Jeez, you guys are always trying to get me to reveal stuff that won't come up in the story for years!
OK, since Paul's bus appears elsewhere on the site, I'll give you the page on which to find it. I have one other photo that I can use in the story when it comes time...
Thirty Years in a Housetruck
Moderator: TMAX
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Jones'n4chrome
- Posts: 778
- Joined: Mon Dec 31, 2007 3:10 pm
I can't wait until you get to that part of the story, my first bus was 1946 Dodge with a Superior body. I didn't like powerless flat head 6, or the fact that if you got it going, it was very hard to stop, even after installing all new brakes. So I bought a 1968 Dodge D600 bus with a burnt body, it had the heavy duty 413 truck engine & 5 speed trans. I removed the burnt body & put the 46 body on the 68 frame. After that I converted it to a 4x4 using 2.5 ton rockwell military axles, sadly before I was able to finish it I became very ill, after storing it, I tried sell it, the only person with cash was the scrap yard. That was 20 years ago, to this day I still regret scrapping it.
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Dennis The Bus Dweller
- Seasoned Nomadicista
- Posts: 1874
- Joined: Mon Nov 15, 2004 9:33 am
- Location: Southold N.Y.
- Contact:
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Jones'n4chrome
- Posts: 778
- Joined: Mon Dec 31, 2007 3:10 pm
No, but it looked just like his. I'm not sure, but I think his might be longer by one window. Mine was 25' when I started, the 1968 bus was about 38' so I shortened the frame & moved the rear axle forward. When I cut the frame I made it 2' longer then the 1946 bus, so the bus was 25' with a 2' back deck. Under the deck between the frame rails I installed a Braden 20,000 lb PTO driven winch.Dennis The Bus dweller wrote:Hey there Jones
Were you the owner of the dodge in Sharkeys story?
I never got around to raising the roof, but it was needed on that bus, I'm 5'10" & I had to duck a few inches to walk front to back in the center isle.
Hey Sharkey, sorry for raping your thread, your friends bus just brings back some good memories. I never traveled very far with that bus, but I had a lot of good times in it.
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j_nigrelli
- Posts: 50
- Joined: Mon Mar 12, 2007 3:23 pm
- Contact:
One of the more important communal activities at The Schoolhouse revolved around food. Meals were nearly all shared, with most house mates kicking in on the preparation of same. This was a big change from our living situation at The Punishment Farm.
For the first 22 years or so of my life, I was, to put it politely, a "picky eater". I would only eat a few things, and only if they were prepared to my liking. Hamburgers, steak, pork chops, and spaghetti were about it for dinner items, and I can never remember eating a vegetable other than potatoes and corn when I was growing up. Breakfast was always cold cereal, and lunch was never much more than a bread-and-jelly (grape) sandwich. This must have caused my family a lot of problems. My mother often told me that she pitied any woman who ever married me.
Even after moving out on my own, I lived on burgers and Chips Ahoy cookies. For the first year or so, I didn't even own a stove, and never cooked. The refrigerator held only milk, (which I consumed in gallons) and Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill wine.
At some point, my aunt Jean gave me a 1950's full-sized gas stove, which I hauled home from San Diego, stuffed in the trunk of Crazy Robert's wife's Dodge Dart. After that, I made burgers at home.
I can't remember when I started branching out in the food groups, but I discovered that I could enjoy a whole world of other foods. Chinese, Mexican, Italian, seafood, pizza, rice, beans, the Full Monte. This was a revelation in my life, an opening up to something that I had resisted as a child, and never explored as an adolescent.
Some time in 1973 or 74, the price of beef went sky high, and as a protest against the prices, I toyed with vegetarianism. After the meat prices went back down, I never went back.
Life at The Schoolhouse was another such revelation. After moving to Oregon, Woodley and I were exposed to shopping for food at funky natural foods stores, places like The Kiva, Pat Leonard's Community Store, and Grower's Market Co-op. We also had our pick of many natural foods restaurants. What really made a difference was living among folks who had experience with natural foods cooking. Rosalie was a stupendous natural foods cook, and others, particularly Jay were into organic foods, raw juices and macrobiotic diets. We learned a ton about an alternative foods diet in a very short period of time.
Everyone at the house was collecting food stamps, and we kept a big gallon jar on the kitchen table to hold them. When each of our food stamp coupon books would arrive in the mail, we'd rip out the notes and stuff them into the jar. If anyone was going to town to buy food, they'd dip into the jar, take what they thought they needed, and return the change (in the form of lower denomination coupons) to the jar after the shopping trip. The shelves and refrigerator were always brimming with great natural foods.
