More about David's jobs

Most of the time I just worked in the office (Bills home) and dispatched the trucks to pick up and deliver equipment.  It was a great job for me.  I knew most of the roads in Sonoma County and had no difficulty visualizing where the equipment needed to go.  I got to know the names of all the different equipment also.  D9, sheepsfoot, etc.  I loved talking to the other dispatchers and setting up deliveries.  Back then a lot of the companies didn’t have their own equipment, so they rented the piece and just had it moved to their job site.  Von Arx Drayage hauled equipment all over northern California.  A lot of times the equipment had to go to some remote area and I had to get directions for David or Bill so they wouldn’t get lost.  Like I say, a perfect job for me.  

I did enjoy the times I got to drive pilot car and get out of the office though.  Mike loved riding in the backseat with his food and toys. 

Once David and I took a Barber Green Paver to some lake in the Sierra Nevada mountains.  That was a great trip.  It was a Spring or Fall day…nice comfortable temperature with clear roads.  We drove up past Sacramento and then turned north.  The job site were we took it was a tourist area.  I always wanted to go back there and stay in one of the cabins.  Back in those days we didn’t have much money and it was a real thrill to get to eat out on a “business trip”.   Most of the time it was just hamburgers, but that was better than having to cook dinner any day!!

I remember piloting for Bill once up to Ft Bragg.  We were going from Willits to Ft Bragg and the road was very twisty and narrow.  I was driving along at what I thought was a safe speed…when Bill passed me up!!   Illegal… pilot car is to be AHEAD of the wide load.  Oh well…he owns the company!!   So I had a nice drive following Bill to Ft Bragg.  We got there in the late afternoon, delivered the piece of equipment and then put the car on the low bed.  We then drove to the restaurant on the coast by the river and went in to eat.  I told Bill I didn’t think we were dressed appropriately, but he said “my money spends just as good” and in we went… Bill, Mike and I.  Another free meal…I was all over that!!  The trip home was great…I didn’t have to drive!!!

I don’t remember exactly when David quit driving for Bill…but the next job he had was as a mechanic.  The place was small and the owner had a wolf hybrid as a watch dog.  The dog was a good watch dog… he wouldn’t let anyone into the yard that the owner didn’t tell him was OK.  But the dog loved everyone he knew and was gentle as can be. Mike could play with the wolf-dog just fine.  David even brought the wolf-dog home a couple of times…when the wolf-dog wasn’t on duty he was quite playful.  The pay wasn’t too great at this job and when Kaiser offered him a job as their mechanic…David moved on.

David started out with Kaiser as their mechanic over their trucks, moved up to mechanic over all moving equipment, including the equipment that sorted, crushed and moved all the rock.  He was really good at this…and had a crew of men under him.  Finally he was hired on as Plant Manager.  He loved the job, but working with Rudy was tough.  Rudy hated David…possibly because he hated the LDS Church (his wife was LDS and he resented the Church very much – later they ended up divorced)  Anyway, Rudy always made David’s life tough…but David was good at what he did.  He could fix any piece of equipment out at Kaiser.  He kept all their trucks running, the moving equipment running and kept expenses down.  He always said he only intended to stay for 10 years though… and that’s how long he stayed. 

While working for Kaiser David put in long hours and almost always worked 6 days a week.  When it rained David stayed close to the radio so if they said anything about flooding…he’d drive out to Windsor and check on the river and move the trucks up near the front gate where they’d be safe.  Often the river flooded and his shop would be under water… the yucky mud was horrible to clean up.  David always got right in there with his guys to clean it up.  The guys that worked for David loved him…they would do anything for him because he was a good boss.  When I would go out there they always treated me with respect and told me how much they liked working for David.  At the Christmas Parties I could tell they really got along and were truly friends. 

Rudy hired some college educated guy to run the office.  He and Rudy started keeping an eye on David…Rudy truly did want to get rid of him, even though he did a great job and the employees loved him.  (They all Hated Rudy…he was a real jerk).  David started feeling like Kaiser owed him more than just his salary and was filing up our pickup and car with Kaiser gas.  I’m not sure if the college educated dude knew it all along or not…but he apparently knew it.  One year the river started rising… the trucks were moved to the front of the yard by the gate (this is where they always got moved to).  David drove out to Kaiser (from Rohnert Park) quite a few times that night.  The water just kept rising.  By the time he realized that the water was going to come clear up to the trucks…it was too late.  The trucks ended up under water.   The weatherman didn’t predict the rain would be that bad…but it was!   Rudy was MAD.  Someone had to pay.  Kaiser Corporation was upset with Rudy and David was the scapegoat.   Rudy started a fuss about it…David fought back, until the fact that he was stealing gas came up.  David knew he was busted and quit. 

It wasn’t even a week later David was hired by Francis the owner of SR Diesel.  Francis had known David for years and was trying to get him to work for him for quite some time.   

Me

So…what was I doing during all this time?   After the job at Von Arx Drayage I didn’t hold down another “real” job for some time.  When we left Von Arx I was pregnant with Patty.  David and Robert were still good buddies and continued to spend a lot of time drinking together.

One night Robert and David went out drinking.  I have no idea what time David got home…but the next morning he was asleep when I got up.  When I went out front there was a shiny new red pickup in the driveway…where our old green pickup should have been.  When David woke up he couldn’t remember whose pickup it was, or why it was at our house and the green pickup wasn’t.  After a few phone calls we found out who owned it and got it back to it’s rightful owner.  Our green pickup was still sitting at the bar. 

