How to bag leaves

I hate to waste gasoline and hear the loud leaf blowers. I prefer the most economical and environmentally friendly way to rake. I rake to a 4'x8' sheet of plastic or tivec. Pick up the 4 corners and place the leaves into a reusable 55 gallon plastic bag inside a 30 gallon trash can. Envelope the plastic bag around the leaves, remove from the trash can, remove the sheet, and twist the top. I prefer to carry the leaves to a compost pile behind my church and then reuse the plastic bags.

Malheur River N43d47m42s W117d52m53s

It was hot and windy and the kite flew well without a tail. I brought my kite because I like to see the colors against the blue sky. The Malheur River canyon is one of those starkly beautiful places covered with sage brush on the rocky hills, and river grass in the bottom area. Kay helped me cut the long purple ribbon off the tail of the kite, and write their names with a phrase, “we know that when you left this place, you went right into the presence of Jesus.” July 23, 1972. I wrapped the purple ribbon around a wooden fence post near the site. We look forward to seeing you again soon when He returns. My kite could only reach upward to the end of the string, but you went way beyond the blue sky above.

The road winds with the river from west to east, the same direction we were headed that day. It passes the Oasis Café in Juntura, then the abandoned railroad stop at Jonesboro with its rusted steel bridge, and three miles more to this location. Today, the gulch named Black Canyon was almost dry from the heat where it crosses unnoticed beneath Highway 20 and heads to the river on the last straight stretch before this curve. The straight stretch is heading southeast as it rises above the river and curves to the west.

Kay drove as I watched the river and the road wind and I grew a slight feeling of vertigo. The song lyrics were ringing in my mind as we approached, “I will rise, when He calls my name; no more sorrow; no more pain.” I could no longer hold back the tears, from the depths of my stomach like a flood. Their names had been called that day, and they slipped away quickly, just around the curve at the top of the rise.

There is a guard rail there now protecting the road from the river to the top of the rise. Back then, my dad saw only the river to his right where it meandered from the south, touched the toe of the road fill slope and darted back to the south again. For that short stretch, the river and the road ran together. As I saw it, I knew that he had made the better of the two decisions. Had he turned to the river, all six of us may have ascended heavenward that day.

Judge Yraguen met us and carried the remaining file with the court records from January, 1973. Dad had traveled back to Malheur County, Oregon with his cousin Robert to testify, and stayed with Robert’s brother Bjorn and his wife Sally who lived in a house in Caldwell, Idaho across the river from Malheur County. Judge Yraguen, the District Attorney at the time, met dad and provided the questions to which dad testified from the witness stand. Dad had been teary eyed, but composed as Judge Yraguen could recall. Judge Yraguen would run for the bench 3 years later and win by an overwhelming majority of the voters of Malheur County against the judge who signed this court order. He served as judge for 30 years, retired, and continues to serve on the bench through his retirement.

The trial was completed within the first week of January. Dad and Robert returned home, probably with the knowledge that the jury returned the unanimous verdict, guilty on 5 counts of criminal negligent homicide. Judge Yraguen had successfully argued, without a reasonable doubt, that the other driver was criminally at fault. I was comforted to learn that there had never been a question throughout the whole legal process that my dad was in any way at fault. The skid marks from both cars started in the east bound lane and bent towards the west bound lane and the place of the crash. Investigators had prepared video tape footage, side by side showing what each of the drivers saw in the seconds leading up to the accident. Dad may have had 3 ½ seconds from the time he first saw the Shelby coming in our lane before the impact. He had most likely made his decision in the first second knowing that the river was so close on the right. He was braking in the remaining seconds to slow the station wagon and popup camper we were pulling on our vacation. In those seconds, he heard my mom shout his name.

Judge Yraguen had secured testimony that the other driver had bought alcohol at a service station in Vale, and had been seen driving erratically minutes before our accident. The toxicology reports confirmed that alcohol was a significant factor. After the jury verdict, the young man was incarcerated for sentencing. Nearly 3 weeks passed before the defense submitted their petition for dismissal on January 23rd. The judge signed the order the next day and he was free to go, from the likelihood of a life sentence, 20 years for each of the 5 counts against him. Had the prosecution failed to completely argue the detailed points of the law? Were the laws of Oregon inadequate to protect the people of Oregon from some technicality in this case? Or, had the sitting judge been approached by the same source of money who had purchased the Shelby?

