Bringing Apollo Home (Non-Illustrated)

By H. Schussman

Like a lot of people, Clay Boyce led an interesting life. The difference is, he’s a natural story-teller. His contagious curiosity and love for the possibility of adventure, hold his audience spell-bound. Come along on this roller coaster ride of a poor mountain boy born into a shack with no electricity. Clay Boyce definitely had humble beginnings, but his curiosity pushed him into one adventure after another.

His desire to experience everything possible cost money, so he started working at eleven to buy model airplane parts, engine parts, boat parts. Always curious about how things functioned, he was thrilled when his father would give him an engine and tell him to take it apart. At fourteen he learned to operate heavy equipment. Clay paid for flying lessons by working at JCPenney and flew solo at seventeen. By the time he turned eighteen, he’d built his first jet engine which he took to his high school, bolted to the science lab workbench, and fired it up. It produced such a tremendous noise, the principle evacuated the school, thinking they were under attack.
While writing his story I constantly vacillated between outright laughter and cringing. All I could think was how glad I was that I wasn’t his parent. What a handful!

Clay decided to get his mechanical engineering degree and joined the Air Force ROTC. When he graduated, he was assigned on the 1st Pilotless Bomber Squadron and shipped off to Germany during the Cold War. His job? To guide the Matador carrying a warhead three times the power of Hiroshima... if needed. Crazy, right?
Back in the United States, he decided to give this engineering career a go. Clay naturally gravitated to Aerojet, a rocket company. In June 1960, Clay got a three a.m. phone call from Aerojet telling him to go to Philadelphia and find out what this thing called Apollo was all about. Not only did he find out, he became the Chief Engineer over the SPS engine attached to the command module.

Clay’s life has really never slowed down. At ninety-two, he’s traveled to almost every country on Earth and still has places he wants to go.

This is a true-story to inspire all of us to not let our humble beginnings define us.

• Language: English
• Publisher: H. Schussman
• Release date: Mar 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005357634

H. Schussman

Heidi Schussman Gilbert was born in a small Northern California coastal town to a police officer and a mother who gave up med school to raise a family. She was raised to think on her feet and view adventure as way of life. She starting shooting when she was five years old, and continues to practice her marksmanship. Schussman began working when she was eleven years old, starting her first business when she was thirteen selling flower arrangements at a flea market. Now Schussman's favorite past-time is traveling with her husband of thirty-five years. Travel for H. Schussman is usually a cultural immersion, actually living with families in Spanish speaking countries or in Italy and Portugal. When in the tropics, they SCUBA dive every chance they get. The rest of Schussman's time is divided between gardening, exercise, and of course writing. She carefully researches weaponry and police/military intervention. Schussman believes research is a critical component of writing conspiracy theory. All good conspiracies are based on solid facts… that is what makes them believable. H. Schussman has published five conspiracy novels. COUNTERPART is a complex Russian conspiracy. This is the introduction of the popular characters, Sean and Sport. These two captured the hearts of readers, so EL TIBURON brings them back by request. EL TIBURON is a conspiracy set in Central America, mostly Guatemala. A group of teens on a mission trip to Colombia find themselves in THE CROSSFIRE OF REVENGE. Then Schussman gives us SAVE THE GIRLS as the backstory on the beloved character, Sean McGee, as he rescues girls from human trafficking and prostitution. Her most recent book in this crime series, PIRATESSA, is a black-widow story set amongst the billionaire playboys in the yachting community of Costa Rica. H. Schussman interviewed and wrote the biography for a rocket engineer legend, Clay Boyce—BRINGING APOLLO HOME. His life leading up to being a chief engineer on the Apollo Program and beyond are written in a fast-paced story-telling style. Last year Schussman turned her hand to writing a romantic comedy with a criminal element, of course. THE TATTERED BOOK answers the question; What would happen if the main character in a book fell in love with the reader? She claims this was the most difficult book to write to date, however she is now writing the sequel; THE SECOND TATTERED BOOK. H. Schussman also writes two blogs: A Dashing Bold A...

