Daring Darlene to Tell
Dear FOLKS,
I am pleased to announce changes to the format of the family history stories that I tell. As you know, articles that I post have been a weekly transcription project and a second post that spotlights an individual who is usually been a direct ancestor. Since I began this blog, I have concentrated on the records, documents, anecdotes, etc. that were left to me by my late cousin Ed Ostrom. I have called these "Ed's Day Wednesday" articles.
Cousin Ed and I became research buddies through our common surnames, and after his untimely death in December 2015, I was thrilled to receive his research that included his family tree database. I immediately knew that I should begin a blog, where I could spread the work Ed had done. Through these weekly articles, I began to share his direct-line family histories starting with his grandparents.
I continue to enjoy writing these articles very much and I don't intend to stop telling about Ed's family, but I want to add the stories of my direct family members as well. In addition, there are other folks who have gone before us that want their story told. These folks may be uncles, aunts, cousins, in-laws, and who knows, maybe out-laws too. Because of expanding the focus of these future articles, I am changing the title to "Daring Darlene to Tell." It is exciting that this change will provide more family "branches" to learn about. The scope of customs, traditions, etc., will expand because of the many different individuals with their different ethnicity and unique backgrounds. I am also planning to move to a later day of the week than Wednesday to give me more prep time. I am moving towards using Fridays. Never mind this article's publication date.
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| IMAGE: William Richard Johnson 1930-2010, this photo was taken in his freshman year, circa 1945, Renton, Washington. From family photo collection held by Darlene. |
In today's article I want to share with you the creative ideas that my father had, but before I do that, I want to give you a little background on him. Dad's name was William Richard Johnson, for the most part, he was called Bill. He was the son of Alfred Marem Johnson and Olena Marie Haner and was born on 22 March 1930 in the small village of Douglas, North Dakota, about 38 miles southwest of Minot. I transcribed his birth certificate this past Monday. You can read that by clicking here.
Bill died on 19 November 2010, in Tahuya, Washington, a very small community in Mason County. But before that, he had a varied and creative life that I am sure he would like told. Among other things, Dad was a Union Carpenter and a member of the Fraternal Order of Eagles. But those are only two of his interests. He also was content when he was fishing or hunting.
Dad quit high school when he found work at a local dairy near home in Renton, Washington. He only finished the ninth grade. He quit school sometime during his sophomore year at high school. It wasn't long though, before he told the cows, "Good-bye" and began a career in carpentry. Commerical construction became his specialty and before long we would begin to move from job to job. We would leave Washington for southern California, where Dad would soon become the job's superintendent for many significant projects from Los Angeles to San Diego.
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| IMAGE: The Olympic Queen, a houseboat built by William R. "Bill" Johnson. From the author's photo collection. |
Idea #1 - Dad's job projects included high-rise office buildings, military hangars, bridges, and more. As you can see, the list contains many structures made of concrete. Buildings made with concrete walls were becoming the vogue and were time-consuming to construct the re-useable forms that were made from sheets of spaced apart plywood, yet held together until the liquid concrete would set-up into its solid shade. The item that held the plywood in place were thin steel rods that were called snap-ties. Here is a YouTube video showing the building rods at work. You can click here.These snap-ties were longer than the walls thickness to hold 2x4 braces in place to strengthen these forms. Then after the concrete had hardened and the forms removed, there were these snap-ties sticking our of both the inside and outside surfaces of the new wall. These rods protruded maybe twelve inches on both sides. The rod's protruding part had to removed, and that is where the word "snap" is applied. Those trying to remove the protrusions would work the rids back and forth to try to weaken it just under the surface of the concrete and have the excess rod break off.... or snap off. I found a YouTube video that shows the process of manually removing these snap-ties. You can see that by clicking here.
Dad's interest was to find a more efficient method to snap off the extra amount. At the time, he thought, his new idea would have been a new invention. He designed an attachment for a hand-held drill motor that would spin, grab the snap-tie and twist it hard enough to break it off in one quick motion when the drill was triggered. Dad didn't have a lot of capital to work with, but he hired a machine shop to make a prototype. This prototype worked for five or six tries and then broke because it needed to be made from case-hardened steel. So that was the end of that attempt, as there wasn't money enough to carry this idea through further design phases, patent attorney fees, etc. He was pleased with his idea though, but let it sit long enough that someone else came up with other methods to do the same thing.
