CH6_story

CHAPTER SIX - COLORADO

The Apostles and Saint Paul

Saint Paul is my favorite Saint because he helps me most in my unbelief. Even though logically and intellectually belief in God is the only thing that makes sense, my mind sometimes goes astray and starts wondering if the resurrection could be just a hoax perpetrated by a few followers of Jesus. No one can honestly ponder and come to this conclusion, but the mind is not so disciplined. Therefore, Paul comes to my rescue time and again. For you see, Paul had no reason to participate in Christianity: he was a Roman citizen from a well-to-do family, a young man with a trade and he was a respected Jew and was, in fact, given authority to persecute the Christians. So, he gives up this 'good life' to take up a life that leads to ridicule, beatings, imprisonment, shipwrecks and finally death. Not imaginable! Only conceivable if he is convinced this is the way that leads to everlasting life.

The rumor that this was a hoax perpetrated by the Apostles is also unimaginable but for quite the opposite reason. These were, for the most part, poor Galilean fisherman and the Roman authority had just crucified Jesus. So, eleven poor, uneducated and scared Galilean fishermen are going to pick up Jesus' message and defy the Romans- for what? Travel? Most of them got more travel than they wanted and most ended up giving their lives in martyrdom for their efforts. Not good motivation. Again, their actions are only imaginable if they saw this as the way to everlasting life. And since they were eyewitnesses to all of this and they did subsequently defy the Roman and Jewish authorities and carry-on Jesus' work of spreading the good news, the good news must offer something greater than life on earth.

We loaded down the old blue station wagon and set off. First, we traveled down to Grants Pass to say farewell to the relatives there and then on to Klamath Falls to see Auntie Ruth and Uncle Gus.

I had chosen a novel route that took us to Lakeview and out through the deserted part of Southeastern Oregon and into Nevada. I assure you it is about as desolate and deserted as any spot in Oregon. We went through Denio Junction which I thought was a small town in Oregon but which turned out to be neither: it is miniscule and is in Nevada; probably neither state wanted it and Nevada drew the short straw. We spent the first night at Winnemucca in a motel/casino. After the kids were settled, Birdie and I went down to the casino to do a bit of gambling. A bit is all we did, playing the quarter slots at most and more often nickel or dime. We played for a while (an hour at most) and we met and we were both winning and had a bunch of coins and we both said this is boring. We went back to the room. Probably why we still don't understand the attraction of all the casinos today.

The second day we traveled to Maxine and Gene's in Salt Lake City. Gene was still working for Tektronix but he was in field service and they were living in Salt Lake. We stayed a couple of days with them. Maxine had a collection of black widow spiders in glass jars; we were some combination of impressed and dismayed. While there I called HP about the house again and the message was entirely different. They could not find a house to rent that would be suitable for our family. The market had dried up and they were surprised. We were worried! They said they had a three bedroom we could lease. I reiterated we didn't want to commit to lease in any area, especially a 3-bedroom house, until we had time to live there awhile and find an area and a house suitable for our family. I made it clear we were on our way with the entire family and we would be arriving there imminently. We had a nice visit with Maxine and Gene and Chris and Michelle and set off for the final leg.

Colorado Springs at that time was a booming city of about 250,000. Pike's Peak looms over the city but we were used to Mt Hood, a majestic peak that was snow covered all year. Pike's peak was a huge mound of rock, certainly not majestic, so we weren't certain which one was Pikes Peak until the winter snow came. The only house HP had been able to come up with was a three bedroom on Dream Lane, a new development in the eastern section of Colorado Springs. It was a nice house but totally unsuited for a large family. One of the bedrooms was a small nursery off of the huge master bedroom. The other problem was that it was for lease, not rent, but I refused to sign a lease agreement and we moved in. We only lived there a little over three months. The kids all started schools there and the most memorable event was halloween.

Colorado Springs weather is a bit more unpredictable than Oregon. (Many days in Colorado I got up to a warm, sunny morning and went to work in short sleeves and came home freezing in a blizzard.) So that first Halloween the kids trekked off to school dressed for warm weather, they in fact didn't own any clothes for real cold weather, and a severe blizzard struck. A lot of snow fell. We were worried but not much we could do. They straggled home, cold, some in short sleeves and none dressed for snow. One of my coworkers at HP who was a native of Colorado observed, "Yeah, when we were kids, we threw our pumpkins out after Halloween and didn't see them again until the snow melted at Easter." We believed.

We found a lot on Darby Circle that we wanted to build on. It was near HP, you could see the plant, and was a good location. The realtor who showed us the lot made a comment about the rich soil. It was a fill of crushed Colorado red rock! Later when we tried to dig fence holes the rock was so loose and deep it kept falling into the hole as fast as we dug it out. So much for reliance on realtors, actually I would probably generalize that to all salespeople. Soil notwithstanding, we decided it was a good place to live and we started to build.

Vrooman, the developer of the area, offered only one house design (which he touted as economical because of a single, simple roof); so, we selected that. It had four levels that were staggered to make two complete floors. We were able to modify the design and add a large bedroom in the basement (for six total) to make something that fit our family. We were moved in before Christmas. The address was 4032 Darby Circle and we wished it had been "4033" because we thought George Jones song fit us pretty well.

We were in by Christmas and getting our first Christmas tree for that house was a memorable experience. Mike and Joan Keegan and family lived about a mile or so away and they had purchased a lot in the Black Forest. The Black Forest was an area north of Colorado Springs and east of the Air Force Academy that was covered with small (Christmas tree size) pine trees. The area had been developed by clearing roads throughout the area and selling small acreage lots to unsuspecting city dwellers. The only hindrance for getting a Christmas tree was the snow. Lots of snow! But Mike was not the type to be deterred by such a small obstacle and I was not to be labeled a naysayer. After several hours of getting Mike's pick up stuck in the snow, traipsing through three or four feet of snow in improper clothing, freezing and starving, we came home with several scrawny pines trees which by combining (drilling holes and attaching branches) we were able to achieve one acceptable Christmas tree. A successful outing by any standard!

We received some interesting house warming gifts or gift inquiries. Probably due to some comment of Birdie's regarding the difficulty of getting flowers to grow in Colorado, Grandma Giles sent us dandelion seeds claiming dandelions can be grown anywhere. She didn't know Colorado! My Aunt Dorothy asked when the growing season was in Colorado and when I responded it was from the morning of Independence Day until the afternoon of the 4th of July, she passed on the gift idea entirely. We, me and my assistants (in perpetual protest), decided to plant native plants in the yard. Despite a threatened huge fine (and possible jail sentence) we dug up some small Colorado Blue spruce in the mountains and loaded them in our station wagon and tried to camouflage them from any official looking cars as we transported them to our yard and planted them. Survival rate was low. We also smoothed out that wonderful, rich soil (ha) and laid out sod on the yard. That worked reasonably well. We also built a fence. Lumber was expensive and, being frugal to a fault, I purchased some questionable spruce boards, which barely made it as long as we lived in Colorado. But we had a fence and we were ready for a dog!

