Donald Rogers
Oct. 19, 2015
Driving Across Nevada
Driving across Nevada is good practice for life.
Three years ago I-5 was blocked at Wells, NV, and we were forced to turn back to Wendover on a rainy night, then turned south for about 100 miles, turned back northwest through Secret Pass to intersect I-5 at Halleck. We got home about four hours late.
Two years ago we were stopped 25 miles north of Las Vegas by a flash flood across Hwy 95. We turned around, went forty miles back the way we came, turned west on Hwy 160 through Pahrump, NV, and came around Mt Charleston on the south side on Blue Diamond Rd. We got in about two hours late.
Today we were stopped at Beatty, NV, and told all roads through Lathrop Wells were blocked by deep water and there was no alternate route in Nevada for at least a day. I asked about Death Valley, but he couldn’t tell me what was happening there except all of southern California and Nevada have been deluged with major thunderstorms and flooding for two days.
So it looked like a good day to see Death Valley to me. I consulted with some of the other stranded drivers and we decided to go for it. I had a full tank of gas, enough food and drink for a week and we were looking for adventure anyway.
We had a beautiful trip through Death Valley. It was only 91ยบ at 3:00 PM in the afternoon at Furnace Creek, and we only had to ford shallow water half a dozen times on State Line Road just south of Death Valley Junction. We got in to our room about three hours late this time.
Life seldom goes exactly the way we planned it, but the detours can be more fun than we expected.
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Shoes
Donald Rogers
October 27, 2015
Shoes
How my life has been ruled by shoes.
My wife and I have decided to tear out the carpet in this house, and replace it with laminate flooring, which is not too expensive and looks great. I wish I had done it years ago when my wife was suffering with pulmonary problems and asthma, and spending a lot of time breathing inhalers and nebulizers trying to get back to breathing easily again. She first started having breathing difficulties after we bought new carpet for the front room years ago. I wish I had been more observant and noticed the connection then.
Since we replaced the carpet with laminate flooring a year ago in the front rooms, she has not had to use the inhaler or nebulizer at all, so we are going to do the back bedrooms now. This entails a lot of work moving furniture out and emptying the room so we can rip up the carpet, pull out the nails and tacks, and sand the floor down smooth.
The hardest part for me seems to be the shoes. Back in a corner of the bedroom was a pile of shoes gathering dust, most of which hadn’t been worn in years. I must have some kind of obsession, because it causes me anxiety to contemplate throwing out shoes that still have some wear left in them.
I suspect that Imelda Marcos and I have the same obsession. (When she and her husband were driven out of Manila by a revolution, thousands of pairs of Imelda's shoes were found in the presidential palace). I’m pretty sure we share very little genetic material. I’m not that familiar with Imelda’s childhood, but I’ll bet she was not raised rich enough to have new shoes for the asking, at least not until she got older and married into wealth. I was raised by my mother after my dad left the family, and for several years in my childhood shoes were a scarce and luxurious commodity.
I remember going to school with holes in the soles of my shoes, which I covered with cereal box cardboard insoles every day so my feet would not actually be walking on the ground. Luckily I lived in central California, and the weather was never cold enough to worry about frozen feet.
I also remember the soles would come loose from the tops out in front of my toes, and trying to lift my feet a little higher so that the sole wouldn’t catch and fold back under my foot. It wasn’t just the discomfort that I worried about, but the idea that some other person would see that and know how worn out my shoes were. I remember the embarrassment of being asked about the loose sole once, and trying to make light of it by explaining it worked well for scooping up coins from the sidewalk.
One time my great uncle Roy took me downtown to a “surplus” store where people took used clothing for poorer people to rummage through. It was similar to a Goodwill or Salvation Army store, but I don’t remember any prices—I think you just took it away if you liked it. It was on 16th Street in Merced, CA, which was “Skid Row” then, before the freeway went through. All those bars and flophouses are parking lots now.
Anyway, under one of the rude wooden tables where the clothing was laid, was a pile of shoes of all sizes and styles, most of which were for adults and were much too large for me. But as I crawled around under the table, I found a pair of shoes, “tennis” shoes, sort of, with laces from the toe to the top, ankle high, that not only fit, they were barely worn. Most wondrous of all, instead of being made from canvas, which would wear out quickly, they were completely leather! I’ve never seen any like them, before or since.
I stayed under the table putting on those shoes because I wanted to make sure that they would be mine and nobody could take them away. I emerged with the old, decrepit shoes in my hand, looking for a trash can. Uncle Roy looked just as surprised as I did when he saw those shoes. We both left very happy and satisfied.
For many months thereafter I wore those shoes everywhere. Not only to school, but to church, too! They outlasted any other shoe I had ever worn—especially the ones we bought at Karl’s Shoe Store, which my mother swore were made of cardboard instead of leather.
So when I look at that pile of old shoes in the corner of my bedroom, still with intact soles and no holes in the bottom, I just have a terrible time throwing them away, even though they may be scuffed and misshapen. I think to myself, out here on the farm nobody will notice if I use them again, even though I never do.
Not many people will understand my obsession. Just me and Imelda.
October 27, 2015
Shoes
How my life has been ruled by shoes.
My wife and I have decided to tear out the carpet in this house, and replace it with laminate flooring, which is not too expensive and looks great. I wish I had done it years ago when my wife was suffering with pulmonary problems and asthma, and spending a lot of time breathing inhalers and nebulizers trying to get back to breathing easily again. She first started having breathing difficulties after we bought new carpet for the front room years ago. I wish I had been more observant and noticed the connection then.
Since we replaced the carpet with laminate flooring a year ago in the front rooms, she has not had to use the inhaler or nebulizer at all, so we are going to do the back bedrooms now. This entails a lot of work moving furniture out and emptying the room so we can rip up the carpet, pull out the nails and tacks, and sand the floor down smooth.
The hardest part for me seems to be the shoes. Back in a corner of the bedroom was a pile of shoes gathering dust, most of which hadn’t been worn in years. I must have some kind of obsession, because it causes me anxiety to contemplate throwing out shoes that still have some wear left in them.
I suspect that Imelda Marcos and I have the same obsession. (When she and her husband were driven out of Manila by a revolution, thousands of pairs of Imelda's shoes were found in the presidential palace). I’m pretty sure we share very little genetic material. I’m not that familiar with Imelda’s childhood, but I’ll bet she was not raised rich enough to have new shoes for the asking, at least not until she got older and married into wealth. I was raised by my mother after my dad left the family, and for several years in my childhood shoes were a scarce and luxurious commodity.
I remember going to school with holes in the soles of my shoes, which I covered with cereal box cardboard insoles every day so my feet would not actually be walking on the ground. Luckily I lived in central California, and the weather was never cold enough to worry about frozen feet.
I also remember the soles would come loose from the tops out in front of my toes, and trying to lift my feet a little higher so that the sole wouldn’t catch and fold back under my foot. It wasn’t just the discomfort that I worried about, but the idea that some other person would see that and know how worn out my shoes were. I remember the embarrassment of being asked about the loose sole once, and trying to make light of it by explaining it worked well for scooping up coins from the sidewalk.
One time my great uncle Roy took me downtown to a “surplus” store where people took used clothing for poorer people to rummage through. It was similar to a Goodwill or Salvation Army store, but I don’t remember any prices—I think you just took it away if you liked it. It was on 16th Street in Merced, CA, which was “Skid Row” then, before the freeway went through. All those bars and flophouses are parking lots now.
Anyway, under one of the rude wooden tables where the clothing was laid, was a pile of shoes of all sizes and styles, most of which were for adults and were much too large for me. But as I crawled around under the table, I found a pair of shoes, “tennis” shoes, sort of, with laces from the toe to the top, ankle high, that not only fit, they were barely worn. Most wondrous of all, instead of being made from canvas, which would wear out quickly, they were completely leather! I’ve never seen any like them, before or since.
I stayed under the table putting on those shoes because I wanted to make sure that they would be mine and nobody could take them away. I emerged with the old, decrepit shoes in my hand, looking for a trash can. Uncle Roy looked just as surprised as I did when he saw those shoes. We both left very happy and satisfied.
For many months thereafter I wore those shoes everywhere. Not only to school, but to church, too! They outlasted any other shoe I had ever worn—especially the ones we bought at Karl’s Shoe Store, which my mother swore were made of cardboard instead of leather.
So when I look at that pile of old shoes in the corner of my bedroom, still with intact soles and no holes in the bottom, I just have a terrible time throwing them away, even though they may be scuffed and misshapen. I think to myself, out here on the farm nobody will notice if I use them again, even though I never do.
