Author: Paul W. Konopacki

This is the third, and last time I went to California.

The brother of my girlfriend at the time was a young guy named Joe.  He was about 21 years old and played the drums.   Joe was tall and thin.  Curly hair.  Naive.  He was fun to hang out with.  We would ride mountain bikes in the woods in North St. Louis County.

One of his sisters, Stephanie, lived in Malibu, California.  She convinced him to stay with her while going to drumming school. I could tell his heart wasn’t totally into the idea, but his parents were pressuring him to decide what to do with his life. They didn’t want him driving from Missouri to California by himself.  I suggested that I could take a week of my vacation time to be his travel companion.  He would keep his car with him and Joe’s parents would pay to fly me back to Missouri.

We left Florissant, Missouri at 8pm on September 10, 1992.  We took a southern route through Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.  We took turns driving his small car for three days.  We shared a motel room to save money.  The only site-seeing we did was to detour off our route to see the Meteor Crater National Landmark in Arizona.  We listened to heavy metal music (his favorite genre), which was fine with me.  Metallica, AC/DC, Anthrax.  We happened to get a motel room in Gallop, New Mexico during a celebration.  They had a rodeo and music in the streets.  We ate some Mexican food from a vendor for dinner.

As soon as we got to the Pacific Ocean, we stopped at Redondo Beach to soak up the atmosphere and walk in the sand.  We went to Stephanie’s house, where I stayed the night.  The next day I was taken to LAX airport to get on a place back to St. Louis, Missouri.

It was a fun trip.

(Warning:  This post contains photos that may be disturbing to some people, but are essential to the story)

I started the hobby of geocaching in 2001.  It is recommended that people find at least 50 geocaches before placing their own.  In 2001, I decided it was time to place my own.  I looked for a location that was scenic and did not have any geocaches nearby.  I happened to be hiking the Pacific Palisades Conservation Area recently.  It is mostly flat, right next to the Meramec River, contains some farmer fields, and some brush.  Not many people know about it, except hunters.  There are many whitetail deer that roam the woods.  There are no official trails, but contains some interesting bluffs not far from the parking area.  Bluffs have many places to hide a geocache, so that was going to be where I would put my first geocache.

The day I decided to place the cache and get the exact coordinates so I could publish its location on geocaching.com, I asked if my wife, Elaine, wanted to join me for the hike.  We parked at the conservation area parking lot, then walked about a mile before heading toward the bluff.

Just as we were about to enter the woods, I spotted something dark on the ground in front of us, abut 30 yards away.  I was startled and told Elaine to be quiet.  It looked like an animal that was big enough to hurt us.  After a few seconds, I realized it wasn’t going to move.  We cautiously walked up to it.  It was a large, black dog laying on the ground.  After initial examination, it looked like it had been shot in the chest by either a bullet, or arrow.  It was hunting season, so we surmised the dog was shot by a hunter and left to die.  The wound was still somewhat fresh, but the body was starting to smell.  He couldn’t have been there more than a days. I made note of the coordinates of the dog.  Rather than place the geocache at this time, we walked back to the parking lot to head home.

While I was packing up the car, Elaine was reading the bulletin board.  She said someone posted they were missing a dog named Jake, fitting the description of the one we saw.  There was a phone number.  We drove a few miles to a gas station that had a pay phone.  I dialed the number.  Someone answered.  I said something like, “This is Paul Konopacki.  Did you put up a post of a missing dog at the Pacific Palisades Conservation Area?  If so, I think we found his body in the woods.”  I heard a sob, then the person immediately hung up.  I was taken aback, but decided to just walk back to the car thinking I had done what I could.  Suddenly, the pay phone rang.  I picked it up.  It was the owner.  She said she was cautious about who was calling because she was a bounty hunter and did not want to be lured into a trap.  I told her my wife and I were walking in Pacific Palisades and stumbled upon the body of a dog.  I gave her the description and she started to cry.  I said we could meet her at the parking lot and walk to the place where we spotted it.  We agreed.

Elaine and I drove back to the parking lot and waited.  When the woman arrived in her pickup truck, we walked to the location of the body.  When she saw it, she immediately broke down.  She wanted to take the body back home wither her.  I had an old army blanket in the trunk of my car.  I ran back to get it.  We wrapped the body in the blanket.  We found a long branch and put it through the blanket so she and I could carry the body out.  The dog must have weighted over 100 lbs.  We had to stop many times to rest.  The blanket was getting soaked with blood.

At the parking lot, we put the body into the back of her pickup.  She thanked up for our help.  We gave her our contact information and went home.

A few days later I went back to the conservation area to place my geocache.  I decided to call it, “Jake Memorial Cache” in honor of Jake.  Later that year, we got a thank you card in the mail from the bounty hunter for helping her retrieve her loved one from the woods.

You would think that with a name like “Paul Konopacki” there wouldn’t be much of a chance of mistaken identity.

On July 10, 2019 (Wednesday), I was looking through my Google Drive account and saw a file being shared with me called “OTR Deposits”. I had no idea what it was until I opened it. It was a spreadsheet containing financial deposits for a company called OTR Capital. This was highly sensitive information! Names of clients, insufficient funds transactions, lockbox totals, EFT payment info, etc.  I tried hard to remember if I had any connection to OTR in the past. Came up with nothing.

One feature in Google Drive is it keeps track of who made a modification to a document, and when. One person who was editing the document a lot was Eric Redderoth. I decided to contact him and find out why I had access to the spreadsheet. A few Google search results sent me to LinkedIn and other places where you had to pay a fee to get contact info.  The only good possibility I saw at the time was to send him a Facebook message and hope he would read it in a timely manner.  I wrote in the message that if I did not hear from him soon, I would try another method of contact:

Eric, For some reason I have access to a document called “OTR Deposits” on Google Drive. I cannot figure out way. I just discovered it today. It looks like it has sensitive information in it and is regularly being editing. If you want to discuss this issue, please call my home phone: xxx-xxx-xxxx. If I don’t hear back from you today, I may try some other way to contact you tomorrow.  Here is a sample of the document’s editing history in Google Drive:

3:28 PM Eric Redderoth and Alora Hxxxxx edited an item Google Sheets OTR Deposits
10:46 AM Tyler Cxxx edited an item Google Sheets OTR Deposits
6:50 AM Eric Redderoth edited an item Google Sheets OTR Deposits
Tue 2:58 PM Eric Redderoth and 2 others edited an item Google Sheets OTR Deposits
Earlier this week Mon 5:43 PM Eric Redderoth and 2 others edited an item Google Sheets OTR Deposits
Last week Fri 12:24 PM Alora Hxxxxx and 2 others edited an item Google Sheets OTR Deposits

The next day, Thursday, I have not heard from Eric.  I decided to call the company directly and see if I could get to Eric that way.  After a minute, Eric came on the phone and I explained the situation.

Here is an audio clip of our conversation:

You see, there are a handful of people in the United States with the name “Paul Konopacki“.  There are a couple in Wisconsin; one in Chicago; one who was a political cartoonist that may no longer be alive.  One particular “Paul Konopacki” was a student at Ramapo College in New Jersey.  He was a volleyball player who recently graduated.  In 2013 I got an email from a volleyball coach asking me if I was going to an athletic conference.  I replied that he had contacted a different “Paul Konopacki“.  When doing an occasional vanity internet search on my name, an article or two would show up about him.  THAT “Paul Konopacki” was the one who was supposed to have access to the “OTR Deposits” speadsheet because he now works for OTR.  Eric had selected my email address to have access, by mistake.

Eric and I had a good laugh about it over the phone.  He removed me from the shared file on Google Drive, we said our goodbyes, and the problem was solved.

I had no interest in any of the data in the spreadsheet, other than curiosity.  I would hope that if I had made the same mistake in allowing a stranger on the internet access to my company’s internal data, they would show me the same mercy and resolve the issue without malice.

Years ago, I decided that whenever possible, I would make sure to publish my work on the internet as Paul W. Konopacki to distinguish myself from my namesakes.

AEP River Operations

For eight years, I worked for a company called AEP River Operations.  It was previously called MEMCO (“Marine Equipment Management Company”).  The name changed when it was purchased by AEP (“American Electric Power”) out of Ohio.  The purpose of River Ops (what we called the company internally) was to move products on barges up and down the Mississippi River and Ohio River.  For AEP, they bought us to guarantee the delivery of coal to their electrical power plants along the Ohio River.  The River Ops corporate headquarters was in Chesterfield, Missouri.  The Mississippi River is about a 30 minute drive from there.

