No Time for Rest: Keeping Your Nose to the Grindstone

By Larry Rubin

No one ever said that life would be easy. Challenges will invariably confront anyone who dares to step out in faith, even those who believe that they can eventually solve the many mysteries of life. The author was confident enough to attempt many new work opportunities that presented themselves. Stepping out of ones comfort zone is typically a secret recipe for adventure, usually cloaked in success, especially when committed to using a bit of common sense. From logging to construction to wheat farming to cattle ranching to driving huge grain trucks to communication cable installations to avoiding rattlers to even walking in the presence of grizzlies and rams, the author was privileged to taste a touch of what life has to offer. He wasnt disappointed!

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Aug 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9781512753158

Larry Rubin

Living and working in the big wild West, especially as a timber faller in the rugged Montana forests, forces one to learn quickly or perish. The author had little choice but to keep extremely observant so as not to get injured or maimed and thus be able to work another day and provide for his family. Working during sweltering, hot summer days as well as frigid winter days of down to twenty-five degrees below zero brought vivid life to the old adage of “easier said than done.” In spite of his constant vigilance, occasional mishaps were in the making. The author worked for nearly twenty-four years as a Montana timber faller and made it through, alive.

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CHAPTER 1

The Life Of A Logger Continues

While I was still working for the Kinniburgh Brothers Logging, I returned home one afternoon to hear of the ‘mis-hap’ to our son Mark. While he was attending the Junior High School in Kalispell one day, his boys gym class was involved in a vigorous game of indoor volley-ball. Mark had worked himself up to the front row in the game and at one point, was the man on the far right side.

Suddenly, the opposite team had served the ball and it was coming toward Mark. As he looked at the on-coming volley ball, he thought he could jump high enough to block the ball with both of his raised hands. He jumped ‘sky-high’ but as he did so, someone from the opposing team bumped into Mark causing him to lose his balance.

Down he came, landing slightly out of bounds and falling by the up-right post holding the end of the net. As he fell, his right leg fell across the solid steel-base that held the upright post. Another student also fell, mostly on Mark’s leg and it subsequently broke in 2 places below the ankle and the knee.

They rushed him to the hospital where they put the leg in a sturdy cast. He started using a pair of crutches nearly everywhere he went for the next several weeks. He was in a cast for several weeks, as well. In the end, the leg healed up nicely and was probably as good as new.

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A couple of years after we moved down to the ‘Big House’, we acquired a small 10 week old puppy that was a ‘Cockapoo’, which was ½ Cocker-spaniel and ½ Poodle. He began to grow quickly and soon was a part of our family. He acquired the name of ‘Curly Joe’. We never knew why but he had a fairly ‘tight-curl’ at the end of his tail.

The Poodle part must have been of the miniature variety of Schnauzer as he did not get real tall. His greatest quality was that he did not shed hair, at least like most dog breeds do. You could rub your hand briskly down his back 15 to 20 times and would be lucky to find a single dog hair, on your hand.

When ‘Curly’ was about 8 to 9 months old, he developed the habit of jumping up in my lap, whenever I was sitting in the living room on my recliner chair. He quickly became a ‘lap-dog’ and would eagerly jump up to my lap at the slightest encouragement; often times, even with-out any ‘prompting’.

‘Curly’ was primarily a ‘house dog’ but we frequently let him outside, several times a day. His out-door ‘visits’ were usually only for 8 to 10 minutes, after-which, we would let him back inside the big log home. Occasionally, if one of our family members was outside, we typically would let him run for an extended time or until we returned back inside ourselves.

One early afternoon, in the late Spring, our daughter, Kristie was outside so we had let Curly outside to run around also. Kristie was around the top side of our house where the big driveway was. She didn’t notice that Curly had run around to the bottom side of the big log home and then, on down a bit farther to the next-door neighbor’s place, just below us about 40 yards.

