Gordon's Word

Saddness Chapter 2

2010-07-04T19:26:00.001-05:00

Soon my days are get up go to work, get off, go to main job, get off , come home, go to bed just to start all over again the next day. Barbara and I talk everyday on the phone and I really miss her badly, but we have a goal to work towards and I am completely committed to achieving that goal of paying off our debts. After about a year of not seeing her, we decide that I am going to fly out to San Jose to spend 10 days with her for her birthday and then the both of us are going to go up to Eureka Ca and see my Mom. So I book a ticket online right from our little airport here in San Angelo to San Jose Ca. Now it is just a 4 month wait to be able to go out there and I am getting excited and so is she.

Barbara's family always takes their Mother away for her birthday, because their father passed away on their Mom's birthday, so they do that to keep her from getting depressed and to have a good family time. This year they are going to Reno, NV to a niece and her husbands house, so we decide to make the drive to spend the weekend with them too so Barb can see her Mom and family and to join in on the family fun. Now time seems to slow down for me with the anticipation of seeing my sweet heart again and actually getting to hold her and kiss her after so long apart.

Finally the time has come, it is March 3rd and I am flying out the next morning to Ca, I can hardly wait. The morning of the 4th my daughter comes over to pick me up and take me to the airport and I can hardly wait, finally we take off and I am on my way, there is a 2 hour layover in Dallas, so I go have some lunch and burn the roof of my mouth on a very hot hamburger.....OUCH. Then the time comes to board the flight to San Jose and I am almost the first in line I am so excited to get there I almost can't stand it. Away we go and it is now just 4 hours to see my sweety and I am really excited. We touch down in San Jose and as we are taxiing up to the airport building I call her to let her know I am on the ground and she says she will meet me at the baggage area, I can hardly wait, the last time she flew home we were glued together at the lips for about 10 minutes and I am really looking forward to seeing her again, so I gather up my carry on bag and start walking off the airplane and into the baggage area and then I see her.

End of Chapter 2............be well and stay tuned

Please make a small donation to mt medical fund if you can........Thanks

Saddness Chapter 1

2010-06-29T13:52:00.003-05:00

I guess I will call this next segment "Sadness" because for me it was very very sad and I really don't know what else to call it, so here goes. I am still working my part time job at Advance Auto Parts and also installing Emergency Call Boxes in people's homes, you know the " I've fallen and I can't get up " type emergency boxes. Advance is almost an everyday thing, but the call box jobs are very sporadic, but it helps keep me busy and I get to go to a lot of small towns and place's I otherwise wouldn't go, and get to meet some interesting people so it is somewhat therapeutic for me. I am searching for a way to make more money faster to help get Barbara home sooner so I decide to build an online web store and start drop shipping merchandise. I sign up with 3 or 4 drop shippers and start my search for the store software so I can get it all on a website. I looked at several different software's, but most weren't free and the free one's weren't very good.

I finally find a free one that I like the looks of and it seems to be real easy to work with, so I download it and then upload it to my server and start working on it. I make changes to what I want it to look like and also start adding products. I worked about three weeks adding products and decide there is enough items that I can set the store up and open for business, the only thing left to do is set up the payment portal, and this becomes the end of this software. Come to find out the guy who designed the software hasn't updated anything for a few years and has somewhat lost interest in working on it, "he doesn't have time right now". So I have about a months work invested in this software and now can't get the payment portal setup because there is no support for it. So there goes a months work right out the window and I am back to square one trying to find a good free software to use.

I begin my search again and find a software called Zen Cart , it seems to be everything that I want and has a very large community of users and developers, so I start setting it up and adding products. This software is very easy to use and if you get into something you can't figure out, you just go to the community board and ask what to do and usually get an answer right away. So I get it all set up like I want and even have Barbara look at it for her approval and we go live at Koberlin Trading Company so now it is a waiting game and I am adding products every week. This will end chapter one, be back soon with more.........stay well.

