We are not capable of knowing the truth – we are only capable of believing the proposed truth that makes the most sense to us.

God created the universe to share and God is slowly unfolding its mysteries to us. In my hours before the Blessed Sacrament, I spent considerable time meditating on this and concluded the challenge that God has in revealing his creation to us is like man trying to teach earthworms the principles of geometry. Daunting! Obviously, it cannot be done in one generation but takes thousands of years. God is patient.

I believe that God communicates with us through our intellect and through dreams. It is difficult to separate the revelations in dreams from those dreams of imagination, so I tend to put little stock in dreams. Often, I roll a question around in my mind for a while and suddenly an answer appears. I believe those to be micro revelations. The first recorded revelation was to Abraham. God selected him from among the peoples of the world and revealed to Him that there was but one God. God then continued with revelations to prophets among Abraham's descendants over thousands of years. The essence of these revelations was to gradually lead them from primitive people who believed in making animal and human sacrifices to many different Gods to believing in one God, a God of Love. After a couple of thousand years of gradual bringing Abraham's descendants along, God moved to the most dramatic method. The best way to teach is by example. He provided the perfect example of what we should strive to be, Jesus. And Jesus' most dramatic revelation was His plan that people might have eternal life. The details of that are yet to come.

One day God gave me a little thought experiment: Consider that you (of course no one really could) created a little world full of little people who had free will. How would you want them to behave? You surely would not want them to kill one another or do harm to one another. You would want them all to be happy and contented. To achieve that they must be good to one another and help those that needed help. Conclusion: We inherently know what we should do; we just often choose not to do it. We also would not want them to think they were superior to us. Sounds like the first two commandments: Love your God with your whole being and love your neighbor as yourself.

I have many times been troubled by my inability to understand why God made man and how does a perpetual spirit actually work. Our concept of eternal means no change; but that sounds boring! The revelation (which I believe came from God) was don't try to grasp what has not yet been revealed. Be content with the simple: Trust that God is love and our role is to be love also.

I will conclude with just one more observation: As we get older the importance of "things" change. Some of this is no doubt because we realize we are closer to death so afterlife stuff seems more imminent. However, it is also true that as we get older, we realize that stuff (including toys, government, world peace, the future) just isn't really what gave us our greatest joy. Our fondest memories are relationships: family, friends and what could be better than a relationship with our God.

p.s. Maybe God is the universe and the big bang was merely Him clenching his fist and releasing it.

This story starts with the first day of school in September 1952. Gilbert was a junior that year and, more importantly, owned a car. Parking for students was along the street across the street from the school. So, the drivers trolled by the front of the school looking for a parking spot and checking out anyone of interest in the front of the school. On this first day, Gilbert was the driver and I was checking out the front of the school. There was someone of interest on the large porch in front of the school. I made a comment to Gilbert about the girl who had attracted my attention. The exact comment is forever lost to time but it was definitely a "wow! look at that!" reaction. This story is about how I was eventually able to convince that girl to spend the rest of her life with me. Gilbert loved this story and he almost always told it anytime we were together. I would like to take credit but it is definitely God's plan and we are only in it for the ride. Here we are on the school porch.

However, before we embark on that story, I will cover the summer between the eighth grade and this day.In fact, logging became an important part of my life for the next few years. After the demise of the South Bay Logging Company (Uncle Browns venture), Kent and Nadine moved back to Bandon.

Kent started a gyppo logging company in partnership with Johnny Melton's son-in-law, Newman. The importance of Johnny Melton was that he owned a section (640 acres) of land south of Bandon (half of which is now the Bandon Crossing golf course) that he wanted cleared of its timber so he could raise more sheep. He bankrolled this logging to kill two birds: get his land cleared and get his son-in-law employed. (Gyppo loggers were hundreds of entrepreneurs who started small logging ventures in the period of post WWII up through the rest of the century until environmentalist with just enough knowledge to be dangerous and politicians with none at all destroyed logging in Oregon). Kent was a very conservative businessman. Possibly he had been convinced by the failure of the Brown's South Bay Logging venture which was somewhat of an extravaganza. Or more likely he was swayed by the availability of cheap labor, Gilbert and I. Anyway, Kent's logging was always equipment limited and manpower intensive. He was fond of pointing out that to be a good logger you needed "a strong back and a weak mind!" As an example, when I started working for him after the eighth grade, we used an a-frame and end hooks to load logs onto the truck. Everyone else was using front-end loaders that had recently been invented (they were a beefy version of the fork lift attached to the front of crawler tractors) and over the long haul would have been much more efficient and cost effective. The only equipment Kent and Newman had was a small International TD-9 cat, an army surplus deuce and a half truck converted to a short log truck (meaning it had no trailer but could haul logs up to about twenty feet in length) and one of the early McCullough chain saws (also a recent invention). That first year Gilbert and I primarily did delimbing, marking (measuring off log lengths and making a mark with the axe), choker setting and loading logs. Kent was wary of having underage kids working. There was a fire marshal who came once in awhile to check on fire safety and Kent was afraid he would report him if he saw us. So, whenever the fire marshal was spotted (and he always was) we hid in the woods until he left. Major accomplishment that summer was staying alive!

Kent was a big influence on me in music. He would buy a record and we would play it over and over again until we got tired of it. One was Hank Snow's "I'm Moving on".
“01 I'm Moving On.mp3” could not be found.
Another was one by Cousin Ford Lewis called "Yellow Rose" but I have never been able to find anything about it on the internet. Sometimes Kent and I stayed up most of the night listening to one song. This was before Kent became a teetotaler!

Birdie and I pretty much went our own ways for the first part of the freshman year. I kept my eye on her and apparently she did me since she knew about some of my touchdown runs. We had a common friend, George Caulkins, who thought he was a matchmaker. Probably sometime in the spring he went back and forth telling each of us what the other was saying (and possibly thinking). The first noteworthy date is 16 May 1953. I came down to where Birdie was sitting in the movie and asked her if I could sit with her. Since I knew she was interested in the movie (whatever it was), I didn't talk much. Well, not at all. Not that I was shy, just considerate. When the movie was over, I asked if she had a ride home. She said yes. That was it for our first date. Now it turns out that our school set aside a day each year for the students to plant trees on county property that had been logged. This was shortly after the first big movie date. The procedure was to divide into pairs. After some hurdles (her old boyfriend was reluctant to give her up), Birdie and I got together. They gave us a bunch of little trees and a hoe and told us to dig a hole and put one tree in it and showed us where to plant. We were into efficiency and quickly observed that digging the hole was the bottleneck. So, we decided it would be faster to plant several, even many, trees in each hole. After a couple of holes, we were done and went off to walk and talk; two things we would do a lot of in our high school days. Not too long after the tree planting, school was out for the summer. I was living some of the time with Kent and Nadine at their place near the scales (truck scales about a mile plus south of Bandon) and part of the time with my parents at Laurel Grove.

My father was building a house at Laurel Grove. Laurel Grove was an area that built up around one of the Mom/Pop gas station/grocery stores that popped up every few miles along highway 101 as cars became popular in the 1930's and these stores lasted into the 1960's or longer. One hears stories of poor people in years past living in the proverbial "tar paper shack". The house that we built:

First, the house was probably 20 feet square, at most. It was separated into two bedroom areas and a kitchen dining area; the bathroom was an outhouse. The lumber my dad bought was green, no doubt at a bargain price. My dad and I did most of the building; I knew nothing about carpentry and he knew very little. I objected to working on the place when Gilbert didn't have to. Dad said that Gilbert wouldn't do quality work like I would. So, I pointed out the unfairness of punishing someone for being a good worker. He wasn't moved. The floors were one-inch boards (probably 1x8's) placed together into a nice smooth floor. But as the lumber dried out there developed about quarter inch gaps between the boards. These gaps collected dirt and were a good breeding ground for fleas. The outside was covered with tarpaper held in place with slats. The intent, I am sure, was to finish the floors with linoleum and the outside with some type of siding, but those intentions were always just that. Before the house was built the family lived in a tent (the same army surplus one used by my grandparents at Lakeside). This became the storage area and the bedroom for Gilbert and I. The girls slept in the house with Mom and Dad. An interesting side note: We needed water for the house. My grandfather Strader came down and "water witched" the place and determined where to dig the well. He used a forked willow stick and walked around holding one fork in each hand and the other end pointing straight ahead. Then some mysterious force pulled the end down and it pointed to the ground where water would be found. I was (and am) skeptical. Gilbert and I dug the well with shovels and we went down about twelve feet. We had to dig it about 4 feet in diameter or more so we would have room to work. We hit water and, as far as I know, water was never a problem. The water was pumped into the house. Plumbing is pretty simple when you have no hot water heater and no bathroom. I spent as much time as possible living with Kent and Nadine.