After about 12 to 15 minutes, Kristie said she heard a dog starting to scream for its life. She listened for several seconds to determine the location of the shrill sounds and then started jogging toward the bottom side of our house. Just as she arrived at the lower side of our log home, she suddenly saw Curley racing back up toward our place from the neighbor’s, below.

Curley was still screaming in a panic and raced up to the main door at the top side of our house. Several of us came out to investigate and saw him shaking uncontrollably and still whining very loudly and pitifully. We looked at him and saw that the left side of his neck was all bloody and had a huge gash ripped open on it.

We looked Curly over quite thoroughly and saw that the wound was still bleeding. We put him in my pick-up and took him to the closest Veterinarian which was located about 9 miles away in Kila. The vet. fixed him up including putting several stitches and a tube in the wound to let it drain for several days. A large plastic cone was also attached around his neck to prevent him from licking on his would or pulling out the drain tube.

Later, we went down to the neighbor to see if he knew what had happened. The neighbor stated that our dog had come down and was running around their property. The neighbor had a dog of his own; a pit-bull. His pit-bull dog happened to be outside also and suddenly saw our pup on their property.

The pit-bull attacked our Curly Joe and latched on to the left side of Curly’s neck. Typical of most pit-bulls, the dog refused to let go. He kept the ‘death-grip’ on Curly, no matter how loudly the owner screamed at his dog, to let go. The neighbor said he even kicked at his pit-bull several times but all to no avail.

Finally, in desperation, the neighbor kicked both dogs into a small ‘gold-fish’ pond in his side yard. When his dog’s head eventually went underneath the water, he released his ‘vice-like’ hold on Curly’s neck. The owner grabbed his dog and left Curly to exit the pool and race for home.

It took Curly nearly 2 to 3 hours before he could stop his uncontrollable shaking and quivering. He kept the cone around his neck for 5 or 6 days until the ‘drain-tube’ could be removed from the deep wound.

After 16 to 17 days, we had all the stitches removed and he was nearly back to normal. We kept a closer ‘eye’ on him after that episode, especially, when ever he was outside. And he seemed to love to recline on my lap, even twice as much as before.

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The big log house had the master bedroom on the 3rd floor which was the smaller, loft area. The smaller area was heated, in the winter time, primarily by the convection heat, rising from the large wood stove, down in the spacious living room, below. The heat rose up naturally and kept the loft area quite toasty.

Kathie and I usually kept our bedroom door open in the winter to allow the rising warm air from the living room, to enter our bedroom. As the hottest air in the entire living room, rose up to the ceiling, our bedroom sometimes got almost too hot. On those nights, we simply closed the bedroom door part-way and kept much of the warmer air out.

During one late evening, we had left our bedroom door open so the warm air could enter and keep the ‘chill’ off. For some reason, I happened to wake up around mid-night and even though I was still ½ asleep, I thought I heard a strange noise. As I lay there in bed, I sifted the strange sounds thru my mind and attempted to identify them.

For the most part, the sounds were coming from out in the living room but sounded mostly like a large hungry ‘pack-rat’, chewing away on some wood. My first thought was that a big rat was attempting to gain entry to our log home. The gnawing, crackling sound was persistent enough that I thought I better ‘investigate’ and ‘check it out’.

I quietly slipped on my trousers and gingerly crept out of our bedroom to the balcony of the loft area to look and listen. As I stood there listening, I quickly determined that the strange sounds were emanating from up near the ceiling, close to where the chimney exits up thru the roof. In the near total blackness, I stared toward the chimney.

Suddenly, I was able to discern very slight glimmers of lights going on and off, where the chimney went thru the roof. I immediately began to wonder if maybe I was hearing and seeing the results of electrical wiring that maybe had ’shorted-out’ and was crackling and popping.

Finally, as I looked and listened, it hit me like a ‘ton of bricks’. The crackling was the noise of my wood-shingles on the top of the house burning. My roof was on fire. I raced back into the bedroom, hollered for Kathie to wake up and informed her what I discovered.

