You have to work at your job to make it interesting to yourself, too. I remember when I was at the entrance station. I was there for one summer. Of course, that was what everybody worried about. When you got hired, were you going to get the box? When even the Chief Ranger starts calling it the box, you know you’re down at the bottom. When we started working there, it really wasn’t that bad. We just knew we didn’t really want to. I remember after ranger school, Rod Kieser, who was head dispatcher, came in. He was kind of the secretary for Buck Evans. He had the bonding notices to be signed. When he came walking in the room with the bonding notices, I knew somebody was going to be handling money, and the only place you were going to be handling money in those days was the entrance station. We still hadn’t been told our assignments. I remember making myself scarce. I kept moving against the wall. I wanted to move away from him. He walked right past me, didn’t had me a bonding. That meant I wasn’t going to be working the entrance station. I was going to be patrol. Patrol basically “There’s the key. See you in eight hours.” Things are so different now. I remember Gene Shegebee and I walked out. They just said “Drive to the rim.” We were law enforcement officers. We were going to go out and insure the public safety of the park. I knew something about the park because I had worked on maintenance for two years, but Gene was just green. We drove up to the rim trying to get out of the car with the flat hats on. You bang into the wall, going through doorways. You learn how to negotiate after awhile. But I remember that, tripping over our shiny shoes, trying to look neat and clean and everybody feeling a magnet of their first time in the uniform out in public. We were proud, yet we felt like we were sticking out like sore thumbs. And that basically was it. We just patrolled the park for the rest of the summer. Our training was basically the power structure of the park, the power structure of the national organization, a little first aid, place names, and a little history of the park. Ranger School lasted three days. It didn’t amount to much. I hate to ramble, but I keep thinking of rather interesting things.