We had only two simple criteria for a dog. I didn't like barking and we didn't like dog odor. In spite of the criteria, we did go look at some collie puppies because we had both been fond of Birdie's dog, Ginger, although it took a long time for me to get used to her barking. Even though the collie puppies were cute, we passed since they failed both criterions. I had done some research into dogs that didn't bark or smell and the one alleged to fit our criteria was the Siberian husky. So, we found some Huskie pups for sale and went to look at them. One of them was a fluff ball that took an immediate liking to our family. She was full of energy. In fact, the owner kept discouraging us by telling us how much trouble her getting out and running away was. But mutual affection won, she said goodbye to her Mother.

We took her home and named her, Tanya.

The owner's warnings turned out to be dependable. She loved to get away and run. She would come up almost close enough to be caught, then laugh and run away. Her Achilles heel was that she liked to ride in the car even more than she liked to run, so she could be coaxed into the car, and captured. For a family that did not have a real love of dogs, I think everyone loved tanya; except maybe when they had to help catch her.

She certainly loved everyone. And she loved to run and play. We built a doghouse using the design of our house only just one level, in fact one room.

Our kitchen window framed the huge round boulder of a mountain that rose right behind Cheyenne Mountain. We knew Pikes Peak was near but this didn't look like any peak. However, when the snows came it became an impressive mountain!

It turned out that discoverer Zebulon Pike either had poor vision or didn't know the difference between a mountain and a peak. Mounts St Helens and Jefferson and Washington are peaks; Pike's peak is a huge boulder. We enjoyed the views out the window.

The first trip to the top of Pike's Peak was an experience.

The road was a snake of continuous switchbacks in loose gravel. While we were in Colorado Springs the famous racing brothers, Al and Bobby Unser, participated in the annual Pike's Peak hill climb race. One of them won, I can't remember which, but I do remember Ma Unser's famous chili and my chili has since been greatly influenced by her recipe.

The national forest on Pike's Peak allowed cutting of Christmas trees each year and several years we took advantage of it. Maybe just to avoid a repeat of the Black Forest adventure. We had a couple of experiences on Pike's Peak I will recount. Our family was never one to stick with the crowd, same when hunting for a Christmas tree. We parked on the road up Pike's Peak and marched off into the forest and meandered around trying to find the perfect Christmas tree (which only exists in Oregon). After what seemed like hours of searching, we compromised on a tree and cut it down. Then we started our return trip, with only one problem. We weren't certain which way to go. After marching around for some time, some of the disloyal among those closest to me were even suggesting the worst-I was lost! Of course, if that were true, I wouldn't be recounting the story. Finally, we were really quiet and we could hear cars on the road and we headed for the sounds and came out to the road. I don't know if those who accused me of being lost were properly embarrassed or not, I suspect not. Another year we went for a Christmas tree and we were once again having problems finding the perfect tree. Finally, Birdie saw a tree acceptable to our new criteria but of course only the very tip top of a very big tree.

The future movie "Christmas Vacation" for their Christmas tree story pretty much copied our venture on Pikes Peak. When we got home, we cut out the top and with some customization we enjoyed our beautiful tree. Tanya enjoyed the excursions for Christmas trees the most. She ran around the woods and rolled in the snow and generally made us feel guilty for complaining – but some of us were undeterred!

In 1973, all three sets of our parents came to visit.

Grandpa Nettleton was of English descent and he loved the Broadmoor tavern. It had old English music that he knew and enjoyed and they served their beer in 'Yards'. The 'Yard" was a glass about a yard long. It was tricky to drink from it, you tilted it slowly and nothing happened until all of a sudden a gush of beer started cascading down the glass and you no longer had any control over how much and how fast it was coming. Hence, bibs were required. After a couple of 'yards' we didn't get any better at it but we enjoyed it more. Birdie and Grandma Jo didn't try so they didn't enjoy a bath in beer.

We took them up on Pike's Peak to prove to them we really knew which one was Pike's Peak.

Birdie and I had essentially sacrificed entertainment in our twenties to get me through college. We discovered and really enjoyed the Piccadilly bar in the Antlers Plaza hotel. It had good live bands, the most famous of which was Don Ho and his Hawaiian music and dancers in grass skirts. Birdie became a fan of 'Golden Cadillacs' and we had some good times. I don't remember what the main floor was made of but the dance area was a very small area of hardwood and was so crowded my lack of skill was not obvious and I did my unique dance step which was later made famous by 'The Fonz' on Happy Days.

Before we left, a new restaurant opened on a hill on the north end of Colorado Springs. It had some Indian name, something to do with the sun, maybe Aztec. Anyway, we went there and they had a novelty on the specials board called 'Rocky Mountain oysters'. We bumpkins didn't know what those were! Some of us kept quiet. Birdie made a point of asking the waiter, loud and skeptical, "What are Rocky Mountain oysters?" The entire restaurant got quite a laugh out of it. She didn't even order them after all that. Neither did I! But now we know what Rocky Mountain Oysters are!

Grandparents Leppert and Craig and Aunt Helen visited us also in the summer of 73.

We made several trips to the local tourist sites with them and it seems David had an incident at each. First, we went to Royal Gorge.

We rode on a small railroad in a sightseeing tour of the area. The store had an interesting wooden Indian. We walked around the area of the bridge and looked at where those with miniscule minds could try to crush the small remaining remnants on the rocks below by bungee jumping off the bridge. Bungee jumping was relatively new in those days, at least to us. In sporting activities, I am usually game to try new things but bungee jumping just didn't do it. We were leisurely walking along the trails along the top near the bridge. David wasn't much for taking advice and he ignored all warnings and ran ahead. He was barely three and as he was running down the trail, he was unable make at turn and veered off into a cactus that impaled him. The cactus was wicked. It had stickers with barbs like a fishhook and Dave was spread out with barbs stuck into several places. We had to cut the limbs and take him home to cut the barbs out. It was painful for both David and I. A second option would have been to take him to an emergency room and let the professionals with the right equipment handle it. But my credibility would have been destroyed plus pliers and a knife are all that is required for minor surgery. A large shot of whiskey is often used for pain in the movies when preparing for surgery, but I felt I needed to stay sober.

A second incident occurred when we visited the Air Force Academy. We were standing outside one of the buildings looking at some of the planes on display. There was a concrete ramp that ran along some stairs that held the rail on top. Unbeknown to us David crawled up the ramp. The problem was that on the stair side the drop was only a few feet but on the other side the ramp was the top of a wall that dropped some 15-20 feet onto a concrete pad. We were afraid if we did anything to alarm Dave he might fall. Grandpa threatened everyone (Mom) to silence and he slowly moved up toward Dave. I stayed on the pad below in case he fell I might catch him. Grandpa kept him calm and he slowly moved up and rescued him. We decided at that moment to have no more children!