Gilbert had a car and we often went out together. We often picked up some of our friends and drove over to Coos Bay and cruised around. There was lots of talk about picking up girls but I only remember picking anyone up once. She was hitchhiking into Coquille from a few miles toward Riverton. She was homely so we dropped her off in Coquille and from then on just talked about picking them up. Gilbert had a problem with getting sleepy while driving. He would then rest his head in his left hand, which was supported by his elbow on the door. And often he would fall asleep. I sat next to him and grabbed the wheel anytime he drifted onto the gravel or across the centerline. I stayed wide-awake and alert! Another story on his driving was when he and I went to Myrtle Point, I have no idea why unless we had gone to the fair. Anyway, it was a cold night when we started home. Just outside of Myrtle Point there used to be a long bridge built on a wooden frame like a railroad trestle. This bridge may have crossed a stream but most of it was just over grazing land. Anyway, it was a two-lane bridge and pretty narrow, as bridges tended to be in those days. As we came near the end of the bridge, we hit ice and the car did a complete 360-degree rotation and Gilbert got it going straight as if nothing had happened. It was probably more exciting than any of the rides at the fair.

During my freshman year, Uncle Browncame to live with us (Uncle Kent and Aunt Nadine)

and work with us. He had been a truck driver in WWII in New Guinea and he got to apply his maintenance experience considerably with the logging truck of Kent's. Newman had quit his logging career and his wife had quit Newman and they had both gone back to New Mexico. Kent was logging some timber he had purchased up two mile and Gilbert was working with our dad logging for a gyppo mill owned by Al Lively just up the road from the timber Kent was logging. Probably at Browns urging, Kent had purchased a small yarder (three spools of cable driven by a ford flat head V-8 engine).

Uncle Brown and I were doing all of the logging and Uncle Kent was driving the truck. A few things of interest: First, the design of the truck was for hauling up to two and a half tons, mostly troops and their equipment for war. A load of logs is much more than two and a half tons. So, on a periodic basis one of the two rear ends would go out, one of the two gears (ring or pinion) would lose a tooth. So, Uncle Brown would do the repairs and I was the assistant i.e. parts cleaning boy. One time my friend Stinnett and several others, including my girlfriend Birdie, came down to see if I would go out with them. Besides the embarrassment of being all dirty and greasy in front of the prettiest girl in school, I had to tell them I had to pass on having fun. Uncle Brown had discovered in the war that he could take an ordinary brown paper bag and a tap it against the edge of the housing with a ball peen hammer to make a gasket to seal the rear end. I guess they got good at coming up with fixes with whatever was at hand in New Guinea. Another point of interest was that Uncle Brown started teaching me some of the other skills of logging. We used the yarder to both load logs with a spreader bar and tongs as well as to yard the logs. There was a canyon with a creek running through it and we had the tail blocks on stumps on the other side of the canyon. So, after loading the truck, I would stand on the tongs and Uncle Brown would run me across above the canyon and I would step off and set chokers on the logs and hook the choker to the tongs and he would pull them across. He taught me several special logging tricks, including the flying par buckle, which probably few loggers even know today. Many of these things were from the days of steam engine yarders that both Kent and Brown had worked on. He also taught me to run the power saw. One incident I had with that turned a bit harrowing. A tree had fallen across a small gulley and was about 6 to 8 feet off the ground in the spot where we needed to buck (cut) it. I had learned to cut the top down a little way first, because it would pinch off there first, and then to cut up from the bottom. Since I couldn't reach it from the ground I had to stand on the log while cutting it. I cut down one side and under as far as I could reach and then switched sides. The plan was to cut both sides so the yarder could break it apart but not enough so it would fall. As soon as I touched the saw on the second side the log broke in two and crashed down into the gully. I rode it down straddling the cut with one foot on each side. Luckily when it hit it neither end rolled, so I just let out a sigh and was thankful. It was an exciting few seconds! Another time Uncle Brown wanted to move the blocks on the spar tree (the blocks must be moved around the tree as you log different sectors). So, I put on the climbing spurs and climbing belt with the rope and he pulled me up the tree with the yarder using the straw line (Both Uncle Kent and Uncle Brown were great climbers but I never learned that skill). I then had to hook the rope to hold me and use the yarder to lift the blocks and move them over the guy lines. Not a fun time for someone who hates heights! But I had no choice since I am certain Uncle Brown would not have let me down until the blocks were moved.

The last story about Uncle Brown was he drove old cars (from the thirties) and they always had some major defect. We used one to go to and from work and for this one the defect was the main brake didn't work (most thirty's cars had mechanical brakes), so we relied on the emergency brake. The emergency brake was engaged by a lever mounted on the passenger side of the stick shift (most thirties cars were floor shift). As the passenger, I was in charge of applying the brake. Uncle Brown would say "brake" when he wanted me to apply the brake. Uncle Brown also liked a drink, or two or more, on the way home and he always brought a bottle of whiskey in his lunch box (as I was up about 100 ft being pulled across the canyon on the tongs, I often wondered if he drank on the job). Oh, I also forgot to mention they had hired a fellow from Kansas who got paid five times more than I (I received fifty cents an hour plus room and board) and all he did was help carry the tools. Anyway, on one of our trips home, I was turned, passing the bottle to the Kansas fellow in the back, when Uncle Brown hollered, "Brake!" I was too late! A classmate of Gilbert's, Wimpy Hastings, was bringing his girl into the woods (who knows what two high school kids would be doing in the woods) and as he came around a sharp corner on the two-mile road, he collided with Uncle Brown. My head went through the windshield, but luckily, I was wearing my tin hat and didn't get hurt at all. Uncle Brown was without a driver's license (lost for DUI's) and had no insurance but he convinced Wimp that it was to Wimp's advantage to not report the accident and for each to just fix their own cars. Wimp no doubt didn't want the trip into the woods to be common knowledge in Bandon, so he readily agreed. Uncle Brown had a place in Sutherlin and his family had stayed there during these times he was working with us and staying with Kent and Nadine. Not too long after the accident, Uncle Brown decided to quit and live and work in the Sutherlin area. He cut timber for Roseburg Lumber for a number of years after that.

That summer I was busy logging and the first time I called Birdie and it was alleged to be about 31 days and 3 hours and 13 minutes since school had ended. She was not very happy with me. I am sure I pleaded working long hours etc. Birdie was living in Prosper which is a few miles NE of Bandon. On one or two occasions that summer, Gilbert and I picked up Birdie and took her to the movie. On one of those occasions when we brought her home, I got my first kiss. I was a fast mover! Another event that occurred that summer was I got a horrible case of poison ivy. I was cutting the ivy down that was growing on the trees before my Uncle Brown fell them and I didn't realize it was poison ivy. I had to go to the doctor and take a few days off to recover. I stayed in town with my Grandparents Siewell. They lived in a small house in Bandon on Elmira Street and when I was a bit better, I helped them get their garden ready and planted. Getting gardens ready in those days was done with a shovel and hoe. Anyway, it endeared me to my grandpa and that was useful later when I needed booze purchased.

The sophomore year started with football practice in late August. I will regress to describe my football experience. I started playing organized football at Marshfield in the seventh and eighth grades. Our coach was Bruce Hoffine who later became a pretty good Marshfield High School basketball coach. He taught us single wing. I played quarterback, which was a blocking back. I did nothing noteworthy other than stick with it.

In my freshman year in Bandon, things looked up. Coach Therkleson ran an unusual double wing formation. There was no quarterback. There were the two wingbacks and two running backs. The ball was snapped to one of the running backs and he did a spin and either handed off to the other back or ran or passed it himself. I played on the JV team and was the leading running back and ran for a number of touchdowns, at least one of which was noted by Birdie and was a great help in my later efforts to get her attention. The two running backs on varsity were a sophomore, Mike Carver, and a senior, Darry Van Leuven. I was heralded, by others as well as myself, as the heir apparent to Darry's position.

But things don't always work out to plan. We got all new coaches for my sophomore year and we ran an unbalanced line with some form of Michigan spin that our new coach, Dick Sutherlund, had learned while playing under Lon Stiner at Oregon State in the mid 1930's. This formation had a fullback, tailback, wingback and quarterback. The quarterback was a blocking back normally but we had a few conventional T formation plays that were direct snap to the quarterback. On most plays the ball was snapped to the full back who did a spin move and either handed to the tailback, or the wingback or ran it himself. The new coaching staff ran us through some drills to measure our speed and immediately concluded I was not a running back! This was pretty tough news for me so I decided it was time to quit. However, we also had a spunky, short new superintendent for our schools that year named Mr. Lienkamper.

