Bill Wheeler leaps high in the air for a rebound while teammate, Jim Clem looks on.
Not often enough does one realize how high Bill Wheeler once leaped. He’s shown here in the Chuck Smith gym 55 years ago during a game his Enumclaw Hornets basketball team lost to Fife.
But Wheels as he later came to be known kept winning the hearts of those who knew him well. Following graduation, Bill’s talents were bigger than his hometown’s needs and first landed at Big Bend C.C. where he was going to learn to fly, then to Ellensburg to further ground his education. At Central Washington College he studied how to become a wild cat, and succeeded wildly. There he gained the nickname Wheels in a story so fantastic that it can only be told over a cold beer as he brings a smile to your face.
A forever friendship was forged when Bill Wheeler (in plaid pants), Bill Kombol, and Keith Hanson took a week-long road trip to Reno, Disneyland, and Big Sur in Eugene Wheeler’s Lincoln Continental Mark IV. This late November 1975 photo by Pauline Kombol at 1737 Franklin Street, Enumclaw, Washington.
After schooling, ranching, and the passage of time, Wheels returned to his home town to mold the life he sought to build. There in the seat of every imaginable piece of heavy mobile equipment, Bill sculpted the earth, buried utilities, excavated customer’s dreams, and thrived. He soon became the second letter of S & W Construction, learning much from his first letter partner, Sam Schaafsma. But a first-rate man demands his own dominion, and it wasn’t long before Wheeler Construction was born.
Bill Wheeler compares Operating Engineer union cards with 99-year-old Cal Bashaw, left (Oct. 24, 2019). The Wheeler and Bashaw families both moved from Alaska to Enumclaw in 1965, after which Bill became good friends with Cal’s son, Wynn.
Requiring further refinement in the finer arts of life, Bill placed a ring on the finger of a fiery, red-haired, Scots-Irish lass of clever tongue and semi-sweet disposition. Children were born and a fine home built. In time the wheeling wild cat was tamed, but how long it took no one has yet stated with certainty. What skills he lacked on the golf links he more than made up for at job sites moving enough dirt with backhoes, bulldozers, graders, and dumptrucks to build a dozen golf courses. At the poker tables, he’s always a threat, but mostly to his own wallet.
Throughout it all, Bill Wheeler has remained as devoted to friends as he is to his adopted hometown of Enumclaw where he arrived in the 7th grade. Legions number the good deeds and generous gifts of time, labor, equipment, and materials that Bill has donated to his community. Of late he’s even found a new girl in his life and spends hours playing handsome prince to a charming Princess Lucy.
So in a Leap of Faith with hopes that others second this emotion, I hereby declare February 29th as International* Bill Wheeler Appreciation Day, to be celebrated once every four years by people just like you and me who appreciate the finest things in life. As for the other 365 days . . . may God bless Bill Eugene Wheeler.
* International due to his mother, Pat Wheeler’s Canadian heritage.
Bill Wheeler enjoying a cup of black coffee and blackberry cobbler at a Jan. 7, 2023 Pokerque with his longtime Enumclaw pals.
Mom snapped my picture a couple of day before I left for the Oregon Coast.
In September 1975, I moved to the Oregon Coast. I was fresh out of college, grew a beard, long hair, and bought a motorcycle. I wasn’t looking for work, just loafing. I collected weekly unemployment checks of $93 from a coal mining job I’d quit six months earlier, then dodged Employment Security rules by only seeking jobs for which I was miserably unqualified. It was a practice upon which my parents rightfully frowned.
The summer crowds had gone home. It was just me, my Honda 360, and a head full of dreams living at the Lincoln City cabin my parents inherited from my grandfather. I walked for miles along empty beaches to out-of-the-way places. On a long hike to the most secluded stretch of beach imaginable, I found a Japanese floating glass ball. I fixed grits for breakfast upon which I slabbed thick slices of butter. I learned to bake cheesecakes and ate them over the next few days. There was no shower at the cabin so I took long, hot baths and contemplated in silence.
