Class 1961 Memories by Jim Branson

When Ruth (Smith) Branson and I went to the twenty year reunion, seemed like we didn’t spread out very well and ended up spending most of our time with Dawn (Smith) Shepherd and Paul, along with Linda and Rod Lockett who are all neighbors and we knew all about anyway.  I thought perhaps a better way to have a reunion would be to have a virtual reunion and just type up some ideas and maybe a few questions.  You will probably ascertain that I don’t have my year book to consult.  I am trying to get it back from Ruth.

It could be that young people embarking on their high school and college hopes will benefit from seeing how “one couple did it”.  Yes, times have certainly changed, but things have changed both ways.  Wages are five to six times what they were in our time but the amount of credits you need to get a BS degree in engineering has dropped 10-12%.  There still are housing bargains available and foods have a lot more avenues of preparation.  And for those politically inclined, it is high time we did some serious soul searching and made some serious cuts in the cost of tuition, electronic books and internet assistance.  But on with the story.

 

I didn’t have much of a social atmosphere after the sixth grade because I had a job right after the last period and in high school I had a work release for a sixth period study hall, being the swing shift clerk at the Milner Hotel, near Grove and 10^th Street. In the summers, I went to Lowman and even at Christmas, Thanksgiving and hunting season. So I just wasn’t around that much.

 

Garfield Elementary

 

My first taste of school was the old version of Garfield Elementary which was across Boise Avenue from the newer school.  They finished the “new addition” mid-term of the first grade and we (Mrs Hauck sp?) all carried stuff across the street to our new classrooms.  Here is a photo of the old school.  It was three stories high and the bathrooms in the basement. One time I was punished for something and I had to go down there and pound the chalk dust out of the blackboard erasers.

 

 

The new school (existing) had a huge playground and plenty of basketball hoops, softball diamond, soccer and even a separate hardball court.  It had a large gymnasium and a soil area for marbles and plenty of smooth concrete for jacks that many of the girls played in the younger years.

 

I am not sure modern folks even have experienced “semi-professional” marbles but many of us had a barrel of marbles we accumulated.  I couldn’t even bring them all to school.  They used to make reflectors for stop signs out of clear, red marbles that were always a prize possession if they somehow fell out of the signs into your possession…..I am not sure how that happened.

 

At least some of the teachers organized a photographer to come in and take a class picture.  I remember having at least some, but they have slipped away.  So if anybody has copies they can share, please let me know at “knowhow at ctcweb dot net”.  I had Mrs Coxs (sp?) in the second grade; Mrs Chatburn 3^rd; Mrs. Queer (pronounce Gweer) 4^th; Mr. Robb 5^th; and Miss Huber 6^th.  We also used Mrs. Burns for Health in the sixth and another man for art who I have forgotten.  I sent an email to the existing principal with the  Google image marked up with names and the rooms as I remember them. She is new and could not find much of anything but promised to keep looking.

 

I made contact with Mike Stout who left Boise after East Jr High and graduated from Shadle Park in Spokane.  He was in Mr. Robb’s fifth grade and I remember we had some type of basketball team and went out to Monroe or Whitney Elementary.  I remember that Curtis Keith was a star back then but I always thought he was normal and I was just not much good.  I remember the Janitor (Bob) was sort of a coaching assistant and was pretty talented.  Tony Embry, another basketball star, lived over on Leadville and was a year ahead of me but we reconnected with Tony and Lawana (Sutherland sp?) via their son Greg and our daughter Angie in Spokane in the 1970s. Tony was teaching at the Spokane Community College on Mission Street.

