Anyone who drives through our National Forests will see signs similar to the above reminding us to be careful. These signs have been around a long time. This photograph was taken by my father in the early 1960’s and I scanned it from a slide that he had made. The sign was just outside Payson, Arizona on the Tonto National Forest. Dad was the Tonto District Ranger for the United States Forest Service at the time.
I’ve been a bad blogger lately and I’m sorry. I’ve been traveling. I used to prepare posts in advance for that but I don’t generally any longer. I like the interchange and conversations with other bloggers and it is hard to do when I am on the road or visiting somebody. Plus it is nice to get away a little bit and refresh and get more ideas and photographs and stuff.
The family went up to Idaho for a family reunion and to visit my Dad and we had a great time and I’ll be posting about the trip in the coming days.
I took my fancy schamancy all purpose scanner with me and scanned several hundred of Dad’s slides from the 1950’s and 60’s while I was there. The above photo is one of them. The little girl is my sister Ellen (Check out her blog News from the “Pole” Yard), then me to the left, and brother Bob to the right. It is on the square in Santa Fe and I’m guessing that it is 1962 or 1963. Santa Fe back then was a tourist town sure but real people lived there back then and they did their shopping downtown in amongst the tourist shops.
Note the 29 cent hamburgers, and the guys walking down the street with their cowboy hats on. Also note the rolled up cuffs on the jeans Bob and I are wearing. Anyway, there has not been a dime store on the square in Santa Fe for decades and I’m sure that it is some sort of expensive art gallery now. Hamburgers are probably a bit more than 29 cents also.
I’m spending a few days in San Antonio at a convention. I go here about ever other year and it is real nice. The hotel is real nice and right on the Riverwalk. But this post isn’t about that. It’s about my first time in San Antonio a short, oh lets say 36 years ago.
Don’t snicker, you aren’t so young yourself. I had just graduated from College and started work for Mobil Oil Corporation in Victoria, Texas just a couple hours or less from San Antonio.
One of the summer employees at the plant was from Texas, a big friendly guy named Mike. He and I became friends and one day he asked if I wanted to go with him to visit his girlfriend in San Antonio. Sure, lets go I said. So off we went. Truth was I had never heard him say anything about a girlfriend.
Turns out that she was a student at Saint Mary’s University. We got there and she was all in tears and crying and boo hooing and all that. She was the only daughter of a south Texas Rancher. Her daddy owned a big huge ranch. Small ranches in south Texas would be huge everywhere else so a big huge ranch might be kind of like Rhode Island or something. So she was used to a life of privilege. Just to give you an idea, her car that she drove was a late 1970’s model Cadillac Eldorado.
(ecarlist.com)
Her problem was that her suitemates were mean to her and made fun of her all the time and she wanted to go home. So Mike had his hands full trying to convince her to stay in school.
It was decided that we would go downtown and see the Riverwalk. So we loaded up in her car, of course, my Toyota Corolla definitely wasn’t going to get the job done. Not for a girl that wouldn’t settle for anything but white leather under her butt.
;
Now the Riverwalk was a different thing way back when. It was a fraction of the size it is now. They didn’t have all the nice restaurants that are there now nor quite the genteel atmosphere. Nor did they have all the canal boats giving tours like they do now. I remember that people were renting those two person little paddle boats and tool around them on the canal. They were everywhere. There were lots of young servicemen on leave and they were wandering around looking for stuff to do.
We did all the tourist stuff. We walked the Riverwalk, ate, went to Hemisfair and went up the tower. The whole time she was weepy and crying and Mike was doing his Barry White thing (“Cmon Baby, it’ll be alright…”
Anyways, I had of boring time being the third wheel on that adventure. However, it was the only time I got sit my butt on white leather my whole life. Mike and I ventured back to Victoria. He went back to school and got his degree and went to work for Exxon and I lost track of him after a while. I don’t know whether he and the princess ever got married. (I doubt it, she was always going to be Daddy’s girl, I could tell that.)
So that is the story of my first trip to San Antonio.
Have you ever sat your butt down on white leather? In a car I mean.
At the Rim Country Museum in Payson, Arizona stands a monument to forest fire fighters who perished in the area.
There are way too many names on the plaque. Six of them are from the nearby 1990 “Dude Fire.” Three people are from 1961 within a week of each other. I knew one of them. Constantine (Corky) Kodz was a Forest Service employee working as a fire observer in a plane that collided with another airplane over a forest fire known as the “Hatchery Fire” near Payson. Corky was not only a coworker of my Dad but Corky, his wife, and kids were close family friends and also members of our church. Kodz’s death was the first that I remember and it shook me up quite a bit. Especially seeing his wife and kids learning how to go on without their husband and father.
