Flying High 1-15

Flying High
The Life & Stories of
William L. Mikkelson

Copyright © 2019 by William L. Mikkelson
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise without the prior written permission of William L.
Mikkelson and his assigns.
Flying High reflects the opinions, perceptions and memories
of William L. Mikkelson. The stories they express within these
pages are matters of personal opinion, not necessarily fact, and are
in no way intended to be hurtful to any individual or group.
ISBN-13: 978-0-578-40152-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019914109
Crafted & Published by
Linda A. Hamilton
www. StoriestoLast.com
510-301-1997

Flying High
The Life & Stories of
William L. Mikkelson

Acknowledgements
I
dedicate this book to my dear wife of 68 years, Fern.
I would like to thank my wonderful children,
grandchildren and great grandchildren for their love.
A special thank you to Wanda for encouraging me to
tell my stories and for all her support. She has enriched my
life and brought happiness to me.
I would like to acknowledge the skillful and artistic
touch that Linda Parker Hamilton added to my life tales.
And thank you to all my friends who are willing to read
about little old me.

Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Childhood
Junior High at Central
High School Years
College Years
Military Years
Young Married Life
The Smoke-Craft Years
Semi-Retirement
Ski & Heliskiing Adventures
Looking Back
7
61
75
99
113
159
191
247
287
309

Chapter One
Childhood
1924 to 1936
RUMOR HAS IT, I FIRST MADE MYSELF KNOWN in this
world right in the middle of my mother’s birthday party
on May 19, 1924. Of course, I have no memory of it!
Coincidentally, my daughter Gail was later born close to my
birthday on May 22, and a generation later, her son Eric was
also born May 22, making this parent-child-birthday-pattern a
Mikkelson tradition.
My life started in South St. Paul, Minnesota, where my
father grew up and worked in his father’s butcher shop, another
Mikkelson tradition. When I came along, my mother was still
a new mother to my brother Bob, who was born just eighteen
months earlier (November 27, 1922). My parents, Alice and Harry,
had been married in the Congregational Church in South St. Paul
(June 10, 1921) and then moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for a
short time then back to St. Paul before Mother was ready to give
birth to me, christened William Luther Mikkelson.
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Flying High
Alice and her brother Earl, also
known as Uncle Jack, 1920
A Toddler on the Rails to
Oregon
As a young family, we didn’t
stay in St. Paul long. In 1926,
my father left ahead of my
mother and my brother and me
for Albany, Oregon, to secure
a place for us to live and a job
as a manager with the D. E.
Nebergall Meat Company at the
recommendation of my mom’s
brother, Dewey Greiner. Dewey
had wanderlust, visiting various
parts of the United States
before settling into employment
at a lumber mill in Oregon.
There he fell in love with a local
named Ivy Harkins, and Oregon
became his lifelong home. He
and Ivy married in 1924 and
had two children, my cousins
Jack and Shirlee.
Besides the promise of employment in a known field and
independence from his father, it’s likely that the opportunity to play
baseball was also a draw for my dad to move to Oregon. There was
an active semi-pro league in the northwest, and he loved baseball.
My mother, with us boys, just two and three-years old, lived
temporarily with her parents in Minneapolis, just nine miles
from St. Paul. One of my mother’s other brothers, Earl (Jack
or EJ) Greiner was teaching and playing semi-pro ball in North
Dakota at the time. When Mom got the word from Dad that he
was ready to receive us, she asked Uncle Jack, as we knew him, to
accompany us to Oregon. Jack said yes and drove to Minneapolis
8