He had his office in the high school. Somehow, he not only found out I had quit but took some interest in it. He called me into his office and talked to me like a good, tough but caring father would talk to his son and when he was done talking, I was done quitting. I'm not sure any more if I even missed a practice. I went back and we were having a tackling practice which amounted to two lines facing one another and the first guy in one line ran the ball between two dummies about five or six feet apart and the first guy in the other line was the tackler. I was not much into this tackling thing. When my turn came, Mike Carver was the running back. I came in low but was more interested in being faked out than in making any kind of solid contact. I thought I was going for the fake but to my surprise he cut back into me and we collided and I made a great tackle. The coaches all made over it and were telling others to "see, that is how it is supposed to be done". I felt pretty good. In fact, even the tackle had felt pretty good. From then on, I tackled on purpose and got pretty good at it and was first string line backer when the first game arrived. My friend Graydon Stinnett was starting offensive guard and we were the only sophomore starters.

That year I was a sophomore and Gilbert was a senior, Bandon had the best football team of any during my high school days. Gilbert played offensive halfback (wing back) and defensive cornerback. I played defensive linebacker. We had won every game coming into the Coquille game and we were ahead 7 to 6 in the last seconds of the game. The Coquille quarterback ran a bootleg from about midfield around the opposite side from Gilbert and I and Gilbert never forgave Vic Backlund for not making a real effort to tackle him. He scored and they won 13-7, our only loss of the year. Backlund went to Willamette U. and starred in three sports: football, basketball and baseball. Gilbert got a scholarship offer from Linfield but he joined the army instead.

Earlier in the year in a game against Lowell in Oakridge, we joined up to send one of their running backs out of the game. Gilbert hit him first and stopped him just as I arrived and hit him at full speed. He had to be carried off and we loved it.

A couple of football incidents involving Birdie must be revealed: The first occurred following the Myrtle Point game. Birdie was a pepster.

She was on the bus going home and she was sitting with our friend, Butch Ritchert. She proceeds to take her skirt off since she had allegedly gotten her skirt wet doing the pepster stuff during the game. I was not real pleased. I feel somewhat justified in that Butch went on to have about five wives. A second incident occurred when we played Lowell at Oakridge. Some of the pepsters had gotten a ride to the game with someone who they knew wasn't going back. The plan was to ride back on the player's bus; only one problem, no one bothered to tell the coach. He was not pleased when he found out there were three pepsters stranded in Oakridge and he had no choice but to give them a ride back on the team bus. Birdie and I already had some notoriety and had been admonished for holding hands as we walked the hallways of the school. So, coach sent me to the back of the bus and had the three girls sit up front away from the players.

The sophomore year was a year of walking. Birdie had moved into town and lived just behind the high school on Edison street. Birdie and I walked everywhere we went together. We sometimes walked to the movie and then walked to her home. The house had a small porch and we spent hours on that porch talking. I had experienced my parents relationship wherein he was in control and dominant and she was submissive and I wasn't impressed. I had also experienced up close Kent and Nadine's relationship. Aunt Nadine was not intimidated at all and their relationship impressed me more. So when I ran into this opinionated, outspoken and unafraid girl I was really impressed. We spent a lot of time arguing about things and what that did was made us look more closely at what we thought and often we ended up coming to a mutual, better place. However, our bickering bothered Birdie's mother until she exclaimed, "Do you really even like this guy, you argue all the time?" Thankfully she said yes and I am still impressed. This started to galvanize my belief that mutual respect is critical to a good relationship.

When it was time for her to go in, I walked and hitchhiked home. Usually I got a ride after walking a little way, but on occasion I walked all the way home to Kent and Nadine's house by the scales (once to Laurel Grove when they had moved there). We were establishing some boundaries for our life. One example, we were walking from her house toward downtown and I don't know what the topic of our discussion was but I said something that Birdie did not like. She slapped me in the face! I was shocked to say the least but without thinking I slapped her back. We resolved right then that this was not a good way to handle our disagreements and neither of us has ever slapped the other in anger since. We also spent time playing games, sometimes with Birdie's mother, and listening to music on their phonograph.

(we both liked Harry Belafonte's calypso music and Fats Domino.


We weren't into much pop music although we liked the Platters song "The Great Pretender".

We competed in school and both of our grades improved. We were in the same history class and we competed and both got A's. However, the teachers in future years separated us (we did the unthinkable of holding hands in the hallways) and our grades fell.

Most people in those days in Bandon didn't bother to lock their doors, there was very little crime. However, Birdie thought it was a good idea to lock the doors when her parents weren't there. But they nixed the idea and the doors were left unlocked. That is until one time the storage area in the garage was robbed. Then they still wouldn't allow Birdie to lock the house, but they bought a lock for the garage and storage area. I could have just stolen her.

Graydon and I were good friends through high school and still are in 2023. Graydon was about a year older than me so he had his driver's license in our sophomore year and I did not. He also had a car, an old (48 I think) Dyna Flow buick.

that had a couple of memorable features. It was one of General Motors first attempts at automatic transmissions. It wasn't really automatic but it wasn't completely manual. Normally when we were running around with someone who had a car, we shared the cost of the gas. Gas was reasonable. In Graydon's case though, I shared the cost of transmission fluid. When we stopped at a station to gas up, we always had to add another quart or two of transmission fluid. It was expensive and his car used a lot. A couple of incidents with Graydon should be told:

Once Graydon and I were out and had drunk a few beers and ended up at the Dew Valley Grange, the same as gave my Uncle Bert his nickname. (Dew Valley was across the street and a couple of hundred yards north of the present Bandon Crossings clubhouse.) It was a fairly small square building that was basically two rooms, one large dance area and a corner walled off for a small kitchen area. There were a few chairs and no tables. It had a dance every Saturday night and this night, as most nights, there were a few dancing and most were just standing around the edges of the room talking. There was a boy, I have forgotten his name, who had come to the school a few months earlier from California. He was a nice kid but somewhat of a lost soul. Apparently his parents didn't want to deal with him, so they sent him to live with a relative in Bandon. Anyway, he had an older car that had been fixed up into somewhat of a 'hot rod'. He and I had been talking and he decided he needed to run to town for something and asked me to ride with him. Since he was coming right back, I agreed. We went out to go and his car wouldn't start and he finally determined it was out of gas. He went to find someone to take him to get gas and I went back inside. Sometime later, Graydon came over and said we needed to go home. This boy had gotten gas and started to town alone in his car. About a mile or less north of Dew Valley the highway went through a grove of fir trees with some sharp turns. He had crossed the centerline in this area and hit another car head on and he was killed. I have often thought it was the grace of God I wasn't with him. He had plans for me - and for you!

Another time Graydon and I were at Birdie's and we didn't have anything to drink. I remembered she had some ear medicine that was mostly alcohol (180 proof) and we talked her into bringing it out. We had no clue at that time that there were different kinds of alcohol, some of which were not beneficial, so we drank some of the medicine. It didn't take much and we had a buzz. However, she never offered it again!

One time probably about the end of the sophomore year, we went on a picnic at Bradley Lake. The gang was Birdie and I, Gilbert and Ret.

(Birdie's friend from Gresham), and Graydon and Bunny (Birdie's other friend from Gresham). Anyway, we had a watermelon as the most favored item of food. We were going to do some things like hiking to the beach which is only a few hundred yards from the lake, before eating lunch so we decided to bury the watermelon in the sand to keep it cool. When we came back hungry and ready to eat, we couldn't remember just where we had buried the stupid watermelon. We dug and dug but never found it. Possibly watermelons now grow wild around Bradley lake as a result.
(an added note from 2023: I was telling some of the kids that I had no idea why Birdie was laughing so hard in this picture. Matt deadpanned: "Maybe this was the time you told her you weren't going to have all those kids like the Siewell's do! Now that sounds plausible.)

I will digress now to bring my basketball career up to date: I earlier related my first experience in organized basketball was when I was in the fourth grade in North Bend and we played a game that ended up 2 to 0 and I had scored the only goal, a lay in. I played in Marshfield in the seventh and eighth grade. Marshfield had some good teams. They played a fast break and our coach in the seventh grade, Bruce Hoffine, had a grueling conditioning/practice regimen. We did what he called three-man killers where three people just continually passed and ran back and forth across the gym. We also practiced continually on two on one drills and three on two. We also practiced outlet passing. It was great training for a fast break. Our eighth-grade team was very good, at least two of them, Roger Johnson and Sandy Frazer, went on to be very good college players (in football). I was the sixth man. I got to play quite a bit. One of my best friends was an Indian kid named Denny Baker and he was a good running back for Marshfield in high school but I never knew what happened to him after that. He was an excellent athlete.

