Hungry Horse was a pretty nifty place. My father was sent there to build Hungry Horse Dam. At the time that it was built, it was the third highest, fourth largest concrete dam in the world. It isn’t anymore. It was on the north or south fork of the Flathead River.

There was just a teeny little town in the Rocky Mountains; there was hardly anything there, so the Bureau of Reclamation had to build their own town for their own people.  The contractor had to build their own town. 

There were soon 29 saloons along the main street.  We would now call them bars. They are now tourist souvenir shops. When we moved there, the govrnment was putting in duplexes, but they were building houses that were to be permanent houses for the people who would be running the dam and living there and then the rest of the government houses were meant to be torn down when the dam was finished. 

At first I finished out the first grade in a little school in Martin City, a mile or two away.  It was for the first and second grades together only.  The teacher had her "pet" walk up and down the aisles, watching for those who infracted the rules.  I was terrified, but once I had to ask someone if  I could borrow a pencil and I got caught.  The infractees had their names written on the blackboard, with a check mark for each time an infraction was noted.  At recess and at lunch the infractee had to go before the teacher Mrs.  Lancaster, hold out his or her hand back side up, and get hit hard with a ruler for each infraction.   I was also expected to complete the workbook of the person whose desk I occupied when I arrived (that child had left).  Although I spent the rest of that year being terrified, I did learn something that has stayed with me for the rest of my life.  I listened to the 2nd grade lessons although I was in the first grade,  and after spending a pleasant 2nd grade in the new school built in Hungry Horse, I skipped the 3rd grade at the same time that my brother skipped the 5th grade.  The school went through the 7th grade.  Then we had to go to Columbia Falls for 8th grade and high school.

   When the permanent houses were completed, we were assigned one.  It was a three bedroom, one bath with full basement.  For the time, it was a nice house. The Bureau put a swing set in the backyard and a teeter-totter. It was so convenient.

I spent hours and hours with my friends on the swings just talking. We would swing and swing. There were no fences and on our side we played softball. Unfortunately,  first base was my mother’s rose bush which did not fare well. The other side was football. My parents wouldn’t let me play football.

The bureau had hung clothes lines so there were two houses sharing a clothes line,  and then two houses next to that for a total of 4.  It was a very social thing.  You would go out and hang  up your clothes and talk you your neighbor.  I did a lot of hanging up of clothes for my mother and I would talk to the neighbors.  A lot of times you would look out and see so-and-so, and bring out more clothes to hang up.  It was no accident lots of time.

My mother was not fat. When you have a basement and you are doing laundry, you are going up and down the stairs a lot.  She was not fat.

At 70, Dad Takes Up Running 
When my father was seventy years old he took up running. He said that he always wanted to take up running, so he did.  He ran 10k races.  When I cleaned out their house, there were so many shirts from all of the races he ran. I am not sure how many he did, but he ran for about ten years.  He also bought ice skates and and skated with his friend Al Carlson who was even older than he was.  My father bought a snow blower to clear off the snow from part of the ice on Banks Lake so that they could go ice skating.  He also bought a very nice telescope, which he had always wanted.  He considered putting a hole in the wall of the Coulee Dam House so he could mount the telescope through the wall, but he decided he did not want to look in only one direction.

My mother went to a nursing home, finally and he was alone in the house. But he would go up there and join her for lunch and dinner. Then, finally, he was in the nursing home and he still wanted to run. There was a locked area outside with a sidewalk all around so they let him run out there. Sometimes the director of nursing would run with him.  This was a small place. The nursing home and the hospital were one long building. There was a big double door in between and they knew he liked to run, so they would say “Ok, John is going to run,” and they would shut all of the doors and open up that one and let him run up and back. That was in Grand Coulee, Washington. He died in January, 2000 at age 89.

In Hungry Horse, we used to go out and play in the woods and make forts out there. That was lots of fun. It was like our neighborhood in Crescent Lake , Oregon. After that Redmond, Oregon was a big town.  It had 3,000 people. It had a library. There was no library in those other places.

College

I went to Oregon State University. I wanted to go there because it was big and Vern went there because it was small and that was where we met.  He was fascinated by my last name Vertrees and when we got married I was so glad to have the simple name of Tucker and not have to repeat it and spell it for people!

I went to Oregon State because it offered a degree in medical technology. I became  interested in medical technnology because I read an article about it. I thought that I was more of a liberal arts type person, but  at that time liberal arts people came out of school and couldn’t find employment. I wanted to be able to be employable right away in some occupation that helped people. I didn’t want to teach. I had no trouble finding a job immediately.

 I always liked school. My first year, I lived in a dorm and then the next year they converted it into a boys dorm. My first year I had a state scholarship, and then my parents moved out of state so I not only lost my state scholarship, I had to pay out of state tuition. So I moved into a co-op and got a job. working in a research lab at the school.  They were studying the breakdown of glucose.   That changed things. I had a lot less free time not only because of working but also because of co-op obligations. Plus living in a co-op was very different.

I had three very interesting roommates. I had one  from Hawaii, one who was Japanese, and one from Southern California who was six feet tall.  We made quite a group. I had asked for non-smoking room-mates and they all smoked. They had all said they were non-smoking because they all wanted to quit. I went there for three years and then my fourth year I went to the University of Oregon medical school where I actually did my training to become a medical technologist