RANDY SCHWENN
April24, 2008
Marion, Texas
Martha Doty Freeman, Interviewer
San Antonio River Authority Oral History Project, Phase II
This is Martha Doty Freeman. The date is April 24111
, 2008. I'm interviewing Randy
Schwenn as part of the San Antonio River Authority Oral History Project. The interview is
taking place in Marion, Texas.
4-o
I gues~give you a little background, I lived out in this area all my life. I grew up on the farm,
1\
and well, I'm still out on that same piece of property. I went to school at East Central High
School and ...
Did you bus into San Antonio?
No, bused us to East Central, from one side almost to the other side of the district because we
lived way on this east side and the school is kind of on the south side of the district, so we
bused all the way in. Graduated in '64 I think it was and then worked for a custom farm
operator, and we did just about all types of custom farm work, baling hay, planting, plowing,
all that type of thing.
Then the guy I was working with was Charle~(phonetic), and he got a job with
the San Antonio River Authority, and he was, I guess, the first actual full-time maintenance
employee they had. And after he worked there a while, they were looking for somebody as a
temporary, part-time person, and he was in charge of the flood prevention dams. And so I
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started out as part-time working for him, and well, it turned out to be full-time because they
had gotten so much work together that it just turned into a full-time position. I worked at that
position about nine months, started arotmd January in '66 I think it was and worked until
about September.
And the River Authority at that time had entered into a grant-contract kind of situation with
the San Antonio Neighborhood Youth Corps, SANYO, and so I worked with Lawrence
Terrell as a foreman for him. And we had anywhere from 5 to 105 boys that had dropped out
of school or that had gotten into trouble and this is kind oflike their second chanle type thing.
So I worked with that, oh boy, I guess about nine months, year, something like that.
And then the grant was over, so I went ahead and they wanted me to come back to work for
but I worked for him again until we - let's see. We went to Braunig and Calaveras Lake, we
started taking over the operation of that, and we set up the parks areas and shredded all of
that, cleaned everything up to where they could build their pavilions and that type of thing.
Then they wanted somebody to take over river maintenance, so what they did is they put me
~
in charge of river maintenance and the parks. I did that probably for a year or so maybe, or
"" two years, something. I don't remember time anymore. It just flies by when you're having
fun. So anyway, Johne;vcame to work for me, and then over here again, it was a period
of time, Charles~r quit and went to work for a contract~~ere in San Antonio, and I
went ahead and I took that foreman position. And then Jo~;0ook over the parks and
2
the river maintenance. So I worked on the -
(Recording turned off and turned back on.)
So I worked as foreman there for a while, and from when I was working part-time way in the
beginning, since I lived so close to the Salatrillo Treatment Plant and we also had just taken
over maintenance on Kirby Treatment Plant. l had done the weekend work, to go out and
check, make sure the pumps were working and everything was being treated like it was
supposed to be, chlorine was being injected and that type of thing. So I went ahead and was
doing that on weekends.
Well, when I was foreman for dam maintenance, they had - oh boy, let me see. There was
Salatrillo Plant, Martinez Plant, we worked on Universal City Treatment Plant, we worked on
Kirby Treatment Plant, we worked on Oak Hills Treatment Plant, WCID 16 Treatment Plant,
what was the other one, Southwest Treatment Plant, and Boysville."ihey had a little Mickey
TMh~
Mouse treatment plant that was just a little bitty old~atlElieli~ tank. But anyway, those
treatment plants, we were operating them and maintaining.
Then we got called in on special little assignments every once in a while to where - Kenedy
had a problem once, and we had to go down there and help them on theirs, get 'tf'te m back up
and running. Let's see. There was a couple other treatment plants that we went to and
helped them out get straightened up again. Well, from us operating those treatment plants
and that and me being working part-time on that, when I was foreman for the dam
3
maintenance, they needed somebody to also head up the maintenance on the treatment plants,
so they asked if I'd do that too.
And so again, over a period of time I was doing that, and then the treatment plants just got
too much and I says, "Okay. I need help or I need to split this up or something." So Bob e was my boss at the time, and so - let's see, they put Henr8(phonetic ), I
think, he was my foreman on dam maintenance, and they put him in charge of dam
maintenance then, and I took over the treatment plants.
And I worked for them for - well, that was kind of a transition because I was on the
treatment plants, and I kind of just went from foreman and just kept on going and got my A
license and kept on going, and finally I was in management and actually became wastewater
systems manager. And that's kind of where I ended up towards the last, was systems
manager and that's kind ofhow I got there.
What was that A license you talked about?
That's a waste - TCEQ requires to have one of four licenses, either D, C, B, or A, for
operating wastewater treatment plants, and so over the years, I was able to get my A
certification.
And what's involved with that?
4
r/
You have to either have eight years of college or A eight years of experienc~y~! think it's
four years of college, and then you have to pass an exam. The exan1 that I took, I had to go
£o a school - well, you have to get so many credits, so many school hours, CEU's. I had
eight years of experience, and then I had to go to a special school to train you or to help you
pass the A test. And then the A test was like seven hours long, that's what it took me to take
the test. That's average.
Bad as a law degree1 M -fl-b-,r.
itt;; changed it now, it's a lot different. But when I went, the teacher that we had said, " "You're not going to be asked to design a treatment plant. But you get 10 questions, and by
the time you answer those 10 questions, you might as well just have said, 'Okay, I designed a
treatment plant.'" So that's kind of where it boiled down to, that's what an A license is,
basicallyjou know how to operate the treatment plant by design.
So did the River Authority pay for you to go to this training?
Yes, oh, yeah, they paid -
Where was the school?
That particular school was at A&M. I couldn't even tell you how many hours I put in as far
as either continuing education or education to move to something else, you know, to get
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another license or something like that.
I wanted to go back to the flood prevention dams that you were talking about. Were these
the SCS dams?
Yes.
And were you there when they were being constructed?
Some.
Which ones?
I wasn't there when they did the actual - was it Public Law 566, I think, something like that~~
they called it. That was the originals, and I was in high school when they were being built,
and I saw them being built and that type of thing. So the very first ones, I didn't see actually
- I wasn't working for the River Authority. But then the Martinez dams, they were just
completing them because as soon as they were completed, I had to put a fence, a barbed-wire
fence across them, to separate the properties and keep the cows from going from one end to
the other. So as soon as they were finished, I was in there building fences and that.
