Adventures Along the Rocky Trail of Life
This is a true story of love, loss, life, jeeps and me
Finding Virginia: Adventures Along the
Rocky Trail of Life
By David Eilers
Copyright © 2012 David
Eilers
SMASHWORDS EDITION
Version 4.10
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
A few Reader Reviews for “Finding Virginia”
“I finished your book and, although I don't share your love of jeeps (but do now have more of an appreciation of them), your passion for jeeps, life, and food, your compassion for your parents, and your emotional honesty was most touching. Few autobiographies that I have read which were written by men have achieved this level emotional intimacy- entirely unvarnished by a layer of machismo.”
- Leslie
"Dave, you hit a home run. It is Not Zen and the art of Motorcycle maintenance….Your book is much more readable than that was . . . This is a book that you CAN give your wife to read….and she will enjoy it.”
- Bill
"David, I just have to tell you I loved your book. Your descriptive writing style is just wonderful and it kept me glued to the pages wanting to know more."
- Bob
"And the book is great! I end up feeling like I just heard a story from a long lost friend. David, you are really good at painting a picture with your stories. I like that kind of writing. And I just love how you flow from family to jeeps to Virginia...it's all connected...but not. I just like it okay."
- Dana
Table of Contents
4. May 1986: My First Visit to Roche Harbor
9. June 6th, 1986: I Head to Roche
10. May 22nd, 2011
11. 1983-1985: I build my first jeep
12. May 24th, 2011
13. June 1986: I Start Work at Roche
14. May 25th, 2011
15. May 26th, 2011
16. End of May 2011
18. June 1st, 2011
19. June 2nd, 2011
20. Mid-August 1986: A Surprise Visitor
21. June 3rd, 2011
22. June 5th, 2011
23. September 8th, 1986: Naches Trail Jeep Trip
24. June 8th, 2011
25. Epilogue: August 30th, 2012
CHAPTER 1
May 12, 2011 – 10:14 AM
David,
“Your dad fell down again in the dining room trying to carry a salad plate back to the kitchen and pushing the walker with one hand. Not a good idea and, of course, I had told him that, but he needs to do it ‘my way’. It was complicated by his sciatic nerve thing which made getting him back up almost impossible. I decided to call the fire dept and they were here shortly and got him back up. He is not having any fun with this affliction.”
Mom’s email fills the screen of my Apple laptop, an appendage that dogs me in a love/hate manner. I read the words with a painful realization: Dad’s body is breaking down, unable to support itself with certainty. A father bigger than life, stronger than most, my seventy-seven-year-old dad never wanted to be feeble, helpless, dependent. As a man who could fix anything, the inability to fix himself grates on his independence. Despite the daily knee bends in the living room, which has become his sleeping quarters, his emergency potty, and his convalescence room, my father’s walk weakens and balance worsens. Unwilling to give in easily, along with his knee bends, he utilizes the two, five and ten pound weights I carried upstairs for him from his basement workout room of thirty years. He asked for heavier weights, but the doctor wouldn’t allow it, so he makes do with the lighter weights. All this work fuels his hope that he can fix himself, if he just keeps at it. In his mind, if he can just get a little stronger, he will overcome the physical damage done by a stroke he suffered ten years ago, which stole much of the coordination and strength from his right side, and be whole once more.
His approach to life demands that positive attitude. To think otherwise acquiesces to the inevitable, forcing him to acknowledge his weakening abilities. His hope has been to die quickly, or at least that is what he told my only sister Kim. Dad would never say that to me. We never speak that way, never that emotionally, never that intimately. He and I are not friends, but not enemies either. Our relationship is best described as classic or old school, which differs from my relationship with my kids, where I am part father and part friend, a relic of divorce. In our case, Dad is the father, a kind, good, honest soul, and I am the son, following his moral legacy while finding my own way.
This morning’s fall is the third one. He fell for the first time just two weeks ago, while walking in the narrow hall that leads from my parents’ bathroom to their bedroom in the house they have lived in for forty-seven years. The sound of his 6’ 2” 210lb body falling on the floor of the old house echoed loud enough that no yelling was necessary to notify Mom he had a problem. Mom, my aunt Marilyn and her longtime partner Phil, who happened to be visiting, easily heard the noise. Fortunately, Phil is similar in size to my father and still in good health, so he wrapped a bed sheet around Dad’s waist, a strategy learned from the hospital staff during Dad’s recovery from his stroke, and pulled my father upward to a standing position.
The second fall occurred last week close to the bathroom, again within a narrow hallway of the old house. This time my mom and dad were alone. Though five-foot seven and physically strong for a seventy-year-old woman, Mom’s replacement hip doesn’t allow her to bend all that well anymore, so she couldn’t help lift him from the ground. Luckily, he fell close to the bathroom, allowing Dad to drag/crawl his tired body to the white, cast-iron bathtub. Because he wore his usual outfit, a plaid long-sleeved shirt and jeans, he could slide along the wooden floors.
Once at the tub, Dad, employing years of chest presses, pushed his body upward from the tub, while Mom acted as ballast to enhance his stability, their trust of forty-seven years of marriage guiding the effort. Though Dad has a great deal of strength after lifting weights for so long, that muscle has become more anchor than attribute. Regardless, that day they conquered gravity together, but time and gravity continue to plague their later years.
