The greatest of
evils and the worst of crimes is poverty.
George Bernhard Shaw
Chapter 25
Poor Old German Immigrant
I didn’t have a penny in my pocket, but nerve enough to buy an established business with a partner in the sleepy little town of Mission City, population 5,000, with a large hinterland. Well, if you can’t get a job, start a business. The success of the endeavor would hinge on my ability to satisfy the customers, people hopelessly addicted to the boob tube. I was introverted and shy when dealing with people, and in this business I would have to deal with many people, most of them crabby because their TV was on the fritz.
Martha and I didn’t even own a television. I thought that 90 percent of the programming was trash, and now I was trying to make a living with something I didn’t believe in.
Hank, my business partner, had no inhibitions, he was a wheeler-dealer. Hank was a street smart fighter, and Hank also had a way of winning at negotiations, which I lacked.
Hank was also born in Berlin, Germany, and at age 18 he had joined the 100,000 men German Army of the Weimar Republic. He started out with the cavalry. After Hitler came to power and Goering started a new Luftwaffe, Hank trained as a bomber pilot. At the beginning of World War II he flew a He-111 bomber. In 1940 he was shot down during a raid on Brighton, England, but managed to make a wheels up landing on the beach, and became a POW. In 1941 all German POWs held in Great Britain were transferred by sea to Canada, because of the fear of a German invasion.
Hank, who had many stories about his trip to Canada, ended up in a big POW camp near Lethbridge, Alberta. The POWs of the camp could work outside in canneries if they wanted to and many did, just to fight the boredom. They got paid a nominal amount. Many of them were there for years, and had money to spend.
Hank, already the wheeler-dealer in those days, operated the canteen in camp, selling merchandise to the POWs. At the end of the war Hank was doing one million dollars worth of business per year. When the camp was closed, he volunteered to stay on in Canada for another 18 months, and worked for a lumber company in Grande Prairie as a book keeper. When he had to leave, his boss told him, “Hank, if you want to come back and settle here, just write us and we’ll help you.”
It was 1947 when Hank returned to Schwerin, Germany and found his wife and daughter. He was dismayed about the living conditions in the Russian occupation zone. As a well dressed, well fed POW just returning from Canada, Hank stuck out. Since he also couldn’t keep his mouth shut on how shitty the conditions in Germany were, he clashed with the communist officials in Schwerin almost instantly.
When he was tipped off that he was on the arrest list, Hank and his family fled to East Berlin, and then crossed into West Berlin. He went straight to the Canadian Consulate there and demanded that they send him “home” again. When the consul wanted to know what he meant by that, Hank told him his story. The consul laughed and said that he would notify him as soon as immigration to Canada opened. Hank was back in Grande Prairie with his family by 1950.
When Hank and I bought the business in Mission City in 1958, we had to cut expenses to the bone so we shared a rented house. It was a nice two bedroom, two bath house with a beautiful view, overlooking the Frazer River valley and the Cascade mountains across the border in the state of Washington. Mission City was only ten miles north of the US border. Togetherness with another couple in one house is difficult, unless you have a common background. Martha was from southern Germany and Erna from the northern part. They differed in opinion on everything, and so did their cooking. The only thing they agreed on was soap opera time on TV.
Hank and I worked on a strict schedule. In the morning I would be in the store’s workshop repairing televisions and radios that required pulling the chassis and replacing internal parts. Hank would take care of mail and banking during that time. In the afternoon I would go on service calls to customers and repair TV sets that could be fixed at the customer’s home by replacing vacuum tubes.
The installation of new TV antennas was also my job. Since it was raining a lot in B. C. that was often a nasty and dangerous job. Fortunately almost all buildings were single story dwellings, but cedar shingle roofs are not safe to walk on when wet.
Hank specialized in sales of new and used TVs, radios, and hi-fi systems. He often bragged that he made more money for the company in a sale than I did in a day of service work. Hank couldn’t have sold TVs in that town, if I hadn’t provided reliable service. Tactless remarks like that pissed me off, because here was Hank with his ass in the warm and dry store, while I was on the road in nasty, rainy weather, jousting with bitchy customers over a few bucks for a service call.
