Big Toys

When I was in college, I had a part-time job driving a truck.  Back then, the state didn't have a Commercial Drivers License, or CDL.  They issued what was called a commercial chauffeurs license.  You didn't have to take a driving test; only answer ten questions in addition to the standard test and pay them a few bucks more.  This license made it legal for you to drive any truck on the road.

Because they were so easy to get, I had a commercial chauffeurs license.  Dad always had a truck around the place which we used to haul hay or other things with so the truck license came in handy.  When I went down to Stillwater Milling Company during my junior year in school, the people there found out that I had a truck license and asked me if I wanted to drive a truck.  I told them that I would love to but I only had experience with "straight" trucks, not semi-trailer trucks.  They replied that that was fine; they had a lot of loads that were in straight trucks.

Because I was in school, the boss would call me when they had a load.  If I had the time, I would go down to the mill and take off from there.  Sure enough, within a couple of weeks, he called with a load to go to    Perry to the company store up there.  When I got to the mill, I discovered that it was a semi load, not a small
straight truckload!  I protested but the boss said I could do it so that was the beginning of my short lived truck driving career.

After another month or two, I worked my way up to a somewhat regular run to Muldrow, Oklahoma, just west of Ft. Smith.  The truck I drove was a 1964 Mack, Model B61.  This truck had a five-speed main transmission with a 4-speed auxiliary transmission behind it.  The B Series Macks were made from 1953 to 1966 and were probably the most recognizable trucks of that era.  By the time I started driving this truck (in 1968), it had become outdated and slow.  I could reach a top speed of 64 miles per hour on the Interstate and get my doors blown off by all the other trucks out there!

Even though the driving job only paid $1.85 an hour, I felt like I was a big shot truck driver.  I did wind up quitting though, when my boss told me I had to choose between my job and my girl friend, Louise.  I chose Louise and it has been a good deal, since I've been married to her for 43 years.

Let's shift to the current time.  For the past several years, Louise and I had a 1999 International truck to pull our fifth wheel RV with.  I also used it occasionally to pull the small dozer around.  When we traded the trailer off on a motor home, I didn't really need the International other than for the dozer.  I thought about an older truck (we've always liked older vehicles) but couldn't find one I liked.

One day at the doughnut shop, my friend Wayne mentioned that his cousin in Owasso had an old Mack B61 and that it might be for sale.  This got my attention big time and I started asking questions.  Wayne assured me that the old truck was in pristine condition so I conned him into going to Owasso with me to look at it.  Well, it was in excellent condition and I wound up buying it from Wes, Wayne's cousin.

This truck is a blast to drive!  Its big, loud, and attention-getting.  I've got some work to do on it but not so much that I can't get out and herd it down the road some.  The other thing thats neat about it is the Tulsa Model 34 winch.  Having worked for that company for 28 plus years, its fun to have a truck with one of their products on it.

As the old saying goes, the only difference between men and boys is the size of the toys.  I guess this one is probably right!

Autobiography, Chapter 4

4-College, Part One

The reason this chapter is called College, Part One, is because it took me two hitches to get through school.  I know I have ruined the ending of this chapter by telling you this but you have a right to know.

In the fall of 1964, David Alsip, Donna Kellert, Rick Spess, and I all started to school at Oklahoma State as fresh Mannford High graduates.  David and I shared a room in a rooming house, Donna lived in a dorm, and Rick lived in another dorm across campus.

Our rooming house was at 301 South Duck in Stillwater.  A multi-story credit union stands there today but in 1964 it was an old two-story house with about four or five bedrooms upstairs.  I don’t remember the name of the woman we rented from but she seemed to be very old and very frail.  She occupied the downstairs part and rented out each of the upstairs bedrooms.  I remember coming in once and learning that her daughter had found her unconscious at the bottom of the steps going to the basement.  In a couple of weeks, however, she was back and seemed to be fine.