New Employee Task

I was hired into the I.T. Department to support a financial software product called Epicor, develop SQL databases, and maintain business applications. My supervisor, Scott, gave me a list of tasks that he wanted each of his new hire to complete.  Some where to get more familiar with the company by talking to personnel in various departments.  One task was to experience what it was like to be on a boat and push a tow up or down the river.  Since I had access to the logistics software that helped run the daily operations of the company, I kept my eye on when a boat would stop in the St. Louis, Missouri area.  They were not going to change any work orders just for me to get on the boat so I had to fit my time into THEIR schedule. I bought a pair of steel toed boots, which had to be worn on the boat.  I also requisitioned a floating vest and helmet.

About the River Transportation Industry

Barges are grouped in a grid-like pattern called a ‘tow’, and pushed by tug boats (sounds wrong, but that’s how it works!).  In the upper Mississippi region and on rivers that contain locks, tows cannot be configured to be more than three wide, by 5 long.  In the lower Mississippi where the river is much wider,  there could be 50+ barges in a tow!

River Ops owned about 100 boats that mainly worked the Mississippi River and Ohio River.  They would ship fertilizer to the norther states in the spring and crop products to the gulf in the fall.   The operation is 24-hours / day.  Employees on the boat work 6 hours on; 6 hours off, around the clock.  Even though they could see the shore, they are not allowed to get off the boat for a month.  Then they get two weeks off of leisure time.  At different times and places along the river, supplies and mail would be transported to the boat by other boats specifically used for that purpose.

The job of a deckhand is fit for a young guy with no family or just starting out in a mariner career. The most experienced deckhand is called the ‘first mate’.  Building a tow is the most strenuous task because you are up against time and you have are constantly pulling cables and tying ropes.  It doesn’t matter what the weather is, you need to be out in it building up or breaking down a tow when the time comes.  This could be followed by days of waiting around, doing nothing, until the tow reaches its destination.  I found this article to be very true from what I saw and learned about jobs on the river.

Boat Ride Preparation

A week or two went by, but I could not find the right scenario for a boat I wanted to get on.  Then I noticed the “Noble C. Parsonage” (named after an executive in the company), was going to be building a tow in St. Louis in a couple of days, on a Saturday.  I worked with a dispatcher to make the arrangements:

Dispatcher to Paul: I think it will be best to get you on the Noble C. They are at mile 83 N/B turning StL( Mile 178). They will then stop mile 136 S/B.

Paul to Dispatcher: Noble C. sounds find. Let me know what I need to do and when. I will be at Eagle Fleet at the time you suggest. I will have my AEP badge, steel-toe boots, life jacket and helmet.

Paul To Elaine (wife): Here is how it is playing out: The Noble C. Parsonage will be in St. Louis after midnight, tonight.  It will be taking over the tow currently attached to the David Fields, which is heading south to St. Louis and won’t get in until about 3am.  Since they don’t have to break up the tow, it will not be long after 3am that the Noble will head south.  Apparently my get-off destination is Kellogg at mile 125, which is right near St. Genevieve. Trip will be 45 ‘river miles’, which might put us there Sat. afternoon.  Maybe you can take the GPS receiver and when I get near shore, I can have you plug in the coordinates to find me!

I called to make arrangements for me to be taken to the boat from the shore of the Mississippi. The earliest supply boat was leaving shore about 4am.  I had Elaine drive me to a boat yard.  The supply boat approached shore, loaded up and left without me!  I went back to the boat yard office and mentioned it.  They had the boat come back to get me.  The atmosphere wasn’t very cordial.  I was just another piece of cargo to them. They pulled up, I jumped on, and away we went.

Waiting for Tow to be Built

It was about a 5 minute ride to the boat I was to get on, although I could see it from shore.  The Parsonage was anchored to one side of the river with a partial tow already built.  After attaching a couple more barges, we sat and waited for the final barge to arrive from upstream.  And waited.  And waited.  By the time the barge arrived, I had been waiting on the boat for 15 hours!  I mostly sat in the pilothouse and talked to the crew members as they came and went.   I was allowed to roam the boat and take pictures.  I could walk on the tow, itself, but had to be escorted by one of the deck hands.  I got a tour of the galley, the sleeping quarters, and the engine room.

Jobs on the Boat

The Parsonage was one of the oldest boats in the fleet, built in 1974.  It would have been nice to be on a more modern boat, but I didn’t have the luxury of getting scheduled on one.  When the diesel engine is idling, the boat is in constant vibration. The engine room was very clean, but so noisy that you have to wear ear protection.  It contains two diesel motors.  One is almost always running, while the other can be maintained while shut down.  The engineer was changing the oil in one of them when I was visiting.

Each crew member had their own sleeping quarters.   The shared lounge had a workout machine, desk, couch, TV, stereo.

Contrary to what you might think, there is no steering ‘wheel’ on the boat.  Its rudder and throttle are controlled by levers that sit to the side of the pilot in the pilothouse.  The pilot uses radar and GPS to see his current position and help steer the vessel.  Using sonar, he can see the dredged river channel maintained by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers.  Even from his vantage point, high up in the pilothouse, he cannot see the front of the tow.  There is technology where cameras can be put at the front of the tow, but River Ops did not have it.   The pilot has a computer sitting next to him that communicates with headquarters using cell and satellite transmissions to determine what his ‘orders’ are.  At night the pilot uses a powerful spotlight to shine on the tow and shore to see what is going on.

I was told I came at a good time.  Saturday was ‘steak day’.  The crew was always fed well.  The cook reports directly to the captain and is well paid.  The cook is at the same company reporting level as the pilot and first-mate.  I was also there at a time that a deckhand was being trained to be a pilot.  He and his wife had just had a baby.  Because of the work rules, he was only allowed to call his wife.  He had to physically stay on the boat another 3 weeks until his rotation was done.

Let’s Roll!

Now that we had a complete tow built, we could head down the river.  It’s destination was New Orleans, LA, but due to the delay, there was no way I would be able to ride it all the way.  It would take many, agonizingly slow days to get there at 12 miles an hour.

Looking for an Exit

After a few hours, we were a few miles down the Mississippi River and I had to get off.  There was a boat from another company that was going to peel off one of the barges in our tow.  It was arranged for me to get on that boat.  It would then drop me off on the shore.  I thought once I transferred they would drop me off right away, but like I said before, a barge company does not change orders just for someone insignificant like me!  I had to wait another couple hours in the new boat’s pilot cabin until they completed their task.

Finally, the boat’s tow work was done and they headed to shore to let me off.  It was the middle of the night.  The boat happened to be near a cement quarry, called ‘Brickeys Hollow’, north of Ste. Genevieve, Missouri.  I called Elaine to give her the general location to pick me up with the car.  She would have to take an unfamiliar dirt road, in total darkness, by herself,  toward the river until she came upon a gate and wait for me.  A guy from the quarry drove me to the gate in a pickup truck.  I had heard of others who were let off on the river bank and had to scramble through brush in order to get back to civilization!

I was so happy for the ‘experience’ to be over.  I took the next day off from work to process the photos.  All-in-all, it was very interesting. I met some nice people and learned about the barge business.

NOTE:  In 2016, AEP sold River Ops to a barge industry competitor, ACBL.  I was subsequently laid off.  But the severance pay was great!

Additional Photos

My mom is 100% Scandinavian (Danish) ancestry.  My sister and I were born with blond hair and blue eyes.  Through the years, my hair turned light brown; my sister kept her blond color.

Growing up, my mother cut my hair at home with clippers and an electric razor.  It was cut very short.  Before she cut the top, I asked her to leave a Mohawk so I could see it in the mirror.  In high school, I grew my hair longer and wanted it cut by ‘professionals’ in town.  My hair grew straight.  When I grew it long in the back, it would curl a but near the shoulders.  I would use whatever shampoo was in the bathroom at the time.  I remember brands like Prell and Johnson’s Baby Shampoo.

One year I wanted my hair to be more blond, so I used a product called Sun-In.  It is still made today and you can buy it on Amazon. You apply it over weeks and your hair gets ‘yellow-ish’.  I never should have done such a vain thing.  The color looked silly next to my dark eyebrows.

Once I started a professional career in my 20s, I had my hair cut short, around the ears, and nothing on the neck.  I wanted a ‘rat tail’, but never went through with it.  In my 30s, I let it grow longer in the back.  But this is when my hairline started to recede.  I knew it was coming; my father lost his hair early in life and my hairline was always high.  When my hair started to turn gray in 1998, I had it cut really short.