 

My Evening Paper Route

 

In the seventh grade I acquired an evening Statesman paper route.  Papers were truck delivered to the corner of Boise Avenue and Broadway.  The route went south on Leadville, circled out past Triangle Dairy and back down Boise Avenue to Leadville again.  I think I had about 60 customers and I made about $4 per week.  Bill Zurcher was my backup.  We met in the fifth grade and became fairly constant companions until I moved across Boise to live with my Dad and his newer family. If you haven’t delivered papers in 1955-56 in the Boise winter, you should try it.  I remember one time I had to abandon my bike and walk because the freezing snow was building up on the tire to where it wouldn’t clear the fenders.  However…..since a cheeseburger, fries and cherry coke could be bought for $0.25 and the Taste Freeze, $4 went a long way. Bill Zurcher’s parents where far better off than my parents, but I had money to buy things.

 

I remember my dad complaining about having to walk to school five miles near Pagosa Springs, Colorado.  He was impressed that I would deliver papers 8 miles and usually dark in the winter.  In the present times, they would call that child abuse.  I delivered papers to several parents of classmates like Curtis Keith, Ron Otter and Mike Viani but never saw the classmates when I went to the door on Saturday and collected.

 

I had this one customer who used to always tip me a silver dollar for “cigar money” as he called it.  I think he was an undercover cop.  One time I was pretty upset and he inquired why.  There was a huge black lab that would just about attack me near his house.  Somehow the next delivery day the dog went missing.  Later he admitted that he had taken the dog on a picnic and it apparently got lost. J  That’s when I realized there are friends that talk, others that walk.

 

I remember Edgar Cummings, a year ahead, and I got major wisdom and decided to try and ride our bikes to Idaho City.  Going over the summit was much more difficult than we anticipated and I had to hustle to get back to the Crow Inn Area and call Bill for a major emergency substitution. But that didn’t seem to make me any smarter.  Bill and I decided to try and ride to Emmett….long way on old beat up heavy bikes….guess what you don’t want to do?  Don’t go on a long ride with your only paper route substitute.  I had to abandon Bill and beat feet to get back and pick up my papers.  Bill’s mother tore me a new opening when she saw me next.  I don’t think we did any more long rides.  But we did take Bill’s dad Clarence deposits down to the Bank of Idaho on Saturday mornings.  The banker in there would often show us around and one time showed us some large $500 bills and maybe larger.  I hope there wasn’t much cash in the deposits.  Probably not a good idea for the world to know two young boys were taking a deposit to the bank.  I am certain lots of people in the bank knew about it.

  

My Stradivarius Violin

 

My Dad played the banjo and his dad Dave played the violin and you could look inside his violin that I still have and see it was made by Stradivarius in 1727.  It had a photo in the bow and you could see all the major violinists of the era.  But it was cracked and much later I found out it was a fake, but a really good one.  I wanted to play the guitar, but my grandmother Irene played a guitar and she and Dad were not close, to say the least.  And in those days, there was no organized teaching of guitar in private school that I knew about.  I always thought the violin was a sissy affair and would ride my bike clear from South Boise to 22^nd Street and State where Jimmy Hopper’s wife Eve (not sure) provided private lessons…all just to avoid people seeing me on the bus with a violin.

I remember Carol Gabriel was always a much better player than me and I had to fight to have a descent chair in the second section.  All in all it was a good experience for the 7^th and 8^th grade.  Being in orchestra caused the funneling of students into a certain schedule so many of the East Junior High students I didn’t meet until the

 

 

 

9^th grade when we had more individualized classes.  I do remember a girl named Marylyn who could really play the cello and I wonder if she went on to play professionally.  She was a year ahead of me, but since Borah got built, they moved the tenth grade back to BHS.  I don’t remember Marylyn at BHS but then I went into ROTC and again got out of schedule with musicians and sports people. They didn’t have computers then so I don’t know how they decided who went where.

 

I can’t remember how Corby Smith and I got hooked up at East, but I used to ride my bike to his house past the end of Warm Springs after school (post paper route) and then ride back home.  I haven’t checked it on Google, but I am guessing that it was a couple miles from his house to mine.  Teacher Mrs. Farr (sp) lived nearby and her husband Tom delivered diesel fuel to our mine at Lowman.

