Ivan 1937 - 1950     page 8 One of the first projects I got into was a housing project. It was a 450 house operation. This was in a semicircle, built into a hill. First, we had to dig them out of hill. The place for the houses. Then level up streets. (The gas lines, the water lines, the sewer lines, the electric lines, all had to go in following our "rough in.") Then we built the house pads, put the houses on it. Then we dozed all the excess dirt away form the houses (with a crew of Mexicans cleaning up next to the houses.) One day I got clearance to go to "R" site help bury "BOMB," one 50 ft deep. It was in a room 6 ft x 5 ft at bottom the shaft, back under. The shaft was 6 ft x 8 ft deep. I was supposed to bring 2 lunches as they didn't know how long it would take to cover it up. Well, I brought two lunches and I didn't go. I had been thinking about it and it seemed to me that I should have someone else with me as I could break a cable or something else go wrong, so I should have another. Just in case. So the next morning I had two lunches and a companion. We drove the tractors up there. As soon as we came in the gate they checked our passes and as we came through the gate they asked us to turn our tractors off because they might cause a fire. As soon as they had them off a couple of guys came in with a welder; they fired them up and started to cutting off the roof they had put up to keep the rain off. Jack and I had to laugh as they began cutting. There were several chairs parked in two rows by the project. We were invited to sit with the rest of them, there was the science guy with them and several dignitaries with them. I asked the science guy about the project and he said in twenty years they were going to uncover the project and see what was left of it. He said that it had a "half life" of 20 years and they would have a look. There was a big pile of gravel that we would use to cover it up with. Well, we started our "cats" and started covering it up, alternating loads. We were working in second gear, after about 20 minutes a funny sweet smell started to come out. I motioned at Jack, "4th gear," and we started putting it in faster and faster. Well, we covered it up, and took off up the hill. We both stopped our cats and stopped and looked back to see if the ground popped up. We heard the boom and left. One day Russ came to move my cat and can. It was winter time and was slick. Russ placed the blocks back of the bed where I was going to load. I started up the blocks with my cat and when I got to the place where there was a balance my cat pushed the blocks forward and the cat started to tip backwards. I quickly released the clutch to keep from turning over backwards and the cat came rolling back down to the ground. Well, we placed the block back, only a little forward and tried again, this time we were successful. We loaded all right. Dan Handy was a good dozer man and had been promoted to boss. He had started a road job south of town. He needed another push cat. So I was disbursed to him. Now Dan didn't like me because I had gotten a house up the canyon, part way up the hill where Loudermilk had established a repair camp. There were three dwellings there. Bill Switzer got one, I got one and the secretary got one. (The secretary was a one-legged man.) The houses were rent free. Anyway, I was sent down to Dan. One day after being down there I got a rock through my cat's bottom, "the belly pan." This was in the morning. I waited for Dan to take me back to my car which was parked up town. It was after lunch time when I walked out starting up the road on foot. After I had walked part way here came Dan and picked me up and took me to my car. I didn't turn my time card that night, because I wanted to talk to the union man in Espanola about how I should turn in my card. He said to turn it in for all day. So I did the next day. They were waiting for me to turn it in. The minute I turned it in, there was a "strike on" and all because of my turning in my time card. Well, technically I was right. The "Union met for three days" with Loudermilk Inc. and they decided to terminate me. O.K. so I was fired. I said Good-by and left. (There were 9 other of the men left at the same time. I didn't ask them to go, they just quit.)