About 2010, I decided to shave my head.  I shave it once a week. So nice not to have to shampoo or use a hair dryer or carry a comb.

Now my eyebrows are starting to turn white.  I occasionally pluck the stray ones.  I looked into dying them with something like Just For Men, but after reading the side effects and possible dangers of using such a product, I decided to just accept whatever color they wanted to become.

Progression of Hair Style / Loss

The following paragraph is narration for the set of portraits of me published below.

1972 – 1974:  I wore glasses.  I changed to a less nerdy style in 1974, then decided I didn’t need to wear them.  1976 – 1979: I wore my hair over the years.  1983: I tried to grow a mustache.  Should have never tried.  1984 to present: The haircut is short and never over my ears.  1992-1997: I grew it long in the back.  1998: Hair starts turning gray on the sides and back.  The long hair in back didn’t hang well anymore, so it got cut off.  I went a few years with a short chin beard and mustache.  2000: The bald spot was becoming noticeable and the top was thinning.  2006: I started to carry more weight.  You can see it in my face.  The hair was mostly gray now.  2010:, I started to shave my head every week.

Hover over an image to see what year it was taken

In 1965, when we lived on base housing in Duluth, Minnesota, I would ride my tricycle around the inner courtyard sidewalk.  My mom said I took the corners so fast that I was on two wheels.  She was afraid I would tip over, but I never did.  When we later moved to Luck, Wisconsin, it was hard to ride my tricycle in the dirt driveway.

In 1967, my parents bought me my first bicycle when we lived on base housing in Tucson, Arizona.  I was 6 years old.  In the first week I rode it around the block and ran into the back of a parked car.  I got a cut on my knee that gave me a scar that I have to this day.  I remember my dad yelling at me all the time I was crying.  My mom said he threatened to take my bike away from me until I learned how to ride it.  (Do you see the irony in that?!)

In 1968, my dad retired from the U. S. Air Force and we moved permanently to Luck, Wisconsin.  My parents bought me a one-speed, coaster-brake, straight handlebar bicycle.  It was a Schwinn ‘Deluxe’.  I remember I could barely reach the peddles even with the seat as low as it could go.   I removed the front basket because when you turned the handlebar the basket turned too.  I replaced it with two saddlebag baskets that were stable and deep.

In the early 1970s, my parents bought me an orange Schwinn Scorcher, 10-speed, with drop handlebars and pad brakes.  I think they bought it from Sears.  My dad had to assemble it himself.  He got frustrated putting it together.  I rode it around the local community to visit with friends or to ride one mile into the town of Luck to see the sites.

Cut to 1989.  I am 28 years old.  I live in St. Louis, Missouri.  I am dating a woman who is an avid “road bike” (meant to be ridden on pavement) rider. She would take multi-day trips with a biking group, but I was never interested in doing that.  I bought a Trek 800 18-speed mountain bike (meant to be ridden off-road).  We would do day trips around the area. One favorite spot to start was “Airport Road” in Chesterfield, Missouri.  It was an old airstrip that was now abandoned.

Twice, we rode in the annual Moonlight Ramble event through downtown St. Louis.  It didn’t start until after midnight.  There were so many participants one year that we didn’t start riding until 30 minutes after it officially started.

I eventually bought an Omni Vega 14-speed road bike.  The first time I rode it I got two flat tires.  Because the tires were thin, the ride was rough.  And the dropped handle bars were hard on my wrists and neck.

I was living in an apartment and hung the bike in the living room from a hook.  Needless to say I rode my mountain bike much more and eventually sold the road bike.

In 1991, I got in the habit of riding my mountain bike through the suburbs after work and on weekends.   I was fearless – rode with the traffic, hopped curbs and rode sidewalks as necessary.   On these trips, I always rode solo.  I would have a general idea of where I wanted to go and then improvise the route on the way.  By the end of the year, I had over 1,000 miles logged.  I lost a lot of weight.  I kept track of all my rides until about 1996.  I would write down the date, mileage, weather, and my mood in a spreadsheet.

I began dating a woman who had two brothers in their 20s who liked to ride mountain bike.  Joe, Marcellis, and I would ride the off-road trails in North St. Louis County, mostly along the edge of the Missouri River.  I had no major spills or accidents.  A few minor ‘end-overs’.

On July 3, 1991, I took a 2-day trip by myself to Rend Lake, Illinois.  There was nothing special about it regarding riding a bike.  It was somewhere I had never been and I wanted to get away from the usual scenery.   The first day I rode around the perimeter of the lake, then across the 1-foot wide concrete barrier that ran from one side of the lake to the next.  The second day I rode some of country roads near the lake.  Nothing exciting, but the fact that I was on a biking adventure was all that mattered.

In 1993, I visited my parents in Luck, Wisconsin.  My dad bought himself a Huffy 10-speed bike, but hardly ever rode it.  The first day I rode it to Cushing, Wisconsin, then up highway 87 to Bass Lake.  I got back to my parent’s house a few hours later and realized how quick and easy the ride was.

Elaine (now my wife, but girlfriend at the time) bought me a Garmin GPS III GPS receiver for my birthday.  It had a handlebar mount.  Whenever I rode my bike, the GPS receiver came with.  It would record the ride mileage, as well as create a digital map track that I could later overlay on a digital map, annotate,  and save.

My next mountain bike was a GT Tequesta.  It was 21-speed, thick tires, straight handlebars, and front shock absorbers.  Elaine and I started to ride together more often, but only on terrain was flat and were graded or paved trails.

I ended up selling my Trek 800 on Craig’s List for about $50.  It was still a good bike, but was pretty beaten up and  now I owned a better one.

We rode on the KATY Trail a lot.  It is a rails-to-trails project near St. Louis, Missouri that is actually a State Park.  I converted the Tequesta into a hybrid because I was now riding in a more relaxed, upright position.  I put on skinnier tires, softer seat, upright handlebars, and a rear fender to hold a travel bag.  Since Elaine’s lung operation, we only ride a couple times a year and have to make sure she doesn’t get too tired out.

More Bike Images

Dropout

After graduating high school in 1979, it was a given that I would go on to college at a University of Wisconsin extension school.  That seemed to be the plan of everyone in our town.  I had no career goals or any idea what I wanted to do with my life.  I went one year to the University of Wisconsin – Stout, then transferred to the University of Wisconsin – River Falls.  I completed two semesters there, then dropped out before starting the third.  I had no personal goals and poor career guidance.

My mom got in contact with her first cousin, Esther Arine, who lived on a horse ranch called Sun Country Farm in Los Olivos, California.  It was many years later that I learned Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch was not far from there.   Esther’s daughter, Jackie, my second cousin, was the person who ran the ranch.  They boarded and bred horses, mainly quarter horses. My mom probably told Esther I was looking for a job and could I go out there to do some hard labor for awhile.  Since I had already been to California on my own trip a few years previous and I was considering going back, this seemed like a good opportunity.

Heading West

In the spring of 1981, at the age of 19, I drove my 1975 Dodge Dart Sport 3-speed all the way from Wisconsin to California.  A word about that car: The shifter would occasionally get stuck in 2nd gear.  I would have to stop the car, crawl under it with a hammer, bang on the linkage, then get back in and start driving again.  The timing belt in the engine was a problem.  I couldn’t coast while in 2nd gear without the car jerking violently.  so I have to get it into 3rd gear quickly, or put it in neutral at slower speeds for awhile.

After a few days on the road, I rolled into Sun Country Farm in the middle of the night.  I slept in the back seat until morning.  I was woken up by the sound of four barking dogs.  That was when I first met Jackie.

She gave me an idea of what I would be doing and introduced me to Jean, the guy I would be working with and sharing a trailer on the property.

My French Co-worker

Jean was from France.  Short, stocky, good looking guy.  His hair was disheveled.  Because he did a lot of physical labor every day, he knew how to take his time.  Me, on the other hand, a young guy who didn’t know how to pace myself, frustrated him.  He owned a white horse that was corralled near our trailer.  He tried to teach me how to ride it, but he had no saddle so it had to be bareback.  I had no experience with horses, so I would have none of it.

The very first night Jean made sweetbread, which is organ meat from the thymus gland or pancreas.  He covered it in a very rich cream sauce.  I never had it before – and never plan to have it again.  I threw up all night.

