Transcript of interview with Richard "Curley" Francis by Connie Degernes, March 4, 1975

UNLV University Libraries Richard L. (Curley) Francis i An Interview with Richard L. (Curley) Francis An Oral History Conducted by Connie Degernes Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas Special Collections and Archives Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada, Las Vegas UNLV University Libraries Richard L. (Curley) Francis ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2017 UNLV University Libraries Richard L. (Curley) Francis iii The Oral History Research Center (OHRC) was formally established by the Board of Regents of the University of Nevada System in September 2003 as an entity of the UNLV University Libraries’ Special Collections Division. The OHRC conducts oral interviews with individuals who are selected for their ability to provide first-hand observations on a variety of historical topics in Las Vegas and Southern Nevada. The OHRC is also home to legacy oral history interviews conducted prior to its establishment including many conducted by UNLV History Professor Ralph Roske and his students. This legacy interview transcript received minimal editing, such as the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader's understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. The interviewee/narrator was not involved in the editing process. UNLV University Libraries Richard L. (Curley) Francis iv Abstract On March 4, 1975, collector Connie Degernes interviewed truck driver and rigger, Richard L. (Curley) Francis (born on July 27, 1907 in Compton, California) in his home in Boulder City, Nevada. The main focus of this interview is the construction of the Hoover Dam. Mr. Francis discusses the various occupations he has held since relocating to Nevada, including, Cat Skinner, truck driver, cableway operator, rigger foreman, and crane operator. He also talks about working for the government and the Six Company in Las Vegas. UNLV University Libraries Richard L. (Curley) Francis 1 This is Connie Degernes interviewing Curley Francis for the Boulder City Branch at AUW Oral History Project. Where at 817 6th Street, Mr. Francis’s residence. This is the Fourth of March, 1975. Okay. Okay. Ah, I was originally from Long Beach, California working in the area there, heavy equipment and in the waterfront. And all of a sudden we discovered that we were in a Depression where there was no jobs whatsoever. And I pulled a two-day job working for Griffith Company on a roller. Unfortunately, we gassed up about two o’clock in the afternoon and so that night, oh, I backed my old Ford out of the garage and it was four months behind in payments already. So I had to drive at night and I ran over to this big roller and I gassed up everything that I had that would hold gasoline. And the next night oh, I headed for Morris and (Unintelligible) or the Ridge Rock job and the reason I did this was because I had a friend up there and I took all my camping equipment with me and lock-stock-and-barrel, and I started out. And then, I arrived up in the Ridge Rock job and hopefully to get a job. Well, I waited about three or four weeks and running out of grub and everything else and fortunately, I found a little place where there was a lot of rabbits. And I never got so tired of eating rabbits in my life. But I used to get one every day and that was the only way we kept eating, most of the time. And finally, I got a job working for Morris and (Unintelligible) and picking rocks off the grade, as the trucks went up hill. And I had my eye on that Cat Skinner job for quite a while. Because I knew that Cat Skinner liked his bottle real well and he was late getting to work and we were going to work at three o’clock in the morning. Then, all of a sudden one morning he didn’t show. Then, so I just cranked up the Cat and started to work on the field and as the foremen come along, why, he said, “What are you UNLV University Libraries Richard L. (Curley) Francis 2 doing on this Cat?” And I said, “Well, somebody had to work the field.” So I just kept it going and he took a good look at it and he said, “Well, you’ve got yourself a steady job.” And I work for Morris and (Unintelligible) for about eleven months up there. And when the job finally quit, why, this superintendent come around and he said, “Curley,” he said, “Would you like to go to Boulder City?” And I said, “Where is it at?” He said, “Up in Nevada.” Then I said, “Well, fine.” So I arrived in Boulder City, to look at Boulder City on Christmas Day of 1931, and believe me I didn’t like what I saw. Sand dunes, and if you wanted a drink of water, why, you had to go down to the railroad track, there, where there was a tanker sitting, and draw your water there. So I turned around and went back to Las Vegas and I decided to stay in the area. And I rented a little apartment called the Pike Apartments. It was somewhere near Third or Fourth Street, one block off of Fremont. And it was quite a deal, at least I thought so. And I did pull a few jobs and I worked for the New Mexico Construction Company for about twenty-eight days, back filling pipelines in Boulder City here. And just the minute you got through, why, they’d write you right off and give you your check. They wanted to—if you only worked six hours in one day, that’s all the money you got. And I also worked for Bob Lee Turner, who was building