1978 - Summer of travel to Oregon, Washington and Idaho

BETRAYAL- THE BEGINNING OF HEARTACHE AND PAIN

In August or September of 1977 my wife, companion, confidante, and best friend in the whole wide world came to me with a proposition that shattered my world. She announced that she wanted to move out on her own with our son Uriah. When I asked why she said that she wanted to “find herself”. There was really no discussion at this point, her mind was made up and she had already planned everything out. Some months earlier we had bought a mobile home that we had planned on living in on 54 acres north of Santa Rosa that we were going to buy with Frank and Sherrie. We had borrowed down payment money from her parents and were set to close on the property when Frank came up with a clause that we could not abide. He wanted us to put into the contract that if either of us sold that property at any time they would offer it to the other partner at the original purchase price. I could not wrap my head around possibly living in a place for 10 or more years, making untold improvements to it and then having to let it go for purchase price. The deal fell through and Frank bought the place for himself.  54 acres for $9000.00, even then it was pretty damn cheap. 15 of the acres were level and fronted the road. There were some pretty good sized second growth redwoods and a large area cleared for a garden. The place also came with a D-8 Caterpillar bulldozer. It was an older one early 1950’s I believe and it needed a steering clutch for one side but hey it ran and it was impressive.



 

The mobile home that came with the property

 


The sunken garden area.



Frank and Sherrie at the front gate of the property.

 

 Anyway, we had already moved our mobile up to the property, it was not set up and leveled but there is was and with Frank buying the property by himself we needed to move it. Donna had talked to a guy name Mike Mitchell there in Boyes Springs. He was building a house on one acre of property he owned on Thompson Ave. and he would rent her a place for the trailer for $50.00 a month. He had sewer water and electricity. She had all of this set up before she told me her plans. So within 2 weeks she had the trailer moved down to Mike’s place and she moved out leaving me by myself in the house on Baines St. while she Uriah and Sabin the dog moved to Thompson Ave.

URIAH & SABIN AT THE YELLOW HOUSE

DONNA AND TONIA

ME WITH NIGHSHADE AND OWLSLEY

 I was devastated and went through all the usual stages of grieving. She had not asked for a divorce and told me that we might get back together at some time in the future, presumably after she found herself. This of course made it even harder, there was no actual severing of ties and I was left in limbo. She told me that she would not deny me visitations with Uriah and she was basically good to her word although we never set up an actual schedule. She used an ex neighbor of ours Tammy, as a babysitter when she went out on Fridays and Saturdays and I spent many a night at Tammy’s house spending time with Uriah while he was there and watching TV with Tammy when he slept.

 I had a friend Lee Maurice who moved in with me and split the rent and the chores. We had an arrangement that he would do dishes and keep the kitchen clean and I would do the cooking. It worked out pretty good and I don’t remember every getting into a fight or argument with Lee. We got along well.

 I began working with Larry Yarnell at this time. He was putting a foundation under a house in Sonoma and needed a carpenter to help him put up the concrete forms and do general carpenter work as needed. We had a company come out and jack up the house and we then dug the footings and put up the forms. It was the beginning of a couple years of working together. Larry was a great guy and I learned a tremendous amount from him. He was in his fifties at the time and was married to a young woman in her twenty’s named Regina. I had no idea at the time but she was the sister of my future and present wife Denise.

ME WORKING AT THE BLACKSMITH BUILDING

 I was having a hard time dealing with the break up and time was not making it easier. I had no real interest in finding a new girlfriend or mate and I was unable to get out of the depression phase of grieving. It was a long lonely winter and early in 1978 I began making plans for an extended trip up to Oregon Washington and Idaho. At the time I was still working with Larry Yarnell and we were doing a remodel of an old Resort in El Verano. I also worked on a Victorian house up in Santa Rosa. Larry arranged it and I did the majority of the work on the house. As a result of some of this work I had collected a quantity of lumber. Some of it was unfinished bead board from the early 1900’s. I used some of this lumber and other items I had to put a camper on the back of my 1950 GMC pickup truck. While working up in Santa Rosa I spotted this truck for sale and ended up buying it. It was perfect for a work truck and I love old trucks and this one was really nice. No rust and no dents.

 

View inside the camper showing skylights

 

The Chartreuse Caboose at Liv's Cabin

 

View from the cab looing out back door

 I constructed the frame from rough cut redwood 2” x 6” boards. The roof rafters were 2” x 2” s and the roofing material was cedar shakes. I had a couple of sheets of smoked tempered glass from when I worked at Monastery Furniture and those became skylights in the roof. I also had a couple of old 6 pane wood windows from one of the remodels and those were put on each side. The tail gate was left down and this extended the length and gave a small foyer for the door. The door was framed from 2” x 2”s and covered with bead board to match. I put in a skeleton key lockset from my stash of remodel leftovers and this completed the shell.

 On the interior I removed the rear window from the truck and put a piece of inner tube between the truck and the camper shell. This gave me a pass through to the camper that we water proof. I put a shelf over the door and had another over the cab of the truck. The 2” x 6” frame gave me room on the sides for shelving.

 I built three hinged cabinets on the bed of the truck that were about 18” deep. This gave me plenty of storage for tools, clothing, camping gear and miscellaneous items. I placed 3  2’ x 4’ x 4” foam rubber sheets on the top and this gave me my mattress. Each mattress panel could be lifted up to give access to the storage compartment beneath it.

 The truck was henceforth known as the Chartreuse Caboose and it served well for its purpose. The truck was basically a stock vehicle. It still had the original 248 cubic inch GMC motor. It was one of the last motors with Babbitt bearings and this one had been rebuilt a couple of years before I bought it. The poured Babbitt bearings commonly get over 50,000 miles of use before needing replacement. This motor had about 15000 miles on the rebuild. The truck was also equipped with a Pico Battery which was a battery that consisted of two separate 6 volt cells that had a solenoid on top that would deliver 12 volts to the starter giving better cranking power but maintaining 6 volts to the rest of the system which saved the expense of converting everything over. The truck also had an 8 track player which was a standard add-on for those days.

 After finishing the camper I gave the truck a tune-up and oil change and got ready to hit the road heading for parts unknown. I carefully packed my minimal space. One under the bed compartment was devoted to my tools. I had mechanics tools for potential problems with the truck and my carpenter tools in case I needed a job. The middle compartment was clothing and some miscellaneous camping gear. The last one had the cooking equipment and dry goods and water jugs. I had an ice chest that went just inside the door and could be pulled out first and used as a step. The shelf over the door was for my books and loose items that I would need handy. There was a kerosene lantern that was the main light source. The cubby hole above the cab was storage for bedding pillows and other loose items. My guitar rode on the bed while traveling and went up on the front seat during the night. I also had a potted fern that hung over the door outside when I was parked and hung from the ceiling inside while traveling. The last thing was my cat who was my constant companion and good buddy for most of the trip. I did not own a camera at the time so there is no visual record of this time.

 I only had one firm destination in mind when I left and that was to get to the Umpqua National Forest by July 1^st for the Rainbow Family Gathering at White horse Meadows. I left Boyes Hot Springs on the 1^st of June which gave me a month to get to the Rainbow gathering.

                        TIME TO END THE SELF PITY AND MOVE ONWARD

 I headed north on Hwy. 101 going to the redwoods and the coastal range. At this time Hwy 101 was 2 lanes after you got to Healdsburg. My type of road for traveling, two lanes tend to keep the riff-raff out. Those in a big hurry will find their way to the nearest freeway or avoid traveling to areas where two lane highways go. That’s all fine with me. On this trip I headed north on hwy. 101 to Willets, California and then went west to Fort Bragg and the coastal hwy 1. I was in no hurry and hwy. 1 cannot be beaten for scenery. It can be taxing to drive because of the seeming endless hairpins so I cut down on some of it. Further north there are fewer hairpins also.

HALES GROVE OLD STORE

 Around the area of Hales Grove I found a pull off and set up the first camp. The area is deep in the Redwoods and at that time of year can be incredible. We I got up there the rhododendrons were still blooming in all their splendor. The combination of huge trees and delicate blossoms is true eye candy.