The Lincoln City home my grandfather, John H. Morris purchased in 1968, and my parents inherited after his 1973 death.
Some pages of history are best left unturned, but not this one. I was stupid. The third night there I decided to make popcorn the old-fashioned way, so heated cooking oil in a pot and left the lid on. It got hot! When lifting the lid the oil caught fire. I panicked and badly burned the knuckles of my left hand. That night I slept on the sofa with my hand in a gallon-sized jar filled with ice water to stem the pain. By morning the burned skin had filled with liquid and grew to the size of a lemon. Foolishly, I sought no medical treatment but lived with it for days until poking a sterile needle through the skin at the base of the burn to slowly release excess fluid. Months after healing, the skin was still stained a reddish hue that took years to fade to beige.
An organic food co-op had opened a few doors up from the Old Oregon. It was a thrown-together, hippie-type place with barrels, buckets, and jars of grains, nuts, fruits, and vegetables. The co-op was operated by volunteers and after several visits, I offered to help. I joined the staff and one day reorganized shelves to better display the myriad jars of grains. I had grown close to a guy named David who was part of the co-op structure. When mentioning to him my layout improvement, David admonished my boastfulness. The co-op’s ethos was to not take credit for personal accomplishments but to subdue our egos for the advancement of the common good. David was in his early 30s, charismatic, with a kindly wife and daughter. He invited me to join his family at the Taft Tigers high school football game on several Friday nights. It was just like being back home in Enumclaw.
I watched movies at the Lakeside Theater (now the Bijou), but many nights walked to the Old Oregon and hung out with the hippies and long hairs that populated the tavern. There were two pool tables and a jukebox in the corner loaded with good 45s. On some weekends, a local rock band occupied a spot in the corner and patrons danced. Usually, I can recall the times and places by which songs were popular, but the only ones I remember that fall were Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” and the Eagles’ “Lyin’ Eyes.”
One night at the Old Oregon, I made the acquaintance of a pair of carpenters building a home on the Salishan spit. We joined for breakfast the next morning where I drank my first cup of coffee. Even with cream and sugar, I could stomach its bitter taste. Afterward, we drove to the house they were framing where I hung out half the day. Mostly I wanted to access this long spit of land forming Siletz Bay that was only accessible through a private gated community.
In mid-October, I geared up to watch every inning of the 1975 World Series between Boston and Cincinnati. For years World Series games were played during the day when I was in school, so I only watched on weekends. With no obligations, this series would be different. To prepare, I bought copies of Sporting News and Sports Illustrated reading every article. I got lucky because that showdown is often called one of baseball’s greatest. If you’ve forgotten, the Big Red Machine won the seventh games, after Carlton Fisk’s game six walk-off homerun tied the series for Boston. My parents visited for a couple of days during that week, picking up Danica on their way, who was in her first year of college at Lewis & Clark.
Generally alone, I found solace at the Driftwood Library. It was a three-block walk to this ramshackle building of uneven floors and narrow passageways. The library was like an overstuffed bookstore – the kind with a sleeping cat in a window – except this repository observed the Dewey decimal system. I mostly read classics like John Steinbeck, Jane Austen, Somerset Maugham, and Isaac Asimov’s science fiction. Bolstered by my recent World Series fascination, I read Roger Kahn’s classic, “The Boys of Summer” joining the author’s love of the Brooklyn Dodgers. I explored the poetry of Robinson Jeffers and wrote a few lines myself. I spent long afternoons reading in front of the cabin’s picture windows with stunning ocean views. I absorbed “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” and stared in wonder at the birds on the beach. But that autumn’s most surprising literary leap was Albert Einstein’s “General Theory of Relativity.”
Albert Einstein and his Theory of Relativity.
