I wrote the following after a visit from my sister Delores in the mid-1990s. I am not sure of the exact date. The reason this is being included on this site is simply to furnish a little more insight into who I am and some of my background. It may or may not be of interest to anyone in future generations including my own children.

As Delores’ Plymouth station wagon turned the corner and disappeared from view heading up the hill to the freeway which would take her to Seattle to visit her daughter, Denise, I was filled with a sad, empty void. The sadness and the emptiness was not caused by her leaving, in fact I was rather happy to see her go, but rather by what she was taking with her – and by what she left behind.

Delores arrived Friday evening and left Sunday morning. A short stay of less than two days. But the longest of the half dozen visits we have had in the last 40 years. In some ways I wish it had been shorter, or not happened at all.

We were able to work in a pleasant visit to St.Helens to see Diana and her children Saturday morning and then we dropped Dorie off at home to finish arrangements for a dinner with John & his wife, Carol, in the evening.

Delores and I then went to the Rose Test Gardens and took an auto tour of Portland. Her biggest concern was that she didn’t see any “bums or winos” laying around the streets near Burnside and Broadway. This really seemed to disappoint her. And she wanted to know where the red light district was. I told her honestly that I didn’t know.

I couldn’t seem to have an actual conversation with her. Whether it was me or her, I don’t know, but I seemed to be constantly warding off a confrontation by simply letting a conversation die. Whenever politics or religion was discussed (who, in their right mind, brings these subjects up, anyway?) she initiated the discussion with a sharp statement in a manner which dared anyone to disagree. Not the best way to begin amicable conversation.

During one of her infrequent lapses when she forgot to be confrontational but was simply reminiscing, she mentioned the times we visited our grandmother in Montana. All of a sudden, the flood gates of my memory were opened. Suppressed memories sprang forth from deep recesses where I had managed to bury them for so many years and I was filled at once with both a sadness for the past and a sure knowledge that if the past had been different, so would today.

As I gaze out the windows of the passenger coach at the telephone lines, they constantly dip and rise again to meet the next telephone pole. Up, sway down, and up again to the next pole. Mile, after mile of nothing but telephone poles and lines standing like sentinels between the rails and the untold acres of grain marching across Washington. Occasionally the scene is broken by a glimpse of the steam engine or its smoke rushing toward the back of the train. The scene is both hypnotic and boring.

Extra engines are added to help pull us over the pass out of Spokane. Sharp curves and steep grades permit us several times to look down and see the last cars of the train below us.

The train finally pulls into Missoula, Montana, and we get off. Delores and I ask around and are taken to a bus terminal and board for Corvallis (or Hamilton – I cannot recall for sure). It is night when we get to Corvallis.

We are supposed to me met, but no one is there for us. The station agent (he owned the pharmacy as I recall) placed a telephone call and after sometime we were taken out to our grandmother’s farm.

Thus starts this great adventure! Delores is here to start school! But not college as one might think. This train ride is my earliest memory and Delores is six years old and starting first grade. I am three. The year is 1940. Where this trip originated, Portland or Klamath Falls, and why we were sent away from our mother I don’t know.

I can’t remember much about the next year. Only several things have stayed in my memory over the years and these things I have always recalled.

Grandma's home after it was remodeled.

Turning off the main road, you passed a gravel pit on the left and then came to a beautiful two story, white farm house. You turned to the right down her lane, passed her large garden, to her small two room home. Near the house were the shop and feed storage and several large chicken houses.

Grandma Ethel Cox and George "Shorty" Korman

Grandma would later marry Shorty and they combined their farms and turned his home into a milk separating shed.

As I recall, uncle Duane and his youngest sister, aunt Betty, also lived at home then and I seem to recall several others also, so we must have been quite crowded in the small home. Grandma had several cows, hundreds of chickens and raised alfalfa, peas, strawberries, watermelon and sugar cane.

The last two were experimental crops underwritten by the government to try and help the small farmers find what crops might grow in areas where they had never been tried before.

This was not finished at the time although I had the best of intentions. That is one of the reasons for this blog. I will try to do better in the future and continue to post memories and happenings as time permits.

The bottom picture is of my grandmother and Shorty on the front porch of her home as it looked in 1937 when I was born in the bedroom of her 2 room home.

Today is Father’s Day and John sent me a card with a picture of one of Norman Rockwell’s paintings of a father, son and their dog heading off for a day of fishing. I loved the card and John’s comments on fishing memories.

Fishing does build many pleasant memories and it has always been one of my favorite pastimes. I haven’t done much of it the last few years but I have many wonderful memories that can take me to a stream or lake pretty much at will. Not as good as actually doing something, but it is a whole lot easier. I can visit so many places, times and events quickly without even getting into the car.

