I was sent to Denver Colorado a few days later as the Army had some kind of arraignment with a hospital there. They got me a hotel room and sent me to the hospital to have my leg set properly. I was told a couple of weeks later that my discharge was complete and that it was being mailed to my fathers address in Reno Nevada. I had accumulated a small amount of money through my military training so I bought a used pickup truck and drove to my fathers house. He gave me my discharge papers and made it clear that I was not welcome there. My sister had rented a house in Reno with my grandmother and her boyfriend. She was going to the university there. I found a room for rent in Reno next to another college and got a job at a gas station. My truck conked out so I bought a used car. The gas station then let me go so I went to work for various factories in the area. My used car then conked out so my sister gave me a truck that my grandmother had bought for her boyfriend. She said that she wanted six hundred dollars for it which I thought was very unfair because it was purchased with my grandmothers money. I paid her half of it and then began to struggle with work. The jobs that I was getting were not very rewarding. It was sorting nuts and bolts, grinding metal bars and sweeping up. I had to get out of there and do something different. I sold the truck and got a bus ticket towards Nebraska where my two half sisters lived. I did not have the money to get the entire way so I had to hitchhike the rest of the way. I was starving and very thirsty but somehow managed to make it all of the way there. I arrived about three in the morning and collapsed in their garden. Their grandfather found me lying in the garden the next day. He took me in and gave be something to eat and drink. I met my half sisters for the first time and one of the first things they told me was that my sister in Reno had phoned them and told them not to trust me because I did not pay for the truck that my grandmother bought along with a few other negative things about me. My half sisters family was a bit cautious of me because of that. I was still accepted by them far more then my own family members. My former stepmother took me around to find a job. She took me seventy miles to Sioux city Iowa and I got a job at John Morrell meat packing on night shift. Her parents or my half sisters grandparents then bought me a little Ford pinto to get back and forth to work in. The meat packing company was on strike and I was a strike breaker. The job was only intended until the strike ended. I started working the next night and it was very hard work but they rotated workers to different positions so it was not to bad. I got off of work one morning and it had been raining very hard all night. I had to go under a freeway to get home and approached the underpass at around sixty miles an hour. I had just enough time to notice a police car on the other side of the road. I looked in front of me and made out the crystal clear water as I went sailing out across it. The underpass was completely flooded to a depth of about thirty feet. I began rolling the window down quickly and took off my seatbelt. As I got up to climb out of the window, my knee hit the steering wheel and I suddenly realised that I could steer and was not sinking yet. I got back in the seat and thought that it was worth a try to get to the other side. I steered towards the other side and began to see a grassy mound in the middle of the road. I steered towards that as the car began to slow down. I had just passed over the grassy mound and water began to come in the car. It sunk down a little bit and I felt it get traction and I drove right out the other side and the car was fine. I had gotten lucky and kept my nerve. The strike eventually ended and so did my job. My sister announced that her and my grandmother were moving back to Carpinteria in southern California after she graduated from college. My grandmother had a house there. I didn’t know what to do because I could not find another job in Nebraska after the strike ended. I was also very allergic to everything that was growing in that area and began to get a rash all over my body and it was miserable. I thought to myself that I had to get out of there so I gave them the car back and got a bus ticket to Redding California which was the closest city to Yreka in northern California. I thought that I might find some work there and managed to rent a trailer. The only work that I managed to find was for a man running a small construction company. He was putting in septic tanks and leach lines. I would work behind his machine with a shovel, clearing earth that he had missed. He would often give me excuses not to pay me and I was not making much money. I was checking on jobs nationwide and saw that a big union construction company was going to be paving the entire town of west Yellowstone Montana. The company said that they would have a job for me if I could make my way there. I had picked up an old Nissan pickup truck and began making my way to Montana. They hired me on the spot and rented a hotel room for me. I started work early the next morning. The work was very hard and it was twelve hour days but the money was great. I really could not believe my luck in getting the job. We finished the job at the end of August that year. I decided to stop and have a couple of beers before I left town just to clear the dust from