Chuck Hassler

My friend Nolan is as Powell as they come. He’s lived and worked here for his entire life, except for a stint in southeast Asia as a young kid right out of high school. I can’t remember if he was drafted or enlisted and I’m not going to ask him because he’d tell me not to write this.

He did boot camp at Fort Lewis and spent most of his tour in Vietnam at Cam Ranh Bay in a guard tower guarding the port.

And then he came home. Quietly to no fanfare. No victory parades, none of that stuff. He just did his job, what this country asked him to do, like a million other young men and women have done. No rich boy deferments for any of them.

But that was a different war and a different time. For one thing, there was the draft. For another the nation was deeply divided about what we were doing over there.

My point is that whatever feelings he might have had, whatever plans he might have had, whatever dreams he might have had, he set them aside to do his duty.

When he came home he went to work for Dexter Dearcorn rebuilding magnetos at Dexter’s machine shop for the Waukesha motors that powered much of Elk Basin in those days. He got married and started a family. And we became friends.

I loved hanging out with Nolan. He was a few years older than myself and could fix anything mechanical. He put a small aluminum block V8 in a Willys Jeep that was the coolest thing on four wheels. He taught me how to reload ammunition, and we went spotlighting out in the wild places.

One of my best memories is of the time 50 years ago when he and I and Charley Moore and Cy Muecke pitched a wall tent above the rope trail and descended into the canyon one golden summer morning. The fishing was spectacular.

In the intervening years, Nolan began working at the gas plant in Elk Basin where he was to remain for the rest of his working life. He went through a divorce, and I started a family of my own, and we didn’t see much of each other anymore.

Doesn’t matter because we are friends for life. I stopped in for a visit a month ago, and we got caught up. Still the same great guy.

Humble and quiet. Rock solid and decent. Just like the town he came from, returned to and made a life in.

That’s who I’m going to be thinking of and honoring this Memorial Day.