Early Employment

Newspaper Assistant Circulation Manager

My first formal job was with The Holladay Neighbor newspaper. I was just 16 years old and had only had my driver's license for a couple of months. My mom was talking to one of the managers there and found out that they needed someone to help deliver the bundles of newspapers to the paperboys. My brother, Dave, was one of the paperboys.

It was a small weekly newspaper, put out by a Mr. Anderson. He had a few other employees. Only one, the office secretary, was full time. The paper was to be delivered by the paperboys to every home in each delivery area. Then, they went to each home each month to ask for volunteer donations. They kept a percentage of what they collected, and turned the rest in to the paper.

My job was to report to the Murray Eagle Newspaper printing office, where the paper was printed, pick up the bundles of papers and take them to each boy's home. I was also to help recruit additional paperboys. I had a route with about 15 boys, for which I was paid $5 each week. After a couple of months, one of the other bundle deliverers quit, and I was asked to take over his route also. So I was making $10 per week. I had to pay for gas out of that. Fortunately, gas was only about 25 to 30 cents per gallon. I think I ended up earning about $1.50 per hour.

I really learned how to find addresses all over Salt Lake County while working there.

The only problems I had were when there was bad weather, or when the presses broke down and I had to be out really late delivering the bundles. One night there was a combination of both problems. It was snowing, and I didn't finish delivering bundles until after 11PM. I had to have the defrosters in the car going all the time, and I was jumping in and out of the car to make deliveries. As I got near the end of the routes, I started having problems with my vision. Apparently the cold air blowing into my nose caused my sinuses to swell and press on the nerves to my eyes. I lost all peripheral vision and had a hard time keeping the car in the proper lane. Fortunately I was only about a mile from home at the time. Mom said my speech was all jumbled when I got home. After a good night's sleep I was fine. It was just really weird when it happened.

After about 1 1/2 years, the paper was purchased by 2 young political entrepreneurs, the Rosenblatt brothers, Norm and Steve. They changed the paper from a neighborhood news focus, to a left-wing propaganda focus. They even hired an avowed Communist to be the editor. They must have been trying to annoy their father, who was the long-time head of the Utah Republican Party. They also expanded the circulation far outside the Holladay area.

We had been using our personal vehicles for the deliveries. They bought some Ford Econoline vans to make the deliveries. The vans were not heavy enough to handle the loads of papers, and overloading them made them very unstable and dangerous. They had moved the printing to a plant in Tooele. Driving back from there with a load, the van would suddenly, without warning, change lanes. Once I found myself in the wrong lane, with a cement truck coming head-on toward me. I quickly dodged back into my own lane with a near miss. I was happy to quit shortly after that.

I started out using Mom and Dad's cars at first, but eventually saved enough to buy my own car, a 1957 Chevrolet. Soon after getting my own car, I finished my Lifeguard and Water Safety Instructor classes at the University of Utah and was able to earn more money that way, so I quit that job.

Lifeguard and Swimming Teacher

My first lifeguard job was at the Club Fontainbleu. It was a small neighborhood swimming club, with grand designs to become much bigger. They had an Olympic size pool, meaning it was at least 25 yards long and wide enough for several lanes, which had been built by one of their members. He had only previously built small backyard pools, and really botched the job on the bigger pool. That caused us several problems in maintaining the pool.

There was a clubhouse, divided into men's and women's dressing rooms, and a common area with vending machines and where we stored deck furniture. Just outside the clubhouse was a foundation, with a basement where the clubhouse was to be expanded.

The filters for the pool were inadequate for keeping the pool clean, so we had to clean them and reinstall them every night. Cleaning them required back flushing with pool water. We had to dump the dirty water somewhere, usually in the empty basement foundation. That became a large frog pond after a while. The procedure also lowered the pool level a few inches, so we had to refill the pool with cold water every night. While the pool was filling, I would finish all of the other clean up and closing tasks. A couple of times I forgot to turn off the refill system when I locked up for the night. By the time I remembered and returned to shut it off, the nearby empty field was a swamp.

I took Georgia and some other friends there one night after closing hours. That was approved by the powers in charge. I trapped her behind one of the pool ladders, but didn't do anything more than say, "Gotcha trapped." She later admitted being disappointed that I did nothing more. I gave her the first hug I had ever given her while wrapping her in a towel. She was totally surprised by that.

My next lifeguard job was at Willow Creek Country Club. I also taught lessons and helped coach the swimming team. I remember teaching one young boy how to do the butterfly stroke. He went on to win the country club league championship.