As ranch hands, Jean and I put down irrigation pipe, harvested hay, put up new fences, cleaned horse pens, and mowed the lawn.  I did all the cleaning of the horse pens and filling the water buckets.  Some of the horses had strong personalities.  Many tried to kick me, bite me, or knock me down.  I hated that chore.  One day we had to put Creosote on new fence posts.  I got it on my arms and had an allergic reaction.  My arms were red for days.

We spent a lot of our free time at the table in the trailer.  We did not have a TV, but did have a radio that also played cassettes.  Jean had a handful of albums from the band, America.  This was my introduction to them.   We played cards and drank wine.

Nude Beach

One day Jean and I went to Gaviotta Beach, which was on the Pacific Ocean.  Not far from there was a nude beach.  We walked down the cliffs to the water and took off our clothes.  We walked a mile along the shore, then headed back.  That was a first time experience for me.  If you asked me to do that today, I would have too much shame.

Illegals

There was a family of illegal Mexicans who lived on the property, but down the road, a bit.  The father worked on the ranch, but I almost never saw them.  Occasionally I would take the back road off the property and wave to them.

Horse Breeding

Since they bred horses on occasion, I was allowed to watch the process of the teasing of a mare, then capture the semen of the stud inside a large sheath.  I assume the sperm was then quickly frozen for the time in the future to be inseminated into the proper mare candidates.

Ranch Hand

The ranch hired a young woman from Australia to groomed and exercise the horses.  She was a cutie.  Probably five or six years older than me.  I suspected that she and Jean had had a relationship in the past.  I knew she had a boyfriend.  Apparently she and he had a fight one day.  In frustration, she asked me if I wanted to go to a nude beach in the afternoon.  As a 20 year old red-blooded American male, I was not going to say no!  However, when Jean and Jackie got wind of the upcoming date, they forbid me to go.  They knew something I didn’t and probably prevented me from getting into a fight with her boyfriend.  Jackie instructed me to call off the date.  I reluctantly followed their advice.

Leon Barnard – Friend of Jackie

Another character I met while at the ranch was an older man named Leon Barnard.  I never found out how he knew Jackie and why he came and went.  It did seem like he was hiding out at the ranch.  He made pocket money by washing windows in the neighborhood.  All he had was a squeegee, a bucket and some rags.  (He later gifted the squeegee to me).   Leon was once the publicist for the music band, The Doors.  He was interested in a new wave religious group (cult) in the Santa Barbara area called “The Summit Lighthouse” – aka “Church Universal and Triumphant”.  The organization exists to this day.  He lent me some of their books.  Since I was at a stage in my life where I was seeking the Ultimate Truth, I ate it up.  We spent a few evenings driving out into the wilderness and chanting.  One time he took me to one of their buildings in Santa Barbara.

Leon prefers the company of young men.  He may have been attracted to me physically, but never acted inappropriately and I never gave him any indication I was interested in him (I’m heterosexual all the way, baby!)  It was quite interesting to maintain a friendship with an older man who was non-threatening.  He definitely had world experience that I admired and was willing to learn from.

Getting Bored

After a couple of months cleaning up horse poop, I started to slack off.  I was bored.  Ester gave me a ‘talking to’, but it had no affect.  Jackie invited another relative (Lou, from Washington state) to help out on the ranch for the summer.  Ultimately he was there to replace me.

Lou and the Hooker

The first weekend Lou was there, he and Jean and I drove to Santa Barbara in Jean’s car.  It was a small European model.  He drove it FAST through the mountains because he used to race cars in France.  I started to get car sick, so he let me drive for awhile.  Jean said would get a prostitute for the new kid.  We thought he was joking, but we stopped at a diner and he picked up a girl and brought her back with us to the ranch. I have a feeling he knew her from a previous time.  Lou and I didn’t want to have anything to do with her.  We were quiet the whole way back to the ranch.  Once we got there, we went right to our rooms and closed the door.  The woman spent the night with Jean.  When we got up in the morning, she was crying.  Jean paid her with a large jar of change.  He then dropped her off near the highway to hitchhike back to Santa Barbara.  The entire episode was surreal!

Sightseeing to the North

The new kid had taken my room and I was now sleeping on the couch.  A week of that and I decided to leave the ranch and head up the coast.  No particular destination.  I drove through San Fransisco, Redding, then into Ashland, Oregon.  I didn’t have a plan.  I spent a couple of nights sleeping at a rest stop.  I earned a few dollars cleaning windows at businesses in town.  I decided to just go back to Wisconsin, but I was out of money.  I had to have my mom wire me enough to get back home!

Letters to my Mom

Letters from Leon

A few years after leaving the ranch, I made an attempt to get in contact with Leon by mail.  I wrote to the ranch address and my letter was forwarded to Leon.  I lost touch with him in 1985.  I tried to find him again in the 1990s, but was not successful.

Rather than post his replies directly on this page, I am providing links to PDF files that you can download and read.

April 26, May 27, 1983 – Two letter from Leon Barnard to Paul Konopacki

September 22, 1984 – Letter from Leon Barnard to Paul Konopacki

My grandmother, Dora Koch, used to play the organ during church service at the West Denmark Lutheran Church.  Her husband, Holger Koch, was the pastor.  She had an upright piano at home she practiced on.  My parents bought my grandparent’s house and the piano (and bench) stayed.  Over the years it got a bit out of tune.  It is what my sister and I used to practice on when we took music lessons.

The piano teacher in Luck, Wisconsin was Mrs. Charles Madsen.  Her husband, Charles, was a long-time politician.  They lived in a historical house next to the high school and Big Butternut Lake.  We practices on a grand piano in her living room.

She was real strict about the posture of our hands above the keyboard. When she got frustrated with me resting my wrists on the piano, she got out her ruler and slapped them!  When I wasn’t remembering the ‘finger numbering’, she got out an ink pen and write the numbers on each knuckle!

The very first song I learned on piano was called “Hot Cross Buns“.  It was in the beginner’s lesson book :  “Hot cross buns, hot cross buns, one a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns”. It only required the use of three keys and the right hand.  Years after I stopped taking lessons, I would occasionally get out all the lesson books from the compartment in the piano seat and play songs from beginning to end.  Even the easy ones.

One year we had a recital at the piano teacher’s house.  Afterwards ice cream was served.  One of the other students, Brian Randall, was picking on me outside the garage.  I ended up smashing my ice cream cone in his face!

I took lessons for about 3 years.  At the peak of my ability, I memorized a song called “The Little Dog That Chased Its Tail”.  I think I remember seeing the sheet music at my sister’s house.   I played the arrangement at the Polk County Fair and for a senior center audience in Luck.  For the next few years I only played piano at my parent’s house for my own entertainment.  One day I played a classical piece very well and amazed my mom, who was listening in the next room.  She had not heard me play it before.

After I moved to Detroit, Michigan in the early 1980s, I bought a portable electronic keyboard with full size keys.  I wanted to refresh my skills and have something fun to do in my free time.  I bought sheet music for Paul Simon’s album, “Still Crazy After All These Years”.  I spent less than 40 hours on the keyboard before I got bored and stored it away in the closet.  Eventually I gave it away to relatives.

A few years ago my wife and I were visiting her relatives for Christmas.  My sister-in-law has a baby grand piano.  I sat down, plunked away slowly at the key’s and played a few Christmas songs.  I was surprised I still remembered how to read music.  But I wasn’t playing fast enough for the people in the next room who could hear me.  After getting heckled, I got up and did something else.  My performance days are way behind me!

With piano or any other instrument I used to play (clarinet, saxophone), if it wasn’t on the score, I didn’t play it.  In contrast, I learned to appreciate people who can improvise or play-by-ear.  I just don’t have the MUSIC IN ME!

In the 1960s, the Tooth Fairly handed out a dime for every baby tooth my sister and I lost.  The family dentist was Dr. Witte who had an office a block from Main Street in Frederic, Wisconsin.  I remember the waiting room.  One time I was proud to announce to my mother that I had only one cavity!  Dr. Witte was an older gentleman.  All of the lead / silver fillings he put in my mouth have been replaced two times over.

In grade school in Luck, Wisconsin, we were given a stain tablet (GUM Red-Cote® tablets) to dissolve in our mouth.  The purpose was to reveal how well or poorly we brushed our teeth.  The purpose was lost on us kids.  It was more fun to show each other how red our mouth was.

