I knew these himalayan salt lamps reminded me of something...

My Little Flag Pole

Hey guys,

I spoke to "Masa" in Nagano Japan this afternoon! My first real international call, not counting a couple close Canadian contracts. My little flag pole had a decent contact across the Pacific! Pretty cool I think.

In other news, Mom has sprinted to get the decorations up. Looks nice around here.

Hope all is well with you folks!
Dad

Couches and Commutes

I've been working on different commute options since I changed neighborhoods. So far neither are as nice as the ride in with mom drinking coffee and listening to the morning news. That Manafort is such a crook!Yesterday I did the bus from Fairview and that was OK but it took a little while because of traffic. So today I went for the light rail from Capitol Hill. That worked well. Too well! I got to work an hour early which is why I have time to blog.

I'm getting settled into the new place, still lots of boxes to go through but my bedroom and living room are nearly done. I've got a Christmas tree up. Big thanks to Dad, Mom, Brad & Lukas for all of their help, especially the couch. They sure don't make them like they used to! There's probably a reason for that. I wouldn't be surprised if that style couch was responsible for multiple deaths and dismemberment. Better not let the authorities know I have one, I'm sure it'll go into the couch lockup. Next is the kitchen, that's gonna take some time because I need to line the cupboards with paper. Why don't they come pre-lined?! Oh well, better get that done so I can start cooking and stop eating out. That's it for now, gotta get to work. Can't wait for Christmas, I gotta do some shopping for my secret Santa and probably pick up some snacks for Henry. So long!

Mid Fall Thoughts

It’s been a while since I wrote for the blog. I like having this for all of us and want to contribute when I have a few minutes. I don’t have a core topic this time, but more odds and ends.

It’s been good having Patrick stay with us these last few weeks as his apartment gets finished. We see all of you at different times, but have had all of you ‘bunk’ with us here in the compound. Mo has really enjoyed being able to chat with him as she helps with the going to work. He’s helped quite a bit with Lukas and has tried to help him learn some golf. 

We’re looking forward to getting him into his brand-new place in Seattle. I had a chance to go with him on a walk-through, it’s gorgeous!

I was planning on a California trip the last week of November, but it was postponed, pretty late, with just a couple pf working days notice. I’ll likely pick up the trip again after New Years. I don’t think Paine Field will be open yet, so darn it, another trip to Sea-Tac.

Speaking of Paine Field, as soon as Alaska announced they were taking reservations, Mom and I decided to take advantage of a discount coupon I had that would have expired at the end of the year and planned a Paine to Portland day trip. Just down in the morning, and back in the evening. We’ll look for someplace for lunch that we can get to from the little trolly things that they have.

My ham radio as I write this is still in the shop. It lost its mind one day and refused to work for me. It’s an ICOM and it just happens that the North American operations are headquartered in Kirkland. At least when they get around to fixing it, I can pick it up right away.

I’ve had QSO’s (Ham shorthand for a conversation) with several other operators in several states. I even heard an operator in South Africa, but there was a ‘pile up’ (Many attempts to contact at the same time) and I couldn’t make a contact. Fun though. California, Arizona, Hawaii, Missouri, North Dakota, and Louisiana are some of the places my little flag pole has helped me make contacts with.

I worked on the Fort Casey annual haunted house with some other radio people. That was an interesting couple of nights. Duties were varied, but my favorite was mermaid (actually Sirens, there is a very significant, and pretty dark difference) protector. The actors at nearly all of the many scenes were Whidbey Island playhouse people, and the level of effort was amazing.

I flirted with the idea of getting a shorter callsign. About 9 call signs like that were available on one day in November. I applied for the 9, and saw that about 50 other people did as well. There is a buuilt in 2.5 week pause between the application and the granting (if you get the lottery when there is competition). I reflected and decided to keep my K7CWC callsign, so I withdrew my applications. Not saying I'll never try for a top class callsign, but I'll keep what I have for some time I think.

I’m still a few months away from hanging up my work boots so to speak, and I have my eye on one more radio for the shack. I get my equipment from an Oregon store called Ham Radio Outlet. It’s good as they have free shipping, and as an Oregon outfit, no sales tax

The compound has had a change in ownership. Other than a jump in rent, we’re not sure what we’ll notice. They had an intro meeting, but there wasn’t anything significant. That was said. Lot’s of hype on how good they are, we’ll see.

Let us know what’s happening with you!

Dad

Dubai Again

It's still hot. It beat 122 yesterday, today is a cool 105.

Today my work laptop crashed. The hard drive isn't saying anything so the mother board doesn't know it's there. I have suspicions on what happened, but I'm not throwing stones at anyone. They gave me a loaner with the Arabic characters on the keys. Great. It has standard too but like looking at a speedometer for the KM's.

