I have a dedicated crew of guys that are mostly from one family down in the interior of Mexico. The first of these fellows came to work for me around 1980. Leoncio or Shorty, the name I gave him shortly … Continue reading Delivering A Tractor Into The Interior Of Mexico
Dink was a once in a lifetime friend. He could do things to a friendship that would test it beyond limits. I never went five minutes in his company without laughing. He was as much an comic entertainer as anyone you see now on TV or at a comedy club. Dink first entered my life when I was a pre-teen boy. He and my Dad worked construction together in the sixties. Dink was a hard worker and knew his trade. I guess you could say his specialty was road boring. That’s where a big machine drills a hole underneath a … Continue reading Dink – The Man, The Myth, The Legend
Sometime in the earlier part in the mid 1980s, I contracted to run the underground utilities (water, wastewater & drainage) for the New Brackenridge Apartments that were being built. The project involved the tearing down of the old wooden buildings that had far outlived their normal life. Then the site was prepared and prefabbed concrete modules built by the HB Zachery Company In San Antonio were brought in and stacked together like toy building blocks. It was a new building concept. The Zachery Company had just finished building the Palacio Del Rio, a high rise hotel on the San Antonio … Continue reading Replacing The Old Brackenridge Apartments On Lake Austin Blvd.
Back in the days when we were building the Guadalupe River State Park in 1981-1982 we had a lot of characters that worked on that project. One day a couple of guys walked up with backpacks on and asked for a job. They were probably about 20 years old with long hair. We had a bunk trailer onsite that had about 8 or 10 bunks in it. We let them move in. During summer and winter the guys mostly cooked out on a campfire or on a BBQ pit. They all would sit around the fire and tell stories and … Continue reading The Two Drifters
I went out to Las Vegas in about 1982 or 1983 to Con-Ex-Po. That is a trade show for machines and equipment in the construction and mining industries. You can see the biggest machines and all the newest innovations known to man. Anyone in my business will walk around in awe at some of the things you see. Nothing caught my attention more than a fellow at one booth that was cutting really thick slabs of metal. He was slicing through 2″ & 3″ thick pieces of steel like any one I’d ever seen before cut 1/2″ metal. It was … Continue reading Hooking A Cutting Torch Up To Gasoline
Me being a person that would never be involved in self-promotion (cough cough cough) I’m going to tell you about myself. I’m in my 48th year in the underground contracting business. Perhaps the single toughest business where we encounter unknown obstacles daily, never knowing what’s below. There may not be any other business where the liabilities are as great and the rewards are as uncertain. “What was I thinking when I jumped off into this industry and started subcontracting“, mostly on a shoestring, in 1972, the replacing of water lines all over Burnet, Texas. I was a few months short … Continue reading The South San Gabriel Wastewater Project
Back in the fast and furious years of the late 1970s we had contracts with Lakeway to build a bunch of new streets. Kenny put a huge culvert pipe on a trailer behind his pickup that was needed to go in the middle of a big draw. When he got out to the project, no one else was around so he was going to unchain it and let it roll off the trailer. When he popped the boomer (the levered device below) the end of the handle hit him directly in the mouth with tremendous force. Over the Motorola 2-way … Continue reading Ken’s Pearly Whites
It was in the hot summer time and I was out of school for the summer. I was about 14 or 15 years old and working for my Dad, Cecil Lewis. We were building a road down by Turkey Bend. Just country roads are all we built back then, hauling and spreading out caliche for new subdivision roads. I always ran the loader, loading the five or six dump trucks that hauled the caliche. The trucks were driven mostly by our school age friends, the ones at least sixteen and could get a commercial license. Socks Jackson was the mechanic … Continue reading The Disease
Woody was getting hard of hearing and even a little cranky when it came to answering and talking on the phone. The Woody I’m referring to was our office manager back in our early days in the construction business. In fact he was our head accountant also. Okay, Woody was the only person we had in the office and the only one we needed. He did it all, when it came to answering the phone, payroll, our payables and receivables and keeping the tax man happy and insurance all straight. He did then what now takes a whole office full … Continue reading The Mystery Caller
There are a few things in life that really don’t mix. Being really tough and drinking too much are a good example of this. Cecil Lewis was tough guy and he drank a way more than he should have. Back in 1980 – 1981 I had contracted to build a new state park and campground area down on the Guadalupe River near the little community of Bergheim not far from Boerne, Texas. When I needed him, my dad would help me out on projects. On this job he mostly drove a water truck. He never drank while on the job … Continue reading He Bit My Thumb
Angora Chronicles 