Three Crazy Careers Seventy-Two Years: One Lucky Man

By Kenneth E. Nelson

This account of three unplanned careers supports the theory that life does not pursue a set of plans. As the author at ninety-two explains to friends, If it werent for World War II, Id likely still be milking cows today.
While in elementary school, Nelson and his older brother, Roy, became key parts of the familys dairy labor force.
He describes his official thirty-year work career as a fertilizer salesman with clarity. Companies, bosses, and fellow employees are named. Each is given a candid appraisal. Significant failures on his part dont appear to stand in the way of his advancement. Nelson often sees this as pure luck or happenstance.
As an ad-lib speaker following retirement, he describes himself as several notches below President George Bush. And yet almost thirty years and 4,957 speeches later, high schools were still requesting his appearance when he decided to discontinue speaking engagements in the summer of 2011.
Various stimulations triggered the writing of three books during the final fifteen years of his postretirement thirty-year career. The challenge of attracting publishers is described, followed by Nelsons observations of the self-publishing process.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483661599

Kenneth E. Nelson

Kenneth E. Nelson was raised on a California dairy farm during the Great Depression. Three and a half years were spent in the military during World War II, followed by an equal period to attain his BS degree from UC Berkeley. Following retirement from the farm fertilizer industry, he spent thirty years as a volunteer speaker for MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) and SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions). During that same period, Nelson capped a lifelong interest in writing with the publication of three books. He resides in Sacramento, California.

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THREE CRAZY CAREERS

SEVENTY-TWO YEARS

ONE LUCKY MAN

KENNETH E. NELSON

Copyright © 2013 by Kenneth E. Nelson.

Edited by Gwen Gallagher, Alamo, California

Library of Congress Control Number:       2013911863

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4836-6158-2

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4836-6157-5

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4836-6159-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 08/16/2013

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Contents

Book One       At Nine A Dairyman

1       A Night to Remember

2       Alfalfa

3       Swimming and School

4       Wood—$1 a Tier Turkeys—New York Dressed?

5       Disaster and Changes

6       New Man of the Family

7       Pearl Harbor

Book II       A Fertilizer Salesman?

1       Dressed for Selling

2       Scratching for Business

3       California Ammonia Co. (Calamco)

4       A Dry Bank Account

5       Best Sold to Occidental

6       Bad, Bad Decisions

7       A Crippling Resignation

8       Incentives—Getting it Right

9       Unexpected Jolts

10       Difficult Decisions?

11       Happy Trails!

Book III       Loosely Speaking A Lecturer and Writer

1       A Brief Retirement

2       Teenagers Replace Adults

3       Going It Alone

4       A Challenge to Write

5       Birth of a Novel

6       Disillusion Follows Hope

7       Neighbors Revisited A Home for Dear Mr. Nelson

8       Letters, Letters, Letters

Preface

Having been fired from my first and last jobs but tenaciously holding on to the thirty-year job in between, I feel eminently qualified to speak to the issues of careers and jobs—the subject matter of this book.

Both job losses were due to an abject failure to do the work required. Had I been the bosses, I would have canned myself. Some readers may empathize with my failures because they may have experienced similar job losses.

In 1946, an apartment complex operator on Fillmore Street in San Francisco and a gold-mining friend of my father gave me the job of managing the eight-unit apartment building that was owned by his mother. I, along with my wife and baby daughter, who would soon be arriving by train from their lifelong home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, were to get free rent. In return, I would handle such duties as responding to complaints, collecting delayed rent payments, and keeping the elegant entrance swept and polished.

By leaving at six in the morning, I could take a trolley down Fillmore, catch the Key System train across the Bay Bridge, exit on University Avenue, and walk up University to make my 8:00 a.m. class at UC Berkeley.

Thanks to our nation’s taxpayers, I had three and a half years of free college education based on an equal period of military service in World War II. I had signed up for a fairly heavy load of sixteen units, hoping to accumulate enough units to graduate in that period of time.

My high school major, woodshop, hardly qualified my entry into Cal, and with no foreign language credits, my major advisor convinced me to take Russian. According to him, there was a lot of great innovation being done there in agriculture. My chosen major was soil science. Many experts would be needed to interpret Russian work, as my advisor saw in the future.

Reversing my travel route got me home around six o’clock. My wife and daughter (now one and walking) somehow felt they were deserving of time with me. Study got only about half the time needed, and Mr. Feigan’s apartment building got none.

Four weeks into classes got me an edict from the chemistry instructor. I had best drop the course because I had failed every one of the three weekly quizzes. There was no chance that I would pass his course. I told him that it was impossible for me to quit. Chemistry and physics were the guts of my major!

Two months later, my wife was still having migraine headaches; but my daughter was finally accepting me as her daddy, and I was passing both chemistry and Russian. Mr. Feigan fired me for having done nothing.

