BRING SOME SUNSHINE WITH YOU

Welcome to my humble blog.  Come on in and bring some sunshine with you.  Please don’t go away without saying hello.  It gets lonely here when nobody comes to visit so please stay for just a few minutes.  Even if you don’t find anything that interests you, go to leave a comment at the bottom of this message and tell me that you were here.  It won’t cost you a dime but it will warm an old man’s heart.  Thank you for being so kind.  If you would like me to return your visit, leave the link to your site.

POLITICS AS USUAL?

KNOW THIS GUY?  “What goes around comes around.

He is Edward “Ed” Mezvinsky, born January 17, 1937.

Then you’ll probably say, “Who is Ed Mezvinsky?”;

Well, he is a former Democrat congressman who represented Iowa’s 1st congressional district in the United States House of Representatives for two terms, from 1973 to 1977.

He sat on the House Judiciary Committee that decided
the fate of Richard Nixon.

He was outspoken saying that Nixon was a crook and a disgrace to politics and the nation and should be impeached.

He and the Clintons were friends and very politically
intertwined for many years.

Ed Mezvinsky had an affair with NBC News reporter Marjorie Sue Margolies and later married her after his wife divorced him.

In 1993, Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, then a freshman Democrat in Congress, cast the deciding vote that got President Bill Clinton’s controversial tax package through the House of Representatives.

In March 2001, Mezvinsky was indicted and later pleaded guilty to 31 of 69 counts of bank fraud, mail fraud, and wire fraud.

Ed Mezvinsky embezzled more than $10 million dollars from people via both a Ponzi scheme and the notorious Nigerian e-mail scams.

He was found guilty and sentenced to 80 months in federal prison.

After serving less than five years in federal prison, he was released in April 2008 and remains on federal probation.

To this day, he still owes $9.4 million in restitution to his victims.

About now you are saying, “So what!”;

Well, this is Marc and Chelsea Mezvinsky.

That’s right; Ed Mezvinsky is Chelsea Clinton’s father-in law.

Now Marc and Chelsea are in their early thirties and purchased a 10.5 million dollar NYC apartment (after being married in George Soros’ mansion).

Has anyone heard mention of any of this in any of the media?

A VIEW FROM A DIFFERENT WINDOW III

Somewhere in the middle of my high school days I bought a 22 rifle.  I bought it from another student who approached me about buying it.  I decided I wanted to see it before I committed to buying it so he brought it to school.  Yes, he brought it to school and brought it inside the school where I looked it over while we stood in the hallway.  I liked what I saw and gave him $15.00 for it.  That was approximately seventy years ago and I still have that rifle and use it from time to time.  It holds fifteen rounds and is semi-automatic. I am not sure, but I think modern classifications makes it an assault rifle but let me tell you, that rifle has never assaulted anyone.  It has never fired a round at anyone and has never harmed anyone in any way.  It is people who assault other people.  It is people who kill other people and they find many ways to do it.