Book preview

Bringing

Apollo

Home

The Journey From Mountaineer to Rocketeer

Clay Boyce Biography

As told by H. Schussman

~~~~~

Acknowledgements

Clay and I want to thank my husband Joe for encouraging us to start this enormous project. He spent endless hours listening to us talk about rocket engines and the Space Race in general. Clay’s children, Bill, Dianne, and Terri encouraged their father and added to some of the stories. Thanks to Stacy Castle for coming up with the title—Bringing Apollo Home. Thanks also to my proofreaders; Karen Shipley, Frank Lynds, Jeanette Lawson, Isabelle Lynch, Bill Roerhich, and Melissa Shetler. And a big thanks to God for gifting me with immeasurable patience with this project. My relationship with Clay has changed from being strangers to a deep abiding friendship.

Please remember these stories are Clay’s memories. He put a great deal of effort into their accuracy, but in the end, it’s how he remembered it—and this is about his life experience.

The author and subject of this biography have sought to trace ownership and, when necessary, obtain permission for quotations and photos included in this book. Occasionally we have not been able to determine or locate the author of a quote or photo. In such instances, if an author of a quotation or photo wishes to contact the author of this book, he or she should contact her through [e-mail].

Published by H. Schussman/Clayton D. Boyce at Smashwords

Copyright 2022

Discover other titles by H. Schussman at Smashwords.com

Save The Girls

Counterpart

El Tiburon

In the Crossfire of Revenge

All rights reserved. No part of 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 the written permission of H. Schussman or Clayton D. Boyce, except where permitted by law.

This book is available in print at most online retailers.

ISBN: 9781005689797

SERENDIPITOUS

I glanced at the quiet fair-skinned gentleman sitting next to me at the bar. I’d seen him here before. Il Forno Classico is like that. People come in several nights a week just to touch base with the local community. If you’re single, or want to meet some friends for dinner, this is that kind of bar… like Cheers but with excellent Italian food.

This guy next to me was in his eighties, eighty-seven it turned out. His name is Clay Boyce. He always had his iPad and a glass of something clear on ice. If no one struck up a conversation, he sifted through the internet. I struck up a conversation. I like talking to old people. Now, now, that’s not meant to be patronizing! I really do. They’ve got really interesting stuff to say (usually… there are complete bores in every generation), and I plan to be old, so it behooves me to learn the ropes.

As a physical therapist specializing in geriatrics, I’ve heard it all, and it seems to me we are all making world history. Maybe just tiny chunks of history, but we each have a story to tell. Clay’s story really is world history.

Back to the bar. The first item of conversation was me asking about a photo he had open on his iPad. It showed a young man half dressed in fatigues on what appeared to be a dry hillside.

He said, That’s me camping in Germany. His eyes were definitely twinkling as he waited to see if I would bite.

Really? Where in Germany? I grinned as I bit the bait.

On top of a mountain. I was one of a team of three officers and thirty-five Airmen. I was second in command. We had the electronic equipment needed for the Matador.

I raised a brow. What’s a Matador? I knew it wasn’t a piece of physical therapy equipment.

The Matador was the Air Force’s First Pilotless Bomber… today it would be called a drone. It carried a warhead three times the power of Hiroshima [the bomb dropped on Hiroshima]. My job, besides guiding the missile, was to move its operating equipment around. The Russians couldn’t figure out where we were, so it kept them in check. But they were always looking. Always trying to find us. This photo was taken when I first got there, in Germany.

Where in Germany? I asked again.

He looked thoughtful for a moment, and replied, It was spring 1954—my unit was in Northern Germany (the British Controlled Zone of postwar Western Germany). We moved around a lot. We weren’t on a base. On orders from our Squadron Command Center, we would move our guidance equipment as quickly as possible to another location. The problem was the amount of time it took for us to pack up and move two tractor-semis loaded with the electronic guidance equipment and twenty other trucks loaded with support equipment. It took an hour and a half from receipt of orders ‘till we were able to move out. We knew it only took the enemy (Russian) planes fifteen minutes to reach us if they knew exactly where we were and decided to attack. That was a problem, he added laconically.

So, what did you do? What was your job? I asked.

