Part 15. You should have seen this coming.

The summer between my sophomore and junior  year in high school was an adventure unlike any I had ever experienced before. Instead of hanging out at the pool and visiting with friends from grade school and Jr High, I worked in the warehouse and went traveling with my Uncles.

I met a long list of people from Nacogdoches, Texas all the way to Texarkana, Arkansas. There were many towns that played a big part in the history of Texas and it was like taking a field trip with the history class. Most of those trips were with Cecil Murray and my Uncle Charles with a few mixed in with Uncle Woodrow.

Having had my introduction into the various plants that produced, plywood, dimension lumber, cross ties, paper and other forest products such as wood chips to make the paper, I began to go to other places such as Natchitoches, Louisiana (pronounced Nack uh tish), where I would eventually attend college and be a member of the Kappa Alpha Fraternity.

From there, we went east and northward toward Minden, Arcadia, where Bonnie and Clyde met their end, and then on to Monroe where we had another store. Minden had more sand and gravel plants than I had ever even imagined. They seemed to be on every corner.

There was a company there named "Gifford Hill" They would use a huge drag line to dig the sand and gravel out of a pond and then send it to their sizing plant for classification. There were huge machines there that classified the size of the gravel through "shaker screens" that were equipped with 3 decks of screen cloth that would eject the unwanted stuff and make sure the right size gravel was produced.

Next time you look at any concrete, take a close look and you might see nothing bigger than a rock that would pass through a 1 1/2" screen and nothing smaller than a 3/8" rock that would be retained on the bottom deck by using a 3/8" screen. They still use that specification or size of aggregate to make concrete today. Now, it's called ASTM 57 but then it was "Concrete Gravel".

It was neat to watch and all that rock was very abraisive which made my trips to Minden a regular occurrence. The trips were great fun and the education spanned every imagineable discipline from heavy machinery for mining all the way to simple machinery such as belt converyors.

As a very interesting part of that history, I eventually met some real heavy hitters that worked for Gifford Hill, a company that eventually made the Fortune 500 list. I didn't get to meet Joe Greer that summer but it wasn't long before I did and his story is well worth mentioning as it was very influential in my develpment.

Joe was born in 1899 or maybe 1900, I just don't remember the exact date but I do remember the story of his 12th year as a kid. He was working as, get this: "An Assitant Chuck Wagon Hand on a Cattle Drive". Those were his words and he laughed out loud when he told the story.

During that particular year, there was a terrible dry spell and there were serious concerns by the owner that he would lose it all that season. Joe told me about the huge creek beds that ran through the property that the cattle depended on for water. He said they were dry as a bone.

The owner came in one day and told everybody that he'd read a notice in the paper that the First World War was beginning and the Fort, that was very near the cattle ranch, would be needing alot of sand and gravel to expand and prepare the Fort for the upcoming war and the tens of thousands of troops that would be trained there.

In any event, the owner decided to dig those creek beds and supply that material as a way out of the impending doom of the cattle business that was taking a nose dive from the drought. The most interesting thing to me about that story unfolded when Joe told me who the owner was. It was Mister Hill as in Gifford Hill.

Joe watched the first bucket of material leave that creek bed and throughout his adult life, watched that company hit Fortune 500 success before he retired as one of the first of their employees. .

Early on, I didn't have a clue what a hydro electric dam was nor did I connect the dots between the health of industry and how that relates to the strength of our Armed Forces. The point I wanted to make in telling this story is just as applicable to today's day and time as it was during the prepatory stages of manning up for the Firest World War. It had to do with SECURITY not ECONOMICS.

One is directly related to the other but, under certain circumstances, all the money in the world won't do you a damn bit of good if you lose your security and therefore your freedom. In my life, it has always been Military First and then, fine tune those things that make the American way of life the best on earth.

I'll pull all this together as the posts continue but for those of you who have been here since the introduction to Post #1, I think it's important that you see, read, understand, why I am the way I am and the path of life that brought me to this point.

Stand by. As the story of the summer vacation between my sophomore and junior year unfolds, be advised that I get my drivers license in November of my Junior year and, as part time help at the Colossus, began making those trips by myself and making acquaintences that would last me a life time and serve me well during my 37 year long career.    

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