REDWOODS AND RHODODENDRONS
A
PERFECT COMBINATION

   We only stayed one night and then headed up toward Oregon and the coastline. The Oregon coast is dotted with State parks, you can’t go more than a few miles without coming across one. I stopped for a couple of nights just into the state, somewhere around Pistol River I think. The first night there it did what the Oregon coast is famous for, rain. One the coast there are three hundred or more days of rain every year. The skylights leaked and I spent and cold wet night huddled with Thunderfoot. The next morning I was in town looking for sealant to stop the water from coming in around the skylights. All my bed covers were soaked and I had to hang things out to dry.

I spent a couple of days at the coast walking the dunes and the shoreline and just enjoying the sounds and smell of the ocean.

 I had poured over maps before the trip and had decided on a road that looked interesting. It goes east from Gold Beach and heads up into the coastal mountains following closely the Rogue River for many miles. I began heading up that road one morning, it was sunny and delightful. The road begins climbing quickly and soon the ocean is out of sight as you enter the forest land still hugging the Rogue River. The are a great number of creeks coming into the river and I was checking them out and trying to imagine what the area was like for the first settlers here and what prompted them to come up with some of the names they had for the creeks. There is Flood Creek, Lightening Creek, Lynch Creek, Nail Keg, and my personal favorite Wake up Rilea Creek. I imagined a family with a daughter that was always sleeping in and one day they decided to toss her into the creek to get her going. A lot of the creeks are named after people sometime just the first name like Billy Creek and some others have the whole name like Bill Moore Creek.

 This was an incredible place and I am forever grateful that I chose this route. I did not know it at the time but the Rogue River was among the initial group of rivers protected by the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968. No dams shall impede the flow of these rivers. There is a small incorporated area, not really a town, called Agnes up in the mountains. Other than that there was very little in the way of houses or buildings along the road I was on. The road was unpaved and nearly as wild and scenic as the river whose course it was following. I came upon a campground some miles past Agnes and I pulled in there. It was a no fee area and there was not a soul there. I had my choice of campsites and chose one near to the river.

 I set up a clothsline and finished drying out the bedding. I spent the next week and a half there exploring the area and just relaxing and letting my mind goes to a better place. There are a surprising number of roads back in there and they go for a long ways. There were wooden road signs that were hand lettered like something from days gone by. They would usually have a distance marked on them as well, like Grants Pass 90 miles or Medford 140 miles. There were groups of them at some of the intersection. I could have spent the summer there exploring all the different roads.

 Up one road not too far from the campground was a forest service lookout tower. It was in use and I went up there to chat with the forest service lady that was manning the tower. She was up there for the summer, by herself. The Forest service would bring her supplies once every week or so, other than that she was on her own.  I went up there a couple of times and she was kind enough to let me up into the tower where the view is incredible.

THE LOOKOUT TOWER AT QUAIL CREEK

VIEW FROM THE LOOKOUT TOWER

 I spent a week and a half or two there in that campground. The time was spent relaxing and trying to clear my mind. I spent a lot of time playing on the guitar and learning some new songs. One of which was 4 & 20 by Stephen Stills. It reflects that I was still struggling with the breakup.

I did learn that I can be alone for extended times without company. I get along with myself pretty well. It is nice to have somebody to share things with but I don’t fall apart if that doesn’t happen. There was so much there to explore, I could have spent a lot more time in the area. You really need to plan well to do that though. The route I took was 145 miles or so between gas stations. Much of the area is wilderness and there are a number of roads that go a long distance. One wrong turn and you could be in serious trouble. The Chartreuse Caboose had one more thing that enabled this side trip and that is a spare gas tank. There was a Mustang gas tank mounted under the bed of the truck. The stock tank is only 10 gallons and at 12 – 15 mpg that does not get you all that far. There was a valve on the floor of the truck that would allow you to switch tanks. I would use the extra tank first as it had no gauge. When it ran out I would switch to the stock tank and have a gauge for the remainder.

 There was very little traffic back in there and I only saw a handful of other people the whole time I was there and those were for the most part out on the road somewhere. I had the camp to myself until one day when a guy pulled his pickup truck into a spot by the river. He proceeded to unload some machinery and haul it into the river. I walked down there to see what he was doing when the silence was shattered by the sound of a small gasoline motor.

 He had a gas powered dredge and was using it to suck sand and gravel out of the river where he would then run it into a sluice box. I had never seen this before so I asked him about it. He told me it was a hobby of his and that he was on his way home from working as a logger. He would stop a couple times a week in various places along the river or in some of the creeks and use his dredge to look for gold. The suction pump moved an incredible amount of gravel and in a very short amount of time he had a pretty sizeable pile of tailings in the river. After he had moved a certain amount of gravel he would the scoop some of the concentrates into a gold pan. He would then pan out the gold if there was any.

 He explained to me the process of dredging and panning and where to look for gold. He said that along the Rogue River all streams emptying into it from the east and north all had some gold in them. The particles of gold get suspended in the water during spring floods and they come to rest on the inside curves of the river where the water slows down and allows them to drop into the gravel bed of the river. After an hour or so of dredging and panning he packed up and headed home for his supper and to get ready for the next days work. He showed my his findings. He picked miniscule nuggets of gold out of the pan with a pair of tweezers and placed them in a small vial that he had on a chain around his neck. He said that the contents of the vial were the sum total of what he had found since he had bought the dredge. I think he said that he had paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $350.00 for the dredge. The small amount of gold he had was not enough to recoup the cost. He said his wife thought he was wasting time and money but he enjoyed it.

GOLD DREDGE



THE ROGUE RIVER

 The real drawback that I saw was the displacement of gravel and the amount of sediment it stirred up really made a mess. Also it was very noisy. Not for me. I have heard since then that these dredges have become highly regulated where they are in use and I think that they have been banned in California.

 As my time wound down here I began to make my way slowly towards Myrtle Creek and Roseburg. Going on the route I had planned took me through some very remote wilderness and as I wended my way I stopped at places that looked interesting. One place I stopped for lunch looked so inviting that I took a hike up the mountain. There was no trail so I just maneuvered my way through the trees and brush as best I could.  The mountain just seemed to go up and up. I was looking for a clear spot so I could get a view, I just kept climbing and climbing until I came to a small clearing. As I was beginning to cross the meadow something came running out of the woods making a booming noise as it came. My heart starting pounding and I turned expecting to see a bear or some other large animal coming after me. It was a Ruffed Grouse and it was in full display. Tail feathers fanned and wings beating a mile a minute. When I realized it was not something to fear I relaxed and watched it. It was not there for very long. Once it realized that I was a human it disappeared back into the forest, leaving me with a lifetime memory of having seen something not everyone gets to see.

A RUFFED GROUSE DISPLAYING

 About 5 miles from Myrtle Creek I finally got back onto a paved road and as soon as I could I found a gas station and gassed up the truck. Just a short ways up the road is Roseburg and civilization. After my time in the Siskiyou Forest Roseburg seemed like a huge metropolis with traffic congestion and hoards of people. I picked up some supplies and headed up the Umpqua River towards the Rainbow gathering.

                   HEADING UP THE UMPQUA TO THE RAINBOW GATHERING
                                           Experience the Rainbow - 1978 part 1

I don't know if it's him or not but the blonde naked kid at 3:54 minute in the first part could well be Uriah.

Experience the Rainbow - 1978 part 2

Experience the Rainbow - 1978 part 3

Experience the Rainbow - 1978 part 4

 

Experience the Rainbow - 1978 part 5 final

 It was still a couple of days before the gathering so I stopped in Dry Creek. I had been here in January and I knew a couple that lived there so I was hoping to see them again. They had moved and did not live there anymore. I went into the local tavern and had a couple of beers. It was my birthday and this was my little celebration. After that I headed up the road to the Umpqua National Forest site where there was parking for the gathering. I organized the truck and hid things I didn’t want stolen. I opted to leave the guitar in the truck as I had my hands full. I would regret that later.  I packed up some clothes and food for the week, grabbed the cat and headed up the trail to the gathering spot. It was a fairly strenuous hike and I was glad when it was over. I spent a couple of hours after arriving at the site, picking out a camping spot and erecting a shelter. I make a little dome from branches and boughs of fir tree that was toppled.  I first made a frame then covered it with a sheet of plastic I had then covered that with the boughs to keep it from blowing away or getting ripped. It worked very well we had a couple of days with rain and it stayed dry. I had a sleeping bag and some personal supplies, trail mix and some other snacks because I had heard that the food at these gatherings could be lean at times. I also had some food for Thunderfoot. They didn’t want pets there but I had no place to keep him so I snuck him along. He never strayed very far from the camp and was always there when I returned. The spot I had chosen was off and away from everyone else. My own private Hogan in the woods.