To add to our income, Martha went to part time work at the local bus depot café. I thought it was mostly to escape Erna, but we surely needed that extra money. Many of the local business people went to the bus depot for lunch every day, including the manager of the Bank of Nova Scotia. He noticed that Martha treated the customers well and handled the money efficiently. He asked her one day if she would be interested in working at his bank. That started her career in banking, which continued for 28 years until her retirement.
Indeed a British subject now
In December of 1958 Martha and I had to go back to Vancouver just two days before Christmas, where we, together with many other immigrants, were sworn in as citizens of Canada. Canadian citizenship automatically made us British subjects too. We were proud of our newly adopted countries and considered it our best Christmas gift. The irony of ironies was that in 1945 the Russian intelligence officer interrogating me had accused me of being a British spy. I couldn’t have anticipated at that time that only 13 years later I would be a British subject.
In 1959 Hank sold his house in Grande Prairie, and moved into a nice older home in Mission City on a wooded one acre lot, for the unbelievable price of $9,350. With two incomes Martha and I could buy a few pieces of modern furniture, and we even persuaded the landlord to install a natural gas furnace, which made life much more comfortable in the cool, wet climate of British Columbia.
My service work was a real eye opener, there were rich ranch and dairy farmers, and absolutely poor Canadians and Indians on the Chehalis Indian Reserve. Many of my customers didn’t have a decent bed to sleep in, but they had a fancy TV set. It was often the only good piece of furniture in the whole house. To me, creature comfort was more important than the stupid boob tube, which bombarded the audience with nothing but make believe, hype and bullshit. As far as I was concerned, television had no “redeeming social value.”
When I talked to a social worker about it, she told me that TV is for these people the only means of keeping up their hopes and dreams. It is often their only contact to the outside world, into which they could not venture by other means. I understood, but I couldn’t comprehend that people would sink so deeply into resignation.
Some of my customers lived way out in the “boonies” in appalling squalor. They were happy to get service from somebody, but I had to insist on cash payment right away, or I would have never seen my money. Many had been out of work for years because they had no saleable skills. Others were on welfare, or had suffered debilitating work injuries.
One lady in Harrison Hot Springs wanted a new television but she didn’t have enough money. When I explained that she could finance the set she wasn’t enthusiastic about that. She said that she had always made a “deal” with Ed Marler, the previous owner of our business. I didn’t dare to ask her what kind of a deal, but knowing about Ed’s very active sex life, I could well imagine what kind of a deal she had in mind.
Another time a customer out near Agassiz told me that sometimes he could see, but not hear a Channel 3 TV station. In this mountainous country odd reception conditions existed at times. People sometimes had to move their antenna around, depending on weather or time of the year. When I arrived there to check it out, I saw a fairly good picture and a strange parade in some unknown city, but could not get any sound.
Doing much research I found that the city was Santa Barbara, California broadcasting the annual Fiesta Parade. That city was approximately 1,500 miles away and the signal went through multiple skips in the ionosphere to reach my customer. A rare phenomenon for a TV signal, probably caused by sun spot activities.
My service district comprised a roughly 35 mile radius around Mission City. It went all the way out to Harrison Hot Springs, to Abbotsford and to Haney. Our service vehicle was a 1956 Chevrolet Sedan Delivery, in my opinion one of the best vehicles Chevrolet ever built. It took me a while to get used to the manual column gear shift.
I also had to go for a test drive with a motor vehicle inspector, since my B.C. license was restricted to automatic transmissions only. This was an interesting custom in British Columbia. A driver taking the test in a car with an automatic transmission, was restricted to a car with that type of transmission. However, the test in a manual transmission car meant one could also drive cars with automatic transmission. Every 18 months there was a mandatory vehicle inspection by the motor vehicle department, not a privately owned repair shop. If the vehicle was acceptable, a sticker was attached to the windshield, giving the date for the next inspection. This was a copy of the British and German vehicle laws.
One day Hank accepted a service call outside of our regular district as a favor to our television wholesale distributor in Vancouver. There was no money in it for us and the call was on a Saturday afternoon. On the way to the customer my car was broadsided by a driver of another ‘56 Chevy, who had failed to stop at a stop sign. I was going about 65 MPH on the Lougheed Highway and the impact was so powerful that it pushed the tubeless tires off the wheel rims. My car careened across the oncoming lane. I hung onto the steering wheel, but couldn’t control the car as it bounced into the steep ditch on the left hand side.