I asked her to call the fire department and then to get all the kids up and dressed and out of the house. I would run outside and see if I could do anything to slow down the burning roof.

Once outside, I ran out to the driveway and stepped back several feet where I had a good vantage point to see all of the one side of the cedar shingle roof. The shingles were burning right around the 3 sides of the chimney, on the driveway side of the house.

I then ran down to the basement and grabbed the rolled-up garden hose. I carried it outside to the back side of the house and attached it to the outdoor faucet. When the variable spray attachment was screwed on the hose, I turned the water on and ran over to the side of the log structure, directly below the chimney area.

I stepped away from the house maybe 12 feet so that the water could arc up and onto the roof area. Because of the moderate 35 psi water pressure in our system, I was guessing that the water could barely reach the chimney area.

I sprayed the water for a good 4 or 5 minutes, then, laid the hose on the ground and ran back up to the higher driveway. I looked at the area surrounding the chimney to see if I had reached any of the flames with the water. I was happy to see that most of the flames on the lower side had been squelched. I was apparently reaching parts of the lower portions of the burning area.

Then, I jogged back over to the water hose to repeat the process. Not more than a minute or so after I started to direct the water upward, onto the roof again, I heard the fire truck racing down the highway. They turned into our driveway and were soon up on the top portion where they could soon start pumping water on to the roof.

My feeble efforts undoubtedly had put a damper on the burning cedar shingles, but the fire department put the real kibosh on the damaging flames. After putting their long extension ladders against our roof, a fire-fighter was quickly up on top. He not only rapidly extinguished all the burning shingles on top of the roof, he ripped open the roof area near the brick chimney and doused all the lingering-fire inside of the ceiling-joists.

The area of damage wasn’t huge but it was somewhat serious. The total area of damage was easily about 18 to 20 square foot. The weather following the calamity was quite conducive for repairing the damaged roof. We immediately took advantage of the situation and made the necessary repairs, post-haste.

Subsequent investigation by both the fire department and myself revealed that there had been a chimney fire in the tall brick chimney. The rapidly rising smoke allowed burning embers to cascade upward and out onto the wooden cedar shingles. The surface of the wooden cedar shakes only enhanced the hotly burning embers and allowed them to increase in intensity and severity.

When we made repairs a couple of days later, we finished the repair-job by placing a 3 foot wide piece of colored metal roofing adjacent to all 4 sides of the red-brick chimney. Had I not woke-up that night and heard the strange noises, the damage could have been 10 times worse or more. A repeat of another scenario like the last one might not turn out so good. We thought it completely prudent to vow to clean the inside of the tall chimney more frequently as well as install the metal roofing close-by.

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The water well at the ‘big house’ had been drilled just off to the side of the log home about 40 feet. The big 6 inch diameter metal pipe stuck up in the middle of that portion of the yard there and was slightly a ‘sight-sore’. The owner, Lonnie Surratt, had written me that the 220 volt submersible pump was dangling down in the well casing, nearly 110 feet. Irregardless of the depth, the water from that well was second to none.

About 2 years after we had moved there, we discovered a problem with the pumping system. We noticed that we were constantly losing pressure very slowly, somewhere between the submersible pump and the house. I had a professional plumber come out and diagnose the situation.

Somehow, he figured out that the problem was not in the pump, the ‘foot-valve’ or the long plastic pipe inside of the well-casing. There was a slow leak, somewhere between the well-casing and the pressure-holding tank inside the basement of the big house.

Our solution was to determine the depth, that the ‘pitless adapter’ was at, inside the thick well-casing. Then, we would dig down about a foot less than that distance with a back-hoe, on the out-side of the solid casing. Finally, we could dig by hand, the last few inches, down to where the water pipe comes out of the casing from the ‘pitless adapter’.

