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.

Karma

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

When I was working in the lab we had a limited number of people. On days there was a couple of people that worked steady days, but on the shifts there was just one tester and one inspector. If someone called in sick the other two shifts had to cover for that person. One of the testers had a bad habit of calling in sick when he was on midnight shift. Fairly often he would dump a shift, not every time he was on midnights (we were on rotating shifts, so every three weeks would be midnights), but often enough to be a pain in the ass. Especially because he was on the shift ahead of me. So when he called in sick for midnights, I was on days and would have to go in at 4am. What really sucked was I would get a call at about quarter or ten to midnight telling me I had too go in at 4am!!

We tried telling the guy that if he knew he was going to dump a shift, let the other two guys know ahead of time. He never did. When The Old Lady's sister got married, I was on midnights. I knew I wouldn't make the Sunday shift if I was 100 miles away on Saturday night. The guy had been carpooling with someone. When I called in (at 11:45pm) saying I couldn't make it to work (car trouble 100 miles away), he had to go home and get his car and come back to work until 4am. When the other guy came in at 4am, he asked the other guy when he got called and the reply was that he knew about two weeks in advance!!

Should I Be Worried??

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Recently I saw this on facebook and it got me to thinking.

 It seems The Old Lady has been knitting ever since she realized she couldn't figure out how to cut the brake lines on my car (see previous post). Now I know she wouldn't cut the brake lines on the car because it's her car!! She's done sweaters, scarfs, socks, dish clothes, etc.... 

Actually I don't worry about it. After being together for 40+ years, if she was going to kill me, I'd be dead.

Then There Was The Plot To Kill Me

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

In the previous post I mentioned we were house hunting. One of the reasons we were house hunting was because The Old Lady was knocked up. On "The Ranch" there were two houses. One built shortly after my grandparents bought the place almost a century ago and the other when my dad got married in the early 30s. Neither one had an ounce of insulation in them. One of my brothers took the second story off the big house. Even after lowering the roof it was damn near impossible to heat. The other one was the one we called The Little House. It was two rooms and would have been easier to heat, but consisted of only kitchen and bedroom and small rooms at that. And neither one had running water.

But this post is about the plot to kill me not housing. They say some women get crazy when they are pregnant and I can testify that it is true!! Something to do with hormones, I guess. During the later stages of the pregnancy The Old Lady was plotting ways to kill me. Have no idea why she wanted to kill me and probably she doesn't either. One of the ways she was thinking of killing me was by cutting the brake lines on my car. She was really pissed that her big stomach prevented her from getting under the car to cut the brake lines.

They say "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing", but in this case it was good. If she had known more about brake systems, she could have opened the hood and reached over the fender to cut the brake lines at the master cylinder.

Now if everyone followed this advice, they would all sleep alone!!!!!

A Thought On This Blog

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

It is taking about the same amount of time to chronicle my life on this blog as it did to live it. I've been doing this blog for almost 7 years and that's about the time period I've covered so far. There even a bunch of gaps in the posts just like in my work history, or as I like to call them, "Quality Time!!"

Here's another one that is applicable to my life.

After The "Envelopement"

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After we got back from "enveloping" I called someone to find out what was happening with the strike. Found out the bastards settled the strike while I was gone and I had to go back to work. At the time I was working as Package and Wrap, which meant I was wrapping the ceiling panels. (Wrapping Xmas presents reminded me of when I worked as Package and Wrap. The Old Lady [she became The Old Lady because at the time there was the saying "Dirty Old Men need love too" and she kept saying "Dirty Old Ladies need love too"!! I became The S.O. {the B is silent} because she didn't feel like calling me her husband] has me wrap most of the presents because of my having done wrapping as a professional.) When I was doing the wrapping, I lost my fingerprints because my fingers were worn smooth by the kraft paper we used.