The car finally plowed to a stop in front of a mail box and driveway to a house. Fortunately there hadn’t been any traffic in the oncoming lane. The occupants of the house came running out, they had seen the disaster from their living room window.
My chest hurt from impact with the steering wheel. Our banker, who was driving behind me on the highway had seen the accident, and stopped immediately. The other driver was uninjured and came over to my vehicle and we exchanged driver’s license numbers, without discussing the accident. Then the RCMP showed up and took all the particulars. The impact had opened the tailgate of my vehicle and the service tools and the tube caddy had been ejected, and vacuum tubes exploded all over the highway behind me. Our Chevy was a total loss, with the impact dead center at the right hand door. When I left Mission City I had asked Martha if she wanted to come along with me, and thank goodness she said no.
The people in the house invited me to come in to wait for the tow truck and were nice enough to offer me a cup of tea. Pretty soon Hank showed up, was surprised about the damage, and mad that he had agreed to do this call. When we drove home, he said that he had called the doctor in Mission City already, and had told him that I was inbound from an accident and needed a complete physical. Dr. McKinley gave me a good going over, but other then the chest bruises and backaches there seemed to be no damage.
The insurance paid us what the vehicle was worth, and Hank bought a cheap English Vauxhall (GM) delivery van. It was a pitiful substitute for the Chevy, and soon developed the nasty habit of refusing to start when the temperature fell below 40°F. The dealer never found the reason for this problem. I detested that van and referred to it as the British lemon.
Hank wasn’t the kind of businessman who would put up with customers who didn’t pay. He relentlessly went after them to collect what they owed, and our company had less than five percent of non-collectable debt, which was outstanding for a service business. When we sold a new TV set, and the customer couldn’t pay cash, we financed it through a locally owned finance company. Every once in a while a customer would default on his payments, and the TV set had to be repossessed. If the finance company had to do it, it set us back $10 for the repossession. Hank didn’t like to lose that money, and he often went out to get the TV back himself.
Luftwaffe pilot raids Indian reservation
Hank had sold an expensive new TV set to an Indian who lived on the Reservation near Harrison Mills. Hank had been warned by the finance company that the Indian was a bad risk, and would probably not pay. If a customer made at least three payments, Hank said he wouldn’t mind taking the TV set back, because he could turn around and resell it as a new TV at a sizeable discount.
Sure enough the customer made a couple of payments and then defaulted. Hank decided that we would go out and repossess that set ourselves. We drove onto the Indian Reservation, which was in a thickly forested area, and Hank knocked at the customer’s door. There was no answer, and nobody seemed to be at home.
The house owner had probably been notified by smoke signals about our coming. Hank looked through the living room window, and saw the TV set sitting there. It was a big set and would need two to carry it out. I stayed in the car with motor running in case it became necessary to withdraw quickly. Hank went to the back door, and found it open. He asked loudly if anybody was home but got no answer. He then marched right into the house and opened the locked front door, and we carried the TV set out and loaded it into the truck. Hank locked the house door again and we were on our way, watching out for a possible “ambush.”
The next morning Hank got a call from the RCMP and an officer came into the store and told Hank that an Indian had filed a complaint against him for raiding his house. The officer who came to the store was my next door neighbor, and we often saw each other socially over a cup of coffee or a beer. This was an official visit, and he let Hank know in no uncertain terms that he had broken the law by going into a house on the Indian Reservation and removing the TV. He told him that not even the RCMP could do that without a special search warrant, since the Indian Reservation was an ex-territorial area, where the general Canadian law didn’t apply.
Hank apologized and told the officer that he didn’t know that, but that the TV was our property, and we certainly had rights too. There was a hearing before a judge, who dismissed the case, because the Indian had a long list of arrests . We didn’t sell any more TVs on that Reservation.
To keep up to date, I read technical and scientific publications, particularly in my professional field of optics. Late in 1960 I came upon an article in a magazine that reported on the invention of the ruby laser by Dr. Theodore Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories, in California. After absorbing the details of the invention and understanding the significance of the coherent light output it generated, I wanted to get back into optics. One application that I could envision for the laser was the alignment of a number of optical elements with respect to their optical axis.