One more work day, an off day and the the long trek over Iran, Russia, maybe Norway, Greenland, undefined Arctic, then Canada, and finally Washington. Wow I'm eager to come home.

Some observations.

Taxi's are easy and safe. All of the cream body ones are government regulated and pretty cheap. They have different roof colors for the company ID, but you ignore that.

Traffic is crazy. They have few signals, but a lot, a LOT of those darn roundabouts. Chaos in motion.

My host likes to text and drive. ALL THE TIME. Enough said about that.

Lots of construction. They have a 2020 worlds fair they are working on.

There are about 3-5 english tv channels, all with Arabic subtitles. They rest are a host of other languages.

There are few citizens here compared to all the foreign imported workers. There is no path to being a citizen for those people.

The TV commercials are really concerned with cleaning products. There are a pair of ladies that keep popping up have the best time cleaning toilets.

Speaking of toilets, all of the johns here have a host to wash up your neither regions.

The hotel makes lousy scrambled eggs, but other than the fruit, its about all that is recognizable. \

Coming Home Soon!
Dad

Dubai

It gets hot in Dubai. That wasn't unexpected, but the dust in the air, ALL THE TIME, wasn't something I was prepared for. Yes, the smoke in the PNW gave me some time to get used to gunk in my throat, but here coupled with the heat (111 yesterday), it's downright nasty. I don't know how the tourism people get pictures of the skyline, clear and with blue skies, I haven't seen it. The dust/haze makes it hard to see anything at any distance.

The flight here was long. Sit down to get up was about 16 hours. You board pretty early in Seattle, with 3 security guards enforcing the line so no D group person has a chance to board before a C person. They are pretty serious about it. Before boarding, an Emirates rep prowls the waiting area and makes people use the bag size checker. If it doesn't fit, it's checked. He wasn't popular.

The inflight experience was OK. Year I had a last class seat, Honeywell doesn't waste money on business class for my level. They provide a little bag with ear plugs, a blindfold, and little sock booties. Two meals and a snack are served over the 14+ hours of flight time. They were free and that was a mild surprise for me. The food wasn't a good match for my appetite, but I ate enough.

Immigration and customs was easy. It took a long time for my bags to appear on the luggage machine. I stopped at an ATM for UAE dinars and caught a cab to the hotel. It was a fair ride, and cost about 95 Dinars, or about $30.

Checked into the hotel. The room was fine. You need to put your room key in a slot to turn the power on. No wasting watts in the UAE.

Dad

August Update

Update from Dad.

Looks like it’s been a while since my last blog update.

In June I visited a couple Ham radio clubs on what they call a field day. That’s an international, annual day where Hams around the world go out and setup stations at remote sites, using off the grid power and work on contacting as many other Hams as possible. It’s also an outreach to allow kids and others to get on the air with the help of experienced Amateur radio operators.

In July we took the camper up to Denny Creek campground for Scott to have a few days of vacation. The weather was nice, and a good change from the last time we tried that last year when it was pretty wet.

Also in July I passed my Ham “Amateur Extra” level. That’s the top level of achievement for Amateur radio operators. This gives me privileges on all of the Amateur frequencies, or Bands.

Towards the end of July, I did some community service by helping the parade marshals at the Seattle Seafair tourchlight parade. I have memories of this parade, and other Seafair parades from my Civil Air Patrol days, when I worked with a float as some Asian boy with a bald head costume, a bit later as a sponsor of a Seafair princess, and just a bit later still, when I drove my Dad’s Model T truck with a Dixiland Band and a bunch of Farrell’s waiters during the many Seafair parades.

This time, I was assigned a block of the parade route to be a a contact, and to watch for people in any kind of trouble. By and large it was fine, 95% of the people were great, 4& were inconsiderate and very self important, and 1% were out and out drunks. It was a long night starting with a 50 minute walk fro the Seattle Center to my assigned block, then working from 5:30 to 11:30, then walking down the hill to 3^rd ave to catch a bus back to my car. I was pretty sore the next day. 

On that topic, I finally ordered my High Frequency antenna for my ‘Flagpole’ in the back yard. Some fairly heave work is in store as I work through the rocks that seem to be the main material of our little yard. I need to get a ground rod into the ground, a pipe to hold the antenna, and a slit trench from the corner of the house to the antenna spot. More than a little work. We’ll see how that goes.

I “may” be tapped for a little longer business trip than usual. Seems that a group in Dubai, in the U.A.E needs some help with the kind of systems I install here in the US. It’s not a confirmed thing, but if it comes about, it’s a 14+ hour air trip, from Seattle over the North Pole to the UAE. I’ll let you know when or if I’m on my way to the Persian Gulf.

Have fun with the rest of the summer!

Dad

The Last Year, Part 6

Ok, Now it gets interesting. 