 The gathering was amazing. I don’t know what the count of people was but there were plenty. I have not been in too many places where people gather in great numbers and there is no friction but this was one. I saw nothing but love and harmony during the gathering. There was music everywhere. People had brought all manner of musical instruments. There were guitars, banjos, mandolins, fiddles, flutes, drums and more.

 Some things were regimented. Everyone was expected to pitch in a help so way some how. There were lots of us and we policed ourselves. There were latrines to be dug and food to prepare, garbage to be disposed and sick and injured people to be taken care of.

 In the main meadow, Whitehorse meadow, there was a circle of Tipi’s erected. These were kind of the cultural center for the event. These were hardcore hippies, many of them lived in their Tipi’s year around. They lived “the life”. I met a few of them on the trail coming in. They made multiple trips back and forth carrying Tipi poles and it coverings along with all the other accoutrements.

 I gravitated to the area known as Hobo camp. It was comprised of a bunch of guys who were outdoorsmen and who all had good survival skills and liked to party and joke around. They also had a huge pot of venison stew cooking and continuous pots of coffee brewing. The rest of the gathering was vegetarian so this was more to my liking. I don’t mind vegetarian food for the most part but some of the offering here were not to my taste and I can’t pass up venison when it’s well cooked as this was. I was at hobo camp every morning as it was the only place to get coffee and that’s my morning wake up and start the day.

 The latrines were pits placed around the perimeter of the camps. The were open pits and many people refused to use them as there was not privacy screen and you were forced to do your private business in the view of all. As a consequence a lot of people slipped off into the brush and did their stuff there. You needed to be careful walking out in the woods, as often as not the waste was not buried or buried so shallow that you would step in it if you weren’t careful.

 There were a number of different workshops throughout the day. You could attend and if it turned out that it wasn’t something that interested you, then you would just wander off to the next thing. Baba Ram Dass was there and he was quite interesting. He was a contemporary of Timothy Leary at Harvard and the two of them did a lot of experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs looking for a path of Spirituality. He wrote a book called Be here now. I was quite impressed with him, he’s a gifted speaker and a natural teacher.

 Another famous person in attendance was Wavy Gravy who was fairly well know at the time for his Hog Farm up in Northern California and his work at the Woodstock music festival where he did stage announcing among other things. He wore his trademark clown costume with rainbow colored wig. He was another person that was a delight to meet and to listen to.

 The Love family from a commune up in Washington was there also. They performed some musical numbers and did some recruiting for their commune. They were a hard working bunch of people who really  should be looked up to as an antithesis of the lazy, dirty hippies of the day. They were too heavy on the religion for me but other than that their message was good, love thy brother and sister. They appeared to be a very cohesive group with great energy.

 Some time around mid-week I was going somewhere when there was a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and there was Donna and Uriah and David, her latest. “We made it” she exclaimed. We exchanged greetings and stories about our journey to the gathering. I was given custody of Uriah for a couple of days and it was great. He slept with me in the little Hogan in the woods and got to play with Thunderfoot. I came back to camp one day and the Hogan had been ransacked. They left my clothes and bed alone but took all of my snacks. I was not happy. There were only two formal meals at day provided by the tribe and after that you were on your own. The loss was not a big blow to my faith in the people of the gathering. There was a segment that just didn’t fit in. The wanna be’s, the pretenders, they seem to show up at every event whether it’s a hippy gathering or a biker rally there they are. You have to learn to ignore them or they will take over your mind and ruin everything.

 I enjoyed greatly my time with Uriah, he was great company after weeks of being alone and away from him. When the end came and it was time to leave I was sad.

 I said my good-byes to Donna and Uriah and headed back down the trail to the Chartreuse Caboose. Everything was intact back at the truck and that was a relief. You never know what might happen when you leave your rig parked for an extended time in the woods.

                                         GOING NORTH TO THE COLUMBIA

When I left the Umpqua national forest I made a right and headed up the road towards Crater Lake. I had been up there in January but never got to see the lake. It was snowing and blowing and I got into a fender bender at Diamond Lake. So I thought that being this close I would swing by and check out the lake.  However it was not to be. When I got to Crater lake the mountain top was enshrouded in fog and you couldn’t see 500’. Skunked again. I didn’t feel like waiting for the weather to clear up so I headed back north and towards Bend, Oregon.

 Eastern Oregon is a different world from the Coastal area. The Cascades catch all the rain and it is dry and desert on the other side. The area around Bend is all desert to the east of Hwy. 97. The people who live outside of town have to have water hauled in. There is no aquifer or if there is it is so deep that no one can afford to drill down to get to it. If you go east the ground quickly becomes sand and very little grows there. Olivia and I had looked around the area when she was shopping for property. The was a 20 acre parcel that we looked at. It was priced at $1500.00, cheap land but virtually useless for homesteading. It had sand dunes on it. We talked to several people in the area. They were all paying someone with a tanker truck $25.00 to $30.00 dollars for a truck load of water. I can only imagine what the prices are today.

 Anyway, this trip I didn’t stop in Bend except for some groceries, I went up the road a little ways to Madras and pulled into a city park for the night. I went down to a local tavern and had a few beers with the locals. There wasn’t much interesting there and the next day I continued my journey north toward Biggs Junction.

 I picked up a hitch-hiker just out of Madras, he was heading to the Tri-lakes area, so I had some company for awhile. As we got near to Biggs Junction he told me about a cut in the road where they had blasted into a vein of Picture Jasper. I had to ask him what that was, I am not a rock hound and I was unfamiliar with jasper or in this case picture jasper. He explained that the rock was cut and polished and the end result looked like a picture of mountains or some landscape. He asked if I wanted to stop and see if we could collect some. I said sure, I was in no hurry and I was curious to see what it was that he was talking about. He had only heard about this and was not 100% certain of where it was so he said we may have to stop in numerous places. I agreed to do that and we proceeded on towards Biggs Junction. A few miles from town you begin winding down through the hills towards the Columbia River. It was in this country that the road snaked through hills and they had blasted some of the hillsides for the road. The first big one that we came to was the one. I parked at the end of the cut where there was a shoulder and we began scouting the rocks along the side of the road. It did not take long to see some pieces of rock that were very colorful. There were some huge pieces and a lot of smaller ones. I grabbed some of the smaller pieces and put them behind the seat of the truck. He grabbed a few for himself and we got back in the truck and headed to Biggs Junction.

BIGGS PICTURE JASPER AFTER POLISHING

 The hitch-hiker said that they sold a lot of the picture jasper in town and if I wanted to see what it looked like we could see some there. That sounded good to me as I was very curious so we pulled into town and went to a rock shop there. The shop was closed, it was Sunday but they had a window display so I got to see some cut and polished pieces. I wished then that I had grabbed a lot more. It is very cool looking rock.

 The area around Biggs Junction and the Columbia plateau is just beautiful. On both side of the river there are tall hills leading down to the river. These hills are mostly bare of trees and are grass covered with lots of wildflowers mixed in. At this time it was sparsely inhabited and it was easy to imagine the river banks filled with Indians fishing for salmon in the summer’s sun. This was the land of the Yakima Indians, Lewis & Clark had encountered them very close to this area in 1805. Sadly it was pretty much all downhill for them after that. The land they inhabited was fertile and rich with wildlife.

THE SAM HILL MEMORIAL BRIDGE

BIGGS JUNCTION

                                                      ONWARD INTO WASHINGTON

 We crossed the river into Washington and climbed the hill past Maryhill. Maryhill is a failed dream of Samuel Hill who purchased the land in the hopes of establishing a town. There is a replica of Stonehenge on the hills above the Columbia that is one of only a few edifices remaining from Sam Hill’s attempt. You can see it as you go up the highway. A short distance across the river and up the hill and you come to the intersection of Hwy’s 97 and 14. I dropped off the hitch-hiker and Hwy. 14 and bid him adieu.

 It was the 10^th of July and it had taken me more than a month to travel through Oregon. I enjoyed every inch of it and would love to go back and do more exploring some day.

