Beginnings

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The people who were born in my generation came from myriad ancestors. I know very little about mine. However, an Arnold and a Templeton left Europe under what must have been terrible conditions. What else could cause them to board a ship, immigrate to a country they had never seen, and subsequently travel across the country via a wagon train to arrive in Prineville, Oregon? As well, a different mix of ancestors led a Stephenson and an Andrews to leave Europe and eventually arrive in Riverside, California. I cannot fathom how so many people, including my parents, made decisions that led to my birth. Whatever the case, the events happened. Like a statement from Descartes, "I think, therefore I exist!"

I was born on February 11, 1933, at March Army Air Force Base near Riverside, California, during the Great Depression to parents who had about five dollars. My father, Wilbur J. Arnold, had graduated from high school in Prineville, Oregon, when my grandfather lost his farm to a bank. Parenthetically, my grandfather never again trusted banks or deposited money in them. Without jobs, my uncle Ray and my dad (Bud) traveled south, looking for work. My uncle got a job as an electrician in Dunsmuir, California, when the worker who had the job was electrocuted. The supervisor asked my uncle if he wanted to go to work. He did, and he worked in Dunsmuir as an electrician until he retired. My dad kept going south, ending up in Riverside, California. While getting a dinner at a Depression food place, he saw a poster that said, "Join the Army Air Force." He did, and that led to his becoming a pilot.

My mother, Grace Edna Stephenson, grew up in Riverside as one of six kids. She and her family led a simple but steady life. They were poor, but they got by. My mother graduated from a polytechnic high school. Basically, at that time, she had learned how to be a housewife.

My dad and mom met at Huntington Beach while sunbathing, swimming, and surfing. I do not know anything about the meeting, but it led to their getting married. I do not think my grandmother Stephenson ever approved of the marriage. My grandfather Stephenson did not object.

Over time, while I grew up, my growing family (brother and sister) periodically visited the Stephenson family in Riverside. My dad never made the trip with us. We were able to visit because my aunt Lois, who had a good job, sent my mom money so we could travel to Riverside by train.

I liked the trips for several reasons: riding on a train, getting to see the varied countryside, and getting a quarter from my mom to buy a sandwich at a rail stop. My mom packed food for the trip, mostly sandwiches with peanut butter and jam, fruit, and cookies. The trip took two days. I slept in my chair in the passenger car. Great times!

I never liked my grandmother Stephenson. My grandfather Stephenson was great. Several years later, during a visit to Riverside, he let me help him work on a wooden sailboat. He was patient and understanding. He did not criticize my actions. Best of all, he taught me a lot about building with wood. During my life, I have used those skills many times.

On the other hand, my grandmother was never nice to me. I did my best to avoid her and her criticisms, which included, for example, not combing my hair, not wearing neat clothes, climbing trees, and so on. When I was about eight years old, I hit rock bottom with my grandma while eating dinner. My aunt Velda had one child named Roger. At dinner, my cousin, who I thought was a sissy, asked to be excused from the table. I did not know my grandmother insisted that children ask to be excused. At home, when I finished dinner, I simply left the table without asking for permission. My grandmother made me return to the table until I asked to be excused. So I sat there. My mom handled letting my brother leave the table. My sister was still in a high chair. The adults finished eating, left the table, went about their evening activities, and finally went to bed. I continued to sit there. Somewhere around two or three in the morning, my mom came to the table and said I could leave.

This event says a lot about me and my mother. Basically, my mother was shy and seldom bucked authority. But in her quiet way, she always took care of me. This time, she rescued me from an edict from my grandmother. As years passed, she rescued me several times from assorted situations. While growing up, I questioned authority when I thought situations were irrelevant or unfair. In this situation, I saw no need to be like my cousin, and I had no concept of getting permission to leave the table. I have always needed to know why I should or should not do something. Now, when someone asks why I am doing something a certain way (for example, washing the dishes), I tell them I have logic for everything I do. It does not matter to me if other people understand the logic.

From Riverside to Klamath Falls

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The New House

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

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

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

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

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

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

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