Chapter 19: Tragedy Visits

I spent the rest of my time that summer doing odd jobs around the house and visiting with my friends from school. I even spent a couple of energetic evenings and enjoyable meals with Jana Radler. Tory Payne was doing well and was interested in me letting him know what the Eastern Oregon University experience was like. He was considering when he would move when he finished his two years at Crook College. He was still involved in taekwondo with Sharon Weller and had moved up a notch since I last talked to him. He’d also gained some height, weight, and a nice looking young lady as a girlfriend. All that waiting had been worthwhile.

Teresa Johnson had not returned to Clarksville, dropping out of college by the sound of it. I thought briefly of visiting her mother to see what the story was, but in the end decided not to. I assumed she had taken up with her truck-driving man and that was that.

Mom had heard little from Naomi, but she did get a call from her while I was away, to bring her up to date with her life. She would complete her internship at the San Jose computer company, but she would not return there the next summer or when she graduated. She told Mom that it was such a big company that she would be insignificant in the extreme and would look for something smaller where she could contribute and be noticed. Her plans for next summer were uncertain and she would not be coming back this Thanksgiving or Christmas. I think Mom was pretty upset that she seemed to be losing contact with Naomi, but there was nothing she could do about it except to try and stay in touch. I was reluctant to open old wounds and chose not to pursue her.

Dad did take Mom out to the coast, pretty well tracing the same route as I took almost two months earlier. They were just as enthralled with the scenery and sights as I was. They came back looking refreshed and a bit sun burned, but other than that, assured me that they had a great time and planned to go back again and do some more exploring.

My year at Crook County Community College gave me the experience to integrate into the Eastern Oregon culture fairly quickly. It wasn’t much larger than Crook, although it had a full slate of courses that I could take advantage of. Other than living away from home in a shared dorm, it was very little different from my previous year’s experience.

My roommate was Byron Wheeler, a junior in the Education faculty. Apparently his parents were teachers in his home town of Pendleton and he was planning to follow in their footsteps. He seemed a likeable guy with no apparent bad habits and reasonably neat. We agreed to respect each other’s space and privacy, so I didn’t foresee a problem rooming with him. He had a girlfriend in Pendleton that he visited regularly since it was less than an hour’s drive north on I-84.

We had few distractions in our dorm thankfully. There was the odd party during football weekends, but nothing we couldn’t avoid by heading for the library if it got too noisy. The cafeteria food was ... cafeteria food. We tolerated it, although to be truthful, it really wasn’t bad. I made a few friends, male and female during the fall semester, but didn’t date at all.

I had no problem passing my end of semester exams and looked forward to heading for Clarksville over the Christmas break. The roads were passable and that was a relief. The alternative to the mountain pass route was to head up I-84 to The Dalles, then south to Clarksville. That was the more likely route to be free of snow and poor driving conditions.

I finished my first year at EOU with good grades and I looked back on the experience as useful to me. I was away from home for the first time and I enjoyed the college environment. However, over time, my financial resources were dwindling. I’d had some time for skiing over the Christmas break, and between that and my incidental costs around La Grande, I could see my bank account dwindling. Dad had suggested that if I wanted a summer job, he could find a place for me at East Cascades. Apparently my previous reputation was still good with their people.

I worked both in the office and out in the plant that summer, filling in for people on vacation. I had the advantage that I knew how the business operated on both sides of the wall and I could be used as a useful spare part. It paid well (the base rate for a permanent employee) and that contributed nicely to restocking my cash supply.

Year two, I was lucky enough to partner with Byron again after we both made a request. He was now a senior and getting some off-campus experience as a teacher trainee. Most of his placements were in middle school and he came back with some laughable tales of his adventures in that environment. I was immersed in business courses and trying to grasp the financial aspects of the third year courses. I was a good deal more challenged this year and had to spend a lot more time studying to get a passing grade.

At Christmas, I breathed a sigh of relief that the exams were over and I felt reasonably confident that I had passed all of them. I had added some additional courses that Byron recommended including Psychology. He was right. The study of human behavior was worthwhile no matter what my longer term plan was.

Oh yes, I was still trying to pin down just what I wanted from my college experience. What was my future to be? Business was my main focus, so that left me a wide variety of choices from there. Did I want to work in a big company that might give me an opportunity to grow and succeed, or would I be happier in a smaller business where I could have my fingers in a number of areas? To be honest, the latter was more appealing. I kept thinking of Naomi and her experience with the big tech company in San Jose. It had turned her right off it seemed. The more I thought about it, the more I could understand her reasoning.

I spent another summer as the human spare part at East Cascades and added some cash to my bank account. I had one more year to go and while I would have a new roommate, I didn’t foresee any real problem in finishing with my degree in Business Administration. In fact, one of my teachers suggested I should look into earning a Masters of Business Administration. I could do that on-line if I was employed somewhere else. I kept that thought in the back of my mind.

I wasn’t completely celibate during my visits home. Jana was always available it seemed and while she hadn’t really changed very much from my first experiences with her, it was a pleasant diversion and tension reducer. I would usually find some time with her during the Christmas-New Year’s break as well as the summer. She had finished up with her Associates Degree at Crook and was now working full time with her father, taking a lot of the administrative load off him. Their business was thriving since he found a couple of likely apprentices to help out with the mechanical end.

My new roommate, Jim Hammond, was another senior, but a complete opposite of Byron. He was, to put it mildly, a slob. I found myself constantly picking up after him and getting on him about his untidy habits in our small dorm room. He dressed pretty much in a haphazard fashion as well, with no style sense or any neatness about his personal appearance. On the other hand, he was very bright, had a good sense of humor (particularly about himself) and wasn’t a problem in any other way. He was a science major in chemistry and claimed he had the potential to become a truly “mad scientist.” I mentioned to him my father was a chemistry grad, but it didn’t seem to register on Jim. All in all, I realized I could live with his untidiness for this one year.

Dad’s business was growing, just as he and Walt had planned. There was capital available for expansion and with some careful thought about where to grow and with which products, they took a deliberate step forward over the two years since Shelter Ridge had invested in them. Walter Voight remained as the money man while Dad was the operations guy, but he was now getting involved in the marketing end of the business.

My father never thought of himself as a salesman, but he was quite willing to work with the sales people and distributors calling on clients and talking about the products and services they offered. I guess he was more capable than he realized. Their customers quite often would call him for advice or to discuss pre-season planning. He readily admitted he enjoyed the customer contact and made his job that much more interesting. It was his encouragement that led me to add Marketing to my course schedule in my final year.

Mom told me that she could see a big change in Dad. He was happier and more successful than he had ever been and was being rewarded for his success. If Dad was happy, Mom was just as pleased and happy as well. It made for a very comfortable home life for them both. I think they wished I could visit more often, but they understood the need for me to buckle down and complete my education.

Dad had talked to me about joining East Cascades when I graduated. He saw me as potential management with both my experience and my degree. He wasn’t really putting much pressure on me to decide, but he was planting the seed that there was an opportunity there for me if I wanted to take advantage of it. I promised I would seriously consider it.

It was mid-April and I was spending most of my time studying for final exams and graduation. Jim, for all his untidiness, was just as committed to finishing with good marks. He was already sending out feelers to prospective employers. I, on the other hand, hadn’t made a single move in that direction. Why? Aside from my father’s suggestion of joining him at East Cascades, I had no idea of what I wanted to do. I felt truly guilty about that. I was twenty-one, going on twenty-two years old with no fixed target for the future. Inwardly, I was ashamed of myself for not having chosen a “calling” by now.