This arrangement ~could~ cause problems, though. Officially, each of us was supposed to segregate our victuals, and keep them separate from the food of other people in the house. Several times, I opened the fridge to find little notes taped to all the food inside with various housemate's names on them, and pretend nag notes: "Who ate some of my cheese? Keep your hands off." What this turned out to be was the prelude to a visit by the Food Stamp Inspector, who would inspect the food storage and preparation areas of randomly selected household to check for proper observance of "the rules". Failing to properly separate your foods could lead to your being dumped from the food stamp program.
Once, either Woodley or I was "randomly" chosen for one of these inspections. The inspector was to be our regular caseworker, who notified us in writing of the time of his visit.
Sure enough, late in the day on the date of the inspection, a fleet-issue State of Oregon vehicle ground up the steep driveway, complete with the <E> "exempt" license plates. Our case worker got out, greeted us, looked at his watch, said "Oh, 5 P.M., quitting time". He then pulled a joint out of his pocket, asked if we had any beer, and joined us for dinner! No one in the house ever again got scheduled for an inspection after that!
For the first 22 years or so of my life, I was, to put it politely, a "picky eater". I would only eat a few things, and only if they were prepared to my liking. Hamburgers, steak, pork chops, and spaghetti were about it for dinner items, and I can never remember eating a vegetable other than potatoes and corn when I was growing up. Breakfast was always cold cereal, and lunch was never much more than a bread-and-jelly (grape) sandwich. This must have caused my family a lot of problems. My mother often told me that she pitied any woman who ever married me.
Even after moving out on my own, I lived on burgers and Chips Ahoy cookies. For the first year or so, I didn't even own a stove, and never cooked. The refrigerator held only milk, (which I consumed in gallons) and Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill wine.
At some point, my aunt Jean gave me a 1950's full-sized gas stove, which I hauled home from San Diego, stuffed in the trunk of Crazy Robert's wife's Dodge Dart. After that, I made burgers at home.
I can't remember when I started branching out in the food groups, but I discovered that I could enjoy a whole world of other foods. Chinese, Mexican, Italian, seafood, pizza, rice, beans, the Full Monte. This was a revelation in my life, an opening up to something that I had resisted as a child, and never explored as an adolescent.
Some time in 1973 or 74, the price of beef went sky high, and as a protest against the prices, I toyed with vegetarianism. After the meat prices went back down, I never went back.
Life at The Schoolhouse was another such revelation. After moving to Oregon, Woodley and I were exposed to shopping for food at funky natural foods stores, places like The Kiva, Pat Leonard's Community Store, and Grower's Market Co-op. We also had our pick of many natural foods restaurants. What really made a difference was living among folks who had experience with natural foods cooking. Rosalie was a stupendous natural foods cook, and others, particularly Jay were into organic foods, raw juices and macrobiotic diets. We learned a ton about an alternative foods diet in a very short period of time.
Everyone at the house was collecting food stamps, and we kept a big gallon jar on the kitchen table to hold them. When each of our food stamp coupon books would arrive in the mail, we'd rip out the notes and stuff them into the jar. If anyone was going to town to buy food, they'd dip into the jar, take what they thought they needed, and return the change (in the form of lower denomination coupons) to the jar after the shopping trip. The shelves and refrigerator were always brimming with great natural foods.
This arrangement ~could~ cause problems, though. Officially, each of us was supposed to segregate our victuals, and keep them separate from the food of other people in the house. Several times, I opened the fridge to find little notes taped to all the food inside with various housemate's names on them, and pretend nag notes: "Who ate some of my cheese? Keep your hands off." What this turned out to be was the prelude to a visit by the Food Stamp Inspector, who would inspect the food storage and preparation areas of randomly selected household to check for proper observance of "the rules". Failing to properly separate your foods could lead to your being dumped from the food stamp program.
Once, either Woodley or I was "randomly" chosen for one of these inspections. The inspector was to be our regular caseworker, who notified us in writing of the time of his visit.
Sure enough, late in the day on the date of the inspection, a fleet-issue State of Oregon vehicle ground up the steep driveway, complete with the <E> "exempt" license plates. Our case worker got out, greeted us, looked at his watch, said "Oh, 5 P.M., quitting time". He then pulled a joint out of his pocket, asked if we had any beer, and joined us for dinner! No one in the house ever again got scheduled for an inspection after that!