Along with all of the great memories of fishing in my childhood with friends and relatives and later with Dorie and our children there is an occasional fishing experience that might be better forgotten.

Like most boys of the time growing up in Klamath Falls, I first learned to fish for chubs and yellow perch in Klamath Lake, Link River and Lake Euwana. As I grew into my teens and had access to a vehicle, either my own, the families or a friends I broadened my experience and began fishing for trout in the many streams and rivers in Southern Oregon. I soon became sort of a trout snob and would no longer even consider fishing for a warm water fish, let alone a lowly chub!

Well I got brought up short when I moved to the San Francisco Oakland Bay area in 1959. It was hard to find good trout fishing that was close by and uncrowded. In time I was able to find several nice trout fishing spots close to home but it took awhile.

The big thing in the Bay Area was salt water fishing or black bass. I began to follow Bud Boyd, an outdoor columnist for the Chronicle, who was really talking up the wild sport provided by fresh water bass. The more I read, the more I just had to try it.

But I had no idea where to start.

Then one day I saw an ad for an all day Bass Fishing Clinic that would teach you all the secrets you needed to become an expert bass fisherman. It was sponsored by – guess who? – Bud Boyd, the columnist who had been hooking all of his readers on the thrills of the sport for the past month or so.

Well, I just had to sign up. It was held at a private resort in the foothills above Napa Valley and only cost about $25.00 as I recall. That was in 1961/1962 dollars so it was really quite spendy. But I had to go and learn all of his secrets.

Dorie and I had not been married too long at the time and while I would have like her to go with me, we just couldn’t afford it. So I would go, learn everything I could and then teach her.

The day arrived and I headed up to the resort. After several hours of Bud and one of his buddies demonstrating every technique known to man that was guaranteed to catch bass, we headed to p0nds scattered around the resort. Together with the other students I flailed the water with plugs, spinners, spinner baits and plastic worms for about 4 hours and managed to catch a small bass.

In the afternoon I headed home a little discouraged by my lack of success but confident that given time and more practice I would be able to perfect and put in practice all that I had learned.

I was a great trout fisherman and no stupid bass was about to get the best of me!

When I arrived home, I went to place my magnificent bass (maybe 12 inches long) in our refigerator. I opened the door and my jaw just dropped!

Inside were 4 or 5 beautiful bass, the smallest of which would have made several of mine. I yelled to Dorie to find out where they had come from. Like maybe they had just mysteriously appeared.

It seems that, shortly after I left that morning, my cousin Bill had stopped by to see if I wanted to go fishing. Since I wasn’t there, he took Dorie with him to Lake Berryessa and taught her how to bass fish.

They were gone less time that I was, the trip was free and they both had fun and caught fish!

Dorie and I have fished many times together since that day and I have yet to catch bigger or more bass, crappie or bluegill than she did on any of our trips. But she has never beat me trout fishing.

Maybe that is what I should stick with.

You cannot really know anyone unless you know what makes them laugh. With this in mind I will, from time to time, include here short stories and happenings that have brought tears of laughter to my eyes.

I am not sure where I originally found The Golden Belly Button but I read it now and then and always get a chuckle out of it. I hope you enjoy it.

The Golden Belly Button

Once upon a time a young lad was born without a belly button. In its place was a golden screw. All the doctors told his mother that there was nothing they could do. He would have to live with it.

The years passed, and they were hard for the boy, as everyone who saw the screw made fun of him. Then one day, when he was fully grown, a mysterious stranger saw his belly and told him of a swami in Tibet who could get rid of the screw for him. The man was thrilled.

The next day he took his life’s savings and bought a ticket to Tibet. After several days of climbing upteep cliffs, he came upon a huge mona-stery. The swami knew exactly why he had come. He told the man to sleep in the highest tower of the monastery and the following day when he awoke, the screw would have been removed.

That night the man went to the room and fell asleep. While he slept, a purple fog floated in through an open window bearing in its mist a golden screwdriver. In just moments, the screwdriver removed the screw and disappeared out of the window.

The next morning when he woke, the man saw the golden screw laying on the pillow next to him. Reaching down, he felt his navel. The screw was gone! Jubilant, he leaped out of bed and his butt fell off.

Watching the young people at Katelin’s graduation made me think of the mortar board I bought in December 1954. The seniors were instructed to reserve gowns and to purchase their caps to be ready for graduation in June. Seems awful early but we needed them for our pictures in the El Rodeo, our high school yearbook.

Well, I followed instructions, for once, and had my picture taken with full cap and gown as you can see. But I was not to wear that particular cap and gown except in that practice. In June 1955, when my class was graduating, I was stationed aboard the USS Holmes County (LST 836) in San Diego harbor preparing for my first trip to Japan with a stop in Hawaii.

