By Forrest Newton
WINNEMUCCA - Thanks to Calvin Johnson the population of Winnemucca increased by one recently.
The 2-year-old boy was the attraction to get grandfather Glenn Johnson, 68, to move from Las Vegas to Humboldt County.
As the only grandson in the Johnson family it didn't take much for his grandfather to decide that small town life might be just the place for him.
Although it's not like Johnson's a stranger to small towns. He began life in Minnesota, and his formative years were spent in the north central part of South Dakota in the area of Mound City where he was raised on a farm that had been in his family over 100 years, doing all those chores that came with the exalted position of being a farmer's son. The family still owns land in the area that has been handed down for generations.
"Winters were so harsh, but we never wanted for food," Johnson said. "The farm was all grain and livestock."
He said that when he and his five siblings were growing up he saw horses as work animals and was not particularly impressed with riding, nevertheless on weekends he and his friends would get on their horses and ride away together looking for a place to goof off.
After graduating from high school he left home, taking off for Nettleton Commercial College in Sioux Falls, S.D., in 1961. The business school helped turn up his interest in commerce and place it full gear.
Later he would own his own distributor business that would make him a traveling man while his wife ran their restaurant in Hoven, S.D., but not before a stint in the clothing business, which was not all that good of a fit for him. As a distributor of aftermarket accessories for farming equipment, however, he did well and so did the restaurant.
Still later the family, now consisting of son Shane, kept busy trying to keep up with Johnson's new field of endeavor in mechanical engineering. After receiving his certification he went to work at Jacobs Engineering whose home office is in Pasadena, Calif., and he was off again. His 15 years at Jacobs once put him in Louisiana working on the other side of the Mississippi River for the first and only time in his life. The rest of his working life has been spent in the west.
Eventually he found himself in Mountain Pass, Calif., where he worked in his new field continuing his travels out of there and then he and his wife, Lorraine, moved to Las Vegas in 1985.
It was in Las Vegas that he opened the first water store in the area, however, it wasn't long before others saw the value of such a business and they opened their own water stores and he became their distributor until retiring in 2006.
"I didn't learn a darn thing when I was in school, but it got me some opportunities. It opens doors," he said. "Kids don't realize that you don't start learning until you get out in the field."
Lorraine died two years ago. The lady who became his wife had been a part of the group that he had hung out with in his young man years, but at some point she began to stand out from the crowd and in 1966 they married.
Throughout their life together they were seldom apart, working together in business and naturally spending their off time together. Johnson said they never had any qualms about gambling and so Nevada was a good fit for them.
"We had a good time playing video poker together," he said.
After retiring he helped out as a crossing guard with the Las Vegas Police Department, which he very much enjoyed and wouldn't mind doing again.
Right now he is in the new addition they recently built onto Shane and his wife Gretchen's home and Johnson is enjoying being close to family and having his own area.
He enjoys gardening, hunting, fishing and Frisbee golf and wouldn't mind seeing a Frisbee golf course established here in town sometime, but right now he is just having a good time.
"Every stage of life gets to be more fun," Johnson said. "It just keeps getting better."
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