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Dennis The Bus Dweller
- Seasoned Nomadicista
- Posts: 1874
- Joined: Mon Nov 15, 2004 9:33 am
- Location: Southold N.Y.
- Contact:
Getting back to this...
Apparently, the rest of July and the month of August were busy and productive times for me. My letters indicate that in addition to trips to the hot springs, I worked on the Housetruck kitchen cabinet and took on a job rebuilding the engine in Jay's 1960 Chevy pickup for pay. Jay's pickup was a housetruck of sorts, it had a rustic cabin with an airtight wood stove on the bed, kind of a hippie camper.
Another significant project was that I was approached by the owner of the Community Natural Foods store in Eugene to do some electrical work on the premises, installing a 40 ampere branch circuit for a walk-in refrigerator. Since I was in need of some spending cash and wanted to make sure I got the job, I wrote my middle name down as "Sparks" on the paper with my contact information. This got picked up by the roommates at the Schoolhouse, and I was bestowed a new nickname. This was fine with me, as "George Huxley" was getting a bit old by that time. Interestingly, the name has stuck until now, at least as many people know me by that name as Sharkey.
Woodley had a few changes as well, his estranged wife, Anne moved to Oregon, and they began a process of reconciliation. Anne moved in and became a member of the household, living in Woodley's step van. With the van needing to support two and a dog, Woodley put a lot of effort into finishing the interior.
The other notable occasion was that my guinea pig gave birth to four babies. I took the cover off her cage one morning and there were three times as many little eyes staring out at me as the night before. Guinea pigs give birth to fully furred, wide-eyed young, who take only a few minutes or so to shake off the experience and then begin scrambling around exploring their new world. They are drop-dead cute, and completely tame from the first breath. Best of all, the pet shop paid me $4 each for them as soon as they were 6 weeks old! Try that with kittens.
Apparently, the rest of July and the month of August were busy and productive times for me. My letters indicate that in addition to trips to the hot springs, I worked on the Housetruck kitchen cabinet and took on a job rebuilding the engine in Jay's 1960 Chevy pickup for pay. Jay's pickup was a housetruck of sorts, it had a rustic cabin with an airtight wood stove on the bed, kind of a hippie camper.
Another significant project was that I was approached by the owner of the Community Natural Foods store in Eugene to do some electrical work on the premises, installing a 40 ampere branch circuit for a walk-in refrigerator. Since I was in need of some spending cash and wanted to make sure I got the job, I wrote my middle name down as "Sparks" on the paper with my contact information. This got picked up by the roommates at the Schoolhouse, and I was bestowed a new nickname. This was fine with me, as "George Huxley" was getting a bit old by that time. Interestingly, the name has stuck until now, at least as many people know me by that name as Sharkey.
Woodley had a few changes as well, his estranged wife, Anne moved to Oregon, and they began a process of reconciliation. Anne moved in and became a member of the household, living in Woodley's step van. With the van needing to support two and a dog, Woodley put a lot of effort into finishing the interior.
The other notable occasion was that my guinea pig gave birth to four babies. I took the cover off her cage one morning and there were three times as many little eyes staring out at me as the night before. Guinea pigs give birth to fully furred, wide-eyed young, who take only a few minutes or so to shake off the experience and then begin scrambling around exploring their new world. They are drop-dead cute, and completely tame from the first breath. Best of all, the pet shop paid me $4 each for them as soon as they were 6 weeks old! Try that with kittens.
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j_nigrelli
- Posts: 50
- Joined: Mon Mar 12, 2007 3:23 pm
- Contact:
Better get back to work on this before interest fails (yours, not mine).
Late summer and early fall were insanely busy times for me. Getting ready for my first "real" winter in Oregon meant that I needed to get the wood burning stove installed in the Housetruck and prepare a supply of firewood to keep it stoked.
Installing the stove wasn't particularly difficult. I purchased a six inch roof jack and blue steel stove pipe at Quackenbush's, a venerable hardware store located in the downtown of Eugene. The sales clerk who helped me wasn't too sure about installing a chimney on a flat metal roof, but I was fairly certain that the jack that I purchased could be secured to the roof using sheet metal screws and putty. The clerk made the comment that he could tell people who heated with wood as soon as they walked into the store by the sooty aroma on their clothes.
