Case of the missing equipment - part 2

The question was who was doing this? Then why? And finally how?


Start with the last question, how. It seems easily answered. Except we had different equipment on the project. We had Cat, Case, and Komatsu, all required different keys to start. Even the Cat keys were two different types since the scrapers and the D-8 dozer were cable models and the 225 trackhoe and D-4 dozer were newer models. Also,the newer models had kill switches on them, we made sure these were in the kill position every night before we left. So the answer to how was he had to be an operator with keys and knowledge to start and move the equipment.

The question who, we thought it was obvious. It was some one who had worked for us in the past, maybe some one we fired or didn't hire? I concentrated on this even though I was new.

The why, again it was someone with a grudge against the company. They have done over twenty thousand dollars in damage. The next question was, is this enough? Since we still had no clue who or why we needed to have some protection.

So far we had been hit on Friday night or Saturday morning, and on Sunday night or Monday morning. This next weekend I sat out there on Friday night, our chief mechanic took Saturday night, and Sam took Sunday night. They struck again on Monday night. Out the window went theory of them having a job and they only struck on nights they weren't working.

On Tuesday morning after making the latest police report the decision was simple, to contract off duty sheriff deputies to guard our equipment. Since all the damage was done between two and four in the morning we had them start at midnight and would be there until six.

That night the captain that I was talking to drove by the site around six pm and saw all our equipment lined up about one hundred and fifty fee off the road. The deputy that was to sit our there drove past the site around nine pm and didn't see any equipment. Guess what? They hit us between six and nine. The deputy sat out there and guarded nothing. The damage had been done.

Now I was convinced that this was an inside job. Our employees knew the deputy sheriff's had been hired. Who else could it be. The captain from the sheriff's department and myself decided on a new strategy. Random times, he would schedule men to be on site the patrol right before they are to be there. These times would be from six pm to six am, four hours at a time per night. I would the only person knowing these times and I wouldn't tell anyone including Sam.

This seem to work, for about three weeks. Then on a Saturday morning I get the call from Lonnie. “Have you moved my backhoe out?” I told him to look for it.

The next call, “I found it, you'll never believe it, send a mechanic.” This said all before I could key up my mic to ask any questions. When I did get a turn to speak, it was to come out and see for myself and bring a camera.

They backhoe was in a ditch, upside down resting on the roll over protection or most people would say on its top. The key was in the on position so it had been running when it landed there. To this day I do not know how it got in that position and if someone was driving it how they got out without killing themselves. The sheriff did check the local hospitals.

Mystery solved. On Wednesday morning I got a call from a deputy. He was scheduled to be on duty the night before when he drove by he heard our equipment running. He pulled back into the site and saw three kids starting our equipment. He pulled up and flashed his lights they were off like jack rabbits through the woods. He never caught them.

When he called he asked if the company would press charges. When he was told that we would rather hire them he laughed. It's true, fifteen, sixteen year old kids operating equipment like they were, it had to be a hidden talent. I've been around equipment all my adult life and it would take me about thirty minutes to move a Cat 225, they were doing it in five. It would take me longer than that to find the kill switch.

The deputy said he got a good look at two of the boys, he would go through the local school year books to try and locate them. He, also, went to all of the local farms and told them who he was looking for and the damage totaling over thirty thousand at this point. To my knowledge, he never did locate them. No arrest were made. The company paid all the damages.

So, I was wrong on it being an inside job, on the profile of who was doing it, and on why anyone would be attacking us in this way. It was kids, they went to Cat and got keys. They told them it was for their fathers. I assumed they did the same to obtain the Case and Komatsu keys. They practiced on our equipment.

They baffled me and made me mad. To this day I am still amazed how they didn't end up dead. God must have been looking out for them.

Case of The Missing Equipment

The title is a little deceiving. We did find all the equipment, it's where we would find it that was really puzzling.


A few months after going to work for Sam Minnielli in 1987, we started a subdivision for Mike West on Old Colerain Road. It was my first subdivision and it was in a location I was very familiar with. Growing up in Ross we traveled Colerain Road through Dunlap a lot as a kid. During my high school years this section of Colerain was by-passed with a new road thus the name Old Colerain as it became known. It was brought to my attention that this was not the correct name, I'll explain that later.

I found that site projects and subdivisions were a lot alike except subdivisions usually are long and narrow running between right of ways where site packages will control large amounts of acreage. In subdivisions you do not disturb any more than you have to.