Not many people will understand my obsession. Just me and Imelda.
Sunday, October 18, 2015
The Toughest Woman I Know
Donald Rogers
October 17, 2015
The Toughest Woman I Know
“What are you keeping from me?” she asked, an accusing look in her eye.
“Nothing” I replied. “What do you mean?”
“Well, where did the boy come from?”
“Which boy?”
“The little baby boy I carried home in my arms over the mountain” she said.
“Let’s lay down on the bed, and we’ll talk about it” I suggested. “This may take awhile.”
“Are you talking about Wes?” I continued after we got comfortable face to face on the bed.
My heart fell when she said, “Yes.”
The holes in her memory are getting into major stuff. Last spring it was a granddaughter she lost. Now it’s our son.
“I remember holding the baby in my arms as you drove back home,” she said. “But you didn’t say where he came from. Is he ours? Who gave him to us?”
“You did,” I said. “We drove ninety miles in a snowstorm across Dallas Divide, between Nucla and Montrose, Colorado, to get to the hospital where you gave birth to Wes.”
There was a long silence as Carolyn tried to retrieve the memory—without success.
Finally she asked, “Are you sure?”
“You are going to have to trust me.” I told her. “This damn disease you have is breaking down connections in your brain. You don’t have to try to remember if the memory isn’t there “
Tears appeared in her eyes.
Mine, too.
After a minute she said,”But I don’t want to forget everything. I want to get better again!”
“I want you to get better, too,” I said. But I don’t know how to help you. I’d give anything to make this go away!”
There was a long pause as we both contemplated the future.
“Were you with me in the hospital?”
“Yes, I held your hand and we practiced deep breathing and relaxation as the contractions came, just like we had read in that Lamaze book.”
“Was there a mean old nurse?” she asked.
It seemed to me she remembered the event, or at least some of it. She just couldn’t place it in context.
“Yes, there was," I answered. “But you made a believer out of her before it was over. There was a young girl in the next bed, also in labor, and she was screaming and making a lot of noise, so the nurses were spending most of their time with her. When she finally came over to see how you were doing, she nearly panicked, because you were ready to deliver. That old nurse really admired your quiet courage. I think it was her last day on the job before she retired.”
“Yeah" Carolyn said. “She kept saying ‘don’t push, don’t push’ as they wheeled me in the gurney down to the delivery room.”
“So that was Wes, huh?” She paused, and then said, “Where is he now?”
“He lives in Oregon with his wife Theresa and our granddaughter Paige.”
“That is the same one?” she asked.
“I have an idea, “ I told her. “Even though your memory has holes in it, if you let me retell the story, we can enjoy the recollection together, and maybe some of those memories can go back to some other part of your brain for a while. I would love to tell those stories again if you would like.”
“I’d like that, “ she said. “I love you!”
“I love you, too!” I said.
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Universal Gun Access
Don Rogers
October 13, 2015
Universal Gun Access
Liberals are going about it all wrong.
For years, Liberals (mostly Democrats) have tried to get gun control legislation passed to ban certain weapon types, accessories, or ammunition. They have been largely unsuccessful, and in the process lost a lot of one issue, NRA voters. As long as they continue to hammer away at restricting gun ownership, or banning certain types of weapons they will continue to beat their head against the wall so to speak. It is too easy to paint this as another attempt to take away “freedom.”
And yet even most NRA members would like to find some way to stop the increasingly horrendous mass school shootings. They blame mental issues, violent movie and video games, and other causes for the spate of killers in our midst. I see a way to speak to both sides, with a chance of compromise at the end.
Did you know that you can own your own fully auto machine gun? Would you like to have your own M-60 tank to drive around the boonies? All you have to do is show your smart enough and sane enough to get certified. Every year hundreds of people shoot themselves or their family while “cleaning” their weapon of choice, whether it’s a pistol or rifle or shotgun. We know you aren’t that clueless, so if you can show you can do that safely, we will authorize you to own one of these weapons also. We will offer free training for those who might not have had a chance to learn about the safe handling of weapons. We have created a program that funds either the National Guard or local NRA to provide instructors and training on your favorite weapon. We want everyone who likes to shoot skeet, target practice, or go hunting to have that opportunity, and we want you to be able to do it safely, both for yourself and for those around you. Don’t you know you would feel really bad if you went bird hunting and accidentally shot your friend in the face? Sign up today, and get your certification on any weapon you choose. Don’t wait—this may be a limited time offer!
Yep, I’m sure most of you can see what I did there. By offering training we get to screen out the incompetent and insane, and either get them trained and competent or get them mental help. We fund the NRA to provide training, which they are already good at, and maybe get them on the side of responsible, legal gun ownership. Don’t even think about going out to confiscate weapons. Don’t even think about banning or restricting anything. But if someone is seen packing a weapon in public, he may be stopped and asked to show his license proving he is safe and competent to be armed, just as you may be stopped in your car and asked to show your driver’s license.
You may say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one, for sure!
October 13, 2015
Universal Gun Access
Liberals are going about it all wrong.
For years, Liberals (mostly Democrats) have tried to get gun control legislation passed to ban certain weapon types, accessories, or ammunition. They have been largely unsuccessful, and in the process lost a lot of one issue, NRA voters. As long as they continue to hammer away at restricting gun ownership, or banning certain types of weapons they will continue to beat their head against the wall so to speak. It is too easy to paint this as another attempt to take away “freedom.”
And yet even most NRA members would like to find some way to stop the increasingly horrendous mass school shootings. They blame mental issues, violent movie and video games, and other causes for the spate of killers in our midst. I see a way to speak to both sides, with a chance of compromise at the end.
Did you know that you can own your own fully auto machine gun? Would you like to have your own M-60 tank to drive around the boonies? All you have to do is show your smart enough and sane enough to get certified. Every year hundreds of people shoot themselves or their family while “cleaning” their weapon of choice, whether it’s a pistol or rifle or shotgun. We know you aren’t that clueless, so if you can show you can do that safely, we will authorize you to own one of these weapons also. We will offer free training for those who might not have had a chance to learn about the safe handling of weapons. We have created a program that funds either the National Guard or local NRA to provide instructors and training on your favorite weapon. We want everyone who likes to shoot skeet, target practice, or go hunting to have that opportunity, and we want you to be able to do it safely, both for yourself and for those around you. Don’t you know you would feel really bad if you went bird hunting and accidentally shot your friend in the face? Sign up today, and get your certification on any weapon you choose. Don’t wait—this may be a limited time offer!
Yep, I’m sure most of you can see what I did there. By offering training we get to screen out the incompetent and insane, and either get them trained and competent or get them mental help. We fund the NRA to provide training, which they are already good at, and maybe get them on the side of responsible, legal gun ownership. Don’t even think about going out to confiscate weapons. Don’t even think about banning or restricting anything. But if someone is seen packing a weapon in public, he may be stopped and asked to show his license proving he is safe and competent to be armed, just as you may be stopped in your car and asked to show your driver’s license.
You may say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one, for sure!
Monday, April 6, 2015
Love and Marriage
I received the bad news about my brother Gene and his wife Carolyn splitting up a couple of days ago. I've been mulling over what it is about the Rogers' boys through a couple of generations that seems to make it difficult to stay with just one wife. I'm the outlier here, and sometimes it worries me, and makes me take stock of the condition of my marriage. I think that's a good thing for every marriage now and then, kind of like rebooting the computer to get a fresh start.
Speaking of computers, as I was perusing my Document folder I ran across this love letter I wrote to my Carolyn about seven years ago. Sometimes as we get older we forget that the younger generation needs to know from us what makes for a happy life and what makes for a happy marriage. We can't just keep silent and hope they can figure it out for themselves.
Since I'm writing to adults here, hopefully, I'm not going to edit this old letter, and I'll follow up with some clarification, since I was writing to someone who remembered all the places and events I mentioned.
**********************************
A Letter to my Lover,
Without any legal guarantee, you chose to be with me for life, as I offered the same promise to you.
You went with me to Woodland, taking on two young boys who needed a home, and although we had tough times, we also had memorable days exploring mountains and forests together.
You followed me to Silver Springs, to live in a drafty block house, with a shocking electrical system, a balky water pump, and winds that could tear doors off of the pump house and car. Food was scarce, but remember how good that Mexican pizza was, and hot dogs roasted in a cave?
For a short while, we went back to California, to Santa Ana. I don't remember any good times there. Fear, depression, and betrayal by my best friend come to mind. The bright spot was when you chose to follow me away, anywhere, no matter where, as long as we were together.