Then also, when I was - I guess that's when I was dam foreman, yeah, because Charles ­Charlie
left already./teulah blew through down at Kenedy and Kames City, and that's when
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they were flooded out, and there was a number of dams that either sloughed off in the back or
that were washed out w.;llways. And the~t a contractor to come in and rebuild them,
and myself and a couple of guys I had working with me, we went down there and finished
eL
them all off, smoothiRg-them out, and then planted grass in them, resodded them, that type of
thing, resprigged them, and fixed all of that up. And about the time we finished those up, oh,
what was his name? I'm trying to think of the guy who took over down there as foreman.
He worked for SCS down there. Oh, man, I ought to know his name.
Maybe it'll come to you later.
Yeah. I can't think of it right offhand.
So how did you-all coordinate with SCS then, or did they just hand them of! to you-all?
Well, there was a cooperation, you know, and they basically, between the River Authority
and the Soil Conservation - well, it was funded through Public Law 566, and it was kind of a
cooperative effort to build those dams.
I wonder who identified where they needed to be built?
Soil Conservation.
And what was the range of your activities when you were the dam foreman? What did that
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mean?
Oh, geez. Well, kind I like I put in there, Be~ho was my boss during a lot of
that time, found a lot of things for me to do. (Laughing.) Some of them nobody wanted to
tackle, and so he called me.
What kinds of things?
Well, when I was working for the SANYO Youth Corps, we were supposed to provide water
back down to the Espada Ditch Association because they had did a lot of river channel work
through there and they cut the ditches and stuff, and they weren't getting the water like they
wanted back down at the Espada Mission. And there was a lot of farmers that irrigated out
there at that time. So when I was working for the dam maintenance - excuse me, with the
SANYO, Lawrence Terrell was my boss, and Russell Haynes was his boss, well, he was my
boss too. But anyway, he was the main boss. We were working with the crews to clean out
all the underbmsh and a lot of the Espada Ditch all the way from San Juan Dam across from
- well, way up by the - it's not insane asylum.
Oh, yeah, well, it started as the insane asylum.
~re, right across the road is wherekuan Dam was. And that dam would back up
water, and from there it would go down all the way across Military Drive and meander
around back and forth all the way down to Espada. So there was a lot of places where the
8
water had washed out the ditch and silted it up and all kinds of things. People just threw
trash in it. So my job was to take the crews and then go and get rid of all the underbrush, dig
out all the dirt and that type of thing.
And so we were going along, and we got probably about half\.vafthrough, something like
~
that, and we had a repositioning, reshuflling of supervisors, and Bob Book over.
So we were doing all this by hand with just labor.
The old way.
Yeah. The way that it probably was dug in the first place. So we were digging, and Bob
eook over, and he says, "No, no, no. This ain't going to work. We ain't never
going to finish this thing on time." So he got - it was McKenzie Construction, and we got
him to get us a front-end loader and an operator, and he did one job. And then they got us a
little raggedy Cat from another contractor, and we start pushing brush and cleaning out the
ditches and stuff like that with that.
And then just across from the Presa Street asylum there, just down from the dam, they put in
a head gate that we could open and close the water to cut the water off to the channel. We
put that in, and all the rock work that was done along the Espada and San Juan Dam, all of
that area was done with the San Antonio Youth Corps. Had the rock, had a guy that came in
and ran a crew that did the rock chipping and everything and set all that stuff.
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Really. I wonder who that was?
I think his last name was Gonzalez, but I don't remember his first name anymore. I could
picture him, but that's not it.
And so did all of that, put in a sprinkler system. And then like I say, just down from the
asylum, and I can't remember the name of that little street that used to come down, but just
on the south side of it, was a lot of water that always came through there, and they didn't
want to build a concrete bridge or rock bridge or anything. So they got us, I think it was like
two 24-inch 1-beams, and they were like - geez, I want to say they were probably like maybe
30 feet long roughly, huge beams. And they set them up like this (indicating), well, set them
like this (indicating), with the 24 inches standing up, and I'm thinking it was like 4 feet for
the floor, and we welded plates across that. Like John Creel would say, "It was hell for
stout." It was strong. So anyway, we had to weld all ofthat all th~way down all of that
together, we had to weld that. And I was down there probably six, seven years ago, and it
was still there. It wasn't going to move.
And what was the fun ction of it?
It was to - in other words, the Espada Ditch - or San Juan Ditch came through, and then
there was a wash out that went through there, from the asylum, drainage that came through
there. And they didn't want to put any wooden stuff there, dirt, because it'd wash right back
out. So anyway, the channel approach and then the steel bridge or steel channel, actually,
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and then it would take off again as soil, you know, as regular soi I. So we had to put that in.
~~
And we welded, I want to say, a good week on that just solid, that's all we'd~ just weld.
And then we got the water down there. We had to have the water down there by something
like a Thursday or something like that. And that morning, the next morning - we had to have
it down there like that night, the next morning they had more water than they knew what to
do with; it had flooded a lot of land. And the guys from the ditch associatio~ "We
didn't think you were going to do it. We were going to sue you." (Laughing.)
Were there any places where you really couldn 't tell where the old ditch went?
Oh, yeah.
And what did you do in a situation like that?
til
Well, we kind of looked just past where we could find it again, and then we looked at it and
1'\
said, "Well, maybe it looks like it kind of went right through here." And about where we put
the head gate, I'm not even sure how far it was, but I want to say 1,000 yards or so down,
there was a hill, and they had dug their ditch right on the side of that hill. And the only thing
you could tell was there was little bitty flat ripple right there, you know, just a little bitty spot,
so we just followed that on around, and I guess that's where it was.
And if Lity worked, you knew you were going the right direction.
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~
Right, exactly. As long as the water followed, you were good.
~
(Laughing.) That sounds like a very challenging experience.
Oh, it was. It was fun. I mean, after we did it and everything, it was a lot of fun.
And how were the kids with working on it\Js that challenging, too?
Oh, very. Some of them were great, you know, you always ran into that. Some of them were
great, you could ask them to do something, I mean, they jumped on it and tried their best.
And some of them just didn't care, you know, it was kind of one of those deals.
Oh, yeah, we worked on - well, they call it Martinez Park out on 1604. Just before 1604 was
built at I-1 0 on the east side, and just before it was built, we were working on what they used
to call Martinez Park in the very beginning. And we put in picnic tables, we built the
pavilion that's down there, that's just about fallen in now, and it had a great big barbeque pit
in it, built all of that.
We rented another Cat. Again, going back to Bo@gain, we rented a big D-7 Cat,
and he - well, we did a lot of brush clearing and that in there and left a couple trees, you
know, make it look like a park. And then we built a pond out there, and that was right at the
pavilion.
