumped. It was a fantastic time for me and I was mesmerized. He explained all the controls to me, and showed me slips and other important flying procedures, and then the landing. That was the most exciting time of all, watching that ground come up as we descended, finally slipping to lose altitude quickly, and left wing down with right rudder to handle the crosswind. WOW! What a thrill! Flying was an expensive thing to do, and we didn’t do much of it, but I was forever hooked on flying.

In his early years, Dale had been a personal chauffer to a wealthy businessman. He took a very serious view about driving properly, comfortably, and safely. He taught me every single thing that he knew about driving, and gave me lots of opportunities to drive starting at about age fourteen. He taught me about maintenance, checking the condition of the car, what to look for before driving off, trip planning, defensive driving, how to get out of jams, anticipating the “what if’s” and always leaving an out. All of his wisdom on the subject stayed with me, but one really stands out. He told me that if a single person in the car is uncomfortable with your driving, then you’re going to fast and being too aggressive, no matter what you may think. Now, if I don’t have a rider with me, I pretend there is one and constantly ask myself how they would think my driving was. This single gem of wisdom keeps me from following too closely, stopping too abruptly, turning too quickly or leaving anyone wondering of my intentions. Dale was one really good driver, and a great driving teacher. Part of his driving skill derived from the fact that he was also a pilot. And there you pay extra attention to planning, watching the instruments, situational awareness, and anticipating “what if” scenarios. His driving lessons and advice have stayed with me to this day, and I attribute my long, safe, driving career, free of any significant incidents, to his teachings.

I guess if there is one male figure in my life during these years that had a profound influence on my life, and all of it good, it would be Dale. Too bad he’s not around so I could thank him for his valuable influence.

Mom and Dale were divorced after a few years, and mom went on to have several marriages. This is not said to in any way be unfavorable, for she always seemed to marry really nice guys, but it’s merely a part of my growing up years, my environment, and that’s partly what this story is about. It is not surprising, for mom was a very good looking lady, fun loving, tireless energy and had a great personality. What guy in his right mind wouldn’t be interested in attention from mom? I think she had a real eye for the guys, although her private life remained very private, and I was never exposed to any of her dating and rarely met anyone she dated unless she was very, very serious about the guy. Mom was very proper and circumspect about her private life.

My first car, and I was probably fourteen at the time, was a half partnership with my friend Ken, in a Model A Ford. We each put up $25 and we had title. Ran great, but it had some radiator leaks and couldn’t go past a stream without demanding we jump out and get some water from the stream and fill up the radiator. It was a fun car, and if I had my druthers, I would love to have a good running Model A today. I’d run it everywhere. I think they had a couple of models with a rumble seat, and that’s the one I would want. Ours was a coupe and it didn’t have a rumble seat.

Over the next couple of years, cars and driving were my passion. I bought and traded a ton of cars. I had Fords and Chevrolets, and Nashs, Studebakers, Hudsons, Dodges, and Packards. I would buy or trade for one, work on it a bit, maybe paint it myself, then trade it off for one I thought I would rather have. I generally did OK on the trades, and little money changed hands, it was mostly just trading. When I was fifteen or sixteen, about half way through the year I got a notice from the state that if I purchased or sold another vehicle that year, I would have to get a dealers license. I think I was on the eighth card that year, so I had to keep the car I had for six months until a new year began.

I used to wash mom’s card so she would let me use it for dates and running around. It was an interesting car with a semi-automatic transmission. I forget exactly how that worked, but as I recall, you had a shift lever on the steering column with two forward drive positions. In each position you had a low and a high. To shift up, you merely built up speed, took your foot off the accelerator for a moment, and it slipped into the high range automatically. Studebakers also had an interesting feature, called the “hill holder”. These were manual transmission times, and with lots of hills and mountains where I grew up, it could be a challenge to come to a stop on an uphill road, then remove your foot from the brake and to the accelerator while simultaneously slipping the clutch, all without rolling backwards into any car unfortunate enough to be right behind you. But the Studebaker, with it’s hill holder feature, allowed a couple of seconds after taking your foot off the brake before it would start rolling backwards. A great feature, especially for new drivers. Anyway, back to my washing the car story. I liked getting that car clean, and I used many soaps and chemicals to remove road oil and grimes. And I did this every week. After a few weeks of this, I noticed that mom’s car was not quite the same color that it used to be. All the shine was off it, and it had this dull, sanded look. I was washing the paint right off the car. I switched to a milder soap, but that car never looked the same. And mom, bless her, never said a word to me about it. Maybe she never noticed.

Back in rural Oregon during the fifties, driving licenses and insurance were not always paid a lot of attention to, at least in the farming and rural areas. Heck, us farm boys had to work on the farm and drive tractors and hay trucks and stuff, and we didn’t always have time or money to pay for those fancy requirements. Consequently, I drove by myself almost constantly from the time I was about fourteen. I got my permit on my 15th birthday, and my license on my 16th birthday. And I’ve had a license ever since. Never revoked, never a day without a license. I’ve had licenses from lots of states. I never did this, but many drivers would have licenses in multiple states so that if a license was removed in one state, they had another one to be legal with. Somewhere, probably in the 1970’s or 1980’s, laws changed and you could have and maintain only one drivers license at a time.

When my grandfather Mayberry passed away, mom attended her father’s funeral in San Francisco and when she returned, she had her fathers typewriter with her and gave it to my older brother Lyle. But I’m the one that used that old manual typewriter. I remember one of the first times I used it, I discovered that to use it I needed to learn typing. I had to make a seemingly simple decision, yet one that would end up having a big impact on my future. There was an easy hunt and peck method of typing, and the hard to learn but correct method, but once learned was much faster. I had to decide which way to learn to type, and I decided to follow the instruction book and put my fingers on the keys the right way, and to use the correct fingers for the typing. The hard way. So I practiced. And I became very fast at it. It was a skill that was to be of great value to me both in high school and later when I got in the computer field. In future years it was to serve as a reminder to me that even in seemingly simple everyday decisions, that the decision we make can have a lasting effect. And that you’re often offered two choices--the easy way and the right way. And that it’s better to choose the right way even at near term pain or effort. It was a lasting lesson.

In my freshman year of high school, I had an elective, with very few choices in our relatively small high school of only four-hundred students. One of the electives was typing. Well I thought, I know how to type, so I’ll just take that class and have a really easy class period. But the real beauty of my plan is that not a single guy was in that class, it was all girls. And they all needed lots of help in learning to type. And the typing instructor welcomed all the help she could get, having a class of about thirty girls, and one guy, all learning to type. Except me of course. So my class time was spent assisting other students. There was this one especially cute girl, and she sat immediately behind me, and she wore really low cut blouses. And I was in full blown adolescence. I could not keep my eyes off her. I finally worked up enough courage to ask her out, but she politely informed me that her daddy and her big brothers didn’t like her going out with boys, so she’d better not lest I get shot. My dreams were dashed. But I had a lot of fun in that class never-the-less!