One of my duties was to clean the locker rooms after we closed up. One evening a young, recently engaged couple came to swim just before closing time. He came out of the locker room about half an hour after we closed. I had already completed all the outside cleaning jobs, so I then went in to clean the men's locker room. That took me about another half hour. I came out and waited another 15 minutes or so, to make sure the lady had gone. I couldn't imagine that she could still be in there. So I opened the door to go in and there she was, sitting at the mirror in just a lacy black bra and slip, still putting on makeup. I made a quick exit, very embarrassed, and went to sweeping the pool deck until after I saw her actually leave. I had had no idea it could take a girl so long to get ready for a date.

The next year, 1965, I was able to get a job lifeguarding and teaching swimming at the Deseret Gym in Salt Lake. I had not been selected to work there when they first opened, but a month later they decided they needed more staff, and I was hired. That was February, and I worked there until I had to leave for ROTC Summer Camp in June.

When I got back from camp, it was less than 2 weeks before my marriage to Georgia, so I decided to wait until after the honeymoon to ask for my job back. When I returned the first of August, all the positions were filled, and it looked like I would have to wait until school started in the fall, or until someone quit. The pool manager asked one of the lifeguards, who had his mission call, when he planned to quit. He had already decided to leave as soon as a replacement was available, so I got to start the next day. The Lord blessed us with that job.

I worked there while going to school until January of 1967, when my schedule got too heavy to both go to school and work. I loved that job and was sad to leave it. I loved teaching, and apparently got pretty good at it, because I was rewarded with the best teaching position, teaching the lifesaving class. I taught future lifeguards from the summer of 1966 until I left.

One of the challenges I faced in that position was when a group of young men from the Cyprus High School state championship swim team signed up for my class, along with some college PE majors from Utah State University. There were also some average swimmers in the class who were pushed along faster than they felt ready for, as a result of the way-above-average students' pace. Everyone did quite well, and all graduated feeling confident in their knowledge and ability.

Concrete Construction

After I finished my graduation requirements at the University of Utah, I only needed to wait for my orders to come through from the Air Force. But they were slow in coming, and the first orders were in error, so it took even longer. I had some time to work for a few weeks, from the end of February until the first of May. Granddad got me a job working concrete construction for a contractor who was working on some of the projects Granddad was a supervisor for.

A couple of things that happened while I was there included a nearly broken toe and a near electrocution. Working in the rain, the ground was quite slippery. As I rounded a corner carrying a heavy concrete form, I slipped and planted the corner of the form on one of my big toes. That night when I removed my blood filled shoe, the toe was extremely painful. My dad took me to an orthopedist the next morning. He x-rayed my foot and found that the toe was not broken. Then he heated a needle in a Bunsen burner and used it to pierce the toenail to relieve the pressure. As the needle penetrated the toenail, a spurt of blood and water came out and sprayed clear from the floor to the ceiling. But the severe pain was gone. I went back to work the next day.

A few days later I was standing atop the recently poured cement wall using a tool called a vibrator to get the bubbles out of the wet cement. It was raining, and the vibrator suddenly conducted the electricity through me. The power threw me off the wall, still holding onto the vibrator. I guess I couldn't let go. The boss quickly unplugged the machine. I was just fine, but he wouldn't let me operate the vibrator the rest of the day, and I had to go back to hauling forms.

Black Lightning

Another story from my US Air Force days that my grandchildren often ask me to tell.

Part of my assignment as an aircraft maintenance officer at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska, was to be part of an accident investigation board and head of the base crash/recovery team. This is a story of an Air Force plane from our base that crashed near McCook, Nebraska.

Six expert pilots from Offutt AFB were returning from a conference at Moffett Naval Air Station at the south end of San Francisco Bay. They were flying in a T-39 jet, a small 2-engine airplane sometimes called a Sabre Liner, which had seats for 4 passengers in addition to the crew of pilot and co-pilot.

They stopped at Francis E. Warren AFB at Cheyenne, Wyoming for refueling. As they were ready to leave, they received a report of thunderstorms developing along their route home, along with a recommendation that they stay overnight there in Cheyenne. After discussing the thunderstorms, they thought they would be able to get past them, and so decided to get home.

As they got over Nebraska, they received a report that a large thunderhead was looming directly in their path. After finding out that it was at about 36,000 feet, they decided to fly over it. The maximum altitude for a T-39 was 42,000 feet, at which altitude the air was so thin that there was just barely enough flowing through the engines to keep them going. Any air turbulence at that altitude would cause the engines to shut down. They call that a "flame-out".

Just as they got to the thunderhead, it bloomed to 45,000 feet. They were flying at maximum altitude, and the updraft from the storm caused a double engine flame-out.