I sat around and waited, he said with a laugh. Well, I was self-training. I was assigned as a Guidance Systems Officer, which meant my primary job was to guide the missile if a war started—no prior training in that. I rapidly became quite competent at it. More on this later. Also, as a brand-new officer, I was learning real time how to help manage the thirty some Airmen who kept the electronics, other equipment, and services functioning… that was interesting. As I said, just the guidance equipment took up two semi-trailers full of electronic components. He swirled his glass as he talked.

If the Soviets wanted to start a war, during the Cold War—that’s what the Cold War meant—having real missiles ready to launch was a good deterrent. All of Europe was inundated with destruction from WWII. The Allies didn’t have enough manpower or equipment to stop the six or seven thousand tanks that Stalin had accumulated, so our Air Force created this remotely guided missile we could use to wipe them out if they rallied and tried to start another war.

The bartender set a glass of wine in front of me. After I took a sip, I asked Clay to finish his story. I couldn’t help but think my father would have loved to talk to this guy.

I was assigned the task of figuring out how to shorten the amount of time it took to pack up all this equipment and get ‘em moving. The two semi’s trailer vans were easy—unhook electric cables, close the doors and they were ready to go. However, the enormous bundles of electrical cables that connected the vans to each other were extremely heavy. [Nerd Alert: Three multi copper wire conductor cables were over 100 ft. long and each were about 3 to 4 inches in diameter.] They would be laid out between the two semi-trailers, which were usually parked about thirty feet apart. It took a lot of men to lift those things and coil them into the back of a truck. I requisitioned a small trailer and parked it between the two semi-trailers and coiled the cables inside it. When we arrived at our new hideout we simply parked the small trailer between the big ones, pulled the cable ends out just far enough to reach each semi-trailer, and plugged them in. It cut the moving-out time in half! They were happy with me for that one, Clay grinned.

My husband poked me in the ribs and asked me what I wanted for dinner. So that was the first time I spoke to Clay.

I told Clay he should write all his stories in a book. It would be cool to have all this crazy life written down. He explained that, though he’d heard that before, he wasn’t a good writer, and in fact he hated to write. Well, I’m an author… I like stories…

I agreed to meet with him once a week and chat (back in February, 2017). It was a win-win decision for me because he’s fun to talk to, and I can learn more about American space history for my writing. The first thing I did was to confirm he is who he says he is. Thankfully a simple internet search brought up Clay Boyce and even had multiple photos of his bright-eyed little face to confirm this wasn’t some lunatic who thought he was Clay Boyce. Other than that, I won’t be doing much research to write this story. It’s his story richly seasoned with his favorite sayings: I was in the right place at the right time, or There’s a story behind that, and It was just Dumb Luck.

When I entered his home the following week, I was escorted to his kitchen and placed at the head of the kitchen table. This became my routine for several years. Once the stories were exhausted, we began the editing process, which was Clay’s job. As I copied his stories down in real time, I made multiple errors in locations and time frames. His job was to correct all my mistakes. His part took a year… why? Because Clay Boyce is a nerd. He felt compelled to research and investigate every detail. He would get deep into the rabbit hole of science and history on the internet.

I can’t really emphasize enough what an honor this was to hear his story. It was both complex and remarkably simple. After he completed his part, I organized it in chronological order to give it continuity, but that’s definitely not how it was told. I hope I made the right choice. I wanted each story to stand alone yet flow through time.

A second thing I want to point out is the use of the Nerd Alert. As a rocket scientist Clay could describe things with intricate detail. Sometimes it would take away from the story. In those cases I enclose the details in a bracket with the warning; [Nerd Alert]… so be warned.

At the end of this book is a list of where he’s lived and when. If it all starts to run together in your head, just flip to the back and that should clarify things for you.

Well, here we go… pull up a chair to the table and join us.

EARLY DEVELOPMENT

LEARNING FROM DAD

Let’s start with you and your beginnings, I suggested as I settled into my chair and flipped open my laptop.

Clay cleared his throat and began his biography. My name is Clayton David Boyce. I was born October 20th, 1929 (the Great Depression started a week later), in a tiny river-side community called St. Maries (pronounced Saint Mary’s) in Northern Idaho.

St. Maries is on the St. Joe River, which feeds into Coeur d’Alene Lake. There’s actually a pretty good book about that area titled Swiftwater People. It’s a compilation of interviews from the loggers and river people at the turn of the nineteenth century. His father Charles has his own chapter. I read it and found it to be fascinating.