1985-1990 Distribution Consultant

This was a major turning point in my working life. Rather than a local gut trying to make a mark in a distribution center, I was now a corporate distribution consultant. My new boss, Wade Lukas, recruited me from Safeway Seattle Division and pulled out the stops to entice me to move to California. It worked. 

For the first few months, I was a member of a medium department. Maybe about 12 other folks at the same level as me. Than the corporate take over, leveraged buy out, whatever you call it, the Safeway that was a large public company was taken over by wall street people. Right away, those financial people decided to sell of whole divisions, and distribution centers. My department at Oakland was chopped from that dozen to about 2, myself, Chuck Finley and the manager.

One of the duties now on our plate was to assist in shutting down those operations. That wasn’t fun. Chuck did most of that as they had me cranking out new applications for the trucking people to use on their PC’s. I turned out a lot.

I traveled quite a bit (Mom says during this time, she lived in Vallejo, I just visited). The job was to advise the local DC managers and transportation, and maintenance people on how to better do the job. It was advise as the DC’s stayed independent (for the most part), answering to the local division managers. But while not in their chain of command, our advice was thoughtful and pretty much universally respected.

While on this part of my career, I golfed, or at least pretended to. The Safeway upper ups were golf fanatics, so I pretended to golf. Sometimes just a 3 or 4 at the little course near the Oakland airport, on occasion, at a good size tournament. I bought lots of the cheapest golf balls I could find.

On one such conference, I flew to Phoenix to a very nice golf resort. Upper Ups loved golf resorts for ‘meetings. When the 4 worker bees were setting up, we heard about the earthquake in the bay area. That was an anxious time for us, as it was near impossible to call back to the bay area to see if you guys were ok. We took over an hour with all of us calling over and over before one of us got through. All of our families were fine. During this time, we recognized a long time before the news people that the viaduct road leading to our offices, and the airport had collapsed. We knew it, from the aerial pictures, but were amazed that it took so long for the news people to recognize that as the worst potential for people losing life or being seriously injured. Yeah, that was my drive to and from work or the airport. Pretty chilling.

Eventually, and really not that long in the scheme of things, I decided to abandon that corporate life and move all of us back to Washington.

New Callsign

K7CWC

 

KI7YHU

KI7YHU

K7CWC

 Yes, that gob of letters is a new identity for me. It may change, more on that later.

Kilo India 7 Yankee Hotel Uniform  Kilo 7 Charlie Whisky Charlie is my new Amateur Radio operator (and station) callsign. I’ve been studying for the Technician level Ham license for a while now. The Tech is the lowest of the 3 current amateur license levels. Each license level, from Technician to General to Amateur Extra has an increasing set of privileges as well as increasing detailed tests needed to qualify.

I looked around for a nearby Ham club that also supported giving the exams. I found one in Woodinville that was having a meeting last Saturday, so off I went. The meeting was interesting, about 50 people there, all pretty friendly. As we were waiting for the meeting to start, a few of the folks there introduced themselves. As we chatted and I indicated my interests and that I wished to take the technician exam, they encouraged me to take the next level too, the General operator. I protested that I had just studied the Tech topics, but they pushed that with my background and interests, that I should take both levels.

 So, after the meeting, I signed up for the Tech exam, and took my place at the table. The process was more strict that I remembered for even school major tests. The rules require 3 certified examiners to be present, and each test sheet has to be independently graded, and signed by all 3 examiners. You’re only allowed pencils, pens and a simple calculator to be on the table. The calculator is allowed to convert some test questions like current and voltage determination using Ohm’s law, or converting radio frequency to wavelength and back. You never outgrow the need for math!

 I go through the test, all multiple choice, and when finished, give the answer sheet to one of the examiners. She asked if I wanted to do the next level test. Knowing that if I failed it, I could take it again on another day, I nervously agreed. This was a much harder test, with some exacting questions on FCC rules and other topics that was beyond my knowledge of radio. During the time I was taking that General level test, the examiner came by and quietly showed me the results from my tech level test. 100%! That helped me as I knew regardless of the General test, I would get a license.

With much less confidence I turned in the General answer sheet, and waited. And waited. Finally she came by and asked how I think I did? I honestly answered that I didn’t have much confidence for that level. She paused, smiled and showed me that I passed ! Not by much mind you, but I passed.
For my own peace of mind, I’ll study that level until I effortlessly can pass with high scores on the available practice tests so I KNOW the material I squeaked by on.

What does all this mean for your favorite Dad? Well, it gives me another hobby along with Astronomy, Camping and just being lazy. It’s a complementary activity to the others. It allows me to learn in depth in an areas I had an interest in, and I think it’s going to be fun to reach around the planet to say hi to folks.

 With the General license, I have privileges beyond the VHF/UHF (Very High Frequency/Ultra High Frequency or line of sight) radio bands that the Tech level is limited to. I can use bands that bounce off the ionosphere to talk across the country, hemisphere, and around the world.

