Memoirs of a Worldly Guy
We'll never know, of course, whether our bubble-headed behaviour led to our next assignment but it was certainly one way for the Black Diamond office to get rid of us for a week or so. We were told that we were going to enjoy a week or ten days of surveying along the Highwood River west of Longview. Since we would be some distance from civilization we would be required to take all the necessities of camping with us. The only thing the company had for us was the tent; the rest of the gear, air mattresses and sleeping bags, Coleman cooking stoves and lanterns, pots and pans and food would be our responsibility. All we had to do was keep track of our expenses amd we would be reimbursed.
I was not unfamiliar with the Highwood; Lloyd and I had fished on a number of occasions with our Dad as far west as Minesinger Hole, a favourite fishing spot in those days. Actually, I don't remember catching any fish there, but we could stand looking down into the clear water in the water-scoured hole and see the monster rainbows lurking there. The problem lay in the fact that they could see us too and obviously had no interest in our feeble attempts to catch them.
Art and I followed the river all the way west, almost to its source in the Rocky Mountains where there is a camping area in a meadow these days. In those days there was only a meadow; we could step across the Highwood and there was a minimum of traffic. We both learned a lot about rigging a tent since neither of us had beeen required to do it before.
'Go over and get a bucket of water while I rig up this lantern,' Art said confidently as he handed me a cooking pot then turned and pulled the Coleman lantern from its shipping box. Although this was all new to him, I had been dealing with the great new invention ever since my cousins first clustered around it doing their homework on the farm in Saskatchewan. I was tempted to linger but thought he was as capable of reading instructions as the next man.
I walked over to the river, only two and a half to three feet wide at this point and dipped out a potful of the clear water. I was half way back to the tent when I saw it suffused with a brief reddish glow then heard a barely audible 'Poof'! I quickened my pace and peered into the tent. Large particles of free carbon were floating about. Art was sitting on a camp chair in front of a card table holding the offending lamp, his face smudged with carbon.
'Are you okay?' I asked anxiously.
'Yeah, I'm okay! My feelings are hurt a bit though!'
Much relieved, I said 'You look very smart in your Al Jolson makeup!' I laughed hysterically, mostly with relief, partly with astonishment that he had escaped the explosion without damage.
'I reckon I haven't quite got the knack of this thing yet,' he said with a rueful smile. I thought asking him to get down on one knee to sing a few bars of 'Mammy' might be pushing my luck.
Our menu for the next ten days was definitely not 'haute cuisine' but it was tasty and there was lots of it. I took to cooking as though it were genetically inspired; bacon or ham and fried eggs with toast and cups of coffee were automatic for breakfast. Pork chops in mushroom soup gravy with tinned baby green peas and mashed potatoes were a big hit. Peanut butter and strawberry jam on brown bread sandwiches were popular lunch fare and tea with lots of tinned milk and sugar took the place of fresh milk. Burns meats used to produce a tin of sausages which tied in nicely with boiled potatoes and generous dollops of butter. Tomato ketchup and '57' Sauce were available in quantity.
Since we had arrived at our campsite we had observed on a two-hourly basis a Dench Storage truck coming from a track beyond the end of the road and grinding its low gear as it made the turn and climbed up the steep gradient at the bottom of the hill. Just as the truck ascended the steepest section the long fir poles (presumably destined to become fence rails) which were twice the length of the truck bed, dragged along the ground behind the truck and the front wheels lifted completely off the road.
The next day we located and tied into a bench mark and started to survey along the river with alidade and plane table. I was driving back and forth between survey points on a crude dirt road studded with granite rocks projecting from the dirt. On one passage I heard and felt a hard impact but thought nothing of it. However, on my return to the flag point I saw a long dark streak on the dusty road which I concluded was suspiciously like motor oil. I stopped the car and went back to give it the 'Scotch Whiskey Test'. It was motor oil! When I looked under the car I realized the unusual bump I had felt was a result of the cap on the oil pan impacting an unforgiving rock and peeling the cap back like a banana skin. I walked back and consulted with Art. It was agreed that he would start to whittle a plug to pound into the hole where the oil pan cap had been and I would stand by to flag down the Dench truck and appeal for assistance. The next time the truck came out of the trees and entered the meadow prior to starting up the hill I flagged it to a halt and spoke to the driver.