Tell me more about your parents, I prompted.

When my dad arrived in St. Maries, in 1902, our little home town could only be reached by boat or horse and wagon. Dad was five years old (born in 1897 in Pennsylvania). He lived in St. Maries the rest of his life.

[Nerd Alert: According to Clay, the St. Joe River is located in central northern Idaho with its headwaters near the Continental Divide at an altitude of roughly 6,500 ft. It flows basically west for 140 miles and terminates into Coeur d’Alene Lake at an altitude of 2,100 ft. The river and its tributaries drain a water shed of approximately 1,850 square-miles of forest land—over 70% of the St. Joe National Forest. The city of St. Maries, current population about 2000, is the largest town on the river. Only the last 35 miles of St. Joe is deep enough for tugboats to safely navigate. The St. Joe River is designated as the highest navigable river in the world.]

My mom was born in Twin Bridges, Montana in 1902. She arrived in St. Maries about 1922 and worked in a small restaurant and ice cream shop. I have no idea how or why she moved there. About a year later she and Dad started courting. About another year later, in 1924, they got married… they had to keep it secret for some time because the restaurant owner where Mom worked would not employ married women.

Wow, times have changed.

Most of his life, starting at age fifteen until early 1960’s, Dad worked on-and-off for the Milwaukee Railroad. Jobs were fleeting. There wasn’t an expectation to have a career back in those days. You just did work until it was done, Clay said while re-aligning the papers on the table for the tenth time. Did I tell you my dad was a P-47 fighter pilot trainer?

No, you didn’t, I looked up in surprise.

He chuckled. "He wasn’t really, but one of the skills of a P-47 is its ability to come in for ground strafing. That’s when the fighter pilot can come along and shoot things on the ground, especially support vehicles like trains. Dad had a P-47 swoop down on him a few times for practice when he was crossing the Washington desert-like area, out near Larson Air Force Base. He said the first time it happened, he was wondering what that loud roar was, and suddenly he was looking a fighter pilot in the face! That was back in 1944-45.

Dad started his tugboat business about 1931 and sold it in early 1942 when the Milwaukee [Railroad] called him back to full time service. Except for a couple short vacations per year, he was gone from home until WWII ended. In 1946 he built a building on the main street of St. Maries and opened Boyce’s Sporting Goods and Gunsmith Store. At the same time, he worked part-time for the Milwaukee. A couple times a week the railroad needed a Helper Engine to get the big heavy freight trains up over the steep hill, about two or three miles of track from the town. Dad would just walk four blocks to the train station, get on the Helper Engine, hook up to the rear of the train and push it up the hill. Then he’d come back to the shop. Each trip took about four hours. He officially retired from the Milwaukee in 1964.

Your father had a sporting goods store? I asked.

It was mostly after I left home, he clarified. "Mom manned the sporting goods store when Dad worked the railroad Helper. She ended up specializing in tying fishing flies and making fly-fishing rods. She taught the mailman how to make them and that guy later taught my son, Bill, how to make them. Bill spent a lot of time up at Dad’s in Idaho. He got to hang out at the store and meet my family. Bill learned how to hunt and fish. He still ties flies as a hobby.

Anyway, Dad worked for the Milwaukee Railroad off and on, as business fluctuated, from about 1918 until he officially retired. Due to the shortage of qualified railroad engineers, Dad worked for them full time during both WWI, near the end of that war, and all through WWII. [Nerd Alert: The Chicago Milwaukee St. Paul and Pacific Railroad Co had completed their Pacific Extension in about 1910. After their tracks crossed the Continental Divide (Rocky Mountains), they followed the St. Joe River Valley on their way through the Bitterroot Mountains to the border between Idaho and Washington, then across the state of Washington to the Port of Seattle. For the St. Joe Forest, this was the advent of moving logs by railroad to more distant mills.]

The conversation shifted to Clay telling me that the doctor who delivered him went into politics after he retired and eventually became the governor of Idaho, Governor C.A. Robbins. Originally politicians were retired men who’d already worked hard and learned about how things work at the workingman level. Now they are career politicians. These people have no experience in the workforce.

This conversation led to an lively political discussion. No need to give details on that, but it was quite animated and interesting, probably because we agreed.

