At some time during his youth, he made rope with his bare hands and
sold it. A number of years ago, he invented a machine that would braid
rope by turning a single handle. He has a wood model of it in the house
and now makes colorful ropes for fun.
The house in Jackson Hole is full of 40+ years worth of original
inventions, designs, films and collections. Making your way through the
rooms is like a journey into the inner workings of an creative mind, every
available space is occupied by something unique. The walls are lined
with photos he has taken over 25 years, it became an obsession with him
and he wore out a car per year and more shoes than you can count
walking endless miles in the mountains with his friends the animals.
Some of the movies and stills are once in a lifetime of viewing chances,
like the time the Bull Moose shook his head and both antlers fell off, (it scared the Moose so bad
it jumped completely out of the picture). The house is also full of a lifetime of rock collecting
and a unique artful eye for form, his memory is such that you can pick up any stone from a huge
pile and ask him about it and he will likely tell you where, when, others that were found that day
and what the weather was like and how it looks like some animal if you hold it just so.
A strikingly handsome man with thick rich light brown hair and now the full head of honey
toned white hair all of them seemed to acquire after 70, Rob has quick grey eyes and medium
build, the traditional large shoulders narrow waist and of course the Estonian nose, long and
straight. He once grew a moustache and it came in as red hair, very likely we have a bit of
Viking in us, certainly my daughter and I have a lot of red highlights in our hair. Rob possesses a
brilliant inventive mind, a gentle nature, artistic insight and great athletic ability, quite a
combination for any one person to have, but that was the unique aspect of the Tomingas
children, the brothers and sisters all were very special. But lets go back to his early years.
One of the oldest memories is when he got to go to town and he had five cents that he could
spend on anything he wanted. He stood in the general store inspecting every last piece of candy
they had, imagining exactly how much pleasure each would bring. After a couple of hours worth
of detailed examination and deliberation, he bought a handful of chocolate covered cremes. He
was so excited he took off running down the street to show everyone what he had purchased with
his own five cents. Crash! Down in the street, chocolates in the gutter utterly ruined. He doesn't
care much for candy today either come to think about it.
|
When the government was trying to find work for people to do during the depression, one such job brought my dad very close to what was to be his lifelong home, but also as close to death as he has ever been. He worked on a road crew on Togertee pass north east of Jackson withing view of the Tetons. It was winter and one of the worst cold weather spells, no one got paid if no one worked and the foreman didn't get any bonus if the job didn't get done. So despite the fact that it may have been approaching 60 degrees below zero, the foreman order everyone to work. This was manual labor where you wound up breathing hard, frozen air freezes the lungs, and it did, it killed several of them, I think the foreman was one of them. |
| My dad got terribly ill and they though he was going to die too, but he hung on for days, so they shipped him to Denver to see if he could be cured. He walked into the hospital and when they asked him how he felt, he said "awful, all over", they listened to his lungs and couldn't believe he was alive, they were full of fluid. This was during the war as well and anesthesia and pain killers were in short supply, so they bored a hole in between his ribs with him fully awake and without pain medication, inserted a tube into his lung and began the draining process, they said it would be a long recovery. Dad said the relief was enormous and immediate. A few days later after the operation, the doctor caught him doing a handstand on the lawn and decided he was well enough to go home. But it changed his attitude about life and he regarded each day as possibly the last. |  |
. There was also a one or two man project involving the construction of small dam near the foot
of Togertee, this is now the old road. My dad ran the Cat, later, he would be running a Cat in
many other projects including the movies.
Rob had a friend when he was still living in Gillette,
who got a job in Jackson Hole Wyoming on a ranch.
My dad offered to give him a ride and when they got
there, they offered my dad a job too, he has lived in
Jackson Hole ever since.
Dad was walking to work and a pal driving by said
"hop on" so Dad jumped up on the running boards as
the car came by, but his pal decided to give him a
thrill and cranked it up to about fifty miles an hour
and promptly proceed to get broadsided. Luckily on
the opposite side that Dad was on, but he still flew through the air and bounced and bounced.
Got up and continued walking to work.
My brother and I have both tried this bouncing technique, mine was just silly, I was just a little
kid with Henry up on a really steep rocky mountain looking at Hawk nests. Henry said "Let's run
down!" I did. The strides kept getting farther apart until I finally flew through the air, turn a flip
and rolled down the hill through the boulder field to where Dad was watching the whole thing.
I've still got a few scars on my forehead from that one and I can still see the brown blur as I
rolled down that slope. Henry had of course just been joking, he couldn't believe it when I took
off at a dead run, but not to worry, he got his a couple of times later. In one event, Henry was
Sage Chicken hunting with Jimmy Guest and their college cronies. They had consumed some
very potent home brew they had made. The stuff was so carbonated, that if you threw one up in
the air, it tended to explode. Henry was sitting on the front fender of old Blew as they roared full
throttle out through the sage brush, they were trying out a new Sage Chicken hunting technique
not all that unlike Jack Rabbit hunting. After a few miles of full throttle and some wild bangs
and bottomings, the old blue Chevy finally hit a big ditch, my brother flew through the air with
the greatest of ease, he bounced once, then twice, thrice, he lost count but remembered
wondering if he was ever going to stop bouncing. Funny how none of us ever really got hurt
growing up, it was a dangerous occupation.