By the time I was a junior in high school, my hooky days were beginning to exceed my attendance days. I always got back in, simply by writing a note and signing mom’s name to it. It was always something like “please excuse Russell for being absent all of last week, but he had the flu” or something like that. But somewhere around mid-year, I had been out an excessively long time, and I thought, what can I possible say in a note to get me back in? Saying I had the flu wasn’t going to cut it this time. So I stayed out a while longer while I mulled this over. Should I say I was in a tragic car accident and had finally recovered after some rehabilitation therapy? No, not a good idea. Too easily checked out. I’d better be more creative. Aha! We moved away then we moved back. Nah, they’d want my records from the other school. I never did figure my way out of that one, so I just stayed out, figuring I’d think of something before the school year ended. But along about February or March I started thinking how far behind I would be, and how I’d probably get a failing grade in every subject so there really wasn't much sense going back that year. Maybe I’d better wait and go back next year. I had strange thinking at this point in my life. Besides, I didn’t like sitting around in classrooms anyway. Living life had more fun, excitement, challenge! Eventually, after riding rails as a hobo, picking beans in Portland, and spending time fighting forest fires, I joined the Navy. They said I would need my high school diploma, but I could get it through the Navy. During boot camp, I took the GED, it was a really simple test, and they gave me my high school diploma. Wow, what a skate. I’d made a big mistake in staying away from school, but I didn’t have to pay the price. And college was not in my future anyway. I could never handle four more years of classrooms. Life was waiting, and I was determined that it would be exciting!

Swimming was always a part of my childhood, with all of the rivers, irrigation ditches, streams and ponds seemingly everywhere. A few spots really stand out. One was on the Rogue River near our house on Annabelle Lane. There a very long cable swing that allowed us to spend hours swinging from high on the bank to very high over the river, at the last moment dropping off into the cold and rushing water below. Another favorite spot was the railroad trestle across the river, and there we had a long steel cable for swinging. Plus we had the railroad trestle to climb in and on, and an old steam locomotive that we used to play in. The Applegate River provided some of the best swimming spots, having some sandy beaches and lots of deep swimming holes. And closer to home, we had the city park with it’s beach on the side of the Rogue River. In the middle of the river was a spinning log. This log was attached from one end to a cable that was anchored somewhere deep on the bottom of the river. But this cable was on a spindle, and the log was debarked. So, you clamored aboard that log, got your footing, then started walking fast then faster and faster as that log spun wildly under your feet. Finally, it would be spinning so fast it would be impossible to stay on. Actually, this was good training for the would be lumber jacks that later would walk the logs in the river and in holding ponds to break up log jams and get the logs floating to wherever they were headed. These logs had slippery footing and spun out of control under your feet, so you had to be nimble and quick to walk the logs.

Swimming was my favorite thing to do, not only because I was a very good swimmer, but for all the wonderful girl watching it afforded. I was absolutely enamored with the young ladies in their revealing suits, well, revealing for that time as the bikini had not yet been invented. Nothing compared to the bikinis of the late twentieth century, but very revealing for a young adolescent just growing up and being keenly interested in girls. I remember when Sheila all of a sudden, seemingly overnight, turned from a little girl into a beauty to behold. We were swimming at “eight foot,” and she was sitting down on the bank, and I was approaching, ready to take a big swan dive to impress her. But I was mesmerized by her low cut swim top and her amazing and recently formed endowments, and somehow, as I approached, I tripped and fell, badly twisting my ankle as I splashed, unceremoniously into the swimming hole. I doubt if I impressed her very much, but the water was cold, and that was probably a good thing.

We had lots of fun on the long railroad trestle spanning the river. It was narrow, just one track with two rails, and it had steel arches. Sometimes we'd climb all around the trestles, and it was high over the river at that point. Fall and you'd have an excellent chance of meeting your maker right there on the spot. At least with the height, you'd have plenty of time to say your prayers on your way to a watery grave. One of our favorite things was to ride our bicycles across that trestle, at least for the bravest of us. We thought, and I'm not sure how correct we were in our thinking, that once we heard the whistle of the train as it approached the trestle, that we'd have time to get all the way across and off the track. Luckily, that supposition was never tested that I know of since we knew to the minute the train schedule. One train in the morning, and one in the evening. The first several hundred feet of the trestle was about fifty feet above a very rocky terrain. Not wimpy rocks but covered with eight inch rocks on a solid gravel base. I doubt a fall off that part of the trestle would be surviveable, even with my hard head. With the railroad ties being about eight inches wide, and with about six to eight inches between the ties, we quickly learned that the smoothest ride across the railroad bridge by bicycle was a very fast ride. Go slow and it was very bumpy and difficult to keep your path straight and between the rails. So we'd go with great speed and gusto, at least the bravest of us. Many of the kids wouldn't do it because of it's high risk, but I loved the chalenge of it and knew I was up to mastering it's difficulties and challenges. I've never been short of confidence in myself. I often came up short in good sense, but always long on confidence.

Our town was a former railroad terminus of some signifance, hauling supplies to the loggers and hauling great quantities of logs and wood products outbound. The switching yard was in the middle of town and had ten or twelve tracks. It was frequently quite busy. My brothers and sister and I, along with some of our friends, loved to play "chicken" with the trains by dodging between the cars, clamboring over the connector hitches and hoses, while they were moving slowly. Sometimes we even rolled across the tracks undr the train after the front wheels of a boxcar passed us and before the back wheels rolled over us. With the trains moving very slowly, we had sufficient time to complete this hair brained stunt, if we moved quickly enough and didn't get a foot caught in the track or something. I don't know of any kids that were rolled over playing these games of "chicken" with the trains. These stunts added excitement to our day and broke our boredom.

Ken was my best friend in high school. We hung around and got into lots of trouble together. Played hooky from school together, and did all the things that really close, and trouble prone adolescents, are inclined to do. We got into a fun game of friendly fighting with each other one day. I don’t know why, but with adolescent boys, fighting seems to be a fun thing to do. Maybe it goes back to caveman days or something. Anyway, I had seen in a comic book or a magazine, some interesting karate chops. While Ken and I were fighting, with neither of us yet getting an upper hand on the other, I decided to try a karate chop that seemed to be a good one to use, at least from my the impressions from the comic book. I mustered all my strength and chopped Ken with the side of my hand and with all my might, right across the back of his neck. Down he went. He didn’t get up. He didn’t move. I thought I’d killed him. I shook him. No response. I rolled him over. I mulled what to do. I thought “his parents are gonna kill me!” After a seemingly lengthy period of time, he started coming around. He was shaken. He was weak. He declared me the winner. And I was really thankful that I hadn’t tried the other karate thing I’d seen in that comic book. Together, they would topple any person in any situation. I filed my newfound knowledge about defense into the back of my mind as to what I would do if ever in a serious altercation. But I’ve never used that since, and Ken and I never got into a playful fight again. I figured that if we played fighting games again, he would probably kill me for what I had done to him.