A VIEW FROM A DIFFERENT WINDOW II

During the days of my childhood and youth there was a saloon on main street in our town that was called the Pool Hall. It is true that there were a couple of pool tables in the back but it was much more than that. It was a banking facility, a social center, an employment office, a post office, a candy store, a tobacco shop and an orderly bar.
As you entered the front door, on the right was a huge safe that always held enough cash to cover all of the paychecks that would come in on a Saturday night. During the era of the Pool Hall the industry of the valley was primarily ranching and logging with a lot of people employed by both. Most of the ranch workers lived on the ranch and worked six or seven days a week. Many of the men working in the woods stayed out there all week. The point is that, one way or another, none of these people could get to town during banking hours so they would arrive in town on Saturday night with their paychecks and the Pool Hall would be the only place where they could cash them. Quite often folks would get to town too late to mail their letters but they could leave them at the Pool Hall and they would be mailed for them on the next business day at the Post Office. You could even buy stamps for your letters at the Pool Hall.
On the left, as you entered, was a glass showcase with an assortment of candy bars as well as pocket knives and pocket watches. In a glass fronted case behind the bar were tobacco products including chewing tobacco, smoking tobacco, cigarette papers, “tailor made” cigarettes and cigars. On that end of the bar was a cigar cutter and a lighter. When a person pulled out the stem of the lighter an electric arc ignited the fuel on the wick and made a small flame for lighting cigars and cigarettes.
Continuing on the left was the hardwood bar, slightly worn and polished to a fine sheen by many years of use. It was a bar where anyone was welcome but nobody was allowed to be obnoxious or troublesome. Anyone who got disgustingly drunk left the premises, either by invitation or by force. Anyone overheard hitting someone up for a drink was invited to leave and if they stayed and tried it again they left whether they wanted to or not. When I say that anyone was welcome at the bar I mean it. Even a minor could come to the bar and buy a bottle of soda pop but would absolutely not be served any alcohol. However, on the very day that he became of legal age, he could sit up to that bar to order a drink and the first one would be free. The proprietor seemed to know every young man in the county and know exactly when his birthday was.
The back bar was of the same deep quality hardwood with a huge mirror that was always spotless the same as the rows of glasses that were neatly arranged in front of it. There was also a stock of bottled liquors that was nearly as complete as at the liquor store, which was only open in the daytime.
Going back to the right side, there was a case with several guns for sale and ammunition for most any gun in the valley. From there, along the wall were chairs for customers or idlers to sit in. I mention idlers because one didn’t have to buy anything in order to take advantage of the hospitality of the Pool Hall. The proprietors were aware and considerate of the fact that people who were out of funds needed the sanctuary just as much as anyone else. As long as they  abided by the rules they were just as welcome as anybody else. Men looking for a job could pass the time here while they waited for for someone who needed workers to come along and offer them a job.
In the middle area were several round tables with chairs all around for people to play cards. Sometimes there was a dealer on hand if someone wanted to play against the house but most often it was just groups of men playing a friendly game of cards among themselves. Sometimes small wagers were made but sometimes the games were strictly for a pastime.
As mentioned earlier, there were two pool tables in the rear and minors were welcome to use them at any time as long as there weren’t any adults wanting to use them. Anyone using the tables was expected to play a quiet and serious game. Anyone bouncing a ball of onto the floor could expect a stern warning and if it happened a second time you were done playing. There was a small fee for each game, of course, to provide for upkeep and repairs to the equipment. If juveniles were playing and adults came in to use the tables the juveniles had to end their game and make way for the adults.

Outside, on the sidewalk in front of the Pool Hall were several chairs, put there for folks to sit and visit or enjoy the day when the weather was nice. Once, a man died while sitting in one of those chairs and a superstitious fellow carved a notch in the arm of that chair so that he could be sure not to sit in it. Quite naturally, someone else carved a similar notch on each of the other chairs.

 

A VIEW FROM A DIFFERENT WINDOW

In our town there was a pub that had carried the name, THE TAVERN, for many years but, at approximately the time when I became an adult, new owners took over and named it, DEW DROP INN.  The building was large enough that they could partition off a corner of it by the back door and put in a lunch counter. It was handy, the food reasonably good, and the prices attractive so business was fairly good.  This worked out very well for the dog that was always present near the door into the bar. It was a fairly large dog and very friendly. Customers at the lunch counter knew the dog well and knew what it wanted so,frequently, someone would toss a quarter on the floor near the dog. The dog would immediately get to its feet and deftly retrieve the quarter in its lips. It would carry the quarter out to the bar and present it to the bartender. In a short time the dog would come back, followed by the bartender with a saucer of beer that he would set on the floor for the dog. We lived in a casual and easy-going world.

                

A JACKRABBIT SHARES OUR YARD WITH US

From time to time, throughout the winter a Jackrabbit will come to our yard and spend the day hunkered down somewhere that provides good cover. Jackrabbits are one of the few animals that change color with the seasons and, with this being a white winter, this one is very white with its ears being the most visible part against the snow. Some of them are very nervous and run away as soon as someone steps outside but others are quite confident that they are hidden and stay in the same spot all day while we come and go.  For more about Jackrabbits, go to Rocky Mountain Wildlife at the top of this page.

          

A STORY OF PILGRIMS 36 and final

This post concludes “WOOL TROMPERS”, making it the last of the excerpts from that book.  With that done, future posts will likely be few and seldom.