 Slowing down, there are some challenges to that, especially where we live now. At the old house I could have erected a tower and no one would have had a reason to object. (Hummm, well your Mom may have had a say, but there was no actual ‘restriction’ that would have applied). Here in the compound, it is a bit trickier. I think I can get the rather short VHF/UHF antenna put up on the shed with out too much danger of being called out by the compound rule force.

However, the HF (High Frequency/Long Distance) requires a longer antenna, by quite a bit. So I may have to employ a bit of stealth to pull that off. Plans are being formulated. Stay tuned. (See, radio talk already, stay ‘tuned’!) You may even be able to take part! Wouldn't that be fun.

On the callsign. The KI7YHU is perfectly legal today. I can use that and it identifies me as a legal Amateur radio operator. I also have the ability to request a ‘Vanity’ callsign, in the same nature as a personal license plate. It doesn’t have an extra fee, so I’m trying for one of those. I’ll update your in a few weeks if that worked out.

 Hey, I have to say that I'm pretty proud of all this. It was a big smile day to know that I passed 2 levels of a pretty demanding exam process.

 Dad

Best BBQ in Texas

Howdy. It's 9:40am, the temperature is creeping up to 90 ℉ and I'm in the line for Franklins BBQ. Arguably the best BBQ in Austin, which has to put it in the running for the best BBQ in Texas. The best BBQ...in Texas. Bold claim, and judging by the fact that the people at the front of the line have been here since 6:00am and the people at the back of the line somewhere down the block are waiting on the hope that there's food left when they reach the counter, there must be some truth to the claim that this is indeed, the best BBQ...in Texas. Only time will tell. Hopefully not too much time, it is approaching 90 ℉. Thank goodness for sunscreen and water.
I'll report back after lunch.

Update: Around 1:30 we made it to the counter to order lunch. The wait felt more like a tailgate party than a lunch. Most people had camp chairs and coolers full of cold drinks. They knew what they were in for and came prepared. And while the wait was long you got to know your neighbors so passing the time was pretty easy. Besides, everyone was quick to mention that the food was worth it. That it was the best BBQ in Texas. When I made it through the door the walls were covered in magazine articles proclaiming the unmatched quality of the BBQ. I went with a 1/2 lb of brisket and a 1/2 lb of ribs with a side of beans. I'm happy to report that it is hands down the best BBQ I've ever had. The flavors, the textures, afterwards I felt like I was floating. Amazing, well worth the wait. Franklin's BBQ in Austin, check it out.

The Last Year Part 5

Early 80’s Pallet Coordinator: I don’t have exact dates for this role at Safeway, but it was before the move to California. This position was a risk for me. I had applied to be a warehouse supervisor a few times at Bellevue, but never got the job. The pallet coordinator job was a position where the pay dropped from my Teamster rate, as it was a non-union, but still hourly job at a payrate less than a warehousemen. I took the job. This was technically a clerk type job (with that kind of pay rate), but it was really a negotiator job dealing with hundreds of companies that sold stuff to Safeway. I started out in a little unused office that was in the way back of the grocery warehouse. Lucky me, I did have a window to the outside, so that was nice. As pretty much a person without a boss (The DC manager was my official boss, for time cards etc. but he left me alone). I had free reign around the DC, collecting forms from all of the operations for stuff that was removed from the center (Pallets mostly, but also anything an employee had permission to remove). I arranged for loads of pallets to be sent to vendors, as tallied the pallets they sent into us. The difference between them was my pallet banks that I had spread all over Washington and Oregon, as well as farther places, mostly Safeway manufacturing plants. Easy enough right? Add pallets in, subtract pallets out, and that’s your number. Well, no. Pallets have grades. There are prime pallets that are all that officially could be exchanged. Those 4-way pallets without significant broken boards, without secondary rails (The 2x4 frame) are what could be counted for credit. Anything else, softwood, broken, doubled rails, broken boards were disqualified from exchange counting. Of course, that gave rise to all sorts of disagreements. A vendor hated to send in 20 pallets and only get credit for 17 for example. Also, it was a never ending struggle to have the warehouse receivers properly judge the quality of the pallets that arrived under product. Ok. This tally of pallets started out in big binder books, with accounting paper used for the calculations. Think of a paper check book register. When Safeway decided to buy its first PC (actually an IBM XT with a 10 MB Harddrive), it was my chance to jump on that, and learn how the thing worked. About this time I moved from my little office back to the Box Shed, not as a supervisor, but just to hang out there, do all of the supervisor stuff, but retain my deceptive role as the pallet coordinator. Similar to the work at the Safeway store, the powers that be got a bargain out of my official job. I started logging a few hours of overtime every day, there wasn’t much they could do to argue against it. Anyway, there was a project to equip all of the individual warehouses with electronic time card systems. So all of the housed needed a PC. I was selected to be on the team of Train the Trainers, and that was a good thing for me. Cemented my growing reputation of being the PC guy. Now with a PC (now updated to what they called an IBM AT with a 20mb harddrive, I was in business. The main program that was used for EVERTHING was Lotus 123, a precursor to Microsoft’s Excel. We used it for little spreadsheets, some people used it for a word processor (Wordperfect was the official WP program). SO I build pallet tracking systems, DC Cost and income systems, and made pretty much anything else, any of the managers needed. I built this one really complex sheet, lots of macros etc. that the DC manager went to a headquarters meeting and tried to claim as his own creation. No one believed him. That got the attention of the head of transportation (Trucks) at the head office. The next time he came up to Seattle he asked to meet the guy who built that complex computer model. That was me. Within a couple weeks, he had offered me a job at the Oakland headquarters. That’ll be in the next installment.