One of the log truck operators that Dale Kinniburgh and I, frequently used to haul our logs, was Bobby Wager. Bobby had a back hoe, so I had him come over and dig the initial hole, down beside the well casing.

When he was still about 18 inches above where the ‘adapter’ should have been, I measured again. I thought that he could dig another 6 inches and still be above the ‘adapter’ and horrizontal pipe that ran over to the house. I asked him to cautiously dig just barely 6 inches deeper.

Bobby slowly lowered the bucket a few inches more and slowly took off another 6 or 7 inches of gravel. Suddenly, we heard a dreadfull noise inside the well casing. The 5 inch-long teeth on the edge of the rugged bucket had caught the edge of the ‘pitless adapter’ and ripped it off the casing. The entire submersible pump, long plastic hose, nylon rope and wiring, fell to the bottom of the well.

We may have thought we had a ‘water problem’ before but now, we did for sure. The well ‘water log’ for the property showed the over-all depth of the well to be about 178 feet deep. The static water level came up to be at about 45 feet below the ground level. The pump had been hung at about 110 feet deep. Now the valuable pump was laying at the bottom of the well at about 178 feet.

Since the 220 volt submersible pump had still been in good working order, I didn’t want to leave it resting at the bottom of the casing. It may have been in a somewhat similar situation as the old ‘Titanic’ that went down back in 1912. There was one huge difference though. The valuable pump, still had plenty of life left to it. I immediately decided to call the professional pumber guy that I knew, in Kalispell.

The plumber worked for a large plumbing outfit that had retrieved many sunken pumps from deep wells. They also owned a truck with a raised-hoist on the back of it with a winch and several hundred feet of sturdy cable. He stated quite confidently that he thought that he could ‘go fishin’ and probably bring the pump back from the watery grave. I asked him to come out and attempt to bring the pump back up.

The following day, the plumber brought out the special truck with the hoist and set the truck up a few feet away from our well. When the hoist was centered over the top of the iron casing, he attached a heavy ‘pump fishing’ hook on to the cable.

The special rig had 3 flexible spring-loaded arms on it. Each arm was attached to the center of the rig and then hung out and downward, towards the outside of the casing. Each arm was about 10 inches long and had a fairly sharp barb on the bottom end, angled upward like a real fishhook would.

Each ‘barb’ faced toward the center of the casing and hopefully, would slide down and over the fallen pump. When the cable and 3-pronged rig was pulled up, the barbs would grab onto ‘a part’ of the pump and pull it up also.

The plumber dropped the special rig down to the bottom of the well. Finally the cable went ‘slack’ so we knew we had hit ‘something’. He raised it slightly by hand and then dropped the cable again. After the 2nd time of dropping the hooked rig, he began to activate the winch and rewind the cable.

The cable felt quite firm so we knew we had hooked a ‘big-one’. We had no idea how well our ‘catch’ was hooked but certainly hoped that the 3 barbs were hooked in fairly tight and would not release our ‘catch’. Upward the heavy pump came.

Finally, we saw the top of the hook-assembly approaching, so knew that our catch was immediately below. The cable continued to rise and as the hook assembly cleared the top of the casing, there was our submersible pump being held by the grip of the sturdy barbs on the 3 grab-hooks. We had gone fishing and with a slight bit of trepidation, had successfully made a ‘good catch’.

The plumber made a through check of the old water pump and found it to be ‘worthy’. He rewired it, installed new inch and ¼, black plastic pipe, installed new nylon rope to the pump and lowered the assembly back down to about the 110 foot depth.

We also installed a new ‘pitless’ adapter thru the side of the casing and on the top-end of the black hose. After installing the top of the hose in the adapter, we tied the top of the new nylon-rope to the top of the iron casing and replaced the casing cap. Now, I was ready to resume my work of checking out the old hose from the casing to the house.

In a few days, I had the old plastic hose removed and a new section installed. Subsequent operation of the water and pump system showed that the system was not leaking any water like before. We were finally ‘back in business’.