Indian Motorcycle era |
Dad's pare nts gave him a cow as wedding present. This was during a
drought and considering the poverty that accompanied such a time
meant that it was a gift of real value. Being a mechanical sort and in
need of entertaining transportation, he traded the Black Cow for an
Blue Indian Motorcycle with a slick sidecar, of course no one had
been able to start it for some time even though it was only a few
years old.
Dad looked at the bike for awhile, then went and had a beer to think about why it wouldn't start. He has a philosophy about thinking, he says that people can't think because they always have their mouth open. He walked over to the Indian, bored a small hole in the magneto, and ran a battery wire to the field coil. The Indian started immediately and ran that way for all the years that he had it. He drove it that day the several hundred miles over to Jackson from the little town Gillette Wyoming without a problem and never had to change anything on the ignition again. |
Mom and Dad had plenty of adventures, although some were more difficult than others. There
was the story of a hot desert crossing and millions of bugs. Certainly the desert assault brought a
new meaning to the old saw of "How do you tell how happy a motorcyclist is? By counting the
bugs in their teeth." disgusting isn't it. If they went slow they roasted, fast and the bugs rocketed
into their sunburned faces. They were trying to race through the burning wasteland and my
moms stylish motorcycling hat with the little brim kept blowing off, Mom says that was a real
test of my Dad's tolerance levels. They would have to turn around, go find the wayward hat, and
then set off again, a few miles later, a bug would hit my mom who would let loose of her hat to
wipe the bug off, and the hat would go flying. Cooked and bug plated they grimly made their
way through the torturous testing grounds.
Mom and Dad also broke a chain near the top
of treacherous Teton Pass which in those days
was just plenty steep and plenty scary,
especially when you start going backwards
down it on a motorcycle. While nothing
untoward came of it, the adrenaline ran thick
for a few feet and a few moments that felt
more like hours.
One winter, my dad had to ride the Indian to
work each day, yeah that was kind of tough, it
gets an honest -60 degrees below zero there.
But in addition, it was on a flat tire, the whole
winter! One day a blind narrow corner
brought a car at high speed which crashed head on into the cycle knocking my dad into a ditch,
breaking the right handlebar off, and generally buggering up a great deal of the bike. Dad, didn't
have a scratch, and typical to those days, he picked himself up, then the motorcycle and drove it
home by holding onto the throttle cable and pulling on it for more gas, nothing more done about
it, and just another story added to a long list.
The Indian finally expired, probably from the time Dad had big Poncho Royce on the back,
seemed the rear piston got too hot. The engine went to somebody as Dad didn't really have a
need to fix it, I suppose it could be the one that Yokels made into a snow machine in the 50's out
in Wilson. My brother found part of the frame and side car in a bunch of willows on the old Elk
Ranch a few years ago. The Indian had done it's service, but who knows, old motorcycles seem
to often be blessed with a second life, maybe it will once again rise up from the ashes of the past
and create new adventures and wonderful times.
My dad worked at the Elk Ranch which is between Togertee, and the North Entrance to Grand
Teton National Park. This was the Indian era. Always inventing mechanical things, he designed
an engine with his unique insight. A wealthy manufacturer got very enthusiastic about it and
started doing something with it, but he was suddenly killed in plane crash, and having no other
contacts into that world the engine never saw production. He also did a lot of Cat skinning up the
Gros Ventre on loan. Then when I was born, he got a job at the new Chevrolet Garage opened by
Jess and John Wort in the town of Jackson. They rented a place for a few months near Jackson
until they could buy a house and land at the foot of Snow King.
He built the wrecker for the garage out of an old army 16 wheeler. He remembers pulling a
trucker out one freezing night who was trapped inside the truck. The only way he could get it out
was to pull one end up the slope a ways, then hook to the front and pull it a bit, and back and
forth. He also had to keep checking on the driver of the smashed truck who was freezing to death
in the cab and encourage him not to go to sleep. He got him out and the trucker survived but that
was one of the worst. His metal working and color matching skills came up during this time.
Somewhere along the way, he has managed to get an impressive chemistry understanding. He
knows what ingredient is the active one and how to mix them. When Canadian Thistle came into
the valley, he was to exterminate it along the road north of Jackson just beyond the Gros Ventre
turn off. He made a mixture of Borax and something and build a spreader. The area wouldn't
grow anything for two years, then everything came back except the Canadian Thistle.