This recent fall, the third in three weeks, was in the dining room, too far from the bathroom to crawl there. As usual, he had the will to get up, but the physical coordination on his right side can no longer direct the muscles necessary to help him to his feet. His heart muscle, the very symbol of his kind nature and the best and strongest muscle on his body, was unable to pump the energy to lift him. Without the necessary strength, Mom and Dad were helpless for the first time in their lives. Unable to turn to my sister and me for help, because we live too far away, my mom called 911. She told me she felt humiliated as she dialed the number, calling just to get her husband off the floor.
I can imagine Dad feeling humiliated too. My father and I are enough alike, both tall, big shouldered and slim with blue eyes, and our personalities similar enough — quiet, stubborn, thoughtful — that in him I see my own mortality, the curtains thrust aside and the complete truth revealed. The differences appear purely cosmetic, such as he is left handed and I right handed, he has no hair and I still have plenty, he likes the rain and I’m more of a desert guy.
As the family historian, I can tell you that over the last five generations each male has lived into their seventies, but never into their eighties. The longest living male was my great-great-grandfather, who lived seventy-eight years and three months. Dad is at seventy-seven years and eight months. His goal is to hit eighty. At the moment, I’m not confident he will make it.
Will I make it any further? The odds appear against me based on the family timelines, even with, by all appearances, my excellent health. This means my life will be over in three and a half decades, a sobering fact. When young, the distant end is too far away for any worry, but as a forty-five-year-old, twice-divorced, three-time father, who will be forty-six in twenty days and lives five hundred miles away from my father, unable to help him when he falls, the end seems all too near.
Not only am I in the middle age-wise, but also geographically, for home is Boise, Idaho, halfway between my kids’ world in Salt Lake City and my parents, who live in Renton, Washington, a suburb of Seattle, still in the same house where I was born. I’m also halfway from the beginning of my adult life at age twenty-one, venturing off on my own, and the age of seventy, when Dad had his stroke and when I fear my own physical decline could begin in earnest. However, I try not to fear the end, believing I can outwit it, at least for a little while, which explains the large number of books on food and health that fill my bookshelves.
So, as Dad fights for his last few years, I feel a great urge to spend the remainder of my life in the most fulfilling ways possible. Thwarting my opportunities is an economy that I find unrecognizable, which seems unsatisfied with wiping out my company, the value of the home where I live, available jobs and even my goals. Yet, I seek no pity for my circumstances nor for what I have lost, because others have lost too; Instead, I will keep struggling through this crazy economy until opportunities present themselves. And I need look no further for the inspiration to keep trying then to observe my father, for he has never sought pity for his diminished speaking, seeing, and physical abilities due to his stroke in 2002. When he falls down and is helped back to his feet, he soldiers forward fighting as best he can against his scythed enemy. He keeps fighting because, as he will proudly tell any who asks in his halting speech, he has one more goal in life: he wants to reach the age of eighty. That leaves me wondering, what goals should I chase as age chases me?
• • • •
Prior to this latest fall, my father was on my mind, but for a different reason. For three and a half years I have run a website for classic jeeps, eWillys.com, linking buyers and sellers and entertaining lovers of classic jeeps, such as those seen in movies of World War II. I think of it as a hobby I work like a job and a job that pays me like a hobby.
Why launch and maintain a website about classic jeeps that provides little income? Readers have emailed me with that question many times. The answer is complicated. It involves the relationship with my father and watching him build a wrecked jeep in the cold, detached, two-car garage adjacent to my parents’ house. It involves several generations of my family who have spent much of their lives exploring and moving around the West since the civil war. It involves a peculiar passion for old jeeps, or as others call them old Willys (“Willys Sickness” is a favorite phrase among my website readers), a passion I put aside for fifteen years after getting married, finishing college and a MBA degree, moving, working, and fathering children. It involves the crash of my financial world as the economy imploded. It involves my own self-fulfillment.
However, after reading Mom’s email, I found myself questioning my efforts with the site. Well, I was questioning life itself. Dad’s predicament made me wonder if I would look back on my work helping and entertaining people with eWillys and ask myself if it was time well spent. When reaching the age of seventy-seven and one half, would I tell myself I had lived my life in the right way, made a difference in my own way? After all, running a classic jeep site will hardly cure cancer, feed hungry people, or solve our pollution issues; but what it does provide is an opportunity to distract people from those more serious issues for a little while. Besides, I had already tried once to ‘make the world a better place’ by attempting to create a public education and information utility online. I worked long hours, exhausted my credit, and gave everything to help raise twenty million dollars hoping to build the “PBS of the Web”. Despite great intentions and great effort from many people, the flames from the crash of that company burned me badly, leaving financial scars that are still healing. Dad always said I should go into business for myself. Losing everything, however, made me pause and question: perhaps I chose the wrong business.
Am I choosing the right business this time? Or, perhaps, the right hobby is a better perspective. I think the pre-stroke version of Dad might approve.
The old Dad might even have read and followed the website. After all, jeeps, jeeping, and jeep clubs run throughout my family’s DNA, with lots of great memories buried deep within our chromosomes. I started life riding on my mother’s lap in the front passenger seat of their blue-green 1959 stock CJ-5 jeep, bouncing over trails before the age of one. As Dad drove, Mom’s arms snuggled me safely asleep while we three explored the trails of Western Washington. Mom says the moment Dad stopped the jeep I would pop awake, wondering why my slumber had been disturbed. Yes, I was born into a jeep and my family members were jeepers.
