Twin Sons Of Different Mothers

What are the chances? Two people connect, not meeting face to face initially, but because other people said: “you’ve gotta meet this guy.” To both. That’s the way it was for Kelly Tjaden and me. Destiny. Nay, inevitability.  So it began, when he ventured down to the Mushroom Haus (below) and caught me lip syncing “The Good Ship Lollypop.”

Yes, all true; I was in full character for a skit for what would become “The Plain Players,” a local cadre of rural thespians. Kelly was charmed. And he was charming. It clicked. Cocktails ensued. Antics and shenanigans commenced, and we became fellow wilderness rangers, roommates, colleagues and life-long friends.

The month of June 1978 would mark several milestones. Shortly after meeting Kelly, we were dispatched to Ellensburg for a weeklong fire prevention training session (he called it “chainsaw school”). “I know this town,” he informed me, having attended Central Washington University before transferring. Indeed, he did know the town.

We made our presence known at all the bars with our mates from other districts who would work summers as wilderness rangers, prevention guards and lookouts. Seasonal employees, mostly college students, converged from Naches, Tieton, Ellensburg, Cle Elum, Leavenworth, Lake Wenatchee, Entiat and Chelan for the session.

For someone already sequestered in the woods for months, the training sessions were a godsend. Flittering from establishment to establishment, we finally settled on “The Cornerstone,” a classic college bar. There, I met my future wife, Rebecca Brand, while Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers played “Breakdown” on the jukebox.

Yep, Kelly was there when I met the girl of my dreams. Rebecca would move from Yakima to Lake Wenatchee that fall and we would marry at “The Chapel In The Woods” at Camp Field (now known as Sleeping Lady) in Leavenworth in November of that same year -- 1978. Kelly was there from the beginning.