 

The Billings office had expanded by now to the point that there was a Customer Engineer Field Manager. What seemed to be the ultimate came when Con introduced me to him. As he shook my hand, he looked me over and said, “You are at least two feet shorter than I expected you to be.” I have been wearing a larger hat ever since.
Interstate #90 was in the early stages of construction in the Whitehall area and was completed during the time that we lived there. The Milwaukee Railroad was operating and ran electric engines across most of the state. They had a substation just outside of Whitehall where alternating current electricity was changed to direct current and fed to the overhead electric lines along the tracks. The trains crossed the continental divide between Whitehall and Butte and required enormous amounts of electricity to climb the grade. However, when they had reached the top and started down the other side, they generated power that went back to the substation where it was converted to alternating current and fed back to the electric power company’s lines.
It was during our years there that America forged ahead in space travel. I will always remember the evening when I was driving to Dillon and listening on the car radio to the progress of our astronauts as they made their first orbit around the moon. I could see the moon up in the southwestern sky and hear their conversation as they emerged from the back side of it and resumed radio contact with earth. To understand how truly remarkable this was to me, you have to remember that I grew up knowing that such a thing was impossible. A common expression in my youth was, “Why I could no more do that than I could fly to the moon.” Up until that time, the only one to get near the moon had been a nursery rhyme cow that jumped over it. In my early life, there hadn’t even been radios. Even to this day, I sometimes look up at the moon on a clear night and find it almost unbelievable that men have been there. Later, when men landed and walked upon the moon, my father drove over from his home at the mouth of Deep Creek Canyon to watch the event on television. He did not have a television  set, and so, accepted our invitation. Think, for a moment, of the change for a man who grew up with horses for transportation, to one day get into an automobile and drive 60 miles to watch, on television, as men step out of a space vehicle and walk on the moon!
When we went into the business, we decided that we would give it ten years and then decide whether to stay with it longer or not. As the end of the tenth year came into sight, we were sure we had been at it long enough. Bonnie was getting married in September and Ron would graduate from high school in the spring. So, it looked like a good time for Fay and me to shift to a lower gear.
We sold the business late in 1974 and began waiting and planning for spring. On the 22nd of March, I arrived at my great-grandmother’s former homestead with my truck loaded with a couple of tents and other supplies. We had chosen a homesite less than a half mile south of where her cabin had stood and about a half mile west of my childhood home. I had earlier hauled building materials so the only thing needed now in order to start building was spring. Spring wasn’t here yet but it was due any minute so I set up my tents and set up housekeeping. Tentkeeping?  Not only did spring fail to arrive, but winter came back. When the wind-driven snow sifted in under my tent and filled the space under my bed, I gave up and returned to Whitehall until the middle of April. Fay also came over after school was out. By midsummer, we had the garage building up and abandoned the tents in favor of the garage. With much help from relatives and friends, we proceeded with construction of the house and began living in it by the middle of the next year.
This, of course, is not the whole story by any means. In the first place, the story began uncounted generations before the point where I began. In the second place, there are countless branches of the family, both known and unknown, that I have only barely touched or not touched at all. Thirdly, the story will go on from here indefinitely. No matter how much I wish that I could know the story from the beginning, the knowledge is lost. The future can only be told by someone who will be there to see it. As for the far-flung branches, the task is too enormous for me to even contemplate. Perhaps there will be others who will write those stories.

