AN ABRIDGED UNAUTHORIZED AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Note: this is about me, not my wife, not my kids, not my friends or relatives, so please don't be disappointed
if you are not even mentioned.  You are all included in the full edition
provided it gets authorized.
2007

I was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1932, 5 years before there was a paved road that went all the way across the United States.
I lived there 18 months and decided to move to Nebraska.  That established a lifelong habit of not staying to long in one place.  I have a very poor memory of the past, since I rarely visit and definitely would not want to live there.  When I lived in Omaha, I had my first girl friend.  I was 5.  I really do remember that very well. ;-) When I was 8, I had my first job in Lincoln.  I had a paper route with about 150 customers spread out all over, each in an individual home.  Sometimes on Sundays, if the weather was poor, my father helped me with his car.  I think I gave all of the money to the family (it was the Depression after all).  A very pleasant memory is when, one or two times, I clutched a nickel and walked two miles to a drug store that gave us kids two scoops of frozen malted milk.  They were much larger scoops than regular.  It was a rare treat and I have never taken for granted our now high standard of living.  

When I was 9, I moved to Edmonton Alberta to live with my dad who worked on the Alaska Highway.  I remember, that I so much loved the 5th grade that I took it twice.  I remember the spring Chinook winds, that in three days time removed three feet of snow that had been in our yard all winter.  We and our neighborhood had wooden sidewalks.  Can you imagine that?

Then to Fountain Hills, Tennessee and on to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where the atomic bomb was developed.  I never knew what my dad did, but he was awarded the "A" award for his efforts.  We lived in like barracks on stilts.  My dad had a '35 Packard and he smuggled in pints hidden in the door panels.  Oak Ridge was "dry".  Our barracks was not. ;-)  I remember my kid brother and I hollering out the punch line to an off color joke, from our bedroom, during a Saturday party at our place.  We were rewarded with several applications of the sole of dad's slipper on our backsides.  When he left, we laughed.  I remember that, that was definitively a mistake.  We were there when President Roosevelt passed away. 

I then moved to both St. Louis, Kansas and St. Louis, Missouri.  I remember nothing of those years.  Must have been boring places. 

Then  moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where I went to high school in the late 40's and graduated in '51, and stayed on for 5 more years to go to the U. of Minn. to get a B. S. in Aeronautical Engineering.  Those were pretty good years, even though I worked part time in the winter and full time in the summer.  I was a big kid.  When I was 15, I did construction work in Iceland, 54 hours a week, in violation of the child labor act I may add, but I made a lot of money.  I bought my first car with $50.00.  It was a '34 Plymouth coupe with a rumble seat.  I had two accidents and one ticket before I got my learner's permit.  When I finally received my drivers license, it was taken away the day I got it.  I lived 10 miles from school and worked, of course, so I had permission to drive to those places only.  We played games with our autos, like bumper tag and chicken. 

I worked on a Gandy Gang, worked on highway construction, 16 hours a day, 7 days a week in the short Minnesota summer, worked mixing mud and carrying bricks, loaded trucks, and many other jobs all through high school and collage.  Back then, we didn't try to find work we liked, just the job that would pay us the most money.  When I went to the U. of M., the only free time I had was when I cut class.  A friend and I were able to fly for $2.50 and hour using some dad's plane, a PT-19.  Also we rented J-3's from the U at about the same price.

I only took two school quarters off from work. They were the two Olympic years during my stay at the U.  Although I weighed about 220 pounds, I was able to wrestle in the 191 weight class, which was a weight class that was only held in Olympic years.

Before Joy and I were married, I lived at home, and paid my mom rent.  I worked and paid my own way by working an average of 30 to 40 hours a week during school and all the overtime I could get in the summer (sometimes at two or three jobs).  Times were different.  At the U of M, I took 10 cents to school each day.  That was all.  It bought coffee in the morning and coffee in the afternoon.  It was no hardship at all. That was just the way things were.  Usually, when kids nowadays can't work their way through college it is not because of the high cost of living, it is the cost of high living. 

Joy and I were married in 1954 and have been together ever since then and it has been a really great life.  We both worked and until I graduated in 1956 we saved a $25.00 bond a month.  In today's money that is about $300. On a Saturday night, we could go out for Chinese and a movie or a play and have change left over from a five dollar bill.  One thing of note.  Real men didn't go for the arts.  It just wasn't done.  I did not get interested in the arts until about 1960.

Life without mandatory school, started in December 1956 when I entered the Air Force as a 2nd Lieutenant.  I was fortunate enough to be stationed at Wright Field as a flight test engineer. Why was I fortunate?  Because I received $110 hazard flight pay.  I have many great memories from those years.  Gus Grissom, one of the first seven astronauts, gave me my first supersonic ride, in an F-100F which at that time, was very rare, especially for a non-military pilot.  I was the flight test engineer for the first C-130 on skis.   We landed on top of a 10,000 foot high pile of snow.  Greenland, of course.  Landed and lost an engine on Lake Hazen on Elsmere Island, 420 miles from the north pole, and the temperatures on both the C an F scale were identical.  I flew on every zero-g flight of a C-135 for over a year.  I averaged about 30 minutes of zero-g time a week (30 seconds at a time).  I think I had more total zero-g time than the early astronauts.  Just to show you how insensitive and fickle and arbitrary fate is.  A friend of mine begged me to let him take one of my flights so that he could get in his four hours minimum flight time per month in order to get paid his hazard pay.  I never let anyone do that before, since I loved being in the air.  The B-47 crashed and all were killed.  We lost on the average 2 pilots a year.  All of us had the same attitude toward this risk. It was quite cavalier and to my way of thinking now, was not the smartest attitude that we could have had.  Five of us bought a Luscombe 8a for $1100 and we flew it all over, whenever we could.  Twice, I even flew it as a glider.  It had the glide ratio of a rock.  I bought a Triumph TR-3, played golf three times a week and thought I was on the top of the world.

