My family moved back out west to a small town in Central Washington with a population of around 12,000 but growing fast at the time. Most people think of Washington as the "Evergreen State" But Central Washington contains a large desert called the Columbia Basin. Before irrigation water was brought here from Grand Coulee Dam nothing grew there but sagebrush and other desert plants that most people associate with the Southwestern parts of the United States. It is still pretty barren around there with few trees except for a few trees close to a the few natural lakes in the area. In the areas that they have brought water in there is a lot of wheat and potatoes grown and more recent years grapes have been added. I would spend the rest of my years here until I went into the service at the ripe old age of 17.
Moses Lake was a great place for a teenager in the late fifties. Boeing had just opened a new plant for the B-52 and there was no way that housing could keep up with the demand. Every teenager in town had plenty of money. From the time I was 13 until I went into the service I had a job each summer in construction. I like most of the rest of my friends had plenty of money. I bought my own clothes, bicycles and school supplies.
1946 Mercury Convertible (well this was a coupe but I cut the top off using MS image Composer) The yellow convertible in the movie "The Karate Kid" was a '46 Ford, the same basic car as mine, just slightly different grill and trim. If I remember right the convertible in the movie "Back to the Future" was also a '46 Ford.
When I was 16 I spent less than 6 weeks pay and bought my first car. It was a red 1946 Mercury Convertible. That car was great but it kept me in a lot of minor trouble. There wasn't a police officer in Eastern Washington that didn't know my Merc. Usually within 30 min. after I pulled into another town two things would happen. First a girl I didn't know would offer to put gas into my car if I would just give her a ride. Second an officer of the local town's finest would pull me over and inform me that the local law knew that I was in town and that they didn't allow drag racing on their city streets. For some strange reason the party of the second action always seemed to scare the party of the first action away, sheeeeesh how is a guy ever susposed to learn about life or have any fun? Many years later when I first started IRC I would see a little blue convertible it reminded me so much of my first car and the good times I had with it, that I changed it's color to red and wrote ^46Merc on the side of it. Then about a week later I changed my "nick" to ^46Merc. I have been Known as ^46Merc on IRC ever since.
The good life isn't always so good. At 17 I was in the 11th grade with a good part time job too much money in my pocket and the absolute knowledge that I knew more than all the teachers in the school combined. I had good grades but was bored and wanted to make more money. Yep, I was a greedy little duck, so I dropped out of school at the end of the first semester. Talk about bad timing, this was the worst. The housing market had dried up and I was out of a job. No work and no school meant I was suddenly and absolutly without money. In July, I didn't much choice left, I joined the navy to "see the world", as the recruiting posters said.
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United States Navy- Digital Images
This page was lasted updated 05/29/99