Capital Steps

Mom and I went to this comedy group a few weeks ago. To close out the first act, one of the troop did this amazing story, by swapping the first letters of adjoining words. If I can pop the scan of the script in, take a look. Try to read it out loud, that's how you;ll get the full effect.
Dad

The Last Year, Part 4

More Box Shed Stories

During my pre-married days, I either drove to work from my parents house in Lake City, usually over the then new Evergreen bridge. At that time, you could get a commuter book of 20 trips, and the toll person took a ticket each way. It came to $0.195. Regular cash trip was $0.35. It was always fun during a storm when the waves would crash over the side onto the roadway. Later they added some buffers to decrease the waves overtopping the side.

After I moved into the bachelor apartment with Mark Merryman, I would often just ride my bike to work. One time the security guards came back and said they were looking for a hippie on a bike driving around the back lot. Yeah, me the hippie. I would even ride back to the apt on my ½ hour lunch break. Not a lot of time to make the trip, eat, and ride back, but I liked getting away from the shed.

After a cold snap, the floor of the shed would be very cold. Surprise, it’s not like we had heat in the open building or anything. Having a cold floor was no problem, but if it warmed up fairly quickly, and the humidity went up, guess where the warm, wet air condensed? Yep the floor would get wet, and stay wet for a day or so. Well , the smooth wheels on the pallet jack didn’t steer, or stop very well on the slick floor. We’d throw sawdust around for traction and that was a mess.

Repairing pallets was done every day. Sometimes one person on a table, once in a while 2, sometimes several tables going at once. Crowbars, 20 oz. hammers, and air driven staple or nail guns were the main tools. We went through thousands of dollars of wood slats, and staples/nails a month. Noisy too.

I had a replacement job for a time, when the yard cleaner guy was on vacation. I’d drive around and clean all of the trailer side of the docks, clean out the trailer wash pit, and assorted other odd and end jobs. The trailer wash was a machine that had a 40 foot apparatus that the yard switch driver would use and back his trailer over the long gadget. A sensor would then turn on pumps to spray hi pressure water out jets as he pulled the trailer back out. The water jets would wash anything in the trailer out the back. All that stuff was what I had to clean up.

For a sanitation rule, there was a foot and a half white paint line around the walls. Theory was that any rats, mice etc. would use that area and you could shine a UV light on the white paint to see rat leftovers. Yeah right. We’d dutifully wave the UV light around, but never, NEVER saw any traces.

If the baler shredding part got ahead of the baler bailing part, it was possible to jam up the chute 

where it constricted from a large round silo thing to the square section that fed the baler. If it wasn’t noticed, the large silo could fill up with chopped up cardboard. When that happened, we’d shut off the machines, and climb up on the roof, and the ladder up to a side door in the chute. You’d have to lean in and keep grabbing handfuls of damp cardboard, being sure not to have your head in the chute when the blockage gave way and rushed down into the baler machine. Another OSHA heart attack job.

We were supposed to remove twine etc. before it went into the baler. That was never perfect, so every few weeks, we’d turn off the machine, and climb into the shredder, sit there with your legs in the chopper area and use knives to cut the twine rope off the shredder axle. Took quite a time. It would have been a bad day had someone not known we were in there and turned on the machine.

Later!

The Last Year, Part 3

Hi Again.

Kind of a rough day at work today, so to reset my mind, another installment of looking back over my working career. Aren’t you guys lucky?

Box Shed Continued: I spent a lot of time at the box shed. I had different shifts, with Graveyard (Midnight to 8:30) and days, from 8:00 to 4:30 being the most. I spent some time on Swing (4:00 PM until 12:30) as well.

Mondays were the heaviest days for unloading trailers and sorting the boxes and other stuff that either makes round trips to the stores (Milk crates, egg crates, bread trays, etc.) or things that came back and were recycled by being sold (cardboard) or things like pallets that went right back into the warehouses for reuse.