My freshman year we had moved to Bandon and I was the top scorer on the JV. We had a funky offense (Therkleson was also basketball coach) where the forwards posted just a couple of steps up from the corners. The guards then ran around the posts trying to shed their man and ended up driving from the corner toward the basket which made the shots more difficult. Many games on Saturday I had to work all day in the woods and then come home and get to the game and play. It was good to be young. I do remember a few times when I was tired. However, I was known for my scrappy defense and always going for the steals. I don't know where I got the energy. I was also known for smoking.

My sophomore years we had a new varsity coach who was a fairly recent graduate of U of O. We had an excellent team and I was the only sophomore on the varsity team.

Wimpy Hastings and Vic Backlund were the stars and both of them played college, Wimp at U of O and Vic at Willamette. Mike Carver and I fought for the fifth spot on the team and shared it off and on all year. The highlight of the year was when we beat North Bend on their court. Bandon had not been competitive with (or even played) NB or Marshfield for years, maybe decades; so, beating North Bend was huge. I made a couple of memorable plays (the game was being broadcast on the radio and the next week at practice our coach played the part where the announcer was impressed and said as only a sophomore, I had a great future. I knew several of the guys playing for North Bend from my days going to school there. One was their center, Willard Reeves, and I knew both guards, Hoddy Shepman and Don Adams. Anyway, they were pressing us over the full court and I dribbled by Adams and went all the way down the floor and made the lay in. Reeves was down near their basket but he was guarding Backlund and didn't fall off and pick me up. A few plays later the same thing happened and Reeves moved over to cover me and I dumped it off to Backlund for an easy basket. It was fun playing in the court I had snuck in and watched so many games in as a little kid and especially fun to win!

We were in the play offs at Marshfield later in the year and North Bend beat us and, in fact, Hoddy Shepman got even with me by stealing the ball from me and going down for the lay in. Hoddy and I were always the first to the softball diamond at lunchtime when I was in the fifth grade and he was in the sixth grade. In these play offs I had a good game as we beat Coquille to take third place. The play offs were in the new gym being built when I was in Junior High at Marshfield and was my first sighting of glass backboards.

Starting after my sophomore year, I stepped up my logging skills. We were back logging on Johnny Melton's place. In fact, sometime during this period, Kent sold his 10-acre farm just south of Bandon and we moved to a house that Johnny Melton owned on the south end of his place. We logged the area that was on the West side of Johnny Melton's place which is now the south end of the Bandon Crossing golf course. Gilbert was working with us before he joined the army. I ran the yarder and Gilbert and Kent set the chokers. Running the yarder was one of the more fun jobs I did in the woods. It was during this time that I was walking on a log that was laying next to an alder or maple tree and I took time to carve Birdie's and my initials in the tree.

Sometime during the summer, Uncle Alfred (Stump) took Aunt Jean and the kids to San Francisco and deserted them. Jean called Nadine and said she and the kids were desperate and hungry and Kent and Nadine drove down and rescued them. They set them up in a little trailer next to Kent and Nadine's house at Laurel Grove. Jean tried to teach Gilbert and I to dance which, in my case, was a failure but I found out she knew all kinds of dances including dances from the gay 20's, the polka, foxtrot, and others. I was impressed she knew them but still they didn't take. Eventually Stump returned, made up, and decided to try saw milling. He put together a crude gyppo sawmill on the hill southeast of the house (across the valley) and was sawing slabs and studs that were then hauled to Rogges' mill to be planed. It was not a very efficient or lucrative operation; it was a real Rube Goldberg! As an aside, Kent and I went to a junkyard in Coquille to get some parts for the mill and this junkyard had a huge stack of car engines. Kent told me to go count and see if there were more Ford, GM or Chrysler engines. When I reported back that there were more Chrysler, he said that was proof their engines weren't as good and I should avoid Chrysler products. I believed that for years until I realized there were other possible reasons, like maybe Chrysler sold more. Of course, that isn't the case and Kent was probably right for the wrong reason. Gilbert was off to the army and I did all of the logging. I cut the trees, bucked them, and used the cat to yard them to the mill. Kent hauled the lumber and tried to help Stump keep his kluge going. I enjoyed pulling logs with the cat. I pulled an arch behind the cat since I had to skid the logs a fairly long distance. Much of the time was just riding. One part of the trip to the mill I had to pull the logs along a bit of a side hill. Somehow a small sapling (probable about 8-inch diameter Alder) had fallen across the path and I just ran the cat over it (Kent felt that road building was a waste of time and sign of laziness so he took the blade off the cat). The cat tracks ran along parallel steel beams on the bottom, so the cat went up onto the sapling until enough weight was forward and then it rocked forward. For an instant it balanced on top of the sapling and when it did the cat slid sideways down the hill on the sapling. It happened so fast it startled me and made an impact in my brain that that was not a good thing and I was more careful from then on. Luckily it either hit a knot or something made it stop sliding after it had gone only a few feet and all went well. In discussions with Gilbert and Lucky years later they told me that slipping like that on a pole was a common way for cats to be rolled over. Lucky had rolled a cat at least once so he probably had a good idea.

During this time Kent also branched out into the gravel business. Of course, I also got to do that so I will make a short digression about the gravel business. Kent had bought an old (46) Chevy dump truck and a new Ford-Ferguson tractor with a hydraulically operated front bucket. On Melton's property in Denmark there was a huge hill of red rock that was just like crushed rock. Melton didn't want it so Kent sold it and I loaded and hauled it. I also learned how to spread it by opening the gate an amount determined by where I set the chains and then raising the bed as I drove at the right speed. Anyway, on one of the trips, Birdie went with me. I was delivering it to Prosper so we had driven up from Langlois and I was coming up the long, gradual uphill grade just south of Bandon (coming north toward where the scales were). The old truck was not very powerful so I was trying to maintain as much speed as I could, probably doing about 50. We saw a car up ahead back out of a driveway into the highway with the intention of going the same way I was going. Since it was a long way away, I thought it would get going long before I got there so I didn't let up. Not that I was distracted or anything! Anyway, the driver of the car didn't get it going and just sat in my lane and by the time I realized he was screwing around, it was too late to stop the load of gravel. There was a car coming the other way. I moved into the center of the highway and we passed three abreast on the two-lane road with very little room between us. Not a very smart move…not the way to impress your girl! But God wasn't done with us.

The junior year football team was mediocre. I started on offense as the weak side end and on defense as linebacker. Our running game was not great but our quarterback had a strong arm. I caught a lot of passes. Whenever we were close to the goal, he liked to call the pass play in which I slanted across in front of the linebacker and the quarterback just raised up and fired a bullet to me, as much of a bullet as he could, for the touchdown. I had good hands.

We won 7 and lost 2. I was voted best looking on the team; rumors were that I won by one vote and no other players received votes.

The junior year in basketball was pretty uneventful. For some reason, I did not score much. Part of it was playing point guard and most teams played zone defense, but part of it is mysterious. I was the leading scorer playing with these same guys when I was a freshman. We did play in the play offs again and I had a good game against Coquille for third place.

During our junior year, Gilbert was in the army and I had no car. Actually, to go back a couple of years, when I was a freshman, I had bought an old Model A ford (I had remembered it as a 1924 but on a show that Birdie watches, I recently saw where the Model A was introduced in 1927 so it must have been between 27 and 29). I paid $25 but it had two extra engines and several extra wheels. The rumble seat had been converted into a pick up and the whole thing was pretty well worn out. However, I managed to get it running and drove it back and forth on the Laurel Grove road to hone my natural driving skills. I couldn't go onto the highway since I didn't have a driver's license. A couple of interesting things about the model A: One was that it had a spark advance lever on the steering column and the timing had to be adjusted on the fly. A second thing was that the gas tank was just below the windshield and was gravity feed. It was started by cranking and that required some caution, as sometimes the thing misfired and the crank was kicked backwards with enough power to cause damage to the cranker. I learned a lot from the Model A but it really didn't help my social life. When I was tired of it, I sold it to my third cousin, Larry Sabin, and I think I broke even. When I was a junior and had a driver's license, I used to borrow some of the old cars that Uncle Brown had accumulated and use them to take Birdie out. In their day they were fancy old 30's sedans with nice upholstery. The one I borrowed had one little problem. The battery would not hold a charge and was always dead. It could only be started by pushing. Birdie and I were careful to park on hills. We would park on the hill coming in to downtown Bandon and go to the movie and then we would go to the bluff and park on a hill to make out. It must have started good because I never remember having problems getting it started. The bluff was the favorite hang out/make out spot in Bandon.

