Autobiography - Chapter Five

Another boring installment of my autobiography!  At least my children might enjoy it!

5-Working, Part One

Although I had worked at many jobs by this time in my life, I had not been in a situation where I just went to work and came home with no thought of school.  Things were about to change.

The war in Viet Nam was beginning to heat up and David and I decided to beat the draft by going down and enlisting in the Army.  We were going to go into the Army Security Agency on the “buddy plan” and the Army would guarantee that we would stay together, at least through Advanced Individual Training (AIT).  At any rate, we packed our duffel bags and went to Oklahoma City to take the induction physical.

I remember that there were long lines of guys carrying reams of paper from their doctors explaining why they should not be in the Army.  It didn't help; they were all going!  Here I was, trying to get in and I didn't make it!  On one of the forms I had to fill out it asked if I had any paralyses.  I checked it “yes” and wrote that my left thumb was paralyzed.

Sure enough, a doctor came up, asked me about the thumb and looked at it.  When he was done, he said, “Son, we can’t take you with that thumb!”  Well, I was heartbroken for about 30 minutes until it began to soak in that I was never going to have to go to the Army.  I found out later that David spent two tours of duty in Viet Nam lying in a ditch pounding code on a key.  I’m still glad I didn't have to go although I have the greatest respect for those who did.

Since I wasn't going to have to go to the Army, I decided to spend the summer of 1966 on the wheat harvest.  David had an uncle, Carl Rice, who lived in Cherryvale, Kansas and ran a custom combining crew.  Since David was going to the Army, his spot was open.  The pay was $300 per month and room and board.  I had a little S90 Honda motorcycle which I had bought during my last semester in school and I took it with me, at least as far as Dodge City.

Wheat harvest wasn’t bad, at least until late August, but I didn’t manage to save much money.  I did send some home but not a lot.  In late August, we had gotten to Opheim, Montana, about 10 miles from the Canadian border.  A serious rain spell set in and Carl and the older guys took off for Canada.  After about a week in the trailer house, I was out of money and out of food and there was no sign of Carl.  I called Mom and got her to wire me $50 to buy a train ticket home.

I had never been on a train before so this was quite an experience.  The train from Opheim to Williston, North Dakota was literally a milk run.  We stopped at every small town and loaded cream cans onto the train.  When I got to Williston, I caught the Great Northern Empire Builder to Minneapolis, then the Rock Island Rocket to Kansas City, and the Santa Fe Super Chief to Dodge City.

When I got to Dodge City, I had $5 left to get from there to Mannford.  I told the guy who had been storing my motorcycle that I didn’t have any money to pay him but that I would send him some.  He agreed to that and I took off for Mannford.  Fortunately, the S90 didn’t burn much gas and I had enough money left over for a couple of candy bars.  When I pulled in at home, however, I didn’t have anything but change in my pockets.

When I got back home, Mom had a hot lead on a job for me at a pipeline x-ray inspection company, Conam Inspection.  I got on with them and they sent me to Emporia, Kansas to help a technician on a 42” pipeline being laid from Emporia to Kansas City.  As I recall, I only worked on that job about 60 to 90 days before it was finished.  When we were done, the manager offered me a “camp” job but I turned it down.  In a “camp” job, you literally live in a camp in a remote area for weeks on end.  This did not sound at all attractive to me.

About this time, I decided I wanted to become a policeman.  A friend from Mannford, Kenneth Moser, and I went down to join the Tulsa Police Department together.  Does this sound familiar?  Well, to cut to the chase, he got in and I didn’t.  We both passed the written test easily but I flunked the physical because I was ¼” too short.  At the time, you had to be 5’9” tall and I was only 5’8 ¾”.  Kenneth wound up becoming a Major in the Police Department and had an excellent career with them.

In November, 1966, I decided to try to get a job at National Tank, since a bunch of the Mannford people worked there.  I went down to apply and talked to the Personnel Manager.  He told me that they couldn’t use me, probably because I had received a Workman’s Compensation claim from my injury at Creamer and Dunlap.  As I was leaving his office, I heard him say something to the secretary about him being gone the next day.

