1st day on the Job
By Dan Cote

I remember walking around this country, Jerry Rubin book in one hand and a copy of "Think and Grow Rich" in the other.  Conflicted.  Trying to keep my head in two different worlds.  Then, one evening I met Gary Stamey and Wade ... hmmm. have forgotten his name.  The next morning, I was on a Llama with some strange pilot telling me I'd have to jump!  Looking down into 14 feet of snow from about 14 feet above, I had to wonder to whom or what I'd just sold my soul.  The pilot said there would be someone "coming round the mountain" to meet me.  Well, I dragged my carcass out of the snow, started side-hilling towards the invisible when there ... to my welcoming eyes ... is a dang hippy coming round the hill.  Glory!  We met up - Ol' Rosco introduced himself as Rosco (made sense to me) and he led me back to a group of similar types on a hillside.  Asking what we were supposed to do, Rosco carefully instructed me to pick up a pile of chestnut-sized stones from next to me.  That being done, he invited me to throw at an old dead tree down the hill.  I did that - and Rosco says - "Well, that's part of what we do". 
 The next several days, I spent in a near-daze as, finally escaping the suit & desk, I began to learn a whole new life - with a whole new type of person!  Diane Lee teaching me to roll cables - rolling 35-pounders with one arm and carrying my lame and worn-out body with the other - up a cliff - while smoking - and forcibly changing t-shirts with me at the same time.  I learned.  With Rookie & Joe alternately pushing, helping and then dragging me up a hill, I learned.  With Uncle Piss following close behind, shouting encouragement "You CAN make it thru this swamp - but you've got to cowboy those jugs tighter!"
 Well, over the course of the next few years, I learned even more but I never forget my first day on the job!