Staying Alive
The summer following my first year teaching was spent going to Peabody College for better or worse. The other summers were spent in various efforts at staying afloat in Lafayette, TN.
Teachers were paid every twenty “school-days” with a Macon Co. Trustee’s Warrant. That meant that you had to have taught for twenty school-days to get paid. I had to wait seventeen school-days for the snow to melt in 1963. That put me nine weeks away from my January paycheck. Summers were also trying in that there where two months, July and August with no income. I had to do something to maintain the sumptuous lifestyle of a country band director!
I thought I could run a summer band program on my front porch. That idea turned into a two-hour babysitting service for mama’s who had some shopping to do. The next year Harris Howser, who was the director of the North Central Telephone Cooperative felt sorry for me and hired me to help with the “change over.” The “change over” was from an old system to the new rotary-dial system.
I did a modicum of paperwork and acted as the office flunky for minimum wage. Hey, it kept me from babysitting a bunch of seventh graders. We had some laughs during my telephone tenure. A fellow who had been having a considerable amount of trouble getting service left a message that went: “This is ‘so & so’ out here on Enon Road. You can come out here and fix this $%#*&^@# phone on Monday, or you can come out here on Tuesday and fix the pieces!” He got serviced on Monday as I recall.
I spent a summer measuring tobacco acreage for the Macon County Extension Office. Tobacco allotments were determined by the total acreage of the farm. Tobacco was the major, if not the only source of income for many “scratch farmers!” One single tobacco plant could be worth over a Dollar. Single Dollars were dear to lots of farmers back then.
I soon learned that there were two types of people trying to eek out a living tilling the dirt, milking a few cows and trying to keep the foxes away from their chickens. Usually the farmer and spouse were amiable and lonely enough to be glad to see you. You had to identify yourself by identifying your ancestors: mine were pretty well known in Macon County. Invariably these folks could work it around so that you became a distant relative. Their hospitality served them better than the receptions by others.
The other type had an “attitude!” He did not want you on his property even though he knew you had every right to be there and that you came with the best intentions. One in particular had done a tour measuring tobacco. He knew better than I how to divide a field so that the total of various areas could be determined. I was “spot-checked” on that plot by a young whipper-snapper about two years out of MCHS. He and I re-measured the plot, and he told me how I had screwed up at every turn. When we finished and figured the acreage, his measurements would have caused the farmer to lose significant revenue. He got pretty quiet after that. I said not a word and went on working.
I had a really good area where I could measure lots of farms without a lot of driving. Before long I was called into the office to learn that I had been reassigned to a very hilly area on the other side of the county. This new area slowed me down so that the money was going to be very short. It seems that some “old buddy” had been given my choice territory. The folks I met on the eastern side of the county were friendlier anyway.
It was an interesting summer to say the least. My dad, having grown up in Macon County gave me some advice early on that I had to apply often during my tobacco measuring experience. His advice was, “Don’t make the wrong person mad.”
It occurred to me after five years of building a band of substance where there wasn’t one before, that “this is all there is!” These and future students were never going to be any better than the 1967 group. However since I had no other alternatives I finished the year with an eye on the horizon.
The summer of the following year was spent working for Dunn Bros. Pipe Stringers out of Texas. A high-pressure gas pipeline was being laid through southern Kentucky into Tennessee through the western part of Macon County. Almost everyone my age was anxious to get-on with the pipeline and make the “big bucks!”
I was twenty-six, in reasonably good shape, and ready for anything, or so I thought. My first day was typical. My first step off the running board of the pipe truck landed my feet in eight inches of wet sticky mud. My second step or jump as it were, was into nine inches of white clay dust. I had just purchased a new pair of work boots to start this job. (Those boots are now over 40 years old and are still wearable.)
The pipe-truck would roll up the right-of-way with five pipes that were forty feet long and thirty-six inches across made of five-eights thick of rusty steel. Each pipe was about the weight of three family cars. The pipes had to be “hooked” by a guy on each end wielding a coarse rope attached to a large cable with a steel hook on it. When both hooks were in place the side-boom would lift the pipe, the truck moved forward without running over the front-hook guy, and the pipe was laid next to the ditch. The huge pipe would swing to and fro and mostly over our heads. It took a lot of pulling and just hanging-on to wrestle the monster into position. This process was repeated for twelve hours each day for seven weeks. For the first two weeks I thought that would never get used to the exertion it took to do the job. I wore through a pair of heavy work gloves every four days.