When I was seventeen, I was the typical seventeen year old guy with lots of hormones pumping. Girls were of great interest to me. A lot of interest. Growing up on the farm with a daily influence of my very religious grandparents, it was instilled in us boys that nice kids didn‘t do certain things. We were taught you don’t touch the girls or get too friendly with ‘em unless you were very serious about them, like ready to marry them. And absolutely nothing too friendly unless you were married. And if you didn’t follow this rule, very bad things would happen, including maybe very important body parts might inexplicably fall off your body. Now all this sounded very serious, yet I was after all, a teenage boy, growing up a bit too fast. What to do? Aha! I had a solution! I was really close to Ken’s sister Sandra by this time. We were very serious about each other, and spent most of our waking moments with each other. Why, I thought, we’ll get married, then we can get really friendly! Sounded like a great plan to me! Being short of money, not having a regular income during school years being an impediment to earning money, I pondered on how to get an engagement ring. I finally solved this piece of the puzzle by pleading with my mother over my serious intentions about Sandra, and she relented to giving me one of her diamonds which I then had set in a nice engagement ring. Clever wasn’t I? All this was going according to plan. For awhile. Then it went downhill fast. Sandra felt too much intimacy was not a good thing before marriage. Whoa! My plan was quickly going awry. Then we discovered we really didn’t have very much in common. Events were on a downhill roller coaster. We were engaged for a short while. But how to get out of my predicament since things weren’t going quite the way I planned? But then out of nowhere, rose my opportunity. Seems she wasn‘t really into this engagement thing either, and I found out that she had seen another feller, not really on a date or anything, but being a jealous and insecure male teenager, I felt it was a betrayal of our affections. We were parked on a mountaintop during our discussion of this, and I saw my great plans come tumbling in on me. Things were not going my way. I got mad, and I asked for the ring back. She gave it to me. And just to show her how bothered I was by this whole turn of events, I took that ring and threw it as far off the mountain as my teenage muscles could muster. I’ll show her how upset I am was my reasoning. Then with all the horsepower I could muster out of my twenty year old Dodge sedan, I peeled about five-hundred feet of rubber out of there, and delivered Sandra to her doorstep. And that was the end of our relationship. Too bad young kids are so stupid. But hormones can make you very stupid indeed. I guess in your teenage years, your body wakes up and your brain goes into a coma. Or so it is with most guys, at least the ones I’ve known. I later learned that my mother went up on that mountain, climbed around the whole side of it, looking for that ring. Never did find it. I wonder just how many carets that diamond had? And has anyone ever discovered the ring? Or does it sit there still, a testament to the pains, the stupidity, of a hormonally challenged seventeen year old boy.

So here I was, seventeen years old, still inexperienced in the pleasures of adulthood and staying true to the moral compass of my grandparents, certainly not by choice or through lack of trying. No matter, I didn’t like any of this one whit! I’d had enough childhood, I wanted to go out and meet the world on my terms. And perhaps even sooth my hormones a little before I exploded like a miniature nuclear bomb.

As I prepared to leave on my adventure of rushing headlong into adulthood, I thought “this sucks! I hope life gets better!” I didn’t see much value coming out of my teenage years. But with the value of hindsight, I’ve learned that these were the years that really formed me, and helped mold my views on life and the world. And the plus side of the ledger certainly outweighed the negatives. Sure, I entered my own little world and shut others out, an undesirable trait that would follow me throughout my life. And because of that, my social skills suffered. And I relied strictly on my own observations and experiences to guide me through uncharted waters of life when some sage advice by wise counsel could have saved my fanny from the fire. But what I really learned during these turbulent years is to have confidence and faith in myself, that a dogged determination and tenacity will see you through anything, that flexibility and adaptability was key to enjoying life, and perhaps most importantly, that a good sense of humor and laughing at life’s predicaments and your own fallacies and mistakes keeps your spirits up and is healthy to your outlook on life. I learned life-long lessons of skillful driving, and developed a passion for flying. Most of all, I learned that anything is possible given enough work, desire, planning and thought. Anything. But, alas, I was still clueless about some of the real pleasures and benefits of adulthood. That had to change!

I went into the Navy soon after. And thus began a new chapter of my life.

Russ with mother on the day before enlisting in USN, 1958.

Photo from private collection of author

More humor, adventure and opinion from Rambling Russ

ps... feedback please. Help me monitor interest by clicking on funny, interesting or cool below. Thanks.

_

Early years on the farm

2010-06-15T05:11:00.003-04:00

When I was about four, I had a huge panda bear teddy bear. It was just about the same size that I was. To carry it around, I had to wrap both of my arms around it and waddle my way to wherever it was we were going. It was so big, I did not take it very far from my crib. One spring day, it was a little chilly outside, but the whole family had gone across the road to enjoy the day at Mr. Bott’s house and small irrigation lakes in which everyone enjoyed swimming. We enjoyed spending time at Mr. Bott’s. It was not long after we arrived when there was an excited exclamation, “look, there is smoke coming from our house!”. My father dashed across the road and into our house to see the cause and put out the fire lest the farmhouse burn down. I had apparently left my big panda bear either on the wood stove or right next to it, and dear old Teddy burned himself up. Self immolation I guess. No more panda bear. That was the last Teddy bear I ever had.

Guess I did not have a good appreciation of fires at age four. I was about that old when one day, while wearing my bib, I leaned over a burning candle. My bib quickly went up in flames, no fire resistent clothing back then, and my bib was ablaze with flames licking toward my face. Fortunately, either my brother or sister screamed for mom, she came running and yanked that burning bib off me faster than a scared cat after stepping on it's tail. I did not suffer any burns or harm from the experience, and couldn't understand at my young age why everyone was so excited about what had just happened. Since it didn't hurt me, and not having an appreciation for the dangers of fire, I thought it was a pretty fascinating experience to have it go "whoosh" right in front of my face.

Russ on second birthday, 1943

Photo from private collection of author

My brother Lyle and I shared birthdays. Although four years apart, his birthday was on the 28th of June, and mine was on the 30th of June. I didn’t like sharing birthdays one bit. One particular birthday I remember really well, because I had to eat nearly a whole loaf of bread. Mom had these fancy little glass candle holders to hold the candles on the cake. They were really neat and really spiffied up the cake. To me, being only five, they looked just like candy frosting on our birthday cake. I proceeded to put some in my mouth, and really crunch away on them. They didn’t taste very good, but I figured if it was candy or frosting, well, my taste buds just needed a little more fine tuning. I probably ground up and swallowed several of these glass holders before anyone wondered what that crunching sound was coming from my mouth. My mother got really alarmed when she discovered what I had been so cleverly eating. I complained to her about them not being very tasty. She ran and found a neighbors telephone, and called the family doctor. The doctors advice was to feed me as much dry bread as my little stomach could hold, and to hope for the best. And so there I sat, instead of enjoying cake and ice cream, I spent my fifth birthday party eating a whole loaf of bread!

We lived on a small farm where we had a number of chickens, pigs, and cattle. When we wanted a chicken dinner, it was the job of us boys to catch a chicken, chop off the head, and bring the headless chicken to mom for plucking and cooking. Sometimes we beheaded the chickens by swinging them in circles then giving a snap to our wrist which quickly dispatched the chickens head from the body. Hey, I’m just telling you what life was like on a farm when I was little. That’s the way you prepared the chicken dinners. No local market to go and select a nice frozen one. Back to the story, the other way of beheading a chicken was the trusty hatchet. Now this took a good eye and a fast hand, and a great deal of accuracy least you chop off not the chickens head, but your fingers instead. You’d lay the chickens neck and head on the end of a chopping block, holding it tightly around the neck, then whack the head off with the ax. All within inches of your hand, so a good aim was essential. Generally it would take several tries as the chickens, not wanting to be beheaded, did not cooperate by being still. Now the strange thing about chickens, is that their muscles continue to function even when the head is separated from the body. Often the headless chickens would run around and you’d have to chase them down. One particular time, and it’s by pure accident I am sure, but this newly beheaded chicken ran from the barn down a long winding driveway, turned, and ran two blocks up the road. We finally caught him and returned him to his rightful spot, the cooking pot.