When I was two, my sister arrived. I moved to the bench seat in the rear of the jeep and my sister replaced me in Mom’s lap until she was big enough to ride back with me. Those were good times filled with camping, socializing and playing in the vast forests of the Cascade Mountains, participating in local parades, volunteering to plant trees, attending jeep club meetings, and watching Dad fix the jeep in our garage. I was awed at his ability to fix anything.
When my own life needed some fixing in 2007, as the economic storm began to rain on the sunny times of the mid 2000s, my soul wanted to retreat, to find comfort in the familiar. Tired of the virtual world the 2000s represented, I sought a tactile passion, something to touch, hold and build. For me the world of jeeps means more than just a vehicle. Therefore, my re-entry into the world of jeeps just made sense, because little else did. Jeeps are simple, utilitarian, and inexpensive compared to the complex cars of today. That’s what I needed, something simple to restart my life, gain back some confidence, and place my focus upon a new project to distract me from other forces in my life.
So, in 2007, for the second time in my life, I began building a jeep that I have named Lost Biscuit, a name I borrowed from my youngest child, who’d made up the name for his xBox Live online video game account. I love the name, because getting lost in a jeep is part of the fun and because I love to cook and biscuits are a simple dish. Biscuit is a simple jeep, so simple that it doesn’t need a key; instead, I jump in and push a button to start it. I built Biscuit to be a better version of ‘The Great Escape’, a jeep I built back in 1984, the jeep that helped me mature from a teenager into a man.
Lost
Biscuit, built between 2007 & 2009, was my second jeep.
I am
driving with my daughter in the passenger seat and sons in the back.
(photos)
As part of this second build, Biscuit would be better designed, smoothing out the rough edges of my low budget racing/trail/road jeep of two decades ago. When I created my first jeep, I gained confidence and learned about life by undertaking the project. It transformed my life. This second jeep was less about transformation and more about recovery from all I had been through — divorce, financial loss, stress, business crashes, moves, friendships lost, and more — over the last seven years.
As I gathered the parts to build Biscuit, it occurred to me that the website I needed — a site that specialized in old school builds, parts for sale, and old Willys for sale — didn’t exist. After pondering how I’d approach a site, what content to use and the utility to potential readers, I tiptoed back into the virtual world, launching eWillys in 2008.
The website began with a poor design and even worse logo. Rather than launch a perfect site, I decided to employ the revision strategy I’d learned building software. Version one of the site was intended to be a functioning site. After a year of running the site, version two revisited the design, addressed bugs, and added functionality. At year two, version three was released, finalizing the logo — a scripted eWillys with black text on a white background, something simple and elegant —, the design, the color scheme and the layout. At least, it is final until the next version, which remains unscheduled. As the years have passed, I have also re-written content, to improve readers’ experiences.
In fact, before Mom’s email arrived today, I was rewriting my biography for the website, which I hadn’t touched in three years. I wanted to explain more thoroughly to readers how jeeps played one role or another throughout my life into adulthood, knowing that once I shared my stories, readers would understand how I literally grew up ‘jeep’.
One of my favorite stories involved being named ‘Jeep Dave’. How much more ‘jeep’ can a person become? This happened during the summer of 1986, when I was twenty-one, after moving from the Seattle area to the San Juan Islands, where I landed a summer job as a cook. But describing that summer, the most formative experience of my life, would take more than a webpage. Too much happened to me while I was at the remote resort of Roche Harbor.
At a time prior to the internet and cell phones, when Alf and the A-Team ruled TV and Top Gun blasted into theatres, Roche was an old-school resort, an oasis that felt far away from anything else. Roche Harbor and the Roche Harbor Resort are located at the northern tip of San Juan Island, the most populous island in the San Juan Islands, a group of islands that sits between Bellingham, Washington, to the east and Canada’s Vancouver Island to the West. Offering the Pacific Northwest’s first boating resort, it opened in 1956 with docks for visiting boats, a three-story hotel, a restaurant, a grocery store, a church and more. When I arrived in 1986, it was a place unknown to many people outside the Puget Sound area.
Roche was the perfect place for me at the time. The resort had an innocence about it and, I suppose, that is a word that described me too. I lived a sheltered life, void of drama and heartache; there was no divorce in my family and no fighting between my parents. No one close to me had died, other than my grandfathers. I was free to roam my neighborhood any time of day or night without fear. My childhood was simple and easy. For me, Roche was the first time I faced the world on my own, away from family, forging my own way. It was a perfect stepping stone, leading to a summer full of fond memories. I became a man in many ways, making good friends, plunging into adventures, working hard and saving money. Through trial-by-fire, literally, my blossoming cooking skills matured, expanding both my knowledge and passion for food. And, for the first time, I flirted with love. Her name was Virginia and for a couple of weeks our lives intertwined.
Virginia . . .
What became of the woman who wandered into my life at the beginning of August 1986? She’d opened the door, walked quickly inside, settling next to my heart for several weeks. Then, as quickly as she had entered, she was gone again, leaving me only with fond memories, a letter on a note card and some pictures I have inexplicably kept to this day.