Anywho, sometime later after we went back to work they posted a job for tester in the lab. I put in for it and had to take a test for the job. It came down to two of us for the job. There was one opening and one position would be on a trial basis. They were putting in a relief schedule as that was one of the things negotiated in the new contract. I was told because I had less seniority than the other guy that if they decided the relief schedule wasn't working I'd have to go back to my old job. Well, six months later the other guy had gone from tester to inspector and I was working steady days as a relief tester.

Because I was now "married" we looked around for housing as my place on "The Ranch" wasn't a comfortable place to live in the winter. Looked at a couple houses which I couldn't get financing for and some single wide trailers. Finally bought a new 12x60  trailer (The Old Lady called it "The Shoebox" from the time we got it until I pulled it out and dismantled it) by refinancing my car for the down payment. (The local bank wanted me to mortgage the property in addition to the trailer. Finally got a loan from D&N with just the trailer as collateral.) It was late in the fall when the trailer was finally delivered up to "The Ranch". Got the power and water and septic hooked up. Because it was late in the fall, I bought a bunch of straw bales to put around the bottom of trailer to block it off as I didn't have time to build skirting. Turned out that was probably the warmest winter the whole time we lived in the trailer.

Had trouble getting a large propane tank as there seemed to be a shortage of them at the time. Finally got one and was able to heat the place. I don't think 100# cylinders would have been very good for heating the place. They wouldn't have lasted long.

This is where we lived for the next 6 years.

And Then We Enveloped

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In the fall we decided to get an apartment, by we I mean me, the former girl next door who came camping, and my cousin who didn't want to live with his parents after coming home from the military. We found a three bedroom apartment that was in town and pretty much conveniently located for all concerned. There were four of us living in the apartment, the aforementioned and the former girl next door's 3-year old daughter from a previous experiment.

Then in the middle of the winter the contract ended at the company where I worked and we went on strike. I guess the company figured we wouldn't want to be out in the cold for very long and they would get the best of the deal. Well, we weren't actually out in the cold. For picketing there was at least one RV trailer and there were several shacks built that had woodstoves, tables and chairs and even bunks. Some guys would sign up for night time picketing and just sleep in the picket shack. Some of the material to build the shacks came from the plant that we were striking. There was a pile of asphalt impregnated sheathing brought out to us from the plant, it was dunnage, pieces that had corners broken off or other damage and was usually used to protect the product in shipping.

Anywho, we ,the former girl next door and I, decided to live together. Because of the times and various other reasons we decided we couldn't just come out and say we were going to shack up. So we decided to pretend to get married. As I wasn't working at the time, we went down to Madison, WI for a few days and when we came back announced that we had eloped. Her 3 year old daughter told people that we had "enveloped"!!

And that's how the former girl next door became The Old Lady. Mostly because at the time a popular saying was "Dirty Old Men Need Love Too" and she would say "Dirty Old Ladies Need Love Too". So I started calling her The Old Lady and she calls me The S O. I guess the B is silent!!

Now that I'm older and have learned more about family history and history of my little hometown, I find it a little ironic that we were so paranoid about what people would think. Seems shacking up wasn't anything new and it seems with a lot of couples of the older generations the first kid could come at any time, but the rest usually took 9 months. (When The Kid was born at the end of the year I could see people counting on their fingers, but it had been a little over 10 months since we "enveloped".)

Fuck It, I'm Hungry

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

In my last post I mentioned the former "girl next door" who wanted to come camping at my place.  After being here for awhile, she decided to move here from the big city.  As I was working, I couldn't go to Mad-Town to get her stuff, so I let my cousin use my truck to go after the stuff.  While there a couple of her friends decided to come UP on the Tundra to see the area.  As they were getting here they took the back way, my shortcut that is 9 miles of dirt road just barely better than a two-track.  At the time there was water over the road in a couple of places and the road wasn't the smoothest, there were rocks sticking up where you had to be careful with a car.  My pickup had enough ground clearance that the rocks were not a problem.  While on the shortcut someone (probably my cousin) decided to play a joke on the pair that hadn't been here before.  They were told that there was this guy living way out here in the woods that didn't speak English.  As it happened, when they arrived, I was in the outhouse.  My two room cabin didn't have running water, so therefore the outhouse.  My cousin called out for me and when he realized where I was, came over and explained that I shouldn't speak English only Finnish as he had told the two that I didn't speak English.  I have a fairly good command (better then than now) of the Finnish language as that was my first language.  I learned English in Kindergarten and Grade School.  My cousin on the other hand only had what he had learned from his grandfather.  It was amusing watching him staring at the ceiling trying to come up with the words in Finn while talking to me.  We carried on this farce for a couple hours until finally I said to everybody, "Fuck it, I'm hungry.  Who wants to go to town and get a burger??"  I had to repeat it about 3 times before this young guy said, " Hey he's speaking English!!"

