Before I get ahead of myself and tell you about being sent out to help a carpenter crew on the dikes, I must tell this story. It will gross you out, but it’s worth telling so far as my redneck mindset thinks. My dad had a really great guy for a carpenter superintendant. Van Sexton I think was my dad’s ideal for a boss. Problem was he had a boss in between him and Van. This guy was a really big guy. He was one of those Jabba-the-Hut characters. He was massive, especially from the waist down. Big timed pear shaped. Anyway, dad got along with him fine enough, but he and I apparently didn’t get along all too well. I didn’t really try to be this way, but my mom always said what was on her mind and, well, so did I. Apparently I said something to him one day that didn’t set to well with him and he told dad he was going to fire me. Dad had to talk him out of it, but to this day I still don’t know what I said to tick him off. Now for the gross part. He told dad and Shorty one day he was going to have to go to the port-a-john. We hardly ever saw him go and dad said okay as the guy picked up a spoon and headed out. Dad asked him what the spoon was for. Well, he said as he left out, he didn’t go to the bathroom but about once a month and when he did, he needed a spoon. You figure out the rest. I could say what he said, but then you might have to stop and gag a bit.
Okay, now let’s get to the day I was transferred to the field to work with a carpenter crew. The work in the shop was winding down and the job as a whole was not but just a few months from being completed and turned over to Weyerhaeuser. So I reported out there and it was way away from the main site. There were several dikes or ponds where the water would be filtered before returning to the river nearby. The carpenters were out there constructing forms for spillways between the ponds. The forms would be filled with concrete and then after it had set, we’d go back and strip the forms and a heavy equipment operator would backfill dirt around the outside of it. Well, being out there led to some privileges that we might not have back on the site. One day a couple of the carpenters brought some Rock fish and potatoes and spices, a big cooker and we lit up a fire and cooked Rock fish stew. There was enough for everyone on the crew. The old guy who done it up for us was one of those easy going old farts who joked around a lot and no one really cared as long as he did his job. He had a side kick of sorts and they both worked well together. My crew foreman was a friend of dad’s and we all got along pretty good. Well, the day came finally around November and I was given my walking papers. I was out of my first job. Everyone was helpful and seemingly caring with information of where the next big job was and connections to ask for if I wanted to continue in construction. But, being 1-A for the draft I wasn’t much into travel just yet. The military would probably take care of that later.
During my stint there on October 13, 1970, I got up that morning to go to work and my dad and mom were already up. Dad said I’d have to go to work alone that day. He was taking mom to the hospital. My youngest brother was about to arrive. Jamie Van Rowe, alias, Tad Pole was on his way. So I struck out for work. We did ride with two other guys, but I went by myself that day. I had a hard time working that day not knowing how things were going. There weren’t that many phones to just go grab one on a construction site. When work was over for the day, I had about twenty five miles to drive home and I did it in record time. All my shoes had lead in them anyway. They still do. Okay. I was on the home stretch on the dirt road about a quarter mile from the house right at Theodore and Nina Mae Cayton’s house and coming into that curve I was doing the dirt track racing thing, you know turn right to go left, and right in the middle of the curve came our highway patrolman from the other direction. He saw me coming in and he hit the ditch and as I continued on I looked back in the side mirror to see his car bounce back out of the ditch and come to a stop. Well, buddy, I didn’t stop. I was within eyesight of the house so I kept going till I pulled into the driveway. Dad, Danny, Mike and Timmy were standing in the driveway. I think they saw the whole incident and by that time the highway patrolman had turned around and was almost to the yard. I got out of the car and walked over to dad, who told me quickly we had another brother and what was I thinking back there. Okay, I’m stupid, but I had been at work all day not knowing what was happening with my mom and I wanted to get home. The highway patrolman got out of his car and walked over to where we stood, he looked at me and asked me was I aware of what I just did. I shook my head yes as dad walked over to him. The two of them walked away from us about twenty feet away and conversed a bit. Heads shook and they turned and came back. The patrolman gave me a bit of a tongue lashing and left. Dad told him what had happened that day and begged mercy. That was one of the few times he did something like that for me. Most of the time it was me begging for mercy. See, that wasn’t the first time I’d done that stunt. The other time was with a farmer on a dirt road, ironically, just a bit down the road from where the highway patrolman lived. That time I stopped the truck I was driving and backed up. I gave the farmer some lame excuse that the truck got away from me and I lost it. He told me I should be more careful. But I had a chain in the pickup bed and I pulled him out of the ditch and we all went our way and nothing ever came of it. Okay, so back then I was hell on wheels. Since I’m on this subject let me relate one more story. Ain’t it nice to get off on a rabbit trail every once and a while? I kept a clean driving record all through high school. My cars more or less dictated that. The old ’53 Chevy would do right at a hundred, but the rear end would get to roaring so loud you couldn’t talk to anyone with you, so I kept it down. But when I went to work at Weyerhaeuser I needed something different because the old ’53 had died by then. So my now step-grandfather, Jamie Lamm, sold me his first wife’s old 1960 Ford Falcon. It was a shiny white four door, six cylinder, automatic for a whole $250. I paid him for it in four or five weeks in cash. Then I put recaps on it and painted in the letters on the tires to make it look racy. Oh, and popped the hub caps off and painted the wheels black. Oh well, my ADD is kicking in, I’ve hit yet another rabbit trail. Let me get back on track here. I had kept a clean driving record because if I got a ticket while in school, I would have lost my bus license and that meant money out of my pocket. So now about back to this time frame I was getting my lead foot out more often since I wasn’t driving a bus anymore. One day while I was out kicking around I turned off of 306 at Shirley’s house and headed toward White Hill church and when I got to the stop sign I just kicked it and did a donut in the middle of the road and for good measure kick it some more and then took off toward the Hodges home and right in front of their house sat Ira Rowe talking to his son Hugh. See, Ira was a sheriff deputy and he was in his patrol car and his son Hugh was a fairly new deputy too and they heard and saw me coming and just simply flagged me down as I came up on them. Hugh asked me what I was up to. Quirky me said, my usual self. So from that short conversation I got a ticket for wreckless operation and running a stop sign. There was the end of my sparkling driving career.
