The Random Wandering of Billy Ray

By William R. Arnold

Billy Ray was born during the Great Depression. Through totally unforeseen circumstances, he wandered through varied, random, and unrelated situations. His life seldom had a predictable direction. Despite that, he became successful in athletics, teaching, working, and schooling. This eventually led to his being a professor, textbook author, software test engineer, technical writer, consultant, and more. I hope you are enjoying your life, and I hope reading this book might help you!

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496948236

Book preview

From Riverside

to Klamath Falls

For the three years after I was born, I have no factual knowledge about my parents’ ongoing activities. My parents did not have a camera. The pictures I do have were taken by other people and eventually sent to my mother. As well, my parents seldom talked to me about my early childhood.

Whatever my family did during those three years, I was developing via active exploration. My mom often told people that I was born running and asking questions. The one constant in my life is that I have always been curious. I read books, magazines, and newspapers. According to my mom, I incessantly asked her and my dad questions. I am over eighty now, and I still continuously explore and investigate most of the things I do. As one example of studying and analyzing, during my teenage days of digging ditches to earn money, I studied how to dig more effectively and efficiently. Consequently, I was able to dig more in a day than other workers, even grown men. On one occasion, my skill paid off in getting a job that was to be given to two workers who wanted the same job. The foreman had me get in a partially dug ditch and show what I could do. Oddly, my brother was watching because if I did not get the job, we were going to explore some new areas of employment. Using techniques I had invented, I stuck my shovel in the dirt and pitched it up with sufficient force to break the handle. The other guy left, and I got the job.

All I do know about my first three years is that my parents migrated north eight hundred miles and settled in Klamath Falls, Oregon, in a small house on Garden Street. My grandmother, who had traveled from Prineville to Klamath Falls when the farm was lost, knew about the house and made some type of arrangement for my family to live there.

Parenthetically, my parents were never religious and did not attend church. So my grandmother, who was very religious, had me baptized in a small congregational church that was next door to the house on Garden Street. The adult act of baptizing a child at an age when the child has no concept of religion is interesting to me in many ways, one being that the baptized child has no understanding of how such an event will later influence his or her life. In my case, being baptized affected me much later in life because it became a significant obstacle. I married a catholic woman. Because I had been baptized, the church rejected me.

My parents’ migration might puzzle some people today. However, during the Depression, my parents seldom had work, did not have a phone, and seldom wrote letters. They simply did things moment by moment, more or less drifting toward whatever could or would happen. As I wrote this book, I realized that millions of people drifted to wherever their lives took them during the Depression. I do not think people today, including me, can really grasp the hard times they endured. I knew nothing about those hard times as I was a baby who had no concept of a purpose in life.

As an aside to the above events, my brother, George, and I have often discussed how my dad and uncle traveled from Prineville in Central Oregon to Riverside and Dunsmuir, respectively. Both towns are in California and many miles from Prineville. Neither had a car or money for traveling on a train or bus. They must have walked, rode the rails hobo style, hitched rides, and generally lived off the land. My brother and I always felt we were rough and tough kids. But we did have someplace to stay at night, could forage for food, and could otherwise buy some staples at a food store.

I was later told that when my dad left the military, he wanted to return to Oregon. My mother did not care where the two of them lived. His connection with Klamath Falls had occurred earlier when my grandfather lost his farm. Having no place to live, my grandfather sent my grandmother to Klamath Falls because he knew a family that would take her in. For whatever reasons, she stayed there for the rest of her life, working at whatever jobs she could get. From a kid’s perspective, what I remember is that Grandma Arnold always had cookies in a jar when I visited. The visits lasted until I was a teenager and left Klamath Falls. I seldom returned except for brief visits, but the cookie jar was still always full.

I suspect, though I was never told so, that my dad wanted to return to Oregon so he could reconnect with his dad. When the Depression caused the Arnold family to go in different directions, my grandfather, William, walked from Prineville to Odell Lake. He lived off the land during that trip. Much later, my brother and I calculated that the distance was more than one hundred miles, straight line. Someone had told him he could get work for a rich person who was building a lodge on the lake. He did get a job, and when the job ended, he traveled to Klamath Falls to get new work. He never reunited with my grandmother. I do not think they ever divorced. They simply went separate ways. Over the years that I knew him, my grandfather worked any job he could get, mostly as a plumber, carpenter, electrician, or laborer. Later, he developed some type of relationship with Harry Martin, who owned a farm between the towns of Merrill and Malin, about twenty miles from Klamath Falls. (More on this later.)

