Why Work

Has anyone noticed the change in the workforce in the last 30 or so years? It is odd that when folks are working two weeks out of four and continue to complain about having to be at work when they are there, and then complain loudly when asked to work overtime often turning the extra time down. It's disturbing to me . . . Dad taught me to work when I was very young living in New Mexico while he was employed by the El Paso Natural Gas Company. We lived in company housing up and away from the small community of Kirtland. Dad was doing shift-work at the processing plant and in his off hours he would voluntarily work on my Uncle Roy's ranch and on my Uncle Grant's apple orchard. Many nights he would get up in the middle of the night to go to Uncle Grant's orchard to reset the water lines during irrigation season. After the picking season was complete, Dad would often go the orchard and prune the trees to get them ready for the next season. When we were big enough to go with him it was our job to collect the prunings and bring them out of the orchard. I was always excited to go help with the work, maybe not always that much help but definitely happy to be there. It was exciting for me to be in the orchard working. In the summers there was always hay to pick up and put up. I was too small to handle the bales, so they put me in the cab of the truck and gave me the job of keeping the truck headed down the row of hay bales without hitting any of them. Someone would put it in "granny" and I would sit there in the drivers seat and steer it down the field while the men moved around picking up bales and throwing them up on the flat bed to a man up there who had the job of stacking the bales neatly on the truck.



Later on I always wanted a job. I had paper routes for a while. In the afternoon after school I would hop on my bike after school and head down to the La Grande Observer office to collect the papers for my route. I had to stuff and roll all the papers before I could load them in my paper bags on my bike and deliver them. In the morning before school I would be up and delivering the Oregonian. Mel or Mom would spot the papers along my morning route because the Oregonian was so big I couldn't haul all the papers for my route in my bags. The paper routes didn't pay very well though and I didn't make much money, so I was looking for something more lucrative.


I had a friend the worked for the DelMonte cannery in Pendleton during the summer harvesting peas around La Grande, and I thought it would be good if I could get on with them one summer. At the end of the summer harvest the harvesters were driven back to Pendleton to the cannery and my buddy convinced me that the company had a sign up list back at the cannery and that anyone that showed up could sign the list and work for them next summer. We concocted a plan to get me back to Pendleton to sign the work list. The plan was for me to hop on the harvester he was driving as they passed through town and ride along with him. I hopped on as the parade of harvesters made their way through La Grande on the truck route. I managed to climb up and into the grain storage bin up on top of the machine. I ducked down so I wouldn't be seen as we made our way east on highway 84 to Pendleton. Everything went well for a while until we were about half way between La Grande and Pendleton when the crew boss saw me as I popped my head out of the bin to see where we were and how the trip was going. He pulled up alongside the harvester and stopped the parade right there on the highway! I crawled out and got into the back of his pickup at his insistence. I suppose I was lucky he didn't leave me there on the highway to make my own way home. I rode the rest of the way to Pendleton in the back of his pickup and tried my dangest to talk them into signing me on for the harvest next summer but nothing doing. Not only were they mad at me for jumping the harvester but I was a year too young to participate in the harvest. Eventually we all loaded up in the crew bosses rig and made the trip back to La Grande. Once again lucky they didn't leave me sitting in Pendleton to find my own way home.

I learned a valuable lesson that summer . . . There is no easy path to success!

2010 Christmas Morning

Merry Christmas to all! I couldn't sleep so I'm up a bit early this morning. Delaine and Anna are snoozing comfortably in their nice cozy beds. The weather has been very nice the last couple of days with no rain to speak of and temperatures in the 50's most days of the week. This year it's just Delaine, Anna and me for Christmas. Devin and Ryan stayed home in Wyoming and Tara and Zach stayed home in Las Vegas. It's really quiet in the house without the grand kids here, they always bring so much energy where ever they go! Mom stayed in New Mexico this year even though I tried to talk her into coming up, and she is at Uncle Darrel's house with his family and I'm sure having a great time. We opted out of traveling too, partly because of the weather but mostly because I have used up all my vacation time earlier this year. I'm thinking of saving a few days next year to take around Christmas time. Anyway, it certainly is nice to have Anna here with us! She is out of school for a couple of weeks then heads back on the 4th of January to begin her second semester. She's in her freshman year and so far is doing very well at BYUI. She changed her major from Animal Science to Speech Pathology, so she will have to transfer to a different college at some point to get her degree. She is hoping to transfer to BYU Provo to continue on that path, and so far her grades are what they need to be to qualify for the transfer. We just have to see if it can be done.

I can't help but think about past Christmas mornings when we were young living in our old two-story house on X avenue in LaGrande . . . the three of us boys would get so excited about the coming of Christmas morning! We usually had to go to our rooms early so Santa would be able to the come, but we rarely got right in bed. We would sit up talking and playing and waiting for Mom and Dad to go to bed. We would watch out the window for Santa to fly over and swear we saw him in his sleigh! Some years we would sneak back down stairs after Mom and Dad were well asleep to inspect our Christmas presents. Every year Santa would bring us some nice presents and leave them by the tree and we could hardly stand not knowing what was there. At times we were even naughty and would use a razor blade to open our presents so we could see what they contained, then we would carefully tape them back up so we could open them on Christmas morning. We were always excited to get up early and rip and tear! Once all the presents were open we usually had a nice big breakfast then spent the rest of the day playing with our gifts. One year we got an HO road race set, and I remember Dad and our uncles spent more time setting it up and playing with it than we did. Not that we didn't want to mind you, but they were having so much fun with it we couldn't get close.

One year I remember a small gift under the tree that came from Granddad Fuentes. It was small and had a question mark on it. It was mysterious in its size and the way it was wrapped with just plane white paper. I remember looking at it every day before Christmas trying to figure out what it could be. Christmas morning that was the first one I wanted to open up. When I opened it I discovered it was my pocket knife I had lost the summer before! All at once the memories of that summer came rushing in. We had been at Grandma and Granddad's place in Luna and Mel, Dale and I were playing out back around the grain storage building as we normally did. I forget what game were playing but I had gone into the storage building and Mel locked me in. I couldn't open the door from the inside and nearly panicked! The door had a screen window in it that let the air in and I had a pocket knife, so I pulled it out and cut the screen so I could unlock the door and free myself. I spun around and stabbed the knife into a bag of grain and run free promptly forgetting about the knife until that Christmas morning. Guess what? I never used my knife to damage anyone's property again and I remember it to this day?

I love Christmas! Maybe next year we can all be together again . . . may we always remember the true meaning of Christmas and my we work to keep "Christ" in our lives this time of year and all year long!

Merry Christmas!