Grandpa and Grandma Siewell also visited that summer.


Grandpa had never flown on a commercial plane so it was quite an experience for him. They flew to visit Maxine in Salt Lake first and then on to Denver where we picked them up. Grandpa was quite pleasantly impressed with how well behaved our children were. He particularly hit it off with David and for years he liked to recall a story David had told him about a rooster. We never knew what it was all about but I guess it was one storyteller to another.

The standard faire with visitors were trips to Cripple Creek and Victor and the antique stores there. Grandpa Nettleton remarked that these weren't really antiques since his parents had them when he was little. Birdie and I chuckle about that occasionally when we see something we knew as a child that someone mistakenly thought to be old and put in an antique store. Colorado has a lot of interesting history. We got intrigued with the story about Baby Doe Tabor. We ventured to Leadville to see where it all started and ended with her death. The building (mine shack) was still there where she died clinging to the worthless Matchless silver mine. Colorado grew on us and if it hadn't been for the wind, we might have stayed.

While driving to and from school in Portland, I had become acquainted with Waylon Jennings' music. I thought he was the best thing since Hank Williams. Birdie never developed a refined taste in country music that would allow her to appreciate Hank Williams, but she did like Waylon and we spent a lot of hours dancing in our living room to his music. In 1974 he came to Colorado Springs and we jumped at the chance to see him in person. It was an experience. I am not sure where it was held but it was like a gymnasium with no chairs and some bales of hay scattered around on the floor. We really enjoyed it, quite possibly because we were stoned on second hand smoke. We were probably in the midst of the most drugs we had ever imagined and we didn't see anything but the pot smoke. Waylon probably had more drugs on his bus than the local pharmacy.

We had another experience with our friends, the Keegans. Seems they were going ice fishing and invited us to come along. Having not learned our lesson in the Christmas tree adventure, we jumped at the chance. The ice fishing was at Antero reservoir up in the mountains about 70-90 miles away. One of the first lessons we learned was "where there is ice, it is probably cold and where there is a lake of ice it is probably really cold!" The second lesson was that the most exciting part of ice fishing is auguring a hole in the ice - and this is grueling, boring work. I don't remember anyone catching any fish and the picnic on the ice wasn't all that much fun either. We never went ice fishing again. I think to really enjoy ice fishing you must have the proper equipment. That would be a shed to sit in, a heater to warm you and enough brandy to make you forget you were fishing on a sheet of ice that was probably melting!

One of my friends at HP introduced me to archery hunting. HP had a practice area for archery.

When they built the HP plant, they ran into large groups of rattlesnakes. One story they told was that a bulldozer that was clearing the area all of a sudden had many snakes caught and going around on the tracks. Another story was that in the archery area, a fellow shot his arrow and missed the target and when he went to pick it up, it was right beside a rattlesnake. I suspect these stories have some validity since on the bluffs not far from the HP plant they harvested rattlesnakes to milk them for their venom. Mark and Matt and I all bought bows from the pawn shop.

We practiced to achieve an arbitrary level of skill we thought necessary to go hunting, i.e., occasionally hitting a paper plate at twenty yards. We set off on a hunting adventure to a place recommended by one of my friends at HP. It was a nice-looking spot and we camped and hunted. The hunting was of limited success, we saw deer within range on one occasion and I got off a shot, which fell dismally short. I was only qualified at twenty yards and it was probably thirty at least! The camping was similar to ice fishing, it was hard and very cold, like it was fall, high in altitude and the nighttime temperature hovered near freezing. However, Mark was learning to drive and got a lot of practice while going to and from. Also, the adventure reinforced my lack of enthusiasm for camping. Again, demonstrating that something positive always comes from a negative.

The main recreation for most people in Colorado was skiing. But skiing is expensive and we could not afford this for our entire clan. Consequently, we had to find other ways to entertain ourselves and our creativity took hold. First, I made a couple of pair of stilts, one pretty small to learn on and one pretty high for advanced stilters. The whole family was into stilts and mastered them.

even the old folks.

No serious injuries that I could not take care of with my skill in minor surgery.

One day we decided to purchase new mattresses for the kids and so as to not let the old ones go unused, I set us up for a high jumping contest. I made a couple of posts to hold a high jump bar and we used the old mattresses for a landing area. Of course, I demonstrated the art of high jumping and in doing so set the bar for success high; near what one needed to achieve Olympic quality. All tried to match. None could!

Of course, with lots of snow in Colorado we developed skill at building snowmen, and all tried their hand at that also,

with Dave and I taking the prize.

HP had purchased a large recreation area for employees up in the mountains. In the summer the annual HP picnic was held there and the rest of the year it was open for use by employees. We went up there when it had snow and spent a day tobogganing on our new toboggan.

As usual in the snow activities, some nay saying had to be ignored and Tanya enjoyed it most.

Birthdays were always big affairs in our family and, as with all big families, we had lots of birthdays. From mid-April until mid-August, we had eight. Lots of cake and lots of teenagers; an example here Kirstin turns 13.

The Fallgrens visited us in Colorado. In addition to the normal round of the tourist traps around Colorado Springs some went on a novel escapade, riding horses.

The polar bear at the zoo in Cheyenne Canyon had twins and the zoo had a contest to name them. Paul entered the contest with the name "S-K-Mo" and won.

The prize was free admission to the zoo for our family. We all went to see what the bears looked like.

Hiking in the mountains of Colorado was great. On one occasion we went near the headwaters of the Arkansas river and fished.

As usual everyone soon tired of fishing and we headed into the mountains for a hike. The mountains of Colorado were a great place to hike and explore.

We soon realized we needed another car and I bought a vokswagen bug.

It turned out to be an excellent vehicle for Colorado; the rear engine enabled it to get around in ice and snow. It also turned out to be a good vehicle to teach Mark to drive. The combination of good traction and new driver created a bit of excitement once. Mark and I were driving somewhere up on the Rampart Range Road and we had left the good gravel road for a less than good gravel road (every road in Colorado was, in its base state, rock, as the name "Rockies" was no accident). I don't remember if we were hunting or not (the only distinction between our hunting and just driving was whether we had unused weapons with us) but we went around a sharp turn into a steep climb and we got about half way up the hill in the lowest gear when the engine ran out of power and died. Mark applied the brakes but the traction pulling up the hill had exceeded the traction going back down and we just slid down backwards with no control. Luckily, we stopped at the turn else we would have tumbled all the way to the bottom of the Rampart Range, and that was pretty far. The Volkswagen was a marvel of marketing. The engineering was far inferior to American car engineering at the time, but the German companies had convinced the Americans that their cars were in fact superior in engineering. The marvel of the Volkswagen was that it could be fixed with few tools and scant knowledge. Another bonus was anyone who owned a Volkswagen for long became an experienced mechanic. I drove it to work most days and hauled kids to school along the way. It was a faithful car. Birdie drove it at times also. One of her memorable experiences was having a car full of kids and trying to start from a stop sign on a hill in Garden of Gods. She finally backed down several hundred feet to find a flat spot, revved it up and built-up speed and went through the stop sign without hesitation and on her way! A bit farther down the road the kids finally opened their eyes.