I learned to brush my teeth improperly and continue that technique for decades. I would scrub hard on the enamel with abrasive Colgate toothpaste.  I don’t remember ever flossing until a long way into adulthood.  It was only a few years ago that I learned the proper way to use a toothbrush to gently massage gums and to use ‘in-between’ utensils to remove stuff from between teeth.

My first experience with anesthesia was when I had to have my two lower wisdom teeth removed. My jaw was smaller than normal and they had to be removed to make room for the more important teeth.  My mom drove me to an oral surgeon in Forest Lake.  After putting the mask over my nose, they told me to count backwards from 100.  “100, 99, 98, …”  The next thing I remember was coming to with my cheeks stuffed with cotton.

Both my sister and I had crooked teeth.  Mine were worse than hers.  The nearest orthodontist was in Rice Lake, about 20 miles away from where we lived.  There were numerous visits to have impressions taken, wires installed and tightened.  To make the impressions, they mixed up this pink glob of paste and allow it to drip down my throat.  The horror from gagging has not left my memory.

I had to wear the dreaded headgear with rubber bands!  I was told the more I wore the headgear the faster my teeth would straighten.  But I refused to ever wear headgear to school.  I remember having to attached those tiny rubber bands to my teeth before school, and then off and back on to eat lunch.  I wore braces for years.  Had to have a couple of useful teeth removed because, remember, my jaw was too small.  Imagine having braces while participating in high school wrestling matches.  My face would be ground into the mat.  I would often end the match with bleeding lips.  What a relief to finally have them removed.  I continued to wear a retainer for a number of years.

As I moved around the United States as a young man, I had various dentists.  I remember a husband/wife couple who had a practice when I was living in the Detroit area.  Nice people.  They made a set of bite guards for me when I was suffering with TMJ.  My jaw would pop and crackle when I opened my mouth.  The guard was mean to help prevent me from grinding my teeth during the night.  I still use the top bite guard to keep my top teeth from migrating too far.  I lost the bottom one decades ago.  My lower teeth have migrated over time.  I had considered getting adult orthodontics, but the cost is too much and I’m at an age where I don’t care much anymore.

About 20 years ago I was having a dentist replace a filler in a lower left molar.  He was using some kind of experimental relaxation powder-spray (as opposed to ‘laughing gas’).  It did a good job of taking me out of the moment because when he asked me to bite down hard on his instrument, I bit so hard it cracked his instrument and cracked my tooth!  The work was aborted for that day, but I came back a day or so later for him to finish the job.  He was surprised I came back, but I figured he was the one who messed up, so I was going to make sure he finished the job.  The tooth is still cracked and I’ve been able to survive without any additional work.  My current dentist keeps wanting to put a crown on it.  Every once in a while I get a nerve pain under the tooth when it gets exposed to something very hot or very cold.  I suppose it is a matter of time before I have to force myself back into the dentist chair.

A few years ago I had my first root canal procedure.  It was a molar, furthest back on my lower, right jaw.  Sitting in the chair for the procedure was a very stressful experience.  They used ‘laughing gas’ on me, but it didn’t seem to help prevent panic.  Sitting way back in a chair without being able to cough up phlegm causes me to panic.  The terror continued at my regular dentist who then had to put a crown on the bad tooth.

There was a time in my 40s when I used whitener.  Gave me a white smile, however artificial.  Due to all the orthodontia work done on me as a child, my gums have receded.  That makes hot and cold sensations while eating somewhat painful.  If I eat ice cream, I have to keep it away from my gums.  The whitening process tended to irritate my gums and would cause constant pain for half a day.  So I stopped using whitener.

My mom was a simple cook. It was never anything she wanted to spend a lot of time doing. A special meal was a Salisbury steak frozen dinner (loved that small indent with the apple cobbler). Back then, I thought all spinach came in a can that looked and tasted like seaweed. Was I ever surprised as an adult when I realize what fresh spinach could be like. These days, I eat it regularly in my salads.

As a child every breakfast was cold cereal, a glass of orange juice from concentrate, and a chewable children’s multi-vitamin. Occasionally there was a piece of white bread toast that I would lather with a dollop of margarine and orange marmalade.  I rarely ate breakfast with my dad. Mom made him bacon, eggs, toast, and coffee before he headed off to work. Every couple of months, on a Sunday, dad would get the waffle iron out and make a couple of batches. Such a treat!

I didn’t like cereal that got soggy in milk real fast, such as Rice Krispies.  I think my mom bought one box of Wheaties.  Since I had to add my own sugar, I told her, “Don’t buy it ever again!”   I liked Captain Crunch, but if you ate it before it could soak up enough milk, it felt like you were cutting up the roof of your mouth. There was a period of time where Frankenberry, BooBerry (my favorite) and Count Chocula were brands on the market. My mom bought them all. One big marketing competition was between two brands; Quisp and Quake.  There were commercials during Saturday morning cartoons pitting the cereal icons against each other. I liked them both, but Quisp was my favorite. Quake was a lot like Captain Crunch. Once in a while mom would buy Lucky Charms or Trix. I could eat Lucky Charms forever, but the flavor of Trix got old, fast.  The best part of eating a bowl of cereal was slurping up the remaining suger-soaked milk!

My mom ate Raisin Bran and granola cereal. I didn’t like them much. Toward the end of my cold cereal eating days, a brand came out called Fruity Pebbles (associated with the TV show The Flintstones). It was awful!

These were the days when there was one cheap plastic ‘prize’ at the bottom of the cereal box.  Kids would bug their mother to buy the cereal that had the best prizes.  One time, Super Sugar Crisp incorporated a record disk into the back of the cardboard cereal box.  You had to cut it out with a scissors.  You could play it on a record player.  I got the  songs “Sugar, Sugar”, by the Archies.

I recon I developed tinnitus in my teenage years.  When there is constant ringing in your ears you don’t notice it.  The high-pitched sound doesn’t change in tone or volume.  It’s just always there.  I am not aware that it has been a significant detriment to me.

When I am in a bar or a places where there is a lot of echo off the wall, my hearing ‘concentration’ can become overwhelmed.  I cannot follow a single conversation.  I find myself speaking loudly just to hear myself talk.  This is why I am most comfortable communicating in quiet outdoor settings.

I have about 25% hearing loss in my left ear. I know exactly when it happened.  There was a rock band playing during my freshman college year at the University of Wisconsin – Stout campus.  I got to the performance late and had to stand next to one of the main speakers.  Since then, the audio I hear in my left ear is more muffled than what I hear in my right.

Speaking of hearing – one Christmas I bought my parents a widget that you attach to your key ring.  Its companion widget is one you keep with you or stored some place you remember.  When you cannot find your keys, you press the button on the widget and it causes a high-pitched sound on the widget attached to the key ring.  After my parents opened my gift, I demonstrated how it worked.  I could hear the tone, but neither my mom or dad could!  It didn’t occur to me that the tone was too high for older people to hear.  As you grow older, you lose hearing in the upper audio register.

In the early 1970s, I was a teenager living in Luck, Wisconsin.  Our neighbor was a kind old lady named Agnes Nielsen.  She would pay me to mow her lawn and occasionally run the sump pump to drain water out of her basement when there was a lot of rain.

During some weekends and during the summer, Agnes’ daughter, Bonnie Dufresne, and her family would drive from the suburbs of the Twin Cities to visit her.  Bonnie’s kids were:  Joel, Shannon, and John.  John was close to my age so we hung out together.  We spent a lot of time walking in the woods and playing near Little Butternut Lake.

For some reason, we decided to create a ‘Nature Club’.  The only two members were John and me.  We each paid a couple of dollars in dues and used the money to buy a magnet through mail order catalog.  We took my dad’s aluminum boat out onto Little Butternut Lake.  We tied a rope to the magnet and dragged the bottom of the lake to see if we would pick up any metal. We only used the magnet a couple of times.  We pulled up a few rusty soda or beer cans.

Little Butternut Lake was only about 20 feet deep at most.  There were lilly pads and cattails along the shore.  There were weeds in the water and some times during the year the algae bloom caused the color to turn green.  When it was green you didn’t want to swim in it because you might develop ‘lake itch’.  Even when wading in its sandy north shore, blood suckers were plentiful and on you within a minute.

Decades after those days of youth, my wife, sister, and I met up with the Dufresne family at John’s house in St. Paul, Minnesota.  We shared what we had been up to these may years.  John said he still has the Nature Club magnet!

