Saturday, January 13, 2018

Early Klamath

I mentioned that when I received my Draft notice from W.VA. I chose to add another year to my service rather than throw myself at the mercy of the Army, and chance. It was only two years if drafted, three if enlisted. I suppose that I might be classified as a control freak. When the enlistment center asked me "my home of record", I told them "Oregon". Even though I had been raised and was drafted by W.Va. That innocent sounding question was to have a sizable effect on our lives after the service.

One night before we rotated out of Alaska, Karen and I were sitting on the bed plotting our future. It was fifty below, and the covers on the bed were frozen to the wall. I am not sure where I got it, but I had a map that showed the migration flyways. I noticed that the Pacific flyway funneled down to almost an hour glass pinch point right over Klamath Falls, Oregon. I stabbed my finger on the spot and told Karen, "That is where we are going to live. We will buy about 20 acres in the woods, cut a winding driveway into it so that no one can see, and put our house."

At the meeting with the State Police Officer who would decide where I would serve, I was asked where I wanted to go. I told him Klamath Falls. He was quiet for a bit and then said, "You might want to reconsider. That is a rough posting, and where we put problem officers". Of course I refused to listen.  I should have said Eastern Oregon.  The reason that I chose Klamath was because of Falconry. This same preoccupation with Falconry has steered both Karen's and my lives from the first time we met.

After a year of renting we bought a house in the suburbs with a 1/2 acre of land. It was a good spot. Outside of the city limits, but there were too many people. I eventually quit the State Police, pretty well burned out, and began my Horse Shoeing phase. I had offers from the Sheriff's office in Newport, on the coast. From Portland to work for the liquor Commission, but since neither place had any decent places to hunt Raptors, I turned them all down.

After 15 weeks of Farrier school I began my new occupation. As a farrier I went to the horse for my work. One client was a transplanted Bostonian that had a Moon Eyed white horse, proud cut of course, (Still had the part that produced hormones, without the testicles, and always a pain in the butt) I had cultivated a handle bar mustache as part of the persona. Well this horse had one at least as good as mine. I have never before or since seen a horse with a mustache, especially a "handlebar".

One of the times that I was trimming the horse, George began to tell me about some property back up in the hills behind Klamath. I was intrigued, so I arranged to go look at it.

Klamath Falls is right in the center of the Klamath, Modoc and yohooskin tribal area. Klamath Lake, covering about 34 or more miles, gave the town its name, due to a shallow falls at the pinch point where the town itself is located. In the early days it was a pretty rough and tumble town with the friction between the Indians and the whites. The hills around the town are pretty steep, and the old "Military" road went up one of the hills and through a high valley, and out onto the flat land at the other end. After Hwy 97 was put in along the lake the "old Fort Rd" was fenced off by ranchers on both ends. Most of it was owned by a rancher named Louis Hagelstein on the North end of the valley. He had begun to sell parcels of it, and it was being subdivided by the buyer. This was where the described property was located.

The road had not seen much use at all since the 1800's when it was built. It was a bit rough. The guy took me up a road that had been a narrow Gage Log train track up to a "hanging bench" about 500 feet above the valley floor. The track had been a "Switch back", and was about one car wide. The train had come up from a "log pond" that had access to Klamath Lake. The lumber mill and the trains had long since been dismantled. ( 1920s-30's ) The train would pull out from the mill, go out a spur and then back up the hill to another switch and then pull forward to a loading yard cut into the slope.

The property that I was interested in was part of that track and yard. It was 19.6 acres in size, and a "dog hair" thicket, having both White (Piss fir) Pine and Ponderosa. It was on the final slope to the flat "bench". There was a rise of about 100 feet to the upper edge of the property. The only other person there was the Bostonian, George Dolling. He had an old railroad section house that had been cut down the middle with a chainsaw, and brought up in halves with a cat. "my" potential property was big enough and thick enough that I felt that I could cut that winding drive way. The price wasn't that high, so I decided to buy it, build a cabin for weekends and hunting season, while living in town. There was plenty of trees that would fill the bill. I could see the potential of the area, but it would take time for it to come to its full value. I figured that by the time I retired it would would be a very desirable piece of property. Close to town, but an entire world away.

We were the second occupied place on that bench. The road in there was a mess, and impassable in the winter until it froze. The first year we had to bring our supplies in by horse back. I had to park my truck at a place on the bottom and on another road. I drove a motorcycle to the house from where I parked the truck. It was the only thing that could get through the mud holes that formed in the road. The problem was that the road had to cross the valley floor that drained the entire valley towards Klamath Lake. Once a few years later, the Subaru Wagon that Karen was driving got high centered in the middle of the road. A neighbor had to drag it to high ground where the wheels could again touch the road. It was interesting! Sometimes the snow was 4 feet deep on the flat.