'Sorry, I don't carry any spare oil with me in the truck but the old boy may have some back at his ranch. That's him riding up on the top of the load.' I jumped up onto the running board of the truck and explained our problem to the old cowboy sitting up there.
'I jist got this truck rented for today and we got one more load to git before we're through. I got no problem with giving you some oil though, when the time comes.'
'How about this,' I said. 'I'll come into your ranch with you now and help you to unload, then we can bring the oil back with us and drop it off with my buddy. I could even go back with you and help to load up the truck .'
'Well now, that ain't too bad an idea when you come to think of it,' he said. 'Why don't you hop up here with me and we'll do it your way? Lord knows we can use all the help we can git!' He reached down a large, horny hand and pulled me up to sit beside him.
'Name's Weadick,' he said, 'Guy Weadick.' I tried to conceal my amazement but I'm sure my jaw dropped at least slightly and my eyes bugged out. Son of a bitch! I thought to myself, here I am sitting on a pile of timber with a man who's literally a 'legend in his own time'! Guy Weadick was born in New York but had come up from Minnesota in 1920 with his trick-roping wife Flo and eventually staged the original Calgary Stampede. I told him who I was but didn't notice his jaw drop! We ground up the steep initial incline and rolled on down the road until we slowed down to pass Art, who was standing beside the car whittling a plug.
'I'll be back,' I yelled at him, 'I'm going in to pick up some oil!' We had gone about another five miles when the truck took a sudden sideways lurch and Guy was thrown heavily against one of the upright posts holding the rails in place.
'Sumbitch! That surely does smart!' he groaned, holding his side. I was thinking meanwhile that we were lucky that we hadn't lost the whole load with us riding off with it, hopefully on top of the pile. The trucker had stopped in the meantime and had come around to peer under the truck to see if he had broken an axle. He stood up with a look of intense relief on his face. The culverts used on the dirt roads built back in 'the boonies' in those days were not the sturdy corrugated steel used on the main thoroughfares. They were built of long two by twelve inch wooden planks fastened together and had a limited life span, but they were cheap. The heavily loaded truck was too much for one of them and its collapse had caused the accident.
Guy's ranchhouse was built on a raised piece of land about a quarter of a mile north of the road and the truck pulled up beside the pile of railings from previous trips. We all, including the driver, set to work and had the truck unloaded in little more than half an hour. Guy went over to a work shed and came back with three one-quart tins of Quaker State motor oil.
'D'ya reckon this'll do ya?' he said.
'Good enough for starters,' I replied.
All three of us piled into the truck cab and headed back for the next load. We eventually reached Art who was asleep on the hood of the car.
'How did you make out with the oil pan plug?' I asked him when he regained consciousness.
'Perfect! I whittled a perfectly tapered plug of willow about four inches long and pounded it into the hole. I figure it's tighter than a bear's ass in fly time' he said proudly.
'D'you think three quarts of oil's enough?'
'Sure, it'll get us into Longview tomorrow and we can top it up; maybe buy a case of oil while we're at it...the company can pay for it!'
I went on with Guy and the truck to where the stripped rails were piled and helped him and the driver load up the truck and head back toward Longview. They dropped me off where Art was waiting at the roadside with the survey car.
'Did you recognize that old boy who was moving the railings?' I asked Art.
'No, I never laid eyes on him in my life, why?'
'Because it was only Guy Weadick, the founder of the Calgary Stampede, that's why!'
'No shit?'
'No shit! He wants us to follow him in to his ranch and and have supper with him and his wife.'
'That could be a pleasant change,' Art said.
'Watch your tongue, mister! Smart remarks to the cook can prove dangerous to your health.'
'Only kidding...I'm just crazy about your cooking!'
'I think you're just crazy!'
It was nearly five o'clock so we decided to pack it in for the day. Even though we had done precious little surveying, I had met Guy Weadick, learned how to stack fence rails and Art had learned how to whittle a wooden oil pan plug. Not exactly a wasted day!
It took us about forty-five minutes to move our excess gear into the tent and zip it up then drive into the Weadick ranch. The last load of rails had been unloaded and the Dench truck had departed by the time we arrived.