Introduction

In the mid 1970s, one of my friends was Jeff Skow.  We were both in the same grade at Luck High School (graduation class of 1979).  He lived 1/4 miles from me in the West Denmark area.  The Skow family had a black lab that would join Jeff and I on our adventures in the local woods.  I remember they raised a family of grey squirrels in a tree next to their house.  They were very tame and would eat out of your hand.

Jeff and I would ride our bikes down at the Little Butternut boat landing and see how long we could ‘pop wheelies’. We would ride bike a mile into the town of Luck and buy orange soda from a machine at the Standard Oil station.  We spent a lot of time walking around the ‘Henriksen pond’ – skipping rocks and damming up the creek that fed water into it.  We built home-made rubber band guns and eventually bought wrist-rockets (high-tech slingshots).  I still have both!

One thing we did that was a lot of fun was built and shoot off ‘Polish cannons’ (aka ‘tennis ball cannon’).  It was a simple contraption that had an explosive component that wasn’t too dangerous.  After building the cannon, we would set it off at the Skow house.

The Build

First, get three soda cans.  (Some use 4 or 5).  In the 1970s soda cans were made of  stiff, sturdy material (tin-plated steel).  This was before the transition to mostly aluminum.  A tennis ball would fit perfectly snugly into them to be used as a cannonball.    Cut the top and bottom out of two of the cans and just the top of one of them.  On the one that still has its bottom, use a screwdriver and poke one hole near the bottom.  Tape the other two to the top of the one (no such thing as Duck Tape in those days!).  For ours, Jeff and I constructed a wooden base so it could be placed on the ground in a stable position.

Firing

Get a can of lighter fluid and squirt some into the hole of the bottom can.  Insert a tennis ball into the top of the contraption.  Get a bicycle pump and pump air into the hole where you inserted the lighter fluid to atomize the lighter fluid in the chamber. Stand clear of the top of the cannon and light a lighter at the mouth of the lighter fluid hole.  BOOM!  The tennis ball gets launched high into the air!  Jeff and I would have our baseball gloves on and try to catch it before it hit the ground.

Videos

If you search on YouTube, you will find many videos of people shooting off similar contraptions.  Some use four soda cans.  Others user Pringles cans instead of soda can.  I personally found it disturbing how casual and reckless people were when firing their contraption.

Similar Contraption #1

Similar Contraption #2

Jeff and My Other Contraptions

These photos were taken recently.  I have both the wrist rocket and rubber band gun in my memento box.

In 1977, I took a typewriter class at Luck High School. I estimate there were about 20 seats with mostly manual typewriters on the desks.  There were a handful of electric typewriters, with two being the favored IBM Selectric.  I think seating was first-come / first-serve, so you had to line up in front of the room door early to get one of the good ones.

For those who are unfamiliar, typewriters existed before the prevalence of computer keyboards.  The key layout was the same.  As you hit a key, the symbol attached to the end of the key was physically printed on a piece of 8.5 x 11 paper by pressing on a cloth ribbon containing ink.  Just like reel-to-reel tape recorders, typewriter ribbons unraveled from one spool to another as you typed to expose new ink.  To move to the next line of a piece of paper, you had to use your left hand and whack a lever firmly to make the printing ‘carriage return‘.  On a manual typewriter, if you tried to type too fast, the metal keys might bind together on the way to the paper.  Nothing would get printed and you had to reach up and pull the keys back to their starting positions.  So many keys in the classroom got bent because of it.

After a few rotations, the ink on the cloth ribbon would get used up and you would have to replace it.  If you pressed the wrong key, too bad!  “tomorrow” might be printed on paper as “tonarruw“.  Unless you were allowed to use Whiteout correction fluid or had a special ‘correction ribbon’ on your typewriter, your mistakes were exposed for all to see.

Remembering where the alphabet keys were on the typewriter reminded me of remembering where the keys were on a piano.  In fact, those of us who were taking piano lessons were some of the better typists because we had trained our fingers and minds to know where to press.

Based on our typing speed and accuracy, I and another classmate earned the right to participate in a county typing challenge based on our word-per-minute typing skills.  To be honest, I didn’t practice for the event, nor did I give the event much credence.  I didn’t win any award, but I didn’t care.

Obviously, with my career being computers, I took to the computer keyboard easily and have been using it for decades.  However, I never took the time to learn the numeric keypad by memory as would anyone who was doing mainly data entry or entering a lot of accounting information.  I have used ergonomic keyboards that were supposed to prevent carpal tunnel injuries, but those have fallen out of favor since the trend for data input into computers has moved away from keyboard to touch screen technology.

These days, I use a hard-wired, ancient Dell keyboard.  It’s a bit noisy, but I get a satisfying tactile response from the keys.  I prefer a keyboard I have to ‘pound’ than one that is soft or has very little feedback.  I make so many spelling mistakes using the virtual keyboard on my smart phone that I rely heavily on its built in dictionary to figure out what I really meant to type!

Moving to a New Town

When I first moved to the Detroit, Michigan area to start my professional career as a computer programmer, I did not have much money to start with.  I had to find a cheap apartment to rent.  This led me to a small, old railroad town (South Lyon, Michigan), 21 miles away from work (Farmington Hills, Michigan).  It was a run-down apartment complex called Pontrail Apartments.  I rented a 2nd floor room.  I found an old couch for $10 and borrowed a black-and-white TV.  For the first month, I slept on the living room floor in my sleeping bag.

Sketchy Neighbors

My neighbors tended to be unemployed or not well off.  They were mainly young couples just starting out in life.  One couple and their friends spent most of their time drinking and smoking outside their apartment.  I got to know them a bit – and that was my mistake.

DON’T MOVE!

One night, I heard a noise outside the apartment building.  I saw the hood of my car was up and one of my neighbors trying to steal the battery.  I quickly opened my door and yelled “DON’T MOVE!”.  (which was silly because when you are caught at something, typically you run away!)  I ran to the phone and called the police.  When I got back to my door, the neighbor was still standing by my car!  He must have been high, or on drugs.  I went down stairs and met the cop.  He did a short search of the area and found the wire cutters my neighbor was using to try to cut the power cables to the battery.  One think that prevented him from getting the battery out was the fact there was a wire cage around the battery that he would have to remove, first.

Press Charges?

The policeman asked if I wanted to press charges.  In a moment of weakness, I said no, as long as he replaced my battery wires.  That was a mistake in that it took him two days to replace the wires and put on even crappier wire than what he cut!  I ended up taking my car to a mechanic and have the wires replaced with new ones.

Aftermath

Since that incident, I still was cordial to my neighbors, but they took advantage of me again when they tried to break into my apartment through the front window.  Luckily I had a stick in the channel to prevent it from being opened from the outside.  That was the sign I needed to decide to find a better place to live.  After a few months of work I had money in my bank account and could afford a better apartment complex closer to work.

I went to Washington D.C. on a 4-H trip for the “Citizenship Short Course” (August 14 – 19, 1977).  The purpose of the trip was to learn how government worked and what it meant to be a citizen.  Jimmy Carter was president.  They put us kids from Wisconsin up at the National 4-H Center (Chevy Chase Section 5) for a few days.  I had to write an essay to qualify.  I’m sure the fact that my mother was the Little Butternut 4-H Club leader didn’t hurt.

We traveled by bus – stopping at historical sites along the way.  The group made a visit to Capitol Hill.   We were supposed to be cooped up in meeting rooms for days – attending sessions about this and that.

After a couple of days, I was starting to get bored and stir crazy.  Another attendee, Mike Gargulak, from Rice Lake, WI, and I snuck out of the boring breakout sessions and gave ourselves a self-guided tour of the museums and monuments of Washington D.C.  We didn’t tell anyone we were going!  We were two 16 year olds in an unfamiliar city, unchaperoned.  We went to the Smithsonian, Old Post Office, Air and Space Museum, and the Library of Congress.  At the end of the day, we missed the last scheduled metro bus to get us back to the 4-H Center.  It was getting dark, so we ran at least a mile back to our dorm.

Crazy as it may sound, we never got in trouble.  I don’t even know if they knew we were gone!

It was the summer of 1978.  I was 17 years old.  I had been thinking about going to California for the summer, but never shared the idea with anyone.  You see, I had a crush on a girl in the TV show, The New Mickey Mouse Club. Her name was Allison Jewel Fonte.  I was a member of the fan club and had received photos and newsletters from them for a year.  I recorded the TV show on cassette and would listen to them over and over.

Bear in mind that this trip was taken without a cell phone, without GPS navigation, without air conditioning, without power steering!  I used a printed Atlas for routing.  I drove my 1966 Chevy Caprice automatic with a 327 engine.  I had an 8-track cassette player and 3-channel CB installed.

