Dutch and German Immigrants The Prins Family - Pier 21

came from Kenora in Saskatchewan and Mike and I worked the sameshift in the plant. Mike and Ann have passed away but we still havecontact with their daughter Barbara who has a family of her own andstill lives in Kitimat. A while later I met Henry and Bethel Papenbrock,originally from Osnabruck Germany. Henry and I also worked togetherand after work we washed each other’s back. Henry was a carpenter bytrade and he later helped me build my first house on the Graham road(this was after I had married). One of his sons, Andrew, lives not too farfrom us and keeps us posted about the rest of the Papenbrocks.Then there was 'Bies and his wife Jopie Bisenberger, a Dutch couplefrom Zandvoort. Small world as he was a cousin of Klaar’s wife Leni.Jopie and Bies moved to Smithers BC a couple of years later. At thattime I lived in Terrace and once in a while we drove to Smithers to visitthem; more about them later in the journal.The road between Terrace and Smithers was built during the war by thearmy. Running mostly along the Skeena River there are several rockbluffs, which had to be blasted to facilitate the road building. The armyblasted just enough for a narrow two car passage with not much room tospare. Beside the rock bluffs the rest of the road was gravel, mostly'washboard' gravel after a rainy day. After we left Terrace for Alberta theywidened and straightened the road to a modern highway; some of thepassages through the rock costing more than a million dollars a mile.Once lines 3, 4 and 5 were on stream, we were able to make a lot ofovertime. For three weeks in a row I worked my regular 8 hour shift andright after that shift 8 hours overtime, then 8 hours of sleep and myregular shift followed by 16 hours off and repeat this work pattern. Theextra money earned over these three weeks paid for a big part of myholiday in Mexico.I first flew to Vancouver and renewed acquaintances in the lowermainland. I stayed with the family Berquist in New Westminster, and inthe mean time, obtained my visa to enter Mexico. I boarded theGreyhound bus for San Francisco and Los Angeles to stay a day in eachcity to visit the tourist spots and then via Arizona and New Mexico to ElPaso in Texas. When you travel through this part of the United Statesyou do not exactly see the 'American dream', at least that how it seemedto me in 1957. In El Paso I switched busses and it was another 36 hoursto Mexico City.To travel through that country was quite an experience. The only greenareas you see are the irrigated areas. Whenever the bus encountered adetour on the road you just travel on through the fields beside it andwhen the road was alright again up we went and on the road again. On