I have to admit that in my younger years I spoiled myself with buying vehicles. I was doing a lot of driving, bidding on work all around the state. When I say a lot of driving, somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 miles per year. I had a new Buick Rivera that I considered my road car. And it did handle the road very well.

We had a project in Kendall County, just north of San Antonio building the Guadalupe River State Park, which was a undeveloped tract of ranch land when we started, so I couldn’t see driving that nice Rivera Car around on that project scratching it up and knocking the bottom out from under it on a big rock. So I decided to buy a pickup to leave down there and I drove it around that site.

Wanting to show that I was being financially responsible, I bought a small, fairly well stripped down Ford Courier Pickup. I wasn’t really trying to impress anyone, it was just a work truck.

Along about that time we landed the Jester Estates Project in western Travis County, out near current day Loop 360 and RM 2222. That job being rough as a cob and the steepest hill anywhere around, that Rivera wasn’t going to provide a suitable way for me to see what all was going on so I bought a 4 wheel Drive Ford Bronco. It stayed at the office except when I needed to run out and look around on one of the jobs. It allowed me to look and feel the part.

After awhile the Jester project was built out where the Rivera was suitable transportation, so the Bronco was left parked more and more.

One day Kenny had a mishap in his Ford Pickup, a 4 wheel drive 3/4 ton, that suited him for his job duties as well as his cattle tending up in Burnet County and around the area. Someone hauled him into the yard to get the white Bronco, after a night of knocking down a few beers. It would be suitable for a few days while his pickup was in the repair shop.

When exiting the yard, he made a big wide circle scoping things out. Some how he ran up under then neck of that trailer and came to a stop just before it entered the windshield, which was really fortunate. He was lined up with the steering wheel dead center on it, so a few feet more would have probably decapitated him. He was able to back out and drive over to my house. It was really late at night, but he thought it would be good to come on over and show me what he had done.

The result was a 2” or 3” crease up through the middle of the hood from the fifth wheel pin and the cowling piece in front of the windshield was wadded up. We decided he could drive it until we could get a new hood and the cowling early the next week. Sure enough once we got the pieces and took them to the body shop for paint, our guys were able to bolt them on with ease. Then it was good as new. Which was a miracle.