 I was now just traveling with no particular direction in mind other than to eventually make my way to Northern Idaho to visit Olivia. I wanted to see her new place and see how she was doing with it. For now I decided to go to Mt. Rainier National Park for a few days to relax in the beauty of that place.

 I stopped in Yakima and got a few days supplies and also stopped at one of the plentiful fruit stands outside of town. Yakima is well known for its fruit crops and they grow a wide variety of apples, pear, peaches, grapes, nectarines and my personal favorite apricots.

 I saw a sign that just said COTS and there I went to fill up on cheap and delicious fruit.

I went west from Yakima on Hwy. 12 heading towards the park and the area that’s called Paradise. From there I went to Cougar Rock campground to stay for a couple of days.

 This was my second time at Mt. Rainier which means that there were still a whole lot of things I had not seen. Especially because the first time it rained the entire time we were there. Olivia and I had stopped here on the way up to Idaho. We had hiked a couple miles up Nickel Creek and set up our plastic tent. We were on a low budget trip and had no tent so we purchased a painters drop cloth as it was cheap and was pretty large. It was very delicate but we managed to use it for the whole trip without ripping it. It was never set up the same way twice as we used whatever natural features were available where we camped. Trees, bushes, rocks, etc.

 This trip I had the Chartreuse Caboose and so was spared that however I was stuck with parking somewhere and could not hike in to a spot. I did go on a couple of short day hikes while in the park. You can’t go to a place like that and not hike, at least I can’t.

 I spent a couple of nights at Cougar Rock and then headed up the road toward Sunrise and I camped at White River campground. White river is very cool looking, the waters of the White River are somewhat cloudy. This is because of the rock flour they carry from the Emmons Glacier.

                                                 TROUBLE IN PARADISE

 When I left Mt. Rainier I headed up Hwy. 410 going west towards Tacoma. I had in mind to go over to the Olympic Peninsula to check out the country over there. Not to be though. As I got to the top of the pass the truck began to backfire and misfire badly. I limped it down the road to Enumclaw. I pulled into town and began searching for a service station. There was nothing there that had a mechanic so I continued on towards Auburn where I pulled into an auto repair place that I came across. I explained that I was on the road and needed an assessment of the truck condition. The put the truck into the bay and gave it a compression test. Burnt valves was the prognosis. I was going to have to get a valve job at the very least. They still needed to tear off the head and see it it was cracked. It was so I was stuck there until we could locate another head from a junkyard. My house was now in a garage. Luckily the owner was sympathetic and very nicely offered me a bed in his house until they could get the truck running again. I hung around there until the end of the day and the went home with him.

 The next day they began searching for a new head but it was not easy. The 1950 GMC base engine for the half-ton pickup was the 228-cubic-inch in-line six-cylinder. In contrast, the base Chevrolet model featured the smaller 216.5-cubic-inch straight-six. The 93-horsepower 228 had a 3.6-inch cylinder bore and a 3.8-inch stroke. The 228’s compression ratio was 8-to-1. The optional 110-horsepower 248 straight-six had a 3.7-inch bore and 3.8-inch stroke and 7.5-1 compression. The biggest powerplant available on the GMC truck was the 115-horsepower 270 six-cylinder with a 3.7-inch bore and 4-inch stroke.
 The truck I owned had the optional 248 cu in motor and they were scarce as hens teeth there. So I settled in for an extended stay in Kent which is were Dave’s house was located. I went down to the shop everyday with him and I would do what I could to help him out. He had two shops, with one shop in Auburn and the other located in Kent. I ran parts back and forth for him in his pickup truck and I would go to the auto parts stores or to the junk yard to chase parts for him. I also spent a large part of my day just hanging around the shop, playing my guitar or drawing. I completed a pretty large pen drawing that graced the wall of the Newport house when we lived there. I think it was left behind when we moved.

The drawing on a transmission cooler box

An unfinished song begun in Kent
 

 Dave was a really nice guy for helping me out but he was also kind of a sleazy businessman. I got to see the really bad side of auto repair business. He had a regular racket going, someone would bring a vehicle in for repairs and he would tear the heads off and then call up the owner and tell them that their rings were shot and the bearing were bad and that they needed a lower end rebuild. He would then tell them that he had measured the cylinders and say that the motor had too much cylinder wall wear and he couldn’t put rings in it because of excessive wear. He would then sell them a rebuilt short block. After he got the OK he would have his mechanics hone the cylinders, put in new rings and effectively sell back to the owner his own motor. He may or may not replace the bearing depending on how they measured. He would then put in new freeze plugs and paint the engine block to make it appear to be a new rebuild. A week later the owners would pick up their vehicle and yes it ran good but he was ripping them off big time. He bragged to me that he had put $125,000 into his pocket the year before.

 His other shop was a transmission repair shop and the guy that worked it was an excellent technician and knew automatic transmissions in and out. The thing with those was that most of them that were brought in were slipping, which meant that they needed a band job, or so the story went. Most of them got a „new“ torque converter, which meant that Harold would take the old torque converter and drill a hole in it. He would then drain out the old burnt oil and replace it with fresh oil. He would then tap the hole and install a plug. Completed, new torque converter. I don’t know how much they cost but it was a big part of the profits coming in. Harold was a very conscientious transmission tech and he did really good work. Any tranny that he worked on was in good working condition when he finished. I think the reuse of torque converters was because of Dave. He also sold and installed a lot of transmission coolers. This was a major part of the business.

 I did not like what Dave was doing to people by ripping them off but I also felt I was being held hostage by the fact that my truck was there and I needed him to fix it and get me back on the road. So I kept my mouth shut and continued to help in the shop.

 I was picking up parts from the junk yard one day when I got into an accident. I got into the truck to leave and I was in a hurry to get back to the shop. I didn’t see anyone as I got into the truck and I foolishly just backed up with out looking. I backed right into someone and crunched their fender.

 Dave refused to put it on his insurance so now I had another bill to pay. I dug into my stash and paid the guy for the damages. I think it was around $125.00. Not a huge amount of money but I had been traveling for almost 2 months at that time and I was beginning to get low on funds.

 I began working sometimes for Harold at the transmission shop. He gave me $10.00 for every transmission I pulled out and another $10.00 for installing it. I could pull a tranny out in an hour so it was decent money for those days. I would usually do 2-3 a day.

 I was still running errands as well and one day I went to the shop in Kent to get a transmission and take it to the shop in Auburn. I got down to the Auburn shop and pulled in. It was then that I noticed that the bed of the truck was empty. No tranny. I had no idea of what had happened to it so I turned around and began to retrace my route. I was scanning the roadside and some where in the middle of the route there was the transmission lying on the side of the road. I sighed with relief and pulled an u-turn pulled up alongside it and picked it up and put it into the bed of the truck. I got in and was just ready to leave when a woman came running up to the truck. „I’m so glad you came back“ she exclaimed. „That thing came flying out of your truck and hit my car.“ she said. „I thought it was a guitar“she said.

 So here I was again saddled with a bill for driving Dave’s truck. He again refused to put it on his insurance. There was a heave in the pavement in that spot and I must have hit it just right to cause the tranny to fly out. This one was more than $170.00 so now I was out $300.00 and I still had not gotten the truck fixed. Not good. I was beginning to feel that I was jinxed.

 Sometime in the midst of all this Dave did manage to locate a salvage head for the truck. It was $100.00 plus I have to pay to have it delivered to the shop. It was in a junkyard somewhere around Seattle I think.

 So there was some light beginning to show at the end of the tunnel. I was really getting antsy, at this point I had been there nearly a month.

 The money I got from pulling transmissions was sustaining me but it did nothing to replenish my ever decreasing stash of cash. I began to look for work. I could not get anything going until I had my truck but I could at least get something lined up.

 It turned out that Dave’s girlfriends father was in the remodeling business and they were beginning a new job where they could use some help. I got the number from her and called Jim Cantrell to discuss the job.

 He and his brother Allen were going to do a second story addition on a residential house in Kent. They needed a laborer and general handyman. I said that I was their guy. We agreed on a starting salary of $6.00 per hour cash under the table.

