Popcorn

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Our last stop in Canada was in Chilliwack, BC. When we stepped in the motel room and turned on the light we saw our first popcorn ceiling. There were little flecks of reflective stuff that looked kinda neat because of the light. It didn't take long for the novelty to wear off.

From there we headed South and back to the States. We found a motel North of Seattle with a kitchenette and started looking for work. I had hoped to get a job with Boeing, but that never happened. Instead I got a job working on aircraft at a repair station at Payne Field. The Old Lady also found work quickly. One of the reasons we left home was because jobs were hard to get at home. Was nice to find out you didn't need to be standing there when someone died in order to get a job, that's if there wasn't a relative waiting for the job.

We found a place to stay that was old military housing. It was a duplex that The Old Lady called Mildew Manor.

Sometime after we were settled the In-laws brought the kids there. Our honeymoon was over.

It was a strange area, we had a Lynnwood address, an Everett phone number and the kids went to the Mukilteo school district.

On The Road

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

One of our first stops was in Winnipeg. It was/is a nice city. We were standing on the sidewalk in front of the motel and The Old Lady said that it looked like a nice city. Then I noticed a few cars going by on the street. At least one had something on the inside of the windshield that I hadn't seen in a while. There was a piece of plastic sealed on windshield. (It took many attempts at googling to find an example of that. Finally found out they are called frost shields.) I pointed out a car with that on the windshield and said that means it gets really cold here in the Winter.

Frost Shields 

Another post done using my android phone.

We Hit The Road

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

It was a rough Winter, ran out of propane a time or two because we had to pay up front. Wood stove didn't really heat the place that well, so we started talking about going somewhere warmer like the Southwest. We thought about going somewhere where we wouldn't freeze to death. By the time my Guard obligation was done in late Summer we had decided on Seattle, thought maybe I could get a job with Boeing because of my Air Force experience. 

We loaded as much as we could into an old station wagon and dropped the kids at their grandparents. We headed West, went as far as  Grand Forks, ND, then headed North to Winnipeg. There we got on the Trans-Canada hwy. 

All the while we were traveling we were singing a song, The Gambler. We especially related to the lines, "You got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them. Know when to walk away, know when to run."

Anywho, we drove West through Canada until in British Columbia when we were straight up from Seattle we turned South. When we got to the Seattle area we got a motel room with a kitchenette and started looking for work.

Macrum does a song at the end of his posts, so I'll try that too.

How to Camouflage a 5 Ton Dump Truck

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

After working as a carpenter for a couple years there was a downturn in housing. There was less work for us so I applied and got hired again at Celotex. This post isn't about working at Celotex because that's boring as fuck!

What this post is about is how I got talked into joining the National Guard. (Me, who thought the military was fucked up got talked into playing Army!) Anywho, my cousin had gotten out of the Navy for the second time and for some unknown reason joined the National Guard. He told me about this program they had called Try One. Those that had prior service could sign up for one year to try it out. Also the extra bucks for a weekend a month would come in handy. He managed to get me and his brother-in-law signed up. After I was officially in the Guard I found out the real reason he talked me into signing. The Fucker got a weekend off with pay!

At first it wasn't too bad, I got assigned the job of truck driver because I could double-clutch the diesel truck. Most weekends we would sit around bullshitting and drinking beer. One weekend we were supposed to learn how to do camouflage. Three of us climbed into a 5 ton dump truck and headed out. First stop was to pick up a 12 pack, then we drove out into the country. By the time the 12 pack was gone we all agreed the truck was camouflaged and headed back to the Armory. 

Some times we would have real projects to work on for the community. We were a Combat Engineer unit so it usually was some kind of construction project. That didn't happen very often and during the Winter months we were pretty much limited to doing stuff in the Armory.

 Then came Summer camp. The trucks and the equipment got loaded. The first day on the way to Summer camp we only went 50 miles and stopped at another Armory. Most of the guys slept on the floor in the Armory. I slept in the truck, something I would do a number of times during the 2 weeks. I had a large cooler that took up most of the floor space on the passenger side where my cousin was riding shotgun. We had some food in it for lunches and road food, but most it was full of beer. By the time we got to camp my cousin was saying the first thing he was going to do was go to the commissary and get a smaller cooler. When he did he came out with a cooler that was bigger than mine. I bought a round cooler that was smaller. It was about a foot in diameter and maybe 18 inches high. (I still have it.) 

One thing I'll never forget is the latrine at camp. It was all open, the urinals and the toilets were all out in the open, no partitions in the whole place.

We had to go out on bivouac out in the field. I had a shelter half and another guy had one. We put them together into a tent. I slept in the truck so the other guy had the tent to himself. We also had to dig a foxhole next to the tent.

One day because I wasn't too knowledgeable about what the unit does, I got sent on a recon mission. Got to go rafting down the river in a rubber raft with another guy. We were scouting out ford sites (found a Chevy site too). At one point we were pushed by the current up against a tree that had toppled into the river. When I pushed against the branches to push the raft away I pushed myself out of the raft. It was a warm Summer day so a dip in the river was refreshing. Also  got to go for a helicopter ride and it's a weird feeling when it banks to make a sharp turn and you're looking straight down at the ground. Makes you wonder how it stays up when it's sideways.