Thinking about her always makes me wonder, is she happy now? Where is she? Is she even alive? For twenty-five years I have occasionally thought about her. Why hadn’t I searched for her?
I suppose wondering about the meaning of life and one’s purpose always forces one to look at past choices, ponder them, evaluate them, and consider the mistakes made. Was it my father’s situation or was it my own that has brought Virginia to the surface? Whatever the reason, once again she’s on my mind.
Unlike what people might expect, at least how the movies might portray it, this wasn’t some torrid love affair. Since then, I have had torrid love affairs. They tend to burn hot, then chill. Even with the freedom to do as we pleased, Virginia and I weren’t tearing each other’s clothes off and bedding at a moment’s notice. Though we slept next to each other for several nights, we never consummated the relationship. She asked that we not, because she was just completing a divorce. Sexually, she needed to close one door completely, before opening another. I respected her for that; she was a beautiful creature of her convictions.
Instead of a wild, passionate experience, it was gentle, tender, warm, and touching. Tenderness. That is the word that comes to mind these days. I remember the tenderness, from the warmth of her smile as she greeted me, broad and full of love and happiness, to the thoughtful conversations we had, our time together was peaceful and beautiful. I remember the joy as she gently brushed her brown curly hair from her face when flirting with me. Even on a windless day her unruly hair was much like her spirit, gentle yet untamable. But, most amazing was the energy we felt when we touched, natural and honest. Just to hold her hand, caress her neck, or smooth her hair would ignite my senses.
Even twenty-five years later I savor that experience, storing it and compartmentalizing it for myself and only myself. I never shared the story with others, lovers, friends or family. Amazingly, in total, we might have spent fourteen days together in August. Had it been that short of time?
I can’t think about Virginia without thinking of our last point of contact, a letter written from her on a lavender note card still stored in my temporary filing cabinet, better known as a cardboard box, just another of my easily movable items that has survived many moves. Saving it all this time, along with some pictures of us with silly captions on the back authored by her, I wished at least one picture had us both, but none did. It’s the only letter or card I kept from any of my relationships.
For me to still possess her note is unusual, because my many moves from house to house and state to state have forced me to throw away other keepsakes like this, to live lean. In fact, 1986 marked the beginning of a wanderlust that pushed and pulled me from place to place. My latest stay in Boise of three and a half years is the longest I have remained in one spot in twenty-five years, but that was only due to complications caused by the market crash. Five years ago on my fortieth birthday I listed all the places I had lived for longer than a month. The list totaled twenty-five moves in twenty years. An array of reasons continued to push me in new directions. Sometimes moves were relationship oriented, sometimes opportunity oriented, and sometimes they were just adventures I needed to pursue. Yet, I would love to find peace, that one place that feels like mine, a place where I can store my center, my thoughts, my keepsakes and being. Until then, my stay will always feel temporary, no matter the length.
Along my journeys, I started and ended relationships, started and ended jobs, and started and closed businesses. I learned how to live light. For example, for four months, from November of 1999 to March 2000, at age thirty-five, I lived in my law school office at the University of Utah, where I worked as a web developer and faculty computer manager. I moved there during my divorce from my wife of ten years and mother to my three children. As most know, divorce is rarely a simple process. At the end of much discussion and frustration, I was the one to leave. When that time arrived, having no other options, I moved into my office. Then, I handed over all my paychecks for several months while trying to get extra work to cover my own expenses, such as food for starters.
Living in an office wasn’t all that bad at the turn of 2000, though the drab off-white concrete walls, thin carpet, and metal shelves hardly made for a beautiful space. The lack of windows did provide complete privacy and the building was kept warm, so I stayed cozy. I had a comfortable high-back blue chair when I wanted to relax or my computer chair when wanting to stay busy. Because it was a university campus, I could go workout and shower at any of the gyms, so the benefits were nice. I had Internet and broadband connectivity galore, so I kept in touch with the outside world. As the law school’s web manager and faculty support person, I had master keys that allowed me to access most of the law school. Thus, my freedom within the building was vast. I never felt sorry for myself there; instead, I felt fortunate, as many other people in the world had much worse lives. I knew I would bounce back . . . somehow.
To keep a low profile, I kept a couple days worth of clothes neatly folded in a box hidden behind my office door, consisting of socks, underwear, two sets of blue jeans, one set of brown pants, a few long sleeve shirts, and t-shirts. There was nothing fancy, just enough to last a week and a half. Any clothes not in the office were stored in a second box I kept in the back of my 1989 Nissan Maxima.
I maintained a regular routine. Each evening around eleven o’clock at night I shut my office door, unrolled my sleeping bag, an old, hardy, soft, down sleeping bag with a fuzzy animal motif on the inside lining, and fell asleep on it, not in it. The room was warm, while the floor was hard. Sometimes I would throw a jacket over myself if I needed to feel some weight on top of me. I still own the sleeping bag, just in case the need for it arises again. In the morning I awoke at six o’clock, which is the time the janitors arrived (the last thing I needed was to have the janitors open the door and find me sleeping on the floor). After waking, I changed clothes, rolled up my bag, and stored it behind the door atop my clothes box, ready to pretend I had just arrived at the law school for work that day. The routine worked smoothly.