 

With the paper route funds, I would buy old National Geographic Magazines at the downtown bookstore and cut out pictures and used an old Smith Corona typewriter to type up special reports.  As difficult to type on as that old machine was, it made me an outstanding typist when I got on the newer, but still manual ones we had in Mrs Youngstrom (not sure) class in 9^th grade.  She was the girls PE class teacher and Liz Livingston and I sat next to each other in her homeroom and frequently got kicked out of class together for talking.  Mr. Sandmeyer (sp) the assistant principal finally gave up and didn’t even come down and scold us after a while.  At least Liz and I could talk all we wanted in the hall if we kept it quiet.

 

In the summer between 7^th and 8^th grade I worked for my dad in the mine at Lowman and made $1.75 per hour….man’s wages…holy hog heaven.  My main job was to run the air driven tram that pulled the muck out of the mine but I also made up the primers…yep…for the dynamite.  You took a stick of dynamite, jammed a sharpened 60 penny spike and stuck it about 6 inches down into the folded end of the dynamite.  Then you put the electric cap in there.  The miners gave me a list of how many of each time delay they wanted and it usually was about 13 in total.

 

When dad and I were blasting stumps for a local rancher, he would dig a “coyote hole” under the stump, and then cut the dynamite in half and then tamp it tight into the hole.  I asked if he wasn’t afraid it would go off while tamping.  He said it took 10 lbs to set it off and he wasn’t going over 7.5….that really helped me a lot.  Later I learned it was nearly impossible to set it off with mere compression.

 

We also used “ditching powder” to drain a swamp.  The idea was you only put a primer (blasting cap) in the first stick and then the next stick was only a foot or so away and the blast from the first one would set the next one, and so on.  It made a beautiful ditch….blew crap up in the trees and laid the wet sod back for a ditch about 7 feet wide and 3 feet deep.  You couldn’t dig that with a backhoe even today.  One bite with the backhoe and the bucket is plugged.

 

Wonderful Miss Dart

 

In the 9^th grade algebra at East Jr High we mostly had Mrs. LeRoy and I remember Dennis Brandt and Jim Brady sat near me aphabetically.  Apparently missed the “d” in his name as he sat behind me.  I can’t remember who all was in there, but a great group of kids.  I remember Alora Johnson and Janet Forney were in Latin, but not sure if we were all in the same LeRoy class at the same time, because I think there were several.  But Alora and I were in study hall together and Mrs. LeRoy was the camp keeper. We had to get permission to talk to each other. When Bill Zurcher and I went to the Professional Boise Braves game, Alora and her mother were running some type of hot dog/hamburger stand and she introduced me to her mother as the guy helping her thru algebra.  I remember Bill was impressed. I had no idea what she was talking about.

 

Mrs. LeRoy is the one who set up the students who would eventually be in an accelerated math class under Miss Dart at BHS the following year.  There were a ton of people that stayed in that same class all three years.  Miss Dart always organized things by alphabet so last names starting with A or B sat near the door and people like Corby Smith and Mike Viani and Bob Venning were on the opposite side of the room.  Alora and Janet more centrally located.  Bill Brewer was in my row but a seat or two back.  Olga Blair sat in front of me. With Miss Dart’s blessing I challenged calculus successfully in college.

 

Miss Dart was a no nonsense teacher but far more realistic than Miss Hogarth (sp), the Latin teacher.  When I would go to get a release for tennis or debate excursions, she would break out crying.  When I walked back past Miss Dart’s area, she called me in and said that Miss Hogarth takes her teaching very seriously and that I should always pay her respect. That kept me from going ballistic in the future.

 

This is probably not true, but it sure felt that way back then.  Like everybody, I would be called upon to make a translation from Latin to English and Miss Hogarth would go into a tirade how bad my translation was.  She would then call on other students, getting frustrated with all of them.  But finally it would get to Alora or Janet or somebody she liked, and she would say what I said earlier, and it would be right then.  Oh well, as they say in high energy physics, “shit happens”.