Can I Come Camping at Your Place??

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One day out of blue I got a letter (this was back in the days of snail mail) from someone who at one time was the girl next door.  In the letter she asked if she could come up to my place to do some camping.  I sent a reply saying, sure, no problem.

A few weeks later she and a friend hitch-hiked up from Madison.  We got reacquainted and partied a lot (that was the summer I was helping my cousin celebrate getting out of the Navy), and there was even pitching a tent and actual camping involved.  

Here we are doing the Bonnie & Clyde bit!!

Long story short, she never left!!!!!!!!!!!!

Working on the Railroad One Last Time

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The last time I worked on the railroad, it only lasted for a month or two and then I got called to work at a local factory that made ceiling tile.

I had been trying for over two years to get a job at this plant.  Considering my experiences with working on the railroad, I thought at least this job would be a year round job not just a few weeks or months at a time like the railroad had been.  That damn hindsight , turned out the guy, who had never worked on the railroad before, who took my place on the railroad got the job permanently and worked for several years until he injured himself off the job and the railroad doctor wouldn't OK his return to work.

Anywho, I worked at the ceiling tile plant for 3yrs the first time and for 2 more years later.  We were using kraft paper to wrap the packages of lay-in ceiling panels.  My job title was "package and wrap".  After doing that for a couple of months my fingers were so smooth it looked like I didn't have any fingerprints.  The kraft paper wore my fingerprints off.

Back To Working On The Railroad

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

After working at the sawmill, I was able to work on the railroad for awhile.  I found out from my uncle that there was an opening on a paint crew.  I applied and got the job on the paint crew.  We mostly painted signs along the tracks.  Every culvert has a sign with a number indicating the mileage from some point.  Before painting the sign we would write the number on the web of the rail with chalk so we could paint the number in black on the sign after it was painted white.  One of the other things we painted was the scale used for weighting RR cars before they were loaded onto the ferry that went across the Straits of Mackinac.  We had to crawl down under the scale and spray paint the steel parts.  Needless to say it was not pleasant, I came out of there all covered with paint.  We also had to paint some bridges.  One was low enough that when I dropped my brush for red lead, I was able to lower myself off the scaffold and pick up the brush out of the water.  Another bridge went over a small stream and a county road.  The part over the stream was wooden trestle and the part over the road was steel.  We hung scaffolding under the bridge and closed off one lane of traffic at a time.  We had a  person on either side of the bridge directing traffic just like at some road construction areas.  Also because of the traffic, we painted the bridge with brushes so cars going under the bridge on the road would not get overspray on them.  The bridge I didn't like to paint was a high one.  It was 80 feet from the rail to the water.  It had been prepared (chipping off old paint and red lead primer applied) for painting a year or two before.  We hung block and tackle over the side of the bridge, tied a ladder to the edge of the bridge to climb down to the plank that was supported by the block and tackle.  No safety equipment what so ever.  It was hang on with one hand and spraypaint with the other.  As I was the low man on the totem pole (least seniority), I would always be on the downwind end of the plank.  Even tho I would try to cover up, I still would have trouble getting all the paint off my skin and out of my hair.