Next on to Seattle, where our two kids were born.  I worked in the Boeing plant, and helped to monitor the work being done on a project called Dinosaur.  It was similar to the space shuttle, only earlier, and was eventually cancelled.  Neil Armstrong was the lead test pilot for that project before it was canceled.  Owned a small (very small) boat with enclosed sleeping quarters in front.  On one trip we went to Victoria on Vancouver Island and called the Canadian Customs to come down and check us in.  An hour went by and no customs.  Called them again and they said they couldn't find us.  I told them that I was just behind a large yacht.  They laughed and said that they thought we were their dingy.  That hurt. 

Then, of all things, I applied to go back to school and get my masters.  Then instead of barely passing, I graduated with distinction.  I almost went on to try to get a PhD.  Joy asked if I would still talk to her if I did.  I said, "Of course, but you won't understand me".

Moving then to Sunnyvale where I became involved with the intelligence community for the rest of my career.  Even had a red diplomatic passport.  But, the important thing is that I discovered art.  It absorbed my free time from then on.  Lived on Kodiak for two years, and then in L. A. for a while and ended up in Pleasanton, CA and retired from the Air Force on January 1,  1977.  During this time period I mainly painted large impressionistic paintings.  Not too good, but not too bad either.  At least they sold.

Having lived in Southern California for so long, I decided to go back to the land.  I took my Mother Earth News magazines and retired to the northwest corner on Montana.  Planting, gathering, and hunting lasted a year.  Went into real estate and had my broker's license within 18 months and opened my own agency.  We, Joy and I and our two kids lived about three miles outside of Troy, MT and had only wood heat.  I cut down and cut up about 8 cords of wood a year.  Also, in the winter, not only did our water freeze up, but also the sewer drain.  We had an outhouse and an emergency pail inside for night use.  The rule was that whoever used it first had to clean it.  It frequently needed cleaning, but either the cause was ghosts or someone was sneaking into our house at night, because no one ever admitted to using that particular portable facility.

Well, so much for the simple life.  For moving we bought a beer truck, sold out and we were in the process of packing up when Mt. St. Helens blew up.  Our farm was covered in about a 1/4 inch of ash.  Kind of sign that we had made the right decision.  Of all things, we moved back to the Twin Cities, where I worked as a Professor teaching college math and at the same time achieved another degree, this time, a B. A. in the visual arts.

Wow, I had also discovered liquid glass.  Built my first studio in Minneapolis and proceeded to blow glass for the next 20 years.  The second studio was build on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound.  By that time, the kids were gone and we were full time RVer's, living in our RV on Whidbey in the summer and going south in the winter.  Decided to settled down for a while, so built the third studio and bought a house in Coeur d'Alene ID.  What a great place!  Oh!  Did I mention before, that we must have gypsy blood in our veins from somewhere? 

For you other digital artists out there, who think that digital art doesn't sell because it is a new art form, you are wrong.  There is some other reason.  The Studio Art Glass Movement produced a new art media that was immediately successful and our even our early amateur works sold like hot cakes.  Would that were true for us now. ;-(

Then concurrently, in 1997, I bought my first computer and discovered fractals.  What a wonderful upward trip, from those first limited fractal images and slow, small computers, to today!  I gave up blowing glass in 2000, mainly because it is a 24/7 type of art form and kept me too long in one place. ;-)  We moved to Arizona for a year and then to Las Vegas where we lived in three different places; an apartment, a condo and a house.  Las Vegas can even keep someone like me interested for a while.  In our whole life (so far that is) we always moved to something, never away from something, with one exception, our condo.  I had a total inability to put up with the home owner's association.  You might guess that I don't like to be regimented and controlled.  Just a personality flaw, I guess, or maybe that thing they call artistic temperament.

Then last year, we moved to Manson WA where we have never been before and where we knew no one.  How many people born in '32 would have the inclination to do that?  We moved ourselves, basically in four trips with u-haul trailers.  We will never do that again!  It is too hard these days.  If, I mean, when we move again, someone else will have to do all the work.  We probably won't move though.  This is the greatest place we have ever lived.  I mean for us, not you.  I am sure that you would not like it, so, please, do not move here.  Just take my word for it.  Don't even bother to check it out.  It is not like  normal place.  We don't even have a McDonald's or Burger King within 50 miles.

2007

THE END, NOT!
I just discovered photography

It is now two years later.  June 2009.  Oh, well, so I lied a little.  We now have two homes, one here and one back in Las Vegas.  Again, we are hauling stuff with a Uhaul.  Why back to LV?  LV is a new city every two years.  Our home there is in the far NW of the city that didn't even exist when we lived there.  Also LV this month has the lowest home prices anywhere in the US that you would care to live.  Right now $88/sqft average for a single family home.  And if you think you know anything at all about the city, guess again.  The "strip" isn't even in the city of Las Vegas.  Just think about what other misconceptions you may have.  Just don't live there in the summer unless you have to.  Move there, but not to Manson. ;-)

2009  I bought a Z3100 24" printer.  WOW! No comparison to any printer that I have ever owned.

July 2009  Someone had cash so we sold our home in Manson on Lake Chelan and now only have one home in Las Vegas.  And it is really, really summer now in LV.  ;-(

November 2009  Just bought another home in LV in the Los Prodos golf community, and will have to become landlords.  Something is wrong with me.  I need to settle down.   Well, at least I ain't bored.
 
Late November 2009  Wow!!  Guess what?  Just listed our other home and sold it in one day. ;-)   Don't have to be landlords after all, since we only have one home.

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