The jack did install easily on the truck roof, and the pipe fitted together with two 90 degree elbows to provide an offset to avoid a steel beam in the roof. This gave the pipe the classic "bent pipe" look that nearly all truck installations seem to have. It also made installation of the pipe easier with the stove in place because the two elbows could be connected at the horizontal joint between them after putting the top and bottom sections in their respective places.
The first fire I lit was a fairly small one, but the heat from the stove made the kraft-faced insulation behind the stove immediately turn black, as if it was about to burst into flame! After damping the fire down, I realized that the black was caused by the tarry treatment on the interior of the facing bleeding through to the face. The lesson was learned, however, and I found a square section of 1/8" asbestos hardboard to put behind the stove to protect the bare insulation from becoming too warm.
Firewood was a different matter. I was very dedicated to cutting all of my wood without the use of petroleum products (i.e. chainsaw), so I purchased a small bow saw to do the job and built a sawbuck to support the wood while I worked. It didn't take to long to figure out why power tools were invented. Hand sawing soft wood like fir or cedar was a workout, and I switched the saw from hand to hand to build up muscles in both arm equally. Sawing through hardwoods like oak was a completely different matter altogether. Some larger pieces of wood required a rest break in the middle of the cut to gather some reserves to continue.
Somehow, I managed to buck up a fair supply of wood, split it (while sharpening my skill with the axe and maul), and get it stacked under the truck for the approaching cold weather. My only surprise turned out to be that it was not necessary to split the hardwood into as small as pieces as I thought, so I ended up with no larger logs to bank up overnight fires with.
Now that I had the ability to heat the truck interior, I removed the (!) unvented (!) gas heater that I had been fueling from a propane tank, and began to enjoy the coziness of wood heat.
At some point in September, Paul's mother sent word that she would be making a trip from New York, where she lived, to Las Vegas, and convinced Paul to come visit, since she would be "so close". My own mother had lived in Las Vegas for some time, and I owed her a visit as well, so Paul and I formulated a road trip to meet our familial obligations.
We set out from the Schoolhouse in Paul's 1972 Toyota Celica GT with some food, bedding and my expired gasoline credit card, headed for the capital of sin.
The first day, we got almost as far as Reno before we pulled into a rest stop outside of Sparks, Nevada for a break. It was apparent that neither of us was any longer awake enough to do any more driving, so Paul ratcheted back the driver's seat into a reclining position and fell quickly to sleep.
I did the same and laid there for a while staring at the dark headliner (it was sometime well after midnight), without getting comfortable enough to doze off. After a while, I gave up and got my pad and sleeping bag from the back seat, intending to find a place to toss out somewhere outside. There wasn't really very much around aside from the restrooms and some low shrubbery near the offramp of the highway, so I unrolled by bag under the bushes and conked out for the duration, hoping that Paul didn't wake up and decide to drive off without me.
The LV visit was awful, not so much because of our mothers, but because LV is an awful place. I stayed with my mom in her studio apartment, and Paul lodged with his ma at her hotel. We got together for some meals, and our mothers spent some time hitting casinos together, and took in at least one show at The Showboat. That's about all I care to remember of LV, other than I did find a nice plaid flannel shirt at a thrift store, which kind of blew my mother's mind, because she thought that it was rather frumpy and looked like it belonged on some old guy.
Our trip back to Oregon was more memorable, partly because I wrote some of it up in a letter to Mom afterwards. Heading north out of LV, we took Route 95, which runs through Beatty and up to Tonopah. Wanting some scenic travels, we cut off at Route 3, a narrow, twisty road that winds through a deserted valley to a town named Oasis. There we picked up Route 168, which took us over the White Mountains, depositing up on Highway 395 at Big Pine, south of Bishop, California.
Once again, it was time to find a place to bed down, and we wanted to be a little more organized about it, so we followed some signs, ending up at Horton Creek campground at around 10PM. The campground is located a little north of Bishop, and is directly east of Yosemite National Park, at an elevation of 4,700+ feet. The moon was full, and the early Fall night warm enough to not require even a light jacket. After heating some food on a camp stove and setting up the tent, we spent a couple of hours just sitting in the high desert, taking in a wide panorama of sky and mountains, all illuminated by lunar glow. Nearby Horton Creek provided bubbling water sound effects and frog and cricket music.