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And later on that site was turned into our sludge irrigation for our wastewater treatment plant.
~fter that - now I think they turned it over to the soccer outfit. Then right after that, we
took the ponds and that and we took the effluent from our treatment plant and pumped it
down there and then irrigated with the effluent ~the grass alive, and had a haying
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operation and that type of thing.
Where'd you sell the hay?
To just whoever, just to customers. Nobody in particular, just whoever wanted hay. We had
that operation, and we also had the Martinez I site. That was funded through a EPA grant,
three-quarter - 75/25. And we had to expand the treatment plant, and then also at the same
time, we put in those two sludge disposal sites.
What is a sludge disposal site?
In other words, if you have a wastewater treatment plant, you have so much sludge coming in
and bacteria working on the sludge and that. And to keep the plant from being overloaded,
you have to get rid of your sludge. You just get too many bugs, and there's a food-to-microorganism
ratio, and that has to be at a certain balance; and if you get one of them out
one way or the other, treatment plant won't perform. So you have to keep that balance. In
order to keep that balance, you have to waste sludge, and then that sludge is what we put out
there on the site.
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Now, somebody told me that at the board meetings, there was a brick of something that they
had on their table that was out of sludge or something? What were they talking about?
(Laughing.)
(Laughing.) They're never going to let me live that one down.
Nobody mentioned your name in connection with it. (Laughing.) What was that about?
Well, we had - now, here again, I've got to start thinking. We had a lady on the board of
directors, Nancy Steves. She was really nice, but she didn't want to know nothing about the
treatment plants, no nothing, don't even mention it. So I was - and I still am with the council,
if there's something that I don't think they quite understand or get the full picture, I'll bring
something to illustrate what I'm talking about. Now, I did the same thing.
We were talking about sludge pressesjwe were going in from the way of irrigating with
sludge. We had to change our mode of operation because EPA sai~"That' s not nice
anymore, you've got to do it some way else somehow, some way else." So EPA says,
"You're going to have to treat it with lime," and for us to treat it with lime, we had to get rid
of a lot of the excess water and moisture that was in the sludge. So what you do is you take
your sludge from your treatment plant and run it through an actual two belts, and they press
the water or the moisture out of it, and it comes into a cake.
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So I was trying to explain this at the board of directors, and Ms. Steves was sitting there, and
I said, "And this is the type of material that comes out of the sludge press. It's kind oflike a
moist brownie." That was it, man. (Laughing.) She said, "Don' t you ever bring anything
back here like that."
(Laughing.) Well, somebody seemed to think that y 'all were selling some of this for a while.
Do you remember anything like that or what he could have been talking about?
Well, I'm not - I know - and they might have done it after I left, but I know that we could
sell it because it was treated to that extent. It just had to be - you had to be careful on what
you put it on. You could put it on grass~ type of thing, but you couldn't have any
cows running on it. You couldn't have any contact with food product that was growing in it;
in other words, carrots, turnips, radishes, that type of~But you could put corn on it
where the actual food crop was up on top.
Sounds a little like what Austin did with Dillo Dirt~
Sure.
Is that the same thing?
Yeah. They took it one more step and made it a little bit better. You know, we took it to the
first level - ~d level; they took it to the first level. They really did a good job on
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theirs.
So it would have been sort of like a compost-
Yeah, kind of.
Or a fertilizer?
)
It's an organic fertilizer basically is what it turns out to be ~cause by the time you add the
lime and everything. What the lime does, it runs the temperature up to where it actually kind
of-
Kills the-
(End of Tape 1, Side 1. Beginning of Tape 1, Side 2.)
Okay. So they weren't actually marketing that when you were there?
No, no.
What years were you there?
Well, from '66 to - was it '99 or 2000? It was 30-something years.
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So were you there when Mr. Brune was the general manager?
Oh, you bet, you bet.
Tell me about that.
Oh, I love it. I love it, man. He was ex-Navy, and he was the kind of guy that everything
had to be shipshape. I remember that on Friday) it didn't make any difference what we were
vr<---
doing, where yg(f were at, all equipment was brought in and washed and polished and
cleaned up. I mean, everything wa@nd-span. And on Friday afternoons, we had
inspections. (Laughing.) He'd come out and look at every -
(Laughing.) Did y 'all stand at attention?
No, we didn't quite go that far. But he would come out, look at the equipment, make sure we
were keeping it nice and clean, ask us if we needed anything, how we were doing, that kind
of thing. It was really - I really liked it. But I remember that the most from him, he was
really good in that way.
He knew everybody's name, too, from being military. He knew everybody's name, knew
something about you or your familY.A:: kind of thing. I really liked that.
7
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Now, somebody told me about a truck, a special truck they got fitted up?
Let's talk about Bob @again. (Laughing.)
Tell me about the truck.
Okay. Yeah, I was -
First.
I was - let me see. I guess I was working for SANYO, yeah, I guess I was still there, and he
f) took over. And we had a pickup.SANYO gave us a blue half-ton Ford pickup. And then we
were renting a Hertz tmck to go to Camp Bullis to pick up flat rocks for the San Juan, Espada
rock work that they were doing. Yeah, we'd go out there in the middle of the firing range
and stuff like that, you know. We'd check with the headquarters, you know, "Well, we're
not working out here, you can go over here. We're not blowing things up over here so you
can go over there." So at first, we had a Hertz truck, and we'd nm out there, pick up a load
)
of rocks, bring ~m back.
So Bob says, "I can't see us spending that much money. We're going to get our own truck."
~don't know where they got this from, but all of the sudden we had a old green school bus
sitting out in our yard there at Salatrillo. So we're trying to figure ouj"What are we going to
do with the school bus? Are we going to start tmcking kids, SANYO people or what?" So
18
here comes Bob 62nd he says, ''I'm going to have some guys come out here this
weekend. They're going to take the cab off it - not the cab. Well, yeah, it was the cab, and
then where the kids sit," you know, that part with all the windows, he says, "They're going to
come out here and they're going to cut that off, and they're going to take it up to the camp
"Well, I don't know what we're going to do with it, but okay."
So anyway, next weekend or whatever it was, got back Monday morning, sure enough, the
top part of the body was gone. So Bob says, "You know, that might work pretty good for
hauling rocks out of Camp Bullis." And it was an old Ford F-700, I think, and I might even
have a picture of that thing yet, I might.
Anyway, we say, "Well, we got to go get some lumber." "Oh, no, I got hunber. No
problem." Oh, boy. Someplace - and it was down on the west side of town, they had just
gotten through tearing down an old bridge. He says, "Just go down there and get all the
lumber you need." Well, this was these planks, they were creosoted planks about this thick.