So excuse me if I get a little irritated when some people talk about how civil servants are lazy and don’t work hard..
Psalm 34:18
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit
Thomas Wolfe was wrong, you can go home again, you might get a little dizzy though! The week before last me, my Dad, my Sister Ellen, and Brother Bob went to Payson, Arizona for a church reunion that my parents helped start back in the early 1960’s. We lived there back then you see, Ellen doesn’t have any memories but that is where she was born. Dad was the Payson District Ranger on the Tonto National Forest.
Back then Payson was out in the sticks so the government provided us a house. This is where we lived. It was exactly like the house we left in Coyote, NM where Dad was a Ranger for the Santa Fe National Forest. I remember every detail about the houses. Or at least I think I do. Now it is a storehouse for the local parks department.It is just exactly like I remember except it was yellow when we lived in it.
Here we are, Ellen, Brother Bob, Dad, and yours truly. Best BIL in the world, Irv took the pic. (Sister Ellen’s post on this trip.)
This is Dad’s former office. Now part of the Rim Country Museum in Payson. It was closed the day we were there but the nice people at the museum opened it up for us.
A listing of the Rangers. Dad is listed as the Ranger from January 1960 to July 1962. We were proud of him then, and we are proud of him now.
The getting dizzy swooning part is when we went into the main part of the museum. It used to be the Assistant Ranger’s house. I hadn’t been in it for about 50 years. The details I remembered were overwhelming. It is bizarre to go into somebody’s house that you knew very well and it is now a museum.
The biggest shock and vertigo was the next door elementary school. I went to First Grade there and now the brand spanking new school is named after my first grade teacher. I had her in her 45th year of teaching. Everybody now speaks of her in reverent terms about how great she was. Maybe so but from my first grader’s perspective she invented shock and awe. Have you ever been slapped out of your seat and onto the floor. I have!! I have to tell you though that doing some research on Julia Randall I have some newfound respect for her. She started teaching at age 17 in 1916. She taught first grade from 1923 until she retired in 1969. The Payson Roundup website has a great article on her. She really was a true western pioneer teacher.
The old Ranger Station is now a very nice park with ponds and fountains and such. This used to be where the Forest Service had the helicopter landing pad and close to the warehouse where the guys who worked for Dad used to work when they weren’t out fighting fires. Brother Bob and I told him how we used to go pester his guys and he was shocked.
You see the Forest Fire fighters nowdays may train by playing frisbee football. The guys we knew way back when trained on whiskey, cigarettes, and poker. Dad was a little shocked that we hung around them. He got doubly shocked on this trip when Bob and I told him about jumping off the platforms they used way back when to teach the firefighters how to jump out of hovering helicopters. Of course brother and I were shocked that he was shocked. He wanted to know what else we did. We think we may have told him too much already.
Anyway, I have to tell you I was very happy over going back to Payson. The woods that brother Bob and I roamed are now there for everybody to enjoy, Dad’s work, and the work of others like him is honored, and everything looks great!
My favorite Christmas decorations are nativity scenes. The stores are loaded with them. All sorts of styles to choose from.
We have several in our house. Sweetie does a great job with them.
This one below is special to me. It is not the fanciest one we have.
I got it in 1986 right after I moved to Oklahoma City from Dallas. In those days before the internet and Amazon.com you ordered novelty merchandise out of catalogs. Remember all the catalogs from those days? Lands End, and Eddie Bauer were just the beginning. Anyway my secretary, whom I’ll call Frances, was the catalog queen in the office. She’d find something cool and several people would order it. Anyway she found this nativity scene and several of us in the office ordered one. I don’t know why I did, I was single and didn’t decorate for Christmas but I liked it.
Lake Hefner (Copyright © 2010 by Laura Anne Heller used by Creative Commons License on Flickr)
A subsequent summer Frances drowned after falling off a sailboat during a midnight cruise on Lake Hefner with her new boyfriend. She wasn’t wearing a life jacket and didn’t know how to swim. It being at night the guy couldn’t see her and a sailboat is not the most maneuverable thing around. They didn’t find her body until the sun came up the subsequent morning.
It was a real mess. She had left her long time boyfriend of many years a few weeks before. But he was still the beneficiary of her life insurance, 401K, all that stuff. It was a real heart breaker. He got it all and he kept it all and I dealt with both him and her family through the whole process. It was a sad and stressful time, for a long time, for everybody who knew her.