For most of the faculty and staff at the school, it appeared I was a hard worker. In reality, I had nowhere else to go. Frankly, the school benefited, as I was more than happy to help faculty at all hours, which seemed a reasonable trade for sleeping there. If their computer stopped working at 7am, I fixed it. If a change needed to be made to the website late at night, I could fix that. There was always plenty of work to keep me busy, so no one questioned my constant presence there. After a while, I confided in a secretary that the law school was my home. A few others eventually learned the truth, too.
The biggest challenge I had was what to do with my kids. When broke and living in an office, what does a person do with their kids three times a week? And, when I mean broke, I mean one week I had ten dollars to buy food for the entire week! The answer was that our playground was the University. I quickly learned that the campus historical museum was free from four o’clock in the afternoon to closing time at five o’clock. My kids were young, so we didn’t need much more time than that anyway. Free buses downtown were another path to adventure and entertainment. Best of all, while I had no TV, I did have access to the school’s VCR and projector. So, I would roll the combo into the rarely used and private faculty break room, cook up some macaroni and cheese (thank goodness there was a stove in there) or some soup, and shine whatever movie I could find onto the wall, filling it from floor to ceiling. The room became our own big screen adventure. Occasionally a faculty member would walk into the room, smile, get what they needed and walk out. The law faculty and staff were wonderful.
Living light became my mantra, especially in the early 2000s. Selling and dumping stuff became easier for me, too. If money was tight I sold my tools on Craigslist, had a garage sale, or called friends about buying things. I owned so little at the time that everything I had fit in the back of my car, including my table saw, which fit snugly in my trunk (next to the box that contained my spare clothes). With that background, it should be easy to understand that throwing away invaluable papers and documents wasn’t all that difficult for me.
This constant restlessness was far from a life I had imagined or lived in my childhood. The house in which I was raised differs little from my childhood, only the mismatched floors are a little more worn and the countless trees and bushes that fill my parents’ one-acre property have reached new heights. As a child I roamed the tree lined property, climbing pine and cedar trees and getting sticky pitch on my hands. Another favorite past time was digging in the dirt and building elaborate garages for my Tonka Toys, which back then were metal and indestructible.
Animals were a constant throughout my childhood, first cats and dogs, guinea pigs and hamsters, and then horses. When my sister and I were young, if one of our cats had had kittens it was a major event. When the kittens got old enough for us to handle, we would line them up and have mini cat races, where the kittens would have to travel a foot or so to win. We were always good to the kittens though or we would get into trouble.
One area of my parents’ property was devoted to the garden Mom annually cultivated. Eating fresh fruit off trees and bushes — raspberries, strawberries, apples, peaches, red huckleberries, cherries, blueberries — was an annual experience. The garden seemed to fit our location, because during the late 1960s and into the 1970s we lived in the country. The closest McDonalds restaurant was more than a half hour away at the northwest end of Renton, at a time when the french fries were cooked in beef fat. I can still taste that yummy flavor, a taste unfamiliar to today’s kids. However, it didn’t take long for the country feel to be washed away by the incoming tide of houses and people. By the 1980s, there were three McDonalds within ten minutes of my parents’ home. Their acre of country living is now an island in a sea of suburbia.
It was a fine life, as I never went hungry and there was little family discord. I remember asking Dad once if we were middle class. I was in middle school at the time and asked the question in Dad’s man-cave, our cob-webby basement that became his workout center. As he stood there pondering the question, wearing his blue cotton sweats with his employer’s name, BOEING, written down one side and a hole ripped in one knee, he said we were lower middle class. I found his answer confusing, because we had plenty. But, through subsequent family research, I now understand he knew what being wealthy meant, but as a country boy growing up in Renton I knew no better.
Because of my childhood, I assumed I would marry, have kids, get a college education and enjoy an adult life similar to my parents. In fact, by 1999, I was married, had kids, bought a house at the north end of the Harvard-Yale area of Salt Lake City, which is a nice area, and even obtained an advanced degree (MBA). But my life as I expected it was not to be. Instead, one year later, in 2000, I became the very first of my lineage to divorce. It turns out, there isn’t much of a road map for divorce, which is partly why I landed homeless, living in an office. Following my divorce, for complex reasons, I threw my hands up at the world and charted my own course, taking that path Robert Frost metaphorically describes as the one less traveled.
Yet, despite my office stay, various relationships, and misadventures, I never threw away the note card from Virginia and never felt tempted to do so. Not once. Instead, every year or so I flipped through my personal files stored in a file box I kept to make sure her note card was still there.
With thoughts of Virginia on my mind it doesn’t take long before I find myself digging into my files to find it. I leaf past my passport, past my PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) certificate, certifying me for open water diving (which I earned the hard way, by diving in the cold murky waters of Puget Sound). Next to the PADI certificate sits the cover of an old Truck and Trader magazine from 1992 with the picture of my original custom fiberglass flatfender jeep, a jeep I built in 1984 and sold in 1992 to fund a move to Wisconsin. I was always thrilled it made the front cover. Next to that is a newspaper clipping that shows me helping a ten-year-old kid with a computer, recording my time as a volunteer for a science camp at the Pacific Science Center near the Space Needle.