A STORY OF PILGRIMS 35

Don was our typewriter salesman from Billings and his territory included mine. He had gotten wind of what was going on and, knowing that my work was very satisfactory and appreciated in the rest of the territory, sent a memo to Helena praising my work and expressing his confidence in me. Neither of us work for IBM any more but I will not likely forget what he did for me and I think of him as one of my best friends. Anyway, Don’s memo apparently promoted management in Helena to seek evidence beyond the tales carried by the data processing salesman. The winds turned to a more favorable direction for me. I was not aware of how serious the situation had become until our division manager from Seattle visited my territory and told me that he owed me an apology. By that, I knew that it had been serious enough to come to his attention and that his judgement of me had not been favorable.
Well, the air and my reputation were finally cleared but a bitter flavor remained. It was at this point that I began looking for a business that I could finance and operate myself.
In 1961 I was transferred to Billings and a more diplomatic fellow by the name of Conrad Berg took my place in Cody. We found a comfortable home in a suburb on the northeast edge of Billings called Billings Heights and settled in there. Our daughter, Bonita (Bonnie) started the first grade that fall, at the Billings Heights School, and Ron started there two years later.
Working out of the Billings IBM office at that time were two data processing technicians, two typewriter repairmen, two data processing salesmen and one typewriter salesman. There weren’t any office personnel. We all took care of our own office chores and an answering service took our phone messages. The office itself was in a single story two-room building. IBM occupied half of the building. Those of us who maintained and repaired equipment were called Customer Engineers and the two of us in data processing had a territory that extended west to  Harlowton, east to Sidney and south to Buffalo, Wyoming. Shortly after I went to Billings, Les Dyrud took an assignment in Germany and was replaced by Dave Bowman. Dave had only recently completed basic school and had very little time to gain practical experience when I left for a school in Rochester, Minnesota. The entire territory fell on his shoulders. This was to happen to one or the other of us several times over the next three years as new products required new training. The company’s policy of austerity kept manpower at bare minimum levels.
The first computers were coming out now and data processing methods were rapidly changing. The ability to print and read magnetic characters was being applied to bank checks and other documents, greatly reducing the need for punched cards. The computers were so large, physically, that one of them, with associated input and output equipment, would fill an entire room and required a large air conditioning unit to absorb the heat. The cost of renting or buying one of these systems was quite high, so most of those who did, made maximum use of them. This usually meant running the equipment two or three shifts. Since IBM in Montana didn’t employ enough Customer Engineers for more than one shift, we simply had to be on call night and day. Getting called out during the night became very common and, when one of us was away to school, the other one didn’t get a lot of sleep.
At one point, there were some problems in our Customer Engineering Department and I was put in charge of both data processing and typewriter Customer Engineers. This was not a career advancement but it certainly indicated a higher level of confidence than when I was in Cody.
From time to tine, we still had to deal with reckless promises made by our salesmen but this was an entirely different circumstance so it was never more than an irritation. Things were actually going quite smoothly but Dave and I were under an awful lot of pressure. I decided that, if I was going to be devoting my whole time to a business, it should be my own business. So, I again began looking for a business that I could make my own. We found what we were looking for during the summer of 1964. At the end of that year we moved to the little town of Whitehall.
The move soon proved to be good for all of us. A vilifying teacher at the Billings Heights school had nearly destroyed Ron’s confidence and enthusiasm. But, both he and Bonnie blossomed and thrived in the atmosphere of the small town school.
The business we had bought was a small motel combined with a small gasoline service station. It was very similar to the place in White Sulphur Springs where I had worked for Ray Compton 15 years earlier. At the time we took over, some groceries were also being sold there. In other words, it was what is now called a convenience store. Early in that first year, I went into automobile repair. At the end of the year we discontinued the groceries. The auto repairing and motel provided us with a good income, although, sometimes the days were long. In the summer, it was often like working a double shift.
I returned to Billings several times to take care of unfinished business there and, on one of those trips, I will have to say I was justly rewarded for any shabby treatment I received while working for IBM. Conrad Berg had transferred to Billings from Cody and I accompanied him one afternoon as he called on customers around town. I was warmly greeted by all that I had previously known. Where we encountered new faces, Con kept introducing me as “the legendary Jim Fuller”. It was actually getting to be a little embarrassing.