 I began pushing Dave to get the truck running. The head was there but he determined that it needed a valve job so that had to be completed before the head could be bolted back onto the truck. He was the only guy there that knew how to grind valves so it waited until he had spare time to do it. It was one evening after the shop had closed that he had time to get to the valves. I watched and assisted as best I could. He really was good at doing valves. He did a multi angeled grind that he said was used on race cars. One valve guide was bad and had to be replaced as well as one seat. He lapped the valves and resurfaced the head to take out the warp. He did not charge me any labor for his work which was very nice. The total bill was $248.00, together with the accidents I had to pay for Washington was an expensive stop for me. But the Chartreuse Caboose was alive and well and running good. We parted friends.

The tally for the work plus a phone number for Jim Cantrell

                                           ON THE ROAD AGAIN - SORT OF

 Finally I was able to put my clothes back in the truck and move out of Daves house. I grabbed Thunderfoot and we went searching for a new place to stay. We ended up a Saltwater Beach State Park, it was close to where Jim and Allen’s job was and it was cheap. The only drawback was that you could only pay for one day at a time. It was first come first served. I always got a site but it changed everyday. I did not do much exploring in the park as I worked all day then got back there usually just before dark. I had enough time to cook some dinner and relax for an hour or so before going to bed to rest up for the next days labor. The job was good. The first day we tore the shingles off the roof to prep it for removal. They had rented a huge dump box which was right under the roof so it wasn’t too bad. Jim and Allen were older guys and they let me do the bulk of the work. I got the first row ripped up by hand and after that I took to it with a snow shovel. I would get the shovel under the shingles and then pry upwards to pop the nails loose. It worked really good and I had the roof stripped in no time. They were impressed with my work. We got the roof torn off the next day and began framing up the addition.

 On Friday they paid me cash for the week and told me that they liked my work so much that they were giving me an extra $25.00. They said that each week when we met our goals they would increase my pay. We parted ways for the weekend and I went back to Salt Beach park.

 I had some cash and a weekend in front of me. I spent Saturday just relaxing in the campground and checking out the park. I decided on Sunday that I would drive around and explore the area a little. I drove some of the country roads and eventually found myself in Tacoma, the State Capitol. I drove around the downtown area checking out the old Victorians and the Capitol buildings. I saw a sign for the W.W. Seymour Conservatory and decided to see what it was about..

 The Botanical Conservatory is located in Wright park. Wright park was established in the late 1800’s and the W.W. Seymour Conservatory was built in 1908. The park had some nice gardens and the conservatory had some wonderful display. It reminded me of Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago. The building is original and is very large. It was a very cool place and I enjoyed it very much. I left there and started heading back to camp. There was some road construction and a pretty big traffic backup. I was stopped in traffic at one point and suddenly Thunderfoot leaped out the window and began running towards the woods at the side of the road.
I immediately pulled to the shoulder of the road and began calling him. I don’t know what freaked him out but something did. I waited there an hour calling for him and searching the bushes and woods. He was gone. I never found him and I made my way back to camp with a heavy heart to get ready for work the following day. I was now truly alone and I missed my little buddy very much. He was a good companion and I hope that someone found him and gave him a good home.

 The next day I went back to work and continued to work for Jim and Allen for two more weeks. At the end of the second week, my third week of working, I headed back to camp on Friday with the intention of continuing the job. However when I got up on Saturday the itch to get on the road hit me really hard. It was now September and I had been in Washington for a month and a half. I hemmed and hawed for an hour of so and then decided to hit the road and head up to Idaho and Oliva’s place.

                    GOOD BYE TO WESTERN WASHINGTON - ON TO IDAHO

I felt pretty bad about leaving Jim and Allen in the middle of the project but something was calling me and off I went. I headed up Hwy. 18 through Maple Valley and turned west on Interstate 90. I drove until I got to Sprague Washington where I went to a local park for the night. I talked to a guy there in the town and he tried to get me to stay there. He said that all the young kids were leaving town as they grew up and the town was dying. For some reason he liked me and tried to persuade me to stay and check out the area. It was nice there but not what I was looking for at that time. I thanked him kindly and the next morning I headed up the road through Spokane and up the road towards Newport and the state line.

 It’s only 35 miles from Sprague to Spokane and from there only 45 miles to Newport. I got up to the bridge at the state line in the morning. From the bridge its a short distance to Liv’s place. Left on Lecleric rd and 6 or 7 miles to the turn. I got to Liv’s place early on Sunday, she was home and was happy to see me as I was to see her. She had moved up to her place a month or so earlier and was still in the process of finishing the house. The property she bought had a log cabin on it that was mostly finshed but still needed chinking and some of the finish trim.

Liv's Cabin

Interior of Liv's cabin - The blue lantern was light from Chartreuse Caboose

 I helped her with the chinking. She had spent her time up to that point placing nails every six or eight inches in every log. They go facing up and down in the crack between the logs. You then weave wire around each nail and on to the next. This provides reinforcement for the chinking and keeps it from cracking and falling out when snow, ice and rain cause the logs to expand and contract. Very effective but also very tedious work. You have to get the nail set far enough in so that when you apply the chinking it is covered and not sticking out.

 Olivia was working so we would work on the chinking after she got home from work and we had dinner. It is not difficult work but it takes a lot of time. You have to fill the space between the logs with something first. Besides the nails and wire you stuff the crack with rags or something similar to minimize the chinking material needed and also to provide some insulation. The chinking mix is two parts fine grained sand, one part Portland cement and 1/2 part masonry lime. You can also add some sawdust for a binder as we did. The chinking goes inside and out of the house. We were doing the outside.

                                                       BAD NEWS COMES

 I had just been there a couple of days when on Friday as we were getting ready to begin working on the cabin and policeman showed up. We both looked at each other and kind of went „What the Fuck?“

 The deputy asked for me by name and now I was really mystified and a little paranoid. He would not tell us what was up or why he was looking for me, he only said that I needed to call my parents. As soon as possible he said and then he left. Olivia and I drove into Newport and I found and payphone and called my parents. My mother answered the phone and told me to brace myself.

 „There has been an automobile accident“ she told me. „Uriah has a broken collarbone but is otherwise alright“ she said „Donna did not make it“. The first words I blurted out were „Oh Fuck“ this was a complete shock, couldn’t be real but it was moment. Mom was all business and told me that she was going to arrange a flight for me to San Francisco the next day. She told me to give her a some time to make arrangements and she would call back to the payphone. There was no other way. Liv had no phone service at her place.

 Olivia was there by the booth waiting and when I hung up and stepped out she looked at me and said „It’s Donna isn’t it?“ I told what had happened and we hugged and cried and talked about what had happened. I still had very little information, it was a wonder that my parents had tracked me down to where I was. I found out later that they had been looking all over the Pacific Northwest for me. I had written them from Kent when I was broke down so they had begun looking there. They had nothing specific though as far as the name of the place where the repairs were done. My brother Mike contacted the local Rock Station in Seattle and had the DJ’s make announcements for me to call my parents. He figured that I would probably be listening to the radio. I don’t know what made then try Liv’s place but they did. They knew her name but not her address, she was new to the area so it’s just lucky that they were able to track me down there.

 Mom called back a short time later and told me that they had arranged a flight for me the next morning. Liv and I then headed back to her place to let the news settle in. It was a complete shock, out of the blue and I was really sad. Sometimes there is no such thing a clousure. I have come to really resent that word, it is greatly overused. When we got up to Liv’s house I went out to the woods to have a moment to myself and try to take in all of the news. I was crying and feeling heavy grief when I felt a presence with me. It was Donna and I got this really strong feeling of peace. There were nothing verbal but rather just a feeling. She was telling me not to be sad that everything was good, and then she moved on. It was very strong and I know I did not imagine it. I don’t know what it means but I felt better afterwards. I have had this happen also with the death of my sister and my mother though not nearly as strongly.

                           RETURN TO CALIFORNIA - START OF A NEW LIFE

 The next day Liv drove me down to Spokane to the airport and I said my tearfull goodbyes and got onto the plane heading to San Francisco. It was really surreal to travel back to California in 4 hours after having spent more than 2 months getting to Idaho.

 Mom flew in San Francisco from Chicago and together we traveled up to Sonoma to attend to Uriah and to make arrangements for Donna’s funeral. When we got up to Sonoma we found out that the White’s, Donna’s parents had been busy and had already made arrangements for the body to be flown to Illinois for interment. They had also contacted Social Security and had begun the application process for filing a claim in Uriahs name. The were also trying to arrange to have him flown to Illinois to be with them. All this in the two days time from the accident until I was located. I was really feeling upset when I found all of this out. I was the husband but they had excluded me from all decisions and jumped in with both feet. I called them and let them have a piece of my mind. I allowed them to take the body and bury it in Illinois but beyond that I put a stop to all of their plans.

