Reality...10º

It was spring in Joseph, we were surrounded by grassy fields on one side and mountains and trees on the other...The wind seldom blew and the quietness of the place truly astounded me...Each morning after the kids left for school and Herb for work, I put records on the hi-fi and turned up the volume, as the silence unnerved me...I spent the days unpacking, rearranging and true to my first impression, this house was really lacking in cupboards and closets...The kitchen was particularly depressing as it was small and someone had painted the counter tops black...Shopping was limited in the valley and after ordering the range and fridge from Montgomery Wards, I turned more and more to their catalog...I ordered light colored, stick on floor tile and used it to covered the black counters...That cleaned things up and lighten the room several shades...The kitchen appliances were soon in place and I could cook real meals instead of one-dish "goulash" in an electric fry pan...Now we began living in the house, not camping.

Herb was not treated kindly by the District Ranger when at their first meeting he greeted him with, "What are you doing here, I thought you turned this job down?"...Herb had indeed turned the job down because it didn't come with the promotion he was in line for...But he was reassured (by the higher ups,) that things could work out for him and that it was in his best interest to take the lateral transfer...He really didn't have any choice...The job was in recreation but the Ranger made sure Herb got jobs that no one else wanted and seemed to delight in setting him up for failure...Thankfully he was due to retire and one could always hope that the next Ranger would be better...The Forest Service was in a state of flux, reorganizing and consolidation of districts and adding the NRA (Hells Canyon, National Recreation Area) after the federal government condemned and usurped those properties...The Eagle Cap Wilderness was already in place...All of these changes were made at a higher level but the Forest Service employees working locally ended up taking the flak from the people affected by these changes...We soon found out that it was not easy to integrate into this close knit community...People were friendly on the surface but we found ourselves making friends within the FS community and it took many years before we would fit in with the "locals."

Over the next 20 years the new Rangers were either climbing the ladder or preparing to retire, definitely no one outstanding came along...The FS continued to change radically, leaning toward environmentalism...Logging went by the wayside, new programs were funded to start with but funds were not available to keep them going...Herb did have variety in his job, which changed with each new Ranger...He did everything from campground maintenance (cleaning toilets), jet boat patrol on the snake river and the NRA, informational programs (entertaining the Wallowa Lake Tourists) fleet management (assigning and inventorying all vehicles for employees to drive) and finally what I think was the thing he enjoyed most and that was forest fires...From the time he started with the FS in 1957 to the end of his career in 1995, every summer he could be found fighting fires...First on the line with a pick and shovel, eating c-rations to the last years when he worked dispatching and eating from the commercial, portable kitchens that blossomed as fires became big business...Hugs to Herb for sticking with the impossible, bringing home the "bacon" so we could live in this beautiful place...OWAV:)