the road down at the dam. I worked there almost thirty days, where I pulled a drawbar out of an old sixty Cat there, and of course, I was laid off immediately. I think I went to work for Six Companies either in the last part of March or the first part of April as a truck driver. And I worked the graveyard shift and I was still living in that little Pike Apartment down there. And the results was that when I was working at night, why, we practically had a family living in that little Pike Apartment; a man and his wife and two kids. Times were real tough and we saw many women folks and kids sleeping out on the lawn near the City Hall, covered with papers, and it was kind of a rough go in general. But this little couple that was in the Pike Apartments—in fact, I didn’t know them until UNLV University Libraries Richard L. (Curley) Francis 3 they, almost, just a few days before I rented the apartment. But the little lady was wonderful. She would clean up the apartment and have the beds all squared away and we had lots of men living in the apartment that, during the time that I was working graveyard and they were working days. Everybody had to help each other at that particular time because there wasn’t hardly any money. Now I had come from Morris and (Unintelligible) right straight to this job up here and I was trying to get on with the Six Companies and I went up to see the timekeeper almost every day and finally the guy told me not to come again. And I had a letter from this superintendent of Morris and (Unintelligible) and I pulled this letter out and said, “Will this help?” And he said, “Why in the hell didn’t you tell me?” And he told me to go to Las Vegas and register and see in four names my name would come up on the bulletin board, which it did, and I came out on graveyard shift as a truck driver. And I saw an old foreman of mine that had worked for Morris and (Unintelligible) and he stopped me one night and says, “What are you doing driving truck?” And I said, “Well, this looks real good to me.” And we were making five dollars a day or five dollars a shift on the, driving the trucks, and we had four days off a year. We worked seven days a week and we had two days off, Christmas, and two days off at Fourth of July. Anytime that you got sick and lost more than two days, why, you was out of a job. That’s just something that, we had no seniority no nothing, and it was no guarantee that you were going to work at all. So this fellow that I knew real well, he said, “Well, we’d like to have you do a little Cat Skinning, now and then.” So that’s how I got back doing a little Cat Skinning and truck driving at the same time, for the Six Companies. My dad died in 1933. So I went to San Diego to help with the funeral and I was gone about six days and of course I lost my job. Hm. UNLV University Libraries Richard L. (Curley) Francis 4 When I came back I didn’t have any job. So I shopped around a little bit and went to work for the Hi-mix up in that area. Now can you check me anywhere to—? Well, when it comes to truck driving the reason I liked it so well was that we traveled over the job quite a bit and was able to see the job and it was well lighted at night and you never could tell what your truck was gonna do the next night. Now in the driving mostly it was muck trucks at that particular time. Because what we were doing, it was excavating. And they were shooting and blasting the key waste for the dam at that particular time, anyways, and driving truck become quite a challenge now and then. Because the trucks were large and some of the trucks at that particular time especially the Marlin trucks were considered as the heaviest, the biggest heavy, hauling material truck they had in the world at that particular time. And I think that was around twelve to fourteen yards. Where today, it’s thirty, thirty-five to forty yards. But they were really a challenge to drive, now and then, and the Cat Skinning was something else, because hardly any dirt was on this job at all. It was mostly rock and it was difficult and I’m gonna say one thing about the truck drivers, you was either a truck driver, and they only gave you just a short period of time to break in and the foreman at that particular time could tell within an hour or so whether you was a truck driver. And if you wasn’t, away you went. That’s all there was to it. They didn’t have any time to break in anybody or show anybody anything. It was either drive the truck and that’s the way things went. Now I was driving back and forth from Las Vegas at that particular time and Las Vegas was an eye-opener to me. I was the—like considered a city boy, to a certain extent, when I came through here. But it always made me feel, oh, like I was a very important person, when I had to show a little card and the—when you knocked at the door for, to get into a bar and they’d slide open a little door and you’d show ‘em your card. And then, they’d let you in. And believe me I thought I was real important. But I found out later that I wasn’t so important about that money, UNLV University Libraries Richard L. (Curley) Francis 5 and gambling and the booze and the girls were plentiful and that’s all they really cared about. But they had to be careful at that particular time because Prohibition was still enforced. Mm. And of course I imagine that there was the payoff deal so I just know that there were many, many bars in Boulder