The Plank Road, My First Job

D. E. Larsen, DVM

We had moved to a small (160 acres) farm up the river from Broadbent in December of 1949. There was a lot of snow that winter. We probably had a foot of snow on the ground that January. That was unusual for Southwestern Oregon. With 2 older brothers, I learned every corner of the farm, exploring the hill in the snow.

I learned when a grouse is roasted over an open fire, you don’t want to eat too close to the bone. Drinking from a bubbling brook was a new experience for me. Finding a long dead sheep in the same stream a short distance up the hill taught me to drink upstream from the herd.

By the spring of 1950, I was a hardy 5-year-old farm boy. Left at home by myself and Mom while the other kids were in school, I was allowed to roam the farm’s lower reaches by myself. I was not supposed to go to the creek, and I could not cross the road to the fields by the river.

That spring, I acquired a new job. I became the construction supervisor of the plank road going to the mill being built up the creek. In those days, they often would build a small mill at the timber source, harvest the timber, and saw the lumber right there. When the job was done, they would pull the mill’s hardware and move to the next location.

  The creek road was gravel, but the lower road that crossed the field was a plank road. This road was being built along the fence on the neighbor’s place. I could scurry across that fence in a flash.

Ernie Bryant was building the road. He was a friend of my folks. They had been in school together, years ago. 

Ernie knew who I was before I introduced myself. I had him explain everything he was doing on that first day. I wanted to know everything if I was going to be supervising the rest of the job.  

Ernie laid out two parallel rows of railroad ties, staggered, so the joints between the ties were never lined up with the opposite joint. Then he would lay the large planks across the ties. These planks were large, rough-cut planks, probably 3 by 12 inches. Ernie nailed the planks down with large nails that looked about 6 inches long. The planks were 8 feet long. They extended out from the railroad ties about a foot on each side. I am sure the work was hard. Ernie built the entire plank road by himself.

Most of the time, Ernie showed up at 8:00 AM. That gave me plenty of time to see the brothers and sister off to the school bus and finish breakfast. The first day I didn’t pack a lunch and had to run back to the house when Ernie stopped to eat his lunch. 

After that first day, I always showed up with my lunch in a paper sack and a thermos of milk. I stowed these in the old stump on the fence line. This was an old cedar stump with a rather large cedar tree growing out of its center. All the time after that first day, I would sit and eat my lunch with Ernie. We would discuss the progress we expected to make on the road in the coming afternoon during lunch. Sometimes we would talk about Mom in her school days so many years before. After lunch, I would stand partway around the stump as Ernie and I would pee on the stump.

One morning when the plank road was getting close to the gravel road, I showed up at 8:00 AM, and Ernie was not there. I had learned from my Grandfather and Uncle Ern that to be late for anything was terrible and to be late for work was the worst thing you could do on a job. 

I sat down on the ground by the stump. I would sit on the plank road, but the planks were very rough, and I thought it would probably give me splinters in my butt. I had had splinters in my hands before. I didn’t want Mom to be digging a splinter out of my butt with one of her sewing needles.

Finally, Ernie came driving up the plank road. I stood up and greeted him as he came to a stop and got out of his pickup.

“You’re late for work,” I said. “My Grandpa says you should never show up late for work.”

“I bet you have a time clock in that pocket of yours,” he replied with a smile on his face. “I figure that if I work hard today that I could finish this road. Then you are not going to have anything to do.”

Ernie was right. This had been a fun couple of weeks. I had not thought about the fact the job would be over one day.

“I have lots of stuff to do,” I replied. “One of these days, I was going to convince Mom that I am big enough to fish in the creek by myself.”

Ernie finished the plank road that afternoon. He was picking up his tools when I came running down the road with a small bag of the large spikes that had been left on the old cedar stump. Ernie finished, reached in his pocket, and pulled out his wallet. He handed me two dollars.

“Here you go, young man. I appreciate all your help. We will have trucks using this road next week. You make sure you stay out of their way,” he said as he handed me the two bills.

Two dollars was a small fortune to a 5-year-old in 1950. I had nickels and dimes before, but I don’t think I ever had a dollar bill, let alone 2 of them. Ernie was driving down the plank road on his way home when I scrambled across the fence. I stopped and returned to retrieve my lunch sack and thermos from the stump. Then I was off again to show Mom that I was a rich young man.