As another aside related to my grandfather’s work on the lodge at Odell Lake, the owner made a cabin on Odell Creek available to my grandfather for a week’s vacation each year for as long as he lived. Starting when I was about eight years old, my grandfather took me with him when he visited the cabin, usually once a year. The cabin had one room that had a wood floor, counter, table, and two bunks. To me, it was a mansion. I enjoyed many days catching fish in the surrounding creeks and fishing on the lake. (More on this later.)

Getting back to Klamath Falls, I have no clear record of why my family left the house on Garden Street. I do know that, for a few years, we lived in a basement of what was to later become a house my grandfather was constructing. He did not finish the house until many years later. Outside stairs led to the back side of the basement. The dirt walls were covered by wood. The front half had a wood floor that sloped down to the back half. That area was awful. The water table in the Klamath Basin varies from about five feet to twenty feet. Where the room was built, the back half of the basement frequently flooded. We lived in the front half that had the wood floor. Basically, the house had a counter, woodstove, table, four chairs, and two beds. At night, we lit a kerosene lamp for light. We got water from an outside well, washed dishes in a pan, threw the soapy water outside, rinsed dishes in the pan with clear water, and threw that water outside. Cooking and heating water was done on the wood stove. The bathroom was a very basic outhouse.

To stay relatively clean, we took sponge baths. During one of the sponge baths, when I was about four years old, I pulled a kettle of hot water off the stove. It spilled on my right leg and burned me badly. I still have the scar. I am told that this really upset my mother—not so much what I had done but more how we were living. My grandmother treated the burn. It healed slowly, but it did heal. Sometime after we moved into the basement house, my brother, George, was born.

During my brother’s early years, once he learned to walk and talk, I took care of him and helped him learn to love the outdoors. This process, which occurred in stages, included fishing, hunting, biking, climbing, hiking, exploring, and generally examining whatever part of the world we could access via walking or biking. This caring for my brother gradually became sharing as I moved on to high school. After I finished high school, my brother and I seldom saw each other. When he finished high school, we gradually renewed the above activities. Now, while we are both retired, we get together at least twice a year for some type of outdoor activity.

The New House

I am sure my mother did not like living in the basement house. At the time my father was working as a mechanic at the Ford dealership. Having grown up on a farm, he was a good mechanic. Actually, he had myriad skills. In those days (1930s and 1940s), most farm boys were good mechanics. Cars were still very simple. Several men I knew worked as auto mechanics although they had never had any formal training. Although my dad also lived in the basement house, he generally spent his time after work doing something away from home. To this day, I do not know what he did.

Sometime while I was six years old, my mom and dad had a real discussion of how to get a new house. This was the first time I ever heard my parents have a loud discussion. My mother was generally quiet, but she could be assertive when she really wanted something. Somehow, my mom got a loan from my great-grandmother for $2,500 to build a house. I was 6 years old, so the year was 1939.

I did not know at the time that I had a great-grandmother. All I knew was that we started building a house about five blocks south of the basement house. My mom was to pay twenty-five dollars a month on the loan when she had enough money. Later, my great-grandmother forgave the loan. I do not know the date. Parenthetically, I never knew any of this until a few years ago when my sister provided the details.

My father and grandfather built the house with help from various people I did not know. I was allowed to help by carrying tools, wood, and assorted parts to whomever needed them. My mother also helped. My big event was getting to nail some lath to studs in a closet in the small bedroom. No one would see my work there, and plaster would cover it. For some reason, I always had a desire to help people with work, and I still do. Sometimes I irritate people by offering to help them do something when, in reality, they do not want any help. I never learn and keep offering.

We moved into the house. Compared to where I had previously lived, I thought the house was a mansion. This was, of course, as seen through the eyes of a six-year-old. The next few years were spent planting a lawn, trees, and flowers. We never had a garage. This was not important because my mother never learned to drive and never owned a car. Also, during these years, my sister, Judy, was born. For some time, we functioned as an almost-normal family. My sister was seven years younger than me. I seldom paid much attention to her. Many years later, we became good friends, and we often visit now.