The ranchhouse was a rambling structure of indeterminate age. We were intoduced to Guy's wife Flores (just call me Flo). She had aged since the promotional photos framed on the walls showing her twirling her lariat while standing free on the back of a galloping horse. The only clear memory I have of the meal is the frying pan full of greasy, overcooked pork chops.
I met Guy Weadick at a gathering of some kind late in the 'forties' and asked him if he remembered me and the day I helped him load fence rails.
'I surely do, son,' he said. 'Do you remember when that damn culvert collapsed and I got thrun' agin that upright?'
'Yeah, I do!'
'Well, I found out when I got to the doctor that I had broke two ribs!' I remembered that he had continued loading rails, grunting only occasionally with the pain. Most men would have taken the rest of the day off. Well, he was a tough cowboy!
Having served our penance for past 'stupidities' Art and I were instructed to pile all of our remaining camping gear into the car and return to the Black Diamond office. Just as we were about to leave the Black Diamond office 'Sinky' called us off to one side.
'Is there a road going up the side of that mountain to the west of where you were camping?' he asked.
'Yeah, I think there is,' Art said, 'it's a bit basic, though, why?'
'We feel like we'd like to check out one of the altimeters against what the map says its elevation is.'
'Yeah, okay,' Art said, taking the altimeter 'Sinky' handed to him.
'As a matter of fact,' 'Sinky' said, 'you may as well take two of them, then we can check one against the other.'
'Great idea!' Art said sourly.
'Is this another one of his sadistic punishments, this altimeter caper?' I said to Art as we were driving back to our camp.
'I don't think so,...why?' he said.
'Well, I've been looking up at the so-called road on the side of that mountain and it barely looks wide enough for one car. There are mountain goat and mountain sheep trails slanting across the hard shale scree at sharp angles; if you went over the edge you'd make it all the way to the bottom with no trouble! I don't know what the hell was used to cut it out but it looks like maybe one pass from a bull dozer was all it got. It's probably three or four thousand feet to the top from our camp! If you want to be selfish you can have all the fun and excitement of climbing up to the top all by yourself...don't expect me to volunteer!' Back at the camp Art walked over to the base of the mountain to inspect the 'road'.
'I think you're right about the road,' he said when he returned, 'there's not even a set of car tracks.' Nevertheless, the next day he decided we should give it a try. We started out at a sensible pace but the car bounced around maniacally, coming at times dangerously close to the unguarded edge of the road. 'Bugger this! I'm getting out!' Art exclaimed. 'Stop the car'. He opened the door on his side but found he was looking straight down the side of the mountain. 'Get out! I'm gonna have to get out on your side.' I pulled on the hand brake and stepped out of the car. The door impacted the side of the mountain so I was unable to get out without difficulty.
Art came out and started walking back down the road. Well, what the hell, I thought,...'nothing ventured, nothing gained!' Maybe if if I go up a bit higher I'll find a wider place where I can turn around. I proceeded on up the road but there were places where the road was not only uneven, it actually slanted toward the downhill edge. When the car started to bounce again I occasionally had the feeling that all four wheels were off the road at the same time. To hell with this! I thought. I stopped the car and sat for a while trying to decide whether to continue my foolish attempt to carry on to the top.
My new expertise at driving backwards was the deciding factor, so I put the car in reverse and began a slow, careful backward descent of the treacherous road. As soon as I reached a wider part of the road I opened my door a few inches and held one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the door handle so I could make a rapid exit if the car went over the edge. When I reached the bottom and stopped several feet into the meadow I was drenched with perspiration, more from nerves than from effort.
'I could hardly stand to watch!' Art said as he came up to the car.
'I'm sure it must have been extremely trying for you; how great do you think I felt?' I said ironically. 'I guess we're going to have to climb up there to get the readings.'
'Let's not and say we did!' Art commented. I could scarcely believe my ears; surely he knew if we were found out he would be liable for another tongue-lashing from the irascible 'Sinky'. Maybe he'd just reached the point where he no longer gave a damn.
I suddenly had another rush of sludge to my brain. 'Hey, don't all of the bench marks have their true elevations stamped on the brass plates set into them?' Art got a strange pensive look on his face.
'As a matter of fact, I think they do...now why didn't I think of that?''
'No comment!' I said dryly. 'Sinky' must have thought of it, though.'
'That's right! The rotten prick!'