The pipeline ran in a straight line for the most part. However the pipe had to be bent to match the contours of the hills and glens of the most rugged sections of the country. The blasting crew was immediately in front of us and the pipe-bending apparatus followed us. Prior to all this work the right of way had to be cleared of trees, and the survey crews had come through to mark the route and indicate depth of the ditch.
Because the terrain was so hilly, “tow-cats” had to be employed to hook onto the front of the pipe truck and either drag or winch the truck into position. Two tow-cats had to be used when hills were very steep. One cat would be positioned high up the incline with the second winched to it and positioned about halfway down the hill with his winch attached to the pipe-truck. The top cat had to “dig-in.” That is, the treads had to be spun until a firm layer of rock had been reached. The lower cat had to be able to move up the hill with the truck loaded with ten tons of steel pipe on the trailer.
One day we had the “two-cat” system in place on a steep hill of shale when the “low-cat” operator hit something and “popped the clutch” on his winch. This caused the pipe-truck to careen backwards down the hill completely out of control! No one was injured, but it could have been a disaster. It was such a dire situation that the very experienced operator on the “top-cat” decided to “drag-up.” That means he was frightened enough to quit! He came back the next day, and we were successful in getting the pipe laid across the ridge.
As the pipe got laid we were closer to the pipe yard near Lafayette. The trucks could deliver pipe much faster, and we had reached a relatively dry, flat part of the Highland Rim. We laid six miles of pipe in one day. This was the day when I had to hang on behind the truck cab for several miles back to the pipe yard. I was covered in sweat and dust so that I was unrecognizable to people who saw me everyday and I actually frightened a student of mine I met on the square in town that day.
We pipe hookers otherwise known as “swampers” never sat down! A “swamper” was a "common laborer" with no standing among the engineers and company men. We were expendable! That fact came to my mind the day I was standing still while three tow-cats and three pipe trucks were roaring around. An unloaded truck made a turn while I stood directly in the path of the sixteen-wheel rear portion of the pipe trailer. The young driver saw me just as the truck frame whacked me on the shoulder. He stopped the truck and ran back to see if I was injured. I wasn’t, but I had learned a lesson that day: no pipeline, nor job nor anything else was worth risking my future!
I returned to the pipe yard, sat down in the dusty shade of a loaded pipe truck, “killed” a six-pack of PBR, went to the office and “drug-up!” The boss told me that I had been a “good hand.” I considered that high praise for a “swamper” who had decided to quit. Truth-be-known, the work was drawing to a close because each section of the line was completed by different crews. Our section was running out, and all the talk was about who was going to Alaska to string pipe for the Trans Alaskan Pipeline. These were "interesting" conversations. I was tempted to consider the adventure, but there were other places for me to go and other things to do.
After all the talk about earning “Big Bucks” working on the pipeline; I had made a grand total of $910.00 risking my life every day for seven weeks, twelve hours per day in the broiling sun! That was exactly what I was making in the band room at MCHS for that amount of time, with weekends off.
To add insult to injury, Kentucky wanted me to fill out their state income tax forms! Like most things in my life, I over reacted to the notice and did a little verbal dance in a "stressful moment." Actually I was due a refund since I was not a KY resident. However I found the forms absolutely impossible to decipher: a life-long 'talent.'
I wrote the following on the form in bold script , “I hereby donate my refund to the Kentucky whiskey industry, because everyone who must figure out this form needs all the fortitude he can get!” My note was signed with a flourish! I received my refund in about three weeks.
Thereafter, things started going my way. I finished the summer on a stipend participating in a guidance and counseling project at TTU. We country teachers were involved in sensitivity training: a hot-topic in the emerging “new age of Aquarius.” It was a social experiment that attempted to change our attitudes toward those who were not “our kind of folks.” It turned out to be a horse I could ride out of the rut I was in.
I left Macon County and band directing the following year to finish my Masters in Guidance and Counseling at TN Tech. Then I became a resident assistant and received a “free ride” to work on an Ed. Specialist Degree at Indiana University the following year. I became a "Dorm Daddy" in Wendell Wilkie Quad at IU. A whole new life path had opened it arms, and I was launched into the "Age of Aquarius."
The memories of the Macon County days are sweet breaths of air. I would not have missed them for anything. I’m just glad to have lived through them.