Childhood
in his Studebaker, picked up Alice, Bob and me and headed west
via mom’s hometown of Bottineau, then northwest to the Vantage
District in Canada to visit family living there. Jack left the car in
Saskatchewan where we caught the train to Albany, Oregon.
It was a long cross-country journey with two active toddlers.
Of course, the train was the only option in 1926 since commercial
flight wasn’t yet in operation. This is significant to me since flying
was such a huge part of my life as an adult.
In those days people dressed up to travel, women in hats and
dresses, men in their suit coats and vests and matching trousers,
pressed shirts and winter top coats. This is how my mother and
Uncle Jack were adorned. In the years afterwards, my uncle liked
to recount the story of holding me on
his lap on the train when I guess I just
had to go. “You peed all over my new
suit!” he laughed whenever he told the
story.
Jack ended up staying in Oregon,
enrolling in Oregon State University
and receiving his Bachelor of Science
degree, after which he coached
basketball and taught industrial
art classes for ten years in Powers,
Oregon, from 1928 to 1938. During
that time, Jack married Eleanor Jane
Miller of North Bend and they had
two children, Dona and Earl. In
1938, they relocated to the larger
community of McMinnville, home
of Linfield College (founded in 1883)
and fifty miles north of Albany, where
Uncle Jack created a model high
school industrial arts shop, and the
family settled into a satisfying life.
The Beginning of
Commercial Flight
In 1924, only mail
planes were operating
commercially in the
U.S. In 1926, the
Air Commerce Act
began to regularize
commercial aviation
by establishing
standards, facilitation,
and promotion
and in 1927, Pan
American Airlines
was established. But
passenger flight didn’t
really “take off” until
after World War II).
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Flying High
Like my dad, he continued to play semi-pro baseball in the Oregon
circuit. Jack eventually became mayor of the town because of his
popularity and his intellect.
Settling into Albany
Nebergall Meat
Company was a
slaughterhouse and
meat packing plant,
one of many successful
industrial plants in
town producing
varying goods. Albany,
with a population of about 5,000
at that time, had become the manufacturing and transportation
hub of the Willamette Valley as early as 1871 when Albany
businessmen raised money to make sure the train came directly
through the city. Prior to that, products and people traveled to and
from Albany via coaches and steamboats. The town thrived with
its seat at the confluence of the Calapooia and Willamette rivers
and in the central valley, affording an overland thoroughfare from
Sacramento to Portland and farther north to Seattle (It’s no wonder
Interstate 5 was eventually built in that south to north corridor).
It was the Monteith brothers, entrepreneurs Walter and Thomas,
who gave the town its name in 1847, honoring their hometown in
New York. Over time, Albany became host to foundries, blacksmith
shops, tanneries, furniture factories, carriage factories, a bag
factory, a twine factory, flour and flax mills, creameries, farms, and
sawmills. The logging industry had a major influence on the town
throughout my life there. Flour, grain and produce were shipped
regularly by river and rail to Portland and eastern cities.
Dad worked in the factory for a few years but resolved that he
liked the retail side of the business more than the plant, so he next
10

Childhood
Dad in the Pfeiffer’s Market delivery truck circa 1930. It came in handy
in the early years when we did not own a car.
worked as the manager in a butcher shop called Pfeiffer’s Market,
starting around 1929. Pfeiffer’s Market shared a storefront with the
Dooley Brothers grocery store and a hard goods store, with a dance
studio on the second floor, located on Broadalbin between Second
and Third Streets downtown.
The Pfeiffers were long-time residents of Albany. The first
of them, Charles Pfeiffer built the Revere Hotel in downtown in
1877. Charles Jr. owned a men’s clothing store. Franz Pfeiffer, a
brother of Charles Jr., owned the market. An older guy by the
time my dad worked for him, he had all the money he ever needed
so never operated the shop, just owned it, leaving the day-to-day
management to my dad, which suited them both.
After a half-dozen years of my daddy managing the shop as if
it was his own, Mr. Pfeiffer sold the business to him, and it became
Harry’s Market sometime before 1936. Advertisements in the local
newspaper in 1948 declared, “Harry’s meat can’t be beat!”
From very early on, the entire family, including my mother,
spent a lot of time working in the butcher shop.
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Flying High
With Bob and my father on the Oregon
coast, 1927
Growing Up in the Meat
Business
Bob and I were put to
work in the butcher shop
when we were only six
and seven years old. As
Mikkelson boys, we had no
choice. My only memories
of the meat market
involved working there,
which I did into adulthood.
My first job as a little
boy was cleaning the
glass on the inside of the
showcase on Sundays when
the shop was closed. Then
Bob and I would sweep
the floors. The showcase,
running underneath the
length of the counter was
an important aspect of the
shop. It displayed all our goods. Customers would look through the
glass at all the meats laid out on trays in rows, each marked with
a price, five cents a chop or six cents a pound for hamburger, and
make their decisions, often pointing to a specific cut of meat and
giving their order to whoever was working behind the counter.
“Give me half a pound of hamburger and two pork chops, and
please don’t put that thick one in because I don’t want to pay that
much,” one customer might say.
The showcase glass slanted in the front so no reflection would
block the customers’ view of the steaks, veal, pork, chicken and
various cuts of meats. Every Sunday, my brother or I would have
to climb inside that case and wash all the glass and climb back out.
12