I started on a cabin, working weekends and any slack time. In the meantime I accepted a job from the BNRR as a welder. Then at least I had weekends to work on it. I had a little camp trailer that I moved up there for us to sleep and cook in.



I got the floor and walls of the cabin up, when we both decided that doing this was a pain in the butt. We spent more time driving than working. Karen started working on the power company to get a power line run. They kept promising, but always managed to not get it done. After six months of the manager dragging his feet, Karen got mad! After she was done talking with the PUC Commissioner, the line went in almost overnight. I still laugh remembering the foreman coming up to Karen with his hat in his hand saying " Will there be anything else you need mam?" About 10 years later Karen took a job flagging for the power Company "pole installation crews", and this foreman was one of the guys that she flagged for. They all remembered her. None of them gave her any crap either.

Since Oregon was my Home of Record, I was eligible for a Ore VA loan. They had the best loan rate, which at the time was a reduction of about 3 percent. It was still high, but better than any other avenue. We had bought plans for an A Frame Chalet type, but the cost was so prohibitive that we decided on a Mobile Home. They were building them better and stronger with a winter package that was the best available at that time.



Unfortunately due to the contours of the land, I was unable to place the house down the winding road that I wanted. We settled for this spot. It was still about 100 yards from the road.

To bring in the two sides was a major project. I cut and trimmed trees for the almost three miles that the home had to travel. The only damage to the trailer was in the "cut" in the top picture. They had to replace only one little piece of siding.

After we were settled in we began a brush clearing project that we worked on, cutting and burning each weekend, and sometimes afternoons during the summer. It took us about 12 years to complete it.
The roads were so bad that it took a bit more than 45 minutes to travel the 11 miles back to town. There of course was no power, or phones, so it was an all or nothing prospect. We bought a friend that lived at the mouth of the Canyon a CB radio, and used that for our emergency contacts. I am pretty sure that the antenna that I installed in a large Ponderosa tree is still there, although the limbs have grown up around it, rendering it invisible.


During that time we began breeding Harris Hawks, with a pair of Harris Hawks that was an integral part of the current blood stock of captive bred Harris's in the US.  There was a slump for a bit and I was having trouble selling the young for enough to even cover expenses. I was forced to sell two of the birds to a Wild animal park. I was so mortified that I sold the pair to a guy in Reno, and quit breeding Harris's.






I had gotten a Quonset hut really reasonably, and put it on the property below the house. I then began trying to breed Falcons. Hopefully for myself and for sale for the reintroduction efforts of the Peregrine falcons. We started breeding  Cotournix Quail in the Quonset.


The first Peregrine bred in captivity in the US was in 1967 by a fella in Oregon. One had been produced in Germany in 1947, (Renz Waller ) and the feat had not been reproduced until 67. So a lot of what I was trying to do was new, and in the experimental stage. Strangely enough the problem was getting a male to copulate with the female. In size the males are at least a 1/3 smaller than the female. The problem was basically in the size of the enclosure, since the male didn't have any possibility of surviving if she got pissed at him. He would therefore be a very careful. The female seemed to be the ones that actually had the predominate sex drive. Males were happy enough being celibate.

There was a limited number of breeders in the US, and the prices for babies was pretty high. There was no legal way to get a falcon from the wild. If you could afford to pay for a young bird, you had to be one of the better known falconers to get first pick. Mostly the only ones that we "mortals" could get, was far from the best or even a decent bird. I had learned from breeding Harris Hawks, that like people, not all young birds were "worth the powder to blow them to Hell". One of the other problem was that our breeding stock was forced by the fed wildlife dept to come from our falconry birds. Of course if you had a Butt kicking hunting hawk, you were not likely to give it up. So a lot of the foundation stock were culls. So I decided that the only way that I was ever going to be able to fly a Peregrine Falcon was to breed it.












You may wonder at the desire to possess a Peregrine, and not one of the birds that were native to Oregon. Perhaps the best way to explain it is that raptors are like dogs. Peregrines tend through evolution to have developed certain traits that made them a perfect hunting falcon. They have evolved to fly high, striking their prey in the air. Prairie Falcons, which are the desert version of the Peregrine, have evolved to take ground quarry, generally from a perch. It is unnatural for them to "wait on" at a lofty pitch, waiting for the falconer to flush game. Its difficult to break these evolutionary traits honed over thousands of years.