The move from Tektronix to Hewlett-Packard would turn out to be a great move; but it took a while. I had been in R&D at Tek and was in manufacturing at H-P. At H-P the R&D engineers thought they were (and were treated as) prima donnas. They were consistently trying to quiz me to find arguments around the fact that the Tek Transfer Storage, which I had developed, had a faster writing speed than their fastest storage oscilloscope. The storage tube designers at HP had come from Motorola (a large corporation in those days located on the East coast doing contract work for the military). I don't know what the military applications were but it included building small custom transmission storage devices using magnesium fluoride as the dielectric. (The effectiveness of MgFl for storage oscilloscope writing speed was comparable to MgO used in Tek storage scopes.) I don't remember exactly how the MgFl was deposited but the engineer who had brought the process to HP was not the one who had developed it and it had not been optimized for writing speed. To try to compete with the transfer storage tube, they had achieved their writing speed increases by using a higher energy (higher voltage) writing gun, which in addition to higher energy and more effective electrons, also allows significant increase in electron beam density. The downside of the higher energy electrons is they are traveling at higher speed through the deflection plates and get deflected less resulting in a significantly reduced viewing area. The display on CRTs was historically marked off in centimeters and writing speeds were normally expressed in centimeters per microsecond. HP had to add a reduced scale (about half the normal size) and then expressed their writing speed in 'divisions' per microsecond. I was a bit defensive and annoyed them by pointed out the obvious. I also knew the sales figures from both companies and comparable Tek scopes outsold H-P by about 4:1. The lead R&D engineer in their storage development area and I never got along. However, I got along well in the Manufacturing area and was soon promoted to Manufacturing Engineering Manager.

Several incidents worth mentioning come to mind: I had an engineer working for me who had been working as a manufacturing engineer for years. I was frustrated with his inability to define a task and complete it. I had to make very specific assignments for him. So, in his evaluation I took him to task with examples of his shortcomings and actually suggested he was working more as a technician than as an engineer (I had a bit of experience at both). I went through it with him and he was pretty upset so I told him to think about it a few days and we would discuss it again. When we got together a few days later, he was pretty steamed. He had taken the evaluation I had written home to his wife and she had read it and agreed with it! We eventually moved him to technician and I suspect he was happier, although that is not something he would have ever admitted to me. It was a precedent that will be seen again.

I had an experience with another engineer that was rather fascinating. He had been an engineer before I came to H-P but had moved into management in Manufacturing about the time I arrived. I need to digress a bit to set the stage. Dave Packard had left H-P to be an Assistant Secretary of Defense in Nixon's administration. He had, I believe, saw things he didn't like and had resigned the position and came back to H-P about the same time I was hired. Although Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett had both been engineering students at Stanford together, Dave was more the business leader and Bill the engineering leader. When he returned from Washington, he reviewed the business and was unhappy with what he found, particularly a lack of attention to accounts receivable. He visited the various plants with some specific demands for change and in some cases replaced complete management teams. He came to Colorado Springs and did not do immediate changes but several management changes occurred over the next few months that were no doubt a result of his visit. One was that the long time Manufacturing manager (who hired me) was transferred back to the bay area. The fellow selected to replace him was the engineer turned manager I mentioned earlier in the paragraph. It turned out that he was way over his head and things did not go well. Subsequently the division manager was reassigned also and replaced by a successful R&D section manager named John Riggen. Another digression. John's most successful product was a monitor that used a CRT. (Side note: this product was being used by the early pioneers in the medical field who were developing the prototypes of instruments for scanning the body; MRI,Cats scans etc.) I had become friends with John through discussing ways to improve that product's CRT quality and delivery. John removed the recently promoted manufacturing manager and placed him in my group as a process engineer. Several months later John stopped me in the hall and asked if this engineer had found another job. I was surprised and said no, I didn't think he was looking. John informed me that part of the deal was that he had until the end of the year to find a place to transfer or he would be terminated. John had forgot to tell me this part of the deal. So, I went back to the engineer and told him what John had said. He told me he thought John had forgotten. I assured him he hadn't. I then worked with him and he found a Quality Assurance position in the division that had recently been formed to build the handheld calculators. This was the division that would move to Corvallis and the engineer would end up being my neighbor.

Some of the fellows who worked in the same Cathode Ray Tube manufacturing area as I did, mostly young production workers, formed a slow pitch softball team and I joined. I played second base.

When we started playing my family came out and yelled for dad.
Soon these young players started calling me 'Dad' and the name stuck throughout my short softball career. We had a pretty good team and we played in a lot of city tournaments. I was mediocre. A couple of happenings of interest. One was the city had a mid-winter tournament called the 'snow ball tournament'. The winter weather in Colorado Springs was often clear and always cold. One year we played and it was really cold. As I played and breathed hard, my breath condensed on my beard and froze and gradually built up so the ice was quite an extension of the beard.

Another time we were playing a team that had some burly guys who hit a lot of home runs. One of them hit a really hard line drive a bit above my head but I jumped and easily got my glove on it but it just tore the glove off and left me lying in the dirt as the ball dribbled out into right field. Embarrassing!

My glove was a pretty good softball glove and was really large. Teresa played
some softball also and used my glove. One game we watched as she was playing right field when one of the hitters hit a high fly to right field. Either Teresa was watching keenly and saw the ball leave the bat and headed for her or some unnamed fan hollered, "here it comes!" Either way the result was Teresa quickly got into her position, that is closed her eyes and put the glove up to protect her face. Thump! Miracle of miracles, she opened her eyes and the ball had landed in the glove. Teresa took a second look to be sure it was really there. She certainly didn't see it go in. A little victory dance and throw the ball part way in. Routine!

The reality of having six children before the oldest was six finally settled in while we were in Colorado. Colorado Springs had some excellent sports programs. All of the kids were involved in some sport. Mom and I were constantly going to games and often we had to split up and go to different places. The family attended most of the high school games: Mark baseball and football,

Teresa swimming and softball

, and Matt football.

Football games were often pretty cold.

The programs for younger kids in football, basketball and baseball were also excellent. I mostly remember the football games, might have been Pop Warner. One year I coached the basketball team that Mike and Paul were on. Coronado had a real good basketball program and the high school players were involved in helping the younger kids in the basketball program. Mike and Mark were both pretty good baseball players and did some pitching.

