Dishwasher Duty...21º

I started my new job, assistant cook/baker at Joseph School Cafeteria, late August 1977...I had been a substitute for two years, so kind of knew what I was getting into...I was responsible daily for making bread, rolls and/or dessert for lunch...The campus was closed, kids could bring sack lunches from home, but most kids and adults ate at the cafeteria, approximately 300 lunches were served daily...Margaret was head cook, fixing the main dish, ordering all supplies and making menus...Joanne was responsible for salads, veggies and fruit...Our day started at 7am with the first kids showing up at 11am ready to eat...We finished serving at 12:15pm, cleaned up, had our lunch at about 1pm, finished cleanup, our day ended at 2pm.

Joanne and I traded off weekly, either working the big sinks, washing by hand, enormous pots and pans or washing trays in the dishwasher...My turn on the dishwasher started the second week and I was sure it would never end...Alfred (janitor/bus driver) helped by scraping and stacking the trays...I remember his comment on that first day, as the trays stacked up higher and higher, he said, with a sly grin, "You are getting a little behind in your work." I glared at him over the stack of trays and kept spraying and running trays through the machine...In between washing trays, I also had to sort silverware into plastic cups to be washed last...It went something like this, spray trays, stack in rack, open dishwasher door, shove tray rack inside, shut door, hit start button, sort silverware, repeat!..Also I had to keep moving and stacking the clean trays as they came out steaming hot from the dishwasher...Alfred's grin grew wider as my glare turned to grimace and he handed me the last tray and said, "Is this the one you were looking for?"...Hugs To All...OWAV:)

A Real Job...21º

I worked at the Joseph City Library for over a year and had also started working at the Joseph City Office, posting payments in huge ledger accounts, a couple of mornings a week...The Library and City Office was in the same building so it was easy to coordinate the two jobs...The extra money really helped with our new responsibilities of owning a home and I liked working with Mildred in the city office...Mildred was an old timer in the community, friendly and fun, she had a poodle dog that "resided" under her desk, greeted customers and snored...

Mildred was a chain smoker, always had a cigarette smoldering on her desk...I can't imagine working in that atmosphere today but back then it was the norm...People smoked everywhere and anywhere...I grew up with my Dads unfiltered camels, ashtrays on the table, by his chair in the living room and even tried smoking a "butt' or two...I married a smoker and lived with it for years in our own home...It was just the way of life and we didn't realize the unhealthy side of it for many years...Our kids played a big part in getting Herb to quit, (many times,) only to start up again with, just that one cigarette...Until he finally put it all behind him.

My days at the Library and City Office seemed to be numbered, a job at the school cafeteria was opening up...I never turned down an opportunity to fill in and also to go on the special birthday event, when I got to bake enough cake for about 300 kids...I felt like I fit in with the kitchen crew but wasn't sure if I could handle making 40 loaves of bread or 300 rolls on any given day...I was excited about working in the school kitchen but scared as well and in the days I had worked washing hugh pots and pans in the giant size sinks, all went well, but was I ready to tackle the big, scary dishwashing machine?...Hugs To All...OWAV:)

Disconnected/Catching up...25º

Four days since my last  blog and it seems much longer...Friday I just didn't post anything and Saturday morning, we were up at 4am and our internet connection was not working...Assuming something was wrong on our end, I reconfigured settings, talked to Bobi and reset the modem but nothing worked...I called EONI (our internet server) and left a message...The call back came and it seems it was their problem not mine, and they were working on it...I was so relieved that it wasn't my fault that I didn't ask when we might get reconnected.

Life without the internet is weird...I started looking for things to do in and around the house...I cleaned the bathroom, and the kitchen and the roll top desk...In the desk were cooking magazines...I spent several hours, rereading those, before I picked up a book "Tracks" about a women who treks across Australia and lost myself in it for a few hours...Many times through the day, I found the need to google something...NO INTERNET...So I played a few games of "Gummy Drops."...Couldn't play scrabble because that needs a connection and so does FaceBook.

Herb made a trip to the post office and stopped by the Josephy Center and was able to sit in the car and "borrow" their internet and download another book to his iPad, so he was set for the afternoon and evening...Sunday morning we were up early again and still no internet...I had to think hard, what did we do before the internet?...The old icebox that sits in one corner of the living room is/was stuffed with saved papers and projects...I emptied it one shelf at a time and in between, making bread and fixing Sunday dinner, I sorted, reread, reminisced and that prompted me to pull a shoebox full of old photos, out of the closet...Need I go on.

Late afternoon Pam stopped by on her way from snowshoeing, just as I took a loaf of no-knead bread from the oven, she couldn't stay for dinner, but we managed to eat the loaf of bread, washed down with red wine...She left and we had dinner, then Herb announced that he needed to go download another book...I was tired of sorting papers, put the old photos away and joined him as we both borrowed the internet at the JC...When we arrived back home, our modem showed a green light, that meant our internet was up and working...Life is back to normal...Hugs To All...OWAV:)

Building Equity...28º

At first we were overwhelmed with home ownership and all the added costs, but we quickly learned to prioritize, so we could improve the house without taking on addition debt...The sewer project came first, then the bill for property taxes arrived.

