As far as advancement.
I knew this was the case and I didn’t see any sense in staying with something that I knew that I might just stay the Tiller District for the rest of my life. While it’s nice country, it wasn’t that nice! But anyway, we came up here then. I entered on duty with the Park Service on the 16th of June in 1946. The Park was still closed. I went to Medford and signed up at the office down there. I then came clear around by Klamath Falls and came in the south entrance, which was the only one that was opened. It was still blocked in June of that year because of the snow. I on up here and worked about a week any by this time they had the rest of the Park opened. I went back down and got my wife and son. The quarters that we had for awhile were down in Sleep Hollow. It was one of the very small old houses down in Sleepy Hollow. Our house was to be at Annie Spring. The house has since been demolished, not the log house, but there was another house down there (1). I think it was demolished just this last year. It sat on the canyon. It was built, if not built by the CCC’s, it was used by the CCC’s when the CCC’s Spike Camp was down there (2).
It was last used two years ago and then destroyed last year.
The reason we couldn’t move into that house right away was it hadn’t been used for several years and the pipes were frozen. We couldn’t get water to it. The plumber at that time, Harvey Clift, could not remember exactly where the pipes were. He didn’t know where to dig, was the thing. So we had to wait at least, what was it, a week or two….
Jean Howe: Two weeks.
Before we could move into that place down there. In the meantime, the Chief Ranger had a thought that he would send me out to the north entrance to live in a tent out there. Now the mosquitoes at that time were, and probably still are, pretty thick and pretty big out at the north entrance. I fought against this in a way that I would not expect Seasonal Rangers to fight against the Chief Ranger. Well, I couldn’t see it because I had been promised housing up here and I thought I should have it. I think there was a difference probably in some way in the way returning veterans thought, too. Some of them had been in positions of authority and while as a First Lieutenant, I wasn’t in very much authority, I did have some. And you didn’t take kindly to some of this shifting around, particularly when you had gone through three plus years of War.
