Every new place to which we moved, without fail, had something that would make it interesting. This one certainly did, but in this case, we brought it with us; my uncle!
The reason I want you to meet my dad’s youngest brother is that he lived with us for the summer we were in Worland. He was working his way through college and needed a job between sessions, and one was available on the survey crew. He was an interesting person, and I’m guessing that what we know is not nearly as interesting as the part he was not allowed to tell. You see, he really would be a rocket scientist in due time, White Sands Proving Grounds, N.M. to  Mercury Manned Flight Capsule, St. Louis, and NASA, Cape Canaveral.   

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Daddy’s Baby Bro Sees Wyoming
Baby Sitting Isn’t Rocket Science

In some respects, he was a normal Ozark Foothills country boy, the youngest of eight kids, comfortable behind plow handles or a cane pole. The family sure-shot, he was one of my mentors in target shooting. He enjoyed taking his .22 into the woods when it was “too wet to plow”, but he could just as often be found in the hay loft with an algebra book. He would solve problems that his high school teacher could not, and when he got to college at Cal, Berkley, that did not change with his math prof. He decided his tuition money was not being well spent; he could do as well closer to home. At Oklahoma A&M, he met and later married an extremely attractive young lady, tall and blonde, a wheat farmer’s daughter from a former Kansas Swedish colony. She was very bright, too, and had just a few more credit-hours in mathematics than he did!; a match made in heaven!

In May of ‘46, we were being relocated to the town of Worland in the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming. There was a new company Jeep waiting in Tulsa, for someone to drive it to the prospect, and there was my uncle, J.B. packing his things in Stillwater to go find a summer job; another match made in heaven! Our trip took us over a trail that was becoming more familiar with each transfer. We would stop and get gas and a coke and a short visit at the Red and White Texaco on our way through Shoshoni. After renewing old acquaintances, we were on the road again, and fixing to face one of the greatest fears of my young life: the winding, narrow two-lane road through Wind River Canyon. There were no guard rails in the canyon in those tail-end of the war days, and very little shoulder on the roadbed, with barely enough room for the road! The only place I felt safe was inside the tunnels. In places, the canyon walls towered vertically just shy of a half mile high on either side, but I was always afraid to look. Neither would I look at the coffee-brown walls of water smashing into the rocks, with waves being thrust into the air by the boulder-strewn river bed, sending foam and spray into a fearful  display of power! These days, the canyon is a featured showplace of the Parks Department for tourists on their way to the Tetons and Yellowstone. The regulation of Boysen Reservoir has the river running clear, the road has been modernized and widened, and guardrails added so the beauty of the canyon can be enjoyed, which is hard to do with your face buried into the seat-covers. At our first stop, reaching the mouth of the canyon, Dad pulled over in the family sedan and J.B. stopped the Jeep behind him. The first words spoken were J..B.’s “Sam hill, what a hole!”

Very soon after we got settled into suitable housing, J.B. started a project. He was going to build a radio, with a phonograph turntable, and a mechanism that would change the records without anyone attending the machine until it had played through the whole stack! That’s pretty radical for 1946. We had never seen any such machine, not even in the movies. He would go through his mail-order literature, listing various items in various quantities on an order blank, and after a few days, begin watching the mail. After several little boxes had arrived, there would be times the odor of solder could be found emanating from his room. Wes and I knew not to bother him, but Dad had to drive Mom to the store and she asked him to keep an eye on “the boys“, as we lived very close to the Bighorn River. He told her he would keep us inside: he would be working on his “project”. As we began to lose interest in being inside we became too rowdy to suit J.B. and he gave us fair warning: if we didn’t stop it, he would stop it for us. The warning didn’t “take” and the next thing we knew, he had hold of the backs of our shirts, and with a soft cotton clothesline rope, hog-tied us securely to one another, and rolled us underneath the bed! Problem solved!

In the scenery department, Wyoming is extremely blessed in so many ways. Dad wanted J.B. to get his money’s worth out of his summer excursion, so he took him to see some of the spectacular attractions, even a fishing over-nighter for the whole crew and families to Yellowstone. I remember the guys cooking trout on Coleman stoves by the light of lanterns, and the campfire: they kept the ladies out of the “kitchen”. Back then, you could keep a generous limit of fish, so there were ample Cutthroat trout to take home. In lieu of a cooler to keep them in overnight, the guys hung the stringer, away from the bears, in the cold night air, from the extended outside ridgepole of the “single men’s” cabin. J.B., on his way back from an early morning trip to the rest room, came past the wood pile, picked up the axe, and reaching as high as he could, raked the logs under the fish with it, and tried his best bear impersonation, sounding as much like a bear grunting as he could. He must have been convincing, because he could hear the guys waking-up one another with, “There’s a bear after our fish!”, and issuing challenges to go scare the bear away. This was high adventure for a six year old!