There were also soccer games, although Paul seemed to have difficulty knowing if it he was in soccer or football.

I was an early advocate against teachers' unions. In fact, unions were a good thing in the early part of the 20th century and did a lot to improve working conditions and getting workers a fair deal. The problem started when they had accomplished those things and they had to start looking for ways to justify their existence (i.e., Dues). They took the easy path. Presidents of the past, including FDR, had known that public employee unions were a bad thing and had refused to allow them. JFK saw an opportunity to get the union vote and signed an executive order that allowed them. The problem with public employee unions is there is no check and balance. For example, in the private sector the Steel industry unions pushed for more and more benefits and pay until the companies were no longer competitive with overseas competitors and most of the steel industry in the US went out of business or outsourced. With public employee unions there are no consequence on either side. Excess benefits just result in excess taxes and there are no consequences for those in government who negotiated the bad contracts or for those who reap from them. Eventually, as we are seeing now in 2014, the taxes on employees become so high and their pay must be so high that the entire economy is not competitive with overseas workers and companies move every job they can overseas to stay alive. But for unions in those days the easy way was to unionize the public employees and get laws passed to force even those who didn't want to be members to have to pay dues. By a quid pro deal with the democrats, unions got what they wanted and democrats got union support. This goes on to this day and much of the woes of our economy are directly the result. Back to Colorado. I wrote some letters to the editor against strikes by teachers and so when the teachers went on strike, I was asked to substitute. I only did this a few days. I wasn't a very impressive substitute. Good teaching is not as easy as it might seem; which probably explains why only a few teachers manage to be really good.

In 1975 we decided to take a vacation back to Oregon. We found someone who owned a Winnebago Chieftain motor home who was having trouble making his payments and reluctantly agreed to rent it to us for three weeks. He was reluctant for a couple of reasons; one he didn't like the idea of renting it and was forced into it; and second, he was scared to death that a family of nine would surely destroy it. But we left Tanya with the Clark's (neighbors across the street) and headed west. The motor home was kind of fun to drive. Birdie and I could change drivers without stopping by just putting it on cruise control and one steering it while we changed seats. So, I could drive a while then sit back and have a beer and enjoy. There was quite a bit of room for the kids to do what kids do on trips - complain and argue and fight. The thing had an eight-track player. Eight track players made a brief appearance between records and CD's but no one in the family had one. So, we purchased three eight-track albums (Waylon, Tanya Tucker and Neal Diamond) that covered what to us was the known music world.



We had memorized every song (including Luckenback, Texas; Delta Dawn and Sweet Caroline) and were pretty tired of them by the time we got home. I guess I should say the kids were tired of Waylon and Tanya and I was tired of Neal. But it was an important part of their cultural training. My guess is that to this day they all know some Waylon songs by heart – that is culture!

We spent one night camped at 'Bend in the River' park on the Snake River. I think it was our first night back in Oregon. One of the problems we encountered was that motor homes were relatively recent and there was not the ready availability of facilities that would appear in the next few years. We sometimes had to stretch the limits of the container for toilet disposal. In fact, later in our trip while we were at Wallowa visiting Kent and Nadine, I had to stretch the limits of the law and dump along the road in a desolate area. I believe to this day that everything was biodegradable and therefore environmentally friendly. Hopefully no one pulled over there for a picnic in the next few days.

We had rented the motor home with a somewhat unusual no mileage fee but that was probably not the great negotiated concession I thought. The gas mileage on the motor home was less than fifteen on straight, flat freeway and dropped to under eight on crooked highways like 101. All in all, the motor home performed really well for us. A few things like a window latch broke but I fixed them better than new.

We went first to Portland to visit with Grandpa and Grandma Leppert. They then traveled with us to the beach. Grandpa impressed the grandchildren by digging up a clam, then eating it raw.

Made a good movie. Grandma later said that was the only time he had ever done that or ever would. Anything to impress the grandkids!

We then went down highway 101 for a ways and then inland to I5 and south to Grants Pass. Both the Siewell and Nettleton grandparents were in the Grants Pass area, the Nettletons in town and my parents in a mobile home at Murphy. We had a picnic up the Applegate River just like old times. At that time, Coors beer was not allowed in Oregon (another of the typical union scams, Coors was non-union) so I had brought a couple of cases to introduce it to my brothers.

Being great connoisseurs of the finer things in life, both Lucky and Gilbert gave it favorable reviews. Possibly the price influenced them! An event happened that made good movies. Birdie was annoying Lucky by taking movies of him, so he grabbed the camera from her with one hand, pushed her into the river with the other and took a movie of her as she came up calling him things
I cannot put in this story. Great movie.

We loaded both sets of grandparents into the motor home with us and went to Klamath Falls to visit Auntie Ruth and Uncle Gus. Auntie Ruth showed us the house where Birdie was born.

Comparing the picture below with the video I am convinced the picture is at the same place.

(Years later, while we were in Albany, we went back to the location and the whole neighborhood had been torn down and redeveloped. Auntie Ruth and Uncle Louis disagreed on what the address was.)

We had a nice visit in Klamath Falls and went to a park where we got up a softball game and grandpa Siewell played. On the way back, I was driving and everything was going fine and the two grandfathers went to sleep on the wide seat next to the driver. Birdie and I changed drivers. Grandpa Nettleton woke up, saw Birdie was driving and nudged grandpa Siewell awake and pointed out the change to him. They were alarmed but not much they could do but worry.

One day while we were in Grants Pass, I went up into the woods with Gilbert. The first time in the woods since I had entered the Navy at 19. I took some movies of my dad cat logging.

and of Gilbert setting up his loader and loading a truck.

At one point we stopped near a huge pine tree and I walked down to it and thought about the comment one of my co-workers in Colorado, "there are trees up in the mountains so big you can barely reach around them!" Unfortunately, the movies did not come out good enough to really show how huge pine tree was.

We returned up I5 and stopped in Corvallis to visit Birdie's Aunt Gene. She told us about the plant that HP was going to build in Corvallis and we stopped at the end of Circle (Circle only went to the railroad tracks) where the road into the HP site was just being bulldozed. That sparked some interest but it lied dormant for a little more than a year.

On the way back we stopped at Wallowa to visit Kent and Nadine. We spent some time on Wallowa lake and some time fishing with Aunt Nadine.

She was an excellent fisher. Kent and Nadine were living on/ caretakers of a ranch that was owned by the Bandon lumber tycoon, Ken Rogge, who had started up a stud mill near Wallowa. They had several horses on the ranch and some of the kids rode them. They also had an older small Shetland pony for John. David was encouraged to ride it and as soon as the pony was turned loose it headed into a thick bush and refused to budge. That was pretty much the end of Dave's pony ride.