On the farm, for pork and beef, we also had to occasionally slaughter our pigs and cattle. If you’re not an old farm boy from the forties, you’ll find this difficult to understand. But the way we slaughtered cattle was to hit them in the head with a hammer. This was considered the humane way as it was instant and without pain. It just sounds horrible. That was an adult job, and thankfully, I never had to do it. Anyway, after killing the cattle, they were cut open, drained of blood, and their innards thrown in a big slaughter pile that was there just for that use. It was an open pit, but in a far removed part of the farm, and it stank. Perhaps it was treated with lye or something, but I don’t recall that.

One of the things that happens on farms is that you’re always acquiring stray cats. They would come from nowhere. Perhaps they were attracted by the availability of mice on the farm, or perhaps they just liked to be around kids. But most farms attracted quite a number of the little critters. We could handle only so many, and when some of these stray cats had litters, they had to be quickly dispatched least they take over the farm. This was accomplished by putting all the little newborn kittens in a gunny sack, adding lots of rocks, and throwing sack, kittens, rocks and all into our pond, thereby dispatching them to a watery grave. Many dozens of cats and kittens were dispatched this way. No SPCA back then.

We always had dogs around the farm. They just seemed to show up somehow. Sometimes, when we were walking home from school, a friendly mutt might tag along, wanting to play. Sometimes they’d follow for awhile then turn back to go wherever they belonged. But sometimes we just liked the dog so darned much we’d encourage the dog to tag along with us, offering play, petting, and perhaps a few tidbits from an uneaten lunch. Occasionally we actually drug the dog home by a rope, us tugging one way, and the dog trying to run the other. By the time we got home, kids and dog would usually be best buddies. Then we’d plead with our mother, “but mom, he’s just a stray with nowhere to go, and he just wouldn’t stop following us. We tried chasing him away. Look how hungry he is. Can we keep him, huh? Huh?” Usually the response would be that maybe we could keep him for a day until the owner shows up. Of course the owner never showed up and we had a new dog in our collection. Good thing they didn’t hang dog thieves in those days.

Mice and farms go together. They are everywhere, and that is why it’s so nice to have a few choice cats around. The mice are attracted to the grains and food resources of farms. The farmhouse that we lived in had lots of mice. Back then, you didn’t have all sorts of insulation in the walls of the house, you merely had air between the inner walls and the outer walls. We weren’t worried about the efficiency, if you got cold you merely threw another log on the fire. And air conditioning was yet to be invented. Our air conditioning system was to open the windows and doors. Anyway, mice lived in the walls of our farmhouse. At night time you would fall asleep listening to the scampering of mice throughout the walls.

I was about five when Mr. Bott knocked on the door. I think my mother was outside doing laundry, and my sister and brothers were out doing what kids do on a nice spring day. Mr. Bott asked if he could borrow the play swing set of my sister Carol. He explained that he wanted to build a big one, and he needed the toy to see how to construct it. Since I had no compunctions about loaning out or even giving away any of my sisters toys, I gladly got it for him. And build away Mr. Bott did. Within a week or two he had this grand swing with seats on both sides, and placed it high on his bank overlooking the irrigation ditch. Of course all of us kids loved that swing, and we probably about destroyed it with our outlandish and raucous behavior. But it never fell apart and it kept on swinging, just the way Mr. Bott designed it to, a true testament to his crafting ability.

Mr. Bott, had two ponds on his property. He bought two old wooden row boats, and put a boat on each pond, just for us kids. We spent countless hours on those ponds. Sometimes we even swam in the ponds even though they were really yucky and really muddy on the bottom, and had catfish swimming around in them. The catfish and snakes didn’t bother us much.

Mr. Bott had lots of neat stuff, and us kids thought all of it was just for us. Maybe it was. Probably not. For example, he put up a canvas hammock between two trees. And that became a great plaything for me. I’d roll up in that canvas, and some one would push me really hard until it swung me upside down. Usually it went all the way over and the play continued, but sometimes, if the push wasn’t quite hard enough, it would merely lose steam and stop just at the top of the swing. Then you quickly fell out, straight down onto the ground. Ouch.

Mr. Bott shared his property with a Mr. Anderson. Now Mr. Anderson was a true western outdoors man. I’m not sure what he did before he got old, but I suspect he was a lumberjack or something. In the winters, he had his own room in Mr. Bott’s house. But during the spring, summer and fall months, he had a big ol tent that he installed. It seemed gigantic to me as a kid. In it he had his bed, a wood stove, and all the accruements of home that he needed. That’s where he stayed, and he loved it. During the summer months he would go away and work as a fire spotter in one of the forest service towers that are, or were, so prevalent around rural Oregon.

When I was five and six years old, rather than riding with my grandparents to Sunday school and church, we would ride with the spinster up the road. We loved riding in her car because it was a coupe, a Ford Model “A” I believe, but what we really liked is that it had a rumble seat. This was a seat outside the car. You pulled up on the rear deck of this coup and that exposed this open air seat in which two or three people could squeeze in. All of us kids loved riding around in that rumble seat. We loved it so much we were even willing to endure a couple of hours in church just to ride there in style.

My first school was an old two room school house with four grades in each room. The boiler was in the basement, and of course there was no such thing as air conditioning in those days. Out back were the outhouses, for we had no plumbing or septic systems on the older school houses. The grade school was replaced and I entered the third grade in a brand new school house, complete with running water and rest rooms, and just one class per room. It was spacious and modern. Why we even had a lunch room where we got hot meals. What a change, but I did have pangs of missing that old two room school house where I had so much fun.

There was a rock quarry at the railroad bridge across the Rogue River, probably only about a mile or two from our farm. We went down there to play often for it was an ideal swimming spot, complete with a long cable swing that we would use for hours. Swing way out over the river and drop off. Of course there were many pilings that we had to look out for and avoid. Sometimes we narrowly missed those pilings, but I don’t recall anyone ever coming down on them. It would have hurt for sure. But in that quarry was an old steam locomotive. It was complete. It had merely been driven up there and left on an old railroad spur. It was probably a switching engine used for moving boxcars around spur lines, but us kids loved playing engineer in that old steam locomotive. We also loved playing in the quarry when they weren’t working it. We’d climb way up these piles of sand or gravel, and slide straight down. The world was our playground.

Farms had electric fences to keep the cattle in. Just a strand of wire, with electricity running through it, but it sure kept the cattle in. Touch it one time and they knew forever more just where to stay away from. Sometimes us kids would forget, and the wire was not very visible, especially to fast running little children. We’d hit that fence and whoa! It would knock us off our feet. Sometimes we’d actually grab hold of it on a dare, the one not getting knocked to the ground being the winner.