Dad earned the reputation for being able to
accomplish the impossible when it came to
mechanical things. He was asked to retrieve a Cat
that had rolled down a canyon way up in the Gros
Ventre. It was lying on the side that had slipped it's
track and it had been there for ten or fifteen years
rusting away. It had a broken steering clutch shaft.
It was the old kind of Dozer that had an overhead
cable operation. With simple hand tools that he
had carried down into the canyon, he fixed the
track, and the clutch shaft, cleaned up the fuel and
filters and was ready to start it. He placed himself
in between the dozer blade and the engine which
was the only way to get to the hand crank, and
gave it a might heave, and it fired! And just as immediately the dozer blade started going up fast
with him on it. Dad realized instantly what was wrong and managed to avoid the blade, cables
and other deadly moving parts got to the ignition and shut it down. By the end of the day, he had
the transmission clutch freed from the rust that had locked it as engaged all the time.
He did a lot of Cat skinning in the Gros Ventre area with that Cat. Another time he was asked to fix the generator clear up at the Flat Creek ranch which is one of most difficult places around Jackson to get to. He talked to the fellow on the phone to get some idea as to what might be the problem, put a few spare parts he thought likely in his tool box and went up there. He fixed it a few minutes after he got there, he had brought a valve spring along and sure enough, that's exactly what was wrong, the spring had broken.
Rob also removed the original Minners Ferry in Moose and did
the first restoration as well. In Kelly, there was a man who had a
big dream, he had all kinds of big heavy steel devices and his
whole live was tied up in the dream. When the Slide Lake dam
broke, he said if his work goes, then he would rather go too, and
he did. My dad wound up clearing up the scattered pieces of
massive iron. He build a dam there that is still there today as
well.
Dad in the movies. "The Big Sky" was filmed in Jackson, never mind that it was about Montana.
They had built two big boats called the Mandan and part of the action was for men to pull this
big monster up the Snake River with ropes. At least that is how it looks on film, what you don't
see is my Dad driving the special Alice Chalmers T14 (like a D9, a big one) that he had
modified so it could run under water. That's who really pulled the Mandan up the river.
Originally, Dad was simply to fix up the cat so it could run under water, but the cat skinners
were having an awful time driving it in all that famous huge cobble rock river bed. I have seen
the owner of a big cat crying because he got stuck in that stuff and could not get out. Also, there
was the terror that crept in whenever the cat dropped off into a deep hole and the driver would
go under water and usually killed the engine. One time, they killed the engine on the big cat
under water and then while trying to pull it out they killed the engine on the smaller cat when it
submerged as well. Dad managed the impossible by getting them both started underwater and
drove them both out. The final straw for the producers was when the professional cat skinner
slipped the track in a hole, swam ashore and quit. Dad fixed the track, again the cat was laying
on the slipped track plus being under water, and drove it from then on for the rest of the movie
with out another problem. I still remember going to the movie set and looking in the Tepees and
at all the actors. Some guy was bragging he could eat anything and was laying bets that he could
eat a car! Buddy Baer's dad I think worked on the set, Max Baer the boxer.
Dad had a lot of free time when they weren't shooting and did a lot of wood carving, they look
like M.C.Esher designs and have little balls inside cages and such, marvelous pieces every one,
we still have them.
One of dads friends got drunk one night he drove him home and then the friend started
threatening his wife with a gun, my dad took the gun away from him and gave it to the wife. She
got rid of it so thoroughly he never found, he told dad very privately one day, you know that gun
had a lot of history to it and I really hated losing it, Butch gave it to me. That's right the famous
Butch Cassidy.
In one of the funniest early era Tomingas get togethers, my family was living
out in South Park (southern part of Jackson Hole Wyoming) for a few months
just after I was born in 1947. My dad and a car load of his brothers and
sisters went into town to resupply the stock of beer and of course spent a
good deal of time in the bar so they wouldn't get thirsty on the way back and
drink up all the party supplies. My brother Henry, named for my dad's brother
Chick, remembers clearly how they came roaring up the old dirt road, dust
billowing, in our old wood trimmed car. My dad happened to stop with the
back half of the car still squarely on the narrow bridge over the creek.
Everybody was busy gabbing and telling jokes, the doors flew open and they
all piled out, straight off into the water, one right after another. The front seat crew, didn't even
notice that four of them were really in the drink!
It was always fun to see them all get together. They always had casual contests, like walking up
town on their hands, that would be considered marvels of athletic ability. One of my moms
brothers said dad was the greatest athlete he ever expected to see. The rare factor in the
Tomingas children of Jaan and Emma was that they were all highly intelligent, very handsome
and yet such polite, unpretentious people, not that they didn't have things that caused them
trouble, but they really are extraordinary people. The thing I remember most about those get
together's was the music, and laughter. They loved to play, and the theme song of the Tomingas
clan of that generation is definitely "Turkey In The Straw", the motto is "Gawd Damm!", their
joy in being together is still evident, but outside of their family, their passion is solitude.