Please make a small donation for medical costs if you can

The next episode

2010-06-08T14:24:00.000-05:00

The next episode of my life will be very sad, I haven't decided what to call it yet, but stand by for a tear jerker and believe me when I say that I did not make this up, this actually happened to me.
Gordon

Please make a small donation if you can to help with my medical expenses......Thanks

Engaging the Borg Chapter 4

2010-06-06T20:21:00.003-05:00

The phone calls from Wells Fargo are daily now, and they are starting to get real nasty, I keep going back to the gal at the local branch but she has now said that I may have to just pay it. I tell her that this is not my fault and I shouldn't have to go through all this just because an employee of Wells Fargo didn't know their job, she agreed with me but basically told me that she would just go ahead and pay, but if I want to continue my only option left is their written correspondence office. I remember dealing with written correspondence when I worked with Capital One customer service, it seemed to me to be kind of a place to send people when you didn't want to deal with them anymore and that it was not going to do anything, but I decided to try it as I had nothing to lose and it looked like we were going to have to sue them to get any satisfaction.

I went home and spent a good day typing up a letter and making copies of my payment history and got it all together and sent it to written correspondence with return receipt requested. Then it was a waiting game, seemed like it took months with no answer. In the meantime we got another foreclosure letter and Barbara was kind of starting to think we should give up and pay the money. The amount we would have had to pay was up over $5000.00 now and they were relentless in their calls, and I think they do that on purpose so you will just give up for some peace and quiet. One month went by, then two, then three with multiple calls every day even on Sundays, and they started at 8 am and went until 9 pm.

Then one day I came home from working at my part time job and there were the usual messages on the answering machine, so I started to go through them and delete them, I get to the third or forth one and it is a gal from Wells Fargo written correspondence, she is saying to call her as soon as possible, so I sat down right them and called. I was told that she was out of the office, but would be back tomorrow, so I had to wait until the next day to speak with her and I was sure she was going to tell me the same old thing, that we needed to pay the late fees and make up the money that went to the "investor". What a long night at work that was at the Sheriff's Office, I had a real bad feeling that we were going to lose the house, and I had already decided to fight it in court before I would give up.

Luckily the next day I didn't have to work at the part time job, so I was able to call her at 9 am when I got up, what she told me just about made me fall down. She said that all of this was Wells Fargo's fault and that my next two statements would reflect about $6500 in refunds to our account and that she had reversed everything but it would take some time for it to get through the system. WOW....we had won, I couldn't believe it, I called Barbara and told her and she actually started crying she was so happy and told me thank you for not giving up and I told her that we did this together, I did the leg work, but she was my support for the whole ordeal. The next statement we got from Wells Fargo was 5 pages long, most of it being reversals and refunds of late fees, and we were back on track with our house payments, but we still had a lot of bills to catch up on, so I will still work a part time job and Barbara will still be travel nursing for awhile. This whole process took right at two years and caused both of us to lose a lot of sleep. And this ends the saga of engaging the Borg, at least for us.

Please make a small donation for medical expenses if you can, Thanks Gordon

Engaging the Borg Chapter 3

2010-05-30T02:14:00.001-05:00

I waited about five days, and then decided to call them back and hopefully get this all straightened out. I called the 800 number and was informed that collections now had our account and that I would be talking to them. I talked to a very nice lady there, she looked at my account after I explained everything and said just what a few of the others did. Your payments have been misapplied and I told her I knew that but no one can seem to fix it, she offered to try again and told me to call back in a week to see what had happened. I waited a week and called back,but couldn't get back to the same girl. The guy that I spoke to this time said that my misapplied payment had gone to the "investor" and there was no way to get it back and that I would have to make up what had been misapplied. I told him basically to go fly a kite, there was no way that I was going to pay Wells Fargo twice, you guys screwed up, so you guys should deal with it, he said we are dealing with it, your going to have to make up what was misapplied, I told him no way was I going to pay that again and we disconnected.