The answer is 9 W
The general public did not understand, or care about an invention like the laser. This was best demonstrated by the questions that Maiman was most frequently asked, “ What is the laser good for?” Obviously Maiman himself couldn’t envision the future applications of the laser, but having a good sense of humor, he usually replied, “Think of the laser as an answer to a question that hasn’t been asked yet.” Once, when he was being interviewed by reporters he was asked again, “What is it good for?” and he gave his usual answer.
The looks on the reporters’ faces must have prompted the follow-on explanation. He said, “I shall give you another example. He wrote “9 W” on the blackboard and said, ”That is the answer. What was the question?” Silence! Since nobody present could come up with an answer, he continued, “The question was, do you spell your name with a V(ee) Herr Wagner?” Since none of the reporters spoke German, they didn’t get that one either. In the German language the English pronunciation of the number 9 means “nein” (no). I was in stitches when I read it, and for many years “nine W” was my answer to silly technical questions in any field.
The spring of 1961 was a bad time for our TV business. A prolonged strike in the lumber industry in British Columbia had its effect on all businesses. I had stayed in contact with Ed Marler, the previous owner of our TV business, who had moved to Santa Barbara, California. After hearing my business complaints, Ed suggested that I take a vacation and come down to see him.
Fifty cents an hour , where is the beef?
I was reluctant to leave the technical end of the business for two weeks, but Hank assured me that he would be able to handle it alone. When we had argued over business principles in the past, Hank had threatened to buy me out. I thought that my absence would be a good opportunity for both of us to sort out our feelings. I had figured out that my hourly pay rate was 50 cents an hour. I had divided my take home pay by the number of hours I spent in the business. Here I was, 38 years old, with many years of experience in optics and electronics and 50 cents per hour was my reward. The economical conditions in Canada were abominable.
Since Ed Marler had mentioned that my combined experiences in optics and electronics would be a great asset in California, I decided to at least look at the job situation down there. What could I lose? Martha and I looked over our meager financial assets, and I said that I still felt like a P.O.G.I. (Poor Old German Immigrant).
Vacation in Lotus Land
In June of 1961 I got the old Buick ready, Martha gave the house keys to our next door neighbor and we crossed the border at Huntingdon and continued south to Bellingham. We followed what was then Highway 99, (now I-5) towards California, to look over another “promised land”. We stayed overnight in small towns, where the motel prices were cheap.
In Olympia I tried my first glass of eastern American beer. Compared to Canadian beer, it was so bad, that I didn’t drink most of it. Now I could understand why we had one hell of a time to get Martha’s Chicago cousin out of the beer parlor, when he was up in Grande Prairie. Any brew master in Germany who would try to hoist that stuff on beer drinkers would be hung by his balls. From that time on we referred to it only as “pissolene.”
After traversing the states of Washington and Oregon we stayed in Grants Pass overnight. Then drove over to Crescent City, and continue south along highway 101 through the Redwoods National Park. We couldn’t get over the abundance of flowers, especially azaleas and rhododendrons, which grew wild in the shade under the huge redwood trees in Humboldt county.
We also got our first taste of American huckersterism and kitsch right there in the beautiful redwood country. Farther south we had a first glimpse of the California wine industry, and were surprised to see grapes growing on huge, almost level pieces of land. In Germany the vineyards are always on hillsides, many of them on steep south facing ones to maximize sun exposure.
We rolled over Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco. Martha, being a typical big city person and a shopper, went wild in the stores, interesting boutiques, restaurants, etc. We did what all tourists do in San Francisco, rode the cable cars, had a drink at the top of the Mark Hopkins, went up to Coit Tower and down to Ghiradelli Square and into China town. In 1961 San Francisco did not have beggars or drug addicts hanging around in the streets. People were well dressed, the city was clean, with a distinctly European/cosmopolitan atmosphere and above all, it had civility.
We continued south to Carmel and were charmed by its Spanish architecture, the cozy residences and beautiful gardens. After a trip over the 17 Mile Drive we continued south on Highway Number 1 to Hearst Castle, which we thought was badly overdone.