Day 1 – I’m outta here!

I don’t remember exactly why, but one day I had an argument with my mother.  In a few hours I had packed my car, told her I was going to California, and left to withdraw money from my saving account.   I really didn’t have a plan other than my destination was Disneyland in Anaheim, California.  That is where The New Mickey Mouse Club members were performing live, on stage.

I left Luck, Wisconsin in the afternoon and  headed West on highway 94.  I drove all night.

Day 2 – Heading to Billings

I remember as the sun came up it revealed the Black Hills of South Dakota.  I make an obligatory stop at Mount Rushmore, but had to keep driving until I reached Billings, Montana.  I found a cheap motel, then called my mom for the first time since I left.  Initially she did not believe where I said I was.

Day 3 – Yellowstone National Park

The next day I drove through the mountains toward Yellowstone National Park.  Because of the altitude, I took out the thermostat from my engine so the radiator wouldn’t boil over.  I remember my dad having to do that during a few vacations we took as a family through the mountains.  At the park I watched Old Faithful erupt once, drove around a bit to see Yellowstone Falls, took a bath in a hot spring, then headed toward Salt Lake City.  At dark I was just arriving at Ogden, Utah.  After gassing up in town, I spent the night at a rest stop.

Day 4 – Salt Lake City

The next day I drove into Salt Lake City to tour the Mormon Tabernacle and take a dip in the Great Salt Lake.  On the way back to my car to change clothes, I noticed a tall, dark-skinned man getting something out out of the trunk of his car that was parked next to mine.  I don’t remember his name, so I’ll just call him ‘Dave’ from now on.  Dave was driving a nice car with New York plates.  His trunk was packed full of nicely folded clothes.  We started up a conversation.  He had an American accent.  He asked where I was going and I said “Disneyland”.  He said he was headed for Los Angeles and would I like to caravan there together.  It seemed like an innocent offer and since I was having some trouble with my car overheating, I said yes.  We passed the lights of Las Vegas and ended up stopping at a bar so he could get a drink.  Since I was only 17, the bartender would not serve me alcohol, so I had to settle for a can of soda.  We got back on the road and kept driving until dark.  I was having trouble with my radiator overheating so immediately after we topped a hill, I put my transmission into neutral and let the air cool the engine as I coasted to the next hill.  We pulled into a rest stop and spent the night in the cold air of the desert.

Day 5 – Disneyland

We drove to Anaheim, California, which is an old suburb of Las Angeles.  Dave paid for one room for both of us.  We headed for a complete day of activities in Disneyland.  At the end of the day we went back to the motel room.  There was only one bed so I told Dave to take it and I would sleep in my sleeping bag on the floor. Some time during the night, he got up and tried to cuddle with me on the ground.  I said, “What are you doing?”  He said, “You indicated it was OK that I come over.”  I said, “No, I didn’t” and moved his arm from around me.  He went back to his bed and there was no other incident.

Day 6 – Disneyland

Dave and I went back for a day at Disneyland.  There was no mention of the incident last night, but our communication was strained.  We went  back to the motel room that night and no further questionable behavior occurred.  Honestly, I do no recall what we ever talked about.

Day 7 – Goodbye, Disneyland

Early in the morning, while Dave was in the shower, I snuck out for another day at Disneyland.  I was able to catch one of The New Mickey Mouse Club stage performances.  Allison was in it!  When it was over, since I had achieved the goal of my trip, I started the long trip back home.  I drove through the night until I reached Tucson, Arizona.

Day 8 – Tucson

Davis-Monthan Air Force Base is in Tucson, Arizona.  My family lived for a year in 1968.  Soon after my dad retired from the U. S. Air Force.  I drove to the house where we lived and took a few photos of the grade school I went to.  Back on the road, I kept driving through Texas until I couldn’t keep my eyes open.  I took a 4-hour nap at a rest stop, then continued driving.  (That was the last sleep I got until getting back home to Luck.)

Day 9 – Tulsa

As I was leaving the state of Texas, I calculated I didn’t have enough money to pay for gas to get  home.  I called my mom, who suggested I stop to see relatives of neighbors in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Since I was planning to pass through that town anyway, it was convenient.  My mom called them to let them know I was coming.  I had only expected to borrow $20 and be on my way, but Mr. and Mrs. Blessing wanted to give me a driving tour of Tulsa and a home cooked meal before I left.  It was evening when I left Tulsa.  I had 12 more hours to drive.  Some time during the night I felt myself dozing off at the wheel.  I was out of caffeine pills to help keep me awake.  I stopped my car on the shoulder of a Minnesota freeway and did pushups in the cold air.  I kept the car windows open for many hours in order to stay awake.

Day 10

I got home to Luck, Wisconsin sometime in the afternoon.   I said hello to my mom, unpacked, and went right to bed.  I slept the rest of the day and most of the next day without interruption!

Final Thoughts

Going on the trip was impulsive and not very well planned.  But remember, I was a 17 year old boy with hormones racing through his body.  I was too young to enjoy each stop properly.  I was too driven into reaching a single destination. Driving back home from California to Wisconsin on only 4-hours of sleep was reckless.

Another member of The New Mickey Mouse Club in 1978 was Lisa Welchel.  She later went on to play Blair on The Facts of Life.

My encounter with ‘Dave’ could have turned out to be a traumatic childhood experience if he had forced himself on me.  I look back at it as a cautionary tale.  My naiveté got me into the situation, but I think it also got me out of it.  Prior to this blog post, only a handful of people ever heard my story about Dave.  It was part of my adventure, so I wasn’t about to leave it out of this post.

First, let me say I am not a ‘gun nut’, nor am I against the U. S. Second Amendment.  I own guns and shoot them recreationally, on occasion.  This post is about my personal history with guns.

I grew up in northwest Wisconsin where there is a tradition of hunting deer, squirrel, rabbit, etc.  In the fall, school is dismissed for a week during Thanksgiving for ‘hunting season’.  I never went hunting with my father or friends.  My dad owned a .22 and .44 rifle, but I only used the .22 for target practice.  My dad used it for varmint control.  My mother frowned upon using guns.  There was nothing in her past where guns were used or needed.

Fast-forward to my 40s.  My wife’s brother-in-law is a gun collector and hunter.  We were invited a couple of times to shoot his guns on his property.  He had a friend who gave him watermelons in the fall and we shot them up real good!  Elaine and I both took Missouri Department of Conservation gun safety courses, even though we didn’t own any guns at that time.

A few years later, my wife’s brother-in-law sold us our first personal protection handgun (PF-9 9mm pistol).  We got our Missouri conceal-and-carry licenses soon after.  Besides occasionally transporting the handgun in my car, I would bring it with me while hiking in the woods.  The PF-9 is small and easy to conceal.  The barrel is short, so it is not very accurate.  Also, after using it for an hour at the firing range, my wrist gets sore from the kickback and  it makes my thumb joint sore.

The next handgun we bought was a Springfield Armory XD(M) 9mm pistol.  It takes a large clip and has a relatively soft kickback.  The barrel is 5.25 inches long, making it more accurate than the PF-9.

My wife and I have been to commercial firing ranges a dozen times.  We spend around $100 each visit for ammo and range rental. The cheapest option for a shooting range has been the public Missouri Department of Conservation “Jay Henges” shooting range, a few miles from where we live.  About $10 for an hour and you provide your own ammo.  The range is monitored by MDC employees.  They tell you when to shoot, when to stop, and when to retrieve your target.  You also can’t do rapid firing.  One time I went to an unmonitored MDC range in Missouri.  There was one guy sighting in a rifle on one range.  I took the other.  Didn’t cost me anything and I could shoot as long and as fast as I wanted.

After my father passed away in 2005, I inherited his .22 rifle.  It is a single bolt-action with no identifiable manufacturing logo on it.  I refurbished it, but it has a mechanical problem where the firing pin has worn away a section of the barrel.  The gun will fire, but the shell will not automatically eject when you pull the bolt back.  After each shot, you need to take something like a screwdriver and pry the shell out.  I took it to a gunsmith, but he was not able to fix the problem (in actuality, he just didn’t want to take the time).  I created a video of the shell-ejection issue and shared it on a gun enthusiast group on Facebook, but no one offered to help me fix it.