Photo by Antranias on Pixabay.

The Lone Toad

D. E. Larsen, DVM

My eighth-grade year was a significant learning year for me. I had moved from the small community of Broadbent at the end of my seventh grade. We moved to a dairy farm on Catching Creek, outside of the big city of Myrtle Point. I went from a class of 8 kids to an actual junior high school with an eighth grade class of probably 50 kids, taught in two classrooms.

At home, I had a creek to hunt in and a large marsh to learn, first hand, about biodiversity and biomass. This marsh dried to scattered pools in the summer months. These pools teemed with life: catfish, bullfrogs, polliwogs, muskrats, dragonfly larva, and more. And I learned them all.

In the classroom, I found teachers who actually thought I needed to do homework. This was utterly foreign to me. I felt that if I could do well on the tests, I had no need to do the daily work. It had worked well for me up to that time, and I could see no reason for it to be different now.

“I want each of you to pick a topic from the list and write a three-page research paper on that topic,” Mrs. Meyers said. “That means you need to go to the library and find information about the topic and write the paper. And you need to list your references at the end of the paper. I expect everyone to have at least 3 references.”

I raised my hand. “Mrs. Meyers, does the list of references count toward the three pages,” I asked?

“David, you can write more than three pages if you want, but if those references fill the third page, that counts.”

That was all I needed to hear. I would do what I had to do, none of those extra pages stuff for me.

Then, this group of girls in the class wanted to meet at the city library to do the research. And so it was agreed. I am not entirely sure who was all involved, but they were city kids.

For me, a trip to the city library was a big ordeal. My mother dropped me off. I would have to start walking the two miles home that night, and Mom would pick me up. She would plan to be in town at 8:00, so how far I had to walk just depended on when we finished.

Us boys were all seated at a large table in the library. We were working hard on our topics. We each had pulled our 3 reference books and were busy getting information down. I was trying to make sure that I listed as much information on the reference books as possible. My reference list filled half of the last page.

We boys talked in hushed tones, understanding that we were in a public library and not disturbing the other patrons. The girls were in and out of the book racks and not seated at their table. They kept coming to our table and talking a bit before rushing back to the rows of books and jabbering there.

It was not long, and the old lady running the library came by and told us we would have to be quiet. We explained that it was the girls who were making all the noise.

It was not long, and the old lady came by again.

“If you boys and girls can’t do your work quietly, I am going to have to ask you to leave,” The old lady said.

I am not sure that the girls had ever been disciplined in their lives. They didn’t change their conduct one bit.

“Okay, I gave you boys and girls two warnings,” the old lady said. “You are not showing any respect for the others here in the library. I am asking you to gather your stuff and leave now.”

Leave now, I thought, I will have to walk all the way home. We gathered our stuff, and the old lady ushered us out the front door.

There we were, standing on the sidewalk, trying to figure out why we boys got kicked out when we were not the ones making the noise. The girls were still giggling about the whole thing. I don’t think I had ever been kicked out of anything in my entire life. And now I was going to have to walk two miles home, in the dark.

Then the unexpected happened.

“What is that,” Rick asked?

Coming down the sidewalk was the largest and the ugliest toad that I had ever seen. It was close to a bullfrog’s size and had nobs like projections protruding from its head and back.

“That is the biggest toad I have ever seen,” I said.

“I have never seen anything like it,” one of the girls said.

I scooped up the toad to get a better look at it. I had seen a few smaller toads before, but nothing near this size. The toad did not seem afraid at all and sort of nestled in my hand. 

“What are you going to do with him,” one of the noisiest girls asked?

“I think we should put him in the book return and give that old lady a thrill tonight,” I said.

I had noticed that she had retrieved several books earlier when she heard the lid on the book return clank.

“When she hears the lid, she will hurry over to get the book and put it away,” I explained. “Then she will have to spend the rest of the evening getting someone to get the toad out of there.”

And so it was agreed. And I opened the book return lid and carefully placed the toad in the bottom of the bin. I did not slam the cover, but I closed it in a loud enough manner that I was confident the old lady would hear it. 

Then we laughed and scattered, each heading home. I started a slow walk. I wasn’t sure what time it was, but it must have been well before 8:00.