I told Judge Yraguen that it would not have changed the world from my perspective. I have prayed for the other driver, that he would seek God’s forgiveness for what he did. We hope the other driver made a life decision to not repeat this offense. Judge Yraguen kindly said that he hoped that my prayers would be answered. This accident had been a defining moment in both of our lives. The judge had a change in the direction of his career as a result of this and a couple other cases before the sitting judge. I had a better understanding of life and death.

I have one visual remembrance of that day almost 37 years ago of my dad sitting on the slope of the ridge above the road. He was facing the accident, sitting with his broken right leg on the ground and his left leg up, probably to relieve the pain. I didn’t see the wrecked cars, but my dad was facing directly towards the scene. That was the one image that stayed with me for the next two or three days and for these many years. I knew my dad had survived. I was in the back seat of the couple’s car who first came on the scene. They would be witnesses in the trial, and their names appeared on the court papers that Judge Yraguen showed to me. I believe that they corresponded with my dad for years to come and were a comfort to him. They drove me on that hour long drive eastward to the catholic hospital in Ontario. I recall brief moments of consciousness in the car and the woman’s attention to comfort me. I had a broken right arm, an inch long cut near my right eye, another four inch long cut on my right side at the belt line and numerous cuts with glass fragments. Dr. Tanaka treated me in the Ontario hospital, most likely the first of the four patients of that day.

Sally helped me remember that she was the first family member to see me. She had intervened quickly with the hospital staff when she realized that I had been placed in the same hospital room with the driver of the other vehicle. I recall that he had been in pain and acted rude towards the hospital staff. That is the only remembrance that I have of him. Sally said that she was my cousin Eric's mother, who was the same age as our cousin David who I had met at dad's cousin Robert’s house. Sally recalled that she had a difficult time not answering my questions as to the condition of my mom and brothers. Word had possibly come from dad to wait so that he could tell me directly. Dad did tell me, probably two days later when I was able to get out of bed and ride in a wheelchair down to his room.

This past Friday night Kay and I enjoyed dinner in Nampa with Sally, Sarah and James (Eric and his family were out of town); the dinner like what we would have had back then on vacation, as this was where we were headed. North Dakota people (I’ve learned by being one), operate under an understanding that we’ll show up when we get there. We had the excuse that there were no cell phones, not many CB radios yet in common use, the long distance telephone lines where too expensive, and there was a high likelihood that the party line of the home you tried to reach was tied up by two callers chatting away in the era before text messaging has become common. The host kept the hospitality running at all times, never know when someone would show up. I think that my mom had mailed letters ahead saying approximately when we would be passing through.

I can’t remember the chronology of their arrival to the hospital in Ontario, but before I was discharged, I would see my dad’s brother Duane, his wife Bonnie, my sister Joan, and my brother Dwight, who had been in Vietnam. I think that Dad, Dwight and Joan were there in dad’s room when he told me about mom, Alan and Curtis. He said that Lynn was in another room with a broken leg. I learned many years later that her condition was more critical than both dad’s and my own.

I was discharged and went to stay with Bjorn and Sally and their 3 kids. This time was somewhat of a blur, probably about 2 weeks. Dwight and Joan returned with Duane and Bonnie to Tolna for the funeral on Saturday and then back to the Ontario hospital on Sunday. Thousands of miles with fatigue for them both and jet lag for Dwight. They returned with mom’s brother Cornell and his wife Cheryl. I returned with my uncle and aunt, on my first airplane flight from Boise to Salt Lake City to Minneapolis to either Grand Forks or Fargo.

I had not returned to this site until now, almost 37 years have passed. Kay and I traveled across Malheur County to meet my sister, Joan, her husband Bob, and their two boys, Koehl and Eric for the night at Sunriver south of Bend. It was great to see them for the short time we had. We hiked along the Deshuttes River and reminisced about old times, and times to come.