Idea #2 - Some of the buildings that Dad supervised were tall office buildings. Again, these were concrete and steel structures. He was early at doing what is called today "climbing" formwork. When a building or tower is constructed in such a way that the concrete forms can be used over several times, they are created in sections and are then removed from the lower sections, say the second floor on a tall structure and than moved higher with a crane to be used say on the third and subsequent floors in this high-rise. This process has no named inventor, but Dad participated with others to define how this formwork is done. Wikipedia has an article on climbing formworks. You can see that by clicking here. Dad used this concept with constructing one of the Century City buildings in Los Angeles.
Idea #3 - Dad told me many times that you can make concrete float. Sure enough, there are now floating concrete bridges, floating concrete docks and the like. After moving back to Washington, Dad even designed and built a concrete houseboat. He named it the Olympic Queen and its lower structure, the part that sits in the water was made of concrete and steel. The boat was launched in 1994 and Dad lived on the Queen for better than ten years. Yes, concrete structures do float.
Idea #4 - Automobile airbags was another item Dad said we should have in our cars.... way before they became an item that is now a federal requirement to be installed by every manufacturer. He would say that there should be a set of sensors that would send instantaneous signals to a cushion that would spring from the dashboard to protect those in the front seat of a vehicle that was in an accident. He had this idea in the 1950's, and it was a long while after he told us about this idea that we began seeing them in cars. Another, if only...
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| IMAGE: House designed and built by William R. "Bill" Johnson near Tahuya, Mason County, Washington. |
Idea #5 - After retirement, Dad sold the "Olympic Queen" and turned his attention to designing and building a new "landlocked" house to live in. He chose a very rural area adjacent to a Washington State Forest near the small vacation community of Tahuya (Ta-hoo-ya). As you can see from the above photo there is a lot of roof to the design of his house and being it is near hundreds of acres of forest, he was worried about wildfires. To prevent damage to the house in the event of a wildfire he added a sprinkler system to the roof. He added easy access to turn these sprinklers on from inside the house, using well-water at the time of need. He would resort to using these sprinklers a time or two while residing there.
Idea #6 - On the right-hand side of the photo is a stand of good-sized western red cedar trees. These large trees create cool shade under them. Dad decided to capitalize on that shade and provide a cool-air system for the house. He placed a 12-inch diameter deep-underground pipeline from the stand of trees that entered the house up through the floor of the basement. To pull the cool air up from the pipe in the basement, he just turned on a ceiling fan turned to an upward-draw spin. On the upper floors, he had open-grill vents through the floor placed along the outer walls. The gentle pull of the fan moved the cooler air up through the vents from the basement. This pulled the cool air from the tree stand through the pipe into the house, cooling the temperature in the house. Very inexpensive to run.
Idea #7 - Another thing he did was to provide instant-hot water at the hot-water faucets. This was done by having the hot water tank placed in the basement. Using the natural phenomenon of hot water rising, He used the normal outflow pipe at the top of the hot water tank, starting the hot water pipes there. The hot water pipe throughout the house was one large loop, with the end entering the drain at the bottom of the tank, thus creating an endless loop. The unused hot water flows back into the bottom of the tank to be reheated. When a hot-water faucet was opened anywhere in the house, it instantly had hot water waiting. Hot water flowed without any other expense... It worked!
It is likely, he had other ideas that he never put to use or shared with me. To be honest, I am not sure if these were his own ideas or if he had a lifetime subscription to Popular Mechanics. <grin> But I sometimes wonder what he could have done if he had finished high school and had earned a college degree. I'll never know. It was fun to go down memory lane in this article to share my memories.
I am wishing you a good day and hope your week is going well too. Have a great day everyone!
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The URL for this post is: https://homefolktales.blogspot.com/2018/03/2-creative-side-of-william-richard.html
Please comment regarding this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then use the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post. Or contact me by email at dsteff4246[at]gmail[dot]com. Thank you. Once again, I am glad you stopped by today.
Copyright (c) 2018, Darlene M. Steffens
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