zion, 1953

back in milwaukee pain clinic for treatments and while here i was thinking about my first trip to zion in june '53. just graduated from chs with twenty dollars in my pocket from my dad and rode to zion with gusti wisuri and henry bergstrom. stopped in humbolt to visit salminen and lehtinen on the way down. roomed with bro al on mcallister in waukegan and after pounding the pavement with kirby frantti for days on end with only rejections i finally tweaked my birth certificate to qualify for a job at johnson motors graveyard shift in diecast. bought a whizzer motorbike for transportation to work and for otherwise, later upgraded to a 29 model a ford. hugo daavettila signed for my insurance cuz i was underaged according to illinois law.after about 6 weeks of factory work i felt there was more to life than midnights in a factory and decided to come back to the cc and enroll in post graduate studies in chs to qualify me for mich tech. just a little aside. since i started my factory shift at eleven and under 18 year olds had to be off the streets at curfew of 10 i would get stopped by the cops and told to go home. couldn't convince them i worked at johnsons so i had to sneak down alleys through waukegan to get to the shore road which lead to the factory. comes under the heading of doing what had to be done to get the job done.