When I reached the bridge on the edge of town that crosses the railroad tracks and the river, I stopped and watched the shack belonging to Shy the Panther. He was the town bum. There were a lot of stories about him. He was said to have got his name from his days as a boxer. There was no activity at the shack this night.

I was lucky. Mom showed up before I was across the bridge.

“Did you get done early,” Mom asked?

“We got kicked out of the library because the girls would not keep quiet,” I said.

“Are you sure it was just the girls making the noise?”

“Pretty sure, but that’s okay. I put a toad in the book return for the old lady who kicked us out,”

“David, you didn’t!” 

“Yes, it was the biggest toad I have ever seen. It just came jumping down the sidewalk. I bet it made that old lady jump when she opened the bin on the inside.”

“I bet,” Mom said with a smile on her face.

In the years following, when I needed a  laugh, I conjured up the image of that night. I pictured a hysterical reaction of that old lady when she retrieved the ‘book’ from the book return. Only to find the poor toad. It was probably unfair to the toad, but a very fitting payback to the old lady.

Photo by Lucas van Oort on Unsplash

Christmases in the Army

D. E. Larsen, DVM

“Company D, Private Drake speaking, can I help you,” Bill answered the phone on a snowy Christmas Eve in 1965. Bill and I were pulling CQ duty for Company D, a duty company for troops waiting for school at Fort Devens.

We were a couple of lucky ones; we were permanent CQs. We were given private squad rooms in the old World War Two barracks that were housing an overload of troops in the big build-up of Vietnam forces. We worked in 24 hours shifts, with 48 hours off.

“Yes, I know a couple of guys who would be interested,” Bill said.

“What are you getting us into now,” I asked? I was not expecting an answer, but Bill was always quick to volunteer my services.

“We can meet you at Battalion Headquarters by 8:15. We don’t get relieved until 8:00, but we should be able to make that schedule.”

Bill hung up the phone and looked at me with a big smile on his face.

“We have a Christmas dinner to go to tomorrow,” Bill said. “We have to be in Class A uniform and meet the Battalion CQ at Headquarters by 8:15.”

“Where are we going,” I asked?

“Does it matter? It is going to be better than eating Christmas dinner at Con 4 and sleeping for most of the day.”

At 6:00 in the morning, Bill and I took turns going to the barracks, showering and changing into our Class A uniform. When we were relieved by the next CQ crew, we walked through the snow the half a dozen blocks to Battalion Headquarters.

I imagined that we looked somewhat like Mutt and Jeff. Bill was 6′ 4″ and had a heavy black shadow on his face even though he had shaved a couple of hours before. And I was trying to match his stride, and I had to stretch to measure 5′ 8″.

The Battalion CQ was a Specialist 4, who had been in the Army for several years. He was waiting at the doorstep and fell in with us.

“We meet them at the main gate in 15 minutes,” Stan said.

Bill and I were mismatched on height, but we were both in good shape and trim. Stan was taller than me and quite well rounded.

“The main gate is over a mile,” Bill said as he lengthens his stride. I was used to matching his long stride, Stan sort of looked like a young kid who had to take four steps and then run four steps to keep pace.

By the time we reached the main gate, the snow was probably close to 4 inches deep. Mr. Terhune was waiting across the street in his VW van. He was with a couple of preteen boys. Getting into the warm van was a welcome relief.

We drove to their house in Groton, some 4 miles distant. The Terhune’s had 4 kids. The oldest was their daughter, who was a freshman in high school, and 3 younger boys. We had dinner, which Bill jumped right into the kitchen to help prepare. Then we spent the afternoon talking and drinking more than a little wine. 

Having just pulled 24 hours of duty, a full day of eating, and topped off with ample wine, I was asleep before my head hit the pillow that night. But it was Christmas to remember, and the Terhune’s remained friends and a place to escape to for the entire year we were at Devens.

Christmas in Korea was a different event but just as memorable. I arrived in Korea in the middle of September 1966, and I was well adjusted to the country by Christmas. Stationed South of Seoul, at Camp Humphreys, I spent a lot of my free time at the orphanage that we supported in An Song.