'Amen!' I said.
Following our return to Black Diamond we were set loose once again in the high hills along the Sheep River west of Turner Valley. This time we were equipped with altimeters and specific instructions to take readings above and below the roads running along steep mountainsides. One day Art parked the car by a flag halfway down a long sloping road that ran down to the river level.
'Why don't you walk down the road and come back along the riverbed until you're just below where we're parked. We can confirm your elevation by a simple subtraction. I'll go on up the mountainside a couple of hundred feet or so and take readings on the way back down.' Art said.
'Sounds okay to me,' I said. 'I guess I'll see you back here in about an hour.' It took me about fifteen minutes to walk down the hill, keeping a rough estimate of how far I had come. At this point the Sheep was only a few feet wide, similar to the Highwood further to the south. I picked my way carefully downstream until I figured I was very close to a point directly below where the car was parked, then took another altimeter reading. I was one hundred and fifty feet below the car.
There was no particular reason for me to get back to the car quickly but I stood for a while considering the options. If I returned by the same route I had come it would take the better part of an hour. On the other hand, if I climbed straight up the cliff I could be there in fifteen or twenty minutes. Such a dilemma! Decisions, decisions! The thought of walking back up the stream and then up the road to the car seemed sensible but tedious. I opted for the quick climb! Laziness triumphed again!
I slung the altimeter around to my back so that it was hanging from my neck by its leather strap and started up the cliff. It was easy going at first and I was convinced I had made the right choice. There were enough scrub pines and firs growing out from the bank to make the climbing fairly rapid. When I was only about twenty feet from the top of the face things got more complicated. I was crouching on a ledge to the right of which was a sheer wall of sandstone that ran off in a downstream direction and went clear up to the top of the wall. It was obviously an insurmountable obstacle.
To my left was a scree slope eight or ten feet wide that ran up almost to the top of the wall. On the far side of the scree slope there was a solitary little fir sapling that would provide a handhold if I could reach it. If I could reach it! Once there the rest of the climb would be simple.
I had some familiarity with scree slopes and was aware that in most cases they were at the angle of repose. To test my concern I picked up a hand-sized slab of sandstone and tossed it onto the scree slope. It immediately began a slow downward slide until it reached the bottom of the slope and toppled over the edge. I heard it hit the side of the wall twice as it fell until it finally hit the stream with a distant watery splash.
Very unconcerting! I was running out of options.
I knew from experience that climbing down was a hell of a lot trickier than climbing up. I had made a few long stretches on my way up and I could see where I was headed! Going down would be an entirely different story. I had begun to acquire a thin bead of perspiration--from fear, not exertion. To tell the truth, I was 'shit scared'! Such was my condition that I even fantasized that Art would discern my dilemma and appear at the edge of the chasm with a rope which he would lower to me so that I could scramble nimbly to safety. Yeah, right!
There was one other option that I had not thought of previously---I could just sit there and shout 'Mommmyyy!! Nah, that wouldn't work! My thoughts kept alternating between 'Rock and a Hard Spot' and, for some stupid scholastic reason, 'Scylla and Charybdis'.
I started to contemplate the scree slope option once more and focused my gaze on the lonely little fir sapling. Was it possibly sufficiently deep-rooted enough to sustain my weight, or was it just a shallow-rooted seedling that would pull up slowly and agonizingly and send me sliding down the scree slope to my inevitable death on the riverbed rocks far below?
To hell with this! I thought; if I sit here thinking about it much longer I'll be too old to do it when I do make up my mind! So saying, I gathered up my legs and lunged toward the little sapling. I can't remember whether I shouted 'Geronimo' in my headlong plunge but I later thought it would have seemed romantic on film, especially if the sapling was uprooted. I do remember my boots sinking into the soft scree as I scrabbled desperately toward the lonely sapling. When I finally grabbed it I lay absolutely still, muttering supplications that I would not begin a slow downward drift. Maybe I was praying! Hmm,--first time in donkey's years! But the sturdy little sprout held fast! I later concluded that it was a sucker root from one of the solidly-rooted trees at the top of the cliff. Allah be praised! Scrambling on up to the road on the grassy slope remaining was a piece of cake.
'Christ, you'll never believe what I just put myself through for the sake of saving a few minutes,' I said as Art came down onto the road.