Excerpted from ‘Wool Trompers’   by J. L. Fuller

A STORY OF PILGRIMS 34

By this time I had gained enough experience, and learned enough about automobiles, that I was becoming aware of their deficiencies and shortcomings. But, I was confident that they would continue to improve in the future as much as they had in the past. What I didn’t know was that, right then, in the 1950’s, I was seeing some of the best quality and easiest to repair automobiles that the industry would ever produce. As an example of easy repairing, I once, single-handedly, replaced the clutch in a Ford car in just two and one-half hours. During those years there was a true competitive effort to sell more cars by building better cars but that soon gave way to advertising. Television was an important factor in this development. The manufacturers soon learned that they could sell more cars by cutting on quality and putting the money into television advertising. The next step was to design so that repairing would be more difficult and costly. The intent here was to discourage repairing of old vehicles so that more new ones would be bought. This has progressed into the pursuit of a disposable automobile, one that can be assembled quickly, run almost a reasonable distance and be so impractical to repair that it will be discarded and replaced with a new one. This policy is pushing the cost of owning and operating an automobile ever higher but it will succeed as long as the public is willing to pay the sacrifice in order to drive a new car.
We still had no doctor or medical facilities in our town in 1957 when our son was born on the third of February. The cost hadn’t changed in two years either, it was still $200.
It was about this time that I made the decision to change occupations. My good friend, Harlo Patton, had been working for International Business Machines for several years and had encouraged me to apply to them. But, I had declined because their basic school was located at their plant in Endicott, New York. It was not just a case of the country boy being afraid to enter the big, wide world. It was a long way to travel and temporary housing in Endicott was scarce and expensive. Now however, IBM had opened a school in San Jose, California. So, I applied at their branch office in Helena and went to work there the first day of April in 1957. After a short indoctrination period, I was enrolled in a class at San Jose and, with a loaded two-wheel trailer hitched behind the car, we were on our way to California.
A few months later, I was back in Helena maintaining and repairing data processing machines. The punched card was the data storage medium at that time and most of the machines were for the purposes of punching, sorting and collating these cards. The cards measured three and one-fourth inches by seven and one-fourth inches and provided room for eighty units of numeric or alphabetic data. Just a name and address would pretty well fill one card and then each business transaction thereafter would probably take another card. That meant that thousands of these cards had to be stored and saved as long as there was any chance that the data they held might be needed.
The machines used in this system of data storage and processing would be classed as electro-mechanical. They were mechanical devices driven by an electric motor and their functions were controlled by electric relays, solenoids and other magnetic devices. In 1957 there was still one machine in Helena that was strictly mechanical. It was a model 01  verifier for double checking cards for errors after they had been punched on a keypunch machine. All printed documents had to be translated to punched card by an operator at the keyboard of a keypunch. Then, the process was repeated, on the same cards, by another operator at the keyboard of a  verifier. This machine compared what the operator keyed to what had been punched into the card as a means of detecting errors. Then, the cards were passed through sorting and collating machines until they were in proper order for the accounting machine. These accounting machines were nearly as big as one of today’s compact automobiles and considerably heavier. Inside, they were packed full of electrical wiring and  electro-mechanical devices, some of which were examples of engineering that made automobile engineering look crude and clumsy. These could read the punched cards, add, subtract, accumulate totals print accounts and cause an attached machine to punch summary cards. These were fascinating machines and the very best at the time. But, a whole roomful of them would fall far short of matching one of today’s desk-top computers.
This was the most interesting work I had ever done and I was pleased when, in 1958, I was assigned my own territory. Near the end of that same year I was offered a resident territory in Cody, Wyoming. This was, at the same time, a vote of confidence and a challenge. I eagerly accepted and the beginning of 1959 found us in Cody. I was meeting this new challenge with great anticipation, never suspecting that it was going to shatter my enthusiasm for my new occupation.
What this territory lacked in machines it made up for in distance and variety. It took in the entire Big Horn Basin, including Thermopolis and  Worland, both about 90 miles away. And anything that had IBM on it was my responsibility. This included typewriters and clock systems. There were only two or three clock systems and they weren’t complex. However, there were quite a few typewriters with precision that required sensitive adjustments. So, within a few days after moving to Cody, I was leaving my family behind and going to Lexington, Kentucky for four weeks of school. This was the first of a number of times that school would separate us. This trip to Lexington was my first experience with commercial air travel. Frontier Airlines served Cody with DC-3 aircraft and the larger airlines were flying mostly Lockheed Electra’s. The DC-3 used piston engines while the Electra was powered by turbo-prop engines. Both were noisy and the DC-3’s were small and easily tossed around by weather. Aside from the loud drone, the Electra was smooth and comfortable and cruised at about 450 m.p.h. it was capable of 600 or more but had a tendency to tear itself apart at the higher speeds.
Back in Cody, I was soon busy getting my scattered territory organized and the maintenance up to date. For a time things progressed quite smoothly, but then problems began to develop at IBM’s largest customer in the territory, Husky Oil Co. Before I left Helena, the branch manager had cautioned me about the possibility of this customer becoming demanding and advised me to resist the impulse to appease them. Unfortunately, by the time this became a problem, this manager had moved on and a new man was in his place. But, the seeds for this problem were planted during the period of selling and integrating of the IBM equipment, when certain Husky Oil people were wined and dined and promised anything they asked. I eventually learned that our salesman had let them believe that I was coming to Cody as their in-house technician and, therefore, would be serving our other customers at the whim of Husky Oil. My resistance to this scheme aroused indignation in the manager of Husky’s data processing department and a resentment toward me. Typically, when our salesman came to Cody, he treated the data processing manager to dinner and a night or two of partying. The manager began to use these occasions to tell the salesman various tales about me being lazy, inefficient and uncooperative. The salesman then dutifully carried all of these tales back to my manager in Helena. I was diligently trying to handle the territory in what I thought was the most practical and generally beneficial manner, never suspecting the sabotage that was being done behind my back. I really don’t know how far this would have gone had it not been for Don Baker. Don was our typewriter salesman from Billings and his territory included mine