In truth I had given up on breeding, as being too expensive and just too much work. A friend George Peden had some contacts among falconers that would enable him to get a possible start in breeding Peregrines, but since he lived in an upscale professional neighborhood, did not have the option for the chambers that we would need. I got sucked in, again.

I managed to obtain an older Peregrine female that had been retired because she hit game so hard that she injured her feet. She was a hard imprint, originally from the Peregrine fund, because she didn't fit in their program.  She readily accepted me as her mate, and now all I needed was a semen donor. I had built a set of four chambers that were open to the sky but only 8x12 feet. It worked for the imprints, but was not suitable for a natural pair. So I made a deal with a breeder in Reno for a young imprintable male in exchange 5000 Cotournix Quail.

With that agreement we expanded our quail project to the point that we were producing 3000 quail a month. We sold them all over the states. I can't believe how cheaply we sold them. Of course prices were different than today, but we sold them at 7 weeks old for $.75 ea. Now they are over $1.50 ea. Our project filled a 20 x 50 Quonset hut. Karen ended up with Carpal Tunnel ops on both wrists just from cleaning shit trays. I swear one quail could produce 2 lbs of crap with one lb. of feed.

I learned how to inseminate falcons, and if necessary how to strip Males. We made some very nice birds that way. Perhaps the nicest were hybrids. Peregrine/ Prairie Falcons - Gyrfalcon / Peregrines. Each species adding something to the mix. Sometime in all this, my partner died, leaving me the breeding birds that we had gathered.

 Interestingly enough one of the male Peregrines was Jessie's father. I gave it to another friend of ours in Eagle Idaho, that had helped in the gathering of birds for us. He paired him with another Tundra female, and at a later date I got Jessie, who was the "pick of the littler". It does make a difference!




If you notice the difference in the ground in two of the pictures you will see that taking a Goose wasn't a one time affair. The pictures show two different Geese taken.

I decided that we needed some natural pairs, so I began clearing a spot on the old train tracks that had been behind the house. The Father in law had a cute little Cat type machine, and I cut a pad for the building. It also had four chambers. 12 x16 x16. Much roomier and higher than what I had for the imprints.






The snows sometimes reached up to four feet deep. The ladder was there so that I could shovel the roof.



 I had all the chambers full and we produced a fair number of birds from it. Young Peregrines from our project helped reintroduce Peregrines to the Missouri Breaks area. The guy told me that the birds that we produced were the most vigorous that he had ever seen. Of course by this time, the prices for such birds had fallen to the point that it was a lot more work, than reward, so I passed all my stock on, and resolved that once I retired from the Rail Road, I would only play.













During this period of time the environmentalists and Indians began legal proceedings about the water from the Klamath water shed for a Sucker that only bred in swamps anyway. The feds drained some of the empoundments in N Calif at Tulelake. They screwed up the Duck holding areas so much that the Ducks kept moving South rather than stopping in Lower Klamath and Tulelake. Since migration patterns are learned from one generation to the other, what had been flocks of thousands of Ducks dwindled down to almost nothing. The interesting thing about this is that the Klamath wildlife refuge was built for the express purpose of delaying the massive flocks until the rice farmers in the Sacramento region could harvest their Rice Crops.

In 2005 I retired from the Rail Road after 30 years. Karen and I had had enough by this time, so we began looking for someplace in Eastern Oregon that had some game to hunt and less people to share it with.

Through blind luck, we found the "Rock House" and have been here for 12 years this spring. While there are no trees here, we have a winding driveway about 3/4 of a mile from the Hwy that blocks us from view until you are right on top of the place. We live on 25 acres, with a swimming pool and a runway. We have achieved our goal that we set in Fairbanks 50 years ago. Life is good!






Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Story time

Some of you reacted favorably to my musings of yesterday, so now you are going to have to pay the price for encouraging me. Didn't your Mother ever tell you- "Don't encourage him, he will only get worse". One of the comments was that I apparently liked to write, and it is true, I love to tell stories. The ground outside is saturated with moisture, and I am bored as hell. There is nothing on the 800 channels of TV, but politics, so here goes.

My father was a Methodist minister, and we moved probably every three or four years. Always to rural areas that were pretty poor. There was little to do as far as paying jobs were concerned, and I never worked. Besides I had all the wild game that I wanted to eat or hunt, no reason to do anything else. My father was not prepared by his own tumultuous upbringing to be a parent, and I was one of those accidents that sometimes happen to careless lovers, late in life. My interaction with him was never more than disiplinarian and son. I apparently cut into his time with my Mother quite a lot. Since I had no siblings at home, my Mother filled in as much as she could to attempt to keep me civilized. As you can imagine, she took my side when I deserved it. As I got older, perhaps the irritation became a bit more intense.  Learning to drive was an ordeal of the highest magnitude, and the cause of many fights, so I knew nothing of cars, how they worked, their care, nothing at all.

