I got out of the Navy in June 1946 and went to Jeanne’s home (the “Steffins House”) in Carmel while job-hunting. A 2-week trip to LA, visiting oil companies produced nothing at all but I did get a job with California’s Dep’t of Highways (now “Cal-Trans”) as a junior engineer working on a remodeling of Fremont Ave. in Seaside and Monterey. It paid rather well and I took (and passed) a state examination that gave me the title of “Junior Highway Engineer” and I came in no. 33 out of some 300 taking the exam. I was not then an engineer nor am I now, but I had perhaps 4 months on the job before the exam and I did know something about mathematics. So, my temporary job was confirmed. After Fremont Ave. was completed, I was moved to an overhaul of US Highway 101, Salinas to (near) San Juan Bautista and was given a state car for commuting. I spent nearly a year as a full-fledged “Junior Engineer” for Calif. Dep’t of Highways.

My parents had bought a house on Archer St. near Prescott in New Monterey and let Jeanne, Tom and me live there during this period, my duty having been to make improvements to the property. Liz was born to us in that period at the Community Hospital’s branch on Hartnell St. in Monterey.

My old high-school and university friend Nels Edquist was working for the US Bureau of Reclamation in Fresno and told me that there was a vacancy for a geologist. I applied for it and was accepted. On 7 Sept. 1947, I reported to the big cheese in Fresno, Ted Thompson (Jeanne later became a good friend of his wife in Pakistan!). I was sent to the Visalia office and on my arrival found that the USBR had a trailer camp in Lindsay for workers on the Friant-Kern Canal and there was a vacant trailer that I could have. We moved in immediately and Jeanne, Tom and young “Wheets” (as Jeanne’s mother called her first granddaughter) soon joined. There were 3 USBR employees who lived in the Lindsay-Porterville area, and I commuted with them for a long time.

Jeanne checked the local housing market and found a place for us at 465 North Gale Hill Ave. in Lindsay. We bought the house and moved in, leaving the trailer camp. It was a nice house in a simple 2nd-class neighborhood and we enjoyed it. Jeanne made many good friends in Lindsay; Tom went to school across the street; Wheets had companions of her age; and I commuted to my job in Visalia.

I began my USBR job in Visalia by making cross-sections on the Friant-Kern Canal every 200 feet for about 20 miles. The Bureau’s main job in the San Joaquin Valley, however, was to study hydrologic conditions, and after 6 months or so on the F-K Canal, the Bureau found a replacement for me and I moved into the ground-water specialty in about 1948 and have remained in it for the rest of my career.

Some events during our stay in Lindsay:

…Jeanne became active in the Lindsay Art Club (a small group that met infrequently) and made a number of friends there. She also arranged for her father to visit and to lecture to the group, and our esteemed friend and family physician Dr. Horace Campbell bought one of Smith’s paintings.

…Jeanne also became active in the local Episcopal Church and was also a Girl Scout leader.

…My uncle Roy Logan lived in Wasco with his wife Mildred and children Linda Lee and Bill. Wasco was only about an hour’s drive from Lindsay and we visited several times.

…Ione Griffen lived in a beautiful house on N. Gale Hill Ave. near Lindsay’s library. She became a great friend to Jeanne and our children and is well remembered now, more than 40 years later.

…Our property had a large garage, and a previous occupant had built a chicken coop on one side. Thinking that it would be nice for the kids to have some animals, my mother gave them 8 very young bantam chickens. When they had aged a bit later, they all began to present loud, loud greetings to the rising sun. Each of the 8 were roosters and we quickly got rid of them!

…I had been in a naval reserve unit in Monterey and joined another in Lindsay after we moved there. I was quite active in it and even took two cruises from San Francisco of about 2 weeks each (one on a destroyer; the other on a destroyer escort).

I had completed about 5 ground-water studies in the San Joaquin Valley when I was temporarily transferred on an emergency job to study conditions in the Hollister area. This was in 1950 and lasted for about 5 months. My boss Jack Frink gave me a financial break by letting me return to Lindsay every 2 weeks for a few days — this prevented a permanent transfer. I lived in the USBR’s office in Hollister with an air mattress and sleeping bag and took a bus from Hollister to Lindsay and return every second weekend.

That temporary assignment eventually ended when the USBR hired a permanent geologist for Hollister, and I returned to the Visalia job. But not for long.

In June 1951, I was transferred from Visalia to the USBR’s main office in Fresno for ground-water studies in the San Joaquin Valley. We moved to a rented house at 4475 Thorne Ave. in north Fresno and I continued studies in the Valley, specializing in Kern County and needing to travel frequently to the Bakersfield area. Noted events in Fresno:

…Jeanne became a good friend of Betty Ferrar, and that friendship last for years.

…We lived near my USBR colleagues Jack Frink, Harry Kues, Robert Diltz, Dick Richardson and Dan Sokol, and saw them socially on many occasions.

…Liz began to attend kindergarten in a school not far from home; she was baptized in the Episcopal Church on West Shaw Ave. by the Rev. George Woodgates, a former roomie of mine at Barrington Hall in Berkeley.

…Frink was promoted to the Head of the Water Resources Dep’t (Hydrology and Geology) and I was promoted to the Head of the Geology Section (replacing Frink) in USBR’s San Joaquin Valley District.

…One Christmas spent in Carmel was noted for our return trip to Fresno. With Jeanne and Liz in the car (Tom returned separately), I decided to drive by way of Panoche Road, and particularly via the rarely used section termed Jackass Grade. It had been raining and the dirt part of the road was very muddy. As we left the grade and entered the floor of the San Joaquin Valley, we became stuck in the mud, and I couldn’t free the car. We spent an uncomfortable night in the car, dining on cookies (Christmas presents) as coyotes howled nearby. After daybreak, we decided to hoof it toward Panoche, the nearest settlement. We had not gone far before a rancher came along in a pick-up. He took us to his ranch near Panoche and treated us royally. I phoned Bob Diltz in Fresno, and he arrived in a few hours to rescue us. The next day, Bob and I returned to the foot of Jackass Grade and freed our car. Both Diltz and the rancher served as our Good Samaritans!

When living in both Lindsay and Fresno, we spent much time in the Sierra Nevada between the Tule and San Joaquin Rivers, plus Yosemite, on weekends. We went almost everywhere: Springville, Camp Nelson, Sequoia National Park, Boyden Cave, Pine Flat, Shaver Lake, Huntington Lake, et al. Particularly notable: camping on Dinkey Creek and swimming in its pot-holes while I investigated a small damsite for the USBR; swimming at many locations on the Kings River above Pine Flat Lake; a guided tour to the top of Lambert Dome near Tuolumne Meadows in which I carried young Liz in a mountaineer’s rucksack.

In late 1953, the predecessor of today’s Agency for International Development (“AID”; the name has changed several times over the years) was recruiting a team from the USBR in California to provide assistance to the (then) Belgian Congo for the development of the colony’s water resources. I was offered a job on that team. Jeanne and I considered that offer for weeks and we finally decided to accept and to gamble on an adventure in East Africa!