Summer 1961: In my last post, I got up the nerve to ask a rocket scientist’s daughter for a Saturday night date to the California State Fair, spent a long week waiting, worked in a pear orchard for 9 hours on Friday, joined friends for a night of chugging beer that evening, and then left the party at midnight to fight a raging forest fire— all before the date. I am continuing the story today as I tell the tale of the longest weekend in my life...

One hour later I was in a mustering hall in Placerville filled with men being divided up into fire-fighting teams. By 2 a.m. I was clinging to the side of a steep canyon with one hand desperately holding onto a manzanita bush while my free hand wielded the short, heavy mattock. Our team had been assigned the responsibility of clearing a firebreak along the canyon rim. The whole sky was lit up in front of us by an inferno that was relentlessly marching toward our location. It encouraged fast chopping. Full speed ahead and damn the blisters.

It was not our night to play toast, however. The wind switched direction and we completed our firebreak. Somewhere around five a.m., a very welcome soul had shown up with water to refill our empty canteens. At seven we were told to take a break for breakfast. We returned to the staging area where men and machines competed for space, and the earlier night’s chaos had been whipped into a semblance of order. More importantly, a highly efficient cooking crew was turning out mountains of mouth-watering food. Starvation would not be a problem. 

After breakfast, our next assignment was dealing with small spot fires left behind by the main conflagration that was now trying to burn itself out. We marched through the mini-Armageddon with back pumps spraying anything that smoked. A change in wind direction might fan these dying embers into flames and a new outbreak. It was hot, dirty work, but lacked the intensity of the night before. 

A late lunch came and went. Afterwards our crew chief made us an offer I couldn’t refuse. The worst danger appeared to be over. Only mop-up work remained to be done. While our services were still needed, we could be relieved if we had other pressing responsibilities. I decided that Kathy was a ‘pressing responsibility.’ It was 2 p.m. and I had been fighting fire for 12 hours. There was just time to get home, beautify, and make it to Kathy’s home in Cameron Park by 5.

I won’t say the date was anticlimactic, because it wasn’t. Kathy was as charming as I expected and going to fairs has always been one of my favorite activities. Among the things that attract me are pigs and goats. I’m fascinated by pig behavior, especially at feeding time. I love to watch them squeal, snort, shove, and snap their way to the food pan. I particularly enjoy the ones that place both front feet solidly in the middle of the common food dish and glare defiantly around at fellow pigs. It’s so human. As for goats, I like their friendly curiosity and the way they come over to be scratched and nibble at your shirt.

I took Kathy to the animal barn. It’s a must-do on fair dates. Wiser heads might counsel this is not the way to impress a new woman friend, but I’ve always figured if my friend didn’t have a sense of humor about the animals, it was unlikely she would have a sense of humor about me.

A highlight of the evening was winning Kathy a car-filling stuffed dog. As a ten-year old kid, I once spent a couple weeks before the El Dorado County Fair practicing the game of toss a dime in a dish and win a prize. Each night I would religiously get out my plates and two dollars’ worth of dimes and toss away. I learned a little back flip trick that actually allowed the dime to stay in the dish. When the Fair came, I was loaded for bear, or at least stuffed bear. I picked out the booth that featured the animals I liked and bought a dollar’s worth of dimes. My very first dime managed to stick. 

“Even little kids win here,” the carnie shouted as he tossed me a bear. He wasn’t nearly as excited when I won the second bear. On the third, he banned me from the booth. It was one of my prouder moments. I sold the bears to the older brother of one of my friends for $10. He wanted to give one to his girlfriend but couldn’t win one. I had all the makings of becoming a great capitalist.

Unfortunately, I had lost the knack of dime toss by the time of my date with Kathy and the dishes had shrunk considerably. A tiny plate in the middle, slightly larger than a dime, was reserved for the bigger animals you were required to win to impress a girl. 

I decided I would have better luck at a ball toss where all the prizes were large. This is the game where you have to fit large softballs into small, numbered squares. You win if the numbers add up to more or less than specified high and low numbers. Naturally, it is almost impossible to do on skill given the size of the squares and the bounciness of the balls. It is also close to impossible to win on luck. So I did the next best thing, I cheated. I helped the ball behave by leaning over the barrier when the carnie was otherwise occupied. The crowd, seeing what I was up to, participated by distracting him.

“We have a winner,” the carnie shouted as he paraded around his booth with the large stuffed animal. “Everyone’s a winner at my booth.”  Sure. I’d bet a hundred bucks no one else had won one that day. We walked away laughing. 

Eventually the evening came to an end. I loaded Kathy and her large stuffed dog into my 56 Chevy and headed back up Highway 50. I delivered her home ten minutes early. We chatted away happily until midnight. Then the lights started blinking. 

“What?” I asked Kathy. 

“Oh, it’s just Mother,” Kathy explained somewhat embarrassed. “She always starts blinking the lights after I return from a date.” That was a first for me. I reluctantly said goodnight to Kathy as she and her large stuffed dog went inside, and I started my drive back to Diamond.

It was a successful conclusion to a day that had started 42 hours earlier and included 9 hours of working in the orchard, 5 hours of partying, 12 hours of firefighting, 7 hours of mundane activities, and the 7 hour date with Kathy. I was one tired puppy and just managed to make it home without passing out. 

We had one more date that summer, a day trip into the foothills above Diamond. It was my territory, so to speak, the boonies, far away from the world of rockets. Or so I thought. It turned out that her grandmother lived up near Pleasant Valley, on the edge of the same canyon where Caldor had once run its logging trains. Her father occasionally used the property for his hobby, shooting off rockets he had built. His dream was to create inexpensive rockets that would make space more affordable and could be retrieved for use again. And it was this dream that would eventually team him up with Evel Knievel, a man whose name was synonymous with daredevil.

During his life, Knievel made some 275 motorcycle jumps over cars, busses, and trucks. Fifteen of the jumps involved spectacular accidents. He suffered numerous concussions and shattered his pelvis three times. Overall, he broke 35 bones. Maybe he should have pursued a much tamer sport, such as playing NFL football.

But regardless of the injuries, he was always on the lookout for new ways to upgrade his act, obtain more publicity, and increase his income. Mainly this involved adding more vehicles to leap (for a number of years, he held the world record of 19 cars), but he also had a dream of jumping the Grand Canyon. The National Park Service wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea, however, which eventually led him to Idaho’s Snake River in 1974— and to Robert Truax. Knievel’s Harley wasn’t up for 1700-foot jump across the river. Truax offered to build him a rocket-cycle he could sit on that would. The jump failed after the parachute deployed prematurely, but Knievel survived with minor injuries.

That, however, was far into the future. Kathy and I enjoyed the date, returned home, and began to prepare for heading off to college.

Friday’s Post: The revenge of the EX.