I have a Gamo Shadow 1000 pellet gun I use to take care of varmints in my yard.  It is a break-barrel, so you have to load one pellet at a time.  The best accessory I bought for it was a scope.  A handful of times a year I have to sight it in because the scope gets out of adjustment due to the impact of firing the gun.  I am amazed at how accurate my shots are up to 50 yards in distance.

As I said before, I am not a hunter.  I think knowing how to operate a gun and the implications of firing one are important in today’s world.

“Want a sip?”

My very first taste of beer was given to me by my dad.  I was about 14 years old.  We were standing in the driveway of our house near Luck, Wisconsin.  It was a warm summer day.  The can of beer he offered me was half fun and it was not very cold.  “Do you want a sip?”  I wasn’t really curious, but decided to try.  It tasted awful!  I remember saying it was ‘yucky’.  Bear in mind that there were many brands of cheap beer sold in Wisconsin in the 1970s.  My dad was not a connoisseur of beer and I am sure he bought the cheap stuff.  It could have been Old Milwaukee, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Schlitz, Old Style, Hamms, or Miller High Life.  Just the mention of those names brings back memories of ‘piss beer’!  I found an article on the internet discussing some of these brands: ‘Old American Beers‘.

Beer Party

My next encounter with beer happened a year or so later.  My sister and I had just left a Polk County 4-H meeting in Balsam Lake, Wisconsin.  She was two years older than me and I was not old enough to drive.  Instead of going straight home after the meeting,  she said we were stopping at a beer party held on some dirt road.  I protested.  I fumed at the party.  I told my sister I would tell on her when we got home.  True to my word, I tattle told on my sister.  I don’t know if she got in trouble, or not.  I don’t think that incident affected our sibling relationship.

“Is That Paul?”

I did not drink much beer throughout my high school years.  Instead, my friends and girlfriends would buy ‘bottom shelf’ wine (Boones Farm, Strawberry Hill) at the liquor store and go driving the back roads of Polk County.  We would find a wooded lot or cemetery, put an 8-track in the player, and rock out on our air guitars.  Very rarely did I go to a teenage party where there was drinking and smoking.  One exception was a party at a gravel pit during ‘Senior Skip Day’ at Luck High School in June, 1979.  I was to afraid to skip the day, but after leaving around 3:30pm, I drove to the gravel pit and made a rare appearance and drank some beer.

College

I attended a few keggers in college in the early 1980s.  Alcohol did not pique my interest.  I saw it brought out so much bad behavior in others that I didn’t want to have it do the same to me.  I do remember one party outside my dorm building while at Stout in Menomonie, Wisconsin.  I drank so much that I tried to stumble back to my room on the 3rd floor.  However, I only made it to the 2nd floor before I had to find a stall in the bathroom.  Spent the next 30 minutes with my head in the toilet barfing my guts out.

Black Out

When I drink alcohol, it is a balancing act between feeling good and nausea.  Hangovers are no stranger to me and I’ve had my share of vomiting due to a night of overindulging.  There is only one case where I could have possibly backed out.  What I really think happened was that I got so tired that I just remember waking up.

In 1982, a fellow student at Control Data Institute was having a party across town in St. Paul.  I didn’t have my car at the time, so I took a metro bus.  We sent hours at his apartment drinking beer.  At some point I did not feel well and went outside.  It was dark.  I thought a walk would do me good.  So I wandered.  Then threw up on the side of a house.  Wandered some more.  Got lost.  I ended up being so tired and cold that I went up to a porch, used a welcome mat as a blanket and fell asleep.  A few hours later I woke up and realized I had to get home.  Never in my life had something like this happened.  I walked down a few blocks to the bus stop and got a ride back to my apartment.

Anheuser-Busch

Moving to the St. Louis, Missouri area in 1987 allowed me to get a better understanding of how beer is made.  Anheuser-Busch brewery is located in the city of St. Louis right next to the Mississippi River.  I’ve done the ‘brew tour’ three times.  It is a guided tour of the facilities where the beer in made in vats and canned.  The last time I did the tour was with my wife, Elaine, in 2017 for her birthday.  At the end of the tour you can have free samples of different flavors of beer.

Up until 2016, Anheuser owned the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team.  So in ‘Busch Stadium’, the only beer product sold was theirs.  The stadium was only a mile or so from the brewery in downtown St. Louis.  that same year, Anheuser-Busch was sold to a Begium company called InBev.  The general public has not noticed any significant differences in the beer products since the buy-out, but there was obviously a lot of internal company restructuring that cost many local St. Louis workers their jobs.

Home Brew

Even though I have no interest in doing it, there happened to be many co-workers in the past few decades who decided to brew beer in their home.  Because they were excited to show off their product and I was interested in sampling, I got to taste unique flavors (some that were rather disgusting, though!)

Brands and Types

I typically drink pale or amber lager.  Never anything with ‘light’ on the label.  I do not hang out in bars so I rarely drink from the tap.  But I will drink a beer with lunch or dinner when eating out.  Brands I gravitate toward today are Fat Tire, Blue Moon, Heineken, Michelob, Leinenkugel.   I will buy a 6-pack of India Ale once in a while at the liquor store, or a craft beer flavor I have never tried before.  There is a beer bar in Chesterfield, Missouri called iTap.  They serve regular beer, but specialize in dozens of IPA on tap.  A couple of times my wife and I were there to try out ‘flights’ just to sample various flavors.

Some of my ancestors came to the U. S. from Denmark.   My wife and I were in Elk Horn, Iowa researching info on the Koch family, which is near where they lived in the first half of the 1900s.  We stopped to eat Danish dishes at the Danish Inn.  I had my first taste of Carlsberg beer (Pilsner and Elephant).  It is definitely toward the top of my list of favorite lagers.

Elaine’s Trip to Germany

It was my wife who took the trip with family a few years ago.  She had not been a beer drinker most of her life.  She almost never drank any of the brands I bought.  Her trip to Germany changed that.  She learned she had a taste for dark beer, such as chocolate milk stout.  She liked her beer bitter and dark.  I don’t.  At least our different tastes in beer keeps us out of each others stash!

Melvin Brewing Company

The growth of the micro-brewery in the U.S. over the past few years has exploded.  In fact, one is being built a few miles from where I live in Eureka, Missouri.  Melvin Brewing Company is based out of Wyoming.  They will be creating sour mash on site and shipping it to stores in the U. S. and a few overseas.  I have a YouTube Playlist with a couple of videos I created when the company first came into town.

Conclusion

I continue to try different brands of beer.  But I don’t buy it for refreshment such as at the end of a long day of yard work.  If I am at an outdoor community event such as a street party,  I’ll buy a cup or two because it is part of the social aspect of the event.  I’ve mostly given up carbonated drinks.  I probably only have 5-6 cans of soda each year.  My go-to drink in the evening is rum on the rocks.  Sorry, beer!

Night Shift

In the summer of 1982, I was living in a rented apartment in an old building at 399 Ashland Ave (Cathedral Hill) in St. Paul, Minnesota. I had completed my technical school education at Control Data Institute for electronics. Another student at the institute got a job as a night security guard at the horse barn at the Minnesota State Fair. He let me know there was another position and I took it.

For 10 days in a row, he would pick me up in the evening and drive us to the fair grounds. We wore a dark blue shirt, state fair hat (I still have it!), and plastic security badge. We had no weapons and no authority. Our job was to be the overnight contact point for people in the horse barn who had a problem – as well as keep our eyes out for any law breakers or security issues.

We took turns walking the stalls of the barn at night. This was mainly horses sleeping and some exhibitors checking up on them. The exhibitors slept in bunk beds in an adjacent building to the barn. When not paroling, we sat at a table in a break room listening to the radio.

One night I had to reprimand some kids I caught smoking in the barn. With all the dry hay, the place would have burned down quickly. Another night there were complaints from the sleeping quarters. Either a homeless man or one of the carnival workers had taken one of the bunks. I never encountered him. Our job was to call the ‘real’ fair security people to remove him from the premises.

Spectator

I have been to the Minnesota State Fair a handful of times as a spectator when I was a kid in the 1970s. Sometimes with my parents and sometimes with a 4-H group. We would always meet at the grandstand entrance at the end of the day. Otherwise, I was free to roam. My first stop was always to buy mini-donuts, made fresh at a booth on a miniature conveyor belt. Then off to the penny arcade, ‘strange creature’ exhibit, the Hippodrome to see vendor wares, then to see 4-H exhibits, and farm implements. I never cared for the midway, though.

I found a home video taken during the 1982 fair. You can see remnants of late 1970s clothing and early 1980s hairstyles.