Here's a piccy of the view from the campground, courtesy of the Bureau of Land Management:
The next morning, we headed north, passing Mono Lake, and picking up Route 89 to skirt Lake Tahoe on the west side. Up and up, through the Northern California forests, staying on Rt 89 and it's equivalents until we came to Lassen Volcanic Park, a place where the rents and tears of the formation of the crust of the planet haven't yet healed over. We spent some time exploring the park visitor center, and looked at some of the presented displays of geysers, fumaroles, steaming mud pots and the like.
Back on the road, it was a reasonably short trip to join Interstate 5, south of Weed, CA, then a boring drive up the lower half of Oregon, eventually arriving home at the Schoolhouse after dark. Rosalie was just arrived home from travels of her own, and Woodley and Anne were there. Life returned to "normal", whatever that is defined to be, and I returned to preparing wood for the winter and working on the Housetruck.
Late summer and early fall were insanely busy times for me. Getting ready for my first "real" winter in Oregon meant that I needed to get the wood burning stove installed in the Housetruck and prepare a supply of firewood to keep it stoked.
Installing the stove wasn't particularly difficult. I purchased a six inch roof jack and blue steel stove pipe at Quackenbush's, a venerable hardware store located in the downtown of Eugene. The sales clerk who helped me wasn't too sure about installing a chimney on a flat metal roof, but I was fairly certain that the jack that I purchased could be secured to the roof using sheet metal screws and putty. The clerk made the comment that he could tell people who heated with wood as soon as they walked into the store by the sooty aroma on their clothes.
The jack did install easily on the truck roof, and the pipe fitted together with two 90 degree elbows to provide an offset to avoid a steel beam in the roof. This gave the pipe the classic "bent pipe" look that nearly all truck installations seem to have. It also made installation of the pipe easier with the stove in place because the two elbows could be connected at the horizontal joint between them after putting the top and bottom sections in their respective places.
The first fire I lit was a fairly small one, but the heat from the stove made the kraft-faced insulation behind the stove immediately turn black, as if it was about to burst into flame! After damping the fire down, I realized that the black was caused by the tarry treatment on the interior of the facing bleeding through to the face. The lesson was learned, however, and I found a square section of 1/8" asbestos hardboard to put behind the stove to protect the bare insulation from becoming too warm.
Firewood was a different matter. I was very dedicated to cutting all of my wood without the use of petroleum products (i.e. chainsaw), so I purchased a small bow saw to do the job and built a sawbuck to support the wood while I worked. It didn't take to long to figure out why power tools were invented. Hand sawing soft wood like fir or cedar was a workout, and I switched the saw from hand to hand to build up muscles in both arm equally. Sawing through hardwoods like oak was a completely different matter altogether. Some larger pieces of wood required a rest break in the middle of the cut to gather some reserves to continue.
Somehow, I managed to buck up a fair supply of wood, split it (while sharpening my skill with the axe and maul), and get it stacked under the truck for the approaching cold weather. My only surprise turned out to be that it was not necessary to split the hardwood into as small as pieces as I thought, so I ended up with no larger logs to bank up overnight fires with.
Now that I had the ability to heat the truck interior, I removed the (!) unvented (!) gas heater that I had been fueling from a propane tank, and began to enjoy the coziness of wood heat.
At some point in September, Paul's mother sent word that she would be making a trip from New York, where she lived, to Las Vegas, and convinced Paul to come visit, since she would be "so close". My own mother had lived in Las Vegas for some time, and I owed her a visit as well, so Paul and I formulated a road trip to meet our familial obligations.
We set out from the Schoolhouse in Paul's 1972 Toyota Celica GT with some food, bedding and my expired gasoline credit card, headed for the capital of sin.
The first day, we got almost as far as Reno before we pulled into a rest stop outside of Sparks, Nevada for a break. It was apparent that neither of us was any longer awake enough to do any more driving, so Paul ratcheted back the driver's seat into a reclining position and fell quickly to sleep.
I did the same and laid there for a while staring at the dark headliner (it was sometime well after midnight), without getting comfortable enough to doze off. After a while, I gave up and got my pad and sleeping bag from the back seat, intending to find a place to toss out somewhere outside. There wasn't really very much around aside from the restrooms and some low shrubbery near the offramp of the highway, so I unrolled by bag under the bushes and conked out for the duration, hoping that Paul didn't wake up and decide to drive off without me.
