It begins at the Hacienda Hotel just outside Boulder City, a few miles from Hoover Dam. Participants are bussed from there to the launch area just below the dam using the old porter road. There were 12 of us on this trip. The raft can easily hold twice that number so it was easy to move around. The guide was very knowledgeable concerning the history of the area, the geology, the flora and fauna, and was quite humorous as well. He has a very good eye, spotting Big Horn Sheep twice where I never would have. We also saw a variety of birds: Red Head and Mallard ducks, Coots, gulls, a Peregrine Falcon, a Golden Eagle, several Great Blue Herons and Cormorants. Not too far from the end our 12 mile journey, while exploring a cave on the Arizona side of the river bank, we saw a beaver. Our guide said that was first time he had ever seen one on the river. They were fairly common before the dam was built, but not now.

Some of the pictures below have additional information. Click the thumbnails to see a larger version of each.

The day started like most summer Sundays back then. We piled into the station wagon for the 14 mile trip to Sacred Heart Church in Susanville to attend the 8:00 AM mass with Monsignor Patrick J. Moran. I don’t remember it myself, but at her funeral a few days later, Father Moran said she had Holy Communion.

The rest of the day was supposed to be fun. We all put on swimsuits under our clothes in anticipation of playing in a pool! We were going to visit at a friends new house in Milford.

I lost conciousness briefly during the crash. I was sitting in the left hand seat in the middle row of the 9 passenger wagon, directly behind Dad. I don’t remember getting out of the car, only walking around in back of it, then toward the front on the other side. Mom was curled up laying on her right side, coughing and choking, between the car and the mailbox post that stopped her flight when she was thrown out, bleeding from the nose and the one ear I could see. Even though I had never seen anything like that, I knew it was not good. There was no one else outside of the cars that I could see, so I started walking down the lane to the house where Mom’s friend lived. As I approached the front door, the woman came out. I said, “We wrecked.” She said, with a forced smile, “I know.” and took me inside, laying me on a bed and hurried back out.

Several minutes later someone carried me to the back seat of a car and drove to the hospital in Susanville. I ended up on a gurney in a hallway near the entrance. Shortly after, another gurney was rolled past. The person on it was covered with a sheet except for some brown curly hair. A doctor came and did a brief examination, including my groin. I didn’t object, just thought to myself, “You can do anything you want to me, just save my mom.” even though I knew she was dead.

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

My first thought of where to get a replacement was Home Depot. There are 3 stores within 5 miles. They also sell on-line so I decided to check there before driving anywhere. A search for “motion sensing lights” turned up only the types of security lights everyone has covering their driveways. You only get the kind I wanted when you add “decorative” to the search string. Some more searching revealed that once again, the best combination of selection and price was at Amazon, where it could be had in about a week with free shipping.

It actually arrived about 2 days before Amazon’s estimated delivery date. Installation had to wait until a weekend so it could be done during daylight. The instruction sheet said it would be easy due the “universal” mounting plate that would fit most electrical boxes. It was versatile, but not really universal. Due to wire placement on the fixture, the half-circle notch had to be positioned at the upper right. This limited orientation to only two possibilities, neither of which provided access to the electrical box screw hole that was also at the upper right. Fortunately, I still had the mounting bracket from the old light. It is two pieces fastened together in the center so that they can rotate.

So I screwed it down and put the new fixture in place. Due to the fact the part of the bracket to which the fixture would be mounted was not flush to the wall like the universal plate, it was not possible to get the fixture against the wall and the mounting screws protruded way too far to use the decorative nuts that hide the ends. I tried cutting them and ended up making them too short. Finally I saw that the distance between the mounting screws and the wall, as well as the effective screw length, could be adjusted if the back part of the bracket was also bent like the front part. The soft copper yielded to some persuasion with a vise and hammer and I got the desired shape in about 2 minutes.

Today I went there and saw a name I remember from high school: Loflin. Kenny Loflin is about 3 years older than me and was a senior when I was a freshman. His brother Donny was a junior that year and excelled in the pole vault. We were both on the wrestling team in 1967. The youngest brother Bobby is a year younger than I. We were both on the wrestling team for a couple of years. Many years later either Ken or Don (I don’t remember which) bought a house from my stepmother, Jacquelyn (Fountain) Fuller. The obituary was for their mother, Betty Jean Loflin. The unexpected connection was Betty Jean’s father: Leo Lusker. Leo was one of the high school custodians during my years there. I knew him because our first and best housekeeper, Juanita, married him after leaving us. We visited them a few times at their home in Janesville. My condolences to the Loflins.

I was quite surprised to see Daniel Paul Sanchez. Dan was married to my stepmother Maggie’s sister, Lois. They lived in Susanville and owned a lot at Lake Almanor. We spent many summer weekends there, swimming and water skiing. They are pictured (right) in 1967 with my brother Hal.

Another obituary with a connection was for Jim Buffham. I never met him but his mother Edna was my first and second grade teacher and the Principal for many years at Shaffer Union Elementary School in Litchfield, CA.