They immediately began to plummet toward the ground, but felt they had plenty of time to get an airstart on the engines. That's where the plane gets up enough speed to force air through the engines fast enough to restart them. They were flying through the thunderstorm as they fell. Monitoring the guages, the pilot and copilot were surprised that there was no reading on the engine rpm guage. But they felt they must have enough speed up to start the engines, so they started the fuel flow and ignited the spark to start the engine.

They immediately had an engine fire warning light, so the emergency fuel shut off was engaged. Now they were getting too close to the ground for comfort, so they tried again to get an air start, with no results, forgetting that the fuel was shut off at the emergency shut off.

Now it was too late for anything but emergency landing procedures. They spotted a truck weighing station along side a highway. The lighting from that facility supplied what they felt like they needed for a landing on that highway. They turned and lined up on the road and let down the landing gear.

Just as they were about to touch down, they saw vehicle brake lights come on a short distance ahead of them. Rather than run into someone from behind, they turned sharply to the right into the highway barrow pit. The landing gear were sheared off, and the plane slid on its belly. Suddenly they hit a hill, which was actually the side of another road which ran at a right angle to the one they tried to land on.

The sudden change propelled them back into the air, broke the wings off the fuselage and broke the tail off the plane. The plane spun half way around and finally crashed going backward into an irrigation canal on the other side of that road.

Only the pilot was injured. His upper right cheek bone was broken when he bounced off the back of his seat and hit the steering wheel. The group opened the door and scrambled out. They saw lights from a farmhouse about 200 yards away and made their way over through the rain.

At the farmhouse they managed to telephone Offutt AFB to report the crash, and then sat down to await rescuers. As they chatted with the wife in the home, the farmer and his hired hand came in, having been out adjusting irrigation gates to allow for the storm waters.

They described their crash to the farmer, and he replied, "So that's what that noise was. My pickup truck must have been the vehicle whose brake lights you saw. I was just turning onto that side road. We heard a loud bang, and the truck was sprayed with mud. We couldn't see what could have caused it. It sounded like lightning, but there was no flash. So we decided it must have been black lightning."

Everyone got a good laugh out of that. But it was also very sobering when they realized how close they had been to death, as the plane had apparently bounced right over the top of the pickup.

As the accident investigation proceeded early the next morning, my chief assistant on the crash recovery team pointed out to me the probable cause of the lack of airflow through the engines, which prevented them from airstarting. The lens on the nose wheel light had been broken our, and there were large spherical dents in the metal reflector for the light. Hailstones the size of marbles had dented that reflector. Apparently the engine intakes had filled with hail as they dove through the thunderstorm, thus preventing any flow of air. By the time we got to the scene, all the hail had melted, but the evidence was there in the nose wheel light.

The ultimate cause of the crash was "get-home-itis" on the part of the crew and passengers.

Wrestling With an Octopus

This is one of my granddaughters' favorite stories. And it is true!

I was in the Bahamas for a sales conference. One afternoon of the conference we had been set free to enjoy the recreation available there on Paradise Island, Nassau.

I had planned to go scuba diving, but the weather was nasty. It actually snowed in Miami, Florida that day, and was the only time in recorded history that it had snowed in the Bahamas. It did not snow where I was, but at Freeport, an island a few miles north, they actually had snowflakes. The sea was very rough, and no one was able to go out scuba diving, or much of anything else either.

I decided to just go beach combing. Much of that area is built up coral. Coral is the remains, or skeletons of coral polyps, that has been built up over centuries. The coral where I was was mostly a dark gray, not the pink that often comes to mind when thinking of coral.

Sea urchins eat coral. There were many tidal pools in the coral. I could see some of the black spiny sea urchins moving around in some of the pools, where they had eaten holes down into the coral. The holes were filled with sea water from high tide that covered the area.

As I walked around, I spotted a large snail shell sitting at the bottom of one pool. The pool was about two feet across and two feet deep. The snail shell was about the size of a small fist. I thought it might make a nice souvenir for my children.

I reached down into the pool and grasped the shell. Suddenly I felt something grab me! Something had grabbed my hand! What a shock! I yanked my arm out of the pool.

I looked back down into the pool and could see nothing except the shell. I wanted to know what kind of creature was protecting that shell.

I looked around and found a stick about four feet long. I returned to the pool and prodded the shell with the stick. Then I saw an octopus tentacle reach out from a crevice near the bottom of the pool and wrap around my stick.

I thought to myself, I'd like to see the whole octopus. I let the octopus get a good grip on the stick, and attempted to pull it out into the open. It was much too shy to let me get it out of its crevice. It let go of the stick and retracted out of sight.

I then worked up the courage to once again reach down into the pool. I grabbed my snail shell. It was empty, the octopus had already extracted the contents.

Poor octopus lost his prized shell. I had my souvenir.