Kenny always had a lot of company pride. He liked for all of his machines to be looking nice and clean. Everything needed to be ship-shape in Kenny Lewis’ world.

He enjoyed having his company name on jackets and caps. He spent a lot of advertising bucks and it paid off for him. You would see people wearing them often, putting the CCI name out in the public.

Kenny and I had an arraignment for about a decade that lasted until 2003. We pooled resources and CCI was the name that was in the forefront of the business. I still had my crews and equipment. Each company brought a different component to the working of the business.

Advertising was good so all of his people and all of my people all wore CCI labeled caps and jackets. When times changed and we decided both of our situations would be better served to part ways. We carefully planned how to re-brand the companies and make a smooth transition.

There were a few boxes of caps leftover that were sitting in my office. One day a couple of my guys got a box each of the caps started handing them out to the homeless people around Austin. If you have ever been around Austin you know that panhandling is only second in number of people to state workers.

Within days everywhere you went in Austin a guy or gal was sporting a red CCI cap. Seemed like pretty good exposure to me. Not that I had anything to do with them handing out the caps, please understand.

When Kenny drove through the city and saw my all those caps, my phone started ringing. “You think you’re pretty damn funny don’t you Ronnie Gene Lewis“. Of course not knowing anything about what he was referring about, I said “Ken, what’s going on“?

“You know &@$%#^^#}¥€>> exactly what I’m talking about”.

He was truly ticked off, only like Kenny Lewis could be ticked off. He didn’t like that kind of exposure. He thought that it wasn’t helpful for business. My denials fell on deaf ears. He was convinced I was behind it. But please understand I had nothing to do with it and I told him so.

I think he hung up on me a time or two. “Calm down Kenny, can’t you just go around town with a pocket full of tens, and buy them back? ” was my suggestion. That wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

I finally figured shutting up would serve me best for awhile. He called me a day or two later explaining what his plan for retaliation was. He was going to order a few boxes of black Lewis Contractors caps and go around and swap them for his red caps. “fine with me, I would like people in Austin to know I’m willing to help the homeless population” was my response. I even sent the LC logo over so he would have a leg up on getting the caps made.

I guess he thought better of his later idea, because I never saw any of my caps on Austin street corners. The red ones started disappearing and soon there wasn’t one in site.

Rumor was a few of them were forcible taken from the homeless people around town, but I have no proof of it.

Of course word eventually got around that two of my guys, Big Jimmy and Mark Behrens had been behind it. But of course as I’ve stated before – It Wasn’t Me, handing out those caps.