We were kind of a tight knit little group and the loss and chaos afterward hit us hard. This was in the midst of the mid 1980’s oil bust that knocked all of Oklahoma for a loop. It seemed that things were never going to get better but eventually of course they did.
Christmas is many things to many people and to me a big part of it is remembering Christmases past especially people who are gone. I always think of Frances at Christmas and how things often don’t turn out the way we plan and that life is fragile. I also learned that people are resilient and although they may never forget something somehow they get through it.
“She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus,because he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21 NIV)
And of course I learned that you need to keep your beneficiaries current on your life insurance, 401K’s, and such to help out the people you leave behind because you really don’t know when something is going to happen to you.
I’m linking up with That’s Baloney today for her perfect pairing day.
We went camping a few weeks ago. We needed some ice so I went looking for some. Couldn’t find it anywhere so I had to drive a ways.
Except for this.
A Shell Station. Hmmmm. What’s wrong with a Shell Station? For a guy that used to work for BP I sure seem picky. Well let me tell you about Shell Oil. I used to work for them also. When they sold the assets I was working on, they included a clause in a bidding agreement that prospective purchasers agreed to not hire the employees of the assets unless they bought the assets. Huh!!! Yep that caused a few problems since everybody in the natural gas gathering and processing business in Oklahoma bid on the assets. Employment lawyer’s office said, “you have a great case if you can prove damages.” Good luck with that.
So as Sweetie can testify I do not buy gasoline from Shell and certainly not ice. It’s not an option. So I drove another five miles, for a total of about 15 miles round trip to find some ice.
Of course I felt pretty stupid when I drove back to the State Park where we were camping. Note the striking mid century modern Eufaula State Park Office.
Notice the big old white ice machine out front?
A fish slap for a blind crusty gas guy. One for Shell also!
Have you ever done anything as dumb as that? You don’t need to elaborate.
Mrs. Albright over at Real Housewives of Oklahoma wants to know what our worst job ever was. My first thought was, “I have never had a bad job.” Then I thought, well wait a minute…
My second job out of college was working as the Plant Process Engineer for a large natural gas processing plant in a small town in east Texas for a large independent oil company. It was the late 1970’s and the first oil boom was in full swing and things were wild.
The Plant Superintendent was a drunk and on the take. The Area Manager was in way over his head. The plant was old, overloaded, and very profitable. Shoot, everything connected with the business was profitable at the time.
I worked there for about nine months until I got transferred to another plant located near Houston.
In those nine months, the plant had nine fires. Eight of those fires didn’t hurt anybody.
One of the fires was a propane vapor flash in our refrigeration compression building. Three guys were walking into the building when the propane vapor in it ignited. There was no explosion just a flash like when you are trying to light your grill and it takes a while and then it goes “whuff” and it lights. Only this was on a lot bigger scale.
The guy leading the trio was burned very badly on his upper body, hands, face, and neck. He was a new employee only there a few months. He was terminated immediately, probably before the helicopter got him to the burn unit in Dallas. When he got out of the hospital months later the company gave him a contract job as a janitor in the office.
After the accident, as stated by a car accident law firm, something I’ll never forget was seeing something that looked like cellophane hanging a metal handrail. I looked at it real close and it had whorls and patterns. I realized that it was the guy’s skin from his hands that stuck to the rail as he staggered back out of the building after the flash and grabbed the rail.
The guy behind him was a more veteran employee. He was a Plant Operator which meant that he had to work a rotating shift. His main injuries were to the sides of his face. He was off work for several weeks with his injuries. When he came back, they kept him but made him work shifts even though he asked repeatedly just to work days as working nights caused him too much anxiety. He told me that his skin sounded like bacon in a frying pan when the flash fire happened.
The third guy was the Lead Mechanic. His burns were mainly his hands. They caused him a lot of discomfort. I remember being in the Plant Superintendent’s staff meeting where he told the Maintenance Foreman to make sure that the mechanic was not allowed to go inside to warm his hands up in the winter. They were trying to make him retire you see.
I could tell you a lot more but I’ve probably wrote too much already. I was not happy with the slipshod half ass maintenance and operation of the place and the overheated concentration on production at the expense of safety. Thanks to the attorneys of a traffic accident law firm in McAllen who helped me to claim my compensation for my injury that helped me to recover faster and also I was able to finagle myself a better job (I’m good at finagling!) into a much safer situation. You can also use the help of Baltimore injury attorneys for hire who can help you to recover full compensation for the injury caused.