I mean, the truck had enough weight on it J~~t by putting the planks on it without even
~~)
putting anything else on it. I mean, the bed was just - we put a headache rack on it and
everything.
Well, had all that fixed up, and they wanted me to drive it without a cab or anything, just sit
out there in the middle of the open with the hood in front of me and that's it. "Bob, no, no,
~
no. fuis ain't going to work." "Well, go get you a cab." Well, just on the south side of
19
~
Military Drive on Presa Street, if you're going out of town on the left-hand side, there~ an
old junk dealer. And they had an old - and I'm going to say it was probably like a '50
International cab sitting there, and it was an old burnt red-orange cab.
So, okay. Told Bob about it, "Oh, hell, yeah. That' ll fit great. Make it work." It was, I
don't know, $100,$200, I don't know, just nothing. So okay, here we take the cab, and we
set it on the frame. So here we are with a '57 hood, old lime green hood, with a burnt red cab
with this - it was about a 16- or 20-foot bed that was made out of these planks about this
)
thick, you know, going down the road, just smokin_gup a storm. (Laughing.) Yeah, yeah.
We drove that thing for a long time. And we didn't even check the oil. When we made a
S&~~
tum and the red light came on, it was ~inauclibh~ 1 mean, and what we did is when you
turned and the red light came on, you got your five-gallon can out and started pouring oil in it.
Don't worry about gas, just oil.
So like I say, we ran that for a long time, and I know we surpl~it, and then we saw it
, A~
over on Roosevelt or someplace like that, we saw somebody driving it. (Laughing.) J)k,
geez.
But anyway, that's the story of that old truck.
That's wonderful. It sormds as if Mr. 9ad quite an imagination. Was he a
character?
20
Oh, he was an old Aggie, he was an Aggie. He passed away here a couple years ago, had a
)
heart attack. But he was one of, I guess, the last ofthe wild breed, I guess you'd call.H!em.
It was him; Bill Shannon, he was a contractor here in town; and Mark ~phonetic);
Phil Becker, who now has - well, at that time he had Utilities Consolidate~o was the
other one? Oh, man. There was another contractor in there. Anyway, they had knew each
other from A&M, you know. ~~might have bee U./"rN>l'"C-P.
CJ!fnore?
Yeah, might have been him. But anyway, some of the best - I mean, these guys, I loved
working with them. They were really- they were wild, but they knew what they were doing
and they were great guys to work for. Because I worked with Shannon on the weekends and
stufflike that, and he was a really great guy, loved working for him.
So they got a lot of contracting jobs from the River Authority; is that what happened?
Some, yeah. But it's kind of one of those - Shannon did a lot of concrete work, bridge work,
and you know as you get into a lot of this history, he did a lot of channel work, stufflike that.
Monk, Kevin Monk took over his operation. And again, he died in kind of one of these freak
plane mishaps here a couple years ago. They were coming back from A&M, and they were
flying, and I don't know what happened. The door wasn't latched right or something, and he
fell out or something like that. But anyway, he was ...
21
How much older than you were they? Were they like World War I! vets or ...
Oh, no, no. 6was probably about l 0 years older than me, roughly, and Shannon
probably about the same.
Soeas actually a SARA employee?
Yes.
And what about Shannon?
He was just a contractor. Him an@ were like this. They both came from West
Texas kind ofthing, you know. And ~'s dad, was, I think, the judge in Sanderson.
There's some other stories I'm not going to go into, but. ..
If you don 't nobody else will. (Laughing.)
We don't want to go into those stories. Some really good stories.
Can you just share one? Pick out the cleanest one. I've already heard about trips to Laredo
and things like that.
22
Yeah. Well, when deer season came around, they always -Salways got this big
party together, I guess you'd call it, of people that he knew, either went to school with or
business partner, something like that. And he'd kind of give them a little special deal, so
everybody would chip in some food and that kind of stuff, and he'd supply a place to hunt.
And this was down at Sanderson. So anyway, Charlie and myself, we were kind of the guys
that got everything together, you know. Well, we'd head down there for Thanksgiving
because mule deer is always over Thanksgiving holidays. So we'd head down there on
Thanksgiving holidays and take the Jeep and whatever else he wanted us to take, and we'd
run down there.
)
This one time we went down there, it was late afternoon, got up to the hunting camp, and we
had a little camper trailer that we stayed in. Everybody else stayed in the tin barn kind of like.
And during - well, they were predicting it was going to snow. Well, that night, it got down
to - I guess it was probably like 10 o'clock, it was - oh, I guess maybe like 6 o'clock the sun
was down and that, and we were having all kinds of food, you know, open fire.
And they had this camp guy that basically lived there, but anyway, he would do all the
cooking, and we'd just kind ofwalk up and start serving ourselves and sitting down. And
there was I think he was a banker, a Cajun banker out of Houston, and the guy just told jokes.
We sat there from I'm going to say 6 o'clock roughly until about 10 o'clock, and he
constantly told jokes, I mean, in the Cajun accent, you know, just like a Cajun. Just one after
J
another, just rolled ~m off. And we were just rolling on the ground.
23
And about 10 o'clock they were coming up and sayingtWe can't get any more water, all the
pipes are froze already." We' re sitting around there just going to town. So a couple guys
said, "Ah, I'm going to bed. I'm going to get up early and we're going to go hunting." He'd
say, "Let me tell you one more." Here we go again. It was about midnight when we finally
got to sleep. Well, we probably wouldn't have broke up, but it started snowing, and the next
morning we had snow on the ground. So anyway, this guy could tell jokes. He could be a
comedian on TV. He was just - I mean, just one right after another, and it was all out of his
mind, all of it was memory. It wasn't no prompts or nothing, he just kept going.
When you first worked there and on through the )70s and lsos. I guess, was there a lot of
camaraderie within the River Authority where y 'all would get together outside of work?
Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. We'd find excuses to have to get together. One of the things that we'd
always have was our skeet shoot. That, again, was started by@ He kind of was the
ringleader on that. And we started getting that thing set up, and it lasted until, I guess,
probably about the year I left or something like that, and then they tried to revive it, and I'm
not sure what they're doing now. But we'd try to find excuses to have something. Either
we'd have little Christmas parties, or somebody did leave, had to have a party kind of thing.
It's a lot different now than it was then.
It was kind oflike a family. We weren't as large as they are now, it's overboard from the
way it is now. Nobody knows anybody else's name. But here again, when I was there, we
all knew each other's name, we all knew something about each other, always tried to have a
24
little get-together, a party or something.