The six of us were on the return of our vacation. We’d stopped to see my mom’s brother, Larry, his wife Annette, and their daughter Janet and son, Troy in Scobey, Montana. I scarcely remember a ride on a horse drawn wagon like they had used on the Oregon Trail. My brother Curtis was Troy’s age, and they continued their friendship and played; this time on Troy’s turf in his back yard. Alan, like me, most likely had a crush on Janet who was pretty and talked a lot. It was probably not spoken, but we both knew that you couldn’t have a crush on your first cousin. Janet spent more time with Lynn as they were close in age, and Alan and I hung out close together, but teasing them both occasionally as somehow thought that we were supposed to do.

We spent two nights in Scobey, and then headed west into Glacier National Park. My dad since told me to take photos with people in them, but he was enthralled by the mountains. His movie camera captured a lot of the beauty of the mountains and streams with an occasional darting back and forth of one of us kids from rock to rock. It was a cold night I’m sure in the popup and my brothers and I probably pulled the sleeping bag back and forth through the night. There was a high likelihood that I had had a bloody nose, with the cool, dry air and the low pressure at altitude, but mom would carry extra pillow cases for me for this reason.

The next stop that I recall is at dad’s aunt Lil’s place near Seaside, Oregon. It was the first time that I’d eaten a waffle as mom would prepare pancakes instead. Aunt Lil’s waffles were covered with raspberry jelly that she’d made from her garden and real maple syrup. We picked some more of the raspberries off the vine to top off the meal. The next couple of days we stopped to see Lil’s sons Don, Cal, and Russel. They had been boyhood friends of dad's and lived across the Tolna Coulee on the farm to the north from my grandparents’ farm. Sometime before my dad’s teen years, Lil’s family packed up and moved west to Oregon.

We spent the next afternoon at the rocky coast of the Pacific Ocean. The water was too cold by North Dakota standards to swim but we waded and took photos. I dropped my Kodak 110 in a shallow pool during my first exciting moments of seeing the ocean, but was glad to see that it still worked after drying it off. We collected seashells and played as a family of landlocked kids would seeing the ocean for the first time. Dad had seen it before during his Army service in World War II in the Philipeans and Japan. Mom was seeing it for the first time with the rest of us.

We went to Don’s in Coos Bay to the south along the coast and then to Russell’s in the southwest near Crater Lake. On Saturday, Russell and his wife brought my dad, mom and my little brother Curtis to see Crater Lake. My sister, my older brother and I stayed with our second cousins to swim in the gravel pit swimming hole as the days had been hot and the cool water was refreshing.

Then, Sunday morning, we packed up, said goodbye, and headed to the northeast and central Oregon. I recall my mom and dad discussing whether we had time to tour Yellowstone, or if the crops back home were ripening and ready for harvest. Had we made it to Bjorn’s in Idaho, they probably would have called home to talk to grandpa or Sydney to get an update on the crops, and then decide whether to go to Yellowstone or not.

While driving through Burns, Oregon this time with Kay, I think I can recall stopping back then, somewhere for a picnic that mom had packed. I’m sure one of us kids was the first to inform mom and dad that there was a Dairy Queen right along the way. DQ’s were drive-ins in those days and didn’t have either outside or inside tables. We’d have it in the car with no problem. I don’t know if we stopped at that one, but in the years since then, it was a rare occasion that dad would pass the DQ and not buy us a dilly or a buster bar.

My next memory is seeing my dad at the top of the slope beside the road. I had been in the way back behind Alan on the right side. Lynn was on left side behind dad, and Curt was in the middle of the front seat between mom and dad. The heat of the day, the picnic lunch, and possibly the DQ dilly bar combined to lull me to sleep. I never saw the river, only the hills behind dad rising to the north over Black Canyon.