~~~~

EARLIEST MEMORY

One of Clay’s earliest memories dates back to 1932 to a tiny two room home the size of a large tent. It had a room with a curtain separating where his folks slept and where he slept on a cot. There was another space with the kitchen and dining area. They had no running water and used an outhouse. Dad later dammed up the creek by the house, got some pipe, a sink, and we got cold water in the house. There was an old wood stove for cooking, heating water, and providing some heat. Mom had an old dog named Piker and we became good buddies. A new house was built three years later with indoor bathroom and separate bedrooms. It was another three or four years later before we got electricity.

Remember, Clay’s father owned and piloted tugboats.

There were big steamers for transporting freight and people to and from Coeur d’Alene. Right after I was born Dad got his first boat, a launch named the Molly Hogan, followed by a larger tug named Hardtack with a big old gas-powered Buda truck engine. Dad used these boats primarily for towing and managing the logs for the St. Maries’ sawmill. In those days, sawmills were located next to water—rivers, or lakes fed by rivers. Logs were delivered to the mills down rivers flowing from the forests where the timber had grown. Logging trucks had not been created yet.

When was that? From now on, just assume I ask that question at least ten times during each session!

It had to be around 1932, along in there. There was a flood in the spring of 1933 I remember. By the time of the flood I think he still had the Molly Hogan, but his primary boat was the Hardtack. During the ‘33 flood I remember seeing Dad rescue some cattle with his tug. Our house was on the mountain side of the river and well above flood level. Across the river however, the land was flat and below flood level and was protected by dikes. Somewhere a dike had failed and the flatland had flooded houses and farms. People had evacuated leaving some livestock behind. From our house we could see several high spots of the dike, and several cows had made it to those high spots. Dad would put the nose of the tug into the bank, hook a rope around a cow’s neck, pull them into the water, drag them across the river near the riverbank, and toss the rope end to the cow owner waiting on the shore. He repeated it nine or ten times until all the cows were rescued. They were happy farmers.

I bet, I commented as I typed as fast as I could.

In 1934, my little brother was born. I remember him being a tiny infant.

~~~~

LIFE ON THE RIVER

When I arrived today, Clay stepped out into his front courtyard instead of inviting me in. He asked me if I noticed anything new. I gazed around the little yard. A twinkle of light caught my eye. A slowly spinning sun-catcher hung from the corner of the awning. Is that the crystal spinner your daughter bought you? I asked.

He nodded. Yep, but I think I’m going to have to move it. It only gets a few minutes of sunlight on it.

It’s really pretty there, even if it’s not in the sun.

It’ll be prettier in the sun, he replied.

We went inside and I reminded him to tell me the story about April Fool’s Day. I’d written myself a note.

I remember in about 1935 the Hardtack sank. I told Dad it was sinking. He thought I was joking because it was April Fool’s Day.

I know it’s next to impossible to get a boat off the bottom of a river, especially a heavy one with a powerful engine, so I asked, It sank? How in the world did he get it out?

Whenever one of the boats wasn’t in use daily, it was tied up in a boat slip which was formed by three or four long logs lashed together on each side of the boat. Dad had created a series of chains under the boat slip where the boat was tied up. If the tug were ever to sink, it was stopped from going down any more than three or four feet by the chains, Clay replied.

But you said it sank?

I meant it was sitting much lower in the water than normal, he clarified.

Clay relayed an interesting story to me here, which he didn’t think was all that interesting, but I did. When he was about eight, his father had to pull the engine out of one of the boats and replace it. He set the old broken Studebaker car engine on the dock and told Clay to get some tools and take it apart. That kept him busy for the entire summer. This is the beginning of my understanding of where Clay gets his creative engineering personality.

I saw him do something unique to get the water out of the boat, Clay continued. Dad had the local distributorship for Johnson Outboard Motors. In those days they came in nice wooden crates. He got three or four crates and built a trough from the inside bottom of the boat up over the stern and out. He then mounted a Johnson engine at the bottom of the water trough. When he started it up, the propeller shoved the water up the trough and out over the stern. This technique quickly removed about ninety-percent of the water that was flooding the boat.

Sounds like your father was an inventor?

True, Grandpa was an inventor as were my father and two of my uncles, Clay agreed.

One of the most serious problems for all of the boats was when the river would freeze over in the winter. The ice had to be chopped out all around each boat twice a day, or the expanding ice would crush the hull. In the un-chopped areas ice would get over a foot thick, and the river became a miles-long skating rink.