The first of the month came around and our regular bill came for the house payment, but we also got certified letters, signature required, one in my name and one in Barbara's name, they were foreclosure notices. The next day I called the local branch and made an appointment with the mortgage person to come in and see if we could straighten it out. The first thing she did was take a quick look at all my receipts and then said we need to order a payment history, it would be free and should come in 10 to 15 days. She gave me the number and I went home and called and ordered one.

In the mean time, Wells Fargo collections is calling every day and demanding we pay something like $4500.00 to catch our payment up and take care of all the late fees. I keep telling them that I haven't missed anything that their teller misapplied several payment and that I am seeing the local branch mortgage pro to try to figure this out, they don't care what I am doing , they want a payment right now, I said "sorry" but no extra payments. This is starting to get mean. I keep going back to the local branch and speaking to her, we go through everything several times over and finally we see where it all went wrong. She calls the collections people and they tell her basically that I will have to make up the misapplied payment or lose the house. She asked why can't we fix this, I have looked through it, it is our fault and we should fix it, they told her sorry we can't do anything that I would have to make that up or they will foreclose, her answer was, so your going to foreclose and we will get sued and lose big time in court because this is our fault, we messed up. she was told that they couldn't do anything about it.
End of chapter three......be back soon with more....stay well

Please make a small donation to help with medical expense if you can.

Engaging the Borg Chapter 2

2010-05-26T14:45:00.001-05:00

This was the beginning of a nightmare that would last over 2 years. I called them the next day and explained the re-payment plan and how I had made my payments at the local branch, on time, proper amount, had a receipt to prove it, they still insisted that I was late on my payments. The person that I was talking to was hearing what I was telling him but was like a machine just telling me I need to bring my account current, so I asked to speak to his supervisor or someone with more horsepower, he resisted for about 20 minutes and then I demanded to speak to his immediate supervisor, that got results. I was transfered to another person, they looked at everything and said that my payment had been misapplied and that the extra money went to the "investor" and they would do some payment reversals to get it back and all would be well. I said "great" and this will take care of it? I was assured by the person that they would have it all fixed by the first of the month. Wow, that didn't take long, in the mean time I had been having a lot of trouble with my left knee and was going to have to have my knee joint replaced soon.

We were still really struggling to make ends meet, so Barbara and I decided that she would go travel nursing and I would stay home and get an extra job to make more to pay bills with. She didn't want to leave until after my surgery, but started looking at travel nursing agencies and job locations. We really didn't want to do this, but felt it was going to be necessary to get ourselves caught up. I had my knee joint replaced and was back on my feet, so Barbara went to work as a travel nurse in Palo Alto Ca. at the VA Hospital there. It was a good deal for her because her middle son was stationed very close by and her youngest son's wife was stationed in Monterey which was close as well, so they got to see each other a lot and it made it easier on her as far as being lonely.

Then I get another call from Wells Fargo Mortgage, your behind on your payments, can you make a payment and catch it up, here we go again, I told the guy what had happened and that the last gal was going to do some payment reversals to take care of it. he said that he could see where she had done that, but it didn't fix it, your still behind and you have several late fees. We argued back and forth a bit and he said, let me try doing some reversals and it should be fixed by the following month. I said Ok and thanks and figured they would get it right this time.

Well it was not to be, at the first of the next month I got another collections call saying that we were behind and we needed to get it caught up or there would be further collections action, I tried to explain to this guy what was going on, but he wasn't hearing it at all, he was very insistent that I catch the account up and right now, and I told him I hadn't done anything wrong and wasn't going to pay them for their mistake, things got a bit heated and I hung up on him.
End of chapter 2.....stay well.....be back soon with another chapter......... stay well