Excerpted from ‘Wool Trompers’  by  J.L.Fuller

A STORY OF PILGRIMS 33

However, when we arrived at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, our celebrity status vanished. We were swallowed up in the crowd. The Signal School there was full to overflowing and nobody there had time to give us any special recognition even if they had been the least bit interested. Our only purpose for being on this Signal Corp post was to learn and we were taught electricity, electronics and radar. Occasionally, students and instructors would talk about television repairing. The instructors said that we would all be able to repair televisions when we had finished the school. Having never even seen television, this was a little hard for me to believe.
Shortly after arriving at Fort Monmouth I went into Long Branch and rented a small attic apartment. The whole thing was not as large as most living rooms but it was the best I could find that could fit into the budget of an Army private. Then, I went to a telephone and called Fay with the message she had been waiting for. The telephone connection was not good but that was pretty much to be expected at that time. Today we have come to expect long distance calls to be just as clear as those across town. But, in 1952, a good long distance connection was a pleasant surprise. Anyhow, Fay got the message and was soon boarding a Milwaukee train at Harlowton for the long ride to the east coast.
Living off post involved more expense than just the rent. We had to have a car and gasoline too. So, it was necessary for Fay to find some sort of employment. She had been a waitress at a café back in White Sulphur Springs, so now, she went downtown in Long Branch to see if her skills were needed there. She found an opening at a restaurant at $3.00 a day. She was reluctant to take the job at such low pay but felt much better about it when she discovered that her daily total of tips was $10 or more.
From New Jersey we went to Huntsville, Alabama where I had another six weeks of school at nearby Redstone Arsenal. This school was on the guidance systems of guided missiles. There was a missile near company barracks there but none of us ever saw it because it was inside a tight building and under 24 hour guard.
During these months in classrooms, some friendships developed that have endured throughout the succeeding years. One of these was Harlo Patton from Golden, Illinois. He and Maxine now live in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Another was Gene Cooley from Mt. Etna, Iowa. He and Mary Lou still live on a farm there.
Upon completion of school at Redstone Arsenal, I became a Guided Missile Guidance Components Repairman and assigned to 96th Ordnance Company at White Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico. There, we not only got to see guided missiles, we launched them. These weren’t intercontinental missiles or even intermediate range but it was exciting just the same. These launches were for research and training purposes and the distance covered was usually less than 100 miles. White Sands was a good place to have duty. It was a small place where everybody had a job to do, so there was a minimum of military routine and harassment. However, this only lasted a few months before the 96th was made a support company for an artillery battalion and moved to Fort Bliss, Texas. That ended my career in guided missiles.
During the time I was at White Sands, Fay and I lived in Las Cruces. She got another job there as waitress and, just like in Long Branch, was making far more money than I was. After the company was moved to Fort Bliss, we moved to El Paso and lived there until my discharge in January, 1954.
By April of 1954 I was back at Compton Motors. This time Fay and I rented the little house that had previously been the school hose on Newlan Creek School. Main street was the only paved street in town and some of the other streets would get some pretty bad holes in them about the time the frost went out in the spring. This was especially a problem in the lower areas such as the vicinity of Compton Motors. More than once we had to pull a vehicle out of a mud hole in the middle of the street beside the building. One spring day, a truck that was passing through needed some welding done and, since the street was in pretty good condition, I asked the driver to pull his rig alongside so as to be near the shop. What I hadn’t anticipated was that he would try to turn around on the open area of land across the street. The truck did not break through but the sod sagged under the wheels so that they were always in a depression. After he stopped to go into reverse, his driving wheels would only spin on the wet sod and could not pull out of the depressions. I learned then that the truck was loaded with 13 tons of eggs. It eventually took the county road grader, with chains on all four driving wheels, to get the truck moving again. This all took place approximately where the bank parking lot is now.