We were poor, so we were frugal. On a farm there was always a number of things either being built or torn down. When things got torn down, the old rusty nails were salvaged for reuse. Bent nails went in a big nail bucket, and during idle time, we’d bang those nails out straight and they’d be good to use again. Now I guess, everyone just buys new nails.

We had cows that were milked twice a day for our own use and for selling to neighbors. We had three stalls in the barn. The cows would come in when called, for they knew they would be eating hay while granddad yanked and pulled on their utter to get about a pail of milk from each. Of course one of them was called Bessie. Cats would gather around and every once in a while you’d try your aim at squirting the milk in the cats open mouth. Milk was then sent through some kind of manually cranked machine, I think maybe it was a skimmer to separate the cream from the milk. Then straight to the supper table it went. I loved that warm milk, and I loved the buttermilk mom made. Probably not allowed to do that anymore, you probably have to pasteurize and homogenize and sterilize to some government agencies standard. But not back then.

That milk made absolutely the finest ice cream. Not like the stuff you buy in stores today, that goes by the name of ice cream but really isn’t. No, this was the real stuff. Thick, cold, and oh so tasty! To make the ice cream we had a big old wooden ice cream maker, and into the sides of it you put a lot of rock salt or something. Then you had this big wooden paddle with a handle that you stuck into the end, and turned and turned and turned until your arms fell off. Then you turned it over, stuck the paddle handle in the other end, and did the same thing all over. By then, you’d burned up far more calories then you would ever devour from eating the ice cream. Didn’t matter, we didn’t know anything at all about calories back then anyway. We just knew that if you ate a lot, you gained weight, and if you worked really hard and didn’t eat too much, you were thin. Most of us were thin on the farm.

Speaking of butter, sometime in my late childhood, oleo margarine was invented. But it was weird. You had a clear plastic bag of this oleo margarine, and it was totally white. Except you had this deep yellow bubble in the packet that you pushed to squish something yellowish out and into that clear plastic packet. Then you kneaded that packet until your fingers fell off, then it was about done and ready to use. We didn’t like it much and rarely used it, preferring instead real butter from real cows right out there in the back forty. Except in our case, it was the back four.

We always ate well on the farm. A hearty hot breakfast, a more than ample sack lunch, and always a supper that included meat and vegetables. Mom was a strong believer in eating lots of vegetables, reds and greens and all the stuff that’s suppose to be good for you. As kids, we didn’t appreciate this attention to our health. We often didn’t like the vegetables being served. But, table to our rescue. Our table had support planks underneath that provided a handy ledge for hiding the food we didn’t want to eat when no one was looking. Being a big shelf, it accommodated large quantities of uneaten food. About once a week, one of us kids would have to wait until no one was in the kitchen, then collect and dispose of all that uneaten food least it be discovered.

Family photo, 1945. Russ at lower left.

Photo from authors personal collection.

My family was a stickler for being on time for meals. Perhaps it came from Grandpa Kelly. At promptly five each afternoon, he sat down for his meal and if Grandma was not busy serving him at exactly that time, he would announce in his strong voice, “I am ready to be served”. Grandma and Grandpa Kelly rarely had disagreements, at least that us kids ever knew about. Grandpa was a bit rigid. If he and Grandma had a discussion in which they disagreed, after a few minutes he would simply tire of it and announce in his most commanding voice of authority, “that’s the way it is because I have spoken!” and that was the end of the conversation. I thought that was a pretty cool way of handling disagreements, but I’ve tried it several times in my adult life and it hasn’t worked for me yet. Once it earned me a bunch of dishes thrown at me, most of which found their mark on my noggin. I’ve not been tempted to try it since.

One day I was playing with my friend Chuck, and with him being about as rambunctious as I was, we always seemed to be getting into trouble together. This particular day we were having such fun with whatever mischief we were into, when I realized I was a few minutes late to sit down for supper. The family would be inside eating, and I was going to be in big trouble for not being present. We knew that this was going to require one big and dramatic tale if I was to get out of this one. So a scheme was hatched. I hid in the bushes at the base of our very tall power pole that had all these electric lines running from it. It was wooden and had these metal cleats in the sides, starting about ten feet up, that allowed utility workers to climb the pole. As kids, we didn’t climb up there often because we knew what could be the fatal outcome if you touched those wires at the tops. While I was hiding in the bush in eager anticipation, Chuck went running into the house to shout at the top of his lungs to family, all sitting quietly around the table, “Russell climbed up the power pole and he is just laying there at the top across the wires!”. My idea was that they would come running out, I’d jump out of the bushes and exclaim what a horrible fall I had from the top and it sure was a good thing that big bush was there to catch my fall. I figured they would be so happy so see me alive, I not only would not get in trouble for missing the start of supper, but I might even get a big piece of pie or something. Frankly, I thought my story was working well, and there was a lot of relief on mom’s face, but then Chuck started laughing. Uncontrollably. And the gig was up. Time for the bedroom where spankings were administered.

Spankings were the behavior modification of choice for errant and misbehaving kids of my era. They were usually administered with gusto to the bare skin of your buttocks by a shave strap (a belt for sharpening shaving razors), a hairbrush, a wooden paddle, a belt, or a switch from a tree. My father’s favorite, although not necessarily mine, was the hairbrush, and a switch off a tree. And not just one or two swats, but a full grown measure for which the punishment would be remembered for a long time. Frankly, I think spankings are hugely effective. There are many things that I did not do simply because of the fear of getting caught and getting a spanking for the misdeed. Occasionally we would have to go outside and whittle a switch off a tree and bring it in for dad to use for the spanking. And heaven help you if you picked a wimpy switch, for then dad would find a proper sized one and use it twice as hard and twice as long.

With four growing children, it was not easy to determine which one was responsible for misdeeds. Then the solution was for all the kids to go pants down, bottoms up, and dad would proceed to spank all of us until someone fessed up. Well, being the youngest and smallest, spankings were probably hardest on me so I was the one that frequently fessed up to whatever we were being spanked for, just to make the spanking stop. And of course that always resulted in further punishment, and an undeserved reputation for doing mischief and getting into trouble. Well, life wasn’t always easy growing up on the farm, and fortunately, our spankings were not all that frequent. At least not for the trouble we were always getting into. Probably should have been spanked a whole lot more.

Grandmother Kelly loved flowers. She kept all these beautiful pansies around her very small house. In front of the big house, down a dirt walkway that went to the street, she had roses planted on both sides. Those were beautiful roses. We didn’t have outside water spigots for watering outside plants, we used irrigation ditch water. We might have to walk back through our farm, and the farm behind us, to open a gate to let water down an irrigation ditch from the main upper irrigation ditch. It would go through various concrete water control things that had lots of valves and gates to control where it went. Anyway, once the water was started toward us, we could open a gate on the front lawn and water would pour out. We directed the flow of that water using metal irrigation pipes, just laying them down in sections and letting the water go wherever we decided it should go. What water was not used for our irrigation purposes, continued on down the ditch and into Mr. Bott’s upper pond, overflowed into the lower pond, and from there into the lower irrigation ditch. The entire irrigation system around our part of the country was built around two large irrigation ditches that provided great quantities of water from the Rogue River to the farms of the area. They both started at Savage Rapids Dam, about five or six miles out of town. The water was pumped from the river into each of the two ditches, and each ditch went it’s own separate way. They were typically about four feet deep with water and provided great swimming spots for us kids. Sometimes there were especially deep parts of the ditch, before going over a dam or something, where the water would get eight or more feet deep. These swimming spots were called, appropriately enough, eight foot. Such clever naming! What imagination we had as kids.