We started an off site water line the same day we started the clearing and the dirt. About four days into project I get a call on the radio from Lonnie Creech asking if we moved his equipment. The mechanic who fueled up all the equipment told him he found his completely out of fuel to the right of the entry. Since that area was wooded I didn't think too much of it except for the question “who moved Lonnie's equipment?”

That was incident number one, incident number two happened a couple of days later. Usually, Sam would be in before me and get the crews out to the job sites with men and tools they needed for the day. This particular Monday morning, he wasn't in. I got everybody out the door and was in my office when he came through the door.

Some one had hit our equipment at Mike West subdivision. Mike had called Sam around four in the morning telling him a Deputy Sheriff had called him to say our equipment at the site was running.

When he got there a brand new D-4 dozer was stuck on a tree. This tree was one that was to remain, not good. Some one had started a 225 track hoe and tried to tip over a scraper. This damaged a hydraulic cylinder. All toll about ten thousand dollars in damage plus a five foot diameter oak tree.

The first police report was filed with the Hamilton County Sheriffs Department. Assumptions were made about who was responsible. One, they knew their way around equipment. Two, they may have a grudge against the contractor or the realtor. Three, they wanted to be destructive.

We also had several questions, the first being how did they get the D-4 on top of the tree trunk? The second was why us? The third was who did this?

The rest of the week Hamilton County stepped up patrols after hours. We got lulled into thinking the worst was over when it was just beginning.

Mike West started his first house, the foundation was in and part of the first floor framing. The roadway took shape, and the on-site utilities were going in. The sun was shinning and all seemed to be going well. Then it happened.

On Saturday morning Lonnie called on the radio asking for his backhoe. Sam told him that it wasn't moved, to go look for it. He called back a few minutes later, he found it. It was nose down in the basement. Oh yea, they knocked down the house that was started a few days ago.

Ever try to pick up a twenty thousand pound machine that usually sits horizontally now sitting vertically on the bottom of the basement. We knew we would have engine problems because it was running when it went over the foundation wall. Now it was obvious that someone had a vendetta against us.

The thought crossed our mind that some one was getting even for something we may or may not have done. The person doing this knew us. Who could it be?

Next time I will conclude this.

Venezuela 3 - The Ball Game

Being in a location in which you are not wanted can be a very unpleasant place to be. It's even worse when you are out of the country and away from your family. That was San Diego in the state of Carabobo, Venezuela. What had been a lazy farming town was now a busy industrial town due to oil. The locals resented foreigners, we were carpetbaggers in their eyes. In a sense, I guess we were. We were bringing change and most long time residents didn't like it.

This was the fourth time we had built this same test facility for Creole International, the second time using metric in lieu of British units. Luther Borgston taught me in Borneo to think in metric and stop doing conversions in my head. Building this building did get easier when I took his advice.

Another thing that made this job easier was I kept the same sub contractors and suppliers from the project in Borneo except for the plumber. The plumber was local and was the only local contractor to give us a bid. With my broken Spanish we worked out the numbers so he got the project and to this day I believe he was grateful.

Americans had the dirt, concrete and carpentry portions of the project. South Koreans had the steel erection. The electric was contracted to a company in South Africa and the HVAC to a company in England. All these companies came together to build a little ten thousand square foot test facility in record time.

Being out of town and away from home the work schedule tends to be long. The trick is not so long that you slack up on safety and get sloppy. This particular job, we worked five twelve hour days and one eight hour. We would take Sundays off unless we were rained out more than one day. Our goal was to get the job done and go home.

Americans had the dirt, concrete and carpentry portions of the project. South Koreans had the steel erection. The electric was contracted to a company in South Africa and the HVAC to a company in England. All these companies came together to build a little ten thousand square foot test facility.

After the trouble at the bar, none of the men ventured back into town to have a night out. They had their beer in camp. Sundays was the only day they ventured out and that was to the local school grounds to play softball.

Several locals would come out to watch but not to partake. The younger ones would taunt about not really playing a real game. My men tried to get them to join us but they looked at slow pitch softball as a woman's game. They would only play a man's game of baseball. One Sunday afternoon a few locals came around and challenged us to a game of baseball. Luther told them that they had better watch what they asked for. They held pat and the challenge was on. They gave us a couple of weeks to get ready which was their mistake.

Luther told the boys that baseball was my game and for a few years had managed a high school aged baseball team. Getting onto site the next day Luther told me of the challenge. Having my doubts since I didn't think anyone played baseball after high school or before. The second thought was it may be good for community relations which we greatly needed.