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In the Spring of 1984, our good friend, Curt James, asked me if I would help him sell some small, evergreen pine trees. He had done it once or twice in previous years and had a fairly good market for the good looking trees. Curt had taken several hundred of the small trees down to Eastern Colorado and was able to sell most all of them.

Curt came to me and described his plan of action. Since I would be off from logging for a couple of months, it would be a good time as well as probably, a fairly lucrative enterprise to engage in, for a few weeks.

The plan that Curt proposed was for us to go out in the Montana forests when the soil was free of all snow and was starting to warm up. We would put approximately 20 or more, empty 5-gallon plastic buckets in the back of his pick-up, fill them each with about 3 gallons of water, and then place the lids on them. Next, we would grab a couple of pointed, long-handled shovels and drive out to the rural timber.

We knew of several areas that had an abundance of new, ‘Yellow Pine’ trees starting to grow. When we arrived at a likely looking area that was covered with scores of the young pine trees, we would each grab a bucket and head out into the boonies.

We quickly found out, that because of the ground being so moist, since the frost just left the soil in the past 10 days, the small trees very easily pulled right up out of the ground. And since the soil was still so moist, probably 90% of all the tree roots remained attached. We looked over each tree with a critical eye, until we located, those that were quite straight and good looking. We would pull the most ideal trees up, out of the ground and place their roots into the 5 gallon bucket of water.

When each bucket held about 10 to 15 small trees, we would carry the bucket back to the truck, replace the bucket in the back of the pick-up and grab another new bucket. We would then head back out into the forest to look for more new pine trees.

Eventually, we filled all our buckets with an average of about 10 trees each so would then slowly return home. After arriving at Curt’s place, we took all our new baby pine trees and leaned them almost upright in a long, level, trench that we had dug and lined with a piece of thick ‘vis-queen’. We usually returned home with between 200 and 250 small, good-looking pine trees.

Curt and I repeated the process for about 5 days, after-which, we thought we had enough young pine trees to take them to market. We loaded Curt’s pick-up and my 1-ton van with as many 30 gallon, plastic garbage cans as we could fit in. After filling each can with about 15 inches of water, we loaded all of our young trees into all of the larger garbage cans in our rigs. Then it was time to head South to Colorado.

Curt and his wife, Brenda had lived near Burlington, Colorado, so, we headed there. Curt had some good friends that had a spare home that was still empty and said that Curt and I could use it for several days. We arrived in Burlington and began our work.

One of the very first things we did was to empty my van so that we could drive up to denver. Curt knew of a huge ware-house that sold every kind of item related to gardening and planting containers that was ever made; at least it seemed that way.

We looked at their selection of samples and chose to purchase a biodegradable container that was about 16 inches tall and about 12 inches diameter. The more you purchased, the cheaper they were per item. We decided to buy 1500 of the sturdy containers.

After making our purchase, we bought about 30 large bags of a suitable potting soil. Then we headed back to Burlington, with my van stuffed to the gills, to begin ‘potting’ our trees. The house we were staying at, was situated on a very large lot on the out-skirts of town. There was an abundance of suitable soil on the property to use in mixing with our preferred blend of potting soil.

We started by putting in about 1 & ½ shovels full of the commercial potting soil followed by placing a single tree down inside the container. We would firmly place the tree roots down at least 3/4ths of the way towards the bottom of the container and then pour a good pint of water over the roots.

Next, we added about 2 to 3 shovels full of the soil from the back yard inorder to fill the container about 7/8ths the way full. We finished by adding 1 more pint of water to the nearly filled container. When completing each container as described, we would set each filled container into our rigs on a piece of plastic. The water in the containers would slowly leach through the sides of the containers but not enough to pose any problem; especially, since we had the floor of my van covered with the plastic.

When filling my van with the finished containers, I usually made about 3 to 4 rows wide starting right behind the front seats. When the first rows were completed, setting tightly, side by side, I set a second level of containers, placing each one in between the tops of the standing tops from the bottom level.