When I was living with Kent and Nadine, I spent considerable time listening to music with Kent and I thought he had a good taste in music. So I had him and his friend in the motor home and I played a Waylon song, She's looking good, which I thought was great and would appeal to Kent.
They merely muttered it had a nice tune. I guess age had dulled his good taste.
“09_She's Looking Good_160kbps.MP3” could not be found.
When we got back to Colorado Springs, we cleaned up the motor home and took it back to the owners. He walked through it and his demeanor completely changed as he realized our family had brought it back even better than we had received it. It was a great vacation.

One of the things we found different in Colorado Springs was the lack of a natural affiliation with one parish. We never really belonged to any one although we sent the kids to Corpus Christi school until we had a slight disagreement. One of the teachers was a nun who should have been doing something other than teaching. She did not like Paul. She criticized him and humiliated him. One student even said she tripped him. We forced Paul to take it for a long time but eventually it was too much and we went in and talked to the principal. We had Paul sit in the car and he saw the teacher leave and get in her car and take off in a huff. Paul didn't return to the school and soon none of our kids went there. We often went to St Mary's cathedral downtown for mass. One of the priests there, Father Raleigh Myers, was an outstanding speaker and we enjoyed his homilies. He had also written several books and we purchased a pair, "Those who Loved", which are good.

One year we decided to go to Mesa Verde for Memorial weekend. We drove down (Southwest) to Montrose and then south toward Gunnison. The weather was beautiful as we started up into the mountains and then it started deteriorating. Typical of Colorado, we quickly passed from beautiful sunshine into in a heavy snowstorm-it was the end of May for Pete's sake. But we passed back into sunshine before we got to Mesa Verde and we explored the site one day and were impressed.

The next day we went to four corners and then headed back through Pagosa Springs. I was impressed because in CW McCall's song: Wolf creek Pass, he ends up in downtown Pagosa Springs. We went by a huge sand dune that had been created in the middle of nowhere by sand blowing through a crevice in the mountains. Pretty amazing!

One of our archery hunting expeditions (described by some of the semi-willing participants as aimless hikes in the wild) was on the back (West) side of Pikes Peak. I don't know what took us there; probably a suggestion by one of my co-workers, but we went into the woods and hunted for a while, being careful to mark trees to show from hence we had come (we were now experienced explorers) which was good since before long we had no idea which direction would point to the car. We didn't have any luck discovering deer but we did run onto an interesting old gold mine with the remnants of a burnt cabin. This was intriguing to Birdie so we went back as a family and explored the mine area in more detail. We found several artifacts, most broken from the weather and the years. We toted some home including a long-handled fry pan that when first seen was intact but when touched the handle had separated. It was still lying in the position it was left, probably some 70 or 80 years before, by a prospector. Maybe he left it lying there in his haste to go to town and celebrate the fortune he had discovered.

While I was in Colorado Springs, Bill Hewlett visited. He was very interested in the technology and new products and spent most of his time in R&D. There was a dinner in his honor and in the predetermined seating arrangement I was seated right next to him. I was pretty excited and was expecting to hear some great insights from him. Turns out he only wanted to talk about skiing and that was not something I knew anything about. Very disappointing!

The R&D manager had my favorite poster of all time hanging in his cubicle. It was a vulture sitting on tree limb and the caption was: "Patience my ass, I'm gonna kill something!" A great concept.

John Young took over day-to-day operations for H-P while I was in Colorado. He made a visit and my boss, Dave Dayton, and I got to give him a review of what we were doing. He wasn't as interested as he would be a few years later in Corvallis when I gave him a tour of our first high speed assembly machine for inkjet pens which had cost over $4M.

One of the great experiments we got involved in was breeding Tanya. We somehow knew about a husky kennel near Colorado Springs that was pretty renowned. We contacted them and agreed to a mating with one of their dogs and we took Tanya out to deliver her. Our first shock was that it was not a very well-kept place. Their dogs were in kennels and we weren't sure our pampered Tanya could take that. We went ahead as planned but with some reservation. After I insured Dave wouldn't get into trouble.

we talked to the breeders and it all went well. We talked to our local veterinarian and he didn't expect any problem - as long as it happened during his 'open hours', he could help. Turns out it wasn't during open hours and it didn't work out well. Tanya didn't seem to know what to do and we tried to get them breathing by rubbing them and trying to simulate what we thought mother dogs normally do. In the end we salvaged only two of the pups, Black Bart and Brandy.

They turned out to be a lot of fun.

We gave Brandy to Grandpa and Grandma Nettleton and they came out and picked her up. We sold Black Bart to a young lady and shortly thereafter someone stole him

He was located and she came to us to get pictures of him to use to identify him by his markings and prove he was hers.

Things came together in 1976 that ended in us leaving Colorado. Three things were becoming clear to me. First, digital technology was coming on and it was becoming apparent that CRT manufacturing would be coming to an end at HP (it ended a few years later). Ever cheaper digital memory meant that future products could use standard monitors for display and there was no way that HP special CRTs could compete cost wise with standardized monitors from Japan. Second, the Advanced Product Division that produced the hand-held calculator had made the decision to move to Corvallis. During our vacation back to Oregon in 1975 we had seen where they were beginning to break ground for the plant when we visited Aunt Gene in Corvallis. This meant HP in Oregon. Third was our realization that our parents were getting older and if we wanted to spend time with them, which we did, we needed to do it soon. I began watching for openings in APD that would lead to Corvallis and I found an opening for an engineering manager (project manager) for a thermal printhead operation. Thermal printing was used in the first printing handheld calculators. The project manager at Cupertino, Bob Waites, had decided not to go to Corvallis and all of the engineers in his group had made the same decision and several, in fact, were already leaving for new jobs. I dusted off my old resume' and applied. I flew out to interview with several managers involved in printhead engineering in Cupertino and HP labs (where the technology for the thermal printhead had been developed). Those went well. I then flew to Corvallis to interview with Ed Shideler who was heading up an operation called Corvallis Components Operation which was intended to eventually produce the integrated circuits and thermal printheads for the hand-held calculators. The interview with him was going well and he took me to lunch in the cafeteria. The cafeteria at that time was in a small area of building 4 between the entrance to building 4 and the exit into building 3. He had been telling me these optimistic estimates of growth of the Corvallis site and how many thousands of people would be employed there. I suggested that the cafeteria looked awfully small to accommodate that many people. Big error! He had been involved in the decision on where to site the cafeteria and he was against building a separate cafeteria building and he was very defensive about any comment that the current one was too small. He ended up casting his vote against hiring me. The engineering people in Cupertino wanted to hire me but I probably would have lost out except my competitor for the job decided he didn't want to move to Corvallis. He did move to Corvallis two years later. Also a few years later the cafeteria was obviously way too small and a separate building was added north of building three. Anyway, I was offered the job and I took it. The task was to learn the technology for thermal printheads, hire an engineering staff, move the manufacturing to Corvallis and start it up without running out of inventory. I needed to get started!

