Sibling Assignment #94: A Commendation on Your Record

InlandEmpireGirl stayed with the rhythms of the Christian calendar and asked us to write about a vivid Easter. InlandEmpireGirl's piece about her church in the country is here and Silver Valley Girl's exploration of her marriage as a source of renewal and resurrection is here.

During my freshman year at North Idaho College, I worked weekends at the Bunker Hill Zinc Plant. Sometimes I stripped zinc in the cell room and sometimes I poured anodes with Sparky Jasburg, Mike Rieken, and Dale Fattu out in the anode shack.

Working weekends at the Zinc Plant was a good gig. I earned plenty of rent and spending money for the month and I was good enough at both pouring anodes and stripping zinc that I could come to work hungover or still kind of drunk, let the sulfuric acid fumes sober me up, grab a couple of naps during the shift, and get all my work done.

In the spring of 1973, I was working in the cell room, and I was on a lunch break, and into the lunch room strolled the Plant Superintendent, Bob Bird. I nearly shit my salami sandwich. I'd never seen Bob Bird in the lunch room before. I'd seen him stroll through the cell room a few times, but he was always talking with a shift boss or some other manager: he never talked to us workers.

I still don't understand why Bob Bird took on the matter he raised in the lunch room. I don't understand why he was at the plant on a weekend. It was close to Easter, either the weekend before or the weekend of. Easter was a paid holiday and the cell room was short-handed. That's kind of weird, actually, because working a paid holiday meant earning double time and a half.

Bob Bird explained the situation and asked if anyone would be available and willing to work on Easter Sunday. Now looking back, I wonder if there was some kind of labor action informally taking place. Looking back, I wonder if the strippers were trying to slow down production and make the company hurt a bit.

I don't know now and sure didn't know then.

I volunteered. Almost immediately.

I broad smile filled Bob Bird's face. He thanked me for my willingness to give up my Easter Sunday for the good of the Zinc Plant and, furthermore, exclaimed, "I will put a commendation on your record."

He said this in front of all my fellow workers.

I felt like the biggest ass kiss in the whole plant. I volunteered for the double time and half. I wasn't thinking about giving up my Easter and I didn't even know I had a record onto which a commendation could be entered.

Bob Bird left.

Bob Casady said, "Not bad, man. A fucking commendation on your record." He was sticking the needle in pretty deep.

The Easter Day shift came and went, I got my fat paycheck, and my life went down the track of earning a college degree, going to grad school, and picking up a two year temporary full-time job at Whitworth College in 1982-84.

In the spring of '84 I came home from Spokane for Easter. On Holy Saturday, Dad and I went to Dirty Ernie's uptown and got really drunk, so drunk the cops had to drive us home, and I had to walk uptown on Easter morning and get the car.

We got drunk with Bob Casady and the first words out of his mouth, after not having seen me for over ten years, were, "I will put a commendation on your record."

I about died and we laughed and laughed and drank schooner after schooner of draft lager beers and remembered how much fun we'd had at the Zinc Plant and laughed about all the psychos we worked with.

A couple or three years ago, I went to the University of Idaho to be a guest speaker in an American Studies course taught by Bob Bird's son, my friend for nearly fifty years, Kenton Bird.

Kenton had arranged for me to look at Bunker Hill records and artifacts in the afternoon. The University of Idaho holds these Bunker Hill records and artifacts.

I looked at different things for about an hour, and then I thought, "Hmmm, I wonder.....", but alas, search as I did, not only did I not find my Zinc Plant record, I didn't find my commendation either.

Rosie Goes to the University of Idaho

When I spoke to Professor Kenton Bird's American Studies class last Thursday at the University of Idaho, one of his students brought her daughter to class. Rosie brightened the room:

Three x Three Beautiful Things 3/28,29,30/07: Ed, Driving Idaho, Vandaltown, Lecture, Textiles, All Night, Doma, Lula's House,Blogger Paparazzi

1. Ed's career as a log truck driver has possibly come to an end. His boss, Buff, decided to call her quits in the logging business and Ed started a new job near Kellogg on Thursday.