Last year I called the Oasis Café in Juntura to learn about Mr. Gene Jones, the nearest rancher to the accident scene. I called him and he recalled that it was a hot day and he had been haying in the meadow. He saw there had been an accident and hurried back home to call the sheriff’s office. He headed to the scene and met a doctor from Minnesota who was also traveling through on vacation. He recalled that one of the boys had already been taken from the scene to the Ontario catholic hospital, which was most likely me. He helped the doctor help my sister out of the car. The doctor then turned to the Shelby to help the other driver who had been pinned in. Mr. Jones used his tractor to clear debris from the road so that traffic could proceed as normal.

With my internet access to google maps, and Mr. Jones recollection of the location, I was able to see an aerial photo of location I’ve described. While riding with Judge Yraguen, I was aware when we crossed the river bridge to the east of the accident site that we were close approaching the site. I was not overcome with emotion in that ½ hour that Judge Yraguen spent with Kay and I at the site, maybe due to the shock of seeing the hills again. Or, maybe God was having me process in my mind what I was seeing and hearing from Judge Yraguen for a quiet time yet to come.

Dad and Lynn were also taken to the catholic hospital in Ontario and spent about a week there. Sally noted that the Caldwell hospital had the best orthopedic surgeons at the time and had worked out the details of their transfer across the Snake River from Ontario, Oregon to Caldwell, Idaho.

I spent the remaining weeks of summer with my dad’s brother, Sydney, his wife Delores, and my cousins Dale, Wayne and Laura. Wayne and I spent lots of time together. He carried me on the back of his motorcycle with my broken arm. I learned how to place pennies on the railroad track and find the flattened coins the next day. Sydney and many of our neighbors worked together to take off my dad’s crops.

Dad and Lynn, together with Dwight and Joan returned from the hospital in Caldwell, Idaho where they had been transferred and Dad had had surgery to place a metal plate in his leg. Because of their broken legs, they returned on a chartered airplane rather than the Frontier commercial flight out of Boise that I had taken with Cornell and Cheryl. Lynn was homebound for much of the school year yet had class assignments to do, prepared by our school staff. I entered Mrs. Forde’s 6th grade class. I had my cast removed in time to join the basketball team in November. By then, the extra glass fragments had been removed by outpatient surgery at the Devils Lake Clinic and all of my stitches had been removed. I was often asked about the scars that remained and would tell abreviated versions of this story.

I would soon learn what life would be like with our smaller family; Dad, Dwight, Joan, Lynn, and me, now the youngest. I would learn to make a kite and fly it. I’d ride the snowmobile that we’d previously ridden together. I’d learn to drive tractor and trucks and continue to pick rocks from the field before planting the crops. I had a large extended family, all my grandparents, 10 uncles, 1 aunt and lots of cousins.

I can say that I have had four phases of my life so far. That day was the end of the first phase and the beginning of the second. The second would pass into the third phase when I met and married Kay and we grew our new family together. The third phase passed into the fourth after twenty years of marriage when I realized that the pain of the loss of my mom and two brothers affected my ability to communicate in our relationship. The defining moment in this transition has included prayer, counseling, and support from Kay and our family. It’s ironic that Kay and I have been married almost as long as my mom and dad had been on that day. I thank God for this fourth phase of my life and I pray that if there are to be any more distinct phases that each one will be increasingly better.

The question comes, 'what was God doing in those moments of the accident?' Was God taking a break? Had God been out of control for the moment and overcome by the enemy that steals, kills and destroys? I've prayed through this question and have comfort in knowing that God was there. Some of you who are reading this were touched by God back then in the moments you heard of our accident, and you were moved to pray for us. Some of you continue to pray for others who are affected by similar tragic events. God is calling us to pray through the hard circumstances of our lives.

Kay had anticipated the importance for us to come to this place together. After we thanked Judge Yraguen for meeting us here, we remained for a quiet time together. Together we were overcome with emotion. The accident at this location had affected us both. Kay never knew the wonderful mother-in-law and grandmother that my mother would have been. I lost one of the most important role models that a boy needs to learn to communicate with a woman, my mom. I lost two of the closest friends that I had known, my brothers Alan and Curt. I look forward to seeing them again as I know God in His Grace will arrange.