If you can, please make a donation to help with medical expenses

Engaging the Borg.....Chapter 1

2010-05-25T01:21:00.001-05:00

Most people are wondering what the heck is the Borg. If your a Star Trek fan, you already know that the Borg was the undefeatable enemy in the Next Generation Series. Our Borg was Wells Fargo Mortgage Company. When we went to be with my Mom and Dad when my Dad passed away, we had to float a loan for the airfare and some other expenses to be able to go on such short notice, that loan put us just far enough in debt that we started to fall behind. So I called Wells Fargo Mortgage and asked them to help us out by letting us skip a month on our payment so we could get some things caught up, their answer was NO, we can't even talk to you about anything like that unless your late on your payment, the girl said to call back a day after our next payment was due, so thats what I did. The first thing that happened is that they demanded I make the payment right now, I told the girl on the phone what the other gal had said and her answer was I need to get my account up to date right now, and again I told her the reason I was doing this and she transfered me to someone else. After talking to about five different people, I finally got a re-payment plan that I could handle and a month with no payment to get other things caught up......yippee

Our normal payment is due on the first, but not considered late until the 16th, so as long as we paid no later than the 15th, we were considered on time, with the repayment plan it had to be posted on the account no later than the 6th of the month, so I had to have it in the bank by the 2nd because even by paying at the local branch, "it can take up to 4 days to post to your account", that seems a little weird to me, but that is what they told me, so thats what I went by. I decide to go pay my payment at the local branch and get a reciept to prove when I paid it, just in case they try to tell me I was late. And that's what I did on the first of the next month I went to the local bank and paid and got my reciept and had the teller ask me what the extra money was for, I explained to her that I was on a re-payment plan and that is what they told me to pay for the next five months. She said she didn't know what to do with the extra money so she would put it as paying extra principle, I said if thats what you need to do I guess it is ok.

I made about 3 payments and thought all was well and then I'm at work at the Sheriff's Office and get a call one evening on my cell from Wells Fargo saying that I am late on my house payment and can I make a payment right now to catch it up.......what the heck?????, I knew I hadn't missed anything and told the gal that there was no way I was late, I told her about the re-payment plan and everything, she insisted I was late, so I told her I was at work and didn't have any of my records to be able to give her times and amounts paid, so she gave me a phone number to call the next day........man that was a long night for me. As Captain Picard on Star Trek the Next Generation would say.......... We have engaged the Borg !!!
End of chapter 1....stay well, be back soon with another.
Gordon

2010-05-24T15:10:00.001-05:00

I am composing a new post to my blog called the "Engaging the Borg", check back, it will be very interesting.
Stay Well

2010-05-24T15:07:00.000-05:00

As you can see in my blog, I have some serious heart issues. The expense for this has become overwhelming and is about to drive me to bankruptcy. I have placed a donation button here and would greatly appreciate any help you can give, even a dollar will help. It is thru Pay Pal which is free to use and safe for your securtiy and you don't need to have a Pay Pay account to use it, just use your credit or debit card.
Thank You
Gordon

The passing of my Father

2007-05-02T00:34:00.000-05:00

Sorry about the delay on another entry here. In February my Dad passed away from complications with COPD (emphysema), this was something that we all new was coming, but yet it was a very very hard thing to go through. It is very hard to watch someone you love go through several days of hanging on, just barely living and not being concious of their surroundings. This was the man that taught me how to fish, how to camp, how to drive and how to be a responsible person, all of those little life lesson that parents teach their kids. He always made sure that my sister and I had what we needed and kept us fed us and gave us a home. My Dad's name was Gordon also, we have different middle names so I am not junior, this man was the one that I had all my hormonal teenage battles with, and some how he always won those fights. We never got physical, just loud, but boy did we knock heads for a few years.
I have all these things in my head of what I want to write here, but somehow I just don't know how to express them, he was the man that I loved as a child, hated as a teenager and loved again as an adult, we would spend hours chatting on the computer after he retired and when I was trying to get disability it was almost every day that we chatted. I had noticed in the last few months that he wasn't online very much, and almost confronted him for avoiding me, but it wasn't that he was avoiding me it was that his health had deteriorated to the point that he couldn't pay attention long enough, he would just go to sleep if he sat for very long.
One thing I am grateful for is that my Dad was coherent enough to meet my wife Barbara, my folks hadn't met her yet, they had talked to her on the phone but we hadn't made the trip to California so they could meet. He told me she was a keeper then he said no.....she's a triple keeper, and I agreed with him cause she really is. My sister and I now really worry about our Mom, she is now alone after 59 years of marriage, it was very hard for her and it was good that my sister and I could be there for her, she would have had a rough time if she had not had us there with her, we all were around Pop when he actually passed. His lungs filled up with fluid and he didn't have enough lung function to clear them. He was to the point that the doctors couldn't do any more for him, and had sent him home to die with end of life hospice.
I don't really know what else to put here, I am grateful for the years my Dad has been alive and for the time we had together, I am also grateful for the sense of family we always had even though we lived so far apart. Barb and I live in the southwest and my sister lives about as far away as you can get from California and still be in the continental US. I am very very grateful that I got to say goodbye to him and to see him off on his next journey.
Godspeed Pop..............................................Godspeed

