Eagle Cliffs Publishing
Hardcover with
24 photo pages
A few excerpts from:
For the Love of HIS Work
by Rod Allin c2004
Table of Contents
Foreword
Introduction
One................................. Beginning or the End?
Two................................. Growing Up
Three.............................. Skydiving Cats
Four................................ Archery & Saint Rodney
Five................................. More Mischief
Six................................... Logging, Fishing & a
Bear
Seven.............................. Sailing, Motorcycles
& Harvest
Eight................................ Skiing, Drinking & Saving
Nine................................. A New Career
Ten................................... A Close Call...
Eleven.............................. ... Or Two
Twelve............................. ... Or Three
Thirteen........................... The Best Job
Fourteen........................... Here Sharky, Sharky
Fifteen.............................. Helicopters
Sixteen............................ Tigers & Rhinos & Such
Seventeen........................ Iran, India & Islands
Eighteen........................... Diving & The Great
Barrier Reef
Nineteen........................... North America
Twenty.............................. Pirates & Dragons?
Twentyone........................ A Whale of a Tale
Twentytwo........................ Wrapping It Up
Epilogue
Chapter One
Beginning or the End?
"It was a dark and stormy night. Just kidding, hahha.
-Really it was night, and it had been snowing.
It was evening, November second, nineteen ninety-nine.
I was just under seventy years of age, sitting in my rocking
chair, here in my little cabin in the wilderness, up in northwest
Montana. The phone rang and I answered it.
A woman named Angie Heimforth asked if this was Rod
Allin. I said it was. She said, 'Do you know you have a sister?'
I said, 'Yes, I have two sisters.' -I have two half-sisters
and three half-brothers you see.
She said, 'No; A full blood sister.' Well, I have one that
died at birth, and I said, 'You must be mistaken.' ...
Chapter Two
Growing Up
... Of course in old ponds, with about one hundered years of
old decaying cattails, there is about one and a half feet of mud on
the bottom. You know- the kind that really slimes you up.
I decided I better head up to the house and get my lickin' from
Grandma and a bath. I knew the lickin' would come first. ... -So
I decided to wait awhile to let the mud harden, perhaps it
would provide me some protection, or so I thought.
Wrong thinking, Grandma didn't even seem to slow up, just
got the job done and said she loved me. I doubted it momentarily,
but later realized she did, love me that is.
Well, that didn't even slow me up. .. I immediately started on
some major overhauls on my wonderful raft. I spiked four more
fence posts onto the bottom of the raft, knowing that this time it
would really be a winner. ...
Chapter Three
Skydiving Cats
...It worked beyond my wildest dreams. I set Boots out in
the center of the floor that had been freshly polished. It was a
miracle. Boots began to skate as though he had trained in the
Olympics for years! I tell you it was a sight to behold...
I figured if Boots was this good with just two feet
wrapped up in paper he would be SENSATIONAL with
All FOUR feet wrapped up in paper. Well, by this time Boots
had figured out that I wasn't to be trusted completely, but with
only two feet working, he didn't stand a chance. ...
Chapter Eight
Skiing, Drinking
& Saving
They were making a movie in Banff and they needed a lot of
horses. The ranch I worked on had two hundred head of horses,
Brewsters Ranch, the 7H Ranch. I got to be strawboss,
moving and trucking horses from this location to that location,
round and about, and I believe that movie title was
'Saskatchewan' if I'm not mistaken. ...
(with Marilyn Monroe)
... Later on I almost made the Olympic team, but not quite.
I did make the New Zealand Open Ski Champion for 1958
however. ...
As a ski instructor, we used to teach the classes all day long.
Of course, you'd bring them (your class) into the hotel at night,
and they would all sit down at the bar, and each one would buy
you a beer.
If you had a large class that sort of added up in a hurry.
You'd end up getting snockered about halfway through the night.
This went on seven nights a week all winter long, which was
usually about a four month season.
It got to be that it snuck up on me, and I was becoming an
alcoholic, and didn't even know it. ...
Chapter Eleven
...Or Two
...Little did I know, that, that very fact was going to save my life
that day. The fact that the tank was not taken out of the boat. ...
...We were at one hundred-eighty feet, and that's quite a ways to
make a free ascent. ...
Chapter Thirteen
The Best Job
"I use to get up in the morning, this is no lie, and my feet
would hit the rug on the side of the bed spinning, just eager to
get to work. Can you believe that? I just had to get up in the
morning, just raring to go to work.
That's pretty magnificent when you can get a job like that,
seven days a week. We'd work lots of times long hours.
Sometimes less, but there were usually a good ten to twelve
hours in a day. ...
Chapter Fifteen
Helicopters
...I've been taping for the last twenty minutes all kinds of really
neat stuff, and the sucker wasn't recording what all I was saying,
so I've got to start again.
I had such a lot of good stuff on there and I don't know what
all I'd said. I was just talking about the helicopter work I was
doing. Oh what a loss. I'm going to stop, and get grumpy for a minute.
Okay, I will try again. That half hour of tape is lost forever. It
was pretty good stuff, too. I'll try and remember parts of it. ...
...I talked carefully to the pilot and I said to him, 'Listen
Carefully, and do Exactly As I Say. ...
...I looked at him afterwards, and his face was as white as the
snow.
We never told the others about it, because the men
below would have been wiped out, as well as us. You could
call that a pretty interesting moment. In fact it was a bit scary.
I had forgotten all about that till now. It could have been
really bad news. ...
Chapter Twenty-two
Wrapping It Up
...I hope you've enjoyed his stories and that you've read at least
some aloud. ...
cameraman by your vigorous, hardworking father, who I honor
to this day for the lessons and perfections he taught me.
Not only was working with Rod a terrific, serious, fascina-
ting effort, but he is such an enjoyable sort of one-of-the-good-guys
kind of friend. ...
...To get me in shape to film he gave me a Bolex camera; the
hardest viewfinder of all to learn to rack focus. I was taken to
the desert where Rod threw sticks for a retriever. As the dog
scampered after the stick I was told to keep his head in focus
all the time; regardless of the direction the dog was running.
Rod told me how to do this, but also made it increasingly
hard to frame and focus, as he threw the stick short so the dog
ran at the camera. Now that was tough. He persisted in this
practice. ...
...He was always tougher, could carry a bigger pack further,
and could easily get up earlier than me to do it all over again.
He's inspiring. ...
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