I did not believe my early experiences in the Lighthouse Service over sixty years ago were of any interest to most people, but after making several tours with the Lighthouse Society, I have met a peculiar breed of people who are intensely interested in anything pertaining to lighthouses. So for those people, I will try and write a few recollections. I got into the Lighthouse Service chance in 1927; although I was raised near the sea at Coos Bay, Oregon, where I frequently explored the Old Cape Arago Lighthouse. Graduating from Oregon State College as a civil engineer with honors, I found nobody wanted to hire me. After working in a sawmill piting lumber at forty cents an hour, I got a job with the U.S. Bureau of Roads as a chainman at ninety dollars a month on survey party building roads on Mount Rainier. Upon taking a Civil Service Civil Engineering Examination, I soon received a letter advising me of a job as junior engineer at San Francisco in the Lighthouse Service at one hundred and fifty-five dollars a month and I grabbed at the chance.
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