City, in Las Vegas, at that particular time, that were operating, ah, with the prohibition law. Now, things to me, was it, what I got acquainted with the booze was that I was working graveyard shift and I was living in a little place in Las Vegas. I had moved from the Pike Apartments to a one room sleeping room and I couldn’t sleep; too hot in the day time, no coolers, no nothing like this, at that particular time. But the land lady told me, she said, “Well, why don’t you go over and get yourself a home brewed beer?” And I said, “Where do you get that?” And she, her husband’s name was Bill, he took me over and introduced me to the little bar in the Apache Hotel. Then, I could drink one of those home brewed beers and then I could sleep for the rest of the day, seemed like to me. But finally it got two, three, and four, and things weren’t going so good so I decided then that I’d better move to Boulder City. Now the dormitories were beginning to be finished. So I made an application for a room in the dormitory and moved in to the number two dormitory, close to the Mess Hall in Boulder City. And it wasn’t very long till I was transferred down through the river camp down the river, which was a real backset for me. Because I didn’t like it down there. But they had different areas for graveyard shift and swing shift and day shift to work as far as truck driving was concerned. As you all know that river camp was built right alongside the mountain there and one night a big rock came down through the mess hall and I thought to myself well it was time for me to move again. (Laughs) UNLV University Libraries Richard L. (Curley) Francis 6 So I came up and made another application for getting into the dormitories and after about a month waiting a made it again. So number two dormitory was my home for almost five years here. Hm. There you go. (Laughs) Many of the people wonder or, why I got the name of Curley, of course, I had curly hair and one of the first night I arrived on graveyard shift, why, it was a big fellow named Farmer, and we all ganged up on a big platform up there and as we called our numbers, they also called the number of the truck we was to work that night. And then, all of a sudden I was the last fellow left on the platform and then he said, “Francis” rather lightly, and I said, “That’s me.” And he said, “Good hell, what a name to hang onto a man.” Hm. He said—looked at me for a little while and finally said, “Well, when I call Curley, you come a running.” Hm. And that’s the way I got the name of Curley, and I’ve had it ever since. And I guess I’ll never get rid of it. But I’ve got lots of mail by the name of Curley Francis. And we were excavating the tunnels about this time and also the Penstock tunnels and some of the upper tunnels. And driving trucks through this tunnel, there was a gas problem there real bad, at times, and usually you could tell by looking at the lights in the tunnel, and if they had a big blue ring around them, why, you know the gas was getting pretty rough in there. But fortunately for the truck drivers, why, we would be driving through it and come out to the other end. And usually if you get too much gas that’s when you get sick is when you come out and into the fresh air. And they followed a few of them up to the hospital. And working the upper tunnels there, they had a catwalk from the valve UNLV University Libraries Richard L. (Curley) Francis 7 houses across from Arizona to the Nevada side and one night we were working up into the Pen Stop tunnels in the upper tunnels and one of the fellows got hurt pretty bad and we knew at that particular time that you received more money, compensation wise when a man got hurt on the Arizona side. So we made a litter out of a cup of two by twelves and some two by fours, and four of us fellows loaded him on that makeshift stretcher and took him across the catwalk to the Arizona side. And then, we called the first aid and informed them what the problem was. And that’s when Doc Jenson comes into the picture pretty well. Doc Jenson was with Six Companies and he was on twenty-four hours a day. He had, was moved from place to place and he had a first aid hut that anytime of night, anytime of the day, why, you could call him and he’d be right there. And he usually had a thermos bottle with him when he came along. And usually if you weren’t hurt too bad and so forth and so on and he’d offer you a drink out of this thermos bottle and that made everything rosy. Now the cableway work was beginning to work at that particular time somewhat. We had not excavated down to the glory hole yet. The glory hole is the, right down to the bottom of the dam and we were getting into gravel and sand down at the bottom. And during the nighttime they always had their blasts or shots go off somewhere around three o’clock in the morning. And as we were bunched up together as truck drivers why, we’d always try to pan gold down in the slot a little bit. And this glory hole was a beautiful place to look at after it was completed because it was actually swept and washed and cleaned up with brushes and everything. Everything had to be as clean and immaculate as one could imagine, for, to start the concrete pour. And it was slow work to the fact that a lot of it was hand mucking at that particular time and there was no big machinery could do this, that type of work. Curley, what does mucking mean and