Hysterical Journey to Historic Places

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ROSEMARY



I, for one, have always been fond of Bud Irwin, but I adored Rosemary from the very first day I met her. Aside from my own sainted mother, she was the loveliest, kindest, most gracious woman that ever I knew. Had I been more exposed to her influence surely she would have given me better manners than I learned from my dad. I was a terribly spoiled brat who should probably have been on Ritalin, but that is a story better told for when I am 80 years old myself.



My first sort of prolonged exposure to Bud and Rose came when they were stationed at Mather AFB, near Sacramento. They were living in a home that they had leased with an option to buy out in Carmichael or Citrus Heights or some place. It was off-base housing, and quite small, but it had plenty of kitchen storage. That was important to Rose because she had some very nice place settings given as wedding presents. We happened to have been visiting on the day those dishes were being unpacked. Nearly all of them had been broken in shipping. It was a tragedy that brought her to tears as it would any newlywed bride. It pissed me off too. I wanted to kick the mailman’s ass because I thought it was the post office that wrecked those dishes. The only mailman I knew was a guy named Ken Bigelow who lived up in Sky Ridge. I must have ambushed him six times during the next year with my slingshot, but missed him every time; poor shooting on my part.



The first air show I ever saw was at Mather with Bud and Rose. The show was highlighted by the Air Force Thunderbirds. They were flying F-100 Super Sabers, and put on a magnificent show that culminated in their patented Thunderburst. The F-100 was the first of our jet fighters capable of supersonic speed in level flight. It replaced the F-86 Saber Jet, hence the name Super Saber. After the show we had dinner with Bud and Rose. Bud got me loaded on cheap pink wine during supper and then taught us kids how to play Red Dog. It was the Air Force version of acey-deucy. I came up with a king and a three in one hand and Bud advised me to bet the farm. I did and then drew the ace. It was my turn to break out in tears, but I doubt if Rose ever assaulted the nearest mailman with a slingshot for a year afterwards. She probably would have hit him four times out of six. Bud had been reading a book called “You Can Trust the Communists” I don’t know what it was about, but I left there that evening all pissed off at the commies for wrecking my Red Dog game. The bastards.



Bud and Rose would occasionally visit our home in Auburn. On one fine clear day during late autumn of 1959 gramma’s sister, Mae Marton was up visiting from her home in Hope Ranch near Santa Barbara. Aunt Mae was filthy rich by our standards. She had married the rooster who owned the city bus line in Santa Barbara. That poor devil died an early death and Mae took over running the bus service. She bought so many tires for her busses that Firestone leased her a brand new Cadillac every year. One of Mae’s neighbors was Fess Parker. He played the role of Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier on TV. On one of her previous visits Mae had purchased a parcel of timbered property up near Foresthill. It got burned up in a forest fire and Mae came to see how much damage her trees had suffered. Bud and Rose came with us to see the trees because they thought it might be a good opportunity to pick up some pine cones for Christmas decorations. There were plenty of sugar pines around Foresthill and those sugar pines had nice big cones; not them crappy digger pine cones like we had around Auburn. The trees were okay I guess, but the cones were in poor shape. On the way out Bud spied some nice big cones in another stand of trees, but they had not yet fallen. He had the idea that we could use my dad’s 22 rifle to shoot the cones out of those trees. We blasted away at those cones until we had used up two whole boxes of ammo and did knock down about four cones. They were all shot to pieces of course, but we took them along anyway. I am sure they made damn fine decorations. I insisted on having tacos for supper that night. It was my favorite meal and I probably deserved tacos for shooting up those pine cones. We had to stop at the store on the way home and Bud got us a can of refried beans. It was the first time in my life I ever had beans with tacos. It was a damn fine meal at the end of a wonderful day.