Getting started meant flying out to Cupertino to work during the week and flying back for the weekend. I lived at Howard Johnsons during the week. I spent hours with Bob Waites who was a very talented engineering manager. The thermal printhead technology was new but most of it was built on processes familiar to me except for two: the depositions, which were done by sputtering; and a dry etch of the tantalum: aluminum film that was a combination of ion bombardment and chemical etch. What I observed immediately was that the engineers had not applied the standard techniques of process control. I concluded I didn't need a full team of engineers like had been required so far but I needed someone who knew the sputter process. Sputtering is basically a deposition technique whereby ions are created in plasma between the target material and the substrate to be deposited on and the ions are accelerated to the target where, by momentum transfer, they dislodge atoms from the target, which fly off in a broad cosine distribution with some falling on the substrate. With Bob Waites help I came across an engineer, John Vietor, who had been involved in process development work for years starting at Fairchild Semiconductor where a lot of the early integrated circuit development happened. He was an engineer by experience as opposed to degree and knew sputtering. I hired John, we learned the printhead processes from the few engineers still around, and we moved it to Corvallis without a hitch. I worked with John on putting my ideas for process control on the metal deposition process. This process first deposited a layer of sputtered tantulum:aluminum which would become the resistors used to fire the printhead and then a layer of aluminum over that layer to act as conductors. The inherited process depended on the resistance measurements at the end of the printhead process to feedback to the sputter deposition at the beginning of the process, a delay of a couple of days. My idea was to put special substrates in each deposition that were sacrificial and which would allow us to measure the resistivity and control the process immediately. After moving the processes to Corvallis, we soon had yields twice as high as any they had achieved in Cupertino and we were soon in excess inventory and slowing back production.

Back in Colorado we were preparing for the move back to Oregon. We needed to sell the house, find a place to live in Cupertino for a few months, move and transfer all the kids into new schools, and eventually find a house and move to Oregon. None of these came easy. We decided to just move whether the house sold or not. Our friends, Mike and Joan Keegan, agreed to keep Mark until he graduated since it would have been too much to transfer right at the end of his senior year, to say nothing of missing baseball.

Our car also was questionable for such a long trip so we decided to trade cars. Some of the boys and I went down to trade cars. The only instruction from Birdie was not black. So, we ended up with the black ford station wagon, which turned out to be one of the best cars we ever owned and one of Birdie's favorites. But its beginnings were a bit ominous. Soon after purchase we discovered that it would occasionally balk and refuse to run. I found that the fuel filter was plugged and with a new fuel filter we were off and running- for a time, until it plugged up again.

We had our stuff packed and hauled to Oregon by the movers. I had left the concrete yard Madonna (which I had bought for Birdie in Beaverton for a Mother's day gift) because it seemed at the time that it made more sense to buy a new one in Oregon than pay more to ship a chunk of concrete to Oregon. That was a bad logic. Birdie was upset and gave it to Joan Keegan. The Keegan's hauled it all the way to Oregon in their van to give it back to her. It is still recounted as an example of one of the many very bad decisions I have made in my life and Joan is still a close friend.

Our stuff was gone and the house had not sold.

We spent the last night in a motel in Colorado Springs. That evening the realtor got hold of us and presented an offer that we accepted. The house was sold and we were on our way in our station wagon with six kids and a dog and all of stuff we needed in California. The station wagon was loaded down.

The weather was great and we planned on traveling south so we could see the Grand Canyon and then come up through Nevada and cross wherever we could, hopefully in the Yosemite, a naïve thought. We traveled down to Montrose and turned south as we did when going to Mesa Verde but for some reason, maybe because it was scenic route to Telluride or maybe because it went more west or maybe both, we turned from the main road (to Gunnison) and took a bypass to hit highway 145 toward Cortez. We had to go over Lizard head pass and as we got up in altitude the weather turned a bit worse and suddenly turned into a horrible blizzard. I debated stopping and putting on chains but thought we would get through it quickly, and we did, although it was a pretty scary driving and we were glad when we made it to Cortez where we planned on spending the first night. We found a motel, but with one problem, no pets! We took it and snuck Tanya in and all went well. The next day we made it to the edge of the Grand Canyon but didn't have time to go down. We spent that night in Kingman, Arizona. The next day we traveled into Las Vegas and our car balked again at a stop light right in the middle of the city. We managed to push it across the intersection to a parking spot and I decided to verify if it was the same old plugged fuel filter problem. The fuel filter was right near the carburetor and was attached on both ends with rubber tubing, one to the fuel line and one to the carburetor. I pulled the rubber tubing off the carburetor end and it looked dry which indicated a plugged filter; but I thought it would be a good idea to turn the car over a time or two and make sure no fuel was coming out. I told Birdie to turn it over and she did. Big mistake! The engine immediately started and gas sprayed out of the filter I was holding and went all over the engine. The gas ignited on the exhaust manifold and Birdie shut off the car and she got everyone evacuated. I had been holding a rag that I dropped and I started trying to beat out the fire. A young man passing by stopped and took off his jacket and helped beat out the fire. A fire Marshall in a fire department pick-up passed by but pretended not to see us and didn't stop to help; I guess he only took care of the fires of locals. After a while I noticed that the remaining fire was mostly coming from the rag I had dropped, so I picked it up and the fire was done. I put in a new fuel filter (I had learned to always keep a spare) and we were back in business. The bystander who helped put out the fire refused everything we offered except he accepted a ride to where he was going; so, we dropped him off at a casino and we were on our way with a lifetime distaste for Las Vegas and especially their fire department!

The idea of crossing a pass into Yosemite in the middle of the winter was as ludicrous then as it had been for the Donner party years before. We ended up spending the night at Lake Tahoe. The next day we drove into Cupertino.

We somehow rented a house on Kintyre Way in San Jose that was medium sized by most standards but small for our family. We had kids sleeping in the living room and everywhere else there was room. We went to a place that rented furniture and rented all the things we needed for our estimated three-month stay. We had an orange tree in the backyard that was unusual for us. I don't remember ever getting any oranges and some claim it was a lemon tree. The kids went to school for three months there and that was a lot tougher than we anticipated, especially for Teresa and Matt who were nearing the end of high school. There was not enough time to get settled and develop friends and then we were gone again. Birdie had trouble with the smog and traffic and eventually we found her back roads to where she needed to go and she got around fine.