The LV visit was awful, not so much because of our mothers, but because LV is an awful place. I stayed with my mom in her studio apartment, and Paul lodged with his ma at her hotel. We got together for some meals, and our mothers spent some time hitting casinos together, and took in at least one show at The Showboat. That's about all I care to remember of LV, other than I did find a nice plaid flannel shirt at a thrift store, which kind of blew my mother's mind, because she thought that it was rather frumpy and looked like it belonged on some old guy.
Our trip back to Oregon was more memorable, partly because I wrote some of it up in a letter to Mom afterwards. Heading north out of LV, we took Route 95, which runs through Beatty and up to Tonopah. Wanting some scenic travels, we cut off at Route 3, a narrow, twisty road that winds through a deserted valley to a town named Oasis. There we picked up Route 168, which took us over the White Mountains, depositing up on Highway 395 at Big Pine, south of Bishop, California.
Once again, it was time to find a place to bed down, and we wanted to be a little more organized about it, so we followed some signs, ending up at Horton Creek campground at around 10PM. The campground is located a little north of Bishop, and is directly east of Yosemite National Park, at an elevation of 4,700+ feet. The moon was full, and the early Fall night warm enough to not require even a light jacket. After heating some food on a camp stove and setting up the tent, we spent a couple of hours just sitting in the high desert, taking in a wide panorama of sky and mountains, all illuminated by lunar glow. Nearby Horton Creek provided bubbling water sound effects and frog and cricket music.
Here's a piccy of the view from the campground, courtesy of the Bureau of Land Management:
The next morning, we headed north, passing Mono Lake, and picking up Route 89 to skirt Lake Tahoe on the west side. Up and up, through the Northern California forests, staying on Rt 89 and it's equivalents until we came to Lassen Volcanic Park, a place where the rents and tears of the formation of the crust of the planet haven't yet healed over. We spent some time exploring the park visitor center, and looked at some of the presented displays of geysers, fumaroles, steaming mud pots and the like.
Back on the road, it was a reasonably short trip to join Interstate 5, south of Weed, CA, then a boring drive up the lower half of Oregon, eventually arriving home at the Schoolhouse after dark. Rosalie was just arrived home from travels of her own, and Woodley and Anne were there. Life returned to "normal", whatever that is defined to be, and I returned to preparing wood for the winter and working on the Housetruck.
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Bruce Berryhill
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Sun Nov 09, 2008 8:35 am
- Location: Sisters, OR
- Contact:
Great story. I came to Oregon something like five years after you did and ended up a few miles down the road in Saginaw at Appletree Commune. The commune was mostly done but the renters in the other three houses on the 21 acres got along great. I don't recognize your housetruck but the name 'Sparks' rings a bell. I was on the OCF garbage crew for 5 years and the site crew for 5 more. Haven't been back since. One of these days.
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Dennis The Bus Dweller
- Seasoned Nomadicista
- Posts: 1874
- Joined: Mon Nov 15, 2004 9:33 am
- Location: Southold N.Y.
- Contact:
Still stuck in 1975, I'm afraid.
-+More+-
Work on the Housetruck continued, with Woodley and I exchanging skills and helping each other to get farther along in the process. My kitchen cabinet got a finished counter top and a backboard, and Woodley's step van was fitted with a fresh water tank and a system of valves that allowed the pump to be configured for several modes. I began building a floor-to-ceiling cabinet to house my refrigerator, and took the first steps to make my apartment-sized gas cook stove operational, hooking a regulator to the tank and using rubber hose to supply the stove with gas so that it could be used, even though the LPG tank was inside the truck (not good...).
I wanted the propane cylinder out of my living space, so it was time to build a rack for it and the three other tanks I had purchased in L.A. before leaving. There was a lot of scrap iron around the Schoolhouse, including many old bed frames, made of very sturdy angle iron. Several of these were cut into measured sections and formed up as a rack that would mount under the truck's van body on the left side. All that remained to be done was to have them welded together. One of the auto repair shops in Creswell had a "Welding" sign outside, so I approached the owner and described my project. He said he would do the welding for $20, but only if I assembled the pieces as he worked, and helped him by holding them in position. I agreed, and after arriving at an appointed day and time, we began. I was given a spare welding hood so that I could watch the process while I held the parts in place. All told, it took about an hour to weld the rack into shape, during which time I received many nice electrical shocks from the rudimentary "buzz box" welder that he was using. Nevertheless, the job was done, and done to my satisfaction. Afterwards, I decided that it didn't look all that difficult, and since I had much more welding to do on the truck, I determined that I would have to learn to do it myself.