So how many were there at the beginning when you were employed?
There was one maintenance - ~was myself, Charlie was the very first maintenance man
that they had hired, and then I came in as part-time, and then Jim Thompson was actually the
first person there I guess you'd call it, as the River Authority and what's his name, Brune,
David Brune - no, it wasn't Bnme. Braunig, Victor Braunig, he was there, and then David
Brune came on and Fred Pfeiffer, and then after a while Brune left and Pfeiffer took over.
Then- oh, gee whiz, who was there? There was only like maybe five people there, six
people, something like that at the very beginning.
So how many maintenance folks were there?
In the beginning?
Yeah.
There was just that one - Charlie was the first one.
Just him and then you part-time, and then you came on full-time.
Yeah. See, the Salatrillo Plant was built in '66, and that was the first treatment plant they
25
had. And then~omebody, I can't think of his last name, he was the treatment plant
operator. Joe1~phonetic) was there, and he moved over to Houston, and what was the
other guy's name? He's still here. Tommy - Tommy - I lost it. Anyways, he's here in town
yet doing consulting work.
And what was his job?
He was - worked under Jo(r9, I gues~kind of like a treatment plant engineer, something
like that.
So were there people who were in the office and then people who were out in the field all the
time?
The only people that were in the field was Charlie and me. Everybody else was basically in
the office.
And if you needed help, would they be hired as temporary help to help you to get - or did you
oversee contractors who actually did the work?
Well, at that time, the office people - let's see, who would have been a good one? Jim
Thompson, yeah, Jim Thompson he would have probably overseen a lot of the dam
construction, you know, that kind of thing. And Roy e (phonetic), he was another
engineer up there. I think those were the only actual - yeah, I think~ was actually the
26
only engineer they had up there, and then later on Russell Haynes came on, and he was a
draftsman, and he kind of worked his way into some of the park stuff. He kind of actually
started the park stuff.
Because I worked under - well, here's another interesting little thing. When I was working
part-time, and I started, like, in January, and then when summer came around, they hir@
!eo now is hea~e Nueces River Authority, but he worked for us part-time while he
was going to A&M, and he did that one or two years. And then he came back, and he went
to work for us, and I worked for him for a little bit. And then he drifted off and went - he
became a real estate agent, and then he went to Nueces River Authority as their general
manager, so he actually started with the River Authority in the very beginning. And we
worked together for a while.
But I worked for (!9, I worked for Russellgl worked for Bobs, 1 worked
for Daniel Chang.fte was - worked on the treatment plants there for a while. Blair Warren
who was the assistant manager, well, I worked for him for a number of years. I guess after
~~d after Daniel Chang - oh, KGlworked for him for a little while. I went
\__ __./
to work for Blair Warren, and I worked for him for quite a while.
So was part of your job running crews eventuallY; working on different projects?
Oh, I did everything. I did -we rebuilt treatment plants, operated treatment plants, just
everything.
27
What did you have to do -you mentioned that for a while there on the weekend you were
going in and operating the treatment plant. What would have been involved with that?
Well, I'd go in and make sure that - I have to read the charts and make sure that flow - what
the flow readings were and make sure the chlorine was working and that the chlorinator was
putting in chlorine like it should, that in some cases the aeration system was working, making
sure that the overall operation was running over the weekends. And if it wasn't, then either
I'd fix it, or if it was too much for one person, I'd call in the actual operator, and he'd come
in and we'd have to fix it or whatever.
So who would the actual operator have been? Would it have been an employee of SARA?
Yes.
Did you do any work with the lab? Did you coordinate with the lab at all?
Oh, definitely.
What did you do? How did that work?
Well, again, on weekends, I would go in and take the - in other words ...
28
The samples?
Well, it's kind of a- we would operate - the operational samples, we would do every day,
and so on the weekends, I would do those. Now, there were certain tests that had to be done
that are reported to TCEQ, and those are done by the lab or were done by the lab. But on
weekends to keep somebody from coming in 20, 30 miles and I was there already, I'd read
the tests for them so they wouldn't have to come in.
Yeah, everything was coordinated through the lab, too, because we would bring in samples
and they'd set them up and everything for actual TCEQ reporting purposes. And at that time
it was called Texas Water Quality Board and then there was Texas Water Commission and
Train Wreck and everything else, you know. They've changed their name so many times.
Were you involved at all in the reworking of Olmos Dam?
No, no, I never got involved with that. I was there a couple oftimes to see what they were
doing, but not actually involved in it.
And what about the tunnel project or any of that?
Here again, we did do a little work on that, but nothing to write home about.
So what would have been your job at that point in the history of the River Authority? Would
29
it have been at the recreational parks or where?
Let's see, the tunnel I would have probably be somewhere around the wastewater systems
manager, something like that. Yeah. Olmos Dam was a little bit earlier, but I was still with
the treatment plants.
As the manager, did you have direct contact with the state water quality people?
Oh, yes.
And what was the nature of that?
Well, I was - part of my responsibility was to make sure the permitting was taken care of,
and I'd have to talk to them about as far as what the new permit parameters were. And then
if we were in an expansion mode, I'd have to go and talk to them to see what we could do
under new permitting procedures and just coordinate everything with them and then relay all
that to the engineers and then try to work all of those . ..
So you were sort of an intermediary or translator between the state agency and -
Yes, and the SARA engineers, right.
Were there ever sort of innovative things that they came up with to deal with those changes?
30
Yes. There was a couple things. One was the type of aeration system that we've - well, I'm
not sure they use it now anymore, but the type of aeration syste~ that were used at the first
1\
expansion with federal moneys was vertical turbine aerators, and that's the aerators that stand
straight up and they look like propeller, just spinning in the water.
And that was - most of our innovative ideas came from Europe, and this was one of them.
We were about the second in the state to have that type of treatment system. And the reason
we used it was because of the energy savings from the old conventional what we calffu;_·bine
1\
air injection because it took a lot less horsepower. And so we were about the second in the
~
state to have a system like that. And we flew to Kentucky and - tb.efe was another treatment
plant we went to look at. One of the - the one in Kentucky was one of the textile plants, and
you'd watch it and red would come in and then the blue would come in, and that treated it
and discharged it.
During one of our expansions - there's a magic number. Anything over a million gallons a
day that you have to dechlorinate your water - in other words, you chlorinate to kill the bugs,
but then right after that you have to tum around and dechlorinate it so that you don't kill the
fish in the creek. So we were some of the first to actually put in ultraviolet light for a
treatment plant:.~t way we didn't have to chlorinate, but the ultraviolet would still kill the
bacteria. And the fish would actually swim up into our discharge. So we did that.