My freshman year in high school was great and I managed straight A’s taking advanced subjects. Then I sort of went off the deep end. I kept up my music, sort of, playing in the pep band, marching band, concert band and orchestra. But most of my other subjects suffered. Out of 12 possible course credits my sophomore year, I was awarded 5.

The next 2 years did not improve. I was having a hard time in school and with life in general ending up in serious trouble with the juvenile authorities.

Graduation looked bleak to me. I had taken courses in summer school to make up some of my earlier misses and only lacked a required semester in English to matriculate. But it was not to be.

In January 1955 I went to the post office, where all of the military recruiting offices were located to enlist in the Air Force. Walking down the hall I noticed the Naval recruiting office and thought, well why not give it a try. (I was not terribly goal driven at this stage of life.)

One reason for joining the military at that time, in addition to escaping from a bad situation, was that the GI Bill was ending January 31, 1955, and if I enlisted before then I would be eligible for educational benefits.

While in the Navy, I tested for and qualified for my high school GED certificate and passed the 1 and 2 year college equivalency exams.

Upon discharge, I was accepted at So Oregon State College (now Southern Oregon University) in Ashland, OR and the University of Oregon, Eugene, OR. After working for about 18 months at Weyerhaeuser Timber Co to get some funds together I decided instead to enroll at the University of California, Berkeley.  It seems odd, but the tuition and fees at Cal were cheaper that in the resident fees in Oregon.

None of that materialized. I went to Oakland, California and stayed with my aunt Doris, her husband Ray Stowe and my cousins, Bill and Sandra and started job hunting. My intention was to get a part time job and go to school during the day. When the part time job market fizzled, I went to work full time for Shell Chemical Co., San Francisco, where I met and eventually married my wonderful wife, Dorie.

While with Shell, we were transferred to different localities and I would enroll in the local college to continue my education. I ended up studying at Oakland City College, Berkeley, Long Beach State College, Portland State College, Portland Community College, Marylhurst University and the University of Portland. And some correspondence course thrown in.

During final exams at Marylurst in May 1984, I put in a day of work, sat for a final exam in the evening and then Dorie and I drove to Rexburg, Idaho, to attend Diana’s graduation from Ricks College (now BYU-Idaho). It was wonderful seeing her graduate with a college degree and I still didn’t have mine.

While I was in school Diana was a very important part of my educational process. There were many papers to write and they all seemed to be many pages long. I did not type much at all and this was before the computer.

We had an old electric typewriter that Diana pounded away on for me, re-doing some pages several times.

The payoff came in June 1984, two weeks after Diana graduated when she was in the audiance and yelled “Yay, Dad!”, when I walked down the aisle to receive my diploma.

It was a long road to an education and it is not yet finished as I continue to study and learn as much as I can in this life. I would recommend to all young people that they take an easier path.

Our granddaughter, Katelin Marie Johnstun, graduated from St. Helens High School yesterday. What a mile stone this is in a young person’s life. Most people will not appreciate just how major a step this is until later in life.

Katelin stepped on a nail earlier in the day and as she marched in the processional it was obvious that her foot was hurting from the injury. But she was there!

As she came into view in front of the reviewing stand I glanced at her mother, Diana Johnstun, and saw her eyes glistening with tears. It is a big moment in life when we see our children getting ready to leave the nest and face the world more alone in life than they could ever imagine.

She plans to attend college this Fall. I am not sure what she will be studying and I do not know whether or not she knows yet for sure. She has a job now as an assistant in a care facility so she may follow that path. (She is working a 12 hours shift there today, sore foot or not.) She has a real love for animals and could end up in a veterinary arena of some kind. Photography is also an interest, so a career as an animal or wildlife photographer?

This is all speculation and dreams on my part. I have no idea what her life goals are.

Katelin is the 3rd of our 6 grandchildren to graduate high school so we are half way there. She has had a rocky road the past couple years so it was really great to see her hang in and reach out for the diploma cover.

I was impressed with all of the graduates. The boys seem so much more mature and the young women so much more poised than when I was that age. I think our future is in good hands.

The only sour note for me was one of the valedictorian speakers said that going forth they must not be rigid like an old large tree but be flexible like a reed. They need to bend with the wind and compromise.

In my mind, this is one thing that is wrong in the world today. Too many people are seeking compromise rather than sticking up for their beliefs and principles. This was especially driven home to me this past week as Dorie and I began watching the award-winning television series “The World At War”.

Neville Chamberlain epitomized a “flexible reed”. Had he and the French had more back-bone, we might never have had a Second World War. We need to be teaching more about history and the dangers of compromise in our schools.

‘Nuff of the soap box. I’ll write more about my own education and the importance of graduating in a future post.

Katelin, we love you and are proud of you! Congratulations!