J.B. spent a few evenings of his spare time making a cabinet for his project, and one evening after the varnish dried, he gave a demonstration of this cutting-edge technology. Wes and I enjoyed showing it off to the half-dozen or so kids we had befriended from the neighborhood. The fun part was announcing that our uncle had built it, and watching the jaws drop and the eyes pop. When it came time for him to return to college, he presented the records and player to Mom and Dad as a gift, in appreciation for “having him underfoot”. I think it had more to do with washing and ironing his khaki shirts and pants. This small stack of 78 RPM recordings was my introduction to classical music.

He had a plan in mind that would advance his goals for his education: he  made application to the Coast Guard Academy. Before he heard anything from it, he got his draft notice, and reported as required. He was in boot camp at Fort Bliss when he was notified he had been accepted at the academy. When he shared the good news with his superiors, their response was, “You’re in the Army, now, Buddy”. Thus began a correspondence campaign, ultimately involving his Senators and Congressman, and anybody they knew that had leverage. The Army released him and he went to the Academy. Upon graduating, he was told he could stay in the Coast Guard, or go to the Navy, who had better training programs for electronics engineers. He chose the U.S.Navy.

He spent several years at White Sands, Alamogordo, N.M., where one of his projects was to design a telemetry decoder to supplant the “manual” methods that were being used to collect, evaluate, and “understand” the information gathered from missile tests at the proving ground. In those days, everything had vacuum tubes. He designed the decoder he wanted, but the devices he needed didn’t exist, so he had to design the tubes, also. He became involved with the space program and left Alamogordo for St. Louis where components of the Mercury Project were being produced, to be over the electronics of the manned flight capsule. When the program moved to the launch site at Cape Canaveral, he went, too. After he retired from NASA, he chose pure research as his field for the balance of his years. I had asked him once during his tenure associated with an important-sounding project, just what he spent his time on. His reply: “Particle beam research, mostly”. Seeing my quizzical expression, he continued, “Propulsion and weaponry”. I knew I was in over my head, so I didn’t pursue it.

We were finishing a meal at his dining room table, New Years Eve. 1955, when I asked him to explain multiplex broadcasting, that would allow one receiver to reproduce stereo sound. I had heard about it, but couldn’t quite believe it, much less understand it. He picked up his fork, and with the handle, started drawing little boxes on the tablecloth, with graphs and mathematical equations, explaining as he went, of which I was understanding nothing. He paused, went back over his figuring and paused again and called to his wife who was starting on some dishes in the kitchen sink. She came in, wiping her hands on her apron, and he said, “Hey, Alva, would this be co-sine theta…” She had been squinting over his shoulder and didn’t wait for him to finish, She took the fork, and without a word, scribbled a few lines underneath his, laid down the fork, and returned to her dishes! I guess those extra credit-hours paid off!

There had been an E.T., UFO incident at Roswell, NM in 1947, that has been shrouded in mystery, controversy, secrecy, and intrigue, spawning many conspiracy theories. Various personnel were involved at one level or another, but no one was talking. One of these was an officer that J,B. had later become friends with at White Sands. He knew his friend couldn’t discuss it, and though he was very curious, he never asked. By chance, as he was winding down his career with NASA, he saw the officer in Maryland, and they began swapping favorite memories and yarns. It occurred to him that after all these years, it might be a good time to find out something about the “incident”. The officer would not offer a single word. Case closed!

Where is the Canyon, highway number, I would like to drive it sometime?

Jim, the canyon is below Boysen Dam and reservoir, between Shoshoni and Thermopolis, WY, and accessed by U.S. Highway 20 and Wyoming Highway 789. There are several websites that can be googled to see pictures of it in its present condition, also pictures of the monster trout that the fly-fishermen catch on their float trips on the river. With the reservoir and dam regulating the flow, it seems quite serene, compared to the wild torrent of muddy water that used to come crashing through the gorge. The cliffs are still 2,500 feet high in places, that has not changed.The name of the Wind River changes to Bighorn River, at a place at the north end of the canyon called Wedding of the Waters by the Native Americans of the area because that was where the river lost its ferocity, and was relatively calm as it flowed North. I have not found any vintage photos of the conditions in the '40s, though I'm sure some exist, maybe in museums. If I find some I'll let you know..