The cars (those with working batteries at least) would park in a row looking out over the bluff at the beach. The Bandon police force amounted to two: Chief MacDonald (Big Mac) and officer Francin. One of them would drive up periodically and ask how our parents were doing, since they knew most of them. Francin always called Birdie's dad Carl because he could not accept Carroll as a man's name. Usually we had to park some distance away where there was a starting ramp! On some occasions I borrowed Kent's pick up and then we could drive as far as Coquille and go to the drive in. Often, I slept through one feature, not a great date. The pick up wasn't that old (I think it was a 49 or 50 Chevy) and was pretty nice to drive. I will digress to tell a learning experience I had with it. The road into the house (Kent and Nadine's place near the scales) was gravel and periodically developed potholes. So, Kent told me to take the pick up and go to Morris' rock quarry and get some rock and fill the potholes. The exact location of the rock quarry is lost to memory, I think it was down the road near Bandon crossings golf course that is called Dew Valley lane but the road back then was called something Morris road so I may be wrong on location. Anyway, I obediently drive down to the rock quarry and old Jap Morris asked me how much I wanted. I had no idea how much rock to put in the stupid pick up. He is a bit exasperated and lists off several choices like half a yard or a yard. I chose one. He pulls the handle and it dumps this crushed rock into the bed. It was not the right amount! The bumper was on the ground. Old Jap Morris gives me a shovel and I removed enough to get a few inches of clearance and headed for home. It all worked out. When my Mom died and I was looking at some of her high school info, Jap Morris was a classmate. Maybe he was getting even for something she had done, or not done, to him. We will never know.

I had a couple of other car mishaps that might be of interest. While I had a permit but before I had my license, I was driving my Mom's car with a full load of people, including Birdie in the back seat with some of the kids, probably Lucky and Karen, and my Mom in the front. We were on the Seven Devils road going from Bandon to Charleston and at that time it was all a gravel road. The grader was some distance ahead of me and he was smoothing out my side of the road and leaving a ridge of gravel in the center. I was just guiding on the ridge and having a good time. All of a sudden, my right front wheel dropped down off the road and the car went off the road into a small gulley. The grader had gotten close to the right edge and had left a loose fill that did not support my right wheel and it had just dropped. We were stuck in the gulley until the grader came back and pulled us out. The car was not much worse for wear. We continued on. Birdie had bruised her leg and she has had broken veins in that area ever since.

A second learning experience actually occurred between my junior and senior years while I was working with my dad out of Charleston. My dad had an almost new dodge pick up. It was pretty nice. He let me drive it when he and I were going to or from work. One time in Coos Bay I was making a left turn and I started to cut the corner (very poor habit) and my dad just came unglued. He yelled and lectured and lectured and yelled for I don't know how long about what a dumb stunt it was to cut corners. I never forgot it! But that is not the experience I was going to tell. One week end I borrowed his new pickup to go to Bandon to see Birdie. I don't know why I didn't go the Seven Devils road, but I didn't. I was going between Coos Bay and Coquille, on the part of the highway that had the only divided, four-lane highway in Coos County and the only one I had seen. Some fellow in a pick up challenged me! We were getting pretty close to full speed when we came over a hill and the traffic was stopped and both lanes were full. No way we could stop. He was in the right lane and had some room to the right of the line of cars to come to a stop. I was in the left lane and on the left side was the ditch...which I went into. The damage to the pick up was minimal and dad didn't see it until it was too late to be certain I had caused it. I learned a good lesson. Never race when some moron is going to turn his milk truck over in the middle of the highway and stop traffic. I also learned the dodge was pretty fast.

My experience with cows began when I lived with Kent and Nadine at the scales. Kent had one cow he was milking, Babe, and another cow that he let two or three calves suck. Kent was no dummy. He soon taught me how to milk the cow. Babe was a gentle old jersey cow. We milked her and let the milk sit in the refrigerator until the cream came to the top and then we skimmed some of the cream off. It was very rich cream. Her horns had never been removed because they turned and pointed together instead of pointing ahead where they could do damage. We milked her for most of the year and then she was dried up until she had a calf. We immediately took the calf away and started milking her again. It was no coincidence that the other cow was left to feed calves. She was so ornery and against being milked that she gave Kent so much trouble while he was trying to train her that he gave up. Once when we dried Babe up to have her calf, Kent suggested I teach a two-year-old heifer (the daughter of the ornery cow) to milk. So, I proceeded. I first tried to just hold one arm in front of her leg nearest me and held onto the other to keep her from kicking the bucket while I milked with the other hand. Cows are not very strong kicking forward, although they are quite capable of doing it. She was as ornery and determined to thwart me as her mother had been with Kent. She kicked until she would fall over. The first few times the milk was half milk and half manure from her kicking and getting her foot in the bucket. The cats didn't know the difference and they were pleased they got all the milk instead of just a small portion. Eventually I used clamps (they have a name which I have forgotten) to hold her legs so she couldn't kick. She still tried and sometimes she fell and I had to be quick to get the bucket and myself out of the way before she fell on us. I was able to get enough milk for the cats and us and always felt I had won. Somewhat like Bobby Bare in the song "The Winner" only this was just a cow. I was glad when Babe was back. Babe was a gentle and seemingly content and never tried to get out through the fence although the fence was pretty shabby. One time when she was ready to deliver, she turned up missing. I went looking for her and found her in the woods. She had gotten out through the fence and gone into the woods a ways to have her calf. When I found her, she had the calf all cleaned up. I picked up the calf to carry it back to the barn. She was not very happy with my interference. She followed so close behind me that every time I stopped, or even slowed down suddenly, she would bump her horns into my back. Maybe she was anticipating the fact that we would take the calf away, which we always did.

Later after Kent had moved to Laurel Grove, the ornery cow had a calf that when it was a few months old got stuck in the creek and I found her and dug her out (it was a big job, she had kicked and struggled until she was so deep in the mud just her nose was sticking out) and carried her home. She had been there so long she couldn't stand up. Kent said it was critical to get her on her feet. Kent helped me build a sling to hold her up so her feet just touched and she eventually was able to walk and live normally. Kent said I could have her. However, when she was two years old, he sold his herd of about a dozen and he included her and didn't bother to share the proceeds. But in retrospect he did a lot for me that I failed to appreciate at the time.

My experience with cows was to be an advantage. Birdie's mom, Jo

had a cow named Sparky. She was a jersey like Babe. Once when Jo was really sick, I milked Sparky for her. Things like that along with Birdie and I playing games with her and taking Mike to movies etc. got me on her good side. Birdie's dad, Bud, however, was always real social and liked to tell stories and jokes and because I was introverted and quiet, he and I didn't hit it off. He once exclaimed to Jo with regard to me that, "You treat him like a little tin God". I thought that was good and that I probably was, except for the tin part.

After my junior year, Kent all of a sudden decided it was too much risk to have me working in the woods. So, Larry Sabin and I took a job building a sheep fence for Johnny Melton on his place (80 acres) in Denmark.