It’s not a difficult book to comprehend. Einstein’s genius was to use thought experiments to illustrate scientific principles. There in Bern, he formulated his theory of relativity while employed as an examiner in a Swiss patent office. He simplified the speed of light by conjuring the image of a streetcar rushing away from a clock tower. Einstein surmised that as the streetcar gained velocity, time for the human rider slowed relative to the hands of that clock in Bern. As the tram approached the speed of light, the second hand on the clock would appear to stop – at least to the passenger with telescopic eyes looking back. But, the passenger’s clock in Einstein’s streetcar beat normally.
A storm broke loose in Einstein’s mind after realizing that time elapsed at different rates depending upon how fast the observer moves through space. Upon arriving at his theory, Einstein insisted that he’d tapped into ‘God’s thoughts.’
The Bern clock tower with Einstein’s thought experiment briefly explained.
As for my thoughts, I’d grown lonesome and figured my current life experiment hadn’t produced satisfactory results. Cashing unemployment checks, alone at movies, reading books, and endless beach walks are interesting diversions, but not the foundation of a gainful life. Volunteering at the food co-op for an hour or so, reminded me how much I enjoyed working with others. My months of seclusion needed to end, so I packed my bag and rode my motorcycle home, arriving the week before Thanksgiving.
The best buddy trip of my life soon launched. I’m not quite sure how it came together, but Keith Hanson, then working at Almac-Stroum planned a one-week vacation and invited Bill Wheeler and me to join. Wheels secured his dad’s Lincoln Continental Mark IV with Eugene Wheeler engraved on the dashboard. It was a solid fatherly reminder for three guys in their early 20s, as to whose car we were driving. We left the day after Thanksgiving.
Bill Wheeler, Bill Kombol, Keith Hanson, late November 1975 standing in front of the Lincoln Continental in the Kombol family driveway at 1737 Franklin Street.
On Friday morning, Mom captured our mid-70s fashion with several photos in the driveway. For most of the trip, I sat in the back seat while Keith and Wheels traded driving duties. On that first day, we traveled all night through a snowstorm to Reno, arriving Saturday morning to a cheap breakfast and games of Keno. There we played blackjack and roulette, then tested our luck with dice. Wheels and I stayed out very late only to be awakened abruptly Sunday morning after Keith, a fan since his North Dakota day turned on the Vikings game.
We drove south for L.A., stopping at the Joshua Tree desert on our way to an adventure in Disneyland. After that, we twisted north along Highway 1, admiring Big Sur scenery and listening to the 8-track Beach Boys tapes we’d bought in San Luis Obispo. After picking up my sister, Danica in San Francisco, we toured the Sonoma wine country getting buzzed on Chenin Blanc and other blends, then, lest we wear out our welcome drove north along Highway 101. We continued up the Oregon coast driving all night through rain storms that never stopped arriving back home the following morning. It was a road trip that more than anything solidified the bonds of friendship we’ve shared for five decades.
Back home, I hung out with Wayne Podolak who was similarly out of college and unemployed. That December we played tennis on the Junior High courts during which we hatched a plan for a long trip to Hawaii in spring.
I hadn’t yet digested how my months of solitude added up. I didn’t keep a journal back then, but each day I typed out lists of words and their definitions to improve my vocabulary. I was inspired by Uncle Evan who gave me the handwritten pages of words he memorized thirty years earlier while in college.
At the time poetry seemed the best way to convey thoughts and feelings I couldn’t fully articulate. There in the warmth of my childhood bedroom on a fog-bound day with Christmas fast approaching, I penned the first draft of a poem initially called “Beaming.”
The original poem titled Beaming, rewritten later that day as A Single Moment Captured.
Channeling the Bern tram car of Einstein’s thought experiment I rewrote the poem and gave it a new title:
A Single Moment Captured
Traveling on a beam of light
bound to live until
a single moment captured
motionless and still.
A simple thought now trapped in time
caught within that wave
a glimpse of yesterday revealed
now listlessly engaged.