 

 

 

Science at BHS

 

I have to say that what I was taught in Biology (Bjornson), Physics (Pranks??) and Chemistry (Gavin) at BHS put me in good shape for engineering school at the U. of Idaho.  I don’t remember ever taking another biology class in college and yet even decades later I was able to supervise people who graduated as biologists without me looking too stupid.

 

Rod Lockett got shot in the arm accidentally in our senior year by his brother and he missed a lot of class. Rod calls it physics but I think it was Mr. Gavin in chemistry who asked me to help tutor Rod.  All I did was give Rod my tests and apparently Mr. Gavin used the same tests on Rod.  I am certain that was not my worst crime. Maybe Mr. Gavin recognized a budding criminal.  He never said anything if he knew.

 

Debate

 

I don’t remember the debate instructor but I did learn a lot of methodologies in there that helped with contract negotiations and presentations in my consulting exposure later on.  It seems the last semester I was doing more debate judging than anything else.  Maybe that is like “promoting somebody who isn’t worth a crap as a team member”.

 

 

History

 

I certainly didn’t get off to the right side of Mrs. Hanks.  She gave me a C at mid-term and my Dad had a fit.  Hell, they had to burn his high school down to get him out and he was certainly pressing me.  He always said I was going to college, and by the way, you are paying for it yourself.  That’s a funny story to come.

 

Then there was American Government where there was a male part-time teacher and I think I was beginning to discover girls and struggled a bit in there.  I got out of there hating that instructor.  Without the grades in the two history classes, I might have graduated higher.  But….never took another history class in my life, yet I did get interested in Lewis and Clark and went over to Lemhi Pass and met up with a BLM dude who broke it all down into details on site.

 

English

 

I have to jump ahead to college to tell this funny story.  I had this duck tailed, hippy male English professor who on my first paper put about seven F’s on it.  He said he went and checked my high school record and when he saw I had been given mostly A’s, he put some more F’s on the paper.  I never had a clue what was setting him off but finally got smart and paid a few bucks to his wife as a tutor and got thru ok.  This was my first experience at politics in the education system.

 

I guess the English teachers at BHS had their agenda and if you did the assignments, you got the better grades.  But obviously, I didn’t learn a thing from them other than spelling and questionable grammar.  My English SAT score was close to half of the math and science score. I am sure glad Bill Gates came up with spell checkers or I still would be in trouble.  I finally became a pretty good technical writer for engineering proposals, however. J

 

ROTC

 

I really liked ROTC at BHS but I knew I was going to have to take it again at Moscow, so I only took two years.  Besides, Bob Venning could outshoot and out polish his uniform and about everything else, and was good looking….why wouldn’t I quit. J

 

But ROTC from BHS served me well because at Moscow I did the Air Force version and was quite a bit ahead of people who hadn’t taken it in high school.  This left a lot of time to really dig into aerodynamics and fighter plane design as well as turbine design.  Ultimately, when the Viet Nam War broke out and it looked like I was going to have to go in, I scored pretty high on getting into Pilot’s Training and I dearly wanted to fly jets.  However, due to a series of peculiar events, I was eventually granted professional deferments until ultimately I was too old for the lottery and never served any active duty.

 

Cruising with Arguinchona and Bean

 

When my Dad started moving to Boise from Lowman for winter months, I started living with him over on the north side of town and with John Bean and I being in the math and ROTC classes and thereby lots of other classes, we started palling around.  Besides, he had a car and I didn’t. We had some common musical interests.

