Lee S. Thomas spent his seventh birthday, in February 5 1891, watching the Spokane Falls from the immigrant car of the trans-continental railroad. The next day, his family settled in Washington State, where his father worked as a schoolteacher, after building the schoolhouse. In spring 1899, at the age of 15, Lee quit school, and started working as a skid greaser for a logging team. After his house burned to the ground at the age of 33, he moved with his bride and two-year-old daughter to Stockton, California, where his mechanical skills earned him a living as a carpenter, as a caterpillar driver, as the pilot of a passenger ferry and a freight barge, then finally, for seven years, as the foreman of a crew plowing and harvesting land in the swampy "tule" islands of the San Joaquin river Delta. In 1936, "we moved to Kent, near Seattle, with our accumulated household stuff in an ox-car and the old Holt 75 on a flat car." This autobiography was written 1946, typed 1970, digitized 2018.