Besides having lots of roses and pansies and lots of other beautiful flowers around, we had apple and cherry and plum trees. Red apples and green apples, and other kinds of fruit trees. I never cared for the plums, but I sure loved those apples and cherries. We’d sit for hours eating cherries from the tree, trying to get to all of the ripe cherries before the birds did. One night, my sister Carol and I slept outdoors in our sleeping bags, under the cherry tree, and spent the entire night doing nothing but eating cherries. We were two sick puppies the next day.

When I was about six, I had my only overnight hospital stay. I was to have a tonsillectomy, which was a really common procedure back then. I guess they considered tonsils a bad thing and the cause of much grief, so they simply removed them. It was frightening for a little boy, especially when they started to put that mask over my face. But I’ll never forget what that nurse anesthetist promised me. She said that when I went to sleep, Donald Duck would come and visit and play with me. I don’t think he did. At least I don’t remember it. And when I woke up, my throat really hurt. Now here’s the good part. They gave me all the ice cream I wanted. I guess that was the most effective thing for soothing the throat after a tonsillectomy.

As a child on a farm, it seemed we had unsurpassed opportunities for mischief, most of which we did not want discovered. I had done something one day that was not to my mothers liking, but she wasn’t sure whether I was responsible or one of the others did it. I knew, since I did the misdeed, but I wasn’t telling! She grabbed me by my shoulders, and asked sternly whether I had done it. By this time my whole body was trembling and my lip was quivering. “Tell me Russell, did you do that? And tell me the truth because your eyes will tell me whether you did it or not!” Well, not wanting to give myself away unnecessarily, with eyes as big as saucers I looked right at mom and asked, “well, what do my eyes say?”. She laughed, gave me a swat, and sent me away with a warning to not ever do that again. Sure. At least for the rest of that day.

We swam a lot in our irrigation ditches. Often, we would ride our horses into the deeper parts of the ditches and let them swim around, sometimes with us riding bareback, and sometimes we’d get off and grab them by the tail and let them pull us around in the water. It was great fun. I know. The horses told me so.

Irrigation ditches could be a lot of fun, but they could be treacherous as well. The water flowed swiftly, and if you weren’t a good swimmer and found yourself in the ditch, you’d be swept a long ways downstream only to come out who knows where. We figured they emptied out into Hades or someplace, for we never dared to go the entire length of the ditches. A few kids were lost each year to the ditches. The lower irrigation ditch ran right beside the road we lived on, just a block up the street, before it turned and went in other directions. The road was quite a ways above the ditch, as much as twenty feet in spots. And there were no guardrails. We really didn’t use guardrails on roads in Oregon. If you were dumb enough to go to fast on the narrow and winding roads, then perhaps survival of the fittest came into play and you were no longer a menace to others on the roads. Anyway, one summer day, my sister Carol, myself, and a neighborhood boy, Stanley, were walking along the road, high above the ditch, when all of a suddenly Stanley falls over the embankment and into the ditch. And he was not a swimmer. As Carol and I watched him quickly being swept away, we did the only thing we knew how to do. We shouted “HELP!” and pointed to the ditch. Now how creative is that!? Anyway, we were going past a house that had several teenage boys. One of the older McLean boys came out, saw what was happening, and did a magnificent swan dive from the top of that embankment, right down into the ditch. He grabbed our friend Stanley, and drug him to the bank where they both clambered out. Had it not been for that McLean boy, ol’ Stanley would have been the dearly departed Stanley, and would have missed many summers of fun. The McLean boy from that moment on was our hero.

We lived next door to a teenager several years older than us. We always looked up to Bob, and he was always so good to all of us kids. He never got tired of us pestering him, and never got upset when we damaged his trucks by playing in them. Just a really neat teenage kid. At about seventeen, he married his high school sweetheart, and enlisted in the Army to begin a career. Driving home from boot camp late one night, his car ran off the road. His buddy stayed in the car and was not badly injured. But our very best of buddies Bob, was not so lucky. No seat belts in cars back then. As his car left the road, the door swung open and he was thrown out, right into a big rock. Killed him instantly. And so us kids learned early about death and dieing and the unexpected. It was a really sad moment in our lives. Someone we had known so well, had been such a part of in our growing up years, gone in the bat of an eye. We’d never look at life quite the same again.

When I was in the second grade, I fell in love for the second time. And I’m not sure just how I justified falling in love again when I still loved that beautiful little Goldie. But this time, I fell in love with my teacher, Miss Fowler. She was young, and beautiful, had marvelous curves, and always smiled and had this long flowing brunette hair. I was in love. And the way she smiled at me, I knew she must be in love with me as well. I was sure she would wait while I grew up a little. Boy, was my heart broken when she got engaged and then married. I can describe in details her features and the wonderful smell of her perfume to this day, as her image and smells are etched indelibly in my mind.

Most of the time while growing up, I was fairly good and reasonably well behaved. Oh sure, the usual stuff of farm kids like occasionally playing hooky from school, or doing things we weren’t suppose to. But nothing really bad. But I did have this little personality trait that could cause me some grief. I was fiercely independent and stubborn, and no one really was going to deny me what I really had my mind set on. Grandpa Kelly had all his farm tools in a cabinet in the barn over a big old wooden work bench. I loved playing with his tools. But sometimes, I guess I forgot to put them back. He asked me not to play with them, but I’m sure he didn’t really mean that. Not even when out of frustration he even put a lock on the tool cabinet. Why to me, that wasn’t a message, that was merely a challenge. He merely wanted to see how badly I wanted to play with those tools. After much use of crowbars and hammers and saws and such, I was able to knock the lock off the tool cabinet, and get to the tools. A lot of damage was done, but I’d met the challenge. From that moment on, I never played with the tools again. And grandpa Kelly, gentleman that he was, never once scolded me or mentioned the fact that I’d torn his cabinet up pretty bad. Perhaps he too, had a bit of this same fierce independence, and maybe I reminded him of when he was a kid. Who knows why he never said anything? Perhaps he was just a very wise man, and knew that having met the challenge, I would not be in his tool cabinet again.

With infinite patience, wise counsel, and always having time for us unruly kids, my Grandpa and Grandma Kelly were surely the best possible grandparents on the face of this planet. I think of them often. Having given me so much, it gives me some pleasure knowing that I was able to give something back. Grandpa Kelly wanted to learn how to whistle. And since I was always, and I mean always, whistling as a kid, he figured he could come to a real pro to learn. And teach him I did. From then on, anytime he was outside the house, he whistled everywhere he went. It was a bond between us.