The summer following my first year teaching was spent going to Peabody College for better or worse. The other summers were spent in various efforts at staying afloat in Lafayette, TN.
Teachers were paid every twenty “school-days” with a Macon Co. Trustee’s Warrant. That meant that you had to have taught for twenty school-days to get paid. I had to wait seventeen school-days for the snow to melt in 1963. That put me nine weeks away from my January paycheck. Summers were also trying in that there where two months, July and August with no income. I had to do something to maintain the sumptuous lifestyle of a country band director!
I thought I could run a summer band program on my front porch. That idea turned into a two-hour babysitting service for mama’s who had some shopping to do. The next year Harris Howser, who was the director of the North Central Telephone Cooperative felt sorry for me and hired me to help with the “change over.” The “change over” was from an old system to the new rotary-dial system.
I did a modicum of paperwork and acted as the office flunky for minimum wage. Hey, it kept me from babysitting a bunch of seventh graders. We had some laughs during my telephone tenure. A fellow who had been having a considerable amount of trouble getting service left a message that went: “This is ‘so & so’ out here on Enon Road. You can come out here and fix this $%#*&^@# phone on Monday, or you can come out here on Tuesday and fix the pieces!” He got serviced on Monday as I recall.
I spent a summer measuring tobacco acreage for the Macon County Extension Office. Tobacco allotments were determined by the total acreage of the farm. Tobacco was the major, if not the only source of income for many “scratch farmers!” One single tobacco plant could be worth over a Dollar. Single Dollars were dear to lots of farmers back then.
I soon learned that there were two types of people trying to eek out a living tilling the dirt, milking a few cows and trying to keep the foxes away from their chickens. Usually the farmer and spouse were amiable and lonely enough to be glad to see you. You had to identify yourself by identifying your ancestors: mine were pretty well known in Macon County. Invariably these folks could work it around so that you became a distant relative. Their hospitality served them better than the receptions by others.
The other type had an “attitude!” He did not want you on his property even though he knew you had every right to be there and that you came with the best intentions. One in particular had done a tour measuring tobacco. He knew better than I how to divide a field so that the total of various areas could be determined. I was “spot-checked” on that plot by a young whipper-snapper about two years out of MCHS. He and I re-measured the plot, and he told me how I had screwed up at every turn. When we finished and figured the acreage, his measurements would have caused the farmer to lose significant revenue. He got pretty quiet after that. I said not a word and went on working.
I had a really good area where I could measure lots of farms without a lot of driving. Before long I was called into the office to learn that I had been reassigned to a very hilly area on the other side of the county. This new area slowed me down so that the money was going to be very short. It seems that some “old buddy” had been given my choice territory. The folks I met on the eastern side of the county were friendlier anyway.
It was an interesting summer to say the least. My dad, having grown up in Macon County gave me some advice early on that I had to apply often during my tobacco measuring experience. His advice was, “Don’t make the wrong person mad.”
It occurred to me after five years of building a band of substance where there wasn’t one before, that “this is all there is!” These and future students were never going to be any better than the 1967 group. However since I had no other alternatives I finished the year with an eye on the horizon.
The summer of the following year was spent working for Dunn Bros. Pipe Stringers out of Texas. A high-pressure gas pipeline was being laid through southern Kentucky into Tennessee through the western part of Macon County. Almost everyone my age was anxious to get-on with the pipeline and make the “big bucks!”
I was twenty-six, in reasonably good shape, and ready for anything, or so I thought. My first day was typical. My first step off the running board of the pipe truck landed my feet in eight inches of wet sticky mud. My second step or jump as it were, was into nine inches of white clay dust. I had just purchased a new pair of work boots to start this job. (Those boots are now over 40 years old and are still wearable.)
The pipe-truck would roll up the right-of-way with five pipes that were forty feet long and thirty-six inches across made of five-eights thick of rusty steel. Each pipe was about the weight of three family cars. The pipes had to be “hooked” by a guy on each end wielding a coarse rope attached to a large cable with a steel hook on it. When both hooks were in place the side-boom would lift the pipe, the truck moved forward without running over the front-hook guy, and the pipe was laid next to the ditch. The huge pipe would swing to and fro and mostly over our heads. It took a lot of pulling and just hanging-on to wrestle the monster into position. This process was repeated for twelve hours each day for seven weeks. For the first two weeks I thought that would never get used to the exertion it took to do the job. I wore through a pair of heavy work gloves every four days.
