The family ran the businesses in the Palace, now Funky Winkerbeans, and the Pennsylvania, then in the late '30's bought and ran the Metrople. Blackie was a partner in the Metrople. He loved new-fangled things. He bought a new car and mounted an altimeter on the dash. When he'd return from a trip he would include the altitude in all his stories. "We spent the night in Ashcroft. I was surprised it was 1100 feet." He kind of married into the family. He married Anne, the daughter or niece of a good friend of my dad's. Anne's family was from Scotland. She was a good Scots girl. Blackie later bought the Invermere, and then the Astor. One year we all went to the Astor for Christmas dinner.

It rained for weeks while we were in Italy. I dug a hole in my tent so in the morning I could stand up while I dressed. In the morning the hole was full of water. Luckily my biggest mistake as a signalman happened in Wales, not Italy. Part of the company was on service and they sent for twenty-two haversack lunches. I sent on the message and they were sent two lunches. I was a pretty good reader, but not the best sender. The best readers would read whole sentences, not just each letter or word. Usually the sentences were pretty simple. They were often repeated messages. Some trainmen were in our unit. The Morse code used on the trains was different than the international code we used. At home their code was used to send telegrams. But the trainmen learned quickly. Knowing the letters wasn't the hard part of being a good reader.

Blackie once called the house about a telegram for Malcolm McKinnon. When you were young, Malcolm was often at our house. He was a good carpenter, and a good baby-sitter, too. Blackie called and told me to tell Malcolm that a friend of Malcolm's had sent a telegram from Illinois. Blackie said the friend was sick. Blackie had looked through the window on the envelope containing the telegram and had been able to see a bit of the message. It said, "Muskogee Ill."

Franz's Run at Whistler Mountain is named after a man Ken and I joined in an investment. Ken and I invested 15,000 dollars in a pill manufacturing company that was in a building on Broadway and Oak. Franz also invested 15,000 dollars. The guy had a machine that compressed the powdered ingredients into pills. We made about 20,000 dollars when Pfiser bought out the operation. By then the guy had moved from a tiny room full of barrels, into a bigger place on Arbutus Street. He'd hired a guy who coated the pills. The company was called Stanley. I think it's still making pills.The guy who coated the pills often drank in the Ambassador. We ended losing the money when we invested along with Art Grosse in a mining operation north of Squamish. One weekend Ken and I took the Union Steamship to Brittania. Art picked us up and drove us to Squamish. He owned a hotel there. We stayed in the hotel Friday night then hiked into the claim. I brought a few core samples home. I am pretty sure it was a gold mine. On the way we stopped at a cabin and shared a half a bottle of whiskey. We left the bottle to finish on the way back. We camped at the mine site. Ken and I shared a lower bunk in a tiny cabin. The hike back the next day was pretty tough. I felt sorry for my brother because I was really worn out. He must have felt worse. We forgot to pick up the whiskey on the way back. We thought about turning around but we were all too tired. Sunday night we came back to Vancouver on either the Prince George or the Prince Rupert, the two Union ships that would travel to the small towns. I think it even stopped at Gibsons Landing.

There were a lot of ships like the Prince George. The CPR boats would travel to Naniamo and Victoria, and north to Alaska. And the Union ships travelled all along the coastline. Most of them left out of Vancouver. There always seemed to be one passing through the First Narrows. When we had the dugout canoe, we had to be sure we didn't cross the harbour when one was coming or going.

The summer I looked after the picnic grounds on Gambier Island, we'd go back and forth to town on one of the ships.

My brother Ken sold the Seattle paper, the Post Intelligencer or PI, in Sandon. It was when he was about ten. He sold most of the different papers that came to Sandon. He was the only newsboy. He often told the story of going to Sandon's brothel to sell the paper. The madam answered the door. He told her that he collected once a month. She said it was probably better for him to collect weekly at the brothel. Ken would often tell a joke about the Post Intelligencer. PI was once a common word used instead of "pimp." A Seattle newsboy selling the P.I. asked a man, "Seattle PI, Sir?" The man replied, "Oh, no. I'm a dairy farmer from Wisconsin!"

A man showed up at the hotel in Sandon and told my mother he was hungry and wanted to know if he could do some work in exchange for a meal. It wasn't unusual for people to work for a meal, or for a night in the hotel. My mother didn't have much for him to do, so she told him he could go the bakery and pick up the hotel's order. She said he only had to tell the baker to charge the hotel as usual. The man returned without any bread because the bakery didn't have any. He told Mom if she had some yeast he would bake her some bread. Mom didn't have any yeast so he walked to the grocery store and returned to the hotel with some yeast. He baked the bread and continued to bake at the hotel for about a month, until he got a job working on the power plant.

A secretary in an office in San Fransisco that did business with the Mac and Blo mill in Ocean Falls got tired of hearing about the great time salesmen had when they made trips to Ocean Falls. She would listened with obvious interest to the endless stories about the beautiful country and the wonderful people. Knowing she would enjoy going to Ocean Falls, the men treated her to a trip to see the mill and the town. In those days people would have to take a boat that first went to Alaska then came back down the B.C. coast visiting the company mills. She was really impressed by the town and took a number of pictures. She wanted to add a few pictures to the collection on the San Fransisco office's wall that was covered with photos of the places the staff visited. She went through her collection and selected a photo she had taken of a cabin that sat on a picturesque point along the shoreline about a mile out of the town. The cabin was the town brothel.

My father would keep track of the deaths around Nelson then travel from town to town visiting the families of the deceased hoping to sell them a tombstone. He was once told by a friend that so-and-so had lost his wife. Next time Dad saw the guy he asked him if he was interested in getting a tombstone for his wife's grave. Things didn't work out. The man had lost his wife when she left town with a travelling salesman.

Once Dad took me on a trip to get some stone from a CN quarry outside of Nelson. A friend of Dad's and I travelled in the back of the truck. It was a really rough trip because the tires were solid rubber, not inflated. Dad's friend vinagled me into playing a game of "What can you do that I can't do." After a few challenges the man asked me if I could take out one of my eyes. So I asked him if he could take out his, so he took out his glass eye. I was about six at the time. Dad's friend was about 47 / 48.