I spent my initial years as a straight warehousemen (yeah, it was never called a warehouse-person) doing the sorting stuff. For the first couple of years in the new shed, I also did a job of sanding the labels off of wood peach lugs so that they could be resold to local growers. I was by myself in a corner of the baler shed holding these lugs (boxes) one at a time against this huge machine that spun a belt of floor sanding material to grind off the labels, and make the box look sort of new. I brought my own goggles, face mask and ear protection as this was loud dusty and more than a little scary as if I had a moments inattention and allowed any part of me to brush against that rotating belt of the coarsest sandpaper you can imagine, I would have lost whatever touched it in a flash. Of course, being along, no one would know I was in trouble until a break when I didn’t show up to have a cup of (very poor) coffee. Not even sure then.

Break time was in a very small room. In those days the smokers dominated that kind of work force so being in that room was not that great if you wanted to breath. Alas, it was the only heated room in the facility so I did the breaks there and just had to put up with the blue air. There was one summer where the air smoke was a little different. One the of the guys was a committed stoner, and every break would lite up his little pipe with something that had a very unique smell. Yeah, those were the days.

Besides the box sanding business, we were also the place where pallet boards were repaired. The company bought extra slat boards (1x6’s) and nails for the air powered guns by the truck load. Anther very noisy job with us swing 20 oz hammers, crow bars and shooting those nail guns all shifts. We were usually able to repair a stack of 15 pallets every hour. Some repairs were quick, others required more. It was a job that you just got into a pace and didn’t think too much.

After a time, I moved on to a fork truck driver. For an astounding extra $0.10 an hour, I got to sit for part of the day. The job consisted of either working the yard, or loading pallets of boxes or paper bales on the customers truck, or for cardboard bales often a rail car. This job was either fairly easy, with me picking up large garbage containers, driving over to a huge truck sized compactor and dumping the container, back across the yard with it empty, rinse repeat.

Loading the paper (carboard) trucks and rail cars was more fast paced.    It was full speed from start to end. The truck drivers appreciated a quick load, so we hustled when they were there. Sometimes alone, sometimes 2 of us working opposite sides of the truck. In rail cars, we would work in pairs most often, with one of us using a pallet jack to bring a stack of store bales (smaller) and push them over onto the floor (boom) and stack the pallets. The fork guy would grab what bales was the right size for a spot he had and shove it into the stack already in the car. If we were loading baler bales (much bigger and heavier), we’d have one fork guy on the ground where those bales were stored, and one buy up in the shed to load into the car. Again, a fast paced task.

Sometimes, we’d have more than one car to load. When we had to move the cars down the track to have a new empty by our loading door, we’d call the whole box shed crew to come out and we’d release the brakes and push the things down the track. It was a break in the routine, and the position of brakeman was the jewel on this task to release, ride the car, and then to spin the cars brake wheel when in position.

All you folks really bored with this diatribe? 

More later!

Dad

Hot Trip Coming Up!

The Last Year Part 2

1968-1969 Safeway Box Shed (Part Time):  Ok, now the fun begins. Pretty much right towards the end of my senior year of high school, I got a summer and part time job at the Old Box Shed at the Safeway Distribution Center. I worked the 2 AM to 10:30 AM Shift.

Most produce in those days came in wood or in some cases cardboard boxes. Mostly wood. There were a lot of types and sizes of boxes, and all of them had to be separated, stacked on pallets, tied up and moved out. They were sold to local farmers for them to refill and send back to the produce warehouse. There was lots of money involved in those boxes. Each box had a name, a specific way to nest or load on a pallet.

The trucks coming back from the stores had this stuff stacked haphazard on pallets. In this first year of my working, it was in the Old Box Shed, a fairly small area near the main produce warehouse. It was no where near big enough. The truck drivers shoving the pallets in one end had a single goal, to empty the trailers so they could be loaded again. They didn’t care so much if they were shoving the stuff in faster than we could stack it and get the stuff out. I still remember the voice of this rather large Italian unloader shouting a warning “I’m A Gonna Push!” If you ever want to know the names and description of the boxes we sorted back then, just ask, I think I can still name several dozen.

A companion job associated with the Box Shed was the cardboard baler. The machine my first year was a real bear to work. You needed 2 guys to lift these big burlap squares onto a platform, and dump on a belt. Two other guys pick through the cardboard looking for things that didn’t belong in the recycle cardboard. The cardboard then went through a chopper and was blown up and fell down into a machine that compressed the paper into a bale (Hence the name baler). This first generation machine had to be stopped each time a bale was complete and metal bands were shoved through slots in the ram, and the bales was tied up. A forklift took the bale and stacked it. You earned your pay working this job.

After I started classes at the UW, I worked Friday and Saturday nights. Pretty decent pay at the time for a part time job.