We did a few things while we were there but not much. One time we went to the beach in Santa Cruz and had a couple of mishaps. First, we took off our shoes and started across the sand only to discover it was super-hot and burnt our feet. We Oregonians had never heard of a beach where it was warm, let alone hot? Not like the beaches in Bandon where you left your shoes on to keep the feet warm. We danced back and put on our shoes. Second, we discovered that all of the parks charged to use their facilities. To lifelong Oregonians it seemed un-American. Little did we know that soon enough Californians would invade Oregon and install these unsavory practices there along with the other death spiraling concepts of liberalism. The third mishap occurred when we went to McDonalds for lunch. McDonalds had been touting a mint milk shake to celebrate St Patrick's Day. Being creative geniuses, the kids wanted to mix the mint with chocolate. So, I had ordered some $30 plus of McDonalds faire including 3 of both chocolate and mint milk shakes. In those days $30 bought a lot of McDonalds food and they fixed it all before they collected the money. So, when it was done and I went up to pay, I asked for an extra paper container for mixing the shakes. The clerk refused to give it to me unless I paid extra. So, I told them to keep all of it and we went to another fast-food restaurant across the street. Probably cost more and didn't taste as good, but principles are principles.

Birdie and David had a little dog encounter. Every day she walked to meet Dave at school and walk home with him. This day she took Tanya and, unbeknownst to her, Tanya had started to come into heat. On the way home a large dog became interested and began to move in. Birdie realized what was happening and took the three of them into the rest room. The male parked at the door and kept them captive for over an hour before he tired and left and they escaped home.

At work, John and I were trying to pick the brains of the engineers that were left and they were more interested in finding new jobs. They were finding jobs and leaving. The engineers were an interesting group. One of them told me he was going to leave HP and become a marriage counselor. He had just ended his fifth marriage and I guess he felt this provided real life experience that more than qualified him for the job. Bob Waites, the manager of the group, had gotten a position at HP Labs in Palo Alto but he stayed with us to the end and was a great help.

During spring break, we made a house-hunting trip to Oregon. We dropped three kids off each at Grandma Nettleton's and Lucky and Rose's houses; Teresa, Paul and David at Grandmas' and Matt, Kirstin and Mike at Lucky's. We went on to Corvallis and spent the week looking at houses. It was a problem; HP had moved a lot of managers and engineers in about a year earlier and most of the houses in the $60 - $70K price range had been gobbled up and naturally prices of cheaper houses had been increased to fill the void. Because of our knowledge of the smell from Wah Chang and the paper plant in Albany we would not look at houses in Albany. When we had only one day left and nothing acceptable to show for our time looking in Corvallis, and we were fed up with our realtor, we walked across the street from our motel to a different real estate office. We saw a house advertised in the window that looked interesting but upon inquiry we found it was in Albany. We talked to the realtor (named Derryberry) and he told us it was in North Albany and that North Albany was better than other areas of Albany. We agreed to take a look. He chose several houses in North Albany to show us and we were on our way. The house in the window had started out at something around $100 K and had been lowered a couple of times, was listed at $87K, but he said they were anxious to sell. That was out of our range. We took a look and loved the house. It was perfect for our family. The other houses in North Albany, including one on Thornton Lake, were not acceptable. We talked about it and decided since we had to leave and go back, we had nothing to lose by making an offer. We walked over to the realtor and told him we wanted to make an offer of $70K since that was as much as we could afford. He did not like it. He didn't want to make the offer and told us it would likely insult the seller and not even warrant a counteroffer. I insisted he make the offer and he did. We had to leave to go back before our offer was presented. We picked up our kids and headed back to Cupertino with no high hopes that we had solved the house problem. A few days later the realtor contacted me, somewhat chagrinned, and told me that they had countered with two conditions. First, they wanted $75K and second, they wanted to close on June first, we had stipulated July first since we wouldn't be arriving until sometime in June. I countered with $71K if they leave their riding lawn mower and gas BBQ grill (which I had seen in the garage) and we agreed to close on June 1st. It was accepted! Later it was found that he had a tax lien and he had to put off the closing to July 1st. Probably the best financial deal we made in our lives.

Birdie flew out to Colorado Springs to celebrate Mark's birthday. She flew out of the San Jose airport. I took her to the flight and accompanied her to her plane. On the return I was supposed to meet her at the plane. However, the airport had changed the rules while she was gone and no longer allowed anyone without tickets to go all the way to the gates. So, Birdie was waiting and I was blocked and it was before the era of cell phones, at least for the masses. I don't remember how the stalemate was ended but it did, probably not without a whimper!

Teresa got a cat while we were there. She named it "Precious" and we nicknamed it "worthless". It was quite a good cat. It was really little when she got it. It would climb in Tanya's feeding dish and sleep. This was very frustrating for Tanya. She wouldn't hurt the kitten but she didn't like her feeding dish occupied. She didn't know what to do, so she just stewed. Otherwise, the two got along quite well.

When Mark graduated, Birdie and I both flew back for the graduation and then drove the Volkswagen back with Mark. Once all of Mark's stuff was loaded into the VW bug, there was barely room for the three of us. We took the straightest route from Colorado Springs through Utah and Nevada to California. Things were pretty uneventful until we got into Nevada. At one point, we were traveling through a desolate area (I think it was about 100 miles between towns) and we came upon a motorist who had broken down. We stopped and agreed to give him a ride to the nearest town, which I believe was 60 plus miles a way. Birdie rearranged stuff in the back seat and some of it had to be held by her and Mark as we proceeded with this guy. We hadn't gone more than about one mile from where he had broken down until we came upon another stranded motorist, this one had been pulling a horse trailer with three horses. We stopped and our first passenger agreed to make contact with someone this fellow knew in the town we were going to. So, we took him to the town and we impressed upon him our desire that he make sure the other guy was not left stranded and he agreed to do it. Hopefully it turned out good. We continued on and arrived in Cupertino. These excursions gave us a greater and lasting love of Oregon!

With Mark in Cupertino the family started playing games. Mark was always the game starter. One of the neighbors commented to Birdie that she knew who organized games since they didn't start until Mark arrived. The weather in Cupertino was marvelous. Unfortunately, when you have wonderful weather, it attracts bugs and snails and lots of people. We were not fond of either.

John and I supervised the preparing and loading of all the thin film equipment in trucks for the trip to Corvallis. Birdie and I loaded up our belongings and children and dog and Teresa's cat in our bug and station wagon and headed north for the last leg of our return to Oregon. We spent one night in some cabins somewhere in California and upon arriving in Corvallis we were lodged in Nendel's Inn until we could get into our house. That was fun that lasted most of the first day then we suffered until we could move in on Meadow Wood. Living in a motel with seven children and a dog and a cat is overrated!

When the furniture arrived, the gun my grandfather had given me didn't come with the rest. After much interrogation it was finally delivered and the explanation was that it was separated and put away for safe keeping for us. I believed the put away part. The next step in this adventure called life was ready to begin. Since being married we had lived in 11 houses in 19 years, but we would stay in the house on Meadow Wood for at least the next 38 years. No longer vagabonds!

link to Chapter 7
CH7_Story

link to go back to table of contents
Let Us Learn Table of Contents