We were able to find a vacant apartment in a former wartime shipbuilder’s complex in Richmond at a most welcome rent of $30 per month, including utilities. My cousin, Bruce Black, also coming out of the military, was completing an earlier start at UC Berkeley and had alerted us that an apartment was coming vacant. Three and a half years did result in my degree, and I had a job in the real world at thirty years old.

My second and final experience of being fired wasn’t expected. I had completed thirty years of uninterrupted employment with The Best Fertilizers Co. and Occidental Chemical Co. Occidental Petroleum Co. had purchased the Best Fertilizers Co. and named their western fertilizer division Occidental Chemical Co.

A nonsalaried sales agreement had been made with Occidental Chemical Co. to represent them in Nevada. All of the expenses were to be mine; a commission would be paid on collected sales of the company’s fertilizers and agriculture chemicals.

A consulting agreement had been reached with California Ammonia Co. (half owned by Occidental Chemical Co. and half by about 1,500 California growers). My job was to ride herd on the three field representatives who had been recently hired and to prepare the annual newsletter, the Calamco News. I was to be paid $12.50 an hour for work performed and reimbursed for travel expenses.

Having control of my time was wonderful. I had learned to love ocean travel during the war, and now my wife and I were ready for a series of cruises.

I had read in National Geographic Magazine about a horse-packing outfit in the state of Washington led by a man who really took care of the environment as well as his customers. A ten-day ride out of Lake Chelan, hardly on a gallop like Paul Revere but at a steady pace of an experienced animal, and I was hooked.

The call came from California Ammonia Company’s board chairman. I was fired. He had called once, and the information was that my wife and I were on a cruise. His call ten days later had resulted in my wife advising him that I was on a six-day horse-pack trip somewhere in the high mountains west of Mammoth Lakes.

Book One

At Nine

A Dairyman

Chapter One

A Night to Remember

It was the summer of 1930. My father, Roy A. Nelson Sr., had become a sharecropper on a grade-B dairy farm west of Lodi, California. The term sharecropper wasn’t foreign to us, but we had always associated it with downtrodden people in the Southeast, trying to eke out a living growing tobacco, corn, cotton, or taters.

It wasn’t the dream or the plan of a proud man but was now the critical need in order to provide for a large growing family. After almost ten years of effort, my father’s earlier dreams had crashed. With the onset of what was to be known as the Great Depression of the 1930s, he had lost the 365-acre mountain ranch bordered by the Mattole River in Humboldt County, California.

Over a period of six months, the Nelson family had first lived with Sue Nelson’s parents in Lodi, then moved to rental homes, grabbing short periods of work when it could be found. Her parents helped out the family with some money, I’m sure, although no one spoke of it.

Now my father had a contract with the owner of this one-hundred-acre dairy farm, Guard Darrah, the district attorney of San Joaquin County.

We were to provide all of the labor, and Mr. Darrah was to pay all of the other bills. Each was to receive 50 percent of the gross milk check, paid twice each month. We would pay no rent for the two-story old wooden frame home on the property, and water and electricity would be furnished.

My mother liked the location. School was less than half a mile away, well within walking distance. Traffic on Ray Road was light. The house was livable, with two large bedrooms downstairs. It was a tight fit, but one could handle two double beds and take care of us four boys. Our sister Yvonne, then three, would somehow be accommodated with a small bed in our parents’ room.

Our wood-burning kitchen range would provide some house heat and hot water. A small wood-burning heater in the living room was the only other source of heat. The two rooms upstairs would serve well for storage and as a playroom even without heat.

At nine and a half years old, I, along with my brother Roy Jr., eleven, were to become my father’s labor force. Little did I realize then that this would result in a twelve-year career.

It was difficult not to overhear my mother’s voiced concerns. How were Roy and I going to get enough rest if we had to be up at five every morning and working until seven at night? How would we have the time for homework? We were good students, and she didn’t want us to fail.

My father’s argument was that we had to make it work. There was absolutely no money for hired labor. Roy and I had learned to milk the two cows on the big mountain ranch. We had milked two goats at the most recent rental house, which had a large backyard and a little shed where the goats could sleep.

Roy and I were glad to be rid of the goats. Their teats were a different shape than a cow’s, and they were difficult to grasp and squeeze. Despite our father’s encouragement, we never liked the different taste of goat’s milk.

We had explored the big barn, with its mow of alfalfa hay stacked in the middle, with a row of twelve stanchions to hold the cows on either side. Wooden planking covered the milking area, with a concrete trough about a foot wide and four inches deep, positioned behind where the cows stood while being fed and milked.

Our parents had bought knee-high rubber boots for Roy and me. We’d taken them off and on several times, felt pretty grown-up. Cow manure is really sloppy, and you never knew when the animals were going to poop, so wearing shoes was out of the question. My mother said she would insist that we hose off the boots before entering the house after milking.