With going over a million gallons a day, one of the tests you have to do is an actual fish test
31
where you have, depending on what type of discharge you have, there's two types of fish,
and you actually have to put the fish in your effluent. You know, you take samples and take
it to the lab, and then they grow their own fish and everything. Then they put the fish in that
water, and if they live for seven minutes or seven days, it depends on how good your water is
kind of thing. So that's one of the reasons we went to ultraviolet.
And at the Salatrillo Treatment Plant, the major reason that we got started into the ultraviolet
system was we were going to have - we were using one-ton containers for chlorine, and I
)
kept after ~m, I said, "Look, we've got the school right across the road from us. And if we
ever have a chlorine leak, it's over with." So at that time, ultraviolet was a little bit higher as
far as construction cost, purchase cost to get it installed, and so -
(End ofTape 1, Side 2. Beginning ofTape 2, Side 1.)
You went to Converse?
~~~
Yeah, I went to S@e'i'f Converse, Universal Cit? and Live Oak, and the reason I went there
was first of all, we were under contract with them to treat their sewage for them. And we had
to justify all our expenses, you know, because it'd be part of their rate increase or whatever it
might be. And because of the ultraviolet costing a little bit more than just a conventional
chlorine system, I had to go over there and justify why I wanted to use ultraviolet.
So anyway, I went to Converse and them, and I told them, "Look, we're running one-ton
32
chlorine cylinders right now, and if we get a chlorine leak, we might as well shut the school
':JJ down.I mean, it's gone." No problem. They said, "Do it." And so that's how we got started
with ultraviolet. And then as we had gotten more experience in operating that, then we
moved over to Martinez I and then later on Martinez II and put it in there too. I'm not sure
what they're doing now again.
Was that a European idea also, or is that just something that was floating around at the time
as a solution?
Well, it was - they used it in a lot of their factories, in United States factories too. But the
problem they've had in the past was the;(m:1ent that's coming out of a treatment plant does
have some floating particles, and they would seal up or wrap around or attach themselves,
whatever you want to call it, to the outer lens of that light because - it's just kind oflike
these things here, the fluorescent light, you know. The ultraviolet light actually goes through
a tube, and the outer side would coat itself up with either the floating particles or just the
calcium carbonate, just the hard water.
So then when that happens, the light can't get through. And what happened in the past is
they had to sit there and clean them all the time. Well, now they've come up with a little -
it's kind of like a rubber - kind oflike a windshield wiper, that rubber, but it fits around the
glass. It's a little squeegee thing, and it just moves up and down and cleans it off. So that's
one of the new inventions they came out with.
33
But because our water was so clean and the quality was good that ours would last for a long
time without having to be cleaned. And our major problem was just the hardness~U would
get that crusty thing on it, and you had to put it in Lime-A-Way and soak it off. So it worked
real good for us.
Now, there were some treatment plants that didn't do as good a job. We went to Nogales,
Arizona, because we were looking at different ultraviolet systems at that time. And we went
to Nogales, Arizona, and it was one of these government border - you know, where the two
countries got together, Mexico and United States, and they had this border committee, and
they're supposed to operate treatment plants and have this cooperative thing. Well, whatever
that outfit's name is, they built a treatment plant on the United States side, and just because
of the way the topography is, the water would run from Mexico to the United States and then
-t4--
go in the creek and then go down and eventually get back into, I guess it's the Rio Grande.
A
But anyway, we got up there, and the operator that was there, he was really kind of reluctant
to show us around. And after we saw what was going on, you know, we were kind of
reluctant to even go look. But anyway, we went in, and they had this big area, I'm going to
say it was maybe like five acres, roughly, and they had vertical turbine aerators, but they
were the floating kind, and they had them anchored into the ground. And what was
happening was that the water, as they were pumping and swishing the water around like a
propeller, it would form a vortex and it would wash out the anchors, and all of the sudden it
~ke bumper cars out there; they were flying into each other. And so then they had one
train - one treatment train shut down because it was just tore up, so anyway, we went down
34
to the - what was the settling area I guess you'd call it, and actually the water coming in
looked better than the water going out. It was bad.
Then we finally made it down to the ultraviolet system, and, oh, it was bad. They had two
guys that worked seven days a week, and I don't remember if it was eight hours a day or
what it was, but they had two guys that worked seven days a week. 4n they did was pull one
rack up, clean it, put it back, all the time.
What was really something to see, if the treatment plant isn't treating the waste properly and
you don't have your food-to-microorganism ratio correct, usually if you have too many bugs
and not enough food, you'll get a foaming action, frothing, whatever you want to call it. But
anyway, as the water left the treatment plant, it went in the creek, and this frothing action,
there was this frothing, it was taller - they had dry land willows, and these things were
()..-
enormous, you know. Well, the foam was taller than the trees, and all of~sudden the wind
would take it and get. a big hunk of it and just float it off.
Amazing.
Yeah. But anyway ...
That was their purification system.
.
tl"
Yeah. And what the bad part about it was, Mexico had no controls on any of the sewers.
35
Whatever somebody could dump into it, whatever, it went into it. I mean, they were getting
toxic chemicals and everything else. So part ofthe problem you couldn't blame the
treatment plant for because they were dumping some stuff in there that'd just kill anything
that was coming in, and your bugs that you're trying to grow have to have something, you
just kill them off and then you didn't have anything. So you can't really blame the whole
treatment plan~ A lot of it was just because of lack of control on the Mexico side. Like I said,
they dumped everything in, and it was actually their city drainage system, because when they
got a big rain, the sewers would fill up with sand and that would come down to that treatment
plant, and they'd actually have to get backhoes into the clarifiers and stuff and dig them all
out and get all the sand out because they'd be filled up. It was bad.
~~~
So that was a lesson in how not to install-,-
And not to let Mexico . ..
Right. Right. Well, what about the case against San Antonio? Did you ...
Which one? We were in a couple ofthem.
Were there any that you were called upon to supply information?
I guess, the ones I got involved with was - I don't remember who it was, but somebody dug
into our sewer line, and we had to call in H.t. Zachry to help us repair it and, well, clean the
36
lines, too. But we had to call in Ht Zachry, and he worked there for a couple weeks. And
then the people that did the job, or did the sewer line break, actually dug into it, I had to
testify on all the work we did and stuff like that, so we got into that lawsuit.