A group of us spent Christmas Eve at the orphanage. Following dinner, the group of elementary kids continued my lessons in Korean. The little girls were very serious about this instruction. They would frown when the boys were hysterical over my pronunciation of even the simplest words.

We did a Santa for the kids with toys purchased by the guys at the 177th. The kids all went to midnight mass, and so it late when they got to bed. 

On Christmas morning, we loaded everyone up and took them to Camp Humphreys for Christmas dinner with the entire company. Before dinner, all the staff and the older kids had the opportunity to take showers in the barracks. That was probably the best present we could give them. Then dinner in mess hall and entertainment in the club. All the kids were well worn out when we loaded them onto the trucks for the trip home.

The next morning the young kids were hanging all over me. It was apparent the kids didn’t want us to go. The staff was still in a state of euphoria from their day at the company compound. But we loaded up in the trucks for the drive back to the company. I opened the window and shouted goodbye, in Korean, to the kids.

“Annyeong,” I said. The boys almost rolled on the ground, but the girls laughed and waved.

 The drive back to base seemed longer than usual as we rolled down a dusty dirt road lined with dry rice paddies. My mind did drift back home with only a twinge of homesickness.

My experience in Germany was different still. I arrived in Germany in the middle of December 1967. Even though I had friends from Fort Devens, I really had no time to settle into an off duty routine before Christmas. My first Christmas in Germany was spent on the base at Rothwesten. Christmas dinner at the mess hall was well done and accompanied by some German carolers. The evening I spent at the NCO club, again filled with entertainment. It was less than ideal, but it was a pretty good day.

Christmas in 1968 found me in Schöningen, a small village on the East German border. I was stationed at Wobeck, a significant border listening post with about 70 of us stationed there. Christmas here was super. The town went all out on their decorations and festivities. There was a Christmas spirit everywhere. 

We had a major Christmas party at the ‘Swing Club’ in the Banhof Hotel. The club was not supposed to make a profit, so it had to give away a lot of booze to make sure the books came out even for the year.  Needless to say, there were a few drunk GIs.

A couple of us were invited to Christmas dinner at Howey and Holley’s house. Wives were a recent addition at Schöningen. Before this time, only men without dependants were stationed there. Holley was the best cook that I had seen since my mother. Howey was very drunk at the end of the party, and we had to help Holley get him into the car.

They lived in Wolsdorf, a little village a few miles out of Schöningen. They had an upstairs apartment in a new house, still finishing its construction. It was built on a hillside, and there were three stories with a high porch to the entry on the middle level. The steps and porch were new and not completely finished. There was no railing on the steps or porch.

When we arrived at 1:00 for dinner, Holley was slow to answer the door. She looked like she had was running on empty.

“Are you okay,” I asked? “You look like you have been cooking all night.

“I feel like it. We had quite a time last night,” Holley said. “And my night was just starting when we left.”

“You know, we can find a place to eat in town,” I said. “You don’t have to wear yourself out to feed us.”

“I should have had you guys help me get Howey home last night,” Holley said. “Let me tell you the story.”

“When we got to the house, it was not too hard for me to get him out of the car. And I sort of kept him against the wall as we struggled up the steps to the porch. We made it up here with no problem. I stood Howey up on the porch, turned around, and unlocked the front door. When I turned back around, he was gone. There he was, ten feet below, spread eagle in the snow and mud.”

“Is he okay,” Schniedewind asked? “That is a long way to fall.”

“He was too drunk to get hurt. But that was just the start of it. I had to get him up out of the snow and mud, back up the stairs, and then up the stairs to the apartment.”

“It looks like you made it,” I said. 

“Yes, I made, but there was a trail of snow and mud all the way. There was mud on the wall coming up the stairs. You know how the Germans are. They would kick us out of here for such a mess. So there I am, in the middle of the night, mopping the porch and washing the wall. It seemed like I no more than finished, and it was time to get the turkey into the oven. It was certainly a Christmas Eve that I won’t forget in a long time.”

About this time, Howey makes his entrance from the bedroom. He was fresh out of the shower but still feeling the effects of the party. We greeted him. Holley didn’t have much to say to him.

The dinner was excellent, as was expected from a cook like Holley. But the tension between the couple put a little chill in the air. Schniedewind and I made a pretty quick exit following dinner.