Life after Work

2006-10-13T21:08:00.000-05:00

So here I am retired from driving at the age of 43, I figured I should go out and find another job but my wife Ruth said "why don't you try to get on Social Security Disability, so we can have regular stable paychecks". So that's what I did, I filed the first attempt by myself and waited for several months and was turned down, which I found out was the normal thing to happen. Even if you have a totally disabling problem, you will most likely get turned down on your first attempt. I then hired a social security attorney that had an office next door to the social security office, so now I had someone to fill out all my forms for me and that's about all he did. This all took about 2 years and I was turned down again and then had to wait for an administrative judge hearing which is where most people get their disability. This took almost three years to get to that point and then you have to wait for the decision to be mailed to you, which takes another six months. But in the mean time just after I went for the hearing I found out that my wife of 25 years had been having an affair with one of her ex coworkers for over five years. This was very devastating for me and for a short while I really wanted to die, I figured that I was going to be alone for the rest of my life and didn't know if I could live with that, after all who would want a middle aged disabled guy.

I really didn't know what to do, all my friends told me I needed to have my own attorney, so I hired my own attorney to protect myself asset wise, not like I had a lot of assets, but I didn't want to be taken to the cleaners because it wasn't me that did wrong. Of course according to Ruth it was all my fault and that "I made her do what she did", but I don't want to get too deep into all that stuff here, but suffice to say she had her way of rationalizing things so that they were never her fault, at least in her own mind, and that's all I have to say about it. One day while I was at an appointment with my heart doctor, the nurse practitioner told me I ought to set up a request page online to find someone to talk to, so I set up a little page on excite.com for that. I had a lot of women respond to it most of them were looking to do to their husbands what my wife had just done to me, some were just looking for a booty call which would have been fine with me if the circumstances had been different, all I wanted was someone to talk too. One lady that I met was just looking for the same thing I was, her name was Linda and we started chatting on IM regularly. It was really great to have someone to talk to about all this and Linda was a good listener so over several weeks our relationship grew and after 3 months or so we finally met for a night out.

Linda and I dated for several weeks and got to know each other better and at the same time I was going through the divorce process with Ruth and after it was all settled she wound up having to pay me support because I was still on disability and hadn't finished the process yet. This really pissed her off no end and she really hated it, she would call me up and gripe about me spending "her money" on that "other woman", in fact it got so bad that I had to threaten to file harassment charges on her to get her to quit doing it. As time went by Linda and I got closer and closer and I started spending more time with her even staying at her apartment during the week. I finally got my response from the social security board and was turned down flat, so no disability for me. It was about this time that we signed the final papers to make our divorce final and as soon as we signed them Ruth and her lover moved out of state and she immediatelly stopped my support payments, because she knew that it would be very hard if not impossible for me to force her to pay when she lived out of state. This put me on welfare for a while and boy was that embarrassing for me to have to go to the county office and file for benefits just so I could eat and have a place to live and then to have to use my EBT card to buy groceries, everyone looks at you like your some kind of leech when you pay that way. I had been working part time for a company called Road One for a few months as a relief release clerk at impound lots in San Diego county, so I told the supervisor that I needed to start working full time and after a several weeks he got me set up as a full time worker with benefits and all. I didn't make a whole lot of money but it was enough to get by on and when Linda and I decided to move in together we were doing pretty good with our combined income. More later...............stay well.