~~~~

KA-BOOM!

Last week at dinner Clay told us he’d discovered a new TV he had to have. It’s incredibly clear and huge. I want it.

This week he told me he’d purchased the new TV because it has the latest technology. Each pixel has its own light source, which makes it extremely clear. He already has a nice TV. He’s going to give that one to his daughter.

Another couple of days later at Il Forno he told me, The new TV has arrived… but it’s huge and thin, fragile. I can’t get it out of the box alone, so I propped it up against the wall and peeled most of the box away to see if it works and how good the screen really is.

My husband offered to help get it out of the box, but he had someone coming by to help.

Today I arrived at his house to see the TV up and running. It was enormous and so clear it seemed like I was looking through a window at people… not 3D but almost. I asked him how he got it out of the box.

That’s a long frustrating story. Suffice it to say I finally had help. I tried to get it all set up while it was still halfway in the box. He shook his head at the frustrating memory. I got it turned on, but that was it. I couldn’t get it to do anything. I was so mad. I finally gave up and went up to Il Forno to have a drink. The sweet little bartender said her husband was good at setting up TVs and stereos, so the next day he came out, and in less than five minutes he had the darn thing working!

How did he do it? I asked. I was a little surprised Clay couldn’t figure it out. He is such a techno nerd.

Clay looked a little embarrassed and crestfallen as he answered, He sweet-talked it. It was voice activated. I didn’t know that. I’ve been dreading the day that technology passed me up… I think it just happened.

Not bad at eighty-seven years old… I’m only fifty-four and it already passed me up!

So you had a story about dynamite, I prodded.

"I remember the periodic use of dynamite. Some logs would get water soaked and drop to the bottom of the river. They were always somewhat upright. Those upright logs, called dead-heads, would be twenty to thirty feet from the shore and were a hazard to the tug’s expensive propellers. It was too much trouble to try to raise and save the log, so the top ten feet of the log was blown off using dynamite. Clay became animated as he described this procedure. Dad would prepare the explosive charge by cutting about fifteen feet of fuse, insert one end of the fuse into a blasting cap, and then insert the blasting cap into the end of a stick of dynamite. The fuse, cap, and dynamite were all water proof, but the joint was packed with heavy grease to keep water out. This explosive assembly was then taped to a long stick to place it down along the log about ten feet below the water surface. The long stick had a couple of large wire loops that hooked over the top of the dead-head… that way the charge would stay close to the log. Once it got down the log far enough, the fuse was lit and the boat was backed away about hundred feet, and then… Ka-boom! Clay threw his arms up in the air. A big plume of water!"

You can see his fascination with things that go boom hasn’t waned.

There were a couple of things about that dynamite that were good; one, the dead-head was gone, and two, it would stun the nearby fish. I’d go gather up the fish and bring ‘em home for Mom to cook up. I was about eight to twelve, along in there.

It was a nice change from chicken, I bet, I commented, remembering he raised chickens.