what’s a Cat Skinner? UNLV University Libraries Richard L. (Curley) Francis 8 Well, mucking is a general word used in construction. You drive a muck truck which hauls nothing but dirt or if you’re running a shovel, you’re mucking, or if you’re a Cat Skinner with a dozer in the front end of, you’re mucking out. Ah, even if you’re running, even if you’re working a hand shovel, the word mucking, means of course, moving dirt. And Cat Skinning got the name from a caterpillar, a man operating a caterpillar with a dozer in front of it. The dozer is a normal word for a blade that sets in front of the Cat. And the, eventually the word of Cat Skinning is making a reference to the operator who operates the Cat with a dozer in front of it. Okay. What was your job after they started pouring the concrete in the dam? Well, after my dad died in 1933, of course, I lost my job, when I came back for Six Companies and I wrestled around and got a job up with the High Mix. And I was extra man there, running the gas locomotives and flatbed trucks and so forth and so on. Seeing the concrete got to the cableways. Now they had four Davenport gas locomotives at that particular time and a few of the electric locomotives, which run on a third rail around from High Mix. And my job was to haul concrete to the cableways at that particular time and you had to be quite efficient with the air breaks in hauling concrete to the cableways due to the fact that you had to stop right on the money to receive the empty and move the length of the bucket to, for the cableway to pick up the full load. And these concrete buckets, as I understand at that particular time when they were full with eight yards of cobble that they weighed twenty-four ton. What’s cobble? Well, they had an eight inch cobblestone mix, is what we called it, cobblestone mix, and that was for the big pours in the middle of the dam. Of course they had smaller aggregate for the keyway slots and so forth and so on. And also, there was grout in each pour before the large aggregate or eight inch aggregate came to the forms, at that particular time. Now I think the first bucket that UNLV University Libraries Richard L. (Curley) Francis 9 was poured down in the glory hole was on the Sixth of June of 1933—or in that area, I believe. And we become interested in that particular time to that they had a, the, as the dam started to grow, the cableways become more demanding, otherwise we had to haul concrete faster all the time. And so, about the end of 1934, they decided to make a record pour if possible, on the cableways. And I run the gas locomotives on that particular pour and I think there were two hundred and seventy-seven (unintelligible) cubic yard buckets poured in an eight hour shift. This didn’t mean any more money to us or anything like that but just it was the fact that we were the top crew working cableways. Now I had worked two years and four months of graveyard shift. I can sleep any place, anywhere, and if I stood still just a few minutes, why, I’d be sound asleep. It didn’t make any difference where I was at. I was a young fellow at that particular time and there was a lot of interesting things that I could see and going on and I didn’t get too much sleep in working nights all the time. So finally I had saved a little money and decided that I would try for a day shift job. So I went to the boss one morning and said how long I had worked for the graveyard shift and asked if there was anything to do on dayshift and he said, “No. There wasn’t.” And I said, “Well, I’m gonna quit at the end of the week.” He said, “That’s just fine. Glad to get rid of you anyways.” And so, the day before I was going to quit, why, he came to me and said, “I’ve got a dayshift job for you. One of the fellows had a death in the family and that’ll be two or three days work.” And I started out on the dayshift and that’s how I got on the dayshift. The fellow never did come back so I just kept his job and finally got to the point where we were doing quite a bit of Cat Skinning along with the railroad work. And eventually I came up with a job that I enjoyed very much at that particular time and that was hauling the pipe down from BMW or Babcock and Wilcox Fabrication Plant about a mile and a half from the dam and in that area. UNLV University Libraries Richard L. (Curley) Francis 10 I understand that there were electric trains as well as gas trains running from the High Mix. What was the purpose of having two kinds? Well, I really don’t know what the purpose was but the fact is that the concrete was raising in the glory hole and that meant that they didn’t take the cableways as long to get rid of their load. Therefore, we had to have more engines. At some times we had nine engines running on two tracks with two crossovers at that particular time. We had four gas engines and as many of the electric engines as we could get at that particular time. We had a switch tower that was stationed just outside of the two tracks and they were all air switches and there was many times when we had to be run around one engine to the other to get the pacific load to a certain cableway. This was a mass confusion and this, they had a large whistle on the top of the switch tower and any time that that man hung on to that whistle everybody stopped because we all knew that he was confused and didn’t know where everybody was at. We had red lights and green lights