LATEST NEWS and PHOTOS



Christmas at my son Terry's place
Left to right, Grampa Dale, Aiko 10m, Terry, Irych 7, Autumn, Zayde 3

Just days prior to shipping out to Iraq, Tod was put on medical hold due to a hearing loss he sustained in Kosovo. As of July first he was discharged from the army and is returning to the University this Fall.

I am turning my apartment over to Tod and hitting the road in my little travel trailer with my collie Shadow. At 64, I have decided to run away from home and become a snowbird. This summer was spent living beside a lake in an RV park north of Duluth. It was wonderful to get back to the north woods where I grew up. Hopefully I will be in Arizona and California this winter. I have no intention of being in Minnesota when the snow starts to fly. You can folllow my adventures at:    On The Road With Shadow.

Perhaps I am a little old to be a Dharma bum, but why not, if I don't do it now I never will. The first time I took off like this I was 19 but this time I am better prepared and going in better style. Unfortunately, the poets and musicians I once knew, Neal Cassady, Hoyt Axton, and others are no longer out there to drop in on, but in a way, they always will be there.

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About Me, Dale Chester Westbrook Jones

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Portrait of an Artist As A Young Man
I believe I was 18 then.

I was once told by a doctor that I had a hard life. I'd rather think of it as an interesting life. I believe there is a Chinese curse wishing one to live in interesting times.

I was born and raised in Hibbing, Minnesota, a small mining town northwest of Duluth. I bounced around a lot. Not only here but overseas. After my first year of college I spent the summer working in Glacier National Park and headed to San Francisco that fall, much to the consternation of my parents. Photography had been my passion from the time I was 12. When I hit Fisco, I got a job as a lab man for a photographer and somehow my folks scraped up the money to send me to the San Francisco Art Institute to study photography. I was lucky enough to study under Ansel Adams, a well known art photographer.

I stayed in San Francisco for a year, doing the folk singing circuit and selling my drawings on the street and paintings in the galleries. This was the tail end of the beatnik era and the start of the hippie era. Somehow, I got accepted by the poets, writers and artists that were the movers and shakers. There were a lot of interesting people and a lot of strange parties.

Eventually I had my fill and headed back to Minnesota. I went back to the University and was finally pulling good grades when Donette, my pregnant girl friend tried to kill me. She told our friends that "If he doesn't marry me, he won't marry anyone". She told me she was pregnant with a gun in her hand. We took three different guns away from her, When she got a 45 automatic, I joined the military. So, somewhere out there, I've probably got a kid named Keith Conrad Sieversen, born in the fall of 1962. Now skipping out on her and the kid may make me seem like a real bastard, I had considered marrying her, but she could be a dangerous person.


Dale in Japan
I did four years in the military with three years in Korea and Japan. I held a top secret clearance and did security on nuclear weapons. I even got to work on the famous U2 spy planes. I was in Korea when the Cuban Missile Crisis begin in the fall of 1962. They told us 240 air police that there were North Korean landing boats off shore and that they would come ashore if we went to war. Our job would be to hold them off at the beaches. Meanwhile, they would destroy records, and after they left by plane, we were to fight our way north and join the army. They said the base fell in three hours the last time and that we should do better than that. We were dead and we knew it. Thank God the Russians backed down. We were on full alert for three weeks, working 12 on, 12 off and sleeping with our weapons. Every time the noon whistle blew we all jumped as we were sure that this was it. Two times the planes fired up and rolled to the end of the runway, ready to take off, only to be called back, other times they just fired up and sat there, waiting for the word. I remember seeing a pilot being shoved into his cockpit by his buddies, fighting and kicking, screaming and crying that he did not want to die. Many of the targets were beyond the range of the planes and they could not make it back after they dropped their nuclear bombs.

Of course, I had it easy, I was not in South Vietnam like a lot of other poor souls. Once in a while a flare would go off overhead at three in the morning, and we might get a few shots from snipers, but it was a hell of a lot better than being in Southeast Asia. When I reached Japan I fought my way out of air police into photography and spent the rest of my time doing what I liked, photography.