my throat and give myself a little pat on the back for a job well done. I jumped back in the truck and began heading west out of town wondering where my next job would be. I looked in my rear view mirror and noticed smoke rising up from Yellowstone park. Something told me to go back and investigate it so I turned around and was at the park toll gate an hour later. I asked the guy at the toll booth what was going on and he said there was a bad forest fire. He said that the Army was in putting out the fire. I asked him if they were doing any hiring and he said to go up the road and speak with the Army captain. He let me in without charge and I went to speak with the captain. The first question that he asked me was what can you do. I said that I had been in the California conservation Corp. and had received some fire training. We began talking about the Army when he suddenly asked me if I could drive a flatbed truck. I said yes and he told me to grab a tent and a steak from the mobile cook truck. We shook hands and I had another job. I felt as though I was really on a roll now. My job was to drive equipment and supplies along with a few men to and from the fire. The job was pretty easy except for a couple of close calls with the fire. I really enjoyed myself and spent most of my time on call. The workers and Army personnel were really friendly and easy to get along with. The fire remained out of control for over a month until the rain and snow hit. The fire was out after a couple days of rain. We started packing things up and loaded my truck with supplies. The final job for me was to drive the truck to the Army warehouse in Idaho. There were two ways out of the park and each road crossed on a mountain pass. I had a small crew of guys with me along with a few trucks behind me. The other crews went the other way out of the park. Our crews were the last to leave and mainly consisted of Army top brass. The majority of Army personnel and workers had been bused out previously. It began snowing heavily as we approached the mountain pass. We were speaking to the other crews on the radio who were also approaching the pass from the other direction. The highway department closed the pass twenty minutes before we got there so we were stuck. We all pulled into a large parking lot in front of a mountain lodge. The top Army brass got on the phone and received authorisation to put us all up in the lodge. We all had a big meal and then bought a couple kegs of beer. The party lasted for two days until the road finally cleared. It was a great way to finish the job. I delivered the truck and personnel to the warehouse and got a ride back to get my own truck. That was the end of another job and I was soon on my way out of the park with my pockets full of money once again. I thought that it would take a lot to beat my luck that I had recently with jobs. My sister had graduated from college and moved to Carpinteria, California with my grandmother. She had split up with her boyfriend. I went back to Redding, California thinking that I might pick up some more work there. It was not happening though and I was just spending money. I had started thinking about disasters as a means of employment after the forest fire job. Mount Saint Helens had just blown but I had not heard about much clean up work on it. The next thing to hit the news was the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. The news was saying that some hiring would be taking place but that they were requesting local Alaskans. I thought that I would give it a try anyway. I went up to the Canadian border and barely managed to get through because I did not have much money and no credit cards. I drove for awhile through Canada towards Alaska until I ran out of money. I was not supposed to work in Canada but managed to find some work putting in fence posts for a farmer and then working on a roof with another guy. My truck had about had it and I was wondering if it was going to make it all of the way. I had run out of gas before getting the jobs but managed to get enough gas from a guy at a marina to make it to the next town. They called it purple gas and it was meant for boat motors. It got me up the road anyway. I went up over a tall mountain pass and then down to Valdez, Alaska. They had a unemployment office that was taking names for the oil spill cleanup operation. I tried to sign on but they told me that I needed my Alaskan drivers license. The only place to get that was in Anchorage, Alaska which was over two hundred miles away. I had found some work painting houses in Valdez which was very well paid. Everything was very expensive there however including hotel rooms so I was camping on the beach along with several other people because there were no hotel rooms available. All of these people were trying to get on the oil spill cleanup. I met a guy from Finland who was trying to get hired as well. He agreed to share the gas with me up to Anchorage to get our drivers licenses. We did not have that much money between us and we ran out of gas on the way back to Valdez. We coasted all of the way down the mountain road into Valdez and then put a couple dollars of gas in at the bottom. We both signed on to the oil spill with our drivers licenses. They told us to keep an eye on a list that they posted outside everyday to see if our name came up on it. My name came up about two weeks later to my surprise.

Next Chapter: Chapter seven