When Karen came to Fairbanks to join me, we moved into a 8 x 28 foot trailer belonging to Jack Oar. ( One of the best falconers that I have ever met.) That problem solved, I had to then get to work at the missile  site, South of Fairbanks about 40 or more miles. No problem, I'll just hitchhike.

The people of Alaska at that time were some of the best people on earth. In my uniform, it was rare to have anyone pass me by. Generally as soon as I stuck my thumb out, they would stop and as the weather got colder they would drive out of their way to get me home. As great as the people were, it was still a hassle, as I had to be on the back side of Eilson Air force base by a certain time to catch a ride up above timberline, on a dirt road, to the site where I was assigned. My last night of hitch hiking was in the last of November and the temps were 44 below zero.

One of the Cooks was rotating out, and he had a 58 Olds 88 two door coupe that he sold me for $75.00. He had used it to go back and forth to town occasionally. Unfortunately he was a city boy who knew even less about cars than I did, but it ran after a fashion. It had a fan, but no heater.  The frost collected on the inside of the windshield, not outside. The tires were nylon that took several miles to pound them back into their round shape. but its biggest problem was the electric choke. It was always on. The idle screw was backed all the way out as well, so the motor would not idle. With the choke always on full, the car would only do 35 mph, but it was still quicker than hitch hiking.

The last thing the guy did was show me how he started the car. He would go out, lift the monstrous hood, put a can lid, bent into a vee shape, into the carb to open the choke. The car would then start right up, but I was supposed to rev it up high enough to get out, run around the door, pull the can lid, slam the hood and get back in before the car died. Neither one of us realized that if we had loosened the little screw that kept the electric choke full on, the car would then run if the idle screw was turned in a bit. The car would idle with the choke all the way on, just blubbering along at 35. Although it was a hassle, it at least got me back and forth to work on time, and more importantly back home to my blessed answer to raging hormones.

During this time I was still a regular MP and as such, part of my duties was to act as "Gate Guard" to the compound, and Missile site. One evening a gigantic Snow Shoe Hare wandered into the compound. Of course, I cornered him in the fence and grabbed him. I turned him loose in the guard shack and he seemed quite tame, so naturally I took him home with me.

Arriving home about 2 in the morning and not having any where prepared to put him, I just turned him loose on the floor and went to bed. Karen worked days at the Hotel, and I worked 12 Am to 12 PM. We also had a 8 week old Black Lab Puppy as well. I had just gotten to sleep when the puppy started screaming. I got out of bed and found that the Rabbit, outweighing the Pup by about 8 pounds, had him treed on the couch. I slapped both the pup and the rabbit and went back to bed. Perhaps 10 minutes went by when I felt something put its feet on the mattress by my head. I reached out to reassure what I thought was the puppy, and the rabbit bit clear through the end of my thumbnail. Not drawing any blood, I slapped the rabbit and went back to sleep. It wasn't long before we heard one of our "Mel mac" plates hit the floor in the kitchen.  In about 2 seconds Karen clawed her way over top of me, grabbed the rabbit by the ears and shoved him into a cardboard box, turned it upside down,  climbed up over me again, bouncing up and down a couple of times as payment, and we went to sleep for good.

When we woke the next morning, the rabbit had expired, apparently he had peed on the box and it formed a seal, suffocating him. I remember thinking, "well he wasn't much of a pet anyway". So I decided to toss him out to the first hawk I saw on the way to work.

When my shift was over and it was time to go home, the car was giving me nothing but trouble in my attempts to keep it running. If one slipped on the ice, it tended to slow you down enough that the car would die and you had to go through the same process again. I was sitting there fuming after the car had died twice before, thinking "If  only I had something to put between the seat and the gas pedal, life would be so much more pleasant". I looked in the back of the car, and there was the rabbit, frozen stiff of course. I picked him up and his forehead was at just the right angle, and his rear toe nails caught the welt on the seat covers and held the car at a perfect 1000 RPM's. My troubles were over. I wasn't any smarter, but I was a lot more relaxed. We of course named him "Harvey". Naturally he was quite the subject of conversation among Karen's work mates. I managed to freeze the engine block and radiator solid before the spring thaw, but I will always think fondly of Snow Shoe Rabbits.