to tell us when to go, how to go and it was the amazement to me that we didn’t have more wrecks than we did. There was derails at times and we had a few collisions, minor ones—didn’t amount to an awful lot but at the same token why it was a real feat to be able to run the switch tower and keep all nine trains working. Could the electric trains do some things better than the gas engines? Ah, not particularly but they tried to keep the electric trains on the long-haul for small buckets like pouring four yards in the intake towers. Usually we had the—they had the electric trains running on the inside track and the longest run. It was difficult to switch the electric train from one side to the other because the third rail did not go along with the switchover. Therefore, you had to have speed to go from one track to the other. What was your job like when you started hauling the penstock pipe? UNLV University Libraries Richard L. (Curley) Francis 11 Well, I fell into that job a little bit because I was doing Cat Skinning work somewhat and all of a sudden there was an opening for that. And I sort of fell into that job. I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about it but after I got started at it I could see it was a real challenge and our job was to haul the penstock pipe, which was thirty foot in diameter from Babcock and Wilcox Fabrication Plant down to the cableway. Oh, perhaps a mile, mile and a half. And these pipes ranged from eighty-six ton to two hundred and ten ton, which would include the spiders that were to keep the pipe round. And we would receive these pipes at BMW and it took two Cats to start the load. We always started the load with two Cats and after we made the turn towards the road, the front Cat would drop off and go to the backend and hook on to the backend of the trailer and all the time this trailer was moving. And the idea of the back Cat was to give the trailer a stable ride down the hill, otherwise we were, hopefully, that we had a good break job on the trailer, and with this Cat in the back, why, it would stabilize the speed. And this was real essential, we found out later on. And then, when we arrived at the cableway it would take two Cats to push this large pipe into place so that the cableway could pick it up and that meant making a real right turn. And on this trailer every wheel in it steered, both the back and the front. It was all hydraulic and we had air breaks. It was a real piece of machinery for that particular time. Now our job at that particular time, too, was the Cat Skinner when we got to that place there, why, we would have to put the rigging on. We had to hook up the moonbeams and the cables and the cross cables to balance the load and eventually we worked into the rigging under the cableway in between trips with the pipe going down to the dam. Why, we’d have all kinds of machinery and lumber and stuff to hook up and take down to the dam. So that fell in with the job. Mm-hm. How many sections of pipe might you call in one shift? UNLV University Libraries Richard L. (Curley) Francis 12 Well, sometimes we’d get two or three and then sometimes we wouldn’t haul one for sometimes two or three days. Mm-hm. This was because of the demand for the pipe. Otherwise if they wanted a pipe down in the hole and they didn’t have it ready up at Babcock and Wilcox, basically, we’d just have to wait until it was ready. And there were many times when we thought we was gonna get a pipe on one shift and we wouldn’t get it until the next shift. So this varied quite a bit. But it was always an outstanding event for everybody when we come down the hill with the pipe. I don’t know whether people just enjoyed seeing going long or looking for something that might happen someday. But it was quite, quite a job to take this—in fact, it never been hauled, I believe this trailer was a, what they called, a hundred and fifty ton trailer. But as you can see it was built to haul better than two hundred ton. And it was an outstanding piece of equipment for its time. What was that road like that you had to haul on? Well, the road was a dirt road at that particular time and our job was at the in between pipe, was to keep this road clean. We’d blade it and water it and so forth and so on and it was absolutely level. It, we couldn’t stand any tipping of any kind as far as the trailer was concerned and the pipe was concerned. We had four saddles on the trailer. It was contoured to the pipe itself and we had no way of binding it down or so that it just sat right on the trailer with these four saddles. So we kept this road absolutely leveled. There was no tipping of the road, even though it did make hairpin turn towards the dam—it was all leveled. Could any other traffic use the road while you were on it? No. We had a police escort. We had two policemen that usually come down and one would stop the traffic down at the dam and then the other would follow us down and try to get all of the UNLV University Libraries Richard L. (Curley) Francis 13 vehicles off the road. And we did have some problems, once in a while. But we got real efficient in picking locks and moving cars that were in our road. We would use coat hangers and wires of all kinds and we’d open up a car and hook onto it and drag it off to someplace and so it was out of the road. Did you ever have an accident while you were taking the pipes down? No. Not a serious one. We