Trego's Mountain Ear

"Serving North Lincoln County"

Tag: writing

  • Poor Maintenance is Just Another Form of Debt

    I’m working at remodeling the old service station. The most interesting thing is that the repairs aren’t a whole lot different than what I read my old high school (now the middle school) needs – and the comments on that read like it would be cheaper and easier just to tear it down and start anew.

    My first task was replacing the roof – once the leaks were repaired, other work could proceed. Like the old high school, we’ll be adding another frame to the inside wall – simply enough, the insulation of 1966 hasn’t been adequate for a long time. Framing in a second, internal wall will give seven inches for insulation . The copper tubing used for plumbing will be replaced by pex. Deferring maintenance – whether a building or a piece of equipment – just means you’ll be paying more later.

    Someone early in the building’s history removed a load bearing wall. We put it back in, within a couple of inches of the original. The sheetrock cracks disappeared as the 20 ton hydraulic jack took out the sag – it shows where the work should have been done years ago – but it’s OK, the repairs are coming along.

    Once we get the old store part fixed, the challenge will be getting the old logging camp cookshack moved a bit toward the south, and, if we can, getting a solid foundation under it. I’ve got the idea that the cookshack and bunkhouse were used in railroad logging down along the Kootenai until about 1936, and that Don Boslaugh brought them up to Trego to work in the impact with Westwood Acres 30 years later. There’s too much history in the old logging camp buildings not to do a little bit of restoration. Again, deferred maintenance is a debt that has to be paid sooner or later.

  • Thinking About H1-B Visas

    I see that Governor DeSantis (Florida) is moving to eliminate H1-B visas from Florida’s university system. My experience with the H1-B visa holders is limited – and at least ten years out of date – yet DeSantis’ comments match my experience: “They come in with these brokers who make a fortune of this with arbitrage. They bring them in and they are indentured to the company. So, the company can basically pay them low and they say no, we got to do this. You have to prove there are no Americans. They will put an ad in the classified sections of a newspaper. Nobody reads that section of the newspaper… It’s all become a total scam”

    The article explained the numbers: “The H-1B program exists to bring workers specifically from India and China: • 283,397 Indians in 2024 • 46,680 Chinese • Philippines came in at #3 — with 5,248.” My limited experience confirms DeSantis’ comments – Prasanthi was from India, and asked me to serve as a reference on her job applications as a way of getting out of the ‘indentured servitude.’ The last I heard from her was a very appreciative thank you note as she managed to get a job out of SDSU. She was hired to teach faculty to do distance-education courses, and it was a job I would not have taken – the technique was to assign busy work instead of academic inquiry. I will admit, I’m no fan of busy work. It fits right in there with group projects.

    The point is, she was hired to do a job that this American would not do. I can’t say H1-B is always bad – but she was hired to teach me to present in a way that didn’t really improve my students’ research skills (in my opinion – I could be wrong, but don’t believe I am). DeSantis said  “I don’t understand how is that specialized knowledge that only someone from these places can do. A $40,000 a year job working as the assistant at the athletic department? That’s an abuse of this whole idea. If there are things that the universities need, that somehow they just can’t find in Florida, to me, they, of all employers, would be the ones most responsible for why they can’t find what they need.”  Like I said, his comments are pretty much in line with my experience.

    Yet I learned a lot from working with Prasanthi – that there is a color discrimination in India that exceeds our own cultural racism, and that was a reason to accept the limitations of the H1-B to get to America. As I look at immigration, both legal and illegal, I realize that there is a lot more opportunity here than over there. And it seems to me that the difference between coming into the US as a mojado or with an H1-B isn’t so great – either way, it’s better to be in the land of the big PX.

  • The Lady Wore Mink (or remodeling the gas station)

    As I unloaded material into the old service station, I had a visitor. A lady wearing a mink jacket – interested in what we’re doing there. I have a soft spot for ladies wearing mink, and it isn’t a common apparel in scenic downtown Trego, so I showed a bit of the unfinished project.

    Part of the deal with furs was my aunt Fay. Over half a century ago, she had examined yard sales and thrift stores for large women’s fur coats – which she would disassemble, and rebuild into vests for me. Afterall, it was the sixties. Later, after Renata and I married, I offered to get her a mink coat kit. She was less than impressed by a singe trap and a small skinning knife. The morning I drove to work and spotted a roadkill winter mink, I didn’t dare call her and ask her to pick it up for me. Sometimes discretion truly is valor’s better part.

