I am so sorry to know about your son. that has to be rough on all of your family and my prayers go out to all of you.
I have a fond memory about Kalama, WA.
I was at Ft. Lewis for five or six weeks in Winter of '52 awaiting my little vacation trip to the Orient. I loved the area, and especially the view of Mt. Ranier at sunset. I have many stories about my stay at Ft. Lewis. The ongoing feature of my stay was that every weekend, I would manage to get a one day to go off base. I did not know anybody in the state, so I would just get to the gate as quick as I had partaken of the morning chow, stick out my thumb for the first car I saw heading to anywhere. In those days, it was very common to see hitch-hikers along the highways. It was just as common for people to pick up hitchhikers as well, especially if the pedestrian with the prominent thumb was in a uniform of the armed forces. I got to see a whole lot of the state using "shank's mare" form of transport. I got as far west as Yakima, as far south as Oregon border, as far north as Bellingham and on a very rainy Sunday, i got a little way up the Olyimpia peninsula before I got so soaked i just switched sides of the highway and rode my thumb back to base. The following day, i got my flight orders and within another day, I was flying towards Tokyo via Alaska and the Aleutians.
During one of my trips, the one where I nearly reached Oregon, I got picked up by a happy crew of loggers near Kalama. There were four guys who, I found, were just out for a joy ride on the day. We all got chatting and it was very quickly discovered that I was a farm boy from Connecticut and Massachusetts. They had never been out of Washington and Oregon, so they had a lot of questions about New England. I had had a little logging experience and was interested in their trade of logging trees that were, to a kid from the Eastern parts of the US of A, gigantic. I had watched trees being cleared from near my barracks at Ft. Lewis that were over 200 ft from root to tip. Maybe even more. A man up in the top of one of those trees looked no bigger than an insect and he cleared away limbs in preparation to snip off lengths of log on his way back down out of the tree. I wanted to know all about logging such giant trees.
That group of loggers took me up into the hills (mountains to me) and showed me a flotilla of logs waiting to be released for the trip downstream to the mills. They took me into their camp and showed me around. They took me to one of the mills down stream from the camp and showed me the equipment used to saw timber into lumber. they showed me everything the could show me in one short day. They took me to a rester ant frequented by many of their logging friends. Much of the meal was liquid, as in lots of suds. I did not get loaded, but the afternoon was spend with several roadside stops for relief of an unstoppable pressure in the lower regions.
The first question that had been asked me when it had been decided to squire me around in their mountains had been, "What time do you have to be back in your barracks?" Eleven o'clock was curfew. And a very strict curfew it was. There were a lot of guys who were not particularly interested in travel any further west than the State of Washington. The army was very vigilant on that score. I was not too interested in being put on record as having been rerouted AWOL. After a most enjoyable, as in FUN, day with a great education, the trip was made back north with offers to pick me up on base the next weekend, I was dropped off at my barracks at only a few minutes before curfew. The driver had to do some fast talking to be allowed onto base, but the fact that he happened to have a "lost" GI on board was probably the clincher to get us thru the gate.
I never saw or heard from those guys again, nor did they hear from me, but I assure you, that day was probably the very most memorable and enjoyable day of my two years spent with "Uncle Sam". That is until the day I mustered out at Ft. Dix in New Jersey. And, what was my means of travel from Ft. Dix to Wilton, CT? Why, "shank's mare" of course. ;D ;D ;D
Tinker
;D
