From the files of Frank Clyburn Clyburn Family News Vol. 16, July 4, 2003

Doris June (Knight) Taylor

My Memories

by Franklin L. Clyburn

I thought it was time to mention my Aunt Doris. Doris Knight was born on August 31, 1931 at Oak Bar, Klamath River, CA. She was the 7th child of Vera Ellen Burris and Earl Guyles Knight, Sr., of Oak Bar, CA, but only the fifth child to survive. Doris was born next in the family after my mother Violet Mae Knight and just about two years before Earl Knight, Jr.

My earliest memory of Doris involves the year I was in the first grade at Riverside School. 1952 to be exact. That is the year that my father and mother were divorced. I remember living in Blyth, CA and Las Vegas, NV during part of that year. I should have been in the first grade but due to the moving around I wasn't in school or not very much for the first part of the year. Then we moved back to Oak Bar, Klamath River, CA. We lived with Earl Knight, Sr., my mothers dad for quite awhile after that. We lived with him about a year and a half at his home on the hill above the house my Grandfather's brother George Lester Knight built (that house is still there, and being lived in). My grandfather's house is no longer there but last time I was there the old cellar was still there and the orchard. In fact, the last time I was there Doris was with me. We walked up the hill to where the house used to be. That was the summer before she passed away. She sure enjoyed that short trip we took.

Well, anyway back to Doris. After moving back to Oak Bar I started catching the bus to school. The school was the one-room Riverside School up the highway (now Walker Road) toward Walker Bridge, a distance of several miles. I still have some clear memories of that school and the last half of my first grade there (The next year I had to take the year over at the then new Horse Creek School). One is that the children in my grade were reading from a reading book and I couldn't read it at all. How humiliating for me! I've never forgotten that and that kind of thing has never happened to me since. I remember being very lonely while at that school and not playing during recesses. Well, no wonder, having starting in the middle of the year I didn't have any friends there. Anyway every now and then Doris would walk up-river and walk back home with me. We would walk and talk. She told me that when she and my mom were kids that they used to chew on the charcoal of some burnt fence posts, and chew the pitch from the large yellow pines for gum. I tried that stuff but didn't like it. We would throw rocks into the river, look at flowers, birds, etc., and just enjoy the walk.

I remember her and her husband George Albert Taylor lived in a little cabin (I remember there were two little cabins there) beside the road at Oak Bar ranch. The cabin was almost across the road from her Uncle George's and slightly down river before the road going up to my grandfathers. It had been built on a wide spot beside the highway (the highway wasn't any better then than it is now). I remember seeing the mailman, Dick Merrill flying by grabbing the mailbag and throwing another one in the mailbox. He really flew!

I watched them build the new highway across the river on the north side and my uncle George Edward Knight (Doris's older brother) working on that project and when he got his knee injured there while driving a Uke belly dump or scraper.

I remember when Doris's daughter Donna was born and them bringing her home from the hospital in Yreka. George owned his own Caterpillar and logged some. I know he logged up above the old house at Oak Bar. Once I went up the hill with him and he let me operate the winch and pull a log up the hill to the cat. What a thrill that was for me! I'll never forget that day.

Another memory of Doris (Preceding all the above) was of a time when my dad (Woodrow Clyburn), mom (Violet Clyburn), Lynda and I lived up Ash Creek. I certainly don't remember much about that as it must have preceded my going to school. My dad was a ranger with the Forest Service and we lived in the Ranger Cabin way up Ash Creek (off the Klamath River of course). Lots of rattle snakes at that place. That cabin has been gone in every other memory of mine. Anyway I have a real distinct memory of Doris and I walking down the road to my Uncle Tom Clyburn's house. What makes the memory so vivid is Doris telling me to be real quiet and maybe we could get past Jack Taylor's place without him seeing us. If he was to see us we'd never get away because he'd stop us and talk and talk. Well I remember that we made it past Jack's alright and my memory fails me there. I don't remember getting to Uncle Tom's and what a shame, because my memories of Uncle Tom although starting later in my life are all wonderful memories of a loving, giving, loyal man and friend.