When we were painting the bridge over the road, our railroad cars that we lived in were parked in the Soo.  One evening I went looking for an auto parts store for something and came back with something different.  I don't remember what I originally went to get, but I bought a new throw-out bearing as the one in my car broke while on my way to the store.  After buying the new part, I had to drive across town with no clutch.  It meant starting the car in first gear and shifting without the clutch.  At one light I went thru several changes of the light before I got it fired up as it was slightly uphill and it didn't want to start.  After getting back to where I was staying (the railroad cars parked by the roundhouse), then I had to change the throw-out bearing.  The car had a four speed transmission that was heavy.  I jacked up the car and made a ramp under the transmission to slide it back on.  I knew if I dropped it on the ground, I would never be able to lift it back in place while lying under the car.  I had to get it fixed by Friday as I had found out that I had been bumped by the foreman and would no longer have a job after Friday.  I was able to get my car fixed and drive home Friday after work.

A short time later, I found out there was an opening of a bridge crew and I got the job.  We were working on the ferry slip for the railroad car ferry the "Chief Wawatam".  One day the foreman said we could go for a ride on the ferry if it was OK with the captain.  It was a nice ride across to Mackinaw City in an old ship (it was built in 1911) and when we got there, I learned it would be a couple hours before the ferry was unloaded and reloaded for the trip back.  As it was around the time we usually had out morning coffee break, I went to a restaurant for coffee.  When I sat down and took off my hardhat, the waitress asked if I worked around there and I said "No, I work in St. Ignace."  She had a funny look on here face until I explained how I came to be in Mackinaw City for coffee.  The ferry was removed from service in the 80s, and ever since to ship something by rail from St. Ignace, MI to Mackinaw City, MI. it had to make a trip all the way around Lake Michigan.

That job only lasted a couple weeks as the paint crew I was on got shut down for the year and one of the guys I had worked with came back to his job on the bridge crew.  Some guys would work on the paint crew during the summer as a painter made the same as a carpenter on the bridge crew, so if you were a carpenter's helper it was a raise in pay. 

When The Unemployment Started To Run Out

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Towards the end of summer when I was down to only a couple of weeks left of unemployment benefits,  I got a job at a local sawmill.  In a larger sawmill it would have been called working on the green chain.  As this mill only had 4 workers, the owner who was the sawyer, a guy that operated the Cary-Lift (which moved the logs and all the wood from the end of the mill) and debarker, the guy who took the pieces after they came off the main saw and either sent them down the line or ran them thru the edger to trim them into boards.  Then there was my position, I got to deal with all the pieces at the end of the line.  The slabs got put into a rack where they would be bundled, the boards would be stacked after being trimmed to cut out bad areas, the railroad ties would sometimes have to be cut to length then pushed off the end of the line into a pile.  All in all it was hard work.  I was paid a little over minimum wage which at the time was under $2.  I don't remember exactly what my wage was, I seem to remember that maybe it started at $2 and eventually was up to $2.25.

One thing about this job is it was close to home, only a mile away.  I could go home for lunch and most days did.

Then just before "Deer Hunting Season" there was an extension to unemployment passed and I asked for and was given a lay-off.  That way I was able to go deer hunting while drawing unemployment.  I got a 13 week extension and drew it thru the winter.  Over a 2 year period I drew a years worth of unemployment as there was the original 26 weeks and two 13 week extensions.

 

 Me on the left and my friend dressed in monkey suits for his wedding.

      

Above is a picture of me and a friend taken before my friend's wedding.  We drove to the courthouse where the wedding was to take place in my truck which was covered with mud as I didn't have time to wash it in between getting stuck out in the woods and going to the wedding.  This happened at the time I was working at the sawmill or on unemployment. 

                                                                                                           

Some Thoughts About Things After My Father Died



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Yesterday seeing a coffee can reminded me of some of the things that happened that summer my father died.  When we (my brother and I) were emptying the house there were a number of surprises.  We found a large cache of coffee.  There were a lot of 3# cans of coffee.  Back then the large cans actually held 3# of coffee, not 28 to 34oz like today.  We also found many 5# bags of sugar, and a large supply of toilet paper.(One older woman I knew had the bathtub piled high with packages of toilet paper.  They had a sauna, so never used the bathtub in the house.)