The one I'm thinking of particularly that people talk about is the City of San Antonio- the
sewage treatment plant that wasn 't really treating ...
Oh, Rilling Road.
y~·
~okJ·
(.t get that involved in that. It's one of those things I know about and I knew what the
problem was, I knew how to fix it, but that was it. All it takes is money. (Laughing.)
I assume you had something do to with projects in all four counties. What did you do outside
of Bexar County?
Okay, let's see. I know one of the things that we did was the, I guess, the Escondido Project
down at Kames City, we worked over there for a little while helping out the Soil
Conservation. Like I say, that was before they actually had atrnployee down at that site.
So we helped out a little bit on that, and then when they had the dedication on that, we went
down there on a Saturday morning and worked down there and helped set everything up, get
everything done, and that's when Brune was here. We went down there and helped set up
37
/
and everything, and then after the dedication, we tore everything down and cleaned
everything up and that. So we were on that.
We worked on that Beulah project [was telling you about a while ago, we worked on that.
And then we had gone down there for a number of other things to help ou~working on dams
and stuff. And then they built a building down there, and we had to help set up part of that
building, and that was at Kames City.
And then Kenedy, we ran into a problem with some of our what they call horizontal - or mag fbr. And they're the type of aerators that run like this, kind of like a - looked kind of like
a big corncob. They ~ave fins on it, but instead of vertical they're horizontal, and they mix
up the~~ ~e~ether. Anyway, we were having problems with the shafts breaking at
the end, and so we had experience in fixing that. Well, it so happened that Kenedy had the
exact same problem, and they broke the tail shaft off and theeell in the water, and so
they asked us to come down and fix it. So we went down there and put a new tail shaft on
there and got them up and running again. So that was one thing we did.
We worked on Goliad. We did a little bit of work down at Goliad on that park out there. We
did a little work down there when they were setti~tthat up. And then we did some river
work, cleaning out some of these log jams and stuff like that. We got called in every once in
a while to work on something like that.
Did you have anything to do with cleaning out on the up end of the tunnel during that big
38
flood right after the tunnel was finished?
No, no, we didn't get involved.
Somebody else's headache.
Yeah, exactly.
Did you get pulled into any of the park concession work?
Well, we actually started it.
You did?
Yeah. That was when I worked on parks and then into river maintenance. It was myself, and
I think Lawre~worked a little bit on that, but Russell ~started it with myself.
And then we had do all the shredding around there and set up for the pavilions and
concession stands and all that. Yeah, we did in the very beginning when everybody was
fishing, jumping the fences at Braunig and Calaveras - well, actually, Braunig because
Calaveras was just - when I was there, Braunig, they were jumping the fences and everything
and going fishing in there, and they wanted some type of security to keep everybody out. So
that's when we got called in and said if you want to do the concession and have a fishing area
and all that, then that's when CPS came in, and we got the agreement, and we started taking
39
over maintenance.
I had heard that there was a point at which the concessionaire wasn't performing, and so he
went away, and the staff had to go out there and sell hot dogs and drinks and stuff
Yeah, and that's when we took it over. That was after I moved on because I think it was Jim
Blair, I think, got involved in that. I think it was him. But that was after - because when I
was at Braunig working on that, Calaveras was just being finished because they were laying
the pipeline from San Antonio River through Braunig Lake area to Calaveras, and that's what
they were doing then, so that was about that time frame.
I was thinking also you were there when the agency experienced all that really big growth in
the 1980s, wasn't it? The staff grew a lot and ...
Yeah. We had a slight blip right there that we had a few more people.
What accounted for that do you think?
..,
Well, as far as - well, a lot of it was;reatment plant. We experience~ with the building boom
that happened and then it busted, too, we were building treatment plants. So we had a need
for engineers and more operating personnel, that type of thing. So there was slight blip in
there about that time. I think they were doing the tunnel about that time. And I guess that
was probably - those two things, the tunnel and then the treatment plants were being
40
expanded about that time.
And I didn 't realize until you started listing all these places where you-all were doing the
1
work, and they weren't River Authority facilities, but you-all were consulting with them? ' ?
Which ones?
Universal City, Oak Hills, WCID, Southwest)
Yeah, we were contracting with them.
!see.
Yeah. We contracted to operate their treatment plant for them. Some of them was - like
Kirby, Universal City, those were cities themselves. And then we had developers, like, for
instance WCID 16 and Oak Hills, that was a develope] Southwest Treatment Plant, that was
a develope~ Boysville, well, that was just a single unit. Boysville, that's over in Judson now,
used to be over on 35, and they had a small treatment plant.
So was there any sort of consistency from plant to plant in a situation like that, or did you go
out there and find dijferen;a different operating setup in each one of those?
They were similar but different. And what I mean by that is, yeah, they had the chlorination
41
system and the Q system were basically all the same, but when you got to the way they
were configured or set up or operated, they all had to be a little bit different.
And why is that?
Well, some of them didn't need lift stations. Some ofthem - and no two lift stations are
alike. And especially in those days, I mean, nobody talked to anybody, and they just went
out there and built a lift station.
So there was no standardization beyond a certain point?
Yeah, yeah. You know, lift stations in those days were bad because they weren't designed
correctly, they were not at all safely designed. I remember Oak Hills, that was really bad.
The motor sat up on top, and then about 15 feet down - they had shafts nmning down, and
then the pump was actually about 15 to 20 feet in the ground. And that was a centrifugal
pump where it would pick up the water and then pump it over to Oak Hills Treatment Plant
which was about two miles away.
And we constantly had problems with that one. Either the pump would go out, the shafts
would go out. One time we got there and - the pump itself fit down on - it had a flange on it,
and it would fit down on the pump housing, and then yo · i peller at down inside of that.
And the bolts that held the flange down onto the pump bo 1 itself came loose, and this thing
rose up enough, loosened up enough to where instead of pumping that water the two miles, it
42
filled up that 15-foot cylinder, cavern, and the water was coming out of the door. That was a
lot of fun. So we had to pump that out.
So every job was different.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Every treatment plant was totally different.
Have you seen more standardization?
Oh, definitely, yeah. The TCEQ and their design criteria they use now on that, it's brought a
lot of standardization. It's come a long way since those days, definitely. Some of the old
treatment plants I saw, it was just ridiculous. From a pipe coming out - this was down
country- a pipe coming out, going over a bunch of flint rocks and then into the creek, you
know, that type of thing. So there's lots of bad ...
May have worked on the farm. (Laughing.)
Right. There's a lot ofbad stories I could tell, I mean, from what it was then to as
sophisticated as it is now.