1969-1982 (?): New Box Shed: They built a new, much larger facility after my first year. Maybe 24 trailer docks as opposed to the 4-5 at the old shed, a ground level belt for the much larger cardboard baler, that also had a ramp from the main shed level. The box shed (it was still called that) was divided about half and half for unloading trailers, and a side to load up different trailers of the various things we separated that came back from the stores. The design had a major mistake, in that a ramp to ground level was right in the middle of the building, making a narrow bottleneck when we were taking pallets from the unloading end to the reloading side. In future years, this design flaw as fixed.

Like the Old shed, trailers from the stores needed to be unloaded so they were empty and ready for a new load. They had all of the produce boxes as before, plus Wire Cribs (A fence like thing that attaches to a pallet to make a big box), meat lugs (Aluminum things about 18 inches wide and about 4 feet long and a foot deep. They nested together and were heavy when you had a bunch of them. Add glass returnable pop bottles, metal bread trays, wood milk cases, returned products that went to a salvage department, stacks of pallets, broken pallets, junk (that shouldn’t have come back), wooden banana tubs (About the same size as the Meat lugs), Egg cases, and store size bales of cardboard.

All this stuff came back around the clock as the new shed was a 6 ½ day, 24 hour facility. Only late Saturday to Sunday was quiet.

My first years there were pretty much limited to working the boxes, or the paper. The box job was the same as across the street at the old shed, just more room. They would still saturate the larger space with pallets of boxes during busy days. Mondays were the busiest by far as the stores sent back all of the empties from the weekend.

At the paper end, there were two ways to process the cardboard. The hard way, was to work on the ground behind this mountain of the square burlap bundles that the truck drivers huck onto the ground. The squares are tied up with steel wire ties to hold the bundle together. SO, you grab a bundle, cut the wires with a pair of diagonal cutters, and pull a corner of the burlap to dump the paper onto the belt. You had to spread the paper out a bit as if you had it too thick, it would choke the chopper. That’d be bad.

Another was to feed the baler was up on the shed floor, where the store bales were pushed to the opening, the wires cut and the layers of cardboard dumped down the ramp, just past the poor guy working the burlap bundles.

When the chopper jams, the 100 HP motor still tries to turn it, and the belts squeal, and if the power to the motor isn’t cut like in seconds, the motor can and did burn itself up. Very bad. The chopper was a big shaft that had these steel pieces, think of a 18 inch 1x4, that pun between a second set of steel pieces that chopped the cardboard into smaller pieces. A very large fan then sucked the paper past a set of water sprayers, then into the fan, up a chute to the roof, where a silo deal caught the paper and it fell down another chute into the baler proper.

This baler was a continuous feed type. As the paper was compressed and shaped into the bale, every 12 feet a big rubber divider would drop as the baler went into a special cycle to push, back off a bit, open the trap door to let the divider drop, than continue to bale the next bale behind the completed bale. The guy working the machine would go around back and force round steel wires through slots in the divider to the front. Back at the front, he would take the ends and use a air driven tier to twist and cut the wires to tie up tie up the paper. Next he’d grab the loose ends of the 4 wires, he’d pull them the length of the machine, and push them through the rubber divider so they’d be ready in back for the next complete bale.

While all this was happening, he needed to push a completed bale down a set of rollers, and use a fork lift to stack it. That would cause the divider rubber to fall down, where it had to be dragged to a little lift gadget to get it back up on the top of the machine over the trap door ready to drop again the next time a bale was ready. All the while the other crew people were sending cardboard through the choppers, so it was a continuous cycle. No rest for the weary. This was another job where you knew you earned your pay.

More Later!

I have been reading another book written by my Uncle Stanley (my dad's older brother). It fascinates me because it is also the history of my father and my grandparents. I have learned so much about all of them through my uncles books. Following is a memory he records of a time when he, my dad and their brother Rodger went swimming in Wood Lake in Minnesota. My dad was about 5, Uncle Rodger was about 8 and Uncle Stanley was about 10.

"Rodger and I had learned to swim at the Mill Dam near Prentice so felt at home in the water. Emory, about 5 years old, came near the water and sat on a door we had used for a raft. With our splashing we created enough water movement to move the raft from the shore and he got carried with it into the deep water. He tried to get off, did so, but sank. I finally caught up with him, but had no understanding of how to get him to shore. I pushed and threw him as far as I could, then swam to catch up. I repeated the process until I came to shallow enough water to stand up. I straightened him up, patted him on the back and sent him in to shore."

Not sure that's Red Cross approved method of life saving but glad it worked!!

The Last Year, Part 1

Hi All,

Well, after a lot of years, it is looking more like by the end of 2018, I will join the ranks of retired people. It’s likely going to take all of 2018, but that’s my goal.