That company eventually got bought out by another company and the plant was spun off to yet another company. The Gas Processing industry is very safety oriented now. Most companies keep the safety department’s management totally apart from the operations management so there is not the pressure to continue unsafe situations. Plus there are lots more Federal and State regulation of safety. Things are night and day compared between now and then.
I became an Operations Manager in Oklahoma in the mid 1980’s. I only had one lost time injury among my 55 guys and gals during my tenure (which is one injury too many, so I’m not bragging.) I’m not sure how good a boss I was but my biggest fear was having to call somebody’s wife or parent to tell them that their husband or son was hurt. I never had to do that (the one injury was a sore back) and I’m grateful for that.
Go check out the RHOK Stars. Tell them what your worst job was.
When I pulled up in the parking lot of the Equestrian Facility where SuperPizzaBoy is taking his Hippotherapy Sessions my dog Pierre ran to greet me.
Pierre is one cool dog. Of course I had never seen this dog before in my life, but he knew that he was my dog and was ready to jump in old 666BOI and go home with me. Before you get your pup trained here, buy them toys or give them a cozy spot, you should have an attachment. We had it.
Because Pierre knew that he was my dog and he had never seen me before in his life.
Of course we couldn’t go home right then and there because we had to watch SPB in the arena.
Are you wondering what I’m talking about? Well let me tell you a story.
Way back when, just before the last of the dinosaurs died out, young Yogi and his family lived in the Ranger Station at Payson, Arizona. We lived in a government issue cinder block house. Here is Yogi with his siblings. (Isn’t Yogi’s sister cute as a button?)
About every two or three months on a Saturday morning when we were all still in bed, Dad would yell, “Here’s Pierre!” and we could hear these dog toenails click clacking down the government linoleum in our hall and run into the bedroom I shared with my brother and jump up onto our bed and just go crazy jumping and licking and barking. It was a magical joyous occasion when Pierre showed up.
Being the little kids that we were we never wondered why or how Pierre got to our house. We just knew that he was there for a little while and then he was gone.
So whenever I see a Basset Hound, I know what his name is and I know that he is mine. And he knows that his name is Pierre and he is mine.
But I have never taken him home.
Those of you that have read this blog know that I am crazy about geocaching. I started about 7 years ago and have been at it ever since. For several years my wife Sweetie, and SuperPizzaBoy geocached with me but they have backslided, fallen of the wagon, and left the one true path so I have been pressing on mostly by myself.
One of my goals over the years was to find 1000 caches. That is not that great a number actually. I have known geocachers that have found that many in a year. I ran into a couple geocachers in California that had over 14,000 each. For my type of geocaching, keeping it fun, I can average about three or four a week and I’m happy.
Recently I got up to 994 geocaches just prior to a family reunion in western Oklahoma this past weekend. I was going to have leave everybody on Sunday to drive to Wichita, KS for the Kansas Independent Oil and Gas Association annual convention. That drive Sunday was my opportunity to get to a 1000 caches.
So off I went, first a trip down memory lane,
Believe it or not, I hope that you don’t hold it against me but I used to work for BP many moons ago. While working for them I bought the above office building for them. It is right on Highway 66 and just over the fence from I-40. I paid only $85K for it during a bad oilfield depression. The addition behind it? My old boss, one of the nicest guys I ever worked with, still gets mad about it, almost 20 years later. We were expanding and I asked him how much money I could spend. He said $100,000. I said OK. So when I bid the building out, I told the contractors that the bid was $100,000. The winner would be the one who gave me the best building for that amount. I thought that was pretty clever. My boss thought otherwise.
And oh, if you think that it looks a little bleak. You are right. The front double door was added by a subsequent owner. When I worked there, whenever somebody walked into the front door on a windy day all the acoustic ceiling panels would raise up. Hey what do you expect for $85,000.
Oops, I’m sorry, this is a geocaching post. Well, guess what there is a geocache close to the building. How did you guess? I think it was number 996.
I headed down route 66 to find a few more caches. I just love Route 66. I love interstates even more!!
In Yukon Oklahoma right outside Oklahoma City, I found this cute cache.
I might use a different shot of this for a Ruby Tuesday post. What do you think?
Later on, I had to get off Interstate 35 to go find a cache.
I just love dirt roads. Love’em love’em love’em.
This is where I found #1000, near a cemetery. Cemetery geocaches are great. I had to poke around a little bit before I found it. Why did it have to be on the other side of a barbed wire fence in some heavy brush? Why?
Wow, a 1000!!!! The crowd went crazy!!
You didn’t know geoaching was a spectator sport did you? Shows what you know?
Anyway, now what? I guess that I’ll go find some more!