One day Bud and Rose came up to Auburn to see us and he had a sportsman’s stock that he was planning to fit to the action of a war surplus German Mauser. He was hand rubbing the rifle stock with a few coats of linseed oil. He was doing a beautiful job, but it was boring us to death. My dad had learned from some of his drinking pals down in the Shanghai Bar that there were some whitefish running up the American River. They are boney as carp, but they are cousins to pike and my dad was positively burning to try and catch one for supper. His pals had told him that if you ground the filets up real good and cooked them in Worcestershire Sauce and mustard a hungry man might could eat them without choking to death on the bones. Down in the canyon below our house there was an old coffer dam across the river that no whitefish, no matter how desperate he was could get past. The dam was accessible down the worst road in America. I dug us up a can of worms in my mom’s garden, we loaded up some fishing gear in my dad’s ’55 Rambler Classic, and off we went. No crappy stretch of bad road could keep my dad away from a fishing spot. There were some good sized fish in the pool below the dam and we caught a few of them and were lounging by a little fire we had built in the parking lot. In my youthful exuberance I had fallen in the river and was soaking wet. Dad wanted to try and dry me off a little before we went home and he caught hell over it. I was standing in the parking lot butt naked with my dad and Bud and Garlon Wilson when we heard a racket coming down the road. It turned out to be a guy in a brand new Jeep trying to impress his wife with what a dandy purchase it had been. The look on her face was priceless when she saw my dad’s Rambler. Maybe he wanted to do a little fishing himself, but when he saw three grown men drinking beer in a remote parking lot with a naked child he decided to get the hell out of there instead. My dad laughed all the way back home, but I didn’t realize what was so funny until several years had gone by. If a drunk person ever tells you that a whitefish filet can be ground up fine and cooked up in a sauce of Worcestershire Sauce and mustard to a toothsome state of gourmet perfection he is fulla shit.



Everything between leukemia and butterscotch pie must come to a conclusion. Bud and Rose left Mather and went on to further misadventures in Harlingen, TX. Midge and Mike were both born there. Before they left Bud came up to Auburn and gave me a gas airplane he had built but could not box up and take due to space limitations. He probably had too many new dishes. The plane was a kind of dark red-purplish color and it had a plastic pilot’s head that was all yellow. I cherished that model plane for a couple of years but did not know how to fly it. Some days I would look at the plane and imagine myself shrinking down in size and kicking the plastic pilot out so I could zoom off into the clouds and head for Texas like a real airman. The plane languished on my bedroom shelf until the summer of 1962 when my cousin Butch came down from Alaska for a visit. He wanted to go fly the plane, so we went down to the Hobby Shop in Auburn and got a new battery and a can of fuel and control gear, and by God Butch got that plane running and he could fly it good. Wherever the fuel leaked on it the paint dissolved and ran and the fuel also dissolved some of the glue around the wing root. When it was my turn to fly it I made two turns and one whole wing broke off, the plane crashed and broke all to pieces. I was devastated, but Butch built us another plane and we flew that one all summer. We had a blast. Thanks, Bud, you set me on a pathway to fun that has never ended.

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Photos

BEHIND GRAMMA'S
This was the first time any of us ever met Rosemary:
Back row(l-r): Mike Geoffry, Pat Jordan, Bud Irwin, Mike Irwin, Dick Oliver, Peewee Oliver, Jerry Oliver, Mrs Knopf, Chad, Rosemary Irwin.
Front row (l-r): Jackie Oliver, Evelyn Jordan, Gramma, Linda Oliver, Nancy Oliver, Donna Oliver, Chad's wife. Little girls in front are Lori Oliver, Deanna Oliver, and Julie Jordan.

ROSE CATCHES ANOTHER BIG UN
Fish would just leap into the boat if they knew Rosemary was aboard. Unlike a whitefish these fish actually are pretty tasty.

THEY HAD SUCKERS AT THE COFFER DAM TOO
Susan Rector at the coffer dam. She wasn't with us the day I fell in, but I don't many pictures of the dam.