HOM: Very Little Honey, No Moon

I'd made a reservation at a little Idaho B&B up in the boonies for a short honeymoon. When we finally got into Boise from Boston I canceled it. Lyn was in a dark & untouchable mood, both sick & homesick, & I was having massive misgivings about this whole marriage thing. I did NOT expect a marriage to start like this. Seeing NNC didn't help either -- it was a depressing ghost town with everyone gone. I picked up my car & my stuff and we headed north. It was good to get back to Kalispell, and Lyn perked up once we were into the trailer and she started to get involved with family & friends. I guess this period was kind of a lull in the storm. I started the new job with the Street Department. My new boss was a retired CHP officer named Bill, and he had three of us program-hires for the summer; me, Clint & Dale. At first Bill put me on a dump truck with a guy named Monte to show me the ropes. I was the passenger & trainee driver and we were hauling gravel from the McElroy & Wilken gravel pit just across the river on HWY2 back over the bridge to the batch plant. This was by the city shop and is where the gravel was mixed with hot petroleum products for paving. Monte got a speeding ticket coming up underpass hill and thus got on Bill's bad side. Bill put him to work at the dirtiest job he could find at the batch plant and gave the driving to someone else. He gathered his three Newbies together and asked if any of us had a Commercial Driver's License. I did -- in those days you just paid a little extra, took an extra written exam, and were good to go, unlike today with the massive red tape jungle you have to navigate to get a CDL. It was really worth doing. Since I was the only one able to produce a commercial driver's license, Bill assigned us a truck and appointed me the driver. He also put me in charge. Given my work ethic, this was another Fox & Henhouse situation... TBC (Me) (Blacktail Books)