I went back the next day, filled out a new application, and sure enough, he wasn't there.  I talked to a guy by the name of Bob White, who offered me a job in the drafting department.  I told him that I would rather work as a welder’s helper, since they made more money than draftsmen.  I started work there the next day.

I was assigned to help a welder who was totally illiterate, F.W. Dobbins.  I think the reason they put me with him was because I had had two years of drafting in college and could do all his layout work for him.  The foreman in Bay 3A, our bay, was Gabby Etheridge and the assistant foreman was Marvin Code.  3A was a piping bay, where all the vessels were brought, mounted on skids and plumbed.

After about six months, I got to where I thought I was better than F.W., since he couldn’t read or write.  I’ve learned since that I’m no better than anyone else, but I didn’t know that at the time.  Anyway, my idea of punishing him for being “stupid” was to not talk to him at all, except where it was required for work.  After a couple of weeks of this, Marvin Code came up to me one day and asked if I liked my job.

Being a smart-alecky kid, I replied that I didn’t particularly like it.  He then told me that, if I didn’t start treating F.W. better, I was going to have a lot of time on my hands to look for a new job.  Even though I didn’t really like working at National Tank, I was too lazy to want to go find a new one, so I starting talking to F.W. again.

The whole time I worked at National Tank, just over a year, we worked nine hours a day, six days a week.  I started out at $1.85 per hour and worked up to about $2.15, so this was pretty good money for then.  National Tank had over 1100 employees at the time and was non-union.  It darn sure wasn’t a “sweat ship”; in the whole time I worked there I never overworked myself once.  On many a day, I would get Dobbins lined out for the day and I would spend the whole day working on some personal project.

Although the work wasn’t hard, it was extremely dirty.  I remember one day in particular I was laying on my back under a skid burning a hole overhead.  The fire was falling all around and on me.  When I got ready to get out from under the skid, I had to crawl through a big chew of tobacco that someone had spit out on the floor.  I thought then that I would be a lot better off being back in school.

In December, 1967, Bill Murr and I were trading rides back and forth from Mannford to work.  Because I liked to take a shower after work before I came home, Bill decided to quit riding with me.  This was probably the best move he ever made, since about a week later I had a head-on collision in Fisher Bottom on the way home.  The right side of the car was really caved in and Bill would undoubtedly have been killed if he had been in the car.

I was “tail gating” another car when, all of a sudden, it went into the ditch on the right side of the road.  When it did, I saw the Mustang coming right at me!  I guess I thought I had a better chance going left so I jerked it that way as I hit the brakes.  I left 39 feet of skid marks before the Mustang hit me, went airborne, and landed in the bar ditch behind me.

I wound up with a broken right arm and cuts and scratches and the car was “totaled”.  In fact, the front bumper on the passenger’s side was pushed back even with the windshield post.

The guy who hit me was Maurice Roger McSpadden, nephew of Clem McSpadden and a great nephew of Will Rogers.  McSpadden was a “disk jockey” at KVOO Radio and his air name was “Boomer” McSpadden.  He had worked all night the night before and then driven to Stillwater to see his girl friend.  He was on his way back to Tulsa and just picked that time to fall asleep and hit me.  He had several broken bones and cuts but survived it.

I never did talk to McSpadden about the accident, although I wanted to.  It had changed my life in a profound way and I always wondered what impact it had on him.  Once, a good twenty years later, I went up to him at the State Fair where he was working the KVOO booth.  I introduced myself to him and his jaw dropped.  I stood there for what seemed an eternity and he never said a word.  I finally just turned and walked off.  Apparently he was not able to deal with the memory which I wanted to discuss.

This accident provided me with the motive and financial means to go back to school.  I had had about enough of National Tank and was ready to do something else.  With my arm still in a sling, I went back over to Stillwater and enrolled for the Spring, 1968 semester.