did have a mechanical failure, one of the brake linings in one of the big wheels folded over and locked the wheel tight. And we couldn’t move the trailer whatsoever and, until we had to repair it. Traffic—we were in a place where we could reroute the traffic by building a road to the side and getting around it. We had several one hundred ton jacks underneath it and our biggest problem was trying to get the wheel off of the brake assembly due to the fact that the brake lining had folded over. This took, I believe we worked about eighteen hours on that and eventually we got the wheel off, got the brake shoes out, plugged off the line, put the wheels back on and was able to continue on down, down to the dam. At that particular time, we also had a little trouble with hydraulic steering and we had leakage and broken pipes, now and then. But we was able to overcome this situation by using heavy duty pipe and we didn’t care too much about how the steering failed but when our braking system failed, why, we were all concerned. Ah, some of the trips down were just a little bit—we were a little bit uneasy about it because sometimes that load would get to rolling too fast and it would take some time for the brakes to take hold. And we’ve lost quite a few bearings out of the back Cat, from pulling it on compression. Ah, most construction—most of the construction people will know what compression is to stabilize the speed of this load. Mm-hm. UNLV University Libraries Richard L. (Curley) Francis 14 As time went along work became rather thin and I began looking for a place to go to find work, and I believe that was in about 1935. And I never did like to work a job until it was absolutely through because most of the guys that drifted on and by the time I’d come along then, why, all the jobs were taken. So I always looked ahead a little bit and finally one day I thought, well, I’ve had enough of this job anyways, and I know of two or three jobs down in California, so I’m gonna quit and go down and take a look. So I bunched it and pulled a pin and I believe I’ve had—one of the few fellows that got a letter of recommendation from Frank T. Crow. And I asked him for a letter for it and he gave me one and I shoved off and I went to California and I didn’t go to work for a while. I was enjoying life real well. I lived down near Westlake and for eight cents to a dollar and twenty cents I could get to any of the fights or the Ice Palace or the ball fields there, and I sure did enjoy life, for a while. But all of a sudden I discovered that my money was getting thin. Mm. So I went out and looked for a job and I went to work for Griffith Company in Calco Dam and that was in the metropolitan water district system. And I worked there for quite a little while and saved up a little more money and then went to Parker, which I met a lot of the old cronies that I’d known through construction work and when a fellow named Frank said, “Well, how long did it take you to get here?” He said, “We’ve been looking for you every day, almost.” (Laughs) And I got there about, oh, I don’t know, about ten o’clock in the morning and I was—went to work on swing shift as a Cat Skinner, pushing overload on top of the dam; that was an earth filled dam. And due to union problems, controversy on who was to be the union in that area, why, there was a strike on, or a job, shut down. So I came up to Boulder City to visit Claude UNLV University Libraries Richard L. (Curley) Francis 15 Moore and a few of ‘em old cronies that were still working up here and all of a sudden, why, when I pulled in through the BMW warehouse there, why, Claude said, “There’s a guy that can get that Cat going.” And I said, “Claude, I’m not looking for a job. I’m perfectly satisfied and I don’t want to get hooked back on this job up here.” Mm. But after our discussion, we went out to the stockpiles out there and there was a Cat out there that the transmission needed timing real bad and so we checked the timing and got it back into working order. And I had dinner over at Claude’s house that night. He lived on C Street at that time, if I remember correctly and his mom was an excellent cook. And as we were eating and talking, why, a knock came at the door and this foreman came and wanted to know if I was interested in going to work for the government, and I said, “Well, I already, I have a job. I’m just not—don’t know.” And he said, “Well, we’d like to have you come to work for us for being a Cat Skinner and we have work enough for you from four to six months.” And I asked him what the wages were and it was eighty-six cents an hour. And I said, “No go.” I said, “No. I’m making a dollar and ten where I’m at.” And I said, “I’m not about to go below that.” And he said, “Well, I’m sorry.” So he left and came back in a little while and he said, “Do you care what we call you? What rating we give you?” I said, “No.” He said, “Well, all I can offer you is a dollar an hour. That’s the highest pay that the government puts out at this particular time anyway.” And he says, “But we’ll have to call you a heavy-duty mechanic.” And I said, “Well I don’t really care what you call me or what my rating is. But I’m not enthusiastic about taking a job for a dollar an hour when I can make a dollar ten an hour.” But Claude, my old friend, he said, “Yep. He’ll take the job.” And I said, “Well, I don’t have any diggers, I don’t have any work cloth