The herd of twenty-five to thirty cows had been milked that morning. The family had moved out a day earlier to allow us to get settled in, then had come back to do the morning milking. Two or three empty ten-gallon Sego milk cans were standing beside a little shed with a concrete tank inside. When we finished milking, the now-full cans would be placed in the water-filled tank for cooling.

How did the milking of these two dozen or so cows go that first night? I have very little memory of exact events. Readers with dairy experience know that cows are ready and even anxious to part with their milk at regular milking hours. Milk can often be seen dripping from some of the cows’ teats as they await their turn to be milked.

My father would have shown us how to fork hay into the mangers in front of each cow before the doors were opened to permit them to enter. We had practiced opening and closing the huge sliding doors. No doubt the cows would have crowded the barn door area, jostling for position to be first to enter. I’m sure my father slid the immense doors open himself that first night, cautioning us to stand clear to prevent being knocked down and trampled. Our job would have been to lock down the stanchions as soon as each cow stuck its head through the V-shaped opening, eager for the tasty alfalfa hay in front of them.

No doubt my father helped select a first cow each for Roy and me to milk. He would also have helped us position and balance ourselves on the one-legged wooden stools. Each was made with a twelve-inch piece of one-by-six nailed on the end of a longer two-by-four. Cows dislike unfamiliar hands grasping their teats and often react by kicking the buckets and the new milkers. I have to believe that we boys, and possibly my father, suffered that indignity before the milking session was over. Very likely we spilled partially filled pails of milk.

One of us would have carried half a pail of warm milk to the house for our own use. Part of it would have been poured into a deep pan and covered to keep the flies away. The reward the following morning would be a thick layer of welcome cream that had risen to the top during the night. We’d have the luxury of cream on our cereal and wouldn’t have to endure drinking goat’s milk any longer.

We may have had an icebox, but I do remember that after several months, our parents bought an electric refrigerator—that was a completely new experience. On the mountain ranch, the closest we had come to refrigeration was a screened-in cubicle in the oak tree near our house. There was no electricity in our part of the Mattole River Valley. Now we had a sparkling white-colored Copeland refrigerator. Unfortunately, it failed after two weeks, but fortunately, the store replaced it with a Frigidaire. What a blessing for my mother!

That first milking had to have been a long, tiring event. Milking a cow requires squeezing one’s hands vigorously three hundred to six hundred times. My father had told us in advance to expect our hand muscles to become awfully tired and sore but had assured us that in about a week, we would be amazed with how easily we could handle our job. It would surprise me if I wasn’t crying from the pain before the last cow was milked. Probably not my brother Roy. He would have toughed it out and without a complaint.

It had to be with some satisfaction that we watched my father load the two full cans of milk on to the wheelbarrow and place them in the water tank for the next morning’s pickup. It may have been that the younger children were fed and perhaps even put to bed before we trudged into the kitchen, leaving our boots on the porch. Roy and I would have quickly eaten and then collapsed into bed. Five o’clock the next morning would come all too soon.

Sore hands didn’t prevent the next morning’s milking. It was our job. We watched as my father clamped down the lids on the full ten gallon cans and used the wheelbarrow to transport them to the shed with the cooling tank. The Sego truck would arrive between nine and ten and pick up the milk from both the prior evening and this morning’s efforts.

On hearing the roar of the big truck’s engine, several of us ran outside to watch the loading. The driver really impressed me. In a single movement, he hoisted each full can four feet up onto the truck bed. A few minutes later, everything was roped tightly together, new empty cans were lined up against the shed, and he was gone.

Chapter Two

Alfalfa

Mr. Darrah’s one-hundred-acre farm was made up of a large, dry pasture adjacent to the corral, two irrigated clover pastures, and two alfalfa fields. The animals had free run of the open field and could nibble on emerging natural grasses or eat from an enclosed, open-air feedlot. This enclosure stood several hundred feet from the barn. Wagon loads of low quality hay were unloaded by hand into that enclosure.

The alfalfa field nearest to the house was irrigated by a deep-well pump. It was in fine condition and the primary source of high quality feed for the animals during the year. Five good cuttings could be made during the April to October harvest season. To quickly stimulate growth, two irrigations were applied between cuttings. Two cuttings had already been made, cured, and stored in the barn prior to our arrival in early July.

A standard two-wheel mowing machine with a six-foot sickle was to be pulled by two horses on the farm. We children were amazed by the size of these horses that roamed and fed freely among the cows. We were warned to stay clear of the big stallion because of his mean streak. The equally huge mare was said to be docile and even welcomed human attention. There was no saddle in sight, much to Roy’s and my disappointment.