After the newspaper clipping appears a photo of Tesh, my former boss, and me. The photograph was taken as we peered over the back porch of the BurgerWorks, the place at age eighteen where I started my cooking career. The photo shows my dark blonde hair, curly and thick, partly hiding the ends of the glasses I wore. I am not smiling in the photo, but rather have a purposeful look, slightly tough-guy as I lean forward on the railing of the small porch with a cooking spatula in my hand. However, it is hard to pull off a tough-guy look when wielding a cooking spatula, even if I was six-feet tall. No, my baby face has never looked particularly mean or tough.
Tesh
(left) and me, age twenty, at the BurgerWorks, my first cooking job
in 1985. (photos)
Finally, my search yields the note card and eight pictures Virginia mailed me in September of 1986. Plucking it from the file folder I open it. The photos remain nestled inside. On the back of each photo she wrote something cute and loving. The lavender note card with its handwritten script looks so old fashioned, nearly a museum piece in these days of email. On the inside it reads:
September 16, 1986
Dear Dave,
I’m sorry it has taken me so long to return your letter. I’ve been so busy and have been thru so much in the last week. I made almost every life change possible. I finished my dissolution of marriage, talked to my priest, found an apt, got my phone for my new place, opened my own checking account (again), and I finally decided to look for a salary job. That is a lot of changes!
I also prepared my resume and had it typeset. My resume looks great! I start serious job hunting tomorrow, so I need to find a job fast. I’m not worried, but I am excited. I’ve really cut some strings and started over.
The day I received your letter I was just walking out to go to the attorney’s office. It was an extremely welcome letter. Thank you so much! I was also glad for your invitation to visit. I’d like to, but as you can see I need to do things here, but I want to for sure. I hope you’ll visit me too.
Love and Kisses, Virginia
Strangely, opening the card feels different this time than in previous years. For some reason, this time I have to know what happened to her. Maybe it is the twenty-five year mark, an anniversary of sorts, which compels me to want to find her; or, it is my personal struggles — lack of employment, the house foreclosure, Dad’s illness, my relationship, the crash of my company, so many struggles in the last few years — facing me. Whatever the motivation, I have to know . . . is she good? Is she well? Is she happy? One time in 2001, after reading her note, I searched for her on the web, most likely using AltaVista. But nothing appeared, so I put the card away, assuming she was lost forever.
Now, armed with a more powerful search engine, Google, I decide to search for her one more time. Sitting back down at my desk I reach for my laptop. I launch Firefox and type in her full name, hoping it hasn’t changed due to marriage.
Unfortunately, too many results yield what seems to be the wrong Virginia. Some women are too old, some too young, and some professionals in jobs I can’t imagine her doing, such as accounting, municipal water management, and day care.
I poke through possibilities and chase dead ends. Finally, my diligence and patience reveals a clue. Someone named Virginia left a comment on a blog post. In the comment, the writer lent support to the cast of “Sex in the City 2”, telling them to ignore criticism and keep making their movies. She said she was a big fan and hoped to see another movie soon.
“Never Give Up”, she wrote conclusively. Is this a cosmic sign for me not to give up, to keep searching for her?
I love the post. It is rambling, yet powered with energy and excitement. I can imagine the Virginia who captivated me during the summer of 1986 so bound with enthusiasm her message literally burst from her and, in her excitement, made a few mistakes while writing her comment. In addition, remembering she loved movies, design and color, I figure she still has an interest in them. This has to be her. This has to be the Virginia from twenty-five years ago. But, can I find her using the information in the blog post?
Well, if there is one thing I do well, it is research effectively on the internet. Employing a few nuggets of information found in the comment, I complete more searches. Eventually, my additional detective work yields a small site with her name on it. On the site is a hotmail address. And, the best part, there she is, a picture of her. IT IS HER!
Amazing. After twenty-five years, she looks about the same. It must be a picture from her late thirties, because she doesn’t look nearly fifty at all.
The suddenness of this situation hits me. Fifteen minutes ago the note card I am holding in my hands was a memento from my youthful past, marking the end of my teen years and an entrance into adulthood. It was my first taste of love and flirtation on an adult level. Up to that point, I’d never had a long-term relationship. A late bloomer, I was slow to understand the finer points of how to treat women. That’s not to say I treated women badly, but rather my shyness, goofiness and kindness seemed to lead to friendships rather than loves. Before that summer, I lacked real confidence, the confidence to approach a woman and know what to say, the confidence to grab her when the time was right and kiss her, and the confidence to take the lead when necessary. By late July 1986, in the midst of the most transformative summer of my life, my confidence bloomed. The timing for meeting her couldn’t have been more perfect.
But, that was then. What do I write to her now? Will she remember me? How will I feel if she doesn’t respond? How should I phrase the email? After considering these questions and more, making the letter short and to the point seems a priority. Most importantly, I want to know if she is the Virginia I had known?
On Thursday, May 12th, 2011, keeping it short and casual just in case I don’t have the right Virginia, I send my email:
May 12th, 2011 – 12:02 PM
Hi Virginia,
In August of 1986 I met a Virginia Anderson, a beautiful and sweet 26-year-old woman. I was 21, cooking at the Roche Harbor Restaurant and generally living life one day at a time. We met in Roche Harbor and shared some fond memories that I cherish to this day. I was going through some of my things and ran across the last note she, well I think you, wrote me. So, I thought I'd do a search and see if I came across anyone.
If this isn't the same Virginia in the attached image, then my apologies.