 Uriah was in the hospital in Santa Rosa and we went up there first thing in the morning after we got to Sonoma. He was in good shape but he was not talking. He would not say a word no matter how we coerced him. Mom tried and tried to get him to say something, anything but no such luck.

 Meanwhile the White’s had set up a viewing and wake in Sonoma. I went to the funeral home and viewed the body. It was hard, she had been in a head on collision and died from head injuries. That was very obvious, they had tried to reconstruct the face with wax and makeup or however they do that but it was not Donna and I put my foot down. This would be a closed casket, I personally would rather remember a person as they were in life, not in death, and certainly not with their face badly disfigured from an accident. As I was the husband the funeral home complied even though the Whites were paying and they had requested an open casket. I went to the wake although I did not spend much time there. It was more important to spend time with Uriah and try to get him well again. I talked to several friends at the wake and we decided to have a separate memorial and rememberance at a place more conducive to us later in the week. We needed to say goodbye in our own fashion.

 Uriah was still in the hospital and they did not want to release him until he began communicating. Mom tried all of her tricks with him but he stubbornly refused to talk until one morning what he was eating his breakfast and Mom asked him „What do you call that“ He looked at her and said „I call it milk“. The dam was broken and he began to talk and talk and talk until we began to wonder if he would ever shut up. That day the hospital released him and I was able to take him home.

 Mom stayed with us for another week then she went back home to Illinois and we began the next chapter in life. One chapter ends and another begins. Life, as they say, goes on.

Why I won't be voting for Mitt Romney

In 1989 I accepted a position at Physio Control in Redmond Washington. Physio Control at that time was owned by Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals. It was a wonderful company to work for. They made the 100 best companies to work for book twice in the years around that time.

Going back in time to 1986 – Denise and I were employed by Keytronics Corporation, a manufacturer of computer keyboards. I was in the injection molding department and Denise was working the spring machine in the assembly area.

  We were living on 10 acres of paradise in Northern Idaho/Eastern Washington. We were living the hippie dream, living on our own property in a house we built, growing what food we could, living without electricity and for 4 years without running water. We were off the grid, living in nature with the trees and animals and whatever Mother Nature threw at us. We had just put in a well for our homestead, a $10,000 investment in an area of extreme poverty. But we had good jobs, or so we thought. Keytronics began to make noises about how we employees needed to step up to the plate or they would have to look for a lower wage area to do business. We were told that they had 1500 applications on file and if we didn’t like how things were going then we knew where the door was.

The gauntlet was thrown down and we took it up. We met every goal/demand that they set for us. We lowered scrap to the number they demanded, we lowered cycle times for the machines, we found ways to do the job cheaper, faster, more efficiently. All was to avail, in June of 1986 they announced that the operations for Newport, Washington would be moved to Taiwan.

 They had an all company meeting where they told us that our jobs were being outsourced to Taiwan because “Those people will work for $0.50 a day and they live on fish heads and rice“. They said that they had talked to the government there and were told this. They also said that if they gave them a new pair of shoes every year as a bonus they the people would be happy and work all that they wanted. We were faced with an immediate decision. They were doing the layoffs in two stages. The first was two weeks after the company meeting. The second would come a month later. Either way the outcome was the same, no job.
 Denise and I had to make one of those life-changing decisions and do it in a hurry. We opted for the first layoff. Knowing that the entire plant was closing down and that 300 + people were going to be looking for work we thought that we would get out there first and take our chances.

 We had no roots in Pend Oreille County and the few jobs there would go to locals who had family there. We packed up Bob our 1954 Chevy flatbed truck in July of 1986 and headed across highway 2 into Western Washington.

 We lived in the truck in campgrounds in Snohomish County and began a search for employment.

 This was the days before cell phones and Personal Computers. Although we registered for unemployment in Everett, Washington, we were struggling in an area where we had no contacts, no relatives, and no advanced prospects.

 Imagine going to a company looking for work and then, if they show interest, you have to tell them: Please call me between 1:00 and 2:00 PM or some such time as agreed upon so that you can be at the campground payphone waiting for their call. If somebody else was using that phone all you could do was wait and hope you didn’t miss your call.

 Eventually Denise got a job as a temporary worker at Intermec Co., a company that made bar code devices. Luck would have it that she was put on an injection molding machine. The first day there she told the boss there “You don’t need me here. You need my husband”. I went in there, gave them my resume and references and was hired as a temporary worker. After a 90 day probationary period I was hired as a permanent employee. We were able to move to a house in Everett and eventually bought a house on 5 acres in Monroe, Washington.

 Intermec was a good company with pretty good benefits and decent management. The trouble for me was that they only had one mold machine. I was a department unto myself and there was nowhere to go for advancement. They had a lot of work that was outsourced to local companies and I tried to bring it in house. I got some work back and proved that I could run it cheaper that the outside molders. However the Purchasing department was apparently getting some kind of kickbacks from the outside suppliers and they sent all the work back out.

 I began looking to see what else was out there.

 One day I saw an advertisement in the local newspaper for a job at Physio Control a local manufacturer of defibrillators. I had never heard of this place but the job sounded interesting and it was something I knew I could do. I applied and to my surprise was given an interview.

 They were starting up a night shift and were looking for someone with injection molding experience to run it. Much to my delight I got the job and bid adieu to Intermec.

 After a couple of weeks on the day shift to learn their machines and methods I embarked on my sojourn at Physio Control.

 I was the floor lead, the process technician, the material handler, scheduler, maintenance tech and general go to guy for the injection molding department, with 5 machines and 7 operators who worked the machines and did sonic welding operations.

 This was my first foray into the world of management and the learning curve was huge. In the beginning I tried to do everything.
 My supervisor on dayshift had really told me very little about the task I was given. The operators I had were all temporary workers with no experience in the job they were doing. I did not know that and thought they were just incompetent at first. After I found out I started out training them as best I could and letting them take over the jobs that they were capable of. It was a matter of survival. I was literally working my ass off before I realized that I had to get them trained or work myself to death.

 It took a year but after that first year we passed the dayshift in every metric. We out produced them even though we shut the machines down for breaks because we had no extra personnel to give breaks. We had very low scrap and met all production goals.

 Here is a little background on Physio Control. They are a company that makes defibrillators for the medical device market. It was a great place to work in the 1980’s and early 1990’s  

 When I was offered the position there my soon to be supervisor Hermilla told me that it was a job for life. They were very selective about whom they hired and most people were turned away. It was a privilege to work there.

 Physio had a lot to offer. The Campus, as they called it, was located on 25 acres in Redmond, Washington. The driveway wound up a tree covered hill to the two buildings situated on the top of the hill. It was the site of a former homestead and farm that they had purchased. When I started working there, there was a herd of Scottish Highlander Cows that the previous owner was pasturing on land behind the main building.

 The main building housed the assembly areas and was also where the engineering departments were located. They had a robot that delivered parts from the warehouse area to the assembly areas. This was the first Robot that I had seen, and up to this point the last.

 There was a full service cafeteria run by Marriott’s that served a full breakfast and lunch menu. Because I was on night shift I seldom got to take advantage of that. They also had a full fitness center with trainers that the employees could use for around $5.00 a month.   The building I worked in was building 2 and housed the Molding Department, the Patch Department and most of the office areas for R & D and upper management. There was also a full service Credit department located in this building. It’s where I got the loan for my first Harley Davidson. What a nice convenience for employees to be able to conduct their banking at work. This was the days before direct deposit.

 Every third month there was a company wide kick-off meeting for the quarter we were about to begin. We were told about the company’s performance in the previous quarter and were given the goals for the upcoming quarter. These were high tech presentations with slide show presentations and music and speeches. This was also a time when employees were recognized for contributions they had made to the companies success. They had a thing called a spark plug award that was given out to employees who had provided a “Spark” to the company. They were an actual spark plug encased in cast acrylic and came with a certificate. The employee was recognized before the entire company. It could be a little embarrassing but what a morale boost it gave the recipient and the entire staff.