I had a reputation for working hard and enjoying work at a very early age. At the school, as an eight and nine year old, I would spend an hour or two each evening and several hours on Saturdays, sweeping and buffing floors, taking out trash, cleaning blackboards, doing the things that keep a school neat and clean. For this, I earned a free hot lunch each day, and on Saturdays, for a half a day of work I earned fifty cents. Plus a candy bar that the janitor, Mr. Ralston, always bought me half way through the morning. He was a really neat guy and I learned a lot from him about work and doing things right. Through the recommendation of my principal, I also got a week-end job washing windows at a donut shop. I was known as a worker. One day while sitting in my fourth grade class, bored to death, a dear old lady came struggling up the street, arms loaded with bags of groceries. I watched as she struggled, and felt sorry for her. Apparently the principal saw her struggling as well, and he called her inside to sit in front of the fan. And then he sent for me. “Russell” he said, “how would you like to carry this lady’s groceries home for her? She only lives about a mile away.” Would I like to!? What a silly question. I was bored silly sitting in class, wishing I was outside. I jumped at the opportunity. I carried her groceries home, and she invited me in for a nice cold glass of lemonade and some cookies. Why life gets no better than this! I was learning at an early age, the value of hard work.

Our farm had lots of opportunities for play, as well as work. We had a big barn with a hay loft. We’d climb up in the loft and jump down on the fresh hay below. We’d do that for hours. And since Carol and I were the closest in age, it was generally us doing the playing around the farm. We were almost inseparable. We also loved making caves through the tall strands of wheat and stuff that grew in the fields. We would stomp down a path and build caves and have all sorts of fun. And next door, in Mr. Cain’s barn, he used baled hay and we could build really neat caves in there. No end of fun on a farm if you only have imagination.

We did a lot of climbing in our tree’s. And none of these sissy trees so common around suburban homes today. No, these were grand trees, stretching seemingly endlessly skyward. Why, they were meant for kids to climb. And climb we did. Really high, probably as much as sixty feet up. One time, my sister Carol got her foot caught in the tree, and was stuck there until Dad got home from work and climbed up into the tree to rescue her. By then mom was about beside herself with worry that Carol would fall before she could be rescued. The rest of us kids thought this was great excitement. Is she going to fall, or is she going to make it?

Life on a farm had its opportunity for embarrassing moments as well. Some of us guys would frequently swim in the upper irrigation ditch in the buff. Only because we probably weren’t carrying our swim suits when we decided to take a dip while exploring through the mountains and fields. Besides, it was remote, and little chance anyone would stumble upon us. But one time, Carol and her friends decided to have a little fun with us. Just as all of us guys were swimming and having great fun, sans clothing, Carol and her friends snuck up on us and jumped up from the bushes hiding them and yelled, just feet away. That got all of us scrambling in a big hurry. That made me really mad at my sister, but neither of us kept our anger with the other for very long. I generally got over most things in about an hour or less. Carol could stay mad for a few days at a time though. I never understood why anyone would want to stay mad about anything for more than an hour.

I learned at nine how carelessness on my part can cause great harm to someone else. And how bad it can make you feel. Susan was a really nice friend, and I really enjoyed playing with her. She had a crush on me, but I wasn’t interested in her in any way except playing games and having fun. Besides, I was still in love with Goldie and with my second grade teacher Miss Fowler (I had not yet learned the dangers and disadvantages of being in love with two girls at the same time). Anyway, during recess, Susan and I were on the teeter totter. Up and down. Up and down. It was getting boring. Besides, did I tell you I had a sense of humor? Well, it kicked into gear and I thought, hey, it will be a real surprise to Susan if I jump off when she’s up in the air. What a hoot that will be. Just as Susan reached her highest point, I jumped off. Down she came. Right onto her leg that folded under the teeter totter and snapped, making a sound like a tree coming down in the forest. A teacher rushed to her aid. Mr. Ralston, our janitor and part-time emergency driver to the hospital, loaded her in the car, and away they went. I was heartbroken that by my stupidity and carelessness, I had broken my friends leg and caused her great pain. I’ve thought of that often through life, thinking how easy it is to hurt someone, even without bad intentions. Unintended consequences. A careless moment, a stupid and idiotic trick on someone and you can unintentionally cause great pain.

Our grade school had lots of glass in the doors. And with grade school kids often being rowdy, it was not infrequent that running kids would put out their arms while running for the door, to swing the doors open, only to find that they missed and pushed their hand through the glass window instead. No shatterproof or enclosed mesh glass back then. You hit it, it shattered into endless pieces, each sharp as a razor. Then there was always a lot of blood and mess. We didn’t have EMS back in those days, so our janitor served as our emergency ride to the hospital in such events. Into the car the hapless student would go, hand wrapped in the first thing handy, and off to the hospital emergency room they would go, just as fast as the janitors car could go. It always resulted in many stitches, and scars to show off. But the girls didn’t like the scars. Of course they were not the usual ones to be doing such stupid and rowdy stuff, so they were not often the victim.

When I was about nine, dad took me to see the circus. It was just dad and me, and I loved it. We saw the elephants and clowns and had pop corn and fun. Then came the trapeze act in the center ring. It was magnificent. Out came lots of girls in flesh colored skin tight outfits, and they swung from the trapeze and did all sorts of fantastic high wire acts. I couldn’t believe my eyes, for I didn’t know they were wearing flesh colored tights, I thought they were out there naked. And I was staring for all my worth. My eyes must have been as big as saucers. And it made sense to me why dad wanted to come to the circus so bad, just him and myself. I thought that was really neat, and I really appreciated the opportunity. Why this must be what adults do, watch naked girls swing around in the air. Why I was ready to grow up right then. No more childhood for me. I was in awe. I was mesmerized. And on the way home, I marveled at what I had seen to dad. He laughed. And he told me, “son, they weren’t naked. They had flesh colored skin tight clothes on.” I was disappointed. I thought for at least a short while, that adult hood was going to be a whole lot more fun than I had ever imagined. The reality was a big disappointment.

I learned about pack mentalities and how cruel children can be when I was ten. It was a surprise to me that it happened, because I had never been one to intentionally ever hurt anyone in any way. It just sort of happened. But I learned a valuable lesson from it, and that’s about the only good that came out of what happened. It happened this way. I was in the fifth grade, a new student in a brand new school. And three times a week, we had a music class. Yuk! That’s the last place I wanted to be. Except that we had one really cute music teacher. It was her “practice” year of teaching. A fiery red head, all of five foot tall, maybe a couple more inches. And she had one dynamite figure. She was cute. I could easily be in love again. She didn’t have very good control of the class though, what with her being brand new. And most of the students in my class were guys, ten year old guys. The last place any of us wanted to be was in a class room singing songs. We had our own songs to sing, best sung on the playground. Somehow, one day things sort of got out of control quickly. And I joined in the melee. Things were so out of control, and teach was totally unable to restore order. Finally she left, running out of the room, totally in tears from frustration. I felt about two inches tall and was in horror at what had just taken place. A really nice teacher, kind to all of us, and we in the class within just a few mere minutes had reduced her to a pained, tearful out of control adult. I don’t know how anyone else felt about it, but I felt small. I never again participated in pack mentality, or cruelty of such an order. Most of that day, and perhaps many that followed, I forget, I was one miserable kid, ashamed of what I had just participated in. I wish I could meet her someday, just to apologize and tell her how very sorry I was, and am to this day.