I’ve been so fortunate to have found work to earn first pocket money, then money for school, and then to support myself, and later my wife and a bit later the whole family. It was my duty, and responsibility and I was proud that while we were never rich, I think we did ok.

I’m beginning to get a bit reflective. Yeah, it’s still 10 months away, but I’m thinking more of the actual ‘hanging up the boots’ then I ever let myself  think before. I’m more looking forward to ending the work phase, than the time starting in 2019.

I know you all have a pretty good idea what I’ve been doing all these years, but I’m going to work through the list anyway.

1960-1962: Shopping news and Lake City Journal. Outside of a few babysitting gigs with my sister Arla, this was my first regular job. Twice a week there was the shopping news, a paper with just ads, and once a week the Lake City Journal, a community paper. There were no subscriptions, people got the things if they wanted them or not, and some really didn’t. The papers came to our house, and your Granma Betty, my mom, rubber banded all those papers so they were ready for me when I got home from school. The journal even did an article on us, Mom and me, took a picture with Mom folding the papers, and me eating a bowl of ice cream. That was a bit embarrassing. They paid me every month with an actual paycheck.

1962-1965: Seattle Times Carrier.The typical paper boy. The papers arrived at a paper shack, a tiny building that was the hub for 8-12 carriers, that fanned out in all directions after getting their allotment. The deal was that I was charged a wholesale cost for each and every paper I got, and the theory was that I would collect the subscription rate from the people on my route. The difference would be my profit. Good in theory, but it only took a small percentage of my customers to not pay and I was in the hole as I needed to pay my bill to the times. I made some money most months, but there were a few where I was on the short end. 
On Sundays, the papers were pretty big. Each Sunday my dad, your Grandpa Bill, would use the car to get the papers We got to where the delivery was pretty evenly split between Dad covering one side of the street to my covering the other. He got to know my route as well as I did. I had what they called a route book. It was a small ring binder that had a sheet for each customer that had the address and name details and the type of subscription they had. Daily Only, Daily and Sunday, or Sunday only.
The papers arrived at the shack in a Master Movers truck. The bundles of paper were bound with a copper wire. The driver would use a hooked tool to grab the bundles and throw them to the end of the truck. Whatever carriers were there at the shack would take them and stack them inside. The shack manager (another kid) would dole out the papers to each carrier adding or subtracting from the standard bundle to exactly match your routes order.

1965-1968: Woodland Park. I’ve written about my Woodland park days before in great (at least long) detail  I can always resend those to you on request 😊

1967-1968: Safeway Store 91: Another ‘boy’ name. Officially I was a courtesy clerk, but box boy was the familiar title. Bagging groceries, changing the reader board Ad signs, cleaning the parking lot, filling the bag bins, were the core jobs. The store assistant managers, looking to get some cheap help for their departments, soon ‘borrowed’ me from the front of the store, to doing what should have been journeymen (more pay) jobs but paying me the bottom of the scale courtesy clerk wages. It was OK by me at the time, being a bit naïve, as it was a break from the front of the store work.
I worked Saturday night in the Meat department, cleaning up the butcher equipment, raking (yes raking) the floor and filling up the display racks with cold cuts and hot dogs. In those days it was a law that you couldn’t sell meat unless a licensed meat cutter was on duty, and Safeway didn’t want to pay double time for Sunday work.
My other extra job was working in the produce department. Stacking boxes in the cooler to rotate the fruits and veggies, and trimming of the lettuce, celery and bananas. There was this motor driven razor blade thing that would slice whatever you stuck into it, with the trimmed pieces falling into a huge screw driven garbage disposal, called a Gar-Ball. Really, not something that fit into the job description, and the spinning razor would make that unlawful for a minor these days to operate, but I came out of it with all my fingers intact.

On Wednesday nights, pretty often my dad would snag the grocery delivery for my store. It was fun helping him unload his truck and store all those pallets of stuff in the back room.

The store had this freight elevator that could be used to bring pallets up or down from the basement. I liked working that thing. The basement had the same floor space as the main sales floor, but only a little bit of it was used for extra stock that didn't fit on the shelves. Way over in the back corner was the Civil Defense Fallout Shelter supplies, food, water, medical, sanitary and radiation monitoring stuff. Yeah, those were the duck and cover days. 

More Later

Dad

Ground control to Major Tom.

I'm sure everyone has seen the news regarding SpaceX putting a car into orbit to test their heavy payload rockets. This is one of the better videos I've seen of the rockets returning to Earth.

https://youtu.be/Z_kfM-BmVzQ

The amount of power it takes to slow them down at the speed they come in is pretty cool. Enjoy!

-PC

Water on Mars.

Interesting article about Mars ice. Someday, humans will go to Mars and discover even more.

https://www.wired.com/story/scientists-discover-clean-water-ice-just-below-mars-surface/