Another thing we found was a bunch of bottles of homemade wine.  There were several different types, strawberry, blackberry and chokecherry are ones I remember.  The only one I remember as being undrinkable was the chokecherry, it was so dry, it would make your asshole pucker when you drank it.  I was able to get rid of it by giving it to a couple of friends when they would stop by half-drunk already.  I'd ask if they wanted a glass of homemade wine.  After they had some I'd ask if they wanted a bottle to take with them.  They must have drunk the wine while still drunk as this ploy worked every time they came around until I got rid of all the chokecherry wine.  They were the only ones that could drink it.





Another thing my brother and I had to do was haul all the stuff my dad picked up at the dump back to the dump.  We spent quite a bit of time asking each other why the old man hauled this stuff home.  The funny part is that when we were bringing the junk back to the dump(back then most towns and area locations had a dump, not a landfill like today), there were a couple of guys there picking thru the trash.  They looked in the back of my pickup and said "That looks like good stuff.  Don't throw it over the edge, set it over on the side so we can look thru it."  Between the basement and the garage, we made many trips to the dump. 

I don't remember how many days we worked at cleaning out the house, but we finally got everything out of it so we could sell it.  Last summer I drove by where the house was and all that was left was the sauna my dad built in the backyard.  When they sold the farm, my dad took apart a log building that had been used as a shop of some kind and put it back together with sill sealer insulation between the logs.  He put in a wall to make two rooms, the changing room and the one for steam.

I'm not surprised the house is gone as it was old and needed a lot of work, I am surprised the garage is gone as that was fairly new.  My dad built it on the lot next to the house after buying the two lots next to the house.

Some Things That Happened After I Got Home From The Military

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

A couple months after I got home my step-mother had gall bladder surgery. She came out of the hospital with some gallstones in a plastic vial. Within a few weeks of the surgery she died. She was buried in a cemetery in an area in Northern Wisconsin that had the same name as the area where she was from in Finland.

A month or so later my dad died. We all joke about how the shock of surviving my step-mother killed him. She had had several husbands and out-lived all except my dad. Not quite sure how many she had, around four or five.

After my dad's funeral, my brothers and I went to a lawyer to arrange for my dad's estate to be probated. He had too many things to not go through probate. If the only thing had been the house or a car, probate wouldn't have been necessary. He had a house, car and a pickup and four sons who got to divvy up these things. Also there was the "Ranch UP on the Tundra" but my name was already on the deed with a survivorship clause. My two oldest brothers lived in states halfway across the country and my next oldest brother had a full time job working rotating shifts. As I was unemployed at the time, I was made the administrator of my dad's estate, such as it was.

Being an administrator wasn't too difficult, had to make a number of trips to the lawyer's office for various things. I was glad we had gotten a lawyer to do the probate because a step-daughter from one of my step-mother's other marriages came around raising all kinds of hell about how she should get everything and my family wasn't entitled to anything from my step-mother's estate. I guess the money she got in the form of mutual funds and/or bonds wasn't enough for her. Michigan law states that everything goes to the surviving spouse, which was my dad because he outlived her. After listening to her (the evil step-daughter) for awhile ranting about she should get everything and we should get nothing, I told her to go see my lawyer. After she left I called my lawyer and warned him that she was on her way to see him. He said, "Good, I'll show where the bear shit in the buckwheat". When I next talked to my lawyer, he said she was the most miserable bitch he'd met. I never heard from her again. I sure was glad I had a lawyer to back me up.

What took the longest was waiting for the house to sell. The vehicles were no problem, we decided I would get the truck and my brother in Georgia would get the car. The value of the car and truck would be figured into the total and be part of our shares. I drove the car down to GA and brought it to my brother. It was in Dec and at the time could not get used to Xmas music with no snow on the ground, so I came home the weekend before Xmas and was greeted by several feet of snow. Anywho, after the house sold (it took like two years), I spilt the money up and sent it to my brothers. By then I had sold the truck in order to make it through the strike at the place where I worked at the time.

Here is a picture of the car at my brother's house.