Dad didn’t fit
of course, so
he needed someone small to do the
job, I guess. Maybe he figured we’d be able to get to spots that
the adults couldn’t get by just reaching inside.
Once cautions were taken for our safety, we were given the
task to grind meat. We also took care of the chickens. We kept
live chickens in the basement of the building in a coop, wired in
from floor to ceiling. It was a big pen, probably fifty feet by twenty
feet and fifteen feet tall, full of birds. Bobby and I had to feed
the chickens and clean out their pen regularly, laying down fresh
sawdust every Saturday.
When we were a bit older, Dad assigned us the job of
slaughtering the chickens. He determined how many birds he
thought we would need for the next day based on the day of the
week, whether it was a holiday or there was a town event, the
weather, and the time of year, and told us how many chickens
to prepare. Dad might tell us to kill a half a dozen chickens or a
dozen. One of the biggest days in Harry’s Market was Saturday
when the ladies would pick out meat for their Sunday supper. Bob
and I would go into the basement and catch the chickens by the
legs, hang them upside down, and cut their throats. Then we’d soak
the carcasses in hot water and pick all the feathers off and dress
them out. That’s just the way life was.
My brother never did like to kill those chickens. He didn’t think
we should have to kill them. I defended my dad, I guess, or went
along with the program. I cut most of the throats. Bob and I made
the best of it, whistling, singing, and creating contests for speedpicking
the feathers. We’d end up laughing in the hot, steaming
basement with blood and feathers everywhere. Dad didn’t pay us
to do this or any of our jobs in the market. The understanding
was, “Do it or else.” After all, working in the butcher shop was a
Mikkelson tradition, and our father was training us the way his
father trained him.
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Flying High
My grandfather Mike
Mikkelson with his
bulldog
Minnesota. Sometime in those years,
Grandpa Mike became a chef on the
Great Northern Railroad and then
started the first meat market in South
St. Paul, Minnesota in 1913, running it
with his brother Roy. Thus the name:
Mikkelson Brothers Meats. Later, it
was renamed to Mikkelson and Son.
Dad started his responsibilities at
the Mikkelson Brothers Meats shop
about the same age that I started
cleaning the showcase at our store,
working with his dad and uncle after
school and on Saturdays.
Mikkelsons and the Butcher Tradition
My grandfather, Michael Concord
Mikkelson and his brother, my Uncle
Roy, ran the first butcher shop in
South St. Paul, Minnesota, called the
Mikkelson Meat Company. (For a long
time, Fern and I had the marble from
their store in our kitchen, a beautiful
piece still, since marble doesn’t
deteriorate.) They learned the trade
in their home country of Denmark,
where Grandpa Mike was born in
1863. He immigrated to the U.S. in
1882 and married my grandmother,
Lena Roscoe Mikkelson (1867–1936)
in the Evangelical Lutheran Church
in Minnesota on October 20, 1888.
My dad, Harry R. Mikkelson was
born February 17, 1896, in St. Paul,
My father, Harry, circa 1900
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Grandfataher and Great-Uncle Roy at the Mikkelson Brothers Meats shop, circa 1915
And below with my dad working there before WWI.