Driving My Life Away

2006-08-09T23:03:00.000-05:00

Working for McClinton Trucking was the stereo typical truck driving job, long hard hours, low pay. They only paid $8.00 per hour but you could have all the overtime you could handle, it was quite often that I had more hours due to me than they could legally pay me for a week. It wasn't uncommom for us to work 80 hour weeks plus. I had worked for them for almost 4 years when they moved up to Corona California which was about an hour and a half up the I-15 Freeway. The owner of McClinton Trucking became partners in a silica sand plant up there and so became the competition of the plant in Oceanside and was told to leave the plant property.
Dalton Trucking Inc. came in to be the primary hauler for Crystal Silica products and I made the jump over to them, and this was possibly one of the best moves I ever made as far as work goes. I went from driving a 20 year old worn out truck to driving one that was only a year old and was in very, very nice shape, and looked really sharp too. One of the things I remember most about it was the difference it made between the two trucks during a haul to Las Vegas and back. When I worked for McClinton I would be toyally worn out when I got back from Las Vegas because there was no air conditioning in the McClinton trucks and they all had millions of miles on them and were very noisy.
The Dalton truck was like driving a car over there, it was smooth and quiet and had an airconditioner that would freeze you out of the cab if you turned it high enough. In fact one of my buddy Pat's and my favorite things to do was drive down the freeway in the middle of summer wearing an overcoat while everyone else was burning up in the heat. After working for Dalton Trucking Inc. for over a year we were given brand new Peterbilts and for the first time in my driving career I had a brand new truck front to back. It was a 1990 Peterbilt 379 truck with a Superior tub type dump box with transfer trailer and transfer box, all brand spanking new, when I went to pick it up at the main yard in Fontana it had 17 miles on the odometer, boy was I proud.
I worked for Dalton until September 1993 when I found out the hard way that heart problems ran in my family. I had my second heart attack and had to have bypass surgery winding up with a triple bypass at the age of 39. I went through the recovery period of 90 days and went back to work at Dalton. I worked for another 3 years and then had more heart problems and in September 1996 I was diagnosed as having Ventricular Tachycardia which for those of you that don't know what it is, it makes your heart race so fast that it cannot fill with blood to pump which can make you pass out or even kill you, it is also known as sudden cardiac death. This ended my driving career, I was no longer insurable, so at the age of 43 I had to retire from Dalton Trucking...........more to come later........be safe

Life after the Navy

2006-07-05T13:20:00.000-05:00

Ahh......finally after six years serving my country I am a civilian again. Now it's time to go find a job. I tried being a car salesman for about a year at the local Pontiac GMC Mazda dealer, but that didn't work out too good, I found it very hard to lie to people and unfortunately that is what it takes to be a real good salesman for cars. After that I worked at a Stoney's Tire Shop doing car,truck, big rig and farm implement tires, really hard work physically but fairly decent pay. I really wanted to find something else that wasn't so physically hard, so one of the local tow drivers talked me into going to work for the local AAA tow company and so started my driving career. I worked for Carpenter's Towing Company in Oceanside California for about three years, starting in a regular one ton tow truck and working my way up to the big rig tow trucks and aquiring a class one drivers license. During my time working for Carpenter's my son Gordon II was born and made us a family of 4. I found a real good job driving big trucks at Ocean Pacific Sunwear better known as OP Sunwear. They were also in Oceanside Ca, and I worked for them for about 4 years until they restructured the company and got rid of all their trucks and warehouses and almost all of their personel. So back to the towing business I went, that was at a time where we were having a recession and jobs were tough to find. I worked at Carpenter's again and was there a year or so and started driving the first flatbed tow truck in north San Diego County at that time there were only two of these trucks in the county, one was in San Diego itself and Carpenters had the other. Now you see that type of truck everywhere. I got fed up with doing the auto club thing and moved across the river to Inderrieden's Road Service another local tow company, the conditions were a lot better and better people to work for, the owner Gene and I became good friends and are still today, his towing company is now known as
TOWizard Inc. After working for Gene for about a year I found a job driving big trucks again and hired on at McClinton Trucking to haul silica sand out of the Crystal Silica Plant in Oceanside Ca. But that's another story, be well...................be back soon