True. Every year Dad would go hunting and bring home an elk and a deer. That fed us through winter. Mom would ask Dad to go get her a bear every three years or so. She’d render it up and make snow white lard. It made beautiful pie crust. People nowadays don’t eat like that. When I talk about our diet back then you can see them make a face. Clay scrunched up his face in an imitation of disgust.

When we got the new house Dad set some pilings in the river across the road from the house. Then he built docks for the boats and a large float-house to house the equipment used to maintain the boats plus tools used for handling the log work. Dad also setup a huge basic single-piston flywheel-engine to pump river water up to some water barrels set in the hill behind the new house. That gave us running water for our home. Che-che-boom, che-che-boom, Clay gave the engine rendition just like my father used to do for me when I was little.

So going back a little, when I was still a child, the sawmill in town knew my dad needed work. The owner told my dad; ‘If you can get a boat, I can give you the job running the log boom on the river.’ This is where the logs were stored and then fed into the sawmill. That’s why Dad bought the Molly Hogan, a very small launch not a tug boat. The small launch was large enough to handle the mill storage situation. Dad said he had to raid my piggy bank to buy it, Clay chuckled. His dad eventually obtained control over the log boom operation, which supplied the logs to the mill storage area.

Did you live on the Molly Hogan? I asked.

None of the launches had any living accommodations. The tugs had a fold-up cot for the time you might overnight during a tow, Clay answered. Eventually, as commerce increased, more sawmills and logging companies were created and used the river. Logs cut in the forest areas were moved to the river by creeks and flumes. The river current then carried them down to where the river was deep enough for tug navigation. Somewhere at that time in history, my dad created and operated a sorting system (sorting gap) that sorted the logs and placed them into separate booms—one boom for each sawmill. There were six or seven booms.

I was raised in a logging community up in northern California, but we didn’t use the boom system. We got our logs off the trucks. What’s a boom then—logs tied together? I read about it in the Swiftwater People, but I don’t know what it means, I asked. One of the great things about Clay is he can always break things down to basics.

The booms were formed by special long logs which had a hole drilled through it at each end. They were called boom-sticks. They could be connected together end to end by large chains as required to create whatever size boom was needed. The sorting gap was located as far up the river as you could go before it became too shallow for the tugs to operate. Then the river current was strong enough for moving the logs to the sorting area. Each boom was like a big floating bag, he explained. When it was full, they tied it off and put a new boom (bag) in there. When cut down, the logs were marked on the ends with a sledge hammer with a company mark on it. The bark was also marked by cutting a mill mark with an axe. The logs would float down the river to the sorting gap. The gap consisted of two floats on either side of the river tied off on the banks. A sheer line of boom-sticks would force the logs in between the floats. Two raised platforms, about fifty feet long, straddled the river from one float to another. A man on the first platform would identify the log as it came through and shove it towards its respective boom. The man on the second platform would make sure it went into the correct boom. Once the boom was full it was replaced.

When three or four booms per sawmill accumulated, a tug would tow them to the respective sawmill. Some sawmills had their own tugs. His father acquired towing contracts for three mills. As a result, he bought another large tugboat (named Kyak) and two new large launches (Sandpiper & Marble). Molly Hogan was sold.

[Nerd Alert: Another piece of history for readers who are familiar with the city of Coeur d’Alene in current times. The current location of Coeur d’Alene Resort and Golf Course—with the famous floating movable green—was the site of the largest sawmill in Northern Idaho in the 1930’s. The mill, owned by Rutledge, operated from early 1920’s until the 1970’s. That mill used a Coeur d’Alene-based towing company.]

When I was seven or eight years-old I could stay with Dad for a week at a time at the sorting gap. Mom would drive me up there. It was fifteen-twenty miles. Most of it was gravel road, except the last part where she had to go about a quarter mile across a farmer’s field. There was a sleep shack on the riverbank. Occasionally I would go on a tow with him. By 1940, logging trucks were starting to be in vogue for transporting logs. His father sold his fleet about 1942.

I should mention our family car—It was a brand new 1936 Chevy two-door sedan with only ten miles on it.

Goodness, the logging business must’ve been more lucrative than I realized! A new car?

