Wow I remember as it was today. Driving through downtown Houston with buildings as tall as you could see, it was mind boggling to look up and almost get sick they were so tall; people everywhere, lots of cars parked and going about downtown life.
I had never seen anything like this before. It was very amazing.
I don't know if you have heard of this place, at the time it was nicknamed the eighth wonder of the world it was called the Astrodome. It was partially demolished in 2013 because it had not been used in several years.
I would ride my bike as far as I could, then walk as far as I could to watch it being built. It was just brush, a swampy kind of place that went a long ways. I, nor had many ever seen the things I was witnessing, it was a busy place.
Big cranes, people working that looked like ants, there was steel in all shapes and sizes. I had no idea, but I thought maybe we could put a man in space. Just watching all I beheld was amazing. What they built, was a huge sports stadium, a round roof that retracted to let in the sun.
Wish I had owned a camera at this young age. I don't think people would have believed the things I saw at this time of my life.
Houston also had one shopping mall; I never knew they existed until then. It seemed big back then but small by the standards of today. Houston was a big city and its one of the biggest today.
There were tunnels going under the water to take you from one place to another. You drove your car, maybe you could even walk it's hard to remember. Large oceangoing ships from all over the world passed overhead going to unload, or get loaded with goods to take somewhere else throughout the Gulf of Mexico.
The water these ships pushed through had oil refineries, steel mills, places that built the world as we live today. They billowed smoke and soot, It became pollution and had to be stopped. There were many people employed at these places, they made good money, and were hard working men and women with families and the American dream.
They bought homes, automobiles, shopped at the big mall and it wouldn't be long before they would take the family to the Astrodome, the Dome as we called it was going to be the new home of the Colt 45's they had been given a new name the year they moved The Astros, soon it would also be the home of the Houston Oilers a big football team, and not long after the new home for what is billed as the largest rodeo and live stock show in the world known as The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.
To me it is funny, as a kid you never think about having those season tickets to ball games, or being a life member, having tickets to every event, for a rodeo and a baseball game. As we grow we are all different, some with good luck and fortune. What you start doing someday to help new generations of people get their young lives going.
My mom found a good job working for a construction company that became the biggest in the world for a long time. Mr. Brown and Mr. Root had built so much of Houston. They started with teams of mules, and horses, they were visionaries. Hiring so many people and often treating them like family. They built everything you can think of in places all over the world. Runways in Vietnam, pipelines in Alaska; they built refineries, roads, highways, canals and rebuilt them when needed.
I to went to work for this company fresh out of the army, going many places for work. I even met my new wife while working. Sometimes I worked seven days a week, for 10 maybe 12 hours a day. Other times I worked in office buildings, thinking I was important.
It was a good 9 years I worked for them, they always treated me well. I learned a lot of different things working with my sweat sometimes always believing I would work for them until I retired.
Not so as I have a mind and heart that thought of owning my own business someday.
I started a moving company in San Francisco, California in 1978, when the pipeline in Dead Horse Camp in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska was close to being done. Man was I surprised, I did learn a big lesson of life. Back to Texas we went with my new wife, everything we owned in a big one ton van. Back to work for the company I had been with building two big nuclear reactor plants, and later rebuilding chemical plants. Several years later back to Houston working at the plants that lined the ship channel the tunnels went under.
I left that big construction company went to work elsewhere, learning a new trade in life. Who would have thought of laying asphalt and concrete? I did, and several years later started my own paving company, I also tried the electric overhead crane business; the big ones that unloaded big ships, and moved steel around at the mills. My partner taught me a lot about electrical components, and the moving parts of these big cranes. But his heart from the beginning was not good to get the business started, and put me out. As long as we learn from these kinds of people, it will make you a wiser, better person in your later life you should be.