Doris and George had a 1952 Studebaker and Doris would go up McKinney Creek to the K.C. Mine to visit George's aunt, Florence Cooper, there. Sometimes Doris would invite me to ride along. Man could she drive that Studebaker! She'd drive that road to the K. C. Mine like she was in a race! Maybe she had to drive that way to even get up there with the car as it wasn't a very good road when wet. Anyway I always enjoyed those trips though I don't remember too much about them except for hanging on for dear life.

I remember in 1955 when George and Doris lived at a little house across the highway from The Swallows on the Klamath River. My family was visiting while the Flood of 1955 was raging. My stepfather decided that we'd better get home as he wasn't certain that the Klamath River Bridge would not wash out. I also remember when she and George lived in Hawkensville, CA and when they lived by the Seiad Creek bridge at Seiad in a house that the 1964 flood destroyed and buried. Then they moved to a house at the Campbell Tract south east of Yreka. There, as a teenager, I acquired that Studebaker from them. I rebuilt the motor in an auto shop night class at College of the Siskiyous while still in High School in Yreka. My cousin Dave Clyburn, a natural born mechanic and a little younger than I, took the class also. We had to get special permission from the High School to do so.

Later George and Doris moved to Sweet Home, OR. George was then working for White's Electronics. He invented and developed the first plastic goldpan. He let White's keep the patent as he was working for them. Too bad that he didn't patent it for himself huh? Now there are thousands of them sold each year. My stepfather Ronald Douglas had the first one up to the time he died. I'm not certain which family member now has it.

After George died, Doris moved back to CA. She settled in Montague. When I moved back to CA from Alaska in 1977 I stayed with Doris for a time. It was there that she taught me to make potato salad. What a nice person Doris was! She was always a kind, fair and lovable person. She was the most even tempered person I knew and she never seemed to have an unkind word for anybody and I never heard her gossip about anyone either. She and I had a long history of being more that nephew and aunt. For certain we were very close friends. Doris passed away from a heart attack. Her wish was to not have a Memorial Service and to be buried near her husband George Taylor. She was cremated and lies buried on the hill above Yreka close to George.

OF OAK BAR, CA.

-- Agnes (Knight) Howarth

My Uncle George Lester Knight was born on November 4, 1879 in Felton, Santa Cruz Co. CA. He was the ninth child born to my grandparents and the first born in California. My memories of Uncle George are fond ones. About three years after my mother died me and my sisters Doris and Patricia went to live with him. My father just could not take care of us all by himself but continued to raise the rest of the family (Mary, George, Earl, Jr. and Violet) after my mother passed away in 1939.

I remember when he built the house at Oak Bar. I along with the other children helped build it. I put a lot of nails in the building and packed a lot of those 94 pound sacks of cement. I was still in grammar school ( I started school in Hornbrook while still with my dad then we went to the Riverside School and I graduated from the Rocky Mountain School).

When I went to live with Uncle George, I was about seven years old, Doris was about nine and Patricia was only five at the time. We heated water with the wood stove if we wanted hot water and the only toilet was the "two holer" outhouse. I still remember using the Sears catalogue in ways it wasn't meant to be used! I was in Yreka High School before we had inside plumbing for a bathroom.

We had lots of chores to do on that place. We worked right along with everyone else. We watered, we weeded the gardens, we helped with the haying, milked the cows, done the cooking and washed the clothes on the old wash board by hand.

Uncle George worked for the State Highways for many years until retirement. I don't know when he started that work but later, after retirement, he worked some for Mr. Rogers on his ranch. He also worked on at the apple orchard further up river just past the mouth of McKinney Creek.

My dad and Uncle George used to do a lot of wild bee hunting. This means they were looking for bee trees to rob of the honey and maybe the bees. They would go sit down at the springs and watch the bees. They would watch the direction the bees were going in order to get a line on them. Then follow them, find the trees, cut the tree, get the honey and strain it. It was sure good. One time I went with Uncle George, and we sat down at this water hole, it did not take me long to move, because next to me was a rattle snake, he killed it with his walking cane. It had 12 rattles and the button. It was a big snake.