2. Driving from Kellogg to Moscow, in and out of fog, from being in a blanket to breaking out into morning light, softly illuminating the mixture of farmland and timber, making it seem I had never seen it before.

3. Arriving at the University of Idaho, where I was never a student, but where I competed in music festivals, played high school basketball, visited my Aunt May, attended Vandal football games, enjoyed the early days of the jazz festival, stayed with my mother while she completed her Bachelor's degree in the mid-sixties; I have many, many wonderful memories and loved seeing the campus' physical beauty and feeling the affection I have for it again.

4. Professor Kenton Bird and I have been friends for forty-eight years and I was deeply honored that he invited me to speak to his American Studies students about my sense of place in Kellogg and the Silver Valley. I enjoyed Kenton's students and could barely believe as I walked around campus and admired the Administration building and the music building and Memorial Gymnasium, et. al., that I was actually lecturing or teaching for one day at the University of Idaho. I never dreamed I'd ever have the chance to do this!

I also met Tara Roberts, editor of the Argonaut, the U of I newspaper. She emailed me about her work on the Gault Hall fire; we've corresponded. It was wonderful to meet her.

5. I loved Gerri Sayler's textile art pieces at the Ridenbaugh Gallery. Gerri is Kenton's wife. I saw her four pieces before Kenton told me they were Gerri's and was immediately entranced and enchanted by her work.

6. When was the last time I was awake until after three in the morning talking with InlandEmpireGirl? Sober, no less. I got back to Kellogg from Moscow and the Cd'A Casino about 2 a.m., InlandEmpireGirl was awake with Snug in Mom's basement and we talked for the next hour or more. . . and then we were up at 8:30 ready to start our day of laughter and driving around with Silver Valley Girl.

7. My first coffee at Cafe Doma in Coeur d'Alene, a comfortable, modest shop owned and operated by Terry Patano and his wife, Rebecca. Terry and I knew each other as kids in Kellogg. He graduated two years after I did. He comes from a great family of good businessmen.




8. It wasn't pretty, but somehow heartwarming to go up to East Bridgeport and see Grandma Woolum's house, where she lived for a little over forty years until she died in 1991. A Jeep Wagoneer was parked in the yard where we used to eat outside; a big boat was in back; a new fence made it impossible to see the back of the house from the alley; the porch was rotting. Nonetheless, I loved seeing Grandma's house.

9. I got hassled twice by a manager at Huckleberries Gourmet Grocery in Spokane for taking pictures in the store. I told her I was taking them for my blog. I told her I teach English at Lane Community College. I told her I spoke yesterday at the University of Idaho. She looked at me blankly. I was trying to explain that I wasn't a gourmet grocery competitor. She seemed assured.

Order of the Arrow: Assignment #7

I gave the assignment this time to me and my sisters. We are to each write about something we did before junior high with a friend or friends that when you look back on it, you say, "That was so Kellogg!"

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I had to have been one of the least confident Boy Scouts in the history of the organization. Especially when I was eleven and twelve years old, I had little to no confidence in doing things with my hands and in Boy Scouts that included building a fire, putting up a tent, preparing a canoe to go out on the lake, or lashing together pieces of driftwood to build a raft, or, for that matter, lashing anything.

As a consequence of my lack of confidence, I relied heavily on Kenton Bird for help in doing scouting things. Kenton was a genius. He was the smartest kid in school and I had come to believe that if I followed his instructions, he could figure out anything that needed to be done. I like Kenton a lot, still do. He was a very good friend. Still is. And I depended on him to get me through our Boy Scout camping excursions.

At the end of the sixth grade, the now defunct Idaho Panhandle Council of the Boy Scouts of America in North Idaho organized a camping/trail clearing excursion on the David Thompson Trail. This was forty-one years ago and I'm not quite sure where we were. I'm thinking it must have been in the Selkirk Mountains. Almost had to be.