The pipeline ran in a straight line for the most part. However the pipe had to be bent to match the contours of the hills and glens of the most rugged sections of the country. The blasting crew was immediately in front of us and the pipe-bending apparatus followed us. Prior to all this work the right of way had to be cleared of trees, and the survey crews had come through to mark the route and indicate depth of the ditch.
Because the terrain was so hilly, “tow-cats” had to be employed to hook onto the front of the pipe truck and either drag or winch the truck into position. Two tow-cats had to be used when hills were very steep. One cat would be positioned high up the incline with the second winched to it and positioned about halfway down the hill with his winch attached to the pipe-truck. The top cat had to “dig-in.” That is, the treads had to be spun until a firm layer of rock had been reached. The lower cat had to be able to move up the hill with the truck loaded with ten tons of steel pipe on the trailer.
One day we had the “two-cat” system in place on a steep hill of shale when the “low-cat” operator hit something and “popped the clutch” on his winch. This caused the pipe-truck to careen backwards down the hill completely out of control! No one was injured, but it could have been a disaster. It was such a dire situation that the very experienced operator on the “top-cat” decided to “drag-up.” That means he was frightened enough to quit! He came back the next day, and we were successful in getting the pipe laid across the ridge.
As the pipe got laid we were closer to the pipe yard near Lafayette. The trucks could deliver pipe much faster, and we had reached a relatively dry, flat part of the Highland Rim. We laid six miles of pipe in one day. This was the day when I had to hang on behind the truck cab for several miles back to the pipe yard. I was covered in sweat and dust so that I was unrecognizable to people who saw me everyday and I actually frightened a student of mine I met on the square in town that day.
We pipe hookers otherwise known as “swampers” never sat down! A “swamper” was a "common laborer" with no standing among the engineers and company men. We were expendable! That fact came to my mind the day I was standing still while three tow-cats and three pipe trucks were roaring around. An unloaded truck made a turn while I stood directly in the path of the sixteen-wheel rear portion of the pipe trailer. The young driver saw me just as the truck frame whacked me on the shoulder. He stopped the truck and ran back to see if I was injured. I wasn’t, but I had learned a lesson that day: no pipeline, nor job nor anything else was worth risking my future!
I returned to the pipe yard, sat down in the dusty shade of a loaded pipe truck, “killed” a six-pack of PBR, went to the office and “drug-up!” The boss told me that I had been a “good hand.” I considered that high praise for a “swamper” who had decided to quit. Truth-be-known, the work was drawing to a close because each section of the line was completed by different crews. Our section was running out, and all the talk was about who was going to Alaska to string pipe for the Trans Alaskan Pipeline. These were "interesting" conversations. I was tempted to consider the adventure, but there were other places for me to go and other things to do.
After all the talk about earning “Big Bucks” working on the pipeline; I had made a grand total of $910.00 risking my life every day for seven weeks, twelve hours per day in the broiling sun! That was exactly what I was making in the band room at MCHS for that amount of time, with weekends off.
To add insult to injury, Kentucky wanted me to fill out their state income tax forms! Like most things in my life, I over reacted to the notice and did a little verbal dance in a "stressful moment." Actually I was due a refund since I was not a KY resident. However I found the forms absolutely impossible to decipher: a life-long 'talent.'
I wrote the following on the form in bold script , “I hereby donate my refund to the Kentucky whiskey industry, because everyone who must figure out this form needs all the fortitude he can get!” My note was signed with a flourish! I received my refund in about three weeks.
Thereafter, things started going my way. I finished the summer on a stipend participating in a guidance and counseling project at TTU. We country teachers were involved in sensitivity training: a hot-topic in the emerging “new age of Aquarius.” It was a social experiment that attempted to change our attitudes toward those who were not “our kind of folks.” It turned out to be a horse I could ride out of the rut I was in.
I left Macon County and band directing the following year to finish my Masters in Guidance and Counseling at TN Tech. Then I became a resident assistant and received a “free ride” to work on an Ed. Specialist Degree at Indiana University the following year. I became a "Dorm Daddy" in Wendell Wilkie Quad at IU. A whole new life path had opened it arms, and I was launched into the "Age of Aquarius."
The memories of the Macon County days are sweet breaths of air. I would not have missed them for anything. I’m just glad to have lived through them.
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