By carefully placing a tight arrangement of two levels, so they wouldn’t fall over, I was able to place nearly 110 filled units in my van. Curt had about the same number in the back of his pick-up truck. Then, we each headed off to sell our young ‘pine trees’.

Curt elected to go mainly on the north side of Denver. I went a bit farther to the east, encompassing parts of the NE corner of Colorado. We usually stopped at gardening centers, land-scape centers and tree nurseries. The majority of places we stopped, usually bought a few.

After 2 or 3 days on the road, we sold the total number of trees we had on that load so would return back to Burlington to repeate the process. We had to purchase a few extra bags of potting soil to finish planting the last hundred or so of trees but otherwise, things worked out about even. It took almost 4 ‘rounds’ of planting and then selling the tiny trees to liquidate our total inventory, that we had brought down from Montana.

Since it was nearly time for me to start back in the woods at ‘timber falling’, that was the only excursion that we made that year in selling the young, 2 year-old ‘pine trees’ in Colorado. After all of our over-head was taken out, we each cleared a couple of thousand dollars for our efforts.

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As a youth, I had always had an interest in guns and shooting. My Pop as well as a couple of Uncles, especially, Uncle Shorty, had taught me much about the art and sport of shooting and hunting. When in my teens, I had hunted extensively with my good buddy, Barry, especially in keeping the prolific number of wood-chucks ‘in-check’ on the neighboring farmers property.

I think Barry and I had hunted the Fred Waterman property for several years when we were in high-school, deliberately reducing the numbers of ground-hogs and preventing them from running out of control.

Extensive damage could be done to a farmers equipment from the burrow-mounds of the cagy ‘chucks’, so Barry and I ‘hired-on’ to keep their numbers, under control. Fred never paid us a penny but that was all right; we never told him we were ‘signing-on’. It was a completely clandestine and covert operation, on our part. It was also a perfect excuse to get out our ‘gats’ and go poking around Fred’s fields, for the furry rascals. We had a ‘ball’.

My youngest son Mark was not much different. Living out in Montana, there was plenty of room to roam and do some shooting, almost anytime we wanted. Mark had taken the ‘hunters safety’ course, just like his 2 older brothers, Tim and Matt.

When living at our 1st log home, we were surrounded with ideal areas in which to shoot a small 22 caliber rifle. Even at the ‘big house’, there were a couple of sides around the home which were safe to shoot. Then for the first Christmas after Mark had taken his ‘hunters safety’ course, we purchased a used .300 Savage for Mark to use. It would be primarily for whenever he went out, deer hunting with me, after that.

After Mark had received his coveted deer rifle, we had shot it a few times out in the back yard of the Big House. I had showed Mark the proper use and operation of the neat, Model 99 Savage, lever-action rifle. Every time we shot his rifle, we would clean the bore shortly there-after.

It was probably several months after Mark had actually shot his nifty lever-action rifle that he decided one day to reclean it. There was certainly no harm in cleaning the bore of a rifle barrel every few months. Mark was in his bedroom, where he kept the rifle so located an old, used blanket on which to lay the rifle and perform the cleaning process.

For some reason, Mark also wanted to check out the operation of the levering operation of the rifle, with real bullets. He put several loaded rounds in the rifle and then proceeded to operate the lever, to process the rounds through, until it was empty.

Before the last round was extracted from the rifle, Mark for some reason, un-intensionally, touched the trigger. The ‘safety’ of the rifle was still off so the rifle shot the round.

The rifle was pointed towards the floor when the round shot off. No one but I was in the house at the time. The bullet went through the 1 & ½ inch floor-board and hit the side of a huge log, right below it. The big log was a part of one of the floor ‘purlins’ that all the bed-room flooring boards were nailed onto.

