Barbara: Until December when we were married.
Oh yes, married. She lived in Riverside and I lived in Fresno. In the summer of 1946, I was employed as a seasonal ranger in Giant Forest. Henry Schmidt was my district ranger and we lived on Highlands, in a tent house. We spent the summer there and then moved to Berkeley in the fall of 1946. The summer of 1947 was spent at forestry summer camp in the Plums National Forest, so I missed that summer in the parks. Barbara spent that summer up there on a dude ranch very close to where I was, so we weren’t too far apart. I went back to the University and graduated from there in June of 1948, returning to Sequoia as a seasonal ranger.
Barbara: You took the Civil Service Test that fall and at some point got to be career conditional. When I was in the hospital with our first child, you told me that three career conditional positions had been filled with three other people and that your services would no longer be required! Here we were living in a park house with a new baby.
The Civil Service Commission, however disqualified those three and within 24 hours I was in! So, I really perspired for a short time! I then become a permanent park employee and we moved around about every six months within Sequoia/Kings Canyon. Hospital Rock, Ash Mountain, Giant Forest , Lodgepole, Grant Grove and Cedar Grove. We spent one summer in Roaring River, which is a backcountry station where we packed in the family and lived in lean-tos because there was no cabin. It was a good pioneering experience with two little children.