So how long were you - you left in 2000?
It was either '99 or 2000, in October.
43
Was that about the time Fred Pfeiffer retired?
It was probably about - he was under contract, he was still there, but he was just kind of
hanging on to kind ofhelp - now, what was his name, the old general manager that just left?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Anyway, just before he left. Anyway, he was there probably about a year, and then Fred hung
around a little bit to kind of ease him into that position.
Rothe.
Rothe, yeah, Greg Rothe. Yeah, Blair had gone alreadYj he was gone about a year.
Did you come directly here to Marion?
No. I went to - I retired, and before I even got away from there, Ed Ford called, who's an
engineer here in San Antonio, and he wanted to know if I wanted to come to work for him.
And I says, "Nah, I'm going to retire. I'm tired. I don't feel like it." He says, "Ah, c'mon."
I says, "No, no." He says, "Well, think about it." I says, "Okay, I'll tell you what I'll do.
;."'"
I'm going to Nebraska to -" lhey've got a big farm show up there called Comhusker Days. I
says, "I'm going to go up there, and when I come back, I'll make up my mind. But not right
44
now." "Okay, that's fine."
~
So I went up ther~ went to the farm show and everything, came back. Then I talked to him
for a little bit, and so I went to work for him. I worked there for two years and worked on
water plants, sewer plants, water lines, just about anything they wanted me to do. And at the
same time, they were city engineers for Marion. So I worked kind of- well, I worked half
days, and I worked here - I worked there, and then I came by here and see what they were
doing and that type of thing.
So about two years went by. Engineering work just - that wasn't - I don't like to be in the
office that much and just sit there and look at numbers. So I went to - at that time, they were
having some personnel problems here, so they asked me if I'd come to work here, so I said,
"Yeah. That'll suit me just fine because I don't have to go in city traffic." You know, it's
country, about as country as you can get. Traffic jams here is a big tractor trying to get down
the road or something, so it's no big deal. And I know a lot of the people that live around
here, so it's worked out rea,l.l ~ood. I've been here now five, five and a half years roughly.
Did you enjoy the time when you were working at the River Authority?
Oh, sure.
What did you like about it?
45
Well, here again, I liked the way things were set up as far as when Bo~ was
arotmd, you know, and that. There was never a dull moment. And I got to do a lot of things
that I know ifl would have been someplace else I probably never had a chance to do, and
learned a lot of things, too. So I really liked that time.
And then the other part is we were kind of like a little family. Like I say, everybody knew
everybody else's name and could kid with them and that kind of thing, you know. I know
now the way they're set up there now, I'm not saying anything bad because I'm not there, but
they're in their little cubicle in their own little world and don't know who lives next to them
kind of thing.
So we had - and then the camaraderie we had and the get-togethers, that type of thing, that
was always a lot of fun. We had the skeet meets and the - we had two of those, we had one
in spring, and then we had one just before dove season started. That was always the big one.
We really put on the food, that really was good.
I heard there was some kind of a camping trip to South Texas with - and it was fathers with
their sons or something.
I dido 't make that one. That was just before I got there.
I think it was Blair Warren who said that he had to borrow a boy.
46
Yeah. It was Blair Warren, Jim Thompson, and I think Russe~as in on that. Yeah,
I didn't make that one. That was just before my time. Did you talk to Blair Warren?
Uh-huh.
How's he doing?
Just fine.
Good. He used to call every once in a while, and here lately he hasn't been calling.
I guess it's always easier to have that sense of a group when it's a smaller group -
Oh, sure.
Had they reinstated the ad valorem tax by the time you left?
No. Fred did away with it, and then) was it the second or third, I guess maybe the third year
after Rothe came back in, he brought it back in again. But you know, we worked without tax
money. The money that we operated on, like for instance the treatment plant, was from the
customers, so we didn't have any tax money.
We operated from - ours was from the rates for treating water. And then, like, the engineers
47
and stuff like that for contracts that they did on river projects, well, we got our engineering
costs and that out of there, and that's how they were funded. And then, like, Fred and those
guys, well, you'd get a cut for admin services from that, so everything was funded from one
to the other. So Fred learned to live without tax money.
$~~.
& did (i11tffuiibkj.
Yeah.
And it worked for the agency.
Exactly.
Did y 'all ever feel any pressure because of that?
I guess - no, well, I guess probably some of the pressure Fred felt that we really didn't get
into because we were out at treatment plants. But I think Fred probably felt it most because
not getting any-
(End ofTape 2, Side 1. Beginning ofTape 2, Side 2.)
Not getting any tax money, we couldn't do some of the things downstream, like doing
logjams and stuff like that because we weren't actually bringing any money in from down
48
there. I know Fred tried very hard to try to get the counties to fund some of that so that we
could go down and do some of that, but because of not collecting any money, you know, we
didn't have any - go down there and operate down there. But I know that guys down at
Karnes City, I know that they're - the money that they have to operate with is coming from
the Soil Conservation and that kind of stuff.
(Recording turned off and turned back on.)
Going back to Mr. Brune, like I say, he was military, and he knew how to politic. One of the
stories that we really got involved with was a lot of fun. Somehow he was trying to get
funding for a lot of river projects, and in order to do this, he was trying to get a lot of the
bigger politicians from Washington to come down so he could wine and dine them and show
them what he was trying to do and that type of thing. That was when Charlie was still here.
I guess I was working part-time, I guess, at that time.
But anyway, we went to - gee whiz, how was that now? We went- I don't think we - man,
)
I don't remember. I think we picked taem up at the airport, and they came down with a bus.
We got a van and had to get all their luggage, make sure that everybody's name was on it and
)
that kind of stuff. We had to meet tRem, we had to put the stuff in the van, and I think we
)
took ¢em to the Saint Anthony, I think, I'm not sure about that anymore. But we took them
there, we had to take all the luggage, take them all up to their rooms, make sure everybody
got the right luggage and everything.
49
Then the next morning we had to go pick up all the luggage again and take it to- I remember
we went to Randolph, and we had to put all the luggage back in, and here comes the bus with
J~rY\'
all the people. So he wined and dined them, you know, and showed~ all the projects that
he wants to do and that they've done already, where the money went and that type of thing.
That probably was enough to get them interested in doing a lot of the other projects that they
got into later. But that was something, I mean. And then in between we had to help set up •
J.l
for different parties, and I think we were at La Vjllita at that point too. We had to take them
~
down there, you know, and get them set up. We had to help set upiet'everything. So we
spent two days just catering to them.
That was Mr. Brune. That was neat.
(End of interview.)
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