I will digress a moment to talk about Johnny Melton. Johnny was the first person who I got to know who had started from nothing and by hard work and persistence had done well for himself. Most of my family pretty much followed the ruts left by those before them and remained in the labor-intensive end of the lumber business. (Aunt Thelma and Aunt Dorothy were exceptions. Uncle Del had worked in sawmills but he and Aunt Thelma moved to Eugene and went into the restaurant business. But both Aunts were gone by the time I was ten so I had very little contact.) Johnny had started in New Mexico trapping (NM had not been prostituted by the environmentalist yet). NM paid set prices for skins from animals that were detrimental to sheep and cattle raising, coyotes and such. So, Johnny trapped and saved and bought a small sheep ranch and added to it over the years and ended up with 26 sections! In about 1950 he sold his 26 sections in NM and bought two ranches in Oregon that were adjoined and made up one section. He said he could run more sheep on the one section in Oregon than he could the 26 in NM. The northern ranch, where Johnny lived, is now the Bandon Crossings golf course and the southern ranch, where we lived, is now cranberry bogs etc. Johnny was a good example for me that you can achieve what you want by hard work and sacrifice. Back to Denmark, which is just south of Langlois and close to where my Grandparents Siewell had their farm. Denmark amounted to a little gas station/grocery store just across the small bridge that went across the creek. This creek ran up through Johnny Melton's place. Remnants of the fence we built can still be seen (2007). It was hard work. For fence posts we had to cut cedar poles from cedar that had burned near the scales during the Bandon fire. Nadine said that area was a beautiful young cedar forest and the fire wiped it out, leaving a bunch of bare cedar poles sticking up. We had to dig the postholes with a clamshell tool that was labor intensive. Melton gave us firm instructions on how to stretch and attach the fence. There was a crazy old fellow that owned the place next to Melton's and he didn't like the idea of a fence that would keep his cattle out of Johnny's grass. He came up looking as menacing as possible and holding a double-bladed axe and threatened Larry and I. We readily agreed to give the fence project up, immediately! However, Johnny walked up to him and stood nose to nose and when Johnny was done talking, he was done threatening and we were back building fence. When the fence project was done, Johnny kept me on to work with him on his place in Bandon. It was a sheep farm and I helped with the shearing. Johnny had hired some old guy to shear the sheep and I was his assistant: catching the sheep and bringing them to him, bagging the wool and running the sheared sheep through a tank filled with some dip that Johnny had mixed up. Anyway, after I had watched the fellow shear for a few hours, I asked and he gave me a turn. It requires a certain sequence but is rather simple. You sit on a stool and hold the sheep with their back against your chest and start shearing. Sheep are malleable to a fault. I enjoyed it and the fellow enjoyed having nothing to do for a while. He didn't do the assistant jobs, that waited for me!

A few weeks after summer started, my Dad insisted I quit this job and work in the woods where he was near Charleston. I didn't like the idea of leaving Johnny in the lurch, but I still had enough respect for my father's authority to do it. The job was for me to fall and buck (cut into lengths manageable for the cat) the trees and my Dad would yard them with the cat and the owner would cut them to 8-foot lengths and load them on a truck. This was spruce and was sold to the pulp mill for making paper. I was offered $1.25 per tree to fall them, cut them into logs of 8-foot multiples up to 32 feet and take off some of the larger limbs. I used my Dad's chain saw and I was able to cut about twenty trees per day. As soon as the owner realized how much I was making, he cut me down to $1 per tree! Even so it was pretty good pay for a teenager. I enjoyed it because I was off working by myself most of the time. When you fall trees for cat logging it is important to fall them in a direction to or from the spot where they will be picked up. It is much easier to pull the logs lengthwise through a field of stumps than if they are jammed in crossways. To control the direction of the tree, you undercut the way you want it to fall and then cut the back side leaving about one inch of uncut wood between the undercut and the back cut. This acts as a hinge and guides the tree in the desired direction. If the tree leans the way you want it to fall, everything works smooth. If not, you have to wedge it over. Spruce are a bit of a problem because they are spongy and tend to deform around the wedge rather than lifting the tree. So being young and foolish and not afraid to think outside the box, I would undercut a tree and make a back cut, put in a wedge to hold it and leave enough uncut wood that it didn't fall. Then I would go back and do the same with another tree, aiming to fall it into the first and fall them like dominos. Sometimes I did up to three at a time. The only danger is that if you do not make a good shot and only graze the tree, it may just rock forward and then come over backwards, where you are. Actually, I never had one come over backwards and if I had, I would have left this section out. That was just a tutorial for the example. One day I was falling a pretty large tree (3 ft plus diameter) and was not paying attention (being lazy and careless) and when I made the back cut, I cut too far and only left a sliver of uncut wood on the corner where I had the saw and no uncut wood on the other side. The tree immediately dropped down on the saw blade and I couldn't pull the saw out. I stood there waiting for it to start falling and free up the saw. But for some reason (possibly it had some limbs intertwined with another tree or shifting winds or both) and no doubt it had the most to do with how I had done the back cut. The back cut should be offset a half inch or so above the undercut to prevent the tree from twisting but I prided myself on keeping that offset to a minimum and this time it was near zero. It didn't fall right away but started twisting on the stump and twisted a full 180 degrees until the entire tree had twisted off the stump and was upright over the saw (which I had abandoned) and then it dropped down beside the stump and pressed the saw into the ground, mashing it. By this time, I felt bad about the saw but was more interested in where the tree was going to fall so, I could try to be somewhere else. Obviously, it worked out, but one little careless mistake like that could be fatal. The saw belonged to my father and he was less than pleased. I had to pay for it! I ended up paying for more than the cost of a saw by far but that is a story for a later time.

Another example on this same job was when my father came out to pick up a round of logs as I was falling a tree. He stopped his cat more than a tree length away and walked up to see how I was doing. As the tree started to fall, I turned to talk to dad a few steps away from the tree. That was a mistake. Normally when a tree starts to fall you look up to make sure no limbs (widow makers) or debris are coming down from the top. It turned out that this tree had a dead top I was not aware of. As I gave one last smack on the wedge that started the tree down, the top snapped off and came down and buried about a foot in the ground right next to where dad and I were talking.

My father had grown up in an environment in which manhood was pretty much synonymous with physical labor and being willing to work hard gained the highest accolades. So, when the summer ended after my junior year and I announced to him that, as planned, I was going to quit and go back and finish high school his comment was, "why do you want to go to school; you have a good job?" I have to admit some of my motivation was football practice, which had already started, and not just school, but I insisted and he said: "fine, but find someplace else to live." Thankfully, Kent had overcome his fear of having a teenager work and he and Nadine took me in. I agreed to work for fifty cents an hour plus room and board. Of course, I had to go to school, but I skipped a lot of school to work. In fact, the record holder for missing school was a girl named Joyce Edwards, and her and I were pretty close to missing the same amount. I used to come in to get assignments and then work a few days and come back to turn them in and get more. Even when I hurt my knee and had a cast on my leg, I could run the cat to load logs by resting the cast on the hood. I couldn't use the right brake pedal but it had separate brakes for each track and the left one was enough

The first few weeks of school included selection of a class president. Some fool nominated me and I made a major point of stating I did not want it, perhaps overplaying it, since my classmates thought it a lark to elect someone who protested so much. So, I was class president. I got even with them by running class meetings strictly following the Roberts Rules of Order. Superintendent Lienkamper and I were buddies and I assisted in apprehending the culprits who left skid marks in the front lawn. I wasn't aware of those who nailed the Christmas tree decorations to the gym floor or I would have helped nailing them too, the culprits that is not the trees.

Birdie and I had our first big date at a restaurant. We went to Lena's in Coquille, the restaurant Jo worked in, and believe it or not, Birdie had prawns! Birdie and I also were pinochle players. Pinochle was one of the few games played in Siewell households. My first memories are playing with my Uncle Jock and Aunt Bubbles

I recall one infamous game when Jock and I were playing against my mother and Bubbles. We played what we called racehorse pinochle; the distinction being that you passed cards (4) and double marriage of trump was worth 300 and double run in trump worth 1500. The game went to 1500. In this particular game Jock and I were substantially behind and in danger of losing. He won the bid and called diamonds trumps. I passed my diamonds to him and he proceeded to lay down a double run which won the game for us. We quickly celebrated with raucous comments to the losers and Uncle Jock quickly began to gather the cards for the next game. As Aunt Bubbles and Mom were discussing their hands it all of a sudden dawned on my mother that she held the two jacks of diamonds! Jock had carefully laid down his double run with two jacks of hearts that only showed the red J and not the diamond (or heart in this case). It hadn't occurred to Mom at the time that she held the two jacks. Uncle Jock was a fun guy to play with; lots of jokes and pranks, but this was the best. Birdie and I also played pinochle with our friends Graydon and Phyllis.

And after they were married, with Gilbert and Barbara. Gilbert was so competitive that he verbally attacked Barb if they were losing – a common occurrence. So, Birdie and I would split up and she would be Gilbert's partner because he might choke and die right there on the table over a losing hand but he wouldn't verbally attack her.

Our world changed in my senior year – we had wheels! While working with my dad that summer I had not taken any of my pay so I expected a large payday (even after paying for a power saw) when I quit to go back to school. I got somewhat of a shock when I got my check. It was illegal to have someone under 18 work in logging so they entered all of my pay as if it were my dads and took all of the withholdings (both his and mine) from my pay. (The bookkeeper was the ex wife of Pat Cornell, my dads' old boss, and a good friend of my dad's and I am sure she felt she was doing him a justifiable good turn). But I had made good money so I still had enough to buy a car and have some left over. Nadine took me to Coquille to look at used cars and we picked out a pea green 49 Chevy 4 door fast back.