If it is you, lets catch up sometime, because I always wanted to know what happened to you :-)
- David Eilers
As the email states, I also attach a picture, the only one she sent of herself. The photo was taken at the McMillin family mausoleum, one of the most unusual sites at Roche Harbor. Set back far away from the main part of the resort, to get there we walked up a dirt road in the woods. Normally, it was a little spooky even during the day, due to the nearby cemetery and the whisper of the trees as the wind gently blew through them. One could easily imagine the dead quietly conversing. However, on the afternoon day of the picture, in August of 1986, rather than spooky, the sun shone on Virginia, making a scene that could not be more beautiful.
The photo I attach to the email shows Virginia sitting in the center of the mausoleum’s table, hands behind her, feet extended straight. The limestone table is big enough, six feet in diameter that her five foot four frame fits comfortably atop it. Brown hair falls to her shoulders in tight, natural curls. Along with her big smile, she wears a white t-shirt with a collection of green and red flowers that reads, “Artists Do It Colorfully”. Around the table are limestone chairs. Surrounding the chairs are tall doric columns that support a circular crown open in the center. Designed with masonic elements in mind, everything is symbolic, especially the side with a ‘broken’ column and missing chair.
Prior to taking the picture, I remember describing to her how the broken column refers to the inability of a person to complete everything he or she sets out to do in life. I also explained that when the mausoleum was built it had views in all directions, but the passing of time and growth of trees transformed the experience from an open and airy one to a nestled and quiet one.
With picture attached, sending the email is cathartic for me, because I have finally made a real attempt to contact her. Would it take an hour for her to respond? A day? A week? Would she respond at all? All I can do is wait . . . impatiently.
(TOC)
Chapter 2
May 15th, 2011
A few days have passed since emailing Virginia. My inbox still contains no letter from her; my hope for a quick response fades. Perhaps she will remain lost to time. In the absence of concrete reasons, possible ones percolate in my mind. Maybe she read the email and didn’t remember me. Could her spam filter have efficiently moved it into a junk folder? It is possible the email sailed into the electronic ether and never made it to its destination. Since I have used email for almost two decades, I know technology is not a perfect medium, so I will remain patient for now and send a follow up email in a few days just in case.
Besides, I have more important issues to worry about then a missing email. Foremost on my mind, as he has been all week, is Dad. His back still hurts from moving the mower after it broke down in late April. This led to the problem with his sciatic nerve, making it extremely uncomfortable to walk, sit, or sleep, which also led to his third and most recent fall a few days ago, prompting my mother’s email. Even worse, the pain from the nerve plus his fear of falling has, according to my mother when I spoke with her this morning, shattered his confidence, making him take tiny steps when walking, small and uncertain, rather than his more confident post-stroke half stride. He has also begun using a walker full-time rather than his cane. To discourage him from walking any more than necessary, Mom has become more and more a twenty-four-hour-a-day caregiver. Her phone calls, like the one this morning, are tinged with exhaustion and heavy sighs. As the patient enduring all this, Dad is miserable and unable to sleep well, constantly shifting in bed. This is not the best of times for them.
Luckily for Dad, Mom has the time to care for him because it is almost summer. During winter and spring my mother is often away from home, traveling all over Western Washington judging junior high and high school gymnastic meets. An accidental judge, she originally took judging classes to help coach middle school gymnasts. With a few judging classes behind her, someone asked her to judge a meet, where she judged terribly, according to her. She didn’t want to go back, but the school programs desperately needed judges, so she reluctantly tried again. The second chance was all she needed, because now, thirty years later, she is judging some of the children of kids she judged at the beginning of her career.
However, regardless of the fact she doesn’t have a job during the summer, she keeps extremely busy maintaining their one-acre property, annually preparing her garden, picking weeds, cooking, killing slugs and managing all the issues with the house. Because my father can’t do as much around the property anymore, Mom has expanded her role, but there is only so much she can do. Yet, because the property is worth more to developers than to a single homebuyer, she wants to limit her investment of time and money on the property. She understands that all her work could disappear to make way for six houses, years of naturally grown and cultivated fruit and vegetables destroyed. While I can understand the financial rationality of a developer altering the land, destroying all my mother’s work is a legacy that saddens her.
Since it is mid May, Mom has been busy managing Dad’s issues, along with planting the garden and cleaning up after the long rainy winter. When I call my mother on the afternoon of May 15th to talk about Dad’s situation, in her usual stoic manner she won’t admit to needing help, but it is clear after talking with her that Dad’s increasing struggles have dampened her normal chipper attitude. She sounds stressed and tired. So, instead of asking, I tell her to expect me in a few days and I will stay a week. She says she is happy to have me visit.
• • • •
Fortunately for my parents, I lead a life full of flexibility. For example, if I decide to make a last minute trip to Seattle and stay a week, I do not have to re-arrange my schedule. There is no need to ask for time off. No meetings are cancelled and no one will miss me at work. But, I am employed; well, more like a contract. Actually, it isn’t exactly a contract, as nothing is signed. Yet I get paid. More like, I get a stipend for doing nothing. I receive enough to make expenses — child support, my half of the house payment, food — but not enough to thrive. While grateful for the money, it feels I am not earning it and that rubs me wrong. The money is a gift to keep me afloat, a gift from the company that invited me to Idaho to build an online payday loan company. Because only a month after my move to Idaho in November of 2006, internal conflicts unrelated to me altered the project’s trajectory, sending it into the ground. I was disappointed, but not surprised; by the end of 2006, all my businesses and investments were crumbling.