Light, oh light shine on from here
and never stop to rest
your brightest beam will one day find
its destiny no less.
Bill Kombol – Dec. 18, 1975
I was trying to make sense of the uncertainties of where life was taking me. At the moment, the tram car I was riding had no particular destination. But, I found comfort in believing it had a destiny.
I kept my ticket stub from the hockey game. This 1976 photo is the only one I have of me standing beside my red Ford Mustang II.
This story is from a diary I sporadically kept in 1983. It’s a another Saturday night with friends (Bill Wheeler, Keith Hanson, Jay Carbon, Wayne Podolak, and Mike Hanson), this time at a hockey game.
Lucky me!
Saturday night (Jan. 22, 1983): Wheels and I drove into Dez’s to meet Keith, Jay, Wayne, Mike, and others before the hockey game.
Dez’s 400 was a tavern at 400 Mercer Street on the north edge of Seattle Center. It was also a popular live-music venue.
We parked at Tower records. Went in to buy the new Utopia album but they were all out. Shoot, I usually like to buy an album at Tower, leave the package face up in my car’s window so they know I bought something there.
The Breakers were lousy. Portland cleaned up despite the crowd chants of “Portland sucks.” Real class fans at these hockey games. Rodney Dangerfield said he went to the fights and a hockey game broke out. Keith, Wayne, Wheels, and Mike wanted to split after the 2nd period. We stayed for the 3rd and said, “Jay and I would meet them back at the tavern in Renton.” There were a few more goals scored in the last period but the Breakers still lost.
The Seattle Breakers were a Major Junior hockey team based in Seattle, WA playing in the Western Hockey League from 1977 to 1985. That year the teas was sold and renamed the Thunderbirds.
Jay and I walked back to my car. My car wasn’t where it used to be. Lots of people’s cars weren’t where they used to be. Jay and I made the 10-block walk to Lincoln Towing. I thought and expressed to Jay how a person chooses everything as well as his response to external events beyond his control. I still had to pay $50.58. Got a free Lincoln Towing key-chain out of it.
At the time I was taking Psychodrama classes at GRCC so during our walk to retrieve my towed Mustang II told Jay about my emerging philosophy.
We drove back to the Tav and burned on the way. Listened to Elvis.
Told my stories and Keith, Wayne, Wheels, and I went to dinner at Red Robin. Retold our stories and ate ribs. Told new stories and drank our drinks. Laughed until we could laugh no more. Said goodnight.
Wheels and I dropped off at Caruso’s before we went home. It was 1:30 a.m. Wheels drinks Smith & Kearns. I had a Jack Daniels rocks. Came home, put on the tape, ‘Nobody else’s hand’ and dreamt.
The handwritten story I wrote Sunday morning and stuck in my diary where I also saved the ticket stub.
The record sleeve to Gilbert O'Sullivan's 1972 hit song, "Alone Again, Naturally."
Fifty years ago, a schmaltzy song by an Irish balladeer topped the pop charts for six weeks. Gilbert O’Sullivan’s surprise hit, “Alone Again, Naturally” ranked number two on Billboard for the year 1972. Because it doesn’t fit into the classic rock genre, the tune soon faded in popularity and is generally unknown to anyone born after 1980.
On a Saturday night in late October 2015, my Enumclaw high school buddies and I gathered to play poker as we’ve done since our junior high days. We join together several times each year and call our outings Pokerques, with a barbequed meal part of the bargain.
At a 2013 Pokerque, clockwise from lower left: Bill Wheeler, Keith Hanson, Chris Coppin, Jim Clem, Bill Kombol, Gary Varney, Steve McCarty, Wayne Podolak, Jim Ewalt, Lester Hall holding a photo of a missing, Dale Troy.
That particular night apropos of nothing, Lester told the story behind the song, “Alone Again, Naturally” which centers on the singer’s plan to commit suicide over a wedding that never happened. Lester assured us this factoid came courtesy of Wikipedia, so we knew it must be true.