When the 150 grain bullet hit the side of the solid log below, the bullet ricocheted off the log at almost a 90 degree angle and went through the top portion of the closet in the bed-room below. Then the bullet still had enough energy remaining to continue on through the back side of the same closet, into the closet in the adjacent bedroom and into the top shelf of the neighboring closet.

On the top self of the closet, a basketball was sitting. The bullet went through the rubber basketball and finally came to rest in the shelf the ball was resting on. Most of the energy had been expended when the bullet hit the big log below and made the bullet ricochet at an abrupt angle.

The episode scared the ‘day-lights’ out of Mark. He knew well enough to not point the rifle towards the main interior portion of the house. However, just seeing the damage as it turned out, was a good learning lesson to see exactly what can happen, when you least expect it.

PTL, no one was in either of the other bedrooms below. I shortly repaired the almost negligible damage so that the owners never knew of the incident.– They say; like Father, like Son. --Seems like I recall Mark’s dad pulling off a similar caper in his dad’s chicken-house roof, once upon a time.

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Parents invariably get involved with their kids activities at school, both grade school and high school. All 3 of our boys were on the grade-school basket-ball team. Many days when the boys were going to have a game against another school, I would attempt to come home a bit early so that I could watch them play.

Having just arrived home from work, I usually still had on my old dirty work clothes and my face probably looked like I just walked out of a coal-mine. I wasn’t too concerned about impressing other people; I just wanted to watch my boys participate in the school sports program, so worked as late as reasonable and quickly returned home to arrive at the school. Many times, their games had already started, by the time I arrived.

Our 2 oldest sons, Tim and Matt were only a couple of years apart in age so they were on the same team for a few years. One game I remember was a basket-ball game against another school that was considerably larger than ours. I arrived a bit late as the game was already well underway. Our good friend, Curt James was the basket-ball coach during those years.

Tim was not the fastest ball handler on the team but was a fairly good shot. Curt had instructed Tim to play in a rear, ‘guard’ position and gave him additional instructions. When the other team had the ball and was up at their end of the court, Tim was to keep his eyes trained on the ball.

Any time, one of our team got the ball away from the opposing team, Tim was to immediately race to our end of the court and look for the ball. Our other team members were told to quickly make a long pass down to Tim who could hopefully put it up and in. For the most part, the plan worked quite well and Tim made several points off of the ‘special play’.

Tim was also on the area’s ‘youth baseball’ team, at least much more than his 2 younger brothers were. There was a ball game in Kila, one summer day. Kila was about twice the size of Marion so had a larger number of boys on their team. Tim enjoyed baseball as much or more than basketball. They usually had Tim play in the outfield.

Tim was only a fair ‘hitter’ in the game. He struck out much more than he got a hit but was just consistant enough that the coach could often count on a ‘hit’ from Tim. When batting, Tim had plenty of power and could often send the ball clear out into the outfield. I don’t remember keeping an actual batting average for him but just thinking back on all his batting, it seems like he usually got a good hit, about once in every four or five times at bat.

Mark was probably the best basketball player of my 3 boys. He started in grade school in Marion and slowly developed the proper techinuqes, over the years. When Mark started in the Christian school in Kalispell, he quickly got put on the team. Mark wasn’t the highest point scorer but was an excellent ball handler and put up a fair number of points, additionally. Mark was also an excellent ‘leaper’ and could jump ‘sky-high’.

The one sport where all 3 boys probably did the best, over-all, was in wrestling. Curt James had been on some high school wrestling teams that won many honers. As such, Curt showed all the boys in grade school, many of the slicker ‘moves’ in wrestling. When Tim finally went into Kalispell to attend high school, he had a good foundation for the exhausting sport.

At one event, they were holding a ‘regional’ wrestling match in Kalispell. Tim was doing very well in his ‘preliminaries’ and eventually had to go up against the top guy in his weight-class. During the match, Tim was holding his ‘own’ for the most part but suddenly, Tim’s opponent was able to throw