After four years in the military, I went back to the University and worked as a photographer, editorial cartoonist and feature writer on the Minneapolis Daily American which is now closed. So, I went to New York to study commercial art and married Jeannie Finkelstein there. We discovered my roommate in San Francisco, John Paul Stone had been dating her , although I did not meet her until I reached New York.


Jean Finkelstein Jones
The marriage lasted 16 years and we produced two fine boys, Tod and Terry. For our honeymoon Jeannie and I went on a three and a half month trip hitchhiking through Morocco, Spain and Portugal. Military training was easier than traveling with Jeannie. Over the years we made it to Morocco, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, England, Ireland, Wales, The Bahamas and Venezuela. On my own I've done Iceland, Germany, Italy, Korea and Japan.


Smoking Keif in Mogadar, Morocco on our honeymoon.



Terry and Jeanne in Venezuelian jungle.

I did a 2 year course in commercial art at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and made a fair living there for 27 years. I worked for the City, New York Telephone, Mobil Oil and CBS.


Terry and Tod in Central Park

In 1985 Jean took header out a 15 story window and that ended the marriage and my commitment to New York. The boys were 8 and 12 and I did the best I could at the time. I bought a sailboat we did some coastal sailing out of New York. The highlight was a summer trip to Montreal up the Hudson and through the canal system in 1995.


Tod and Dale Locking Thru to Saint Lawrence Seaway at Sorel, Quebec, Canada

Finally I retired and returned to Minnesota with my boys. It is now Spring 2001 and Terry is married and has a 4 year old step son named Iryche (ERIC?) and a new duaghter named Zayde. Tod went into the army after running out of education money. He is now in Georgia doing basic and Tech school. I am much happier here and have found many of my old friends, I never did feel comfortable in New York City. I am living on less, but am living better than I did in New York. For one thing, the mortgage on my 2300 sq. ft. duplex is about a third of what my maintenance on my 860 sq. ft. co-op was out there. Besides, it is all mine, and I have grass and trees and my own yard.

I realize that some people may not approve of who I am or my lifestyle, but as Popeye The Sailorman said, "I Yam What I Yam", no regrets, no apologies.

Since retiring, music has become a big part of my life. I have expanded the instruments I play from 6 and 12 string guitar to mandolin, banjo, Irish bazooke, lap top resonator steel (Dobro), and harmonica. I am trying to learn the fiddle, but won't include that as I do not consider myself competent at it yet. I like bluegrass, traditional, folk, country, jazz and classical. Every summer I head up to north woods for a few weeks to sit in my motor home on some nice lake. Besides that, I trouble shoot and build computers for a hobby. I built my first computer in 1981. This was more difficult than usual as I am red green color blind. I had to use my then 9 year old son Terry for my eyes to tell the color codes on resistors and capacitors. My boys were the first generation of kids to grow up with a home computer and I guess it paid off as Terry is a Computer Tech, and Tod will be when he finishes school in the army..

Raising kids is like working on a painting. You can push it too hard and ruin the whole thing. You have to know when to stop working on it. You simply have to put down your brushes and decide you have done what you can. That is where I am with my kids, I love them and I believe they will do ok, especially if they can't lean on me.

I have been using them as an excuse to keep from doing the things I should. It is for this reason that I have bought a 24' travel trailer and will be doing the snowbird thing for the next few years. At 64 I am running away from home with my dog. I am keeping the duplex in St. Paul and renting out my apartment to my youngest son, and hitting the road. I may or may not keep my 32' Ericson sailboat.

I will be loging my travels as I go at:   http://nortvoods.net/roadtrip/
I guess that would make it a blog, but I hate that term, so just call it a travelog.

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UPDATE: It is June of 2005 and I have returned to Minnesota to update my web pages and take a break from taking a break. I will probably head out East in August to do more research but will be back by the time the snow flies.

The trip out west was productive in that gathered a lot of new information and met up with relatives whom I had not seen in over 40 years. I got copies of my grt grandfather's gold claims and got a feel for what his life was like, rough!

It is nice to have more than 240 sq feet to live in and to be able to take as long a shower as I want. I missed the grandkids as well as my own two boys. In short, it is nice to be back home again. You can check out my travels at: http://nortvoods.net/roadtrip/

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SOME OF MY ART - I use my middle name, "Chet" on my art.

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Jam at Prarie Star Cafe