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This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Born, Boise, Idaho in 1930. Attended grade school in Medford, Oregon, junior high and
high schools in Eugene, Oregon, Multnomah college in Portland, Oregon. Employed by Portland
General Electric company from 1950 to 1956, interrupted by two years active duty in the USMC.
Employed by Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. from 1956 to 1967. Married Charlotte in 1956 and
together we raised seven children. We owned and operated our own portrait studio in LaGrande,
Oregon 1967-1969. I returned to Portland General Electric Company in 1969 and retired in
1991. I now own a small mobile home park in Imbler, Oregon (Pop 305). I divide my time
between writing and creating useful objects on my wood lathe from native Oregon woods.
When my family moved from Boise to Medford in 1936 the country was still in the depression. My father opened a retail fur store. Legend in the family is that when he got the door open for business my father had fifty cents left in his pocket, and a wife and two children to support. At that time my grandparents had a farm fifty miles north of Medford, near a small community called Graves Creek, the site of an historic covered bridge. You won't find Graves Creek on the map. The name has been changed to Sunny Valley. My sister and I spent three summers and many holidays and weekends on the farm. That is where I learned about life without electricity and running water.
In 1944 the country was at war. One of my uncles was an accountant by profession and had his own practice in Klamath Falls, Oregon. His contribution to the war effort was to take over operation of a farm owned by one of his clients who was in the service. Aunt Ethel went to the office every day, while uncle Paul farmed.
My mother had changed family doctors. The new doctor decreed that I had a bad heart. I was taken out of school and was supposed to remain in bed. I became such a nuisance that I was allowed to go to uncle Paul's farm. The plan was that I would spend my days lolling about on the banks of the river that ran through the farm, terrorizing the wild life with my .177 caliber air rifle.
Due to the war, Uncle Paul was short handed, then the one hired hand he did have came down with the mumps and was hospitalized. I was soon doing most of the ranch chores, milking two cows and feeding chickens, turkeys and pigs twice a day, as well as driving a D-4 Cat eight to ten hours. When I returned home that fall, a new doctor said that there was nothing wrong with my heart, and never had been.
In 1954, I bought a forty acre farm outside of Newberg, Oregon, a twenty five mile commute to my job in Portland. The farm was on a steep side hill, with a beautiful view of both the Yamhill valley and part of the Willamette valley. At that time, the Yamhill valley was John Deere country. Almost every farmer had a "Poppin Johnny." Every model of those old two cylinder tractors had a different sound and cadence. I could stand on my front porch in the morning and just by listening to the sounds, tell who was working.
My place was so steep that I had to have a crawler, so I was one of the odd balls. I had a 22 Cat, the gas model the same size as the present D-2.
The neighbor above us was a county Judge. His place was on top of the mountain and mostly flat. He had an old Farmall, with a bad muffler. When he was pulling stumps he could almost drown out the sound of the Poppin Johnnys.
A neighbor on the flat land below us had one of the original Ford Fergusons, the first farm tractor with a three point hitch. He was a full time logger and part time farmer. He owned a portable saw mill that he hauled to various logging "shows' in the foothills of the coast range. I had an arrangement with him to visit the mill site and get the slab wood (the first cut off of the side of a log) for firewood. I spent many a Saturday morning watching that old mill work.
Every October Charlotte and I would visit my cousin's ranch in eastern Oregon to get our annual quota of venison to add to the beef and chickens we raised to feed our family.
An ulcer and a bout with TB put an end to my farming and hunting.
Sixteen-year-old Sally is sullen, slovenly, uncommunicative and refuses to attend school. She is a trial to her widowed mother and a pain to the juvenile authorities. Her arrest record already includes shoplifting and drug & alcohol possession when she is caught with a group of kids attempting an armed robbery. She is given one last chance to redeem herself.
Her uncle, Big Al Axel, owner of the Lazy A, a large, very remote cattle ranch agrees to take her in and try to straighten her out. He needs a new ranch cook and housekeeper anyway.
Clean air, good food, hard work and the natural deference ranch hands pay to members of the fair sex soon bring out the real Sally. She had been forced, under threat of physical and sexual violence to do the things she had done in the city and had withdrawn into a shell.
At home she thought that she was being abused if she had to cook Hamburger Helper. At the Lazy A she takes over cooking (on an old wood range) for five hungry ranch hands, along with all the other housekeeping chores. She even becomes locally famous for her sourdough biscuits. Planting and tending a garden, milking a cow, feeding the chickens and pigs are just part of her everyday life. Emergencies require extraordinary efforts. Soon, she is driving a big tractor, and other heavy ranch equipment. She learns the difference between swearing and cussin. (Swearing is using bad words. Cussin is using words that are welcome in church, but said so that they sound bad.) She had to learn to 'cuss' to lead a string of pack mules while she was camp cook on a cattle drive.
She abandons the shapeless, sloppy city clothes for form fitting western wear, and dresses to please the new men in her life.
Mert, a loudmouth, nosey neighbor tells her life story, giving us a vivid and accurate description of ranch life before electricity and running water.
Jeff, the drug using and pushing, foul mouthed, gang leader who had terrorized Sally and all the girls where she went to school in the city finds her. He attacks Sally, but she is rescued by the ranch hands. After being slightly roughed up he is doused with cow urine and deposited in a pasture with an old range bull. He makes it out, but just barely and tangles with an electric fence on the way.
Uncooperative weather, equipment breakdowns and manpower shortages are SOP at most ranches and the Lazy A is no exception. Neighbor helping neighbor is the way of life.
Alice, the juvenile court judge who allowed Sally to go to the Lazy A visits, falls in love, seduces and eventually marries Big Al. She asks Sally for cooking lessons.
Rusty, a homeless youth with a troubled past, who found a home at the Lazy A, tells his life story.
Rusty and Sally fall in love and are married in the last chapter, the climax of four romances and consecutive weddings.
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