With Mr. Lee and his South Koreans, we had fourteen at our first practice. Not one pitcher among us. The only thing that went right was the hitting show I put on. The pitcher would deliver me a fat one I would take it long, he throw inside, I'd take it to the opposite field, and if he throw outside, I'd take it again to the opposite field. It was obvious that fielding was not my problem, it was throwing. The team had the same problem.

At sixteen, I had a pretty good career ahead of me in baseball, at seventeen, I threw out my arm, all I could do is hit. Granted I could still throw, it just didn't pop like before. So I planted myself at first base a position in which throwing was limited.

Mr. Lee came though with a pretty good pitcher in his organization, a kid that could throw a ninety mile an hour fast ball. He didn't have any junk pitches but his speeds was fast and faster.

Have you ever seen “Major League, Back to the Minors”? Doc was a little like me. I could throw a round house curve, a slider and the all purpose knuckle ball. With one practice, this kid picked up a knuckle ball to use as a change up. It worked about one out of four times, the other three was spinners with a speed of about seventy in lieu of ninety miles an hour. Not a bad change up.

We scored first in the first inning. They tied it up in the third and went ahead in the fourth. We scored two in the sixth to go ahead.

Still leading in the ninth, it came down to the last three outs. The first batter walked, the second hit to third. The third baseman bobbled and they had men on first and second. The next man struck out.

One out with men on first and second. The fifth man up in the inning hit a sharp ball to Mr. Lee at short. He flipped to second but we couldn't get the double play.

Two out men on first and third, I called time out to make sure everyone knew the signals. Their cleanup hitter was coming up next. The first pitch was a ball. The second was a strike. The third was a ball. The fourth pitch was a bunt down third base line that went foul. He hit two more foul balls.

I knew he was expecting the knuckle ball that was a more or less a spinning change up. The pitcher shook off the next pitch, all I could do is shake my head. I knew the game was over.

What happen next was too good to be true. The knuckle ball worked and the bottom dropped out of it. He could have swung twice at it and to this day I still it see it in slow motion. No one could have thrown a knuckle ball better.

After winning the first game, we never won another. A game was played every Sunday for the next five. The stands probably held a couple hundred, it was standing room only. There were times we didn't have enough players so they loaned us some. We played on and everybody had a great time and we started going back into town again. Community relations was mended by a ball game.

Cooking for two hundred

I have always thought of myself as a pretty good cook, from my stuffed pork chops to my award winning chilli. Learning to cook was a way of having a home cooked meal all of those years I was by lived by myself. Today my wife does the cooking. She doesn't allow me to cook any more, she is afraid of the ingredients that I may use.


I made stuffed pork chops for my wife only one time. She knew about my secret to my chilli and decided to eat everything except the pork chops. Needless to say I'm not allowed to cook.

My award winning chilli is truly award winning. In 1979 a group of us approached our boss and asked about the company sponsoring us in the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo chilli cook off. The first year we didn't even come in the first one hundred. The second year we added a secrete ingredient.  We didn't cook enough it was so good everyone ate it before the judging. The third year we tied for fourth.

I did make my chilli one year for the yearly meeting of managers at Bray-Arnsperger. It went over very well. You'll have to wait until the book comes out to find out who ate two helpings and had the third in front of him when I told everybody the secret ingredient.

The best day of cooking was not actually for me or in a competition, it was at Plant Daniels north of Pascagoula, Mississippi. You see, in the south when a contractor finishes a successful project it is a tradition to feed everybody on site. Since we finished our construction contract and about to sign a five year maintenance contract we didn't want to do anything to jeopardize our position with the power plant.

How afraid would you be when you are told that you would be cooking for up to two hundred people? I didn't have butterfly's in my stomach, I had dive bombers.

I think our original thought would be to have the Colonel cater it. You know, call up the local KFC and order enough for two hundred. After kicking around ideas for the better part of a week we kept coming back to this.

One site about a week before the lunch date was a sub contractor, I think he was doing the pavement markings. We asked him to come to the lunch for the plant. He asked what we were having, when told, probably KFC he volunteered to cook if we bought the ingredients and supplied the help. This man was pretty smart, he knew a bunch of Yankees didn't know how to make good on this tradition.   He knew what the plant would like and told us he would save us money.

This was the first time I ever saw a deep fryer for cooking turkeys was on this day. It wasn't used to cook turkey, we used it to cook the rice. Also, we had a gas grill to to cook the chicken and sausage. The menu was Jambalaya, tossed salad, cake, and a soft drink.