 I didn’t really appreciate some of it at the time, but they really held the employees in great esteem. I have never before or since worked for a company that treated their employees so much like they were a valued part of the company.

 There were little events through out the year that were a tradition with this company. Once a year they had a breakfast that was cooked by the management. They set up grills on the loading docks and all the upper management team including the  CEO served the rest of the employees.

 We worked a four day work week for most of the year. In the molding department we worked two ten hour shifts and shut down for four hours each day. Even now there are far too few companies that work a four day work week.

 The fourth quarter was our busy time and we worked a lot of overtime leading up to the year’s end. It was very handy for us hourly employees that got overtime pay. We put in long hours but the checks were nice and just in time for Christmas. The always had daily production goals for units produced and during this time as we met the goals they would announce them over the PA system. As we met or surpassed each goal there were teams that would go from department to department handing out goodies for us.

 I could go on and on but suffice to say it was a great work environment. With better than average wages, good benefits including a pension plan, it was a good, good job.

 But all good things come to an end.

 The end came from the FDA and managements refusal to take them seriously. FDA inspects medical device makers once a year to check for compliance to GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices). Physio Control had a big problem with documentation. The FDA inspector found the same basic documentation errors for 7 years in a row. No corrections, no serious attempt to address them. He made noise, there were also numerous lawsuits stemming from families of people who had died while being resuscitated. Not surprising for a company that makes lifesaving equipment, some people will not accept that even with the best equipment sometime death still occurs.

 Physio Control voluntarily suspended operations to fix their documents and get back in compliance with GMP. Under the consent decree Physio Control was not allowed to ship new product until they got their documentation in order. The only product allowed to be produced was service support.

 It took longer than was anticipated by management. It took more than one year. During that time no one was laid off. All employees were retained and given some tasks to keep them busy.

 I spent the entire year typing processes, procedures and guidelines for the injection molding department. I put together hundreds of documents.

  There were occasions when we would run service parts but other than that we were only allow to work on documentation. At the end of the year we passed inspection and were allowed to reopen for business. The company was battered but we had pulled through the shut down with no one laid off and the company was still solvent. They had somewhere in the neighborhood of 260 million dollars banked at the beginning of the shut down.

 It was shortly after that shutdown however that Eli Lilly announced that they were divesting themselves of the medical device companies that they owned. Physio Control was put on the market and was subsequently purchased by Mitt Romney and Bain Investments.

 This was the first time that I had heard of Bain and Mitt Romney and investment companies that buy up business’s in order to “Fix them up” and turn them for a profit.

 Bain basically were given Physio Control, I think they paid something around 23 or 24 million for a business that had been turning over more than 200 million in sales each year.

 They proceeded to strip the company and make it appear more profitable for the next buyer.

 One of the first things that Bain did upon taking over was to announce that all employees with a certain number of points would be offered retirement. We had an 80 point pension plan. Your age plus years of service after a minimum of 5 years service was eligible for full retirement e.g. your age 50 + years of service 30 = retirement. Those that did not accept this would face layoff with no compensation. Now the retirement was good but was intended to be just one facet of your retirement. They also had a 401k plan, so with the 401k and the 80 point plan and Social Security you could expect to be comfortable in retirement. Those that were forced into early retirement were for the most part not happy with it. They still had a ways to go before they could stop working.

The direct effect they had on my department was to close it down. We were told that Physio Control was returning to its core competencies and that molding wasn’t one of them.

 The put all molding jobs out for bid to private companies and when they got an acceptable bid they sold off all the molding equipment and outsourced all the molding.

 I spent my last three months of employment with them traveling to Coeur D'Alene Idaho to train other people how to do my job. The company that got the contract with Physio Control was back in Northern Idaho where I had left from 10 years earlier. Still a economically depressed area with low wage jobs. I was offered a job with this company, at considerably less than my wages with Physio Control. I declined the offer, and looked elsewhere.

 Snohomish County in Washington had a very small number injection molding companies and after trying all of them for work and finding that none were hiring, I expanded my search.

 I was making more money than Denise so when I got a job offer in Colorado we decided to make the move. She had a good job in Washington, with people that she liked, so it was a sacrifice on her part. Our son made the initial move with us but within 6 months returned to Washington when he had grown up and where his friends and future wife lived.

 Bottom line is that Mitt Romney walked off with a huge pile of money to take back to his family. A lot of other people had their dreams shattered and their lives disrupted. Altogether somewhere around 120 people lost their jobs at Physio Control either through direct layoff or forced retirement. I don’t remember the number of total employees there in Redmond but I think it was around 360. In other words about one third of the workforce was gone.

  I had to move 1700 miles away from my son, who still lives there with his wife and three children. My wife gave up her good job and we both gave up the house and home that we had built there in Washington. In my opinion Physio Control did not become a better and stronger company, it was only dressed up for sale to another owner.

 Fortunately I was able to find employment in Colorado that lasted for 9 years. After surviving one plant closing in Castle Rock, Colorado I stayed with the company and worked in Colorado Springs until I was again laid off and took a job in Kansas. That company was bought by a Norwegian Company that laid off everyone and moved the molding to Mexico where I now work. But that is another story…………….

Some notes:

Medtronic bought Physio Control in 1998 for $538 million in stock and assumed debt.

 In a strange twist Medtronic Inc. has sold its troubled Physio-Control division to Bain Capital for $487 million, the deal was finalized in the first quarter of 2012.

Atraco a mano armada - A hold up at work

The action just keeps getting closer. Last night the "Bad guys" made a strike at work.
 When I got to work this morning everything seemed normal. As I made my rounds checking on machines and parts I stopped to talk to Miguel, the Plant 4 manager. He said that he was worried because of something that had happened on the second shift. I immediately thought that there we personnel issues and asked him what happened.
 He said that armed gunmen had entered the plant and took the night shift superintendent into their custody after taking his cell phone from him. They then commandeered a cutting torch and and proceeded on to the cafeteria where they cut open the ATM machine and cleaned it out.
 Yesterday was payday and Thursday is the day when typically the employees withdraw money from the ATM at work. Estimate is that they probably got away with 390,000-520,000 pesos. $30,000 - 40,000. Dollars American that is.
 Danny, the night superintendent was released unharmed after they got the cash. He was shaken but said that the robbers were very calm and professional. They took what they wanted and left.

 When Ruben and I went to lunch today the ATM was cordoned off and the torch was still there to the left in the photo. The investigators from the bank were there assessing the situation. You can't see it in the picture but the floor in front of the ATM was charred from the torch.
 I asked Ruben how many guys there were. He said two with Danny two more in front of the building and 4 more in a car behind the plant. He said they also held up the factory behind us VDO is their name. They wore hoods when they went VDO but were unmasked when they held us up. VDO has cameras, we don't.
 In the first photo you can see the parking lot where I park. The white pickup is mine. There is a locked gate and there is a security guard in the little building there by the gate. They are unarmed however and now I see are largely useless. They are little more than parking monitors, my sense of security has really gone down after this incident.
 The police are useless they are in collusion with the bad guys. Those guys were in the plant for more than a hour and no help arrived. Well onward and upward, tomorrow is another day. Remember it's an adventure.

The week of Hurricane Alex

Its been an eventful week here in Matamoros/Brownsville. First was the assassination of Gubernatorial candidate Rodolfo Torre Cantu on Monday, followed by the tropical storm Alex that eventually turned into a hurricane.




The murder of a major political figure in Mexico barely




got passing mention in the U.S. news. I find it a little disturbing that we have a war going on right at our border and it seems to be of so little concern to the media. If a candidate for Canadian Provincial Premier was killed to keep him from office I would image the news would treat it differently.
 Rodolfo Torre was the populist candidate from the PRI party. He was a probable shoe-in for Governor of Tamaulipas which is the state that Matamoros belongs to. I hadn't been following the campaign real closely except for seeing the campaign posters all over the city.
 The cartel were apparently unable to buy him off so the did the next best thing...took him out of the picture.
 The rumor mill at work is very active and I think we knew within minutes of the assassination that it had taken place. I tried to google it and could find nothing until later that afternoon. The American media seemed to have very little information although it was all over the Mexican Television. We watched footage at lunch, as there is a TV in the cafeteria. They already had news crews at the scene and true to Mexican journalism they showed what they could of the bodies. They were covered up but had they not been all would have been reveled. The media in Mexico is extremely graphic, if you die in the streets your pictures will be everywhere.