We never did much there except work on the ranch. I do remember a time when Uncle George took us children down river following the boat races. They used to race down the Klamath River every year. We went all the way to the mouth of the Klamath River following those boats. I don't remember who won the race that year. He brought us back by way of Grants Pass, OR. We sure enjoyed that trip.

On the 4th of July every year we would go up past Oak Knoll and on up the Siskiyous until we got to snow. We would bury a watermelon in the snow bank and make home-made ice cream. My dad and Uncle George would try to spot some bees while we were having fun in the snow. That pretty much was my life growing up at Uncle George's. He put me and Doris and Patricia through school and then gave me away at my wedding to Ralph Howarth, Jr. on December 27, 1954. The wedding took place outside under the big oak trees by the house at Oak Bar.

Uncle George loved flowers and had a vast flower garden at every place he lived. He sold the Oak Bar property to Mr. Kutzer who lived across the river and built another one on the hill across the river from the mouth of Dona Creek where he also had a vast flower garden. He later sold that property to somebody with the US Forest Service and moved to a property across the road from the mouth of McKinney Creek. He also have pretty flower beds there.

He died of a heart attack there on March the 4th, 1960. He was to meet the owner of the neighboring Apple Orchard to help cut some fence posts. Jim Murray the owner found him there at the house dead and called me. He must have had some precognition of his death because about six months before, he had everything fixed so that I could take care of his affairs after his death. The house he died in was on the property that belonged to Jim Murray, (Uncle George was the caretaker of the orchard). I knew the Thanksgiving before he had his heart attack, that it was not going to be long. He wanted me to handle his affairs and that is when he got everything fixed up for me to do so.

of Tom Clyburn

–by Franklin L. Clyburn

I can't recall when I first met my Uncle Thomas Miles Clyburn. It seems that I've always known him. And what a guy he was!

When I was about 8 or nine years old my dad Woodrow Clyburn and his older brother Tom were mining together. They were partners. This partnership lasted many years until after Uncle Tom found the Dorothey Peak Mine on Cottonwood Mountain.

They had just found the trace on the east side of Rocky Mt. In the Humbug area West of Yreka, CA. They hadn't yet found the main trace. I remember that they had an old trailer house pulled in beside the creek there. One day I went mining with them and we stopped at the Swallows to get something to take for lunch. One of the things they got was some boiled eggs. When lunchtime came and the eggs were pealed some of them had feather like stuff (as I remember) in them. I said "yuck!" and I wouldn't eat them... Tom and my dad said they were okay and they finished them off. I knew right then that there was something wrong with those two!!

Anyway they ended up selling that mine the "Lucky Strike" for $60,000 with the help of the local assayer, Carl Yates, who got 10% and they split the rest.

Uncle Tom was a miner! I believe that it was he who found the main trace on the Lucky Strike although I believe my dad actually did most of the work on it. I know that I helped my dad put timbers in the tunnels after he blasted.

I remember some of the stories Uncle Tom told me. One was the story of his bootleg days. He had made a batch of hooch to take to Happy Camp for their 4th of July celebration. He was selling it there and then he got word that somebody was making inquiries regarding where the booze came from. (Tom always grinned when to told this story.) He said that he took off up the Klamath River as fast as he could go. He owned one of the Model T racing cars. They were built kind of like a boat. Pointed at both ends and the 4 cylinder Model T motor had 16 valves overhead on them. (I got to see one of these cars and a cutaway of the motor and head in Reno, Nevada at Harrah's Automobile Collection). Apparently they were fast! Anyway going back up the river he hit about 5 cars going around the sharp turns on the road. The car was built light so it slid a lot. His eyes always twinkled when he said that the front of the car was not pointed any longer when he finally made it home! He told me that he made the booze up Lime Gulch at what we family members call the Barrel Spring. I noticed later when I went up there that there still was remnants of barrel hoops there.