We arrived in Santa Barbara where I took the “wrong” exit at upper State Street, which in those days was full of potholes and lined by buildings in bad condition. There was a wooden water tower which was on the brink of collapse, and an old fashioned “auto-court” in a run down condition, which turned out to be the local red light business. We drove on until we hit the “real” State Street. There were many fine old homes in Spanish architecture with well kept gardens around them and I called the Marlers.
Ed directed me to a small shack, between Brinkerhoff and Anacapa Street, which was occupied by his girlfriend Andrea. The shack was a rental behind an older Victorian house, which faced Brinkerhoff street. We felt a little out of place there, but Ed assured us that the whole thing had been prearranged, and to make ourselves comfortable. He gave me directions to his house, and invited us to a chicken barbecue in their backyard. His letters had always referred to their house as “our little shack on the hill.”
Why didn’t we come here right away. The weather was beautiful and we took a walk around the neighborhood, with older, well kept homes sitting in lush gardens with flowers we had only seen in flower shops. Martha and I were eager to explore the rest of this “paradise”, and see if we could find jobs here.
The “little shack on the hill” up on the Mesa was a neat and comfortable three bedroom, two bath house with an attached two car garage. The barbecue was in their small backyard on a steep hillside. Ed was as always outgoing, while his wife Joyce kept her distance. Ed’s two kids, Ken and Dianne, for whom I had a crush since I first met her in Mission City, and Dianne’s boyfriend Ray, and girlfriend Andrea were there. Dianne looked gorgeous, and we had an amiable and interesting evening, but I sensed that something was not quite right between the family members.
The next day Ed drove us around Santa Barbara and we felt as if we had been magically transported to wonderland. I picked up a city map and we cruised around on our own, and the more we saw the better we liked it. Martha got employment application forms from several banks. A new bank, just two years old, had a nice location on Carrillo Street. She talked to the manager and told me that this was going to be her future employer.
Ed had promised that he would be able to get me into Optron Corporation, the company where he was the sales manager. He had to drive down to Los Angeles on a business trip, and asked us to come along. He picked us up in Optron’s big station wagon, which was the rage then. Ed called it the “slush pot” and we tooled down to Tinsel City.
As Ed was driving through Carpinteria, just south of Santa Barbara, he pointed out a new building along Highway 101 and said, “There is another employment possibility for you, Hans.” The company’s name was Infrared Industries, and I liked the way it was situated right above the beach, overlooking the ocean. By now it was quite clear that we would be making Santa Barbara our home.
Ed had to tend to business in Encino and when he was finished he drove us around Hollywood and also showed us the downtown area. We got into the five o’clock rush hour and the way Ed was weaving in and out of lanes was scary. Driving north on the Hollywood freeway the traffic once came to a complete standstill. We were not impressed by Smogville.
What does it take to move here?
After a week in “Lotus Land” Martha and I returned north via Highway 101. As we came out of the Gaviota tunnel the heat hit us. My black Buick didn’t have air-conditioning and was soon unpleasantly hot. We planned to visit old Vancouver friends who lived in San Leandro. The further north we drove, the hotter it got. We arrived at the Gunther’s apartment at about 5:30 pm and by then the temperature was over one hundred degrees, one of those rare heat waves in the San Francisco Bay area. The Gunthers advised us to stay and take an early nap at their place to escape the worst heat. We left their place around 9:30 PM.
The temperature was still in the nineties. Going northeast on Highway 80 around Fairfield and Vacaville was like driving into a furnace. We understood why people in California had air-conditioning in their cars. I turned north onto highway 99, and drove through the area north of Woodland where we were surrounded by the pungent smell of onions.
At about 3:00AM I stopped in Redding at the north end of the Sacramento Valley and the temperature was still 93°F. The filling station attendant told us that we would soon get into the cooler air around Lake Shasta. At about 4 am I was too tired to drive on, and pulled the car over to take a nap. Since the terrain was uphill, I heard trucks shifting gears all night long, and I couldn’t get to sleep.
At 5:30 AM I stretched my legs and had a cup of coffee out of the thermos. Despite the noise from the highway, birds were singing. A scrub jay was particularly annoyed about our presence, and made that known in no uncertain screeches. I drove while Martha slept on the rear seat. Highway 99 was a steep and curvy two lane road with few passing lanes. We were forced to hang behind strings of slow moving, smoke belching trucks for long uphill stretches. I was finally able to pull out and into a coffee shop for breakfast.
