Nearly three months after a fierce straight-line windstorm swept through North Longview, damaging hundreds of homes – including ours – repair work continues. We were luckier than many. Our roof sustained minor damage, plus some smashed gutters. The biggest project has been having our deck rebuilt, and that is nearly completed.
One victim of the storm was the Apology Table. It is a 30-inch square cedar outdoor table. The top consists of diagonal slats with gaps between each board to allow rain to fall through. The table gets its name because I built it as an apology gift for my Beautiful...
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The world this week marked the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon in 1969 and Neil Armstrong taking those first steps on its dusty surface. At the time, I worked after school as a paperboy for the Longview Daily News, peddling the afternoon edition to patrons of downtown businesses along Methvin, Tyler and Cotton streets, then heading down Green Street to Highway 80. The paper cost a dime, and I got to keep a nickel. A bit of salesmanship was required, since folks decided each day whether to invest that dime – especially since many had already read the Morning Journal. Most days,...
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As the summer sun beats down outside, I am spending a fair amount of time comfortably tucked inside the Estes Library, getting paid to go through boxes of documents contained in the R.G. LeTourneau Industries archives. Four of us are working to put at least some of the boxes into some sensible order, as I have mentioned before. This is a long-term project.
Here are some interesting pieces I have found over the past several weeks:
• One file folder contained a series of letters between the company and the United States Department of Agriculture. In December 1958, a research agricultural...
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GREEN MOUNTAINS, VERMONT -- Growing up in New Hampshire, our family didn’t have much dealings with Vermont. We often spent a week in Maine during the summer, crowded into a modest cabin at York Beach – which was only an hour east of Allenstown, where we lived. As a kid, it seemed like a epic journey to travel to York, an hour-and-a-half drive in our 1964 Comet with the three boys in the backseat, all of us dodging cigarette ashes flicked out the window by our parents. Ten years ago, I returned to York with my Beautiful Mystery Companion and daughter Abbie. The drive from Boston seemed to take...
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You wanna go where everybody knows your name.
— Theme song from “Cheers”
Back Bay, Boston – Nobody knows our name here on Beacon Street, as we hop off the Old Town Trolley, just up from Boston Common. John Kerry, the former senator and presidential nominee, and his wife, Teresa Heinz, live nearby in one of the brownstones that grace the narrow streets of Beacon Hill. I once tried to figure out which one was their home, to no avail. It is unlikely they would have...
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I am about to offload a few boxes of books to my older daughters, Meredith and Kasey. I have no choice in the matter. There are books in every room of this big ol’ house. My study contains two walls of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that have reached capacity. All the other places for books in bedrooms and living areas are filled as well.
Something has to give. I will start with fiction, especially old best-sellers that I will never read again or need for reference — Tom Clancy, Stephen King, Tony Hillerman. I’m loath to relinquish any biographies, histories or other nonfiction. I might need...
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Many years after my paternal grandfather, Carl Borders, left Wyoming, he continued to subscribe to The Douglas Budget and Converse County Review. He and his father had left Illinois in 1918 to homestead 640 acres in Converse County, about 50 miles northwest of Douglas, which then had a population of about 2,300. It now has about 6,500 residents.
Although he left Wyoming in the mid-1940s to pursue a career as a professional Boy Scout, Grampa Borders continued to subscribe to the weekly paper. This was when folks had to rely on the paper to find out what was happening in places they used to live....
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We held an eighth-grade graduation party for our nephew, Connor, last weekend. He is about to enter high school, which boggles my mind. It seems it was just yesterday that I met him at an Easter egg hunt when he was 3. Connor is now slightly taller than me, which isn’t saying much, but there is still considerable growth potential. He and his dad, Jim, are two of my favorite people.
Connor and his buddy, Jacob, took a break from swimming in the pool, at which point Jim announced he would show all of us the age-old tradition of worm grunting. We headed outside to what most folks might call a mulch...
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As I mentioned last week, I am spending much of the summer going through the R.G. LeTourneau archives, placing the material in acid-free folders and categorizing it. I enjoy this type of work. I fully realize that, despite three of us working 29 hours a week on the project, we will barely make a dent in the mountain of material. But it moves the project a bit farther down the road, and it provides a glimpse in the famed Christian industrialist’s many activities – and the voluminous correspondence he received from around the world.
The material I am going through now is from 1959. Mr. R.G....
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The LeTourneau domes are a familiar landmark when driving into the heart of Longview from the south. The name of the industrial company has changed several times — it’s now Komatsu. Still, for long-time residents, the domes retain the name of the company founder, who left his mark on this city in many ways. R.G. LeTourneau founded the company that bore his name, invented massive earth-moving equipment and off-shore oil drilling platforms, held hundreds of patents and developed a private Christian technical institute after World War II that evolved into LeTourneau University.
Eventually that...
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