 

I remember John had parents a little older than average and of course, my Dad was in his seventies when I graduated from BHS.  John’s folks had to go somewhere on business and didn’t want John staying alone, so I spent a week at his house.  How we avoided wrecking his car is beyond me.  His folks had a vintage Dodge with push button transmission shift.  But we were only allowed in his 1953 (?) Chevy.  But it got us around ok.  He was driving west bound on State Street around 10^th and I was sitting shotgun and this car comes across and plows into him.  I saw it coming and said rather nonchalantly “that car is going to hit you”.  Afterwards he yelled that I should have gotten a little more excitement in my warning.  As I recall it, the guy had insurance, all ended well.

 

Dad & co would just rent during the 9 months of school and then go back to the property at Lowman.  So in the junior year, we rented an apartment at the Milner Hotel and so I was walking to and from school the same basic way Larry Arguinchona was from his folk’s Basque boarding house also on Grove around 9^th Street. Since I was making money as a desk clerk and general council to the old folks at the hotel (just kidding) I had money available for gasoline, even though it was dirt cheap back then.  So Larry and I would use his Dad’s 1956 Chevy Bel Air(?) and drive all over hell and then refuel it.  I had told my Dad that I was going to the library.  I am sure we drove past it a time or two.

 

Apparently Larry’s Dad checked the odometer one evening and the next morning when I came by to meet up with Larry, I could hear yelling a block away.  I am not too good at Basque, but apparently we had put 200 miles on the car.  I am glad his folks didn’t contact mine or else I probably would have a much higher pitched voice now.  Phyllis White lived way on the other side of town and we must have gone by her house three times.  I don’t remember why? J  My Dad did walk up to the library to check on me but fortunately I got home early that night and was home when he got back and he assumed we just passed on different streets.  I think I cooled my jets after that.

 

Even though Larry and Howard Mylander were playing basketball, between working and not being allowed out much I didn’t see much of the games.  My Dad was always afraid I would meet a girl and want to get married before completing college that I was going to pay for.

 

My internship at the Milner was something else.  When I took the maids and their heavy dirty laundry carts to the basement where the washing equipment was, if I hit a little too low, the elevator controller would not work.  So I had to enter the high voltage screened area and take an old board and bounce the high voltage spool manually to bounce the elevator up enough for the inside controller to work.  Sparks would fly from the molten copper of the forced engagement. I expect having a teenager do that now would excite OSHA into seventh heaven.

The manager Mr. Buckley was about 50 or more and he had a wife that was barely older than me.  We received the Statesman bundle on Sunday and I was supposed to deliver it up to Mrs. Buckley shortly and she would answer the door in a night gown and with big windows in the background, I could see all she had. But being the naïve dude I was, I didn’t see a thing.  Of course, I knew Mr. Buckley slept with a 45 and was host to the local Hell’s Angels team.  Probably lucky I was naïve. J

 

The Sweetheart Ball Senior Year

 

Well, my Dad’s worst nightmare happens and Ruth Smith asks me to the Sweetheart’s Ball (girl ask boy) and I guess I can say I was literally swept off my feet and that ended my career with any other social activities.  Ruth and I went to separate colleges but got married in Ann Morrison Park in 1964 and fortunately Larry’s Dad got over the 200 mile incident because he was the superintendent of the park and the sprinklers never came on at the park during the wedding. J Larry and John were in the wedding and my roommate from college, John Ashburn, shown barely on the right side below.  These are photos taken by other people and are not that high of quality. I think Bonnie McKean was in the wedding ceremony on Ruth’s side.

 

Ruth filed for divorce in 1987 but we have remained friends and contact each other now and then.

 

 

Paying for College

 

My summer job for 1961 was on Red Mountain Lookout on the Boise National Forest near Bear Valley.  Below is a photo taken by my Dad’s gang when he hiked up there at age 71.  It is about a 4 mile hike and a 4000 foot climb in elevation from the Trailhead on Clear Creek. This is prime hiking country now.

 

I will include some modern day pics that I took much later on hikes and bike rides. It was truly a wonderful experience even though they later burned the lookout down since it had no road to it and there became much more aerial support.