Another time Tom was telling me about mining up on Bumble Bee Creek. That is a small creek that comes into Beaver Creek from the east. At that time I was really into collecting old bottles. I talked him into showing me where that mine was. He told me about mining there with a partner. I can't remember the partner's name now. Anyway he also told me about a man who was mining below them. These were placer mines and this guy had been piling the rocks up along both sides of the creek as he cleaned down to bedrock.. Apparently it was pretty deep along that part of the creek. The guy didn't show up for a few days so some people started looking for him. They found where some of his walled up sides had caved in. Sure enough they found him under those rocks where they had caved in. Tom said that part of the creek was never mined since.

Anyway Tom and I went up Lumgrey Creek and walked down Bumble Bee Creek to the mine. The cabin was still there at that time. We dug for bottles and found some interesting ones. I don't know if they were valuable or not. He kept some and I kept some. I always gave my old bottles to Loucille Clyburn (Joe Clyburn's wife) who collected them.

Before we left we walked over onto the rock piles on the opposite hillside. Here was the remains of the derrick with which they moved the big rocks away from the creek and piled them. Also we found the old 1928 Baby Grand Chevrolet motor that they used to lift the derrick.. It was still there! That was exciting to me because I was into old cars. Some idiot had taken the spark plugs out and left the motor to freeze up and rust. That made Tom angry. It still had the radiator attached and as it was an old honeycomb radiator I wanted it. Tom told me that if I could pack it out of there that he would give it to me. We got it loose from the motor and I did pack it way up that hill. I was so excited!

I walked back down there about 10 years later with my stepfather Ronald Douglas and came to a road. It had me scratching my head until I located the rock piles across the creek. That road came out of Beaver creek and went exactly through where the cabin had been. No cabin there now but the old Baby Grand was still there. It's hidden from site on those rocks and unless you know it's there it's hard to find. I suppose that it could even yet be good for parts or maybe even fixed. Not so hard to get now that a road is there. I think the bridge across Beaver Creek was washed out during the flood of New Years 1997 though.

Uncle Tom came to Alaska to visit me one time. I found out in advance that he was coming. He expected to surprise me but a little bird dime dropped on him. I met him at the ferry terminal and took him to a friend of mine's place. Stan Livingston had killed a moose not long before and he had a meal consisting mostly of moose all ready. Uncle Tom said it tasted just like the buck he'd killed awhile ago! When he said that he got that little crooked grin and his eyes twinkled. (It had not been deer season for over 7 or 8 months! Ha.)

We had a very good visit while he was there. I was living in a log cabin south of Wrangell at the time. Tom couldn't stay still while there. He used wedges and lifted the cabin up to a level. It had started settling on one side.

Tom was an amazing guy. I remember when I was younger him picking plants and telling me what medicine they could be used for. I wish I remembered all that now.

He brought a pack sack and a briefcase full of gold on that trip. Can you imagine? When he left he was determined to fly on the plane. They had recently built a jet airport on Wrangell Island and he was going to ride it. He'd never ridden a plane before and he was litterly shaking but he went anyway.

He later told me that it was the finest trip he'd ever had. He loved looking out of the plane and seeing all the lakes and streams and islands in Southeast Alaska. He loved the way it looked. He said that in the Seattle-Tacoma airport he was tired and looking to eat somewhere. He saw a shoeshine stand and asked the person there if he could leave his packsack and baggage for awhile while he looked around. The guy said "sure" so Tom left it there and when he come back he said nothing had been touched. Can you believe he left all that gold that way? Well, that bag of gold was heavy to pack.

Another memory I have is of Tom showing some of us how to make moonshine. Dave, Paul and I got the stuff together. I got the grain and I believe that Dave and Paul got the rest. I think that Dave had come up with a copper vessel to use. My memory is a little fuzzy on it all now but one thing we couldn't come up with at the time was a spirit tester. Tom said a hydrometer wouldn't work as it didn't measure a high enough alcohol content. Well, we made do. I never got to taste the product but I was told that it was powerful! A funny thing was I went up to Tom's one morning and here was Gladys feeding the grain to the kids. She'd boiled it and they were eating it like you'd eat hot cereal!