A variety of fuels were used for heating around White Sulphur Springs at that time. Coal and wood were used primarily but fuel oil and propane were gaining in popularity. Our little house was equipped to burn fuel oil only and, sometimes during the winter, we were hard-pressed to come up with the money to pay for it even though we were getting it at a discount from my employer.
On the 6th of March in 1955, our daughter was born. There was no doctor in our little town at that time so we had to go to Townsend, 40 miles away. Fortunately, the weather and roads were not very bad at the time. The total cost for prenatal care, delivery and hospital was $200.
Also, in 1955 Compton sold the business, on contract, to Don Reed. The good relationship that Ray Compton and I had enjoyed did not carry over to the new owner. Reed and I disagreed on several things and my refusal to yield led to me getting fired in the middle of the summer. He gave me my final check and termination at five o’clock in the afternoon. By seven that evening I had a haying job with Tom Coburn. That is a good example of the speed of the grapevine news system in a small town. Within the two hour period, the news of my discharge got to Tom and he called me to ask me to come help him with haying. Within two days I had been offered, and accepted, a job as mechanic at the Ford dealer’s shop. As soon as the haying was done at Coburn’s ranch, I went to work for Don Russell who was then owner of the Ford garage. The following year, ownership of the business went to Chuck Sutton and I stayed on with him until April, 1957. When I started at the Ford garage, it was the first time I had ever worked on commission but I was eager to try it. Don and Chuck were both good fellows to work for and kept their mechanics supplied with work. There were three of us there; John Gratz, El Julian and myself. But there was plenty of work so that I made more money than I ever made before.

Excerpted from “Wool Trompers”  by J. L. Fuller

ARE YOU BREAKING THE LAW?

Are you breaking the law every time you drive your vehicle? Are you one of the many who regard a posted speed limit as a challenge? Do you regard it as a target to exceed?

 

If you are one of those, I ask you, “Why do you feel compelled to flaunt the law whenever you get behind the wheel?”  If you tell me you are short on time and have to hurry you are fooling yourself, not me. Let’s say the posted limit is 60 mph. If you drive 65, and nobody gets in your way, at the end of an hour you will be five miles farther than if you had stayed within the limit. Only five lousy miles! After a whole hour of stress and frustration!  On the other hand, if you had started five minutes earlier and driven the speed limit, you would have made those five additional miles in the first five minutes.

If you are not using the excuse that you have to make up time then is it pure and simple rebellion against authority? Are you pushing the envelope to see how much you can get away with? Or, have you been doing it for so long that it has become a way of life?

Whatever the reason, why not ease up a little with that right foot and relieve some of the tension you are causing for yourself and the others who are sharing the road with you? Deep down in your boots, you know that, in your haste, you sometimes pass another car under unsafe conditions. Maybe you were not entirely sure that you had enough time or that the car ahead of you wasn’t going to swing out to pass. How many times have you cussed out another driver for getting in your way when, in honesty, you knew that this little sign applied to you?

I am asking you to make our streets and roads a safer place by backing off to one or two notches below the limit and encouraging others to do the same. I am sure you will find  driving is less stressful and will likely get some satisfaction from the knowledge that you are making the roads a little safer.

You may be asking, “Who is this guy to think that he has any credentials for preaching to me?”  The answer to the question is, I have been there. I have been as guilty as anyone.