5: My Father was the Greatest CAT Skinner and Heavy Equipment Operator in North America
Why My Dad Never Attended the 8th Grade
My father (age 14) was helping his Dad and brother loading raw onions on a rail car and asked for time off to register for school starting in the 8th grade. The land owner told him he could not until they finished the entire job. Dad bought new clothes and showed up to the school for what would be his 8th grade year (14 years old). He was told he was two weeks late and would have to wait until next year!
Instead, Dad went north in Idaho to the Forest Service and signed up for the CC Camps claiming that he was 16 years old. The CC Camps formed all over the Nation to help keep young men (ages 16 – 21 years) off of the streets and helped them earn money for their parents and grandparents. It worked and he soon discovered his propensity for driving small trucks and other equipment by hauling off cut trees and brush form the new trails mostly in National Parks. He also learned in these CC Camps that he was a natural boxer and over the next 4 years (in World War II) he rarely lost as a fighting SEA Bee’s in Okinawa. He was one of the first military units to land in Japan right after the two hydrogen bombs were dropped and the surrender of the Japanese people. By then, he could drive just about any heavy equipment in existence: Big DC8 Cats, road graters, and giant rolling machines, rebuilding the damaged airstrips in Japan. They still had to avoid being shot at by the Japanese snipers who didn't want Americans in the Japanese mainland. Okinawa was only 400 miles from Japan with American airstrips and fueling tanks.
My dad did everything younger: driving heavy equipment, getting married (mother was 14 and dad was 16), being drafted at 17, and returning from Japan with 2 children, a home, and a car at 20 years of age. Most men are 19 or 20 years old trying to figure out what to do with their lives.
The Best Heavy Equipment Operator
In the next 40 years, he never looked back. He moved to a major construction job on earth-filled dams, operating the major heavy equipment. Monster road graters, covering a full lane of road, the largest DC8 CATS with twin engines and a 27- foot rake blade. The CATS pulling an 8-ton steel ball, monster chains, and mowing down standing timber. The 8-ton hollow steel ball, higher than a man would float when towed across a river to more positions. Two trucks in tandem with 36 wheels hauling 5 miles an hour. A 100-ton generator for the dams to create electricity for cities hundreds of miles away.
Dad was “incredible” and in the top 5% of all Heavy Equipment Operators in the world through the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. Many years later (in the 80s and 90s), truckloads were on 106 wheels moving whole buildings in Australia and huge earth-moving trucks with over 260 yards on the Asway Dan in Egypt (Nile River) with the Russians doing the contract. Dad would have been there teaching them how to drive the largest earth movers at the time. The loaders held 17 yards of dirt each scoop; you could fit a full-size car in three scoops to fill one Earth Truck whose wheels are as large as two stories and cost $20,000 each. Day in and day out carrying these Giant Trucks from one to the next in the Western States. The open mine pits demanded larger and larger equipment. Some coal pits put the loaders on railways to move around the full of the pit. The Big Earth Haulers had built in the TV Monitors so the driver could see when backing up and for expelling noise so everyone could hear within 30 ft. of the loader. On the Oxbow dam in Hell’s Canyon, where I was working, Mr. Oliver had a big boy back up over him and it blew his lungs right out of his mouth and flattened him to a 2” pancake. He was the father of one of the cheerleaders I was dating. It devastated the family for years.
The World's Largest Twin DC8 Caterpillar Tractor
My father (Willard Ford) was called Tennessee Ford by his friends and was known in the western states as one of, if not the best truck driver. The Brownlee Dam on the Snake River had ordered three 100-ton generators (made in France) 3 years before the dam was finished. It came by ship and by railroad car within 27 miles from the dam. (A windy 27 mile, part gravel road.) It would take two Peterbilt (oversized) trucks, side by side to haul the 100-ton vertical generator. The truck drivers were under the direction of my father (driving the inside truck).
Here are the details:
- Two oversized 18-wheeler special built trucks side-by-side.