Dad paid the owner thirty dollars for it… a real bargain at that time. The only problem was it was under water in the river about fifteen feet down! He swam down and hooked some chains to it, got the car wrecker from the local dealer, dragged the Chevy back up on the road, towed it to our house, and parked it in the front yard. He opened all the drains, siphoned any water that was left anywhere and let it set for the whole summer to dry out. After about four months he closed everything up, refilled all the fluids, put in the battery, hit the starter and it was running as if nothing had happened. I learned how to drive in that car, backing up trailers and other skills. It remained our family car until 1949 when Dad bought a new Chevy.

Clay learned a lot of common sense and how to feel mechanical jobs with his hands by working with his father. He got good at parking the tug, especially with strong river currents during spring water run-off. He later applied that same skill to get the highest score in a competition for guiding missiles in the Air Force. Just like a tug, you have to get that missile lined up on the path long before you get to the target. That way you can feel and adjust for the air currents and make minute corrections, Clay told me with his hands swooping through the air.

In about third grade he started making model airplanes as a hobby. His mother taught him how to make glue from egg whites. Most of the planes he made were from scratch, referencing pictures. It helped him understand why airplanes flew. But the biggest lesson was keeping himself entertained and occupied. He didn’t have next-door neighbors. His nearest buddy, who also made models, was about six miles away. When he was thirteen, he scraped and saved money to buy a model airplane kit with an engine. It was about a foot tall with a four-foot wingspan. He put it all together and took it out to a hay field and sent it out for its first (and last) flight. It caught a thermal draft, and even after the engine stopped it kept going higher and disappeared over a mountain. He never saw it again and never made another free-flight model.

Remind me to tell you about when I tried to make a rocket, he said as I was putting my laptop away.

I opened the laptop back up and made a note to myself. (You’ll have to wait to read it because it wasn’t for another five years I this chronology.)

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OLD SYPES

I had my glass of wine, and Clay was nursing his half glass of Scotch on the rocks. Il Forno Classico was slow that night, and we’d managed to get a booth. My husband and Clay were chatting away, so I decided to just settle back and listen. These two could really get the stories flowing. I should try an evening session with them at Clay’s house to see what kind of stories I could log.

Let’s tune in;

I don’t know why, but I got to thinking about my grandpa with his old truck. One time Grandpa was going into town… I often stayed with him to give Mom a break.

I’m sure she needed a break!

Grandpa offered old Sypes (a neighbor with no car) a ride fairly often when he would go past his property on the way to town—about five miles away. If he wanted a ride, Grandpa would slow down to walking speed.

My husband leaned forward to hear him. Clay is actually very soft spoken and can be difficult to hear.

So this one time Grandpa slowed down to let Sypes on the flat-bed of the truck. When Grandpa turned to check if old Sypes had gotten in the back of the truck, the road had curved, and he accidently drove off the road. The truck slowly did a half roll down the slope and landed on its top against a tree… neither Grandpa nor I were hurt. Unfortunately, the point of the truck’s flat-bed, which was firmly in the ground, was hooked on Sypes’ suspenders! He was trapped—arms and legs wagging. I can imagine him going for quite a ride. It took Grandpa some digging to get him unhooked. Boy was old Sypes mad. I don’t think he ever spoke to Grandpa again, Clay said as he took another sip of his drink with a faraway look on his face.

I take notes on my phone app. Things like this get jotted down and I pump him for details later. For example, here’s what’s on my phone right now:

Made his own rocket

Space X Program

Lady in Watergate Hotel/NSA

He made 3 TVs in the 70’s

3,2,1… Oh Shit! Good title

NASA cat fight

Only the mistakes are published by the media

Robert Mondavi Winery and the Japanese

I don’t have to know about the decimal points, I had guys for that.

Old Sypes and his suspenders

He confessed he worries that he might be one of those, braggarts who bores everyone. For a long time he stopped talking about those days with the space program. Recently he began talking about it again. I have really enjoyed talking together for this book. It’s been great to reminisce about the old times.

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SILVER LINING

Has anything bad ever happened to you? Or was life always good? I asked after hearing so many of the cool