For nearly a month, we camped in a tent by the river in Snelling, where the mosquitoes tried to carry us away. We camped at the top of Sonora Pass, and nearly lost our food and sleeping bags when they fell out of the back of the car on a huge bump. We camped on top of Grand Mesa, and we camped on Dallas Divide, where you got sick on Vienna sausages. We camped on top of Uncompagre Ridge, and spent a night near Slumgullion Pass. We were poor, but we were together.
Wes was born nine months later in Nucla, where we made a home for our family for nine years. You followed me into quicksand in Bull Canyon and rode with me down Black Bear Road, not to mention threading our way through avalanches on Red Mountain Pass.
You followed me to a job interview at Tempiute tungsten mine, and breathed a sigh of relief when I turned it down. But I knew you would have gone if I had taken the job. You are tougher than anyone I know.
When I took the job at Winnemucca, you moved out on thirty acres of sand, sagebrush, and rattlesnakes. We've fought floods, gnats, mosquitoes, Mormon crickets, and cat catching coyotes. We've overcome forty below zero winters, clueless and deceptive school administrators, and long lonely power plant outages every spring.
As we look forward to a spring together, planting trees and flowers, hoping to go on walks and rides together, I know how lucky I am to live and love with you. No one could ask for a better wife and partner. I'll love you always.
Don Jan 25, 2008
*************************
My sentiments haven't changed at all--only grown deeper.
In the paragraph on the places we camped, that was one month in June when I quit work in California and bought a double sleeping bag and pup tent, bought some food and camped out in national forest campgrounds and parks as I looked for work anywhere but California. It was the poorest we ever were, and the happiest we had ever been. "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose!"
When we ran out of money, I had a good line on a job in Colorado, but the start was several weeks away, so we drove to Oklahoma and stayed with Carolyn's brother Larry and his family for a couple of weeks. I will never forget the Oklahoma hospitality we received there.
The job at Tempiute mine was a first attempt to leave Colorado when it was becoming obvious that the obsolete electric station there was going to be closed. Tempiute was a lonely mine near Rachel, NV, now located on the Extraterrestrial Highway. It was fifty miles away from the nearest post office and school, and although the wages were great, we just couldn't quite make the leap to that much isolation.
We do love isolation, though. I don't know how a couple can keep the spark going in an apartment building in the city. The whole object of hiking into the woods and four wheeling into the desert wilderness is to find solitude to be exploited for love. You have not known real honest sex unless you have felt the sun and breeze on your butt. You don't know what a thrill is unless you have looked up while standing in an isolated creek enjoying sex and realizing there is a bobcat peering down from the bank above you, curious what all the commotion is about.
Sex is an integral part of any happy marriage, and too many people see it as a way to make babies, and not as a way of connecting two people together intimately and completely. As Carolyn and I get older, we have slowed down some, but we haven't given up yet.
I remember at a retirement party for one of my fellow employees in Colorado, somebody (who probably had a couple of beers too many) asked him how sex was at his age. He grinned and said, "When I was younger I could go all night. Now that I'm older it takes all night, but it's just as much fun!"
This Easter, after our own version of fertility rites, I asked her how she felt. She said, "I'm happy. Even my hair's happy!" I told her I knew just how she felt, because my toenails were still grinning. "And my moustache smells so good I'm not washing my face tomorrow!"
Boredom has never been a part of this marriage!
Speaking of computers, as I was perusing my Document folder I ran across this love letter I wrote to my Carolyn about seven years ago. Sometimes as we get older we forget that the younger generation needs to know from us what makes for a happy life and what makes for a happy marriage. We can't just keep silent and hope they can figure it out for themselves.
Since I'm writing to adults here, hopefully, I'm not going to edit this old letter, and I'll follow up with some clarification, since I was writing to someone who remembered all the places and events I mentioned.
**********************************
A Letter to my Lover,
Without any legal guarantee, you chose to be with me for life, as I offered the same promise to you.
You went with me to Woodland, taking on two young boys who needed a home, and although we had tough times, we also had memorable days exploring mountains and forests together.
You followed me to Silver Springs, to live in a drafty block house, with a shocking electrical system, a balky water pump, and winds that could tear doors off of the pump house and car. Food was scarce, but remember how good that Mexican pizza was, and hot dogs roasted in a cave?
For a short while, we went back to California, to Santa Ana. I don't remember any good times there. Fear, depression, and betrayal by my best friend come to mind. The bright spot was when you chose to follow me away, anywhere, no matter where, as long as we were together.
For nearly a month, we camped in a tent by the river in Snelling, where the mosquitoes tried to carry us away. We camped at the top of Sonora Pass, and nearly lost our food and sleeping bags when they fell out of the back of the car on a huge bump. We camped on top of Grand Mesa, and we camped on Dallas Divide, where you got sick on Vienna sausages. We camped on top of Uncompagre Ridge, and spent a night near Slumgullion Pass. We were poor, but we were together.
Wes was born nine months later in Nucla, where we made a home for our family for nine years. You followed me into quicksand in Bull Canyon and rode with me down Black Bear Road, not to mention threading our way through avalanches on Red Mountain Pass.
You followed me to a job interview at Tempiute tungsten mine, and breathed a sigh of relief when I turned it down. But I knew you would have gone if I had taken the job. You are tougher than anyone I know.
When I took the job at Winnemucca, you moved out on thirty acres of sand, sagebrush, and rattlesnakes. We've fought floods, gnats, mosquitoes, Mormon crickets, and cat catching coyotes. We've overcome forty below zero winters, clueless and deceptive school administrators, and long lonely power plant outages every spring.
As we look forward to a spring together, planting trees and flowers, hoping to go on walks and rides together, I know how lucky I am to live and love with you. No one could ask for a better wife and partner. I'll love you always.
Don Jan 25, 2008
*************************
My sentiments haven't changed at all--only grown deeper.
In the paragraph on the places we camped, that was one month in June when I quit work in California and bought a double sleeping bag and pup tent, bought some food and camped out in national forest campgrounds and parks as I looked for work anywhere but California. It was the poorest we ever were, and the happiest we had ever been. "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose!"
When we ran out of money, I had a good line on a job in Colorado, but the start was several weeks away, so we drove to Oklahoma and stayed with Carolyn's brother Larry and his family for a couple of weeks. I will never forget the Oklahoma hospitality we received there.
The job at Tempiute mine was a first attempt to leave Colorado when it was becoming obvious that the obsolete electric station there was going to be closed. Tempiute was a lonely mine near Rachel, NV, now located on the Extraterrestrial Highway. It was fifty miles away from the nearest post office and school, and although the wages were great, we just couldn't quite make the leap to that much isolation.
We do love isolation, though. I don't know how a couple can keep the spark going in an apartment building in the city. The whole object of hiking into the woods and four wheeling into the desert wilderness is to find solitude to be exploited for love. You have not known real honest sex unless you have felt the sun and breeze on your butt. You don't know what a thrill is unless you have looked up while standing in an isolated creek enjoying sex and realizing there is a bobcat peering down from the bank above you, curious what all the commotion is about.
Sex is an integral part of any happy marriage, and too many people see it as a way to make babies, and not as a way of connecting two people together intimately and completely. As Carolyn and I get older, we have slowed down some, but we haven't given up yet.
I remember at a retirement party for one of my fellow employees in Colorado, somebody (who probably had a couple of beers too many) asked him how sex was at his age. He grinned and said, "When I was younger I could go all night. Now that I'm older it takes all night, but it's just as much fun!"
This Easter, after our own version of fertility rites, I asked her how she felt. She said, "I'm happy. Even my hair's happy!" I told her I knew just how she felt, because my toenails were still grinning. "And my moustache smells so good I'm not washing my face tomorrow!"
Boredom has never been a part of this marriage!
Thursday, March 12, 2015
An evening in Hell.
I am still exhausted this morning. Yesterday was the evening from hell. I haven’t been this frustrated and frankly, scared, in years.
It started with my volunteering to go to a conference in Carson City, NV, to listen to speakers from the AFL-CIO on the series of bills in the legislature that are directly attacking the rights of working people. For the first time in many years, the Republicans have majorities in both houses of the state legislature and the governorship, and they are rushing to get all their pet legislation passed while they can. They know that when the anti labor laws start affecting the people in Nevada, they will lose the next election badly, but they are determined to do their worst anyway.
They just passed a bill to do away with prevailing wages on school construction. That will drive wages down in the construction industry, making workers poorer.