It was a good car and the only trouble it caused was it had a small leak in the gas tank. But gas was less than 30 cents a gallon in those days so I didn't even bother to fix it. Copy of the registration (it says a 2 door but it was a 4 door).

Gilbert was in the army and stationed at Fort Lewis in Washington. He came home on some weekends and birdie and I went out with him since he didn't have a car.

He had a set of engagement rings (he had purchased them for an earlier flame and that fizzled and he got them back). So, part of his MO at that time was to get engaged and unengaged rather casually. Gilbert drove truck in the army and stayed for two years.

During my high school days, Birdie and I visited my Grandparents Siewell on occasion since they lived in town within walking distance.

They always told us how much they enjoyed our visits because we didn't come to ask for money (like one grandson I knew who did), we just came to visit. Granddad was a big drinker in his day but during this time he spent hours at the bars in downtown Bandon just for the social outing. He and the other old guys loved to sit around and tell their stories to each other. Years later they remodeled one of the taverns into an art store and they used the brass foot rail as the safety rail for the stairs. Birdie and I thought about all the hours and many stories that Granddad told with his feet on that rail and the spittoon close by. My grandmother was quite small and Granddad was pretty big and Granddad used to say he carried her around in his pocket. We listened to lots of stories of the old days when my grandfather was young and was hauling freight from Junction City around the valley with horses. Grandma liked to corner Birdie and have her listen to her stories but we both enjoyed Grandpa's the most. He was a good storyteller. We took them to the Coos county fair with us. They spent their time looking at animals and I guess going to the rodeo. Birdie and I spent our time at the carnival. They had a new and daring ride called the Rock-O-Plane, it was basically a Ferris wheel with cages to ride in and a brake that stopped them from rotating so they would go upside down. Pretty tame by today's standards. We rode it over and over until someone got sick above and threw up. It didn't get on us, but the thought did dampen our enthusiasm some. One of the booths we stopped at in the carnival was the one where you throw rings and try to get them to go around objects that you then get. I distrusted them and thought they had the real good prizes bigger than the ring. But I tried this one because it had these huge teddy bear prizes and the ring had to be thrown around a square block whose diagonal was very close to the diameter of the ring. You got three throws for a small fee. I don't know how many fees I paid but not more than three and I won two of the big teddy bears. Of course, Birdie got the one of her choice and we gave grandma the other one that she still proudly displayed in her living room the last time I was there. One way I know my Grandma appreciated Birdie and I was that she wrote the only letter I know of her ever writing to us when I was in the Navy. It was just a few months before she died. Kent used to tell tales of what a terror she was in her younger days (like she had a single shot 22 rifle and she got mad at Kent and Brown when they were kids and they took off running when she said she was getting the gun and she fired a round at them just as they dove over the fence but it went over their heads, probably on purpose but Kent still wasn't so sure when he told me the tale. She also is reputed to have taken the butcher knife after Brown and was going to 'cut your black heart out' until Aunt Sis came to his rescue and calmed her down. But she was just a sweet grandma to me. She had a piano and I remember her really pounding out "Birmingham Jail" on it. She also made vile tasting sauerkraut – enough for every family to take some home. The adults even claimed to like the stuff.

My senior year football career was pretty short. A couple of humorous incidents are all I remember. The first was in a game with Myrtle Point (I think) and we had a new young quarterback who had a pretty good arm. I played end on the weak side and for pass plays toward the strong side, I went deep. So, on one fourth down play, deep was into the end zone and the quarterback threw it as far as he could but it was about 10 yards short and right to a defensive back. The dback didn't know I was behind him and since it was fourth down, he just bounced it up and back and right to me for a touchdown. My favorite pass play (FB at 9 pass) in which the QB pitched to the fullback (my buddy Graydon) going toward the weak side and I did a zigzag pattern and ended up deep and running parallel to Graydon. When the play was called, Graydon was worried he couldn't throw it deep enough. So, I told him to just throw it as far as he could and I would get it. So, he did and it was going right to a defensive back but I ran in front of him and leaped and caught it for a good gain. The rest of my senior season can be summed up in a practice where I caught a pass and just as I turned back wimpy Tony Russell hit me from the side and my knee was done. The coach suggested I have it checked by Dr Collins who was far more likely to okay me playing than Dr Lucas. Collins said it was just a bruised tendon and should be fine. I suited up on game day, but my knee locked up and wouldn't straighten all the way and I couldn't run without straightening it so I told the coach I couldn't play. Next week I went to see the orthopedic surgeon in Coos Bay (Dr. John Ealy) and he said it was a torn cartilage and sent me to the North Bend hospital for surgery the next day. It turned out that Birdie had gone with me to the doctor and now she was stranded in North Bend with no way to get home. Kent and Nadine had said they would come over that night to sign the authorization for surgery so Birdie told her folks she would ride home with them. They didn't show until the next day! The hospital fixed a cot for Birdie and her brother Bob was there bright and early the next morning to pick up Birdie and make sure this whole story was legitimate. It turned out that not only was the cartilage damaged but also the ligament was torn in two. The hospital stay for that surgery in those days was a week. Then a full cast on the leg for six weeks. Football season was over!

In basketball we had another new coach. I couldn't start practice until after Christmas so I told him I could understand him trying to build a team for next year and I wouldn't turn out if that were the case. He assured me it was not the case and that the best players would play. I turned out and my first game was at Florence and I didn't play until we were quite far behind. I led a comeback and we got within one point. I was bringing up the ball with about a minute to go when I was called for rolling the ball over (in those days referees actually expected you to dribble correctly). I thought it was a horribly bad call and was annoyed the coach didn't protest. I started a few games after that and later as I was just getting back into shape, we lost a game that meant we would not be in the play offs. That was the last game I started. I had a rather rocky relationship with the coach for the rest of the year. One day Graydon and I and some of our friends went out at lunch and drank a few beers. On occasions such as this, I would go by myself and pick up Grandad and drive to the store on the south end of Bandon. I would give him the money and he would go in and buy a case of beer and throw it in the trunk. Then I drove him home and dropped him off. When Graydon and I showed up for practice, the coach was put in a bad position. If he accused us of drinking, he would have to kick us off the team. So, he told us to run fifty laps. Graydon complied but I refused. I didn't play much the rest of the year. I did spend a lot of time at practice with a tall kid who was a neighbor of Birdie's trying to teach him to field lob passes under the basket and put it back up. I don't know if it paid off or not.

Another interesting basketball story is about Birdie. In the early 1950's, girls' basketball was just getting started and, in fact, hadn't reached Bandon. Birdie had played at Lynch grade school in Gresham. Girls were pretty pampered and so they played with three at one end playing offense and three at the other end playing defense and they weren't allowed to run past the half court line. They were also only allowed two dribbles before they passed or shot. Birdie's face would get flushed when she played and, much to her frustration, the Lynch coach would take her out because she mustn't get too tired. Anyway, she lobbied the girls PE coach, Mrs. Gorman, to allow her to start up a basketball team.

She got basketball intramurals started in Bandon. In our senior year, one of the other teams beat the seniors!

Graduations in those days in Bandon were rather uneventful. We went through the ceremony and then went to a large house in Bandon for an overnight party. The only thing about this that I remember was a typical rocky episode with Birdie. Seems that all of the seniors were kissing each other (in those days that would be restricted to boys kissing girls) and Birdie and I had different ideas of our participation.

I was a full participator and she thought we should not be. However, in her subtle way, she became an avid participator to make me jealous and demonstrate the error of my ways. It worked. We apparently worked it out also.

The hang out (ala Arnold's Drive In) for high school kids in Bandon was Sadie's. The older woman who ran it was sweet and offered really good huckleberry pie ala mode. I didn't often have pocket money for such luxury but occasionally Mike Carver and I on our way home from basketball practice would stop and share one. Sadie's also had a juke box and I spent some money on that. A couple of favorites were Webb Pierce's 'In the Jailhouse now'.

which was a redo of an old Jimmy Rodgers song. Then, when I found out I was going to Millard's school, I started playing Red Souvine's "Hold Everything til I come home" for Birdie to listen to. It seemed appropo.

There were a number of my friends in my class at Bandon who also worked in the woods. One of them, our valedictorian, Ross Denham, was killed in a logging accident about two weeks after we graduated. Another, Butch Richert, was hit by a log while loading logs shortly after graduation and injured his back and was limited on what he could do the rest of his life. John Minor was able to make enough working summers at logging to put himself through Linfield college and become a teacher.