When I left Alaska in 1977, I wanted to look up Uncle Tom. At that time he was living in Nevada but I didn't know where. I found out that Jeanne Clyburn was in Utah so I thought I'd go see if she knew where he was. I asked my Step-Father Ronald Douglas if he'd like to go with me. He was usually ready for an adventure and he said yes. So off we went. We saw some interesting country. We went by the site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Some Mormons massacred a wagon train of Gentiles in 1857. Also stopped at a state park that looked just like a mini Brice Canyon. This place was still in Nevada.

We went to Brice Canyon and Zion National Park. We would have gone to the Grand Canyon but the north side was snowed in at that time. We found Jeanie at St. George, Utah, she now called herself Robin. She was married to an ex-biker fellow by the name of Thulin and had three children at the time. We thought they made a nice family. She didn't know where Tom was but we had a good trip. On our way back we visited Dorothey and her family in Eureka, Nevada. What a nice husband and family she had there. I believe at the time they had three children.

Later I heard that Tom was at Mountain City, NV so off Ron and I went again. We drove to Elko and turned North toward Mountain City and the Idaho border. We got as far as Wildhorse Reservoir and decided to pull off the road and look at the lake.

Soon afterward his orange pickup pulled off and you'll never guess who got out.....yes, Uncle Tom. He stopped just like we did to stretch his legs. He didn't know it was us. What a lucky break. He was always the hardest guy to find. Well, that's big country over there. We had a nice visit with Tom on that trip. I took the following photo on that day at the lake.

Once Oliver Clyburn and I were both out of work. We had been cutting posts for sale for the summer. We decided to go to Nevada to see if we could get work in one of the many mines there. We drove to Elko, Nevada and decided to visit Uncle Tom. I knew that Tom was at Wilson Reservoir as I stayed in touch by mail. Wilson Reservoir was just west of Wild Horse Reservoir on the other side of a range of mountains.

When we got there we found Uncle Tom all by himself. He'd been fishing through the ice on the lake. He was sick with pneumonia. He coughed up big gobs of blood from his lungs constantly. He wouldn't see a doctor. Oliver and I camped there for the evening as we had the back of his pickup fixed to camp in. It was cold! We never did know how cold but the elevation there was about 6,000 feet above sea level in (January I think.)

We thought Tom was a goner and that we'd never see him again. He fooled us all. A couple of years later when I asked him how he recovered he told me that he would eat a handful of aspirins, a tall glass of whiskey and take some sodium salicylate tablets. He said that it sweated the pneumonia right out of him!

Another time my cousin Dan Taylor and I were over in Nevada trying to find work in the summer. We visited Uncle Tom who was camped at Wild Horse Reservoir. We camped out there with him for awhile and fished. It was very good fishing there. Also there was a hot spring and a cement tub up away from the lake on some private property that we bathed in. We found a lot of arrow heads that summer and Dan found a spearhead in the edge of the lake.

Dan sure liked Tom and once we had ridden with Tom over the mountains to Wilson Reservoir to dig worms at a place Tom knew about. Sure enough he showed us how to turn over these cow pies and under them we always found worms... On the same trip with Tom driving and me in the middle, a badger runs across the road in front of us. Tom yells to Dan who was on the passenger side, "Catch him!" Dan opens the door and jumps out and starts after the Badger. Then he stops and looks so foolish, because he finally figured out that he didn't want to catch a badger. You should have heard Tom laugh. He was often pulling jokes on us. He had a great sense of humor. Tom and I used to make sailboats of different designs and try to make them sale across the lake into the wind. We actually got a couple of them to do it! We got a kick out of it when someone stopped by his trailer and while talking mentioned the mysterious little sail boats they had found on the beach across the lake while fishing.

I was logging in the summer out of Burney and Mt. Shasta and my dad started going south in the winter. He would stop various places but would always end up at Quartzite, AZ before heading back to Siskiyou Co. He invited me to go when I wasn't working. I went with him several times. I usually camped out while he stayed in his trailer.

One time we met up with Tom by pre-arrangement and he told us where he was going. My dad wanted to check out this place Tom told us about called Devil's Cove on the Colorado River on Lake Meade, NV. We decided to follow Tom. He also was pulling a trailer, although a smaller one.