Naval Air

2006-07-05T13:02:00.000-05:00

My good buddy Al and I decided about half way through our senior year in high school that we would join the Navy and see the world. So we joined through a program called the "cache" program that would let us serve six months of our inactive reserve obligation before we even went into boot camp. So right after we graduated high school, we were off to boot camp and went all the way to beautiful San Diego Ca. just 30 miles down the road. Boot camp was pretty uneventful, got through it with no problems, then I was off to NAS Memphis for schooling to become a Jet Engine Mechanic. I had a great time in Memphis, got to see a lot of the city and did real good in my schooling graduating 3rd in my class. Then I finally thought I would get to go see what the world was all abought. NOT!!! I was stationed at NAS Kingsville Texas and your going "where in the hell is that"? Kingsville is in south Texas close to the gulf coast and is the final training base for Navy and Marine pilots flying jets. We were at the height of the Vietnam war, so they needed lots of pilots, boy was I disappointed, I wanted to go see the world. I spent 4 long years at Kingsville, got married to Ruth while I was there and my daughter Malinda was born just before I was transferred to NAS MiraMar for sea duty.....OH Boy......I get to go see the world. Once again, NOT!!! I was assigned to VF-92 which had just come back from a West Pac cruise, so once again.....no world tour. I was with them for about 6 months when the sqaudron was de-comissioned and I was then assigned to VF-111 which by the way had just come back from a West Pac cruise......I guess world tours just aren't in the cards for me. I stayed with VF-111 until June of 1976 at which time I got out of the Navy and began civilian life again.Stay well.........be back soon

Some background stuff.....(a little about my childhood)

2005-11-06T06:21:00.000-06:00

I was born in June of 1952......yup that makes me an old fart, in the eastern part of Washington State in a town called Soaplake. This town gets it's name from the local lake that has naturally occuring soapy water.........suppose to be really good for skin ailments. When I was about 4 1/2 or so my Dad went to work for the California State Park System and we moved to Humboldt Redwoods State Park in northern California.

That was a real neat place for a young boy of five years, lots of frogs and snakes and animals to catch and observe, and the fishing was out of this world. We stayed there for 4 or 5 years and then were transferred to Mount Diablo State Park which is 50 miles east of San Francisco. For the first 2 or 3 years we were at Mt. Diablo we lived at the very top of the mountain with no other famlilies within 6 or 7 miles of us, which made life very hazardous for my younger sister and I'm sure she came close to death more than once. We became acomplished rock and mountain climbers because there wasn't much else to do except ride our bikes in the parking lot.

After a couple of years living at the "top of the world" we moved about half way down the mountain and were much closer to the other park families. We stayed there for another few years and in 1964 we were transfered to South Carlsbad State Beach, which is about 30 miles north of San Diego California and we lived 4 blocks from the ocean.

What a change in lifestyle that was for me and my sister, we had never lived in town in our lives that we could remember, we were not used to having all the people around us all the time. I was in the first semester of 8th grade when we moved, but at least I was used to making friends quickly, because on the top of the mountain the only friends I had were the kids that came up to the top with their parents and they were only there for an hour or so. I started high school in 1966 and graduated in 1970 from Carlsbad High School.
..................more later......stay well.

What do I do now??

2005-11-04T14:16:00.000-06:00

I have a few friends that keep telling me that I need to do a web log. I always ask them, who would be interested in my story? I'm not a very interesting person, just kinda average. They say that I have a lot to tell, so here it is, not all at once but a little at a time. Hopefully I will not bore anyone to death..........be back soon, stay well