At that night’s gathering , I laughed entirely too loud as old friends told stories and we all recounted misspent adventures of youthful revelry. Having stayed out a little too late, I slept in on Sunday morning. After breakfast, Jennifer drove our youngest son Henry to his noon soccer game so I found myself alone and naturally opened the iPad.
I checked out Lester’s story. Clicking on the first Google listing, I cued a YouTube performance with an amazing 27 million views! The video featured O’Sullivan on piano before a large orchestra complete with a dozen strings, piano, organ, drums, and the distinctive guitar solo which nicely cements the melody.
Sure enough, the first stanza of this mega-hit relates the tale of a jilted lover imagining a trip from an empty alter to tower top where he throws himself down, all to the amazement of congregants who concluded there’s no reason for them to wait any longer so they might as well go home – as did the prospective groom, who lived to write this melancholy song.
An alternate cover to O’Sullivan’s mega-hit.
The second stanza adds to the sorrow of the first and subsequent verses examine a contemplative soul, never wishing to hide the tears, relating – first the death of his father and then his broken-hearted mother – all remembered . . . alone again, naturally.
Isn’t it funny how a sentimental song from the summer of your 19th year calls forth buried memories, none specific but together conjuring a formative feeling? I probably heard that ballad a hundred times back when Top 40 radio dominated my listening habits, all while driving around in the 1966 Renault that served my transportation needs. But, I’d never fixated on O’Sullivan’s introductory lyrics, only the concluding verse describing the passing of his father and mother.
O’Sullivan is an Irish singer-songwriter who changed his first name to Gilbert as a play on the names of musical composers, Gilbert & Sullivan the craftsmen behind so many crowd-pleasing operettas from the late 1800s*. Released in June 1972, the song’s popularity stretched from late summer to early fall, proceeded at number one song by Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me” and succeeded by Three Dog Night’s “Black and White” – recounted herein to set the mood and temper of that summer.
O’Sullivan’s follow-up single, “Claire” reached number two on the U.S. charts a few months later. His disc sales exceeded ten million in 1972 and made him the top start of the year. By 1974, O’Sullivan was practically forgotten in America though he continued to enjoy popularity in Great Britain.
From a trip Jenn and I had recently taken to Ireland, I remembered what two Irish musicians who led our Dublin pub crawl told us: Irish songs reflect the nation’s history – they’re either bawdy drinking ditties or sad songs of loss and love.
Having spent the preceding evening playing poker with nine life-long friends; eating, drinking, and laughing so hard my face hurt, I was reminded that we’re all then well into our sixties. One of our buddies was lost to cancer and another to booze, but the rest have aged gracefully and we treasure time spent together. We now resemble our dads and how much longer will it be till we look like our grandfathers?
Most of the Pokerque club traveled to Las Vegas in Oct. 2018 where we saw John Fogerty perform a spirited two-hour set at Wynn’s posh Encore Theater. L-R: Chris Coppin, Steve McCarty, Lester Hall, Jim Ewalt, Wayne Podolak, Keith Hanson, Gary Varney, Bill Kombol, Jim Clem.
All of our fathers are gone, and everyone’s mother save one, has also passed away. One was recently robbed of his daughter, a parent’s worst nightmare. With each fresh loss, we find ourselves looking to our children and families for solace and meaning. And, often we look to each other for comfort. We do so in full recognition that our present health and lives and families cannot be taken for granted.
Yet we still laugh and reminisce and natter and make plans, always looking forward to our next reunion. And come away thankful for the multiplicity of friendships that have stood so many tests of time with rarely a pool cue drawn in anger.
So in hopeful jest, I offer this toast to my friends who’ve been by my side for sixty-plus years: May we all live another three decades; and may I be there to cheer your good fortune when each of us celebrates the centennial of his life.
* If you want to see a spirited and historical account of William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s music-making genius, watch the superb 1999 movie, “Topsy-Turvy.”
