Les Grusendorf

Yesterday was Knott's Soak City water park. I would have ordered a slightly hotter day for this activity if it had been up to me but the day wasn't bad and I managed to get a couple of burns as it is. In the first picture here you can see Alex and myself coming out of the shoot of a giant funnel. In the second picture it isn't all that clear but Alex and I are hitting the bottom of the two very tall and very steep slides. Alex is on the left and his slide has a couple bumps in it while mine is straight down and you feel like you're leaving the slide. You hit the bottom at a very high rate of speed. Sarah will be coming out of the tube on the left very soon and MacKenzie is still in the tube on the right. In the final picture you can see Sarah's head in the water trough and if you look closely you can see MacKenzie coming out of the tube. All in all it was a great day and I'm only a little bit pink.



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Just out side of our back door was a huge willow tree. The tree must have reached a hundred feet into the air and I think it's roots went just as deep into the ground. Not long after we moved in, our sewer backed up and it only took a few calls to learn that the man who could solve every problem in Rosemary was Les Grusendorf (8). Les was an old fellow who was the town maintenance man. He was the nicest guy and he knew how to do anything. I gave him a call and the next thing I knew he showed up on my doorstep with a sewer snake. It worked like a charm but unfortunately I had to repeat the operation about once every three months. I got to know Les very well in the time we lived in Rosemary. He had every tool you could want and I borrowed many of them. I used his cement mixer, I borrowed his saw horses and he helped me on many projects. Just a few days before Brandon was born (June 2, 1984) our sewer backed up again. I knew it would not be a good idea to bring a baby home to a house with no sewer so off I went to borrow the town sewer snake. As luck would have it, this time when I shoved the snake down the sewer it caught on a chipped piece of the sewer pipe and folded over. When I went to pull it back it jammed and that snake was not going anywhere. I estimated where the snake was caught and unfortunately it was right behind our doorstep so we would not be able to get a back hoe in there. I called Les and told him my situation and he promised to come by the next morning and look at it with me. The morning of June1, 1984 Lisa went into labor. I was all excited because I wanted to miss work but Lisa told me that it was nothing and that I should go into work. She would call me if the contractions got serious. When Kira was born Lisa was in labor for more than twelve hours so it didn't seem like there was much of a hurry. Imagine my disappointment when she never called. I worked a full day and then came home. We went for a walk over by the water ponds (9) and we finally decided to head on into the hospital. Once we got into the hospital we found out that she was barely dilated. How frustrating. Lisa slept that night and I basically just sat in the chair beside her. In the middle of the night I was getting hungry so I headed down to the waiting room where they had stuff to make toast. Lisa was having very regular contractions and I had them timed so I set my watch and headed for the waiting room. As soon as she was ready to have another contraction I ran back to her room so she could squeeze my thumb during it. I then went back to the waiting room to check on my toast. We went back and for th like this for a while until Lisa told me that I was driving her insane. She could hear me running down the hallway and she knew that if I was coming to her room she was going to have a contraction soon. I thought it was quite funny. Finally as dawn approached things moved very quickly. It came so quickly that it kind of freaked Lisa out. Brandon was born somewhere around 7:00AM and I was dead tired. I was also bummed because it was a Saturday and I still didn't have any excuse to skip work. June 2 is also my sister Fara's birthday so that was kind of special. After we finally got Lisa and Brandon settled in I dragged myself back home looking forward to a nice long nap. Imagine my surprise when I pulled in the driveway and there was Les Grusendorf digging a big hole behind my back porch by hand. I wanted so bad to go to bed but how could I leave this old man digging a hole in my back yard? I grabbed a shovel and hopped into the hole to help him uncover my sewer line. My arms felt like rubber and I thought I was going to pass out. It was all I could do to throw the shovel full of dirt up out of the hole. We did finally reach the pipe and with Les' help we fixed the pipe for good. Finally I was able to thank Les and send him on his way home and I went and slept like a baby.