They have bills lined up to abolish overtime and eliminate the eight hour day. They want to reduce or eliminate the minimum wage. They want to eliminate worker’s compensation. Strangest of all, they want to eliminate medical benefits covering policemen, firefighters, and other public workers as soon as they retire from active duty.
Economic depression is defined as too many products and not enough customers rich enough to buy those products. Of course, Republicans don’t like to hear the word depression any more, at least since Herbert Hoover and George W. Bush, so now they just call it austerity. It’s the same thing.
Why would a rational businessman try to make his customers poorer? Are they insane? Deluded? Or have they conveniently forgotten that their employees are also their customers?
Sorry, that is not the subject I meant to write about. The scary event had to do with my wife Carolyn. While I was attending the AFL-CIO conference, Carolyn took the car and drove north about 35 miles to Reno (actually Sparks) for a dental appointment to replace a crown that had fallen off. Her appointment was at 4:00 PM and my conference was to be over at 5:30 PM, so we figured there wouldn’t be much of a problem driving back to Carson City to pick me up and go home.
I got out of my meeting a little early, about 5:00 PM, so I sat down on a bench outside to wait. It was a little chilly, but I expected her there shortly. At 5:30 she wasn’t there, so I tried to call her. She did not answer, so either her cell phone was off, or buried inside her coat or purse so she couldn’t hear it. I froze out about 6:00 and went back into the Carson City Nugget Casino and Convention Center and called again. No luck again. I left a message each time so if she checked her phone she would know I was trying to call. At 6:30 I called again, with no response. I hate being helpless. This is where frustration starts, and a little fear begins. Just before 7:00 she calls me! I am overjoyed, and ask if she is back in town. She says she doesn’t know, and she is lost. She doesn’t know what town she is in. I ask her to look around and find a street name nearby. She came back with Keystone. My heart sank. This street is way west of Reno--not south--and I know how badly lost she is. She mentions that she is getting low on gas, and I made a huge blunder. I asked her to look on the dashboard and tell me what the range says. Our new car has a number telling how many miles are left. She said 67 miles. I should have told her to find the nearest gas station and fill it up, but I didn’t.
Instead, I calculated the she was less than forty miles north, and told her to come back south to Carson City. I also talked her through the process of selecting the address of the Carson City Nugget into the Garmin GPS. I had programmed it in earlier, before we left the house.
After several missteps, we got it in and she saw the purple road showing on the map, so I told her to just follow that purple road, and I’d see her in a little bit.
Well, an hour went by with no sign of her, and no word on the phone. It’s been three and a half hours since she left the dentist’s office, and that is about a 45 minute drive.
Finally, the phone rings. I ask if she is in Carson City yet. She says no. I ask if she has left Reno yet, and she doesn’t know--she thinks she missed Carson City somehow. I ask if she is following the purple road, and she says no, she forgot. Now I tell her to find a gas station immediately, because I know she is about to run out. She tells me she is on South Virginia Street, so I know she is on the right track, but without enough gas to get all the way to Carson City. So she says she is going back to find a station. I tell her I love her, and good luck.
In about a half an hour, my phone rings again. A strange voice asks if I’m Don Rogers, and I say yes. The voice on the phone says he is with the Nevada Highway Patrol, and not to worry, that they are getting a gallon of gas for my wife, and will point her in the right direction when they get her some gas in a few minutes. I am about to cry. I suggest to the officer that she is totally confused, has been driving for over three hours until she ran out of gas, and I am worried she will get lost again. A gallon of gas from her location is just enough to make it to Carson City if she doesn’t get lost again. He says not to worry, they will make sure she gets here safely. Carolyn calls me a few minutes later to reassure me she has a gallon of gas now, and will see me shortly. The officer asks to speak to me, and says he will have her follow him to Carson City and asks again for my exact location. I tell him the Nugget Casino, and he says good, that is what Carolyn told him, also. He asks if I’m in shape to drive when they get there and I tell him I’ve only been drinking coffee by the quart, and I’m alert as hell. He laughed and said they would be there in about 30 to forty minutes.
Right on the money at at 10:00 PM I see the Highway Patrol car pull into the parking lot with Carolyn following closely. When she finds a parking spot, I go over to the car, and the patrolman is already there to make sure I’m OK. He asks how I feel, and I tell him I’m about to cry with relief, and a little sick but alright. He tells me what I already knew--that the gallon of gas is probably almost gone, so fill up immediately. I thank him, shake his hand, and point out the Shell station just a block north where I will fill up before heading out to Winnemucca. He tries to reassure me that because of the new freeway construction between Reno and Carson City, an lot of people get lost out there, and there are no gas stations for about a twenty mile stretch.
This morning I realize I forgot to get his name or offer to pay for the gallon of gas. Sometimes I think I’m losing it, too!
So after filling up, we headed out through Dayton, Silver Springs, and Fernley, Nevada, on our way home. We stopped at the brand new Denny’s at the Flying J truck stop in Fernley and ate a very late dinner, and then we drove on to Winnemucca, arriving here after 2:00 this morning.
We both slept very soundly and late, and are still recovering from the ordeal. Carolyn agrees that she won’t be driving alone on unfamiliar roads again.
Life is what happens after you plan how you think it should be. A corollary to that is old age ain’t for sissies!
It started with my volunteering to go to a conference in Carson City, NV, to listen to speakers from the AFL-CIO on the series of bills in the legislature that are directly attacking the rights of working people. For the first time in many years, the Republicans have majorities in both houses of the state legislature and the governorship, and they are rushing to get all their pet legislation passed while they can. They know that when the anti labor laws start affecting the people in Nevada, they will lose the next election badly, but they are determined to do their worst anyway.
They just passed a bill to do away with prevailing wages on school construction. That will drive wages down in the construction industry, making workers poorer.
They have bills lined up to abolish overtime and eliminate the eight hour day. They want to reduce or eliminate the minimum wage. They want to eliminate worker’s compensation. Strangest of all, they want to eliminate medical benefits covering policemen, firefighters, and other public workers as soon as they retire from active duty.
Economic depression is defined as too many products and not enough customers rich enough to buy those products. Of course, Republicans don’t like to hear the word depression any more, at least since Herbert Hoover and George W. Bush, so now they just call it austerity. It’s the same thing.
Why would a rational businessman try to make his customers poorer? Are they insane? Deluded? Or have they conveniently forgotten that their employees are also their customers?
Sorry, that is not the subject I meant to write about. The scary event had to do with my wife Carolyn. While I was attending the AFL-CIO conference, Carolyn took the car and drove north about 35 miles to Reno (actually Sparks) for a dental appointment to replace a crown that had fallen off. Her appointment was at 4:00 PM and my conference was to be over at 5:30 PM, so we figured there wouldn’t be much of a problem driving back to Carson City to pick me up and go home.
I got out of my meeting a little early, about 5:00 PM, so I sat down on a bench outside to wait. It was a little chilly, but I expected her there shortly. At 5:30 she wasn’t there, so I tried to call her. She did not answer, so either her cell phone was off, or buried inside her coat or purse so she couldn’t hear it. I froze out about 6:00 and went back into the Carson City Nugget Casino and Convention Center and called again. No luck again. I left a message each time so if she checked her phone she would know I was trying to call. At 6:30 I called again, with no response. I hate being helpless. This is where frustration starts, and a little fear begins. Just before 7:00 she calls me! I am overjoyed, and ask if she is back in town. She says she doesn’t know, and she is lost. She doesn’t know what town she is in. I ask her to look around and find a street name nearby. She came back with Keystone. My heart sank. This street is way west of Reno--not south--and I know how badly lost she is. She mentions that she is getting low on gas, and I made a huge blunder. I asked her to look on the dashboard and tell me what the range says. Our new car has a number telling how many miles are left. She said 67 miles. I should have told her to find the nearest gas station and fill it up, but I didn’t.
Instead, I calculated the she was less than forty miles north, and told her to come back south to Carson City. I also talked her through the process of selecting the address of the Carson City Nugget into the Garmin GPS. I had programmed it in earlier, before we left the house.
After several missteps, we got it in and she saw the purple road showing on the map, so I told her to just follow that purple road, and I’d see her in a little bit.
Well, an hour went by with no sign of her, and no word on the phone. It’s been three and a half hours since she left the dentist’s office, and that is about a 45 minute drive.
Finally, the phone rings. I ask if she is in Carson City yet. She says no. I ask if she has left Reno yet, and she doesn’t know--she thinks she missed Carson City somehow. I ask if she is following the purple road, and she says no, she forgot. Now I tell her to find a gas station immediately, because I know she is about to run out. She tells me she is on South Virginia Street, so I know she is on the right track, but without enough gas to get all the way to Carson City. So she says she is going back to find a station. I tell her I love her, and good luck.