 

 

This is a pic of the Sawtooths from Red Mtn Lookout taken in early summer.

I got the job fairly easily because I had lived at Lowman and worked with my Dad repairing the USFS #9 wire telephone system and knew the ins and outs of that type of work and of course, I knew the area better than the guy I was working for, Charlie Enlow, Alternate Ranger.  I went to work right out of school and so it was a few weeks before the snow went off enough to even pack into the lookout.  In those days, the radio was the size of a modern dishwasher and it took about 90 direct current batteries to run it all summer.  That required a mule just for batteries.  Good ole Charlie said I had to pack my personal belongings in, and that sure limited how much I could take….his plan came to fruition.

 

We didn’t take a lot of pictures back then so I don’t have any, I don’t think, of Ruth hiking in with her parents a couple times.  I think Wally Hauck came up once.  The only other visitors I had were Basque sheepherders and ten million sheep.  There was the lookout spring about ½ mile down the trail from the lookout and if the sheep got in there and crapped all over the place above the spring, the thunderstorms washed the sheep crap down into the water.  So I had a five foot sling, like the David sling that he used on Goliath.  I could throw a major rock about 100 yards down the hill and funny thing….the sheep didn’t like it and would stampede.  Of course, the sheepherder didn’t either, but I couldn’t understand him who always yelled in Basque.

 

Lightning striking the lookout is a terrifying affair.  I don’t recall my Dad ever being afraid of anything prior, but the night he spent up there in a storm proved he was human.  If you are not familiar with lightning up close and personal, there are a bunch of little fingers of static coming up from the ground and another group comes down from the clouds.  When two fingers connect, the bolt happens.  Before the strike, there is absolutely terrifying static in the lookout and they recommend you stand on a glass bulb insulated stool and stay away from metal.  But they wanted, before modern satellite tracking, you to write down the azimuths of all the strikes.  Since it was pitch black between strikes, you had to write in the dark and often could not read it the next day.

 

The next day you were pretty busy trying to find any smokes because it was important to get on the fire right away.  Since manpower was going to likely have to walk along trails, it could be several hours before they arrived on the fire.  We did have a couple helicopters like the ones in M*A*S*H but they were not all that reliable and did not have much range.  But you can see by my striped four legged friends in the lookout photo that I had plenty of entertainment. Of course, now they just “let it burn”.

 

So I made about $1100 for that tour on the lookout.  My room and board at Shoup Hall at Moscow was almost ¾ of that.  But tuition was $95 per semester and books about the same amount. ($10 for a major text then, now more than $100).  But I would not have made it without support except that I got a job washing pots and pans…..where…..in the major girl’s dormitory complex of Forney-Hays.  They provided food to the workers for free and a little bit of money per month.  It was almost a mile from Shoup Hall to the girl’s dorm, but worth every minute of it.  My dietian boss and elderly friend was Mrs. Hollen (sp?).  Turns out she was a 3 gospel religious person and with my experience with the English Professor, I learned to attend her church occasionally and suck up because of my experience with elderly parents.  In subsequent years, I began to move up in status at the hall feeding trough. If you don’t think kissing the hand of the helpful is a good idea….get used to it.

 

So I did make it thru my freshman year on my own finances and I returned to the forest service a second summer.  On my third summer, the dietian had a contractor friend and I got a job as a carpenter’s helper for $3.15 per hour!!!  Can you imagine that?  Most of the people said at the wood shop I wouldn’t last two days but they didn’t know that the owner’s wife was a close friend of Mrs. Hollen.  The foreman’s name was John Brady and he even let me drive his 1937 chevy pickup since I had mastered the floor stick shift on my Dad’s 1957 jeep.  Now I was really rolling in the dough….and….I went back to work as the “head hasher” at the girl’s dormitory Hays Hall.  It actually didn’t pay as many hours as pots and pans and vegetable cleaning, but was a substantially greater “contact sport” with the ladies.  I remember the girls coming down for breakfast in their braless sweat shirts even clear back then, night gowns, etc for Saturday breakfast.  I was happy to serve them. If they got caught by the lady in charge, they were scolded…but….I was such an innocent, naive fool, nobody thought anything of it. The head mistress, an elderly lady, liked me.

