It must have been the year I was in the 8th grade. We pulled up to the plant early one morning. The plant was Pure Stone Company in Marble Falls. My dad, Cecil operated the dump trucks that hauled the blasted rock from the quarry out south of town back into the crusher that was and still is on Ave. N, on the north side of Backbone Creek. Of course it has been through a couple of name changes in the six decades since the time I’m speaking of. It is now Huber Corp.

There was an old railroad dock, right along side the rail siding that came into the plant yard. Of course, where else would it be, if not along the railroad track. It really wasn’t used. It just set there with a little, mostly unnecessary stuff, stacked around on it.

When Cecil took over the trucking operation, the dock area was surrendered to him as a place to work on the truck fleet. Believe me, there was a lot of working on trucks needed, to keep them running. The fleet that he bought were “62” year model C-60 Chevrolet 5 yd dump trucks that had been rode hard. Bill Wall had owned and operated them, but he died in a tragic accident involving a loader bucket falling and crushing the life out of him.

That is why Cecil Lewis Trucking came in to once again take over that operation. He had owned the trucks during the early part of the 50s, but had sold out to Bill Wall in the Summer of 1956, which necessitated us moving down to Jollyville and being away from Marble Falls for almost a decade.

As I started out telling you in the beginning of this story, we arrived early, like we did most mornings. But this one morning he dumped me out and instructed me to pull the transmission out so I could put a new clutch and pressure plate in it. While I got it apart, he took off for Burnet to buy the new parts from Bill Heckman Automotive Supply.

I was hard at work getting everything unbolted. We didn’t have a transmission jack so I ran a timber thru the windows in each door and hung a come-a-long from it. That’s how I supported it to separate the transmission from the bell housing. So it took a lot of jocking back and forth from the bottom to the top to get it out.

I could see this fellow as he walked up and stood beside next to the shoulder high dock. “Can I help you mister”.

He said he would like to talk to the proprietor of this trucking business. I explained that he would need to talk to my daddy but he was off in Burnet getting parts. We continued to visit for a while, as I kept working to get everything torn apart so we could get that truck back on the road as soon as possible. There would be another truck that would been something fixed, or at least that’s what history had told us. Out of the 5 or 6 trucks, at least one of them was always needing attention.

I finally came out from under that truck and officially greeted the fellow standing down on the ground. He was Bud Lockhart from Lampasas. Bud operated a truck business, mechanic & welding shop and wrecking yard and bought and sold just about anything where he could make a few dollars.

I think he was really taken aback that I was a 13 year old kid, not much over 5’1” tall and weighed less than 110 lbs, covered in grease.

That started a friendship that lasted for at least a couple of decades, until his passing. I think every time I ran across him he’d say “Boy do you remember the first time we ever met?”

I always knew when he was referring to. I miss all the fellows I grew up around. But at least I have found memories.

Cecil Lewis went down to Austin, at Truck City on Ben White Blvd and bought a fleet of much more dependable Ford Trucks that we put dump beds on.

He said to me one day “We can’t make any money running those old junky trucks, so I bought these.”

I could not have agreed more with him.

Out with the old

In with the new

The newer trucks stayed on the road better but that didn’t mean there wasn’t still plenty of mechanic work to do.