But here's what I do know: it was a Wilderness Survival Outing. It was an outing that would help meet certain requirements for the Wilderness Survival merit badge. Being a Wilderness Survival Outing, we were not allowed to bring tents. We brought plastic sheets and were required to construct lean-tos out of this plastic and natural materials around the site where we assigned to camp.

I had asked Kenton to be my lean-to mate. I knew I'd be lost in all areas of lean-to construction. I just didn't understand the lashing of poles and creating the right slant or any of that. I depended on Kenton.

I don't know if Kenton knew how much I was relying on him. Nonetheless, we erected a lean-to. Now, here's what I can't remember: I can't remember if it rained while we, as troop members erected these shelters, or if it started raining after dark.

Here's what I do know: out lean-to was not sufficiently slanted for the raindrops to run right off our shelter. Ours had a sag. The sag filled with water. The water broke. On a cold, late spring, North Idaho night, Kenton and I got drenched.

Our scoutmaster's pickup truck was nearby. I can't remember if we both got in it, but I know I did. Our scoutmaster must have known we were in trouble, because he let us in the truck and turned on the cab heater.

The next day was much better. We hiked the David Thompson trail and we did some light work helping clear the trail. We continued in Wilderness Survival mode, carrying our packs and eating very little.

That evening, the troops of the council gathered in a huge circle around a large campfire for a tapping in ceremony for the Order of the Arrow. I had no idea what was going on, only that scouts and men dressed in Indian costume were walking up to certain individual scouts and tapping them firmly on the shoulder three times: one (pause) (pause) two (pause) (pause) three. Then they were taken away.

Suddenly, a man dressed in loin cloth and with a ceremonially feathered head dress was standing in front of me. He looked stern. He raised his open hand slightly over his shoulder and tapped me three times. Two scouting-aged guys took me by the arms and led me away to where other guys who'd been tapped were gathered.

We were told what to do. We had to remain silent for the next twelve hours. We would be having an intiation into the Order of the Arrow in the fall at Camp Easton.

We had been voted into the Order of the Arrow by our fellow troop members.

We were honor campers.

I nearly barfed with guilt.

Looking back, I think of this as such a Kellogg moment. In Kellogg, I always felt in the dark about things. I just didn't seem to know what was going on in the bigger world and so I was often caught off-guard.

In this case, I was naive about Wilderness Survival camping.

I was clueless about the Order of the Arrow tapping in ceremony.

The scouts from Coeur d' Alene always seemed more worldly, more knowledgeable.

I felt inferior.

Only in Kellogg, I thought, would a scout who spent half the night in his Scoutmaster's pickup on a Wildnerness Survival Campout be elected to an elite group of scouts, chosen for their skill at camping.

Kenton was tapped in a year later.

Three Beautiful Things 12/18/2006: Woot!, Not PO'd at the PO, Kenton

1. In an email exchange with one of my former students, I picked up a new exclamation of joy: "Woot!" Until last night, at Othello rehearsal, when I handed Kellee a stage mug for stage beer, and she said, "Woot!", this exclamation had only been a virtual expression. I giggled and thanked Kellee for being the first person in my life to ever actually say, "Woot!" Woot!

2. Standing in line for about twenty minutes or so at the Post Office and watching customer after customer wait patiently and be served in a friendly and patient manner. Eric, the clerk I went to, wore fatigue on his face, but wished me a good day with sincerity and warmth.

3. Kenton Bird, my lifelong friend from Kellogg, has discovered my blog and reminded me of a time he and James, his quiet brother, came to our house for a Christmas smash and Dad referred to the reserved James as Kenton's "mouthy brother". My guess is that at some point in the evening, Dad also told him, after he hadn't spoken for about twenty minutes, "Hey! James! Shut up!" That was his way.