We fed one hundred sixty two that day for less than one hundred dollars. Lunch started at eleven o'clock and we served until after one. Everybody was full and we had plenty left over that went to the local firehouse. And the most important thing, we had a good time doing it.

I have kept this recipe for a long time in case I may need to cook for two hundred again.

France

It was late spring and Creole wanted another test facility, this time in the south of France. Nothing like being in Europe in the springtime and being paid to build a building that you have built three other times. Oh yea, Cannes Film Festival would be going on during construction.

Several twist on this project verses the other Creole test facilities. The first was a parking garage to be included. Another twist, the local labor force was union and with the timing of the film festival created created a shortage of skilled labor and union frowned on importing labor. As always, to me the job was the most important. Since I couldn't get local labor I did import it. The final twist was Creole had a French partner.

The parking garage turned out to be the least of my worries. I settled on a precast design with the supplier in Paris giving me a turnkey product. This garage was round and they claimed the foundations would take a week to form and pour, the precast set in a day, and a lightweight topping slab finished in two days. My original thoughts was that this was totally B S.

To reaffirm that I am a person of logic. If it seems logical I can buy in to it. If it doesn't seem logical it is very difficult for me to buy. That's me, that's the way I am. So when Creole told me the next test facility was to be in Nice, France. I did my research and found that this was the most illogical place to put one of their facilities for testing and re-building turbine engines for off-shore oil wells. Especially since there was no oil (off shore or on shore) in the north Mediterranean region.

In 1981 the closest established wells were Libya. Just a few years earlier they started drilling off the Canary Islands, and of course there was the USSR in the Black Sea. I figured out that since this was France with a French company owning over fifty percent of the partnership with Creole, it technically was a French company. Remember, this was before sanctions against Libya I still couldn't belief Nice.

My first encounter with the French people was at De Gaulle in Paris. Of course people in most airports aren't very friendly. The people encountered at Nice Cote d'Azur Airport was just the opposite. It was more like flying into Kansas City or Nashville. These people bent over backwards to help you and didn't show any resentment in my lack of French. I can still remember laughing when I called the desk to check on my flight and I heard in a deep southern accent “Air France y'all, how can I help ya.” Several years later I heard a comedian say about the same in a skit except he was talking about Air France out of Louisville.

Arriving in early April it was cool but it had a subtropical appearance. I noticed the usual palms, eucalyptus and the citrus trees but there was a broad leaf evergreen shrub that I don't think I ever saw before. These broad leaf evergreens proved to be a problem when we cleared the site, in the end we recycled them. This was fifteen years before recycling began.

It is always warming to be in a distant city and see someone you know. Martha Borgeston was at the airport to pick me up. Her and Luther had been in town for two weeks while I was finishing up the preconstruction details. Luther was meeting with the local construction union so I saw her smiling face waiting at the gang way.

In upcoming blogs I want to decribe the parking garage, “The Chariots of Fire”, and the trip to Paris.

Gorman Exploration or “How to complete a good job and still get sued”

Have you ever had a gut feeling about a project? You know, one that just didn't feel right. I had that kind of feeling about Gorman Exploration in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Our company was set up for a project manager to take a project from conception to punch out. This is what I was use to. Bob Newton, the big fig as we called him, thought that two project managers in the same town was too much. He wanted one project manager to do both projects. Since I would be in Lafayette doing the Creole Project which could not be given to another manager, I would do both.

The logic of one project manager for both projects makes sense, except I didn't know anything about Gorman. Even though I had built the first Creole job, the project was so complicated that I felt as though it was the priority and Gorman would be secondary.

The Gorman project was a multi story building with the first floor open except for a fountain and an elevator. If you are not familiar with exploration companies, the first thing you need to know is they are very security conscious. Only personnel with security clearance can enter the elevator. If you were invited to their office, you would be met by the person you were meeting on the first floor at the elevator and would be escorted to where you are going in the building.

I was behind the eight ball and was playing catch up all the way through the construction process. It look like it was going to be a very good job. We finished on budget and on schedule and every one seemed happy. But my gut kept telling me something was going to go wrong.

You remember that fountain on the first floor. Some one from Gorman saw a fountain similar and wanted the same for their building. It would spray a ball and give a soothing sound. A great idea except we are on the Gulf Coast and any one on the Gulf Coast will tell you not only there is a wind factor but a humidity factor.