The new house was huge to me. It had two entries, a small utility room with a tub and washer that had a crank-type wringer, a kitchen with a woodstove, a living room, a bedroom off the living room, a small hallway that housed a hot-water heater that led to a bathroom, and a second bedroom. The main bedroom had a closet; the second bedroom did not. Hot water was heated via induction from pipes that ran from the heater to coils in the woodstove. Pretty nice in my view!

The living room had a small woodstove that provided heat to the house. In the winter, the bedrooms got very cold. Leaving the door to the bathroom open provided enough heat to keep the pipes from freezing. My brother and I were in charge of getting, chopping, and stacking the wood for the two stoves. This was a straightforward chore. There was no cost for the wood because a railroad ran parallel to our house. A train often carried logs to mills in Klamath Falls, about five miles to the west of where we lived. A large irrigation canal ran perpendicular to our house. To cross the canal, the railroad had built a bridge. On some occasions, the logs were stacked too high on the train cars to fit under the bridge tressel, so the railroad workers would dump a log or two alongside the track. Free firewood!

My brother and I used a bucksaw, wedges, and sledge hammers to cut the logs into usable lengths, about twelve inches. We then carried the wood home in a wheelbarrow (borrowed from a neighbor) and split them into stove-size pieces. We gave the neighbor some wood to pay for using the wheelbarrow. Several other residents did the same thing. The logs dumped from the train always disappeared quickly, at no apparent expense to the train companies or logging mills. I was about seven years old when I started getting the wood. Do not tell me a seven-year-old could not do this. For my entire young life, I did things far ahead of my years. I have no clue as to why I could function ahead of my years.

Getting the wood exemplifies a basic orientation I developed at an early age. I was determined to get along in life, whatever happened. I quickly learned to work hard to get what I wanted. I did not ask for help, and I still seldom ask. I became a kid who, when something needed to be done, I did it directly. As well, in observing the ways in which the Depression caused many people to discriminate against poor people, I became intolerant of what I considered to be unjust or unfair actions. Now that I am over eighty years old, I realize that this orientation was a double-edged sword. On one hand, I helped a lot of people. On the other hand, trying to prevent injustice (according to my view of justice) led to unfortunate situations. In particular, I could not stand bullies who picked on helpless or handicapped students. I would immediately get in their faces. If they did not stop, the result was a fight. I was a medium-size kid, but I was strong, agile, and strong willed. The fights seldom lasted long. In most cases, my opponent quickly gave up and agreed to leave the bullied kids alone.

My last fight occurred when I was a junior in high school. A new kid started picking on a friend of mine who was partly handicapped. A girl told the new kid that I did not like bullying. He came up to me and started to push me in the chest (a typical way for a boy to initiate a fight during the 1940s). Before he could complete the push, I hit him squarely in the nose. He fell to the floor, bleeding profusely. By the end of the day, word of the fight had spread to the entire school. For whatever reason, I now had a reputation. The aggressive kids left my friends alone. My sister, Judy, provided an interesting comment in regard to my being a tough kid. When my mother died and the attendees were having dinner, my brother’s wife asked Judy, What do you remember people saying about your brothers while you grew up? I ask this because you were much younger. My sister thought a long time and said, All I remember is that people talked about those tough Arnold brothers. Wow!

In terms of my being active, aggressive, and persistent, according to my mom, I was born running and asking questions about everything, often trying to fix the world, and taking on any task with direct action. I am still that way. Even now, in my eighties, my wife often comments on how I get tasks done so quickly.

Beginning about age six, shortly after moving into the real house, I began to spend my time outdoors: hiking, running, climbing the hills east of my neighborhood, observing animals, and generally exploring the natural world. I loved horses and dogs. I still do. Actually, I like horses and dogs better than many people. I spent hours watching clouds and wondering how they generated weather and generally wondering how the earth got to be what I could see. However, laws required that I attend school. Basically, I was indifferent to schooling. I did well when I liked my teacher and the subject, usually math and science.