The heat was back, and around one o’clock, somewhere in the middle of Oregon, we stopped at an air-conditioned motel, took a shower and slept a few hours. At 10:00 PM we continued on our trip north. I drove continuously throughout the night and part of the next day, only stopping for gas and food. We finally got into Vancouver around noon. Even up here it was hot.
We had decided to visit the US consulate, where we were told that we would have to go under the German immigration quota, even though we were Canadian citizens. That was surprising news, because we remembered the long lines of emigrants trying to leave for the USA after World War II. Now, since the post war boom in West Germany, hardly anybody was emigrating to the U.S.
The next day Hank and Erna invited us for dinner, and were anxious to hear about our trip. We always had a drink before eating, and I thought that was the right time to tell Hank that I had good news for him. I told him that he now could make good on his threat to buy me out, because I wanted to get out of the business. Hank was shocked. I told him he would have plenty of time to dissolve the partnership, hire a new technician and train him. It would take time for us to get all the necessary papers together.
We settled back into the usual business routine and Hank talked to the bank manager to determine how my payout could be accomplished.
A recent birth certificate?
About a week later we took our papers to the US Consulate in Vancouver. We met all of their requirements, and all our papers were in order, except for my birth certificate. I would have to get a “newer version” of it. I was stunned. Who ever heard of getting a newer birth certificate? Was I born too long ago? Then the secretary told me to look at it again.
My birth certificate was a temporary one that had been issued to me at the end of World War II. Shit, getting a new certificate would not be easy, because I was born in Berlin- Central, which was now in the Russian occupation sector of the city.
I wrote to the Registrar’s Office Berlin-Central, hoping that somebody at the postal office in Berlin would know where the registrars office was located. I included plenty of money for the customary fee, plus money for a return by “Airmail”. I never got an answer.
I also wrote to my great-uncle Leopold who lived in the Russian sector of Berlin, to find out where the registrar’s office was located now and to get me an application form.
Several weeks later Leopold replied he had found that all the personal files for East Berlin and East Germany were kept at the Stasi headquarters at Berlin Alexanderplatz. He had gone there and they had told him, “If your relative (me) wants a birth certificate, he better come and get it right here (at the Stasi).”
Since I knew the Soviet system from my own experience, I had fully expected that. The fact that uncle Leopold had found where the papers were located, and that he had received an application form, was the most important thing. Now I could address my request directly. I filled out the form and made two copies of it. I then send the request to the Stasi and the two copies to the relatives. One copy went to Leopold and one to my uncle Gerd in Reichenbach with the request to send these copies also to the Stasi.
Three months later I finally received a new birth certificate, which they had sent by regular mail which had taken six weeks to get to Mission City. Two weeks later I got two more from the other relatives. I was now the owner of three new birth certificates, which would take care of any additional immigration desires that I might have in the future. The US government was also satisfied, but my job in Santa Barbara was gone, because it had taken me so long to get that damn piece of paper. The US consulate notified us in November of 1961, that our request for immigration had been granted.
To another new beginning
It was not a good time of the year to move, the rain season was in full swing, but we went full speed ahead anyway. We wanted to be in Santa Barbara for the Christmas holidays.
We decided what to sell, put an ad in the paper, and told all our friends and customers that we were leaving. Hank and I settled the business finances and Martha got our account set up for easy transfer to California. Part of my settlement with Marler Television Ltd. had to be in merchandise, to leave Hank some financial elbow room. I got a German Telefunken Home entertainment center in a beautiful cherry wood cabinet and a good used TV set.
We packed the personal things needed for the trip, and let the moving company do the rest. At several “going away” parties we said good-bye to our friends. On Tuesday, December 12, 1961, the moving company came, and we took off in the old Buick.
In pouring rain we crossed the border at Sumas, Washington, and drippingly ushered in another new era of our life. After eight years in Canada I would have liked to stay there, but we never felt financially secure. I was getting older and we had to make some preparations for our retirement. We both came to the conclusion that we had done the right thing and wondered if it would be possible to convert our status from P.O.G.I. (Poor Old German Immigrant) to W.O.G.I. (Well Off German Immigrant). As we reached Seattle we started to sing “California Here I Come.”