With the fountain came sensors, when the wind blows the sensors would turn off the fountain. When it rains the sensors would turn off the fountain. So in the this particular location the fountain would start up and kick off every ten or fifteen minutes either by wind or by the one hundred percent humidity. Of course this was unacceptable to the owners who wanted the fountain to work one hundred percent of the time.

The meeting was quite ugly when I told them that the fountain could not be fixed due to the wind and the humidity. They turned the fountain off and sue us. We had an ace in the hole.

The ace was a letter I had written to the company representative early in construction stating that after reading the specifications on the fountain and finding out wind would affect the performance that we should find another fountain or drop the fountain altogether. I knew rain would turn the fountain off but I didn't think of humidity until after the building was built. The humidity would be so thick that the sensors thought it was rain.

He had the feeling that we didn't want to put in a fountain, so he wrote me back a letter insisting not only on a fountain but this particular fountain. He totally dismissed my concerns.

When we got to arbitration I sat through two days of hearing how bad we were as contractors. When it was our turn, I was the first and only witness for the defendants. The letter I wrote to Gorman was produced as well as the return letter from Gorman addressed to me. I explained my concerns in my letter and the owners response. Of course, this is one in which we won the battle and lost the war. I don't think we ever worked for Gorman again.

If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.

“If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” this quote was from the only true legend that I have ever met. As a person who have had the opportunity to meet sports heroes, leaders of industry, astronauts. governors, congressmen, senators, and even two presidents some may think of them as legends and they may even think of themselves as legends in their own time, they were not on par with this man. The man who gave us that quote was a legend to all that had met him, wanted to meet him or seen John Wayne portray him. His name was Red Adair.

At Rogers-O'Brian in Houston a salesman would make the initial sales call and then be paired with a project manager. Finishing up a couple of projects I had enough time to oversee a couple of local projects. One of the projects assigned was a office and warehouse for the Red Adair Wild Well Control Company.

Stepping into his office for the first time was total fascination. The only thing I knew about Red Adair was from an occasional newspaper articles and the 1968 John Wayne movie, “The Hell Fighters.” The lobby was full of awards in glass encasement's and pictures on the walls. The conference room was even more impressive, it had pictures in poster size of well fires that they had put out.

It wasn't until the third meeting with company officials that I had actually met him. He was so laid back and really genuine that at first I didn't know who he was because no one introduced him. The salesman that was with me was answering his questions directed toward this new man in the meeting no matter who asked them. I was answering the questions directed to me to who ever ask them and to the man I was first told was in charge of the project.

Around thirty minutes into the meeting the man who no one introduced asked everyone to step out except the man in charge of the project and me. After the door closed he turns around and said he was Red Adair and promptly replied that I knew, even though I didn't until that moment.

My senses was telling me that things were not going well in the meeting. Mr. Adair confirmed this when he asked me about the used car salesman I was with. You see, Kenny Hofman looked like and sounded like Herb Tarlek from 'WKRP in Cincinnati,' complete with the green, yellow and blue plaid suit, yellow shirt and blue and yellow striped tie.

After explaining to him how the company was setup. That any pricing for this project had to come through me and it was a firing offense for any salesman give out any numbers or estimates without a project manager signing off. I think this assured him that I would be his go to man, and not Kenny.

The project was an eighty thousand square foot warehouse with a twenty thousand square foot two story office building. Nothing in particular to note about it, you see these any where you go. I think the office building was built for future use or resale value. All we finished in the office building was the elevator, rest rooms and the perimeter walls. The warehouse was to store the company's fire fighting equipment and well head inventory.

Being twenty seven or twenty eight at the time I was amazed at the amount of men who flock around him. We went to lunch a couple of times and seeing all these men with the alligator skinned cowboy boots and the Rolex watches come up just to say hi. They all wanted to be like him and I've to say I changed my preference of boots to bull hides like his.

Red Adair was seventy seven when President George H.W. Bush called on him to put out the oil well fires in Kuwait. He put together a coalition of companies that were owned by former employees like Boots and Coots International Well Control. The experts were saying it would take three to five years to put out all the fires. When I heard that Red Adair was on the job I made a bet that he would have them out in less than a year. It took nine months, I felt bad about taking their money because it was a sure thing in my mind.

I have found his quote “If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur” to be true in many cases. The times I was hurt in construction it was because I hired amateurs and not true professionals. It happened in Morrow and it happened at Splash Mountain. This is one lesson I vowed never to repeat.