My father explained that after each morning milking and breakfast, our first job was to clean the concrete gutters of the accumulated manure and urine. Were Roy and I ever glad to have those rubber boots! There were two scoop shovels hanging on the wall just inside the barn door. A gross-looking wheelbarrow was just outside, around the barn corner. We were shown how to scoop the mess into the wheelbarrow, filling it only as full as we would handle, and then wheeling it to a central dump located a hundred feet out into the dry pasture. A horse-drawn manure spreader was standing near the pile but showed no sign of recent use. What a horrible, messy, and smelly job!

Helping my father irrigate was a much more pleasant job. If our boots were fouled from handling the manure-cleaning job, they were soon clean from splashing in the fresh water. The alfalfa field near the house was divided into checks, each about thirty feet wide and several hundred feet in length. The ditch carrying the water ran down the center of the field. Grading has been done prior to planting so that each check sloped gently downward, away from the supply ditch.

My father would cut an opening into the ditch bank, allowing water to flow into several checks at a time. Our job was to follow the water down the checks and signal when it was about thirty feet from the end. He could then shut off the flow of water to that check, counting on the water to reach the end. Too much water accumulating there would result in drowning out the alfalfa. Care was critical because once planted, an alfalfa stand could last for six to eight years if it was properly treated.

Come over here, I want to show you boys something, brought us splashing through the water. Now we understood why my father had requested we bring a shovel. He pointed to a small, furry animal’s nose, poking out of an open hole in the levee between checks. With his shovel, he scooped water from the check into the hole. Out popped a gopher gasping for air. It was quickly killed by a whack with the back of my father’s shovel.

He explained that gophers burrowed under the alfalfa plants and ate the roots, damaging or destroying the plant. They had to be kept under control. Between irrigations, the animals would extend their tunnels throughout the field. Mounds of freshly pushed out dirt and dying alfalfa plants confirmed their activity. Gophers apparently have an instinct that directs them to lead a part of their burrowing to the higher ground of the low levees between the checks. When water swamped the underground runways within the checks, these furry rodents had two options: to emerge from their burrows within the check and swim or to scurry through their runways to reach the higher ground of the levee. They would then open a hole to the levee to see what was going on. With an experienced eye, Roy and I soon became efficient gopher sighters.

Because the numerous barnyard cats needed feeding, we soon carried a bucket while helping with the irrigation. The many gophers we caught were fed to our delighted cats!

A large gopher snake would occasionally be seen. We’d heard that snakes would swallow their food whole, so when one was finally captured, we put it in the five gallon pail we were carrying. The first live gopher we captured was tossed into the pail alongside the gopher snake. Roy and I were fascinated to watch the gopher do its best to survive, sinking its large, sharp, gnawing teeth into the snake. Seemingly indifferent to the bites, the snake encircled the gopher’s midsection, tightened the noose, and soon swallowed the dead animal, head first. We thought we were clever in calling the gopher’s tail the snake’s toothpick.

Ten days had elapsed since the irrigation; the alfalfa had responded and was now two feet tall with a few blossoms showing. The ground was dry enough to hold the weight of the horses and the mower, with my father seated on the metal seat. He was no stranger around horses, having used a team regularly during the early years on his mountain ranch. Fields were plowed and harrowed with horsepower. Vetch and wheat or oats were clipped by a horse-drawn mowing machine and then loaded onto sleds or wagons when cured. Horses pulled these to the stationary threshing machine.

We would now watch my father harness the two horses and hitch the animals to the mowing machine. The mare accepted the bridle and harness without a flinch. The stallion wanted nothing to do with being harnessed. We boys backed away nervously as the horse tried to jerk free. Eventually, the agitated animal settled down enough to be harnessed.

Alfalfa fields are mowed crossways of the rounded leaves. The freshly cut hay was left open to the sun for several days. At the appropriate level of curing, my father hitched the team to a mechanical rake and gathered the hay into rows for further drying and curing. That’s where Roy and I learned a new muscle-building skill.

Our hands had become used to the two hours of milking each morning and evening. School wasn’t to begin for another six weeks. The routine of feeding the milk cows was rewarding because of their enthusiastic response. The hated job of cleaning the barns was accepted as unavoidable. We could now shove the heavy barn doors open and quickly stand aside without fear of being trampled. Occasionally, my father showed up at the barn a half an hour late, having continued with another part of the endless work demands. He must have been developing confidence that his labor force could get the milking underway without his presence.

Following the raking of the alfalfa into windrows, our daytime job was to pile the hay into shocks, which are stacks about four feet across and two feet high. The purpose was to allow the hay to further cure while maintaining the desired green color. Also, it made for fewer stops of the wagon while loading.

Another two or three days and the shocked hay was ready to be stored in the big barn. Roy and I had learned how to handle the large, three- or four-tined pitch forks while shocking the hay. Now my father showed us how to lift up a layer of hay that we were capable of handling and position it on the wagon