'Whatta you mean?' he asked, so I took the opportunity to tell him in detail how I had nearly managed to make myself dead for eternity all for the sake of saving a few minutes of tiresome walking. I admit I was disappointed by his apparent lack of awed amazement when I told him my story.
'Didn't you see any of the boulders?' was his response.
'Boulders? What boulders?' I exclaimed.
'There were some big round boulders up on the mountainside that I've been rolling down in your direction as a bit of a lark!'
'A bit of a lark?' I cried. 'What the hell's the matter with you, anyway?' I had a mental image of me being broadsided by a high speed boulder just as I was in the middle of my death-defying leap across the scree slope. 'I suppose it didn't occur to you that one of them might have smashed into the car?'
'As a matter of fact, that never even occurred to me,' he said blandly, but I could see that he was slightly embarrassed as the implications of his behaviour became more obvious to him. 'Maybe they didn't even make it this far,' he said propitiously, 'probably ran into trees or something.'
I was still fuming but in later years I began to think that he hadn't rolled any boulders down the hill at all. Perhaps it was only his way of making sport of my story of derring-do; I'll probably never know!
Several days later we were surveying along a road in hilly country west of Kew, a one-building town that no longer shows up on the map. We had reached the top of a hill at the east edge of a deep valley and proceeded down the hill in ten foot increments. The reason for this was that the rod itself was barely ten feet long when unfolded. Since we were 'levelling' we could take shots of great length as long as the variation in the ground level did not exceed ten feet. On steep hills this required our making shots of as little as one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet. When I reached the bottom of the valley I found that the beribboned peg to support the rod had been pulled out and tossed to one side. I searched around but could not find a hole where it had been lodged.
It was a brutally hot day and when I called up to Art to tell him of the missing peg, he thought about it for a minute. I'm fairly sure I knew what he was thinking; if I hammered the peg back in at the absolute bottom of the hill (which was where it probably belonged) we would have to make two more traverses down and two more up in the stifling heat. Art cleverly decided that all of this bother could be avoided by a simple manoeuvre.
'Take the peg up the far side of the valley to where I can take a reading,' he said, not moving from where he stood. What a splendid 'effort-saving' idea I thought, as I happily complied with his instructions.
Daily surveying became very much of a routine for days on end after that; only occasionally would we encounter the gravity survey teams going about their chores. It seemed that we were sent to do levelling mostly where the geologists had made a favourable report. We would be followed in turn by the gravity meter crews.
Returning to the office one day to store our equipment we noticed that the management was in a considerably excited state, talking animatedly about an 'anomaly' that had appeared after the maps had been brought up to date with sub-surface isobars. 'Sinky' even took time to show Art exactly where the 'discovery' had been made.
Sitting in the hotel beer parlour later, taking our ease, I noticed that Art had once again adopted the distant, far away look that had been made popular by John Wayne and other cowboy heroes of the day. 'That 'discovery' Sinky showed me was made right where we were surveying a week or so ago,' he said tersely.
'Really?'
'Really--and do you remember the hot day when I had you move the flagged peg further up the hillside?'
'As a matter of fact, I do!'
'Well, that's what all the excitement is about across the street.'
'So it isn't a 'discovery' after all; it's just a levelling crew screw-up!'
'Right!'
'What're ya gonna do about it?'
'I'm going to go across the street and break the good news to 'Sinky'.'
'Jeez! It must be hell to have a conscience!'
'I guess I'm about to find out,' Art said bravely as he finished his beer.
The 'boo boo' we had committed was considerably more egregious than previous ones so that the ritual 'chewing-out' by 'Sinky' was extended accordingly. It was several days before we were re-admitted to the human race.
Sometime near the end of July we were informed that the entire 'organization' was scheduled to move to an area somewhere south of Bragg Creek, complete with packhorses and all. Oh, goody! Sometime about a week later I decided that it was time for me to quit--so I did! My only satisfaction came from the extreme annoyance it generated in 'Sinky'!
It was not as though I didn't have adequate reasons. In the first place I was tired of working for a living, even though working with Art made it much more bearable. I had enough 'fuck you!'money to last me until the following summer and in the meantime I had things to organize. As President of the Sophomore Class I had somehow inherited responsibility for the organization of the Freshman Introduction.
— The End —