During high school my goal was to go to college and study forestry. Kent and Nadine encouraged me and talked often about what a dead-end logging was. I could also see that logs had to be hauled farther and farther to get from the woods to the mill, so I concluded near areas were already logged out and eventually all would be logged out. I didn't take much pay but rather kept track of my hours and had talked to Kent and Nadine about the money being for college when I needed it. I am not sure how the idea of going to a military academy evolved, but while living at Laurel Grove I caught the bus at the Laurel Grove store and occasionally Mrs. Millard would be driving by from Langlois and would stop and give me a ride to school.

She and Colonel Millard had moved his Military Prep School from Washington, D.C. to the top of Langlois Mountain and it is very possible she suggested it.

She was the class adviser and had worked with me as class president. She was the best teacher at BHS. The advantage of a military academy from my perspective was the free college education. I knew nothing about the military. So, the Millards got behind me and began to work it out. Millard sought to get the Lion's club to sponsor a local boy by paying the cost of a summer at Millard's school.

Millard's school was set up so you went during the summer; took a civil service exam which was used by U.S. Congressmen and Senators to determine who to give their yearly military academy appointment to. Then those who had appointments went to Millard's during the regular school year to prepare for the SAT exams that were used for acceptance into the academies. To get the Lion's club to agree to this, I had to go for an interview with several of the city business leaders. That was tough. My family did not have a sterling reputation in the community and had actually defaulted on debts owed to some of those who interviewed me. Actually, the Lions were more swayed by Birdie's boss, Fred Moore, who supported me to the Lions although he knew me mostly through Birdie. So, I was off to Millard's. After the summer, I did so well in the exam (mostly math and spatial relations) that I was given an appointment to West point from Senator Wayne Morse. I then spent the winter at Millard's school. A few episodes of interest: First, Colonel Millard was the coarse, hard drinking, unkempt opposite of refined Mrs. Millard. He had over many years developed a teaching curriculum, technique and discipline that were effective for getting students into the academies and was pleasing to wealthy parents.

Our class of nine had several sons of high-ranking military, one son of the vice president of Panama, one from a fairly well to do Salem (or Eugene) family and me. We all got along pretty well, but Ned Oswald and Kizar Bazan and I were always getting up football games and they were my best friends. Ned's father was a Colonel in the army as a dentist and Kizar's father was vice president of Panama. Kizar had trouble with English and I tutored him in math. Colonel Millard's math teaching technique was to assign reading and problems and then give each of us a specific problem to put on the board and explain in the next class. Colonel Millard interacted as the problems were presented. He assigned problems based on difficulty, giving the hardest to whomever he thought was most capable. On one assigned geometry problem assigned to me, I spent hours to come up with a proof. When I presented the proof, he told us the problem had only been solved once before in all his classes and my proof was different from the previous one. That made the hours spent seem worthwhile. For a break from school he took us on excursions. He had a pick up with a canopy over the back with two benches on each side. We all rode back there. Sometimes the excursions were to Bandon to go to the movie. I met Birdie and we slipped away from the movie theater and walked around town and talked. When the Colonel got word of that, he went to the store where Birdie worked and told her if she didn't stop meeting me, he would refuse to bring the boys to the movie and tell them it was her fault. So, we stopped.
Birdie bought me a rado for Christmas and it was one of the first transistor radios (Motorola model AM-1).

It had an earphone that when it was plugged in the volume was off. This was important because the Colonel forbade radios! So, I used it to listen to music and it was great. I allowed some of my friends to borrow it also. One of them accidentally pulled out the earphone and the speaker came on and Mrs. Millard heard the radio. She confided in the cook (a nice lady who drove up every day to cook meals for us) that she had heard the radio but was going to wait for the Colonel (I don't remember where he was) before searching for it. The cook informed us and I was able to get the radio into her car before the search began and she agreed to give it to Birdie. So, I still have the radio and the Colonel was forever baffled. However, not before I had a chance to listen to a couple of songs that were popular and which I liked a lot. One was "Young Love" by actor Tab Hunter.

The other was by a new up and coming western singer named Johhny Cash and his song was "I walk the Line". Most likely I felt these applied to my situation at the time.

One day he gave us all guns and we went deer hunting. We were hunting on the side of a mountain and we were in groups of two, i.e. four groups of mostly city kids with guns and not a clue about hunting. Ned and I were together and we wandered down the hill until we reached the stream and then we started back up. About that time, we heard shots coming from near the top of the hill and we saw a deer making towards us. The deer crossed less than 20 yards in front of us and I didn't have time to aim so I fired at it from the hip and got it, a perfect shot through the heart, all luck. The Colonel was impressed and after that he would let just Ned and I go hunting. We never got anything else. None of this was in hunting season. After I finished Millard's we went by bus down to San Francisco to take the SAT exam. I had been the number one student in both math and English but somehow I failed to score high enough on the English section. The only explanation I have is that I was over prepared. We had finished Mrs. Millard's coursework early, so she spent the last weeks teaching us some more subtle points of English, such as when to use (which or that, shall or will etc.). The major portion of the English section of the SAT that year consisted of a business letter, which we were supposed to correct. I believe I found too many things I thought were errors. Anyway, I was back to square one and back to logging with Uncle Kent.

After I graduated from high school and was preparing for Millard School, Gilbert came home after serving his two years in the army. He wanted to buy a car but didn't have enough for the down payment and he proposed that if I would sell him my car, he would trade it in for the down payment and then pay me, over time, what he got for the trade in. Birdie thought it a bad idea, but I went along nonetheless. Turns out she was right. The over time turned out to be more than one lifetime! I ended up with out wheels when I got out of Millard's. Anyway, he bought a 52 Pontiac with it and soon after I got out of Millard's', he twisted a rear axle off. He and I went to a junkyard and bought a used axle. Since he had to work one day and I didn't, I decided to replace the axle. Gilbert had already removed the parts of the broken axle. So, I put the new used one in place and buttoned it up and took it for a test drive. Unfortunately, a small piece of the old axle had broken off and was still in the rear end. It should have been noticed when the parts were removed, but wasn't. I had just driven out from Kent's house at Laurel Grove, onto highway 101, when that piece was picked up and destroyed the rear end. So, neither of us had a car.

After Millard school I worked for Kent that summer until I joined the Navy in August. Kent was again logging on Melton's place and my dad was driving cat and I sat chokers. A round of logs was about 3 to 5. Generally, you pick up the farthest one away and pick up more as you come to them until you have the whole round. This time we already had three or four long logs and the last one to pick up was short, probably 16 feet. The way you picked up a log was the cat pulled the ones already in the round up next to the one you were trying to pick up and you hooked the eye of the choker onto the bull hook of the cat. If all goes well you can add it on the fly i.e. without the cat coming to a full stop. That is what we did this time. I hooked it on and as I started to walk away, my dad pushed the throttle to full and took off. It turned out that the short log dug into the ground, and probably hit a root or something, and as it did the back end of the log was picked up and swung around in the direction I was standing. I hadn't gotten far enough away yet and the log swung at me about two or three feet off the ground. I hit the deck and it swung over me and thumped back on the ground a few feet past me. Because of the leverage, that is pulling on the choker about two feet back from the front, the back end was moving very fast. If it had hit me, I wouldn't be telling about it. It is also fortunate that it swung past me before it landed. I have always thought it was my dad's fault for going so fast before I was clear but it is also possible I wasn't moving fast enough. Things happen fast in the woods and the unexpected happen even faster.

I hadn't given up on the idea of the military academy, however. I signed up to take the civil service exam again for the appointment from Congressman Ellsworth from Oregon. Colonel Millard was surprised when I arrived at Coos Bay to take the exam. The congressman gave me an appointment to the Naval Academy.

The Colonel had talked with Congressman Ellsworth and he told me that the Congressman had said I was the only one he knew of who had ever scored 100% on the spatial relations section. (note from 2022. Teresa found a newspaper clipping which said that the Congressman said two of us had scored 100% on the Algebra section and it was the first time any of his applicants had. Who knows the truth?) When the Colonel found out I received the appointment, he invited me up and suggested I join the Navy. He said that they would send anyone with an appointment to the academy to the Naval prep school in Bainbridge, MD. He also suggested I get a preliminary physical for the academy before joining and he set this up for me in the Naval hospital at Bremerton. They told me my feet were borderline for flatness but passable. So, I joined. When I got to boot camp in San Diego, I pulled out my appointment and showed it to the Chief (our company commander) and, although visibly unimpressed, he sent me off for a physical. The doctors in San Diego failed me for flat feet. The doctor was young and I pleaded with him to pass me but he was arrogant and untouched. I believed then, and still do, that once they put that in my record, no one was going to change it. That ended my academy dream and began my Navy career.

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