Ivan 1937 - 1950     page 10 We had a man at the track to flag us when a train came through. He bore watching, if he was waving his flag, it was time to stop. He was pretty good. One day a scraper caught the right track of the railroad and pulled it out of alignment with the other track. Quick as a wink he took off down the track and stopped the train before it got to the place where it could be wrecked. It took quite a while to fix it. Another day the flag man had his little boy sitting on a rock beside him. As I was about to pass beside him, I stuck out my finger and pointed at him and said Boom. Just as I said it my rear tire blew. The little fellow rolled off the rock backward and recovered. I had to pull off the road to the right and fix my flat. I had to pull up and dump the load off the rig then park it off the road where it was quite smooth so they could fix the tire. There was another time when we were hauling from a pit that was south of the road. Up to the road quite way before we got to where we dumped. There was a man standing on top of the pickup waving his arms in the air. He had the other half of my drawbar coupling in his hand. I took it out of gear, and came to a stop and tested it if it were not to roll and got off. (Well, there is a safety cable tied on underneath for just such emergencies. So they hooked it back up. They took the responsibility for letting it down to where they could hook it back up.) I later saw what happens when the safety cables come undone. We were coming on the road and coming on in half circle, then back down the road, and dumping coming down hill onto the road. The fellow just ahead of me made the turn in front of me turned on to the road. Just as he turned onto the road his safety cable parted and the front of the rig turned up and he stopped in a cloud of dust. He climbed out. Now, his "can" hit the high dirt on top of the fill just in time to keep it on top. I turned just the other side of him and could see the results. (The Lord had his arm around him, no doubt about it.) They steered by means of two steering clutches one on either side. If you were pulling, that is, going up hill you could steer it, you could steer it by going directly, that is by pulling the right clutch out briefly and pushing in again. If you were going downhill you pulled your left one and pushed it again. If you were on the flat (level) you could push down the brake and steer as if you were going up hill. If you had no brakes you couldn't steer. That was the most fun. You could pull them both out, you might be able to cross friction, and steer. That's what made it fun if you had no brakes...