 The influence that  the cartel will have on this election remains to be seen. The brother of Rodolfo Torre has stepped up and been accepted as the candidate on the ballot for Sundays election. It takes a man of great courage to step up and fill the shoes of someone who was murdered, especially when he was your brother.
 I tried to get a take from people at work on their view of the killings and the cartel attempts to influence the political process.

 There is a strange love/hate relationship going between the ordinary citizens, the

government and the cartels. After years of  corruption in the government there is a basic mistrust of the very people who should be helping them. As for the cartels as long as they are not actively killing innocent citizens they are viewed somewhat as folk heroes. In some ways they are a success story, they are wealthy and powerful. The income from the drug smuggling is ten percent of the economy in Mexico. That is significant in a country of great poverty. The gangs are a way out for many young people. It may lead to their death but we know how the youth can be, living only for the excitement of the moment.

 As so we will see how this play out come election day, which by the way is a holiday in Mexico... this is something we should emulate in the US. Lets make it important enough to take a day from work.

 The second part of the week was building to the tropical storm Alex. We closely followed it's progress as it moved across the Yucatan peninsula and into the Gulf of Mexico.

 This was my first hurricane as far as being in the path of it and I didn't know exactly what to expect. Most of our natural disasters like earthquakes and tornadoes hit with little or no warning.  The arrival of a hurricane can take days from when the storm is first broadcast. The exact place of landfall was uncertain even hours before Alex hit. The models early after the storm moved into the gulf had Brownsville as a direct hit. We took it quite seriously, Denise went shopping for nonperishable food stuffs, batteries, sandbags for the back of the house and extra gas for the grills in case we lost power.

During hurricane Dolly two years ago there were areas that lost power for weeks following the storm. There was also massive flooding so we were trying to be prepared.

 The rains began sporadically on Tuesday as the storm approached, still a tropical storm. At work the decision was made to move the two upcoming holidays from the 5th & 6th of July to the 1st & 2nd which was Thursday and Friday. The floor workers also had Wednesday off since they work 4 tens and normally have Friday off.

 Wednesday morning I went to work with trepidation, it was raining steadily and it takes very little for the streets of Matamoros to flood. Traffic going in to work was horrible. There were very few buses but the car traffic seemed normal. There was an accident at one of the major intersections so that really slowed things up.

 When I got to work it was quiet. All the machines were shut down by the night shift and they were ready to head to their houses and batten down the hatches. All through the morning the rain kept increasing as the bands of clouds moved ashore. With no machinery running the sound on the roof was loud. There were crews sandbagging the loading dock areas as these fill up with rain even with normal storms.

 I was very anxious about the flooding and the possibility of getting stuck in Mexico during the hurricane. Alex had officially become a hurricane as of the night before.

 About 10:00 Ruben popped his head into my office and said "We have a sample to run in machine 412." Oh great, were my thoughts, we've been here three hours and now we suddenly decide that we have to run a sample. Two shots is all that is needed just to verify some repairs to the mold.

 Issac had already put the mold into the machine and the resin was in the dryer so it wasn't too bad. Just start up the machine and cycle it in, about 30 minutes work. Just as we got parts and I was shutting the machine back down Miguel came into Plant 4 and called us over to tell us that they had decided to shut down all 4 plants at 11:00 so we could head home.

 I wished everybody luck with the hurricane and headed for the border.

 The mornings rain had already taken their toll on the roads. The main road back to the border crossing is eight lanes. A center divider followed by two lanes then another divider and two more lanes. The dividers naturally act as dams and hold in the water. No one was using the two outer lanes as they were floorboard deep in water. When I got to the turn at the Soriana dept. store the roadway was like a river, far more suited for boats. I drove slowly through it an into the customs area which was also flooding.

  The bridge was clear and there was only a few cars at the inspection station for which I was thankful. My windshield wipers have a short somewhere and they had quit working so I was struggling to see. They started back up after I got on the freeway and was nearing home.

 Home to finish taking down the hanging plants and sand bag the back door. We didn't board up the windows, just taking a chance that it would not be a direct hit. We moved Kazumba and Sweetie Pie into the house as they have been living outside on the patio. The rest was just a waiting game. Watching the rain dance down the street and the wind pushed it in waves. We went out for a walk during a lull in the afternoon. The rain was warm and we were wearing shorts. There was a good amount of water going down the streets but the drains were funneling everything into the resacas. There was some minor flooding in yards but mostly in areas that were bare ground like around the bases of trees.

 We kept waiting for some great wind action but nothing materialized. The news reports warned of tornadoes that were spawned from the clouds but they were all to the north and west of us. They also said that the tornadoes were "rain wrapped" and you would'nt see them until they hit. Thanks for the warning.

 Alex finally made landfall at 9:05 pm, about 100 miles south of us near the fishing village of San Fernando. They got blown around pretty good with 120 mile an hour winds and torrential rains.

 Here the winds didn't really pick up until after I went to bed at 10:00 or so. I went outside at 6:00am on Thursday to the sound of birds singing. There was some debris from tree branches and palm fronds but really nothing terrible. We were spared a disaster this time.

 I rode my bicycle around town in the morning checking out everything but all looked good. In the afternoon we drove out to Boca Chica to see the beach. The surf was very heavy and there were piles of Sargassum in heaps all along the sand. Sargassum is a seaweed that generally floats in large masses in the gulf. It is home to many sea creatures such as the fiddler crabs.

 So all in all it was a fairly exciting week. Remember....it's an adventure! Peace.

The calm before the, well you know..........

Things have been oh so very quiet. Many people at work have been saying that "Things have returned to normal". People in Matamoros have gone back to their routines. Going out a night, socializing, and just being more relaxed.
Reuben told me the other day that one of the major Zetas bosses and four of his bodyguards had been killed by the marines. This guy, he said was the one behind the kidnappings and killings in Matamoros. The Gulf Cartel are back in charge and they are considered to be "The good Cartel". The devil you know is better than the devil you don't.
These two cartels have history together. The Zetas formed some years back with 31 members who were deserters from the Mexican Army. Now these weren't just ordinary soldiers but rather highly trained specialists that had received some of their training in the good old USA. It is believed they were originally trained at the military School of the Americas in the United States and by other foreign specialists of the United States, France and Israel. They were trained in rapid deployment, aerial assaults, marksmanship, ambushes, small-group tactics, intelligence collection, counter-surveillance techniques, prisoner rescues and sophisticated communications.
This group was recruited by the Gulf Cartel to kill off rival cartels. They were essentially a mercenary army hired by drug dealers to kill off the competition.
This all began in the 1990's and they continued in this fashion until this year in February when the Zetas and its ally, the Betran Leyva Cartel engaged in a violent turf war against its former employer/partner, the Gulf Cartel, in the border city of Reynosa, Tamaulipas. It was reported that a Gulf Cartel member killed a top Zeta lieutenant named Victor Mendoza. The Zetas demanded that the Gulf cartel turn over the killer. However the Gulf Cartel refused and an all-out war has broken out between the two gangs.
There is just too much money floating around and every time one of the "Big Fish" get killed either by rival gangs or the military, there is someone else stepping up to take over.
Last night the calm was broken. Los Zetas attacked right in central Matamoros. They went after the police this time. There was an attack at the police station near the Los Laureles colonia located off of Sixth Street just past the Mundo Nuevo theater.
 Denise woke up early this morning to tell me that she had heard about in on the 10:00 pm news.
And then I heard about it at work.
Ruben told me that he was downtown yesterday evening taking his daughter to swimming lessons. He said that he heard the opening explosions. He thought they were hand grenades, followed by automatic weapons fire. The military showed up shortly in their helicopters. He said they were told not to leave and were there at the gymnasium for an hour before they could go home. There was only one lane open even then Ruben said. Dulce repeated almost the same story. She lives within earshot of the police headquarters and could hear the whole ordeal from here house.
The news reported this one, probably because of the location and the police being involved. There were at least 10 reported dead, some 6-7 of them reported to be police.

So it continues as I was sure it would. This is a feud, a play for power and money. There will be no end to this craziness until we as a nation realize that the whole drug war is a failed notion and try a different direction. In the mean time I go to work each day and try to maintain a low profile.