In about a half an hour, my phone rings again. A strange voice asks if I’m Don Rogers, and I say yes. The voice on the phone says he is with the Nevada Highway Patrol, and not to worry, that they are getting a gallon of gas for my wife, and will point her in the right direction when they get her some gas in a few minutes. I am about to cry. I suggest to the officer that she is totally confused, has been driving for over three hours until she ran out of gas, and I am worried she will get lost again. A gallon of gas from her location is just enough to make it to Carson City if she doesn’t get lost again. He says not to worry, they will make sure she gets here safely. Carolyn calls me a few minutes later to reassure me she has a gallon of gas now, and will see me shortly. The officer asks to speak to me, and says he will have her follow him to Carson City and asks again for my exact location. I tell him the Nugget Casino, and he says good, that is what Carolyn told him, also. He asks if I’m in shape to drive when they get there and I tell him I’ve only been drinking coffee by the quart, and I’m alert as hell. He laughed and said they would be there in about 30 to forty minutes.
Right on the money at at 10:00 PM I see the Highway Patrol car pull into the parking lot with Carolyn following closely. When she finds a parking spot, I go over to the car, and the patrolman is already there to make sure I’m OK. He asks how I feel, and I tell him I’m about to cry with relief, and a little sick but alright. He tells me what I already knew--that the gallon of gas is probably almost gone, so fill up immediately. I thank him, shake his hand, and point out the Shell station just a block north where I will fill up before heading out to Winnemucca. He tries to reassure me that because of the new freeway construction between Reno and Carson City, an lot of people get lost out there, and there are no gas stations for about a twenty mile stretch.
This morning I realize I forgot to get his name or offer to pay for the gallon of gas. Sometimes I think I’m losing it, too!
So after filling up, we headed out through Dayton, Silver Springs, and Fernley, Nevada, on our way home. We stopped at the brand new Denny’s at the Flying J truck stop in Fernley and ate a very late dinner, and then we drove on to Winnemucca, arriving here after 2:00 this morning.
We both slept very soundly and late, and are still recovering from the ordeal. Carolyn agrees that she won’t be driving alone on unfamiliar roads again.
Life is what happens after you plan how you think it should be. A corollary to that is old age ain’t for sissies!
Monday, January 5, 2015
The Rest of the Story
Early in the spring of 1958, before school was out, Dad came down to Merced and picked us up in his green and white 1956 Buick Special and headed east to Illinois to visit his parents. Mom had never driven an automatic transmission before, so Dad showed Mom how to shift into Drive with her foot on the brake, then give it the gas and hang on. The DynaFlow transmission had a unique torque converter with a variable vane stator, which prevented any jerk when shifting. It was hard to feel any shift at all, in fact. The motor just roared at one speed and the car went faster and faster.
Two other unique features on Buicks of that era were the starter switch on the gas pedal and the speedometer display. The starter switch was actually on the carburetor, built into the throttle body. To start the engine, you turned the ignition key and just stepped on the gas pedal. When the engine started, manifold vacuum would disconnect the starter switch so the starter could not function while the engine was running.
The speedometer did not have a pointer hand like most other speedometers. It looked like a red line under the numbers which moved to the right as speed increased. I saw one disassembled years later, and found it was actually a drum behind a horizontal slot. On the drum was painted a red helix on a black background. As the drum was turned by the same mechanism that rotated the needle on other speedometers, the red portion rotated upward and seemed to move across the dial. It gave the car a more solid, substantial feeling than those puny little needles!
John remembers stopping at a restaurant in Livingston, California, called “The Palms” where we all had breakfast. He swears he remembers having pancakes that morning 49 years ago. His memory will be a great help in telling these stories, because it’s so much better than mine!
There was another brief stop in Reno where we kids got to watch Mom and Dad get married again, (that seemed a little surreal) and then we were on the road again. Nevada had no speed limit between towns then, so Dad was over 100 mph everywhere he could across the state. Mom cringed, and I'm sure now she had some regrets already, but we kids loved it! There is something in the Rogers' genes that imparts a need for speed.
As we left Nevada and entered Utah, the speed limit dropped to 70 mph, but the road actually got much straighter as we went out onto the salt flats. Dad took it right up to 120 mph, burying the red spear point that Buicks used for a speedometer into the right of the display. After many miles of this, suddenly Dad said, "Hang on, I've got to slow down fast." He had seen a police cruiser on the other side of the divided highway, and he was crossing the median to follow us. It's still hard to believe, but Dad dropped the shift lever into low range, and the car jerked hard and slowed down rapidly to 70, whereupon Dad put it back into drive, without once turning on a brake light to give him away. The policeman caught up quickly, of course, and followed us for several miles before deciding to give up and go back to the other lanes. They just don't make transmissions like that old Dynaflow anymore.
Evening came as we entered Salt Lake City, where we stopped to eat, and Dad toured us through downtown, showing us the statue to the seagulls, and told us the story of how the Mormon pioneers had a wagon team turn a circle, and then they made all the streets as wide as that circle, which is why the streets there are so wide. None of us wondered at the time how he had come to know so much about Mormons.
It was night as we left Salt Lake City, headed east on Highway 40. All three of us brothers went to sleep in the back, kneeling on the floor with our heads on the rear seat, facing backwards. Sometime in the middle of the night there was a heavy thud and shudder, and we woke up as Dad was sliding to a stop. Something smelled awful, and steam swirled around the car. As Dad went by a flock of sheep, the last one had suddenly jumped in front of the car, and we hit it square in the middle of the grill. The die cast metal grill had shattered and punched myriad holes in the radiator, and besides that the sheep was still under the car, stuck on the exhaust pipe and muffler. Dad backed off of the sheep, and then pulled forward to the side of the road. There was a small stream down an embankment off the road, so after plugging the holes in the radiator with little pieces of cloth, he refilled the radiator with a discarded beer can he found beside the road. He left the radiator cap loose on the first notch, and we slowly started east again. This happened between Vernal, Utah, and the Colorado border. I remember stopping several more times that night for Dad to refill the radiator before we came into Craig, Colorado, at dawn.
Dad stopped at the first service station he came to, and they sold him two cans of Bar's Stopleak, and let him use the water hose to try to wash some of the remains of the sheep from off the bottom of the car. We all had been retching and gagging for hours. Dad ran the engine until it was hot, then poured in the stop leak. After a minute, he pulled out the rags, and we watched the little streams of water choke off and dry up one by one. It was magic! After filling up with gas, Dad went to the local highway patrol office to see if he could get compensation for the damage to the car. They just chuckled, and informed him it was open range, and if the rancher found out who hit the sheep, he would want his livestock replaced. Since it was in another state, they encouraged him to keep on driving east, so that's what we did.
I don’t remember much of the rest of the trip through Wyoming, Nebraska, and Iowa. It was anticlimactic, to say the least, and the only thing that sticks with me was listening to the Everly Brothers hit, “Dream, Dream, Dream” and another song by Perry Como, “Kewpie Doll” on the radio. The Bar's Stopleak did its job all the way to Illinois, and back to Oregon again, where Dad replaced the radiator and grille.
We did not go directly to Chillicothe, where our grandparents lived, when we arrived in Illinois. The Seventh-day Adventist church in Peoria was arranging a surprise program for our Grandmother Rogers, modeled on the popular television program “This Is Your Life.” She had nine children, who as soon as they were able, had moved away to other places. The church had convinced most if not all of them to return to Peoria on a Friday evening for the program to honor their mother.
She was seated on the stage while the pastor began to tell the story of her life, and as he came to stories of her children, they would come out on stage with their families to honor and hug her. She was more and more amazed, as sons and daughters she hadn’t seen in years came onto the stage.
I don’t remember whether our family was near the first or last, but when the pastor announced Vernon and his family were here to greet her, tears of joy overwhelmed the surprise on her face, and she hugged and cried with all of us. I’m sure she had thought she would never see us together again as a family. She was almost right.
The next day, after the Sabbath church services, our Dad was baptized into the Adventist church again, and we all hoped that this was going to be the start of a new life with a father again.
After a few days of visiting with family, including a potluck dinner at a large park on the Illinois river in downtown Peoria, we loaded up and headed west again. We went up through Wyoming and Idaho following highway 30 to La Grande, Oregon.