Tuesday, January 9, 2018

53 years together

Today is our 53rd anniversary. It takes a bit of thought to get ones mind wrapped around such a mile stone. In case you are wondering it all hasn't been a bed of roses. There were fights, disagreements and lots of adjustments required to get to this point. What helped the most was that we were friends first, lovers second, and we wanted it to work.

In March of 1964 I was living in Southern California and staying with my brother. My sister lived in Cerritos and while visiting her, one of her neighbor's sister across the court, had a nose bleed that they could not get stopped. That happened to be the first time I saw Karen. I soon wore out my welcome with my brothers wife, so I asked my sister for lodging, right on the same street as Karen.



I'm the tall one with the "devil may care attitude". Looking back, it would appear that my presence could have been a little unsettling for both my sister and brother.

It was at this point that I first was able to realize and put into action my desire to participate in falconry.


Karen began to help me with this little creature of wonder, and soon we were both hooked on falconry and each other.

On Jan 1965 we married.

By the end of 1965 we followed her Mother and Father to Oregon. I worked various jobs that ran the gamut of selling Fuller Brush products to selling Sewing Machines and Vacuum cleaners in a chain store. Then on Christmas eve I received my Draft notice from W.Va. Wanting to have the last word, I went to Portland Ore and enlisted in the Army. I signed up for a tour of Alaska, simply because they happened to have the best and the most efficient raptors in the world. I figured I might as well enjoy the time that I had to serve.

Having chosen my place to be assigned, the Army was then free to place me in whatever occupation that they wanted. They decided that I had the makings of an Military Policeman. I was serving on KP duty at the time I found out and though I had never considered the idea, thought that it might be fun.

I was assigned to a Minute man missile site in interior Alaska just above North Pole Alaska. I met Jack Oar, a falconer, and he offered to let us live in a trailer that he had parked at a trucking company just outside of Fairbanks. The going rate for a one room efficiency apartment in Fairbanks was $350 a month at the time. He agreed on $10.00 a month as rent. I may still owe him some money. I was drawing $95. a month and Karen was getting $110, so that was the only way that I would be able to afford to have her with me.

It was only an 8 x 28 foot trailer, but it kept us warm and comfortable through - 55 below zero weather.

We were almost the only trailer in the park, which suited me just fine. Karen got a job at the Polaris Hotel in town and I hitchhiked back and forth the 40 miles to the missile site. The last day that I did so it was -40. I bought an old car from one of the guys that was rotating out. That is a story within itself, but I will spare you.

Eventually I was able to transition to Dog Handler, taking over one of the meanest dogs I have ever seen.

                                                     He looks so cute and nice, but he lived to bite people.

While Karen was working at the Hotel she made friends with Vernell and she and her Husband made the rest of our tour of Alaska fun and easy.



Her husband helped me butcher and bring my Moose back to town, helping our grocery bill quite a lot.

Karen reading my new orders to report to Ft Bragg NC.


Alaska was easy compare to North Carolina. Once again the Army didn't have the housing that they were supposed to have for married personal. We managed however. Even when I was posted to patrol in Washing DC after Martin Luther King was shot.

This is our first night staying in the basement of the Pentagon.

When I finished my hitch with the Army, we returned to Oregon. We settled in Canby south of Portland, doing various things until I was accepted by the Oregon State Police.  I asked to be posted to Klamath Falls, and stuck it out for four years until I decided that most of the population of the world did not deserve the efforts, and sacrifice that was required to keep them alive.

I then went to Oregon State and became a Farrier for two years until I was hired by the BNSF as a welder. I finally had a job that I liked.


I stayed in that same job for 30 years enabling us to receive enough of a retirement check to support our hobbies, and live where and how we wanted for the first time..

I find it a bit interesting in that some people rate their lives by accomplishment. Ours was measured in the animals that we had. My only real ambition was to be able to retire with enough money to play and do the things that Karen and I loved. Not having children, we were our kids. We both loved animals. For me it was raptors. Karen's thrill was horses.




Of course there was room for Raptors as well. The outdoors was our play ground, and we visited it as often as we could.


forced celebration after killing her second Antelope


catching the biggest trout of the trip.

My first Goshawk

Dinner after a hunt.

My second bear

My first Bear.

Our first imprint breeding Peregrine

 This was in my Farrier stage.



Our home in Klamath Falls




Falconry has been our goal and occupation from the very first day we met. We have raised Peregrines for the reintroduction of the species to the US. We were very active in the state organization.



Yes it has been a ride, sometimes a bit rocky, most of the time well worth the effort, and damn sure never boring.