Ivan Merriman Lewis 1937 - 1950     3 In a couple of weeks we got an award for setting the most forms and the best. After awhile I got on as a "Guard." I wore a pistol and let people in at the gate when they showed their "passes." One day I let a man in on a bogus pass. I was inside when he came back out, I heard the guy that was outside tell him how to go to Albuquerque. Nights were spent in checking the gates and other entries. The place where we were parked was called Outlaw. There were quite a number of people from Ramah there. We got together evenings once in awhile. There was a couple there that used to go to Gallup, sit in their cars and watch people go up and down the sidewalks and going into stores instead of going into movies. We tried it a few times and it was a lot of fun. One night we were coming back from Gallup, it had been raining and we narrowly missed an Indian going up the road. Another time we stopped at the Top of the World, at a cafe. While we were ordering, we noticed a couple of outhouses outside. This fellow told us they were wired for sound. He said that a well-dressed lady went to use it. He gave enough time to be seated then he said, "Lady, would you use the other hole, I'm painting down here." We went back to St.Johns from there, back to the Navajo Reservation, back to work. Ian was born the 2nd of Jan. 1942. He was ugly, when I saw him he was red faced and wrinkled. I said, "Put him back." The nurse smiled and said, "It's too late now." I said, "I'll keep him. He'll probably be the best looking boy I could have." Well, he turned out to be quite a handsome boy. Well, I went back to work for Hugh, building stock tanks again till May 1942. By May I went to Belmont to work for Ted Page. I was running a "Cat and Can," we were making roads and opening it for "Igloos." I remember a guy by the name of McAllister, everyone called him Mac. Anyway, I thought he knew more about a carryall and digging with it. (Cat 'n Can meant Caterpillar and Carryall.) So every day at lunch I asked, "What could I do better?" I learned a lot from him. A cousin of mine came to work there, too. Lloyd Lewis was his name. He was an innovator. He learned to shift gears of the tractor "on the fly." Everyone else had to stop to shift gears. One day the superintendent came by and saw him shifting gears and took him down to the Tournapull spread. That's where he could catch them on the fly. That's right, I worked there for seven days a week until the last day of the year. One morning I came to work, my can was parked. I raised it up and tried to dump it. Ted Page even tried to dump it. When it became obvious that it needed some shop work done on it, he sent it to the shop. Later that day a mechanic came by and sent me to work on another "cat" that was needing some repair. I don't remember what it was but I became a mechanics helper the rest of the day. The next morning when I came out to work, it still wasn't fixed, so I was sent down to be a helper on another cat. It had a track off and we were putting it back on. Meanwhile, the fellow that he advised me the day before that it was all right to run the rig and that I couldn't get it dumped, had gone by the office and Mr. Page had told him to give me a "Pink Slip." Now this young mechanic was from Flagstaff and Ted Page knew it. He knew it would cause a "ruckus" and he meant the "pink slip" was from the mechanic to be fired. Now the mechanic that I reported to knew that the other fellow had a "pink slip." He told me that I was to ask for it. When he showed up I said "Good Morning" to him as we kept on working on the "cat." Well, we worked on it for about 30 or 40 minutes and nothing had been said about a "pink slip." I asked him "Do you have a "pink slip" for me?" "No," he said. So I told him "If you do have, it's illegal for you to give it to me, because you're not my boss." "No," he said, "I don't have one." I think by this time he caught on that it was for him and not for me. When I came to work the next morning, my cat was ready. (I also heard that the other mechanic was fired.)