Since we had not finished the school year yet, Mom and us kids went back to Merced to finish the school year. Dad lent us his second car, which was a 1949 Nash Airflyte.
We all thought it was pretty ugly as cars go, but years later we found that it had been designed using a wind tunnel and was actually way before its time in several areas. The Nash was the first to use unit body construction, with no separate frame underneath. That made the car lighter and yet more rigid on rough roads. It also had an ignition switch on the steering column, something that didn’t happen on other makes until decades later.
The flathead six cylinder engine was unique, using a “sealed in” manifold for simplicity and reliability. The carburetor was bolted directly to the cylinder head, which had the appropriate passages to carry the fuel mixture to the intake valves.
This car also had a Borg-Warner overdrive unit, which helped get great gas mileage. There was a collar type switch on the column shift lever to switch in and out of overdrive. When you were in high gear, you just twisted the switch on, then let up on the gas. There was a slight clunk as the gears changed, then you were in a higher gear. It was possible to downshift by double clutching, but it took skill and timing so usually we just shifted out of overdrive after stopping. While the unit was in overdrive, the car freewheeled if you backed off, so when encountering downgrades in the mountains, it was a good idea to pull the mechanical handle under the dash to lock out the overdrive, otherwise you risked burning up the brakes.
The most famous item on the Nash was the reclining seats. Many fathers would not let their daughters go out on a date with a boy driving a Nash. The front seatbacks reclined all the way down flush with the back seats, making a bed for two people. I’ve heard of girls becoming pregnant in Volkswagens, but it would be a lot more comfortable in a Nash!
After school was over that year, we all went back to Oregon in the Nash and moved into the housing Dad had for us.
Dad had a mechanic job at M. J. Goss Motors in La Grande, and we all lived in an 8’ X 35’ Nashua trailer house in a small trailer park just south of town. This wasn’t large enough to be called a mobile home by any stretch of imagination. When they talk of “shotgun houses” in New Orleans, I think of that trailer.
In the front was a small living room, which had a table in one end to become the dining room, which was next to the sink and stove, which qualified that end as the kitchen. Through a narrow door was the first bedroom, with cabinets on one side of the passage for closets, and bunk beds on the other side for us kids. I had the top bunk, and I think Bill and John shared the bottom.
Through another small door and you were in the bathroom next to the toilet and sink. Behind them was a small bathtub—so small you had to sit with knees high and feet pulled in. Luckily none of us were overweight.
The last room through the next door was the second bedroom for Mom and Dad. The double bed pretty much filled the room, except for a narrow aisle down one side to get back to the closet. From the door, climbing across the bed was required to get to that aisle.
There were no playgrounds or parks nearby, so we got into trouble pretty regularly. We were chastised for sneaking across a wooden fence and eating berries in a little garden next door.
A block away was a drive in movie, and Bill and I noticed that there were wooden ladders wired to the structure all the way to the top. So every day we would climb a ladder and look around. But the ladders were old and rickety, and the baling wire had loosened through the years, so we would chicken out and come down every day without getting to the top.
It’s funny how familiarity breeds contempt—each day we climbed a little higher, because—well, we climbed that high yesterday and the ladder held OK, didn’t it? I think it took about a week or so until Bill and I both risked that last, highest ladder, and crawled out on top of the movie screen. I remember it being maybe two feet wide and forty feet long, covered in tarpaper and coarse sand composite roofing. I don’t remember either of us standing up, but maybe I have blanked it out. I know we had to talk ourselves into crawling over to the ladder and beginning the long, shaky descent back to earth.
At one end of the trailer park was what seemed to be a junk storage area, with old logs and boards and car parts piled around. We found an old Ford front axle, with the hubs and wheels still attached (no tires) and Bill and I got the bright idea of stacking two long straight pine logs on top of another log so the two logs had a good slope. By spacing the logs the same distance as the wheels, we could sit on the axle and roll down to the bottom, where the axle would stop when it hit the dirt. Of course, you had to ride with your feet held straight out in front so they wouldn’t touch the ground. We gave all the neighborhood kids rides, including the girls, and great fun was had by all.
How we managed this without anybody breaking both legs I’ll never know. It’s just one more thing that gives me shudders thinking about now.
A few days after we had moved into La Grande, Oregon, Dad took the whole family out to eat at a local restaurant. Our waitress was obviously an old friend of his, and he introduced Ethel to all of us. We all knew he had lived there for a year or two, and nobody was surprised that he would know her.
He worked at M. J. Goss, a Chevrolet/Oldsmobile dealer in town as a mechanic. He told us about the attic above the parts room, that he said was filled with old Studebaker parts left over from when the place had been a Studebaker dealership. I guess he just moved the old parts upstairs when he stocked the new GM parts below. I have often wondered what ever happened to those old parts. With the restoration revival going on presently, those parts would be worth millions now.
In a few weeks—less than two months—Dad said we were all going to move back to Merced, California. We were all getting a little homesick, I think, and we kids anyway, welcomed the announcement. He explained that Mom would be pulling the trailer down behind the Buick, and he would follow us down as soon as he could wrap things up in Oregon. He spent the next week fitting a two wheel dolly to the front of the trailer to help carry the load. The Buick had soft coil springs on the back axle, so it couldn’t have carried the weight without crunching the springs down to the rubber stops.
He also fitted a trailer hitch to the car, and installed a brake controller under the dashboard on the right of the steering column. The trailer brakes were electro-magnetic and seemed to be either off or full on with trailer tires squalling and smoking.
On the appointed day, we all piled in the Buick and headed north on old Hwy 30. The route chosen was to go north to Pendleton, bend west to Biggs Junction, then south on Hwy 97 to Weed, California, where we would follow Hwy 99 south to Merced. Any other route would involve a narrow, winding mountain pass across the high Sierras.
Dad showed Mom how to drive the rig, and he drove us through the Blue Mountains to the top of Cabbage Hill. There was a rest stop up there, and we stopped and ate lunch, I think, and then Dad left us there to hitchhike back to La Grand. The old highway switchbacked down from the crest of the Blue Mountains, the foothills looking like leaves of a cabbage. I remember the stories of log trucks losing their brakes and crashing on the hill on a regular basis.
There has been speculation that he hoped Mom would just crash and kill all of us before we reached the bottom, but that may be some longstanding anger issues coming out. I don't remember.
I always knew Mom was tough when she needed to be, but looking back on it now, it still amazes me just how she was able to do it. I know she knew Dad better than us kids did, and suspected things that never occurred to us at the time. I wonder now how much pure rage had to do with it.
She actually did a fair job hauling that trailer down the road. She made the turn at Biggs Jct. alright, and had very little trouble until we came to Klamath Falls, Oregon. Somewhere in the middle of town she lost track of the truck route, and we found ourselves in the middle of old downtown, with cars parked on both sides, and two narrow lanes in the middle. Drivers around us were honking their horns and hollering at her, but eventually she got out of downtown and found a place to pull over and stop. I don’t remember now if she asked for directions, or figured it out on the map, but before too long we were on the highway south again.
In the same situation, I would probably have given some of those other drivers a one finger wave, but our mother would not have done so under threat of firing squad.
As she neared Sacramento, Mom decided she didn’t want anymore downtown city driving, so she consulted the map and found a route around the city on the west side, through Dixon and Rio Vista, joining back up to Hwy 99 at Lodi, California.
We were rolling along pretty good south of Dixon, even though the roads were very narrow, when a loud noise and a lot of jerking let us know we had trouble. Both of the small wheels on the trailer dolly had blown out, and we were miles from any town. Not that it made a lot of difference, because Mom was nearly out of money, too.
We sat there for a long time, with Mom crying some, and praying some, partially blocking one lane. Eventually a local man, a farmer, I think, stopped and offered to help when he saw the situation. My brother Bill said he heard him mutter something about any man oughtta be shot who’d send a woman and her kids out alone on the road with a rig like that.
This was well before woman’s liberation, but even now I tend to agree with him.
The two tires and tubes were 8” or 10” size, expensive and hard to find, and it took most of a day to get them and put them back on the dolly. I am sure the Good Samaritan refused money for the tires and work, because Mom still had enough money for gas to Merced.
The only other trouble was when we came to the bridge crossing the Sacramento River—a narrow steel girder bridge that had two of the smallest lanes and looked a mile long. Mom stopped at the north end, and I think she bowed her head and prayed as we waited for oncoming traffic to clear the bridge. When she thought it was hers, she headed out onto the bridge straddling the center line. Before we reached the other side, some guy in a pickup entered the other end. I think Mom said another prayer, which would have been close to a swear word except she sincerely meant it when she said, “Oh, Daddy!” She squeezed as far to the right as she dared, and I’m sure she closed her eyes and waited for the crash, but somehow the pickup missed us and we missed hitting the side of the bridge.
