MORE FAMILY HISTORY

In about 1950 I left Mexico to take a job,thanks to Uncle Tom Dean, in Gresham, Oregon with the Olympic Mfg. Co., a division of the Dean Co.. My peers in Mexico had all found decent jobs and were on good career paths. I had not been able to do so.

Gresham at his time was a tiny, bucolic town of 5 or 10 thousand and it's claim to fame was The berry capital of the world. There was a cannery, a milk company ( You can't beat our milk but you can whip our cream), one cinema, a few tiny restaurants and the afore mentioned Olympic Mfg. Co., a veneer slicing operation with about 50 employees.

I stayed with my brother Carl who owned a dairy farm in the nearby town of Boring. Carl introduced me to the Carter family.

Thomas ( Doc ) Carter (1885-1975 ) and wife Pauline had an enormous family of 11 children ( two deceased at that time) . Doc had served in the US Army in WWI and again in WWII and emerged as a LT. Colonel. Interestingly he had only a sixth grade education ( Not unusual at that time) but was able to qualify for a veterinary school in Canada. While there he met and married Pauline Horton from Michigan in 1914. After a number of moves he found himself in Gresham and had become the Multnoma County vet with a private practice as well.

Janet was child number 9. We were married in 1952. My job with Olympic was not working out well. Jan and I and three kids returned to Mexico where we spent 20 great if poverty stricken years.

Some time in the 1990s we visited Gresham and discovered, to our dismay, that it had become the second largest city in Oregon with almost nothing familiar to us.

BED BUGS

For many years the US was free of bed bugs. Rather suddenly they have reappeared and are becoming all pervasive. One might well quit going to movies, restaurants and especially, hotels. Hotel rules: Don't put your suitcase on the floor, use the luggage rack; never put your clothing in the dresser; Turn back the bedding and inspect the mattress; keep suitcase closed. Best rule of all, stay home.

We understand that bedbugs do not survive microwaving or cloths dryers. Should your home become infected, there are several fairly ineffective chemicals one can use. Or, one can burn the pillows and mattresses and pray that you got them all.

Once again our officious bureaucrats have screwed things up. Remember DDT ? Rightly or not its use worldwide has been banned. Malaria and other mosquito born diseases, almost eliminated, once again flourished.

The really simple solution to the bedbug problem: Ban the outdoor use of DDT where it might harm mother nature. Allow its use indoors where it can cause no environmental damage. This is known to be 100% effective .