As college freshmen are apt to do, we did do our share of drinking.  There was a pub called the Anchor down by the fire station and we would buy gallon jugs of draft beer in there.  We would then carry the jugs home to the rooming house and have a good time.  Its hard to believe now that someone like me, whose parents could not afford to pay anything, and who had to work to go to school, would “screw off” and party as much as I did.  It is a fact, however.

One morning, I woke up and discovered that there was no door on our room.  David informed me that I had come home drunk, couldn’t find the key to my room and had just busted the door off the hinges.  We managed to get the door repaired before the landlord found out about it.

I had decided to major in Chemical Engineering, since I had done fairly well in chemistry in high school.  Well, college wasn’t like high school; you had to study to get good grades and I wasn’t into studying.  At the end of the first semester, I realized that I had made a terrible mistake and changed my major to Mechanical Engineering.  This wasn’t enough, however, to save my downward spiral.

Sometime during my freshman year, Cabot Corporation decided to close down their service center in Tulsa and let their former manager, Dudley Jorden, open up his own shop to do their service work.  Dad decided to stay there and work for Dudley.  The impact this had on me was that my scholarship from Cabot went away after only one year.

Mom and Dad didn’t have a lot of money and couldn’t help us with tuition or room and board but every time we went home we got the laundry done and managed to raid the freezer.  During my first year of school, I got a job sweeping floors in the university classrooms.  As I recall, it paid about 60 to 75¢ per hour.

Between the first and second years of school, I went back home to live with the folks and went to work at a “sweat shop” in Tulsa by the name of Creamer and Dunlap.  It was a fab shop that paid the minimum wage, $1.25, and the work was hard and dirty.  After about a month there, I got hurt on the job and spent the rest of the summer receiving physical therapy.  I got a rope wrapped around my left arm, almost cutting it off; in fact, the attending doctor told Dad that it probably would have to come off.  Dad told him to take it off when “it rotted off”.  Fortunately, I still have two arms, although the injury did paralyze my left thumb.  One year later, this injury was to affect my life in another profound way.

When I returned to school in the fall of 1965, there were some differences.  David, Rick, and Donna were still there but in addition to them, my brother Gary started to school at Oklahoma State.

Gary and I rented a small apartment together at 213 ½ North Husband.  It was on the alley between Husband and Main streets just behind Cooper’s motorcycle shop.  By this time, I was into a “no study” mode and should not have been in school at all.  I remember a lot of things about living in this apartment but studying was not one of them.

I did still have to work.  Instead of sweeping floors for the University, I got a job pumping gas for a fellow, Joe Lewis, who had a Conoco Station up north of downtown on Highway 177.  Joe was a prince of a guy and I really enjoyed working for him.

A couple of years later, Joe went into Burtrum Marine in Mannford to buy a boat.  He didn’t know that he was talking to Milt, my brother, and asked him if he knew Edd Alexander.  Milt replied that he didn’t think so until he found out that Joe liked me and then admitted that he was my brother.  Anything to sell a boat!

Probably the worst thing that happened to me while I was working for Joe was the day that Dr. Oliver Wilhelm, the President of the University, came in to get gasoline.  I wanted to impress him so badly that I opened the radiator cap too rapidly and almost burned him and me with coolant.  Fortunately, neither of us did get burned but I got really embarrassed.

By now I had switched my major to mechanical technology and the tech school was a lot easier than engineering school.  Still, though, you couldn’t pass the courses without studying at least a little bit.  My last major change was between the first and second semesters of my sophomore year, when I changed from Mechanical Technology to Aero Technology.  Alas, it was too little too late.  I had completely given up on school by this time.

I now had 60 hours of college credits but with a 1.6 grade point average on a 4.0 system.  Not a pretty sight!  David and Gary too were through with school and ready to quit.  Looking back, I don’t know whether I drug them down, they drug me down, or we all just self-destructed together.  I suspect it was the latter.  At any rate, we were done with Oklahoma State, at least for the time being.