The following spring, when Herb and Rusty started the roofing project, it only made sense to add blow-in insulation in the attic...Rusty was small in size and the perfect candidate to climb through a hole in the roof to hold and aim the hose, getting insulation into all the nooks and crannies...Later that summer, while Herb was at work, the kids and I added insulation batts to the eaves of the house and the crawl spaces upstairs...Since I was fairly small and agile back then and didn't mind closed in spaces, I crawled into the "crawl spaces," positioned on my back, and armed with a staple gun...I wore goggles and a handkerchief bandanna over my mouth and nose...Bobbi Jo was outside on the lawn, measuring and cutting the insulation, and Rusty was the runner...He carried the cut pieces upstairs, and wiggled his way through the eaves, delivering them to me for installation...This was considered "family bonding," in those days...All the while we were doing this nasty, itchy job, we had visions of boating on Wallowa Lake, when the weekend rolled around...Hugs To All...OWAV:)

Home Owners/Headaches...12º

I wanted a new kitchen, Herb said, "We need a new roof!"...My mind leans to the common sense side, so the new roof was an easy winner...The kitchen would wait...Also we were looking for a cheaper way to heat our house and with firewood plentiful and cheap at that time, Herb installed a "barrel stove" in the basement and we purchased a freestanding stove/fireplace for the living room...The stove/fireplace was a poor choice as it smoked continuously and was not efficient...But the guys seemed to like getting wood, and we went through a lot of it.

We knew that our old house, with character, was also very needy...The upstairs was cold and drafty, it needed new windows, the living room ceiling was "saggy," it needed a major remodel as did the kitchen and the bathroom, and so did the bedroom that had been turned into a utility room...People asked us before we bought the house, "Have you looked at new houses, are you sure you want an old house."...We always answered, "We love this old house and our small acreage and the location."...I'm not sure when we discovered that it had a view!

Something else that made the top of the list that summer was a boat...We had an old boat, that we hauled all the way from Utah, but it didn't have much power and the outboard motor kept cutting out...Just about the time a water skier had made it to a standing position, the motor would cough and sputter and die...From the for sale ads, in the Chieftain, we soon had a newer boat, inboard/outboard motor that would pull two skiers at a time and now we needed better life jackets, better skies and a slalom ski and a dock on Wallowa lake, for our very own use...The boat gave us many years of family fun, while the kids were still at home to enjoy it, and the kitchen waited...Hugs To All...OWAV:)

Decision/Indecision...16º

August 1977....Many factors were at play now:..We had committed to a mortgage...The Forest Service changed daily, consolidation of districts, new rangers, new policy, NRA added, transfer or not?..Bobbi was in high school, Rusty was settled in and neither really wanted to move...Herb was thinking he had enough politics to deal with here and could see that it only got worse, if one moved up the ladder...I was loving the lake, mountains and the trees, so reminicent of my growing up in Idaho...Maybe we could continue on with the boating, camping, hunting, spending time with Dad and making occasional trips to Utah to see my Mom...Years from now maybe we could move somewhere else to retire.

Now after all the excitement of buying a house, we began to wonder, what had we been thinking, as the first thing that happened was the sewer backed up...We could no longer pass the bills to our landlords but had to figure out how to pay them ourselves...Money was tight and we had plans to insulate the house, buy a wood stove, and the roof needed replacing...We learned quickly, to take one day at a time!..The backhoe arrived to dig up the sewer pipe, that went to the city main and Herb was able to replace old pipe with new...Somehow the bill got paid, maybe Herb got called on a fire and made extra money that pay period...I know I juggled money every month, but at least Herb had a job and a steady paycheck and we had made the first two payments on our house...Hugs To All...OWAV:)

Falling into place...14º

The summer of 1977, brought stability to our life in Joseph...The house we had rented for 4 years was going up for sale...Max Hayes (owner) arrived from Alaska and with a local realtor walked through the house doing an appraisal...Max was quick to point out to the realtor the improvements, such as carpets in all rooms and newly painted walls throughout the house, improvements that we had made...He wanted to get a good price for the house but also wanted to made it reasonable enough that we could afford it...After considerable hassle, us trying to get a bank loan, (the bank required us to come up with $10,000.00 down,) Haye's offered to carry the contract...We had been good renters, our monthly rent paid always on time, so they knew they could count on us to fulfill the contract, and they liked the idea of selling to someone who loved the property and would take good care of it...Their only stipulation was that we pay the loan off in 10 years instead of the usual 25 to 30...They suggested that we could make a balloon payment or refinance at that time with a bank loan, something that people did all the time...We were new to house buying, loans, balloon payments and refinancing...But finally things worked out, Dad came to the rescue with help on the down payment and in the meantime I talked to a local realtor about other ways to pay-down a mortgage...He suggested that we pay a larger monthly payment and showed me that we could actually pay the house off in 10 years...So, again with more help from Dad and my new part-time job at the library, we could make this work...After 16 years of marriage, we would be homeowners...Soon we discovered the costs of owning a home...Hugs To All...OWAV:)