- Six iron workers on each side of both trucks to put in "stops" whenever the trucks would stop to prevent the wheels from sinking totally into the pavement.
- A DC8 CAT chained to the front of the trucks, and another DC8 CAT chained to the back to prevent runaways going up and down the contour of the road.
- Flag cars out two miles from the front and back of the trucks.
- Intercom system so the lead driver (my father) could talk to everyone at the same time: 2 truck drivers, 12 iron workers, 2 CAT skinners, 4 flag drivers, 4 foremen from the dam.
This incredible feat was repeated three times on the Brownlee Dam and three times on the Oxbow Dam, ten miles further down the Snake River, where my girlfriend at the time lived! It still holds a record for weight, difficulty of road, and for 2 special built Peterbilt 18-wheeler trucks. All led by my father!
Dad's Famous Wild Whisky Ride
As a family of four, including me and my younger sister, we moved our foot trailer to Hungry Horse, Montana. My dad worked as a CAT Skinner along with the select few who knew how to operate the powerful DC8 Caterpillar Tractor. This was the CAT used to clear away all trees behind the Hungry Horse Dam being built at the same time.
These CAT Skinners were a “special breed” of men who could work 12-14 hours a day, 6 days a week, then going to town 60 miles away to drink and dance with their wives and close friends. They were notorious for not mixing with the other “damn workers” as they were called. My dad was a fighter in the Concentration Camps since age 13, and then with the fighting Sea Bees at age 17. (He lied about his age to be recruited.) Seldom ever lost a fight boxing with gloves, and with his fists fighting for food stamps in the immigration camps that existed before the war. (These were difficult times for everyone.) I personally saw my dad once in a construction bar in Hungry Horse hit a worker so hard he broke his right hand and finished the man, bigger than him, with his left hand. He had the respect of those who knew him, and could have been a Golden Gloves boxer with a manager in another time.
On Sundays in Hungry Horse, Montana, we also loved to go to the rodeos. (One in every small town in the summer!) On this special day at a rodeo in White Fish, Montana, my mother remarked how difficult it must be to ride a wild bucking horse. My dad quickly said, “I could easily ride such a bucking horse” himself, we all jumped in saying, “No Way!”
Dad left us suddenly in our seats and we thought to buy himself another beer. He loved his beer and the mark of his fellow workers to get drunk together almost every Sunday. The next thing we heard the rodeo announcer say loudly over the microphone, “Next we have Willard Ford, a cowboy from Emmett, Idaho in shoot #9 on Wild Whisky!”
He came out on Wild Whisky wearing his street clothes and work boots, shooting straight up in the air, twisting and snorting like a bull, 3 more back in the air, and off flew my dad, above the horse, and crash on the ground. For the longest time he didn’t move and just when a ring cowboy was ready to signal the ambulance he miraculously stood up and to a cheering crowd, and walked stopped over to the edge to get out of the way for the next horse back rider. It was noted that the riding stock came from the C ranch near McCall Idaho. (My grandfather had worked there one summer.)
Dad wasn’t wearing the all-important leather chaps in his now famous ride. This downside to the rookie rider was that most of the hair was removed up his inside legs to his buttox, including significant patches leaving no hair at all. Hearing him telling his family members at a Ford/Fullerton Reunion at Caldwell, Idaho. Just him telling it made you squirm in the unorthodox way he explained to not be touching any of the hairless areas from the ride, having a large jar by his side, easy to reach and apply for any small relief possible. Mom tells us he still has patches of no hair as the now famous ride on Wild Whisky coming out of shoot #9 while attending the rodeo at White Fish, Montana, the entrance to Glacier National park when I was only 12 years old. Only two years before we traveled to Hells Canyon (Idaho/Oregon Boarder) on the Snake River. Now that’s a five-year experience full of adventure, hunting, and High School sports. Oh yes going through a small High School, falling in love and off to Oregon State University to be an Engineer.
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