We move to our house on

Mayette Ave.

about 3 months after Mike was born.  Directly across the street was a family with about a million kids!  None of which seemed to have any parental supervision.  The kids would climb onto their roof and jump off the roof onto a little black car that was parked in the driveway.  After a couple of weeks of this...the little car was so smashed in it was useless. 

But…I need to back up a little here.  Back when we lived in Windsor and David drank like a fish we would often go over to Robert and Marilyn’s house to visit.  One time we were there and somehow the conversation came around to marriage and people living together before marriage.  At that point I was not attending any church.  Didn’t have a testimony of any gospel and I said “what the heck, why not”. 

That night when we got home David was pretty well smashed.  He and Robert had put away a case or two of beer.  But in that inebriated state…David bore his testimony to me!!  Way down deep somewhere inside him…he KNEW the gospel of Jesus Christ was true and he KNEW that living together outside of marriage was wrong.  And he wanted me to understand that.  He went on about the gospel and told me I should look into the LDS Church because it was the only true church. 

WOW!!   That was the first time he ever even mentioned religion… heck, I was WAY more religious than him.  (or was it self-righteous).  I didn’t drink, I didn’t smoke… I didn’t cuss… wasn’t I the one that was on a higher plain!!

Anyway, I decided to check into that church that David wanted me to know about…enough that he would tell me about it in his drunken state.

I looked in the Yellow Pages, found the LDS Church and phoned…and phoned…and phoned.  Funny thing about our church…nobody is there during the week!!  Not like other religions where the preacher has an office and sits around in it all week preparing his sermon!!   Finally the janitor answered the phone.  Yep, back then the church hired a member to be the janitor.  The janitor then turned my phone number over to the missionaries.

I took the lessons from two young missionaries and the ward mission leader.  David was never around.  You know…he had to work!!  

I was amazed as I heard the gospel –everything just fit.  The missionaries never said “we don’t worry about that” like the SDA leaders always did.  The LDS church just made sense.   I had quit my job at SR General Hospital around that time (cause I was very  pregnant). I spent the afternoon reading the Book of Mormon.  Honestly…I was Golden!!   The only thing that stopped me from getting baptized right away was the fact that I was pregnant.  They thought I should wait until after Mike was born. 

So…when we moved to our house on

Mayette Avenue

I was a new member of the church.  The only ward I knew was the Healdsburg Ward…and I loved them.  David wanted me to go to church, but he sure wasn’t going to go along.  Mike was the crankiest baby I had ever known.  He honestly cried day and night!!   The longest he ever slept the first 6 months was 2 hours.  I decided to go to church one Sunday (with my crying baby, without a husband) and when I got there… the hours had been changed and someone said to me.  “I guess you should attend more regularly, then you would have known”.  That was enough…I decided I wasn’t going to church for another 10 years…. I’d wait until my crying, noisy baby was grown!!

But…those horrible kids across the street were the Andrew’s.  Very Active LDS family!!!   Noni…salt of the earth and her 9 kids!!  Bob, the dad was trying to invent a fireplace for mobile homes and the whole family was on church welfare.   But you couldn’t have found a nicer person than Noni Andrew.  She found out I was baptized and took me under her wing.  There was NO WAY I wasn’t going to attend church. 

Noni had me going to church twice on Sunday, (back then that’s how it was, for men it was 3 times on Sunday).  Then to primary each week and RS once a month.  I became very active very quickly with Noni watching over me.

I got a calling in Primary and loved it.  But when I found out they expected me to give a Spiritual Thought and say a prayer before Primary started…I about freaked out.  In the SDA church I can tell you…I never once prayed out loud in front of anyone!!   I had no idea what to say or how to say it.  I actually wrote down some thoughts and peeked during that first public prayer.  It was the scariest thing I’d done in my life!!!

I learned to love those undisciplined Andrew kids.  They spent a lot of time over at our house.  With David working long hours and those kids having no parents around… they just naturally came on over and spent time with Mike and I.  I remember serving Bill Andrew spaghetti one time…he said he thought he’d get diarrhea or something from eating so much meat…they put about ½ a pound of hamburger into enough spaghetti to feed all 11 of them!! 

Shortly after we moved in across the street from the Andrew’s, Bob bought a mountain lion cub.  Cute little thing!!  But it was a kitten… and it proceeded to chew ALL the upholstery in their new car to bits.  Then it chewed the legs off the piano…  Then it started to grow!!   The kids had to put a piece of blue tarp down on the living room floor each night with a pile of newspapers for the cat to pee on.  Each morning the kids had to clean up that mess.  The floor turned black from all the mountain lion pee.  The backyard had so many fleas you couldn’t walk outside.  Evelyn couldn’t put laundry into the machine in the garage without getting knocked down.  The mountain lion was a pain in the neck.  I remember driving Noni to the stock yard on

College Ave

to buy meat for the cat… the family ate church welfare and the mountain lion ate real meat!!  

Once Sam, the mountain lion got out and the kids came screaming over to my house.  I opened my garage door, called the cat and it came inside.  I shut the door and told the kids to call their dad NOW!! I didn’t want that cat in my garage any longer than was necessary. 

When the Andrew’s moved from that house they had to find a home for Sam… no other rental agency would consider renting to a family with 11 children and a mountain lion.  (by the time they moved Dean and Darin were born).

 That was a busy time in my life.  I joined the church, we moved to Mayette, I went to work for Von Arx Drayage and I became pregnant with Patty.