It's miles and miles out there from Mesquite, NV and Tom would go faster than us then he'd stop and wait until we caught up. He had a bottle of booze with him and as it was miles out on the dirt roads he'd take a nip while waiting for us. We'd catch up and then he'd take off in a cloud of dust! After awhile we started down a very rough narrow and windy road into the Devils Cove.

Tom waited for us there and then we never even began to catch him until we finally got to the camping place on the lake. While my dad was setting up camp, I walked over to where Tom's trailer was. I knocked on the door and he told me to come in. He was using a axe handle winding a rope up in his trailer...he had a hole through both sides with sticks on the outside cinching it together. His eyes twinkled and he got that grin when he said "My trailer got pregnant coming down that hill!" I laugh every time I remember that trip. He later told me he parked that trailer at a storage place and never went back. He bought another trailer.

Tom had a dog that went with him everywhere. What a couple they made. Sally was a Mexican Chiwawa and she seemed to know his every word. When she died he was heartbroken.

Another winter I was down on Lake Meade with my dad and I realized it was Tom's birthday. I baked a cake and took it into Overton, NV where he was camped (we were camped about 10 miles away). He appreciated it, it was his 75th birthday. I was the only family member to see him on his birthday.

Tom taught me how to keep meat during the summer without refrigeration. He would fry it about half way or more and then layer it in a crock or even a coffee can and pour the grease over it until it was completely covered. If the grease on top started to look bad he'd simply bring it to a boil. It would keep for ages that way.

Tom also he had a way of keeping his milk and other perishables without refrigeration. He simply used the evaporation method of cooling. It kept everything cool. He'd put his perishables into a pan and cover the stuff with a dishtowel. Then he'd pour water over it all to a certain depth in the pan. He'd place this in the shade of his trailer. As the water soaked up the towel it would evaporate and keep everything cool.

He taught me how to pick up radio signals from almost anywhere. He wound a coil of insulated wire up and one end he'd attach to the trailer wall somewhere and the other end he'd poke into the ground outside. The coil would fit over the radio. He could pick up stations where no one else could. They would come in strong even hundreds of miles.

I was at the family reunion that took place at Wild Horse Reservoir one year. It was fun to be there. I was the only family member that wasn't a son or grandson or granddaughter or married to one there. I always felt close to Tom. We drank some together when I visited (he liked Old Yellowstone and unsweetened grapefruit juice), but never got drunk. We just talked a lot. In some ways I felt closer to him than my own father. I suppose it was because Tom would always listen to me and would talk to me man to man. I know he was very special to me my whole life. Who else would go to Alaska to visit a mere nephew? Why even my relatives, that live close by, don't visit.

We talked a lot over the years whenever I visited him. Once he told me that he and his Grandfather Miles really got along well together. He said they would talk a lot and go places together. He indicated that he was closer to Miles than any of the other kids in his family. Tom also said that Henry Lee was a very nice brother and that Robert Franklin "Bud" was mean to the other kids. (Tom just called his older brothers Lee and Bud)

Another time he told me that my dad had owned half of the Dorothey Peak Mine. After he'd found it he told my dad about the find because they were partners. He said my dad (Woodrow Clyburn) told him that he wasn't going to climb that hill for all the Gold in California! He told Tom to keep his half. Later I asked my dad about it and he told me that was exactly the way it happened and he still wouldn't if he had to walk up that hill. Tom always told me that there is more gold there. He felt that he could trace it down. Tom never lied to me or to anybody that I know of. Every story he told me was true. He did say a time or so that he wouldn't tell. That's the way he was.

He packed that gold around with him for years in an old US Government pack sack. Finally somebody stole it from him. He told me that he was at a reservoir (I can't think of the name of it) and was fishing around a corner of the lake out of sight of his pickup. He said they broke open the side window on his pickup and opened the door and took it. When I saw him that time he looked bad. He'd lived for that gold. He did still have a little of it that was in his trailer but he'd lost most of it. After that he drank heavy and finally he got so sick that some other campers called the ambulance.