When I was about ten, I got spotted as a shoplifter. Just suspected, not a fact. Shoplifting is not anything I ever thought about doing. First of all, dishonesty and theft was not one of my traits. Secondly, we had a very effective method for keeping kids on the straight and narrow during my growing up years. We had reform schools. And our parents never failed to remind us that if we ever got caught stealing or doing seriously bad things, they would ship us off to reform school. And it was not just an idle threat. Some parents had to resort to just that tactic, and there the kids would stay for a year or maybe even until they came of age. If parents didn’t send the kids to reform school, the local judges certainly could, and did, with some frequency. Just the threat of it kept most of us kids pretty much in line. Anyway, one day I was merely wandering around in a downtown department store. Maybe picking things up to look at them, then putting them back. I don’t think I was in there to buy anything as I rarely had any money in my pocket at that age. While wandering around, this seemingly very old lady store clerk said “young man, are you taking anything from us?”. Of course I told her that I was not. Being a truthful boy in nature, it never occurred to me that my answer was not enough to satisfy her. “Then let me see everything you have in your pockets” she said sternly. I willingly complied, showing her the empty contents of all of my pockets. She said something like “humph!” and left. But I was truly embarrassed by the incident. How could they possibly think I was a shoplifter? I wasn’t doing anything other than looking at merchandise in their store. I never thought about whether they had the right to search me like that or not. I just knew that I was humiliated and embarrassed in front of others. I left the store, and guess I learned a lesson from that. The lesson being that appearances can be very deceiving. Don’t ever assume the worst unless you have a darned good reason to be suspicious. Be trusting of others until someone has given you sound reason for not trusting them. And be careful about embarrassing or humiliating another person. It was not a very pleasant experience.

When I was eleven, my friend Dave and I would get into all sorts of guy games. It generally involved some degree of risk. You gotta get the adrenalin pumping if you’re really going to have fun as a young boy. One of the things we really enjoyed was having dirt clod fights, where we’d try to really zing a dirt clod right into the other one. We’d build little forts or protections from the flying dirt and not much harm came of it. I guess one day our adrenalin and hormones pumped up a bit too much, because all of a sudden the dirt clod fights seemed to lack the element of risk that we were seeking. We upped the ante and decided to use rocks instead of dirt clods. And not just little rocks, but really big, handful sized rocks as well. And we weren’t aiming at lower body parts like the legs. What risk was there in that? Nope, we were going all the way and trying our best to zing the other with a good sized rock right into the noggin. I lost. Dave won. I caught a good sized rock right on my forehead, just above the eye. I forget whether it knocked me out or not, but I know we didn’t have any more rock fights after that one. And for the next month, I had this big knot on my forehead. One of my favorite pictures of me as a kid was taken maybe a week or two later, and it clearly displays the results of that rock fight.

We got around town mostly by walking and by riding our bikes. As we got a little older, if we worked and earned some money, we were able to buy a “doodlebug”. Now this was one tiny motorized vehicle. Probably got about a hundred miles per gallon of gas. Maybe was three foot tall at best. You sat on it and you went. Not very fast, but it sure beat walking. We’d ride them everywhere we rode bikes. On the highways, we used the dirt shoulders while cars whizzed by at 50 and 60 mph just scant feet away. One day, I decided to ride my doodlebug to Medford, a town about thirty miles from home. I could either go the direct way, which had a very fast highway and inherent risk of getting run over, or I could go the long way through small towns and along a not too traveled two lane road with enough shoulders to get off the roadway when cars came by. I took the long way, and arrived in Medford without event. And since I arrived there, I knew I could return home the same way. I did. It was probably a full day trip both ways, the doodle bug being so slow, and more miles at one time than most doodle bugs ever saw. I wish I had a picture of one, for they were a most amazing thing for a young teenage boy. They make today’s mopeds seem like big trucks by comparison.

The circus came to town every year, and it was always about the biggest event of the year. That and the annual gladiola parade. When the circus came to town, all of us boys would head to the fairground to be a part of the excitement. And if we were willing to do some hard work, we could earn our way into the “big tent” and see the show. Putting up the tents was a long and laborious task requiring elephants and lots of tent workers. It was not easy, and required lots of bodies to participate. I always managed to get in on the raising of the tents and a free pass to the show for my efforts. Those that weren’t so lucky and that had no money, well, they had to enter the big tent by more devious means. If you were nimble, quick of wit, and faster than a speeding bullet, you could generally get in unnoticed by crawling under the tent. They were pretty well staked down to the ground, but there was always a spot here or there where a small and limber body could scoot through unseen.

While I was in grade school, Al, a friend of mine lived in a house immediately behind the movie drive in theater. I have no idea how they worked it, but they had a movie theater speaker in the house, so all of the sound came in right into their house. You could sit on their porch or on their front lawn and watch the latest movies for free. Al was a very popular fellow, since all of us enjoyed seeing the movies for free. Most folks didn’t have a friend that lived right behind the movie drive in. Most people had to drive their cars in. You paid by how many were in the car, so it became a challenge to sneak friends in for free. Generally, with them laying on the back floor with a blanket over them just didn’t quite make it. Usually what worked, was to put a friend or two in the trunk, for it was rare to slow down the line simply to open and check the car trunks. Drive in movies were popular for dating. Your own private area, dark nights, a great setting for some cuddling and misbehavior. Much more fun than finding a lovers lane. Besides, the movie might even be good, and the popcorn and hot dogs were always a part of the fun. Frequently you’d get outside the car and sit on the hood, or even on the roof. That way you could socialize with your friends. Movie drive in’s were the social center of the fifties, at least during summer months. Hard to beat for fun, too bad they’ve gone away.

I was never much for hunting when I was a kid. My stepfather Dale enjoyed hunting a little. We went deer hunting a few times, but never got in a good shot at a buck. We generally had better luck with the duck hunting. There we used shotguns, and if you were half way accurate, you could always bag a duck or two. I remember the first mallard I ever shot. It was such a beautiful bird, and I wanted to have it stuffed. But the other part of me said, why kill for fun, such beautiful animals. They’ve done me no harm. I sort of lost my interest in hunting, and have not been on a hunt since. I simply find killing animals for fun to be simply too brutal to be enjoyable.

I used to do a lot of square dancing when I was in the 7th and 8th grades. Most guys didn’t like dancing, and I certainly didn’t like the slow dances like waltzes and stuff. That was just a lot of shuffling around on the floor. But square dancing was different. Lots of fast movement and having to pay attention to the caller. It was an art to do it well. And the girls were absolutely so beautiful, all dressed up in their fancy square dance outfits. Besides, it was an easy way to dance even for an awkward and bashful boy as I was, because I did it so well, and because it was more of a team type of thing, not just you and the girl. In square dancing, my inhibitions mostly disappeared, and I loved the dances with the girls in the safety of being sure of myself and doing it better than most all of the others. I really enjoyed it and continued to square dance well into my twenties.

And thus, I spent my childhood on our little farm in southern Oregon.

More humor, adventure and opinion from Rambling Russ

ps... feedback please. Help me monitor interest by clicking on funny, interesting or cool below. Thanks.

_