We planned the trip to Santa Barbara by the most direct, and fastest route. In Tacoma snow came down mixed with rain. The car was acting up, it sounded like dry hydraulic valve lifters, and I wasn’t going to get stuck in this slush somewhere out on the highway. We decided to wait the storm out in the motel, postpone all problems until tomorrow and get a decent dinner.
The next morning everything outside was white. I checked the car, but there was sufficient oil in the sump. I still didn’t know about Murphy’s laws in those days. On the way around the Portland, Oregon area we encountered hard frozen slush on the highway and the driving, even for a seasoned Canadian winter driver, got a little on the “touchy” side. I was glad I had my winter tires on the car which crunched the frozen stuff with loud cracking noises. Along the road were many semitrailer trucks in the ditches, including quite a few moving vans, which didn’t give us a warm and fuzzy feeling .
At four o’clock in the afternoon we reached Salem, Oregon, and the valve noise in the engine was getting louder. I decided to drive to the local Buick dealer, and let him have a look at the engine. The service manager listened to what I told him, and then listened to the engine. He said not to worry about it, because it could easily be fixed. He suggested we go to the nearest restaurant just a block away and have a good steak and at 5:30 pm we could pick the car up.
I was worried, because I had read about the many rip-offs by automotive shops. When we came back to the dealer the car was finished and the charge was less than the price of the steaks we had eaten. When I asked how they had fixed the problem that fast, the manager grinned and pointed to an oil passage between the engine block and the oil filter. He said that they had drilled that passage bigger and I would never have any problems again. We drove off impressed with this man’s business integrity.
We were in a hurry now because we had made reservations at the Holiday Inn in Grants Pass, Oregon, close to the California border, and that was 200 miles away. As I drove south it rained in the lower elevations and snowed when we got up to higher hills. It was dark and the driven snow illuminated by the headlights impaired the forward visibility and the snow on the road surface obscured the center line of the highway. I was fortunate to get behind a big tanker truck on its way south so we made good headway and at 11:15 pm arrived at the hotel. We had a hot shower and sank into beds knowing that tomorrow we would be in sunny California and our weather problems would be over.
Moving into Murphy country
The next morning the world looked white again, more snow had fallen. I called the Highway Patrol office about road conditions and was told that they wouldn’t let anybody on the road without chains, and that vehicles were being convoyed through Siskiyou Pass. Good grief, here we come from the cold north of Canada, where I had driven for seven years without owning tire chains, and just before entering sunny California I had to have chains on my tires? I felt like the Greek god Sisyphus who had to roll rocks uphill all the time. I drove around Grants Pass to buy a set of chains.
I was miffed because I was certain that with my snow and mud tires I could easily get through. But the idea of what constitutes a “real winter” changes as one goes south. Finally, armed with chains, I drove towards California. We soon reached the end of the long line of vehicles backed up waiting for the snow plows to convoy them through. It took about two hours until it was our turn, and we would have easily made it over the pass without chains, but these southern drivers were peeing their pants when they saw something white on the road. When we finally drove down the southern slopes of the Cascades and into Redding, the temperature was 70°F.
We continued south to San Jose and stayed in a motel for a few hours of sleep. We took off at 5 AM. It was the 15th of December and I was determined not to celebrate my 38th birthday on the road. As we neared Buellton, Santa Barbara County, Martha suggested driving to Solvang, staying over night there, and inviting the Marler’s over for my birthday dinner in Solvang. That was an excellent idea, and we checked into the Hamlet Motel. “To be, or not to be in California” was no longer a question, we had arrived!
We took a leisurely walk through Solvang, and were impressed by the high quality of goods imported from Scandinavia, but the main attractions were the delicious Danish pastries and coffee shops.
For breakfast we had Danish pancakes, and spent more time driving around the Santa Ynez valley.
In the late afternoon the Marlers came up from Santa Barbara to join us for dinner at the Windmill Restaurant. We had reserved a large table and had a good dinner and several bottles of California wine to celebrate my 38th birthday.
The next morning we drove to Santa Barbara through San Marcos Pass. I stopped at one of the view points at the Road, which on that clear December day let us look over Santa Barbara, the ocean and the offshore islands. It was a breathtaking introduction to our new home. It had been a long way to Santa Barbara. I was convinced I had finally arrived at my “non plus ultra” location.