Anywho, I survived the Summer Camp where they actually expected me to act like military? About a month and a half after my year ended. I turned in all my uniforms (I did manage to trade my old field jacket for a newer one) and told them Adios.

Not long after I quit my job, loaded what we could into a station wagon and hit the road for Seattle. That will be my next post and hopefully it won't be a year or so from now! 

A New Post Just To Keep The Blog Active

Not All Who Wander Are Lost 

The Old Lady mentioned this morning that she had seen something about blogger deactivating blogs that don't post over a long period of time. She didn't say when blogger would start doing that or how long between post on the blog. 

I think I got writers block after my last post. There really wasn't much to say. I worked as a carpenter for a couple years, then went back to work for Celotex for a couple years. 

I'll do a real post after I search the fogbank in my head about what I was doing 40+ years ago.

40 Years Ago I Fucked Up!!

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Not one of mine. Thought I had pictures, but now can't find them, so this is from google.

Forty years ago I was working as a carpenter building houses. That meant I had the winters off. After awhile I got bored and decided to try my hand at baking. I think first I baked bread, next I baked a pie. When I figured out I could make pie crust, I thought I'd try my hand at making pasties (rhymes with nasty, not hasty as those are nipple covers and usually not edible!!) So I got the ingredients, meat, potatoes, rutabaga, onion, etc. The Old Lady had a job at the time and while she was gone for the day I made pasties. I remembered how they were made from the pasty sales my class in high school used to do as fundraisers and that is what I went by to put together the pasties, memory. Anywho, my pasties turned out better than The Old Lady's and she has never made them since. So if I want a pasty I either have to make them myself or buy one. In most areas we have lived you don't find pasties for sale in stores or restaurants. UP on the Tundra you can buy pasty meat which is coarsely ground beef and pork. Other places that grind is called chili grind, but usually is just beef.  Sometimes when living elsewhere I would get some beef and pork and cut them up into small pieces, smaller than for stew. Then mix the meat in with the veggies before putting it all in the crust.

My latest venture in baking is I managed to create a sourdough starter on the third attempt. It turned out pretty good and now I have a starter in the frig.

This is a photo of the bread I baked yesterday.

Why The Old Lady Decided She Needed To Get Her Drivers License

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Every summer Celotex would shut down for one week for maintenance and all those not working maintenance would have one week of vacation if they had any vacation time accrued. One year when I worked in the lab I was working swing shift before the shut-down. I had ridden my motorcycle to work that last day before the shut-down. As I was on my way home a couple of dogs ran across the road in front of me. I hit one of the dogs and went over the high side. (over the handlebars) I bounced and rolled for a ways on the blacktop.   After my head cleared, I took stock of my situation. My jeans were torn at the knees and I had a broken finger. I managed to get the bike back up and gathered my stuff and rode the rest of the way home. (A little over a mile.) The wind on my knees really stung, so I drove slowly. Also the handlebars were cocked. When I got home around midnight, The Old Lady looked at me and said go in the bathroom and we'll see about getting your clothes off. When she saw how torn up I was, she called my uncle and he came and drove us to the ER at the hospital. Both knees were torn up and one elbow. There was a patch the size of my hand on the small of my back where a couple layers of skin were scrapped off. As the doctor sewed me up, I asked why I could feel the stitches. He said for about 10% of people local anesthetics don't work. (Which would explain the pain I suffered several years before when the bolt to repair my broken leg was removed under a local!!)  After patching my knees and elbow, they were turning me and asking if there was any more damage. I kept saying, "I broke my fucking finger." (Middle finger, right hand.) They basically ignored that, but in the end they did put a band-aid on it as it was bleeding around the nail.

It took about 5 weeks to recuperate. During that time we needed someone to drive us when we needed to go to town until I got to where I could bend my knees and could drive again. The doctor asked me after a couple weeks if I thought I was ready to go back to work and I replied I can't go back to work until I can ride a bike. The doctor said you aren't getting back on your motorcycle are you? I said I have to ride a bicycle at work.

The Old Lady had driver ed in high school, but never got a license. Recently she mentioned one of the cars her father had she was not able to drive. That may explain why she never got her license and when she went off to college in the big city she didn't need to drive as there was public transportation.

My accident happened in August and when school started in the Fall she signed up for driver ed as part of adult ed. After the driver ed course she got her license. She wanted to learn how to drive a stick and my car was an automatic. My cousin had a junkyard and he had gotten an old Ford pickup with a standard transmission. It was a '60 Ford half ton with a 6 cylinder engine and a three speed column shift. Once she learned to drive it, she loved that truck. One year I had decided the truck had too many problems and was too rusted, so I parked it. One time when I got home after being gone working during the week, it had a new plate on it. She had gone down and got plates for it and we drove it for another year. Ocasionally she still mutters about how I sent it to the crusher.