It all started in April of 2001, when I quit my web-development job at the University of Utah’s College of Law to become an entrepreneur. There were four reasons why I chose to abandon the certainty of a paycheck for the uncertainty of entrepreneurial life. First, while I was in college, Dad once told me that being self-employed was a good idea. He approved of it for me, but never sought it for himself, something I never understood. Second, while working for a business bank between 1992-1994 in Madison, Wisconsin, I reviewed the tax returns from a variety of successful business people. Very few received a paycheck; instead, most made money by owning their own businesses, by earning income through real estate (rental homes for example), and by keeping their cars and similar assets attached to their business, so they could expense the assets through their business taxes, which saved them additional money. I learned that having a little bite of earnings from a variety of businesses could improve my livelihood and reduce my financial risk. The recipes for success varied only by the type of ingredients, but not the strategy. I thought the strategy was a good one, so I pledged to use it when I got the chance. Third, my family research exemplified the upside of entrepreneurship, because just a few generations back my family’s entrepreneurial efforts in mining, smelting, and refining created an enormous fortune, much of which was wiped out during the Great Depression.
The final reason to become an entrepreneur was rooted in my experience as a finance student at the University of Puget Sound during the 1990-1991 Recession. I watched jobs like my father’s – a mid level manager who distributed electrical test equipment among the Seattle area Boeing plants, a job that made enough money to support a wife and kids, allowed him to enjoy his weekends jeeping with our family, gave us great healthcare, and provided him with a significant retirement package – disappear. I believed that the elimination of middle management jobs was caused by leaps in technology, improving the capability of high-level management to direct and monitor lower level employees. The loss of middle management was also caused by price competition from abroad, forcing American companies to cut costs.
Finally, I felt strongly that maturing financial theory had caused businesses to shift from an arithmetic concept of profit, revenue minus expenses equals successful profit, to a geometric concept of profit, where net profit had to grow at an ever increasing rate each year. Under this new type of financial model concepts like Net Present Value and Internal Rate of Return were used by companies to show, and for third parties to evaluate, success. Therefore, profit was no longer enough. Instead, if business revenue didn’t grow at a fast enough pace, expenses had to be cut, with salaries becoming the principal relief valve.
As a result, I recognized that jobs similar to my father’s were being eliminated, reducing the available career ladders to executive level positions, where people were making more money, rewarded in part for taking over the duties of the eliminated middle management. I concluded, if climbing my way to the top of a company had become more difficult, then starting at the top by creating my own company made the most sense. This also convinced me to obtain my MBA, a business graduate degree I felt improved my ability to either jump to the executive corporate ladder or give me the skills to better build a company.
By 2001, having received my MBA in 1998, but forced to get a job quickly to deal with bills, I found myself hanging on the highest rung of the University of Utah College of Law’s computer department, unable to climb any higher or improve my salary. There were no more rungs to climb. I decided it was time to jump off the ladder and start building my own business. This was not without significant financial risk, for I had child support payments, graduate loans, undergraduate loans, and living expenses I had to cover. I could fail and destroy my financial life, or succeed and meet my financial goals.
So, in April of 2001 a friend of mine, Jon Firmage, and I launched a company specializing in online Barter called BarterFarm. Users of the site could create a list of items they had and a list of items they wanted and our system would match people with like wants and haves, first locally, then regionally, and then nationally. Themes of farming, self-sufficiency, and interdependent success were part of our approach. We pitched the idea to potential investors as a locally focused, globally interconnected framework. Even while raising funds, we encouraged investors to view themselves as part of the business, as if this was a true farming cooperative, and to be actively involved.
To launch the company, we had some funding, few assets and big dreams, a perfect recipe for difficult times. Sure enough, after quitting my job to start BarterFarm, the funding didn’t materialize as we were told it would, so we hit the road armed with a business plan to drum up funding with gas money made from garage sales. Those were lean times, with me sleeping on the couch of Jon’s two-bedroom apartment in May and June of 2001, while Jon, his wife and two kids used the bedrooms. Jon’s wife even pawned her wedding ring to help fund our business. My credit was obliterated. We were all in it together, for better or worse.
From that bleak start, in fits and gasps, BarterFarm grew slowly until we combined it with internet legend Joe Firmage’s OneCosmos venture, creating ManyOne Networks in 2002. Jon’s older brother, Joe, had co-founded USWeb in 1995, which quickly grew to become the largest internet consulting company in the world, serving a variety of Fortune 500 companies. Joe left USWeb in 1998 to blend his two passions, science and technology, in a way that would help the world, leading to the launch of OneCosmos in 2000.
From 2002 - 2005, I employed my strategy for financial success. First and foremost was a regular paycheck, which ManyOne Networks finally started providing in late 2003. I also was owed a significant amount of back pay and owned five million shares of stock, so if ManyOne worked, I would be rich. During 2002, Jon left ManyOne to rebuild BarterFarm, which later became Matchbin. I was able to help the company by providing time and resources, earning one hundred thousand shares. During this time I also did some consulting work for large companies and small companies, which generated extra income.