The last time I saw him was in the hospital in Las Vegas, NV. He was tied in bed with a respirator down his throat. He was totally conscious but couldn't breathe without it. His eyes asked me to turn him loose and of course I couldn't do it. It tore me up. Paul and Judy flew in from Ohio to see him and we were the last to see him alive.

I know that I have more stories about Tom but this is enough for now. He was one of the most influential people in my life. I was just watching an A & E program on TV today about the American Revolution and it seems that Tom was a man just like the ones that were our forefathers. He seemed like a throwback to the men of those times. Loyal, self sufficient, a hunter, a trapper. He could live off the land. Such men are the only hope we have even now, if we are to keep our country free, it seems to me.

--by Franklin L.Clyburn

Well folks, on March 17, 2003 I had to turn myself in to the emergency room at the Mt. Shasta hospital.

I'‘d been having pain in my lungs (it seemed my lungs) for a couple of years and more whenever I'd do much activity. I didn't know why. I wanted to exercise more than I did but the pain and lack of breath always stopped me.

Anyway for about a week and a half, before March 17, I'd started having a burning pain in my chest. This pain was far progressed from the other that I've spoken of. The pain came and went several times a day and would last for as long as maybe 15 minutes. It finally hurt so bad that I drove to the hospital at 4:00 AM that morning.

When I got there they put me on oxygen and started testing me. They kept me all night and the next day and the pain never started all during that time. It always seems to happen that way doesn't it?

Anyway at 12 noon they put me on a treadmill. As soon as I started walking hard I immediately had the burning pain in my chest and they knew it was my heart. (I believe now that when they put the oxygen on me that my heart got enough oxygen for a change and that's why it stopped hurting when I got there.)

They immediately sent me to Mercy Hospital in Redding and a heart doctor put a tube in my artery of my right leg up to my heart and shot dye into me. This procedure called a cardiac cath showed six blockages in my heart vessels. One was blocked totally. The others were 73% blocked or more.

With my consent they operated on me and gave me six artery bypasses. They operated at 4 PM the evening of the 18th of March and sent me home on the morning of the 22nd of March.

Angela, my wife, who has been working on another book in SC, immediately flew home and took care of me. She still has not completely recovered from her surgery of a couple of years ago herself. It's was hard for her but she went all out to make my recovery as comfortable as possible.

My youngest daughter Ronnie and her two year old son Rayce came from Soldotna, Alaska to visit me. They were invited to stay with my Aunt Agnes Howarth while here. What a guy that Rayce Lee is!

I had been healing well, with no infections, etc. until Saturday morning (April 12). I didn't feel good that morning and about 10:30 AM I all of a sudden started getting lots of pain. This pain went down the back of my left arm and the healing pain of my chest started hurting a lot more than normal. Within a few minutes the pain was so great that I had Angela drive me to the emergency room again. This time through a snowstorm!

I stayed in the hospital that night and by the next day the report was in. I had been having a heart attack! Again I was sent to Redding to the hospital there. They immediately sent me for another cardiac cath which revealed that one of the new bypasses had failed.

My doctor determined that he would treat my condition with medicine. I was relieved that they weren't going to cut me open again.

Angela stayed with my cousin Steve McMaster this last time. She came back to my hospital room simply raving about how nice Steve and Vickie were to her and how lovely a home they have!

After coming home for just a day I had to take Angela to the hospital emergency room. This was on April 6th. She really got sick. We found out there that she had pneumonia and she was there a couple of nights. I believe she simply wore herself down attempting to help save my life.

All during this time of trouble for me, when ever I needed anything my Aunt and Uncle Ralph and Agnes Howarth have been wonderful. They've transported my car twice, they've purchased and installed gas for me at my house and have been right there when ever Angie or I needed anything. Also Aunt Fae McBain has been very helpful and concerned during this time. I want to thank each of these people for their help. I really appreciate it.

I'm back to work now even though I don't feel good a lot of the time. It's real hard to concentrate on important stuff when you don't feel good. The doctors have told me that it's normal. I hope that I start feeling better soon.

Well, guess this is all for this newsletter. I hope that you all enjoy the memories that have been shared here. If you'd care to share some family stories please send them to me at the above address or email me. Frank