Enrollment for Fall classes at the local community college (Lane Community College, or LCC) were just opening, and looking at the schedule, I found that Basic Welding was offered as an adult education class evening and weekends. The tuition was next to nothing, $9 if I recall, with a materials fee of $11 or something ridiculous like that. I signed up at once, and also registered for a class in First Class Radiotelephone Licensing, with the expectation that this might make it possible for me to apply for a job at one of the local radio stations.
At the first welding class, along with about a dozen other students, I was given the "safety rap", an orientation of the welding tech shop, was issued a small handful of 6011 welding rod, and after picking some small pieces of steel out of the scrap bin was shown into a welding booth in the far end of the shop. No classroom instruction, no book reading, no real direction, just "Here's the materials, now go weld".
By this time, I had purchased my own welding hood and a pair of gloves, so I started burning rod on the scraps of steel, getting familiar with the routine of putting the hood up and down, becoming comfortable with the smell of hot flux, and trying to not flinch with every small spark that worked it's way into my clothing.
After about an hour, an instructor popped his head into the booth to see how I was doing. Not all that well, considering the goal of producing good, clean, strong welds it turns out. A few minutes of having him weld while I watched, some explanation of what to watch for, and having him guide my gloved hand while I welded, showing correct technique produced a lot of understanding, and gave me the direction I needed to start practicing for real.
By the end of the first class, I could lay a bead well enough to join two pieces of metal. On the way out after class, I stopped into the tool crib and asked if it was possible to bring in projects to work on. I was told that this was fine, but they had to be small enough to carry into the shop and get into a booth. Vehicles were NOT allowed inside the welding tech building, due to the hazardous combination of liquid motor fuels and welding sparks.
Every class after that, I had some kind of project to work on, either something brought in from home, or a fabrication job made from odds and ends found in the scrap bins. I took my wood stove in to weld feet to the legs so that it could be bolted to the floor of the truck. A few scavenged car parts from the old Citroën in the Schoolhouse yard were welded to my stove to make a forced-air plenum that gathered cold drafts from the floor and exhausted them as a super-heated column of air. I made a poker for the stove, and a custom grate to burn on. I modified the stove top to be more air tight, and cradle a cooking pan better. An old hot water heater tank I found under the Schoolhouse was recruited to be my fresh water tank, and a mount was welded up to hold it under the truck. Woodley designed some custom latches for an opening skylight that he was building for his truck, which I fabricated using other tools in the welding shop before doing the actual welding on them. I learned to braze and discovered the joy of wire feed welding (MIG process). The gas welding area of the shop had long benches lined with fire brick, where oxy-acetylene welding was accomplished. A motorized line cutter with adjustable flame cutting heads could cut long, straight lines in metal. The whole shop was filled with all of these amazing, expensive tools, and they were all mine for four hours every Saturday.
I quickly became the two instructor's favorite student. Each week they would ask what I had brought them to work on. The rest of the students were all practicing to be certified welders. This was back when the Alaska Pipeline was being built, and welders were needed to work on it. There would be 20 guys in booths, welding together 6" sections of 6" steel pipe, then cutting the pipe assemblies lengthwise into "coupons", and trying to break the coupons in the hydraulic press to test their welds. For the most part, the instructors were bored stiff with the rest of the class, most of whom didn't need any attention from them anyway.
I took the adult ed version of "Basic Welding" over and over, just to have access to the shop, the tools and the instructors, who would help me design and build projects, making suggestions and offering ideas and introducing me to new techniques of fabrication.
In all, the whole experience was summed up by some graffiti that someone had burned into one of the portable welding screens in the shop:
"LOVE TO WELD"
it said.
-+More+-
Work on the Housetruck continued, with Woodley and I exchanging skills and helping each other to get farther along in the process. My kitchen cabinet got a finished counter top and a backboard, and Woodley's step van was fitted with a fresh water tank and a system of valves that allowed the pump to be configured for several modes. I began building a floor-to-ceiling cabinet to house my refrigerator, and took the first steps to make my apartment-sized gas cook stove operational, hooking a regulator to the tank and using rubber hose to supply the stove with gas so that it could be used, even though the LPG tank was inside the truck (not good...).