I believe it was the next day when we pulled into the driveway of Aunt Ora’s house at 1430 E. Santa Fe Dr. It was early in the dark of the morning, so Mom parked outside near the street and we all went back to the trailer and went to sleep until dawn. We were awakened by our cousins knocking on the door at sunrise. After a happy reunion with our Aunt Ora and cousins Jim and Glenn, I backed the trailer into the driveway because Mom did not know how to back a trailer, and I had some experience from backing at the Appling’s farm with their Allis-Chalmers tractor and trailer. With Mom and others all helping direct, we got it parked behind the house with the tongue facing the driveway.
Mom called Vern to let him know we had arrived. John says there was some time lapsed between our arrival and the phone call that ended it all, but I can’t remember that. I have forgotten much of the details of those days, but I seem to remember an icy chill going through me outside the house when I heard Mom scream and wail loudly as Aunt Ora rushed in to console and comfort her. Vern had told her on the phone to keep the Buick and trailer, that he wasn’t coming down ever, and he would be sending divorce papers shortly.
It’s a wonder she didn’t die right there. I know she wanted to.
Several weeks later the divorce papers arrived, and the reason for the divorce was desertion—Mom had deserted Dad! Having no money for lawyers, and never wanting to see him again, she signed the papers and sent them back.
Two other unique features on Buicks of that era were the starter switch on the gas pedal and the speedometer display. The starter switch was actually on the carburetor, built into the throttle body. To start the engine, you turned the ignition key and just stepped on the gas pedal. When the engine started, manifold vacuum would disconnect the starter switch so the starter could not function while the engine was running.
The speedometer did not have a pointer hand like most other speedometers. It looked like a red line under the numbers which moved to the right as speed increased. I saw one disassembled years later, and found it was actually a drum behind a horizontal slot. On the drum was painted a red helix on a black background. As the drum was turned by the same mechanism that rotated the needle on other speedometers, the red portion rotated upward and seemed to move across the dial. It gave the car a more solid, substantial feeling than those puny little needles!
John remembers stopping at a restaurant in Livingston, California, called “The Palms” where we all had breakfast. He swears he remembers having pancakes that morning 49 years ago. His memory will be a great help in telling these stories, because it’s so much better than mine!
There was another brief stop in Reno where we kids got to watch Mom and Dad get married again, (that seemed a little surreal) and then we were on the road again. Nevada had no speed limit between towns then, so Dad was over 100 mph everywhere he could across the state. Mom cringed, and I'm sure now she had some regrets already, but we kids loved it! There is something in the Rogers' genes that imparts a need for speed.
As we left Nevada and entered Utah, the speed limit dropped to 70 mph, but the road actually got much straighter as we went out onto the salt flats. Dad took it right up to 120 mph, burying the red spear point that Buicks used for a speedometer into the right of the display. After many miles of this, suddenly Dad said, "Hang on, I've got to slow down fast." He had seen a police cruiser on the other side of the divided highway, and he was crossing the median to follow us. It's still hard to believe, but Dad dropped the shift lever into low range, and the car jerked hard and slowed down rapidly to 70, whereupon Dad put it back into drive, without once turning on a brake light to give him away. The policeman caught up quickly, of course, and followed us for several miles before deciding to give up and go back to the other lanes. They just don't make transmissions like that old Dynaflow anymore.
Evening came as we entered Salt Lake City, where we stopped to eat, and Dad toured us through downtown, showing us the statue to the seagulls, and told us the story of how the Mormon pioneers had a wagon team turn a circle, and then they made all the streets as wide as that circle, which is why the streets there are so wide. None of us wondered at the time how he had come to know so much about Mormons.
It was night as we left Salt Lake City, headed east on Highway 40. All three of us brothers went to sleep in the back, kneeling on the floor with our heads on the rear seat, facing backwards. Sometime in the middle of the night there was a heavy thud and shudder, and we woke up as Dad was sliding to a stop. Something smelled awful, and steam swirled around the car. As Dad went by a flock of sheep, the last one had suddenly jumped in front of the car, and we hit it square in the middle of the grill. The die cast metal grill had shattered and punched myriad holes in the radiator, and besides that the sheep was still under the car, stuck on the exhaust pipe and muffler. Dad backed off of the sheep, and then pulled forward to the side of the road. There was a small stream down an embankment off the road, so after plugging the holes in the radiator with little pieces of cloth, he refilled the radiator with a discarded beer can he found beside the road. He left the radiator cap loose on the first notch, and we slowly started east again. This happened between Vernal, Utah, and the Colorado border. I remember stopping several more times that night for Dad to refill the radiator before we came into Craig, Colorado, at dawn.
Dad stopped at the first service station he came to, and they sold him two cans of Bar's Stopleak, and let him use the water hose to try to wash some of the remains of the sheep from off the bottom of the car. We all had been retching and gagging for hours. Dad ran the engine until it was hot, then poured in the stop leak. After a minute, he pulled out the rags, and we watched the little streams of water choke off and dry up one by one. It was magic! After filling up with gas, Dad went to the local highway patrol office to see if he could get compensation for the damage to the car. They just chuckled, and informed him it was open range, and if the rancher found out who hit the sheep, he would want his livestock replaced. Since it was in another state, they encouraged him to keep on driving east, so that's what we did.
I don’t remember much of the rest of the trip through Wyoming, Nebraska, and Iowa. It was anticlimactic, to say the least, and the only thing that sticks with me was listening to the Everly Brothers hit, “Dream, Dream, Dream” and another song by Perry Como, “Kewpie Doll” on the radio. The Bar's Stopleak did its job all the way to Illinois, and back to Oregon again, where Dad replaced the radiator and grille.
We did not go directly to Chillicothe, where our grandparents lived, when we arrived in Illinois. The Seventh-day Adventist church in Peoria was arranging a surprise program for our Grandmother Rogers, modeled on the popular television program “This Is Your Life.” She had nine children, who as soon as they were able, had moved away to other places. The church had convinced most if not all of them to return to Peoria on a Friday evening for the program to honor their mother.
She was seated on the stage while the pastor began to tell the story of her life, and as he came to stories of her children, they would come out on stage with their families to honor and hug her. She was more and more amazed, as sons and daughters she hadn’t seen in years came onto the stage.
I don’t remember whether our family was near the first or last, but when the pastor announced Vernon and his family were here to greet her, tears of joy overwhelmed the surprise on her face, and she hugged and cried with all of us. I’m sure she had thought she would never see us together again as a family. She was almost right.
The next day, after the Sabbath church services, our Dad was baptized into the Adventist church again, and we all hoped that this was going to be the start of a new life with a father again.
After a few days of visiting with family, including a potluck dinner at a large park on the Illinois river in downtown Peoria, we loaded up and headed west again. We went up through Wyoming and Idaho following highway 30 to La Grande, Oregon.
Since we had not finished the school year yet, Mom and us kids went back to Merced to finish the school year. Dad lent us his second car, which was a 1949 Nash Airflyte.
We all thought it was pretty ugly as cars go, but years later we found that it had been designed using a wind tunnel and was actually way before its time in several areas. The Nash was the first to use unit body construction, with no separate frame underneath. That made the car lighter and yet more rigid on rough roads. It also had an ignition switch on the steering column, something that didn’t happen on other makes until decades later.
The flathead six cylinder engine was unique, using a “sealed in” manifold for simplicity and reliability. The carburetor was bolted directly to the cylinder head, which had the appropriate passages to carry the fuel mixture to the intake valves.
This car also had a Borg-Warner overdrive unit, which helped get great gas mileage. There was a collar type switch on the column shift lever to switch in and out of overdrive. When you were in high gear, you just twisted the switch on, then let up on the gas. There was a slight clunk as the gears changed, then you were in a higher gear. It was possible to downshift by double clutching, but it took skill and timing so usually we just shifted out of overdrive after stopping. While the unit was in overdrive, the car freewheeled if you backed off, so when encountering downgrades in the mountains, it was a good idea to pull the mechanical handle under the dash to lock out the overdrive, otherwise you risked burning up the brakes.
The most famous item on the Nash was the reclining seats. Many fathers would not let their daughters go out on a date with a boy driving a Nash. The front seatbacks reclined all the way down flush with the back seats, making a bed for two people. I’ve heard of girls becoming pregnant in Volkswagens, but it would be a lot more comfortable in a Nash!