    But back to the shop. We are remodeling it. The first step was replacing the leaking corrugated roofing – you can’t remodel when the roof leaks. The next stage is fixing the ceiling damage, and moving the stuff that has been stored there out of the way. I’ve built a 20 unit storage building, and one of those units is going to be full of stuff that is in the way when I work on remodeling. It’s easier to move boxes than to make a permanent decision about things we haven’t used in ten years.

    The service station was built to serve the population involved in building the tunnel. After that population changed, Retha McCully got the idea of changing it to a Convenience Store. When she died, Dad kept the store going – and took out the parts that made it a garage. I’m not remodeling the building for my ideas – at 75, my task is to remodel it into a building that fits with my daughter’s ideas. Today we brought a mini-split on line. Tomorrow, we bring back the wall that separated the gas and oil from the barber shop when it was built. By the time we finish, the building will include spaces for four small businesses.

    Then comes the other tasks – the southernmost building (that Dad put alongside the gas station) was originally a logging camp cook shack. If it can be restored, it will be moved another 20 feet south and be back looking like it did when it was part of a logging camp. The northernmost building was a logging camp bunkhouse. There is too much community history in those two logging camp buildings. The old service station is from the boom town days of the middle and late sixties, while those two portable buildings are from the logging camp days – two distinct times in Trego’s history.

    The center building looks like an old log building – but isn’t. Back when the railroad was relocated, and Libby Dam was built, a guy named Goldsberry bid in the task of salvaging railroad material from the area that was soon to be flooded. He figured that the cedar telegraph poles (installed in 1904) would still have value – but by 1970, they had spent their effective lifespans as telegraph poles. While the telegraph was high tech in 1904, by 1970 it was ho-hum. In the eighties, Dad set up a small mill and had Pat Eustace mill the telegraph poles and turn them into a small building – representing, in its own way, the first railroad relocation and Trego’s first initial boom. The first part of the remodel was taking off the handcrafted doors – unique, but so heavy that opening and closing them damaged the structure.

    As the new walls go up, it gets easier to see what’s coming in with the remodeling. You don’t need to wear a mink jacket to come by and see what’s going on – or to figure out if your dream business might fit into the old service station and downtown Trego’s future.

  • The Two Goat Herd

    My grandson, Remi, gave me his first complete sentence about six weeks ago. “I need a goat.” I thought back over 65 years – and realized that, just before Dad retired from the Navy, my parents bought their first house – in Washington – then bought an additional acre of blackberry brambles, and goats to eat down the brambles. I realized that I had liked having goats around as a kid – so I messaged a great lady I met who had goats.

    Long story short, she introduced Remi and I to a pair of Nigerian Dwarf does. Remi was enchanted, so I got him two goats just as soon as I got a small goat house set up for his front yard. There’s going to be a lot more work setting up the permanent goat corral.

    I’m no expert on goats – but I started this project knowing you don’t get one goat. They’re a herd animal, and need a friend. So the deal was made for two little goats. The one pictured kept her original name – the other became ‘Stormy’. Which is a lot better than Sam referring to her as ‘that little black witch’ on her third escape the first evening we brought Remi’s goats home. The escapes were (I believe) just to show us she could do it – she might jump to the top of the goat house, and then over the fence, but leaving her friend wasn’t in the cards.

    Nigerian Dwarfs are small dairy goats – and the breed page says that they are primarily kept as pets. Which is fine by me – I’m guessing the smaller of the two weighs about 40 pounds and the larger a little over 50 pounds. The average dairy goat weighs in at 120 pounds – these little does are tiny. And they have all of us feeding them – family and neighbors. After the first night, they settled in and are getting by fine.

    I’m reading a post from the Brown Family Farmstead on Nigerian Dwarf goats: “Don’t let their small stature fool you, they may be small but they can still jump a six foot fence.” I thought a four foot fence was plenty. Sam and Jed have held out for a six foot fence. Now I realize the pair stay in the fence out of courtesy.

    On Sunday, we took the little goats out on a walk. After maybe a hundred yards, they remembered their 4-H training and enjoyed the walk. Then came the recollection – small humans often have treats stowed in pockets. So Remi is checked carefully for grain, pellets, etc. Remi’s complete sentences have gotten longer – “I’m taking my goats for a walk.” is a frequent comment.

  • Politics – Where We Disagree

    This morning, I read a quote from Mamdani – the Socialist candidate who seems to have cinched the race for mayor of New York: “We need to ban all guns.” I understand his point – if there were no guns, nobody would be shot (by guns). We can’t argue the point though – it was the big issue that made me cast a Trump ballot in 2016. I knew where Hillarie stood on guns, and had hopes that Trump was closer to my view. Here in northwest Montana, I don’t even need to go into any greater detail to be understood – and in New York, Mamdani doesn’t have to, either.