 

Of course, when Ruth and I got married in 1964, that ended any job at the University….strict rule then…no mingling of married students with non-married students.  But as fate would have it, I landed three part time jobs and Ruth a couple and we made it mostly thru.  I ended up having to barrow $600 from my Dad my senior year, but easily paid him back at my first job with Shell Chemical, in Los Angeles.

 

But for those younger people reading this, keep in mind I had a heck of a work resume when I finally needed it my senior year at Moscow.  There is a reason Ruth and I could land so many part-time jobs, and they were high paying for the times at $1.25 per hour.  Yes, I did miss a lot of social time at BHS, but it paid off years later.  I think it helped me get about $50 per month additionally at Shell Chemical, which would be $500 per month now. I think I was offered $635 per month to start, but with Ruth wanting to go to LA, it was a no-brainer.

 

 

Why Go to Los Angeles?

 

Ruth had completed three years at U. of Colorado, Boulder, and needed to go somewhere and finish the fourth year in Physical Therapy after we got married.  It looked like UCLA was a natural, but she didn’t check ahead, and many of her credits didn’t transfer and she was going to need to take another year.  That and finding out that fellow engineers were paying more in monthly taxes on their homes than I was paying for monthly rent, left us thinking that anywhere was better than LA.

 

I bought a 1956 Dodge 1 ton flatbed truck and build a moving van on the back of it and we set out for Lowman temporarily and then onto Spokane.  Both of us got good jobs in Spokane and that was a primary residence until 1979.  I had built a fairly large day care/kindergarten for Ruth, who had finished her teaching degree and later a master’s degree, and we had run the business successfully from 1972.

 

When we were at the 1981 Class Reunion we were in the throws of building a sodium cyanide heap leach operation for the gold mine and gold had topped at over $800 an ounce.  Unfortunately, the price dropped precipitously in subsequent years but I did get the heap leach running in 1984.  In 1982 I had taken a management job with Trus Joist and we were doing Lowman part-time and Ruth was doing Spokane part-time.  Clearly this was a train on the wrong track.  Our daughter Angie had graduated from Borah and was off to the U. of Colorado to prove she was better than her mother….not a good plan.

 

I finally quit TJ and took a job in Coeur d’ Alene at Energy products and we were finally working in the same area again. But in just a year or so, EPI lost the contract with Westinghouse that I was working on and things didn’t look good.  I found a really top job in Moses Lake, Washington as the Chief Engineer and Superintendent of Maintenance at a titanium smelter.  But living apart didn’t work and Ruth filed for divorce and it was finalized in 1987.  So that is how we got separated but are still friends and talk frequently about Angie, etc. It was a truly sweetheart relationship for 22 years.

 

In about 1988 the Titanium Plant closed down and I went to work for a large consulting firm.  I became the VP of the Industrial Division and then left in 1991 to start my own consulting firm, Manufacturing Knowhow.  I wrote highly specialized software called “Expert Systems” which provided lesser trained operators the ability to operate the plant at much higher levels, even higher than the better trained operators without the system.

 

I pretty much retired to Lowman in 1993 and sold some bug killed timber and developed subdivisions with the property in the homestead. I spent the last couple decades studying stone monuments around the world which you can see on my other blogs listed under profile.

 

Well, I think that is about enough for this edition. I hope somebody benefits from it and I expect some rebuttal from any digs on other folks.

Jim Branson

52 Canyon View

Lowman, Id. 83637

knowhow at ctcweb dot net

I only answer the phone when I recognize the caller ID