After school was over that year, we all went back to Oregon in the Nash and moved into the housing Dad had for us.
Dad had a mechanic job at M. J. Goss Motors in La Grande, and we all lived in an 8’ X 35’ Nashua trailer house in a small trailer park just south of town. This wasn’t large enough to be called a mobile home by any stretch of imagination. When they talk of “shotgun houses” in New Orleans, I think of that trailer.
In the front was a small living room, which had a table in one end to become the dining room, which was next to the sink and stove, which qualified that end as the kitchen. Through a narrow door was the first bedroom, with cabinets on one side of the passage for closets, and bunk beds on the other side for us kids. I had the top bunk, and I think Bill and John shared the bottom.
Through another small door and you were in the bathroom next to the toilet and sink. Behind them was a small bathtub—so small you had to sit with knees high and feet pulled in. Luckily none of us were overweight.
The last room through the next door was the second bedroom for Mom and Dad. The double bed pretty much filled the room, except for a narrow aisle down one side to get back to the closet. From the door, climbing across the bed was required to get to that aisle.
There were no playgrounds or parks nearby, so we got into trouble pretty regularly. We were chastised for sneaking across a wooden fence and eating berries in a little garden next door.
A block away was a drive in movie, and Bill and I noticed that there were wooden ladders wired to the structure all the way to the top. So every day we would climb a ladder and look around. But the ladders were old and rickety, and the baling wire had loosened through the years, so we would chicken out and come down every day without getting to the top.
It’s funny how familiarity breeds contempt—each day we climbed a little higher, because—well, we climbed that high yesterday and the ladder held OK, didn’t it? I think it took about a week or so until Bill and I both risked that last, highest ladder, and crawled out on top of the movie screen. I remember it being maybe two feet wide and forty feet long, covered in tarpaper and coarse sand composite roofing. I don’t remember either of us standing up, but maybe I have blanked it out. I know we had to talk ourselves into crawling over to the ladder and beginning the long, shaky descent back to earth.
At one end of the trailer park was what seemed to be a junk storage area, with old logs and boards and car parts piled around. We found an old Ford front axle, with the hubs and wheels still attached (no tires) and Bill and I got the bright idea of stacking two long straight pine logs on top of another log so the two logs had a good slope. By spacing the logs the same distance as the wheels, we could sit on the axle and roll down to the bottom, where the axle would stop when it hit the dirt. Of course, you had to ride with your feet held straight out in front so they wouldn’t touch the ground. We gave all the neighborhood kids rides, including the girls, and great fun was had by all.
How we managed this without anybody breaking both legs I’ll never know. It’s just one more thing that gives me shudders thinking about now.
A few days after we had moved into La Grande, Oregon, Dad took the whole family out to eat at a local restaurant. Our waitress was obviously an old friend of his, and he introduced Ethel to all of us. We all knew he had lived there for a year or two, and nobody was surprised that he would know her.
He worked at M. J. Goss, a Chevrolet/Oldsmobile dealer in town as a mechanic. He told us about the attic above the parts room, that he said was filled with old Studebaker parts left over from when the place had been a Studebaker dealership. I guess he just moved the old parts upstairs when he stocked the new GM parts below. I have often wondered what ever happened to those old parts. With the restoration revival going on presently, those parts would be worth millions now.
In a few weeks—less than two months—Dad said we were all going to move back to Merced, California. We were all getting a little homesick, I think, and we kids anyway, welcomed the announcement. He explained that Mom would be pulling the trailer down behind the Buick, and he would follow us down as soon as he could wrap things up in Oregon. He spent the next week fitting a two wheel dolly to the front of the trailer to help carry the load. The Buick had soft coil springs on the back axle, so it couldn’t have carried the weight without crunching the springs down to the rubber stops.
He also fitted a trailer hitch to the car, and installed a brake controller under the dashboard on the right of the steering column. The trailer brakes were electro-magnetic and seemed to be either off or full on with trailer tires squalling and smoking.
On the appointed day, we all piled in the Buick and headed north on old Hwy 30. The route chosen was to go north to Pendleton, bend west to Biggs Junction, then south on Hwy 97 to Weed, California, where we would follow Hwy 99 south to Merced. Any other route would involve a narrow, winding mountain pass across the high Sierras.
Dad showed Mom how to drive the rig, and he drove us through the Blue Mountains to the top of Cabbage Hill. There was a rest stop up there, and we stopped and ate lunch, I think, and then Dad left us there to hitchhike back to La Grand. The old highway switchbacked down from the crest of the Blue Mountains, the foothills looking like leaves of a cabbage. I remember the stories of log trucks losing their brakes and crashing on the hill on a regular basis.
There has been speculation that he hoped Mom would just crash and kill all of us before we reached the bottom, but that may be some longstanding anger issues coming out. I don't remember.
I always knew Mom was tough when she needed to be, but looking back on it now, it still amazes me just how she was able to do it. I know she knew Dad better than us kids did, and suspected things that never occurred to us at the time. I wonder now how much pure rage had to do with it.
She actually did a fair job hauling that trailer down the road. She made the turn at Biggs Jct. alright, and had very little trouble until we came to Klamath Falls, Oregon. Somewhere in the middle of town she lost track of the truck route, and we found ourselves in the middle of old downtown, with cars parked on both sides, and two narrow lanes in the middle. Drivers around us were honking their horns and hollering at her, but eventually she got out of downtown and found a place to pull over and stop. I don’t remember now if she asked for directions, or figured it out on the map, but before too long we were on the highway south again.
In the same situation, I would probably have given some of those other drivers a one finger wave, but our mother would not have done so under threat of firing squad.
As she neared Sacramento, Mom decided she didn’t want anymore downtown city driving, so she consulted the map and found a route around the city on the west side, through Dixon and Rio Vista, joining back up to Hwy 99 at Lodi, California.
We were rolling along pretty good south of Dixon, even though the roads were very narrow, when a loud noise and a lot of jerking let us know we had trouble. Both of the small wheels on the trailer dolly had blown out, and we were miles from any town. Not that it made a lot of difference, because Mom was nearly out of money, too.
We sat there for a long time, with Mom crying some, and praying some, partially blocking one lane. Eventually a local man, a farmer, I think, stopped and offered to help when he saw the situation. My brother Bill said he heard him mutter something about any man oughtta be shot who’d send a woman and her kids out alone on the road with a rig like that.
This was well before woman’s liberation, but even now I tend to agree with him.
The two tires and tubes were 8” or 10” size, expensive and hard to find, and it took most of a day to get them and put them back on the dolly. I am sure the Good Samaritan refused money for the tires and work, because Mom still had enough money for gas to Merced.
The only other trouble was when we came to the bridge crossing the Sacramento River—a narrow steel girder bridge that had two of the smallest lanes and looked a mile long. Mom stopped at the north end, and I think she bowed her head and prayed as we waited for oncoming traffic to clear the bridge. When she thought it was hers, she headed out onto the bridge straddling the center line. Before we reached the other side, some guy in a pickup entered the other end. I think Mom said another prayer, which would have been close to a swear word except she sincerely meant it when she said, “Oh, Daddy!” She squeezed as far to the right as she dared, and I’m sure she closed her eyes and waited for the crash, but somehow the pickup missed us and we missed hitting the side of the bridge.
I believe it was the next day when we pulled into the driveway of Aunt Ora’s house at 1430 E. Santa Fe Dr. It was early in the dark of the morning, so Mom parked outside near the street and we all went back to the trailer and went to sleep until dawn. We were awakened by our cousins knocking on the door at sunrise. After a happy reunion with our Aunt Ora and cousins Jim and Glenn, I backed the trailer into the driveway because Mom did not know how to back a trailer, and I had some experience from backing at the Appling’s farm with their Allis-Chalmers tractor and trailer. With Mom and others all helping direct, we got it parked behind the house with the tongue facing the driveway.
Mom called Vern to let him know we had arrived. John says there was some time lapsed between our arrival and the phone call that ended it all, but I can’t remember that. I have forgotten much of the details of those days, but I seem to remember an icy chill going through me outside the house when I heard Mom scream and wail loudly as Aunt Ora rushed in to console and comfort her. Vern had told her on the phone to keep the Buick and trailer, that he wasn’t coming down ever, and he would be sending divorce papers shortly.
It’s a wonder she didn’t die right there. I know she wanted to.
Several weeks later the divorce papers arrived, and the reason for the divorce was desertion—Mom had deserted Dad! Having no money for lawyers, and never wanting to see him again, she signed the papers and sent them back.
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