    Still, I’m not a single-issue voter. Economics – there is a point where borrowing money can lead to increased wealth. I don’t disagree with John Maynard Keynes on this premise. On the other hand, I can’t see how spending money our nation doesn’t have on some of the frivolities that DOGE has cut from foreign aid helps us any. It’s one thing to borrow to fund something that will produce income – and quite another to borrow to spend on a project that just gets us deeper in debt.

    I don’t particularly favor capital punishment – but I do recognize that there are some people wandering around whose misconduct won’t stop for anything less. I’ve researched the behavior of some of the worst in prisons.

    I had a lib come by at the fair years ago – he explained that, since my party had created the all the problems, I should by a raffle ticket to benefit the local democrats. He seemed totally lost when I asked “When have the libertarians been in charge and able to create these problems?” Our disagreements are areas where we don’t see the topic the other side is arguing.

    Abortion – one side argues against killing babies, the other side argues for reproductive freedom. Is it any wonder that, as we talk past each other we don’t find areas of agreement? Does political rhetoric exist only to arouse and anger its own side?

    As the final episode of MASH aired, I drove a U-Haul to Trinidad, Colorado. February 28, 1983. At the time, Mount San Rafael was the only hospital in the US performing transexual surgeries, and the only surgeon doing the work was Stanley Biber. I suppose I started seeing transexuals quite a while before the typical American – hell, I was teaching at the little college in the nation’s transexual surgery capital. I knew that Dr. Biber insisted on a lot of psych and counseling before he uncased his scalpel. I suppose I think that his pre-surgical caution is still justified. The relevant comment is “First, do no harm.” I don’t argue the topic – but I know my views on something I’ve observed for 40 years.

    I’m a fiscal conservative – and I’ve found that arguments against supporting fiscal conservativism usually break down to accusations of heartlessness. It’s hard to discuss the topic – I talk for being able to maintain a strong currency and I’m told that I’m heartless. There’s no convincing when the argument is on different topics.

    I think back to a transexual student’s Southern Baptist parents – depressed that there would be no grandchildren, and his (my student’s) concerns that he wasn’t comfortable as male. The love was there – but the common ground wasn’t.

    I recall a classmate, insisting there was no voter fraud. Using logic, all I had to do was document a single case. I did. The result was anger and discounting the conviction as only one case. We don’t even agree on the rules of debate.

    So I’ll continue to vote against candidates who vote against my interests. I don’t expect them to understand why. As we get more Republicans officeholders, there will probably be more Republicans who disappoint me. Then as we get more Democrats in office there will be more of them voting against my interests. As Milei said, “Viva la libertad! Carajo!”

  • The Storage Building

    Yes – we have built a storage building across the street from the Pub and the Post Office. Yes, we will have storage units for rent. Probably the most important thing is that we will be filling several with our own stuff. You see, stuff takes up space – and that stuff has been in the way of remodeling the old service station. When I returned to Trego, it was a place to put stuff that I didn’t need immediately. Ten years later, I’m looking at stuff that hasn’t been needed in a decade.

    One of the boxes that is destined for the storage buildings contains is labeled ‘Barbies’. Right now I’m looking at a toddler whose main interest is wheels. After Bruce Todd gave him a ride in his dump truck, he plays wih tractors and trucks, in that order. His little brother is almost crawling – along with mechanical noises. Barbie is headed for the storage building, until another little McCurry comes along that is more interested in dolls than rolling stock. There are a couple boxes of photo albums and such. All good stuff, all temporarily stored in the way of getting things done.

    Today, it would be called a meme – but the slogan “He who dies with the most toys wins.” came along before the internet.

    So what’s going on in the old service station? The first effort was the roof – originally of corrugated metal, it needed to be replaced before anything could be done inside. Then there needed to be a plan – Dad’s remodeling has effectively removed the shop (though most of my old Austin Healey is still there – and parts have been scattered throughout it and other buildings. Again, stuff that gets in the way of remodeling.) Phase 1 is pretty simple – increasing insulation and getting a heat pump added so we can work inside in the winter. Then remodeling the store area, and moving the old logging camp cook shack away from the south side. After all, it too has became storage.

    So Sam has already promised four of the storage units. I figure I’ll be using at least two. There are 20 units in the building. I’m sure that there is enough stuff in Trego to fill the ones I can’t.