I wanted the propane cylinder out of my living space, so it was time to build a rack for it and the three other tanks I had purchased in L.A. before leaving. There was a lot of scrap iron around the Schoolhouse, including many old bed frames, made of very sturdy angle iron. Several of these were cut into measured sections and formed up as a rack that would mount under the truck's van body on the left side. All that remained to be done was to have them welded together. One of the auto repair shops in Creswell had a "Welding" sign outside, so I approached the owner and described my project. He said he would do the welding for $20, but only if I assembled the pieces as he worked, and helped him by holding them in position. I agreed, and after arriving at an appointed day and time, we began. I was given a spare welding hood so that I could watch the process while I held the parts in place. All told, it took about an hour to weld the rack into shape, during which time I received many nice electrical shocks from the rudimentary "buzz box" welder that he was using. Nevertheless, the job was done, and done to my satisfaction. Afterwards, I decided that it didn't look all that difficult, and since I had much more welding to do on the truck, I determined that I would have to learn to do it myself.
Enrollment for Fall classes at the local community college (Lane Community College, or LCC) were just opening, and looking at the schedule, I found that Basic Welding was offered as an adult education class evening and weekends. The tuition was next to nothing, $9 if I recall, with a materials fee of $11 or something ridiculous like that. I signed up at once, and also registered for a class in First Class Radiotelephone Licensing, with the expectation that this might make it possible for me to apply for a job at one of the local radio stations.
At the first welding class, along with about a dozen other students, I was given the "safety rap", an orientation of the welding tech shop, was issued a small handful of 6011 welding rod, and after picking some small pieces of steel out of the scrap bin was shown into a welding booth in the far end of the shop. No classroom instruction, no book reading, no real direction, just "Here's the materials, now go weld".
By this time, I had purchased my own welding hood and a pair of gloves, so I started burning rod on the scraps of steel, getting familiar with the routine of putting the hood up and down, becoming comfortable with the smell of hot flux, and trying to not flinch with every small spark that worked it's way into my clothing.
After about an hour, an instructor popped his head into the booth to see how I was doing. Not all that well, considering the goal of producing good, clean, strong welds it turns out. A few minutes of having him weld while I watched, some explanation of what to watch for, and having him guide my gloved hand while I welded, showing correct technique produced a lot of understanding, and gave me the direction I needed to start practicing for real.
By the end of the first class, I could lay a bead well enough to join two pieces of metal. On the way out after class, I stopped into the tool crib and asked if it was possible to bring in projects to work on. I was told that this was fine, but they had to be small enough to carry into the shop and get into a booth. Vehicles were NOT allowed inside the welding tech building, due to the hazardous combination of liquid motor fuels and welding sparks.
Every class after that, I had some kind of project to work on, either something brought in from home, or a fabrication job made from odds and ends found in the scrap bins. I took my wood stove in to weld feet to the legs so that it could be bolted to the floor of the truck. A few scavenged car parts from the old Citroën in the Schoolhouse yard were welded to my stove to make a forced-air plenum that gathered cold drafts from the floor and exhausted them as a super-heated column of air. I made a poker for the stove, and a custom grate to burn on. I modified the stove top to be more air tight, and cradle a cooking pan better. An old hot water heater tank I found under the Schoolhouse was recruited to be my fresh water tank, and a mount was welded up to hold it under the truck. Woodley designed some custom latches for an opening skylight that he was building for his truck, which I fabricated using other tools in the welding shop before doing the actual welding on them. I learned to braze and discovered the joy of wire feed welding (MIG process). The gas welding area of the shop had long benches lined with fire brick, where oxy-acetylene welding was accomplished. A motorized line cutter with adjustable flame cutting heads could cut long, straight lines in metal. The whole shop was filled with all of these amazing, expensive tools, and they were all mine for four hours every Saturday.
I quickly became the two instructor's favorite student. Each week they would ask what I had brought them to work on. The rest of the students were all practicing to be certified welders. This was back when the Alaska Pipeline was being built, and welders were needed to work on it. There would be 20 guys in booths, welding together 6" sections of 6" steel pipe, then cutting the pipe assemblies lengthwise into "coupons", and trying to break the coupons in the hydraulic press to test their welds. For the most part, the instructors were bored stiff with the rest of the class, most of whom didn't need any attention from them anyway.
I took the adult ed version of "Basic Welding" over and over, just to have access to the shop, the tools and the instructors, who would help me design and build projects, making suggestions and offering ideas and introducing me to new techniques of fabrication.
In all, the whole experience was summed up by some graffiti that someone had burned into one of the portable welding screens in the shop:
"LOVE TO WELD"
it said.
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