Trailblazer: J.O. Jones, Blackfoot

These are first-person accounts from the early days of the department. Some of these stories are fascinating - a look at life on the road crews 70 to 100 years ago. These stories appeared in the Transporters of the '70s.

"I started working for the Highway Department on Aug. 8, 1948 when they were running a line to construct Highway 37 from Malad to Holbrook. There wasn't nearly as much pressure those days. I worked about two years for the engineers on several different jobs around the Malad and Preston areas as a laborer and had the opportunity to learn the ways and duties of an engineer and found it to be very interesting, then decided to try the maintenance field.

Around 1950, I went to work on the special crew as a truck driver. I drove a truck hired by the Highway Department from a private individual.

Those days, all the trucks used by he department were hired during the summer months. The truck owner stood all the expenses on their trucks. A couple of years later, the state purchased a fleet of small dump trucks to replace the hired equipment and the men that had their trucks replaced had an opportunity to stay on and drive the department’s new equipment, which some did. They were a great bunch of men and enjoyable to work with.

About 1951-52, I was assigned the job of boot man on an oil distributor. I enjoyed it, but it was an awful dirty job and my wife wasn't very happy to see me come home on weekends with my clothes full of road oil. In comparison, nowadays one man operates a distributor and gets out of his truck only to load, which is quite an improvement over years past. I worked for the special crew for several years as an equipment operator, roller, loader, and whatever was needed at the time. in those days one had to contribute to the party if you wanted a job, because the Department of Highways was a political job.

We always stayed away from home during the week if we were over 25 miles away. The per diem was only about $2.50 a day, but if we didn't get too reckless we could get by pretty good. We usually didn't do too much for entertainment aside from a few parties. We would take in movies or go fishing if it was handy to do so.

We used spreader boxes that were hooked right to the truck and seemed to work quite well. They did have an old spreader box on wheels that the truck had to back into and it served the purpose if the truck driver was good enough to back into the hitch. It wasn't a very safe piece of equipment and was soon replaced.

I had the opportunity to transfer to maintenance at Malad in about 1955 and worked there until 1960. It was interesting to compare working conditions then with all our modern conveniences today. Back then we had to shovel all our sand on by hand and put it on the roads the same way. I can remember loading several loads of sand in an evening and sanding the highways from Downey to Malad in all kinds of weather.

During our patching operation in the spring before the weather got warm, we would have to dig the oil material out of the row with a crow bar (fastened to a truck if necessary) to be able to get our work done. Look at the equipment they have today. The duties of a maintenance man weren't much different then they are now. There is a lot more traffic to put up with now.

I was asked to move to Blackfoot as a supervisor on May 15, 1960 and that was where I worked until my retirement Jan. 1, 1979.

It was a challenge to keep up with the demands of the traveling public, such as the dry road policy the department tried to adopt as compared to the policies of past years, when we stayed home until the storm was over and then were instructed to leave at least two inches of snow on the road, thereby having a snow floor at all times. To insure this was done, shoes were placed on all snowplows to keep the plow from touching the road, If the snow melted, then we would plow the slush off the road. It's quite a bit different now. Any job that needs to be done nowadays is done with a modern-day piece of equipment.

There are not too many of the old pick-and-shovel jobs done anymore. The new equipment available today makes it necessary for more training programs and safety meetings and better planning.

My experiences while with the department have been mostly pleasant ones and always learning experiences. I will miss my association with the fellows I have worked with over the years, especially our trips and meetings in various places with supervisors and crews from other areas."

Trailblazer: Roy Plessinger, Twin Falls

"I first worked on the road back in the late 20's in Nebraska, with four head of horses on a road drag, dragging dirt into the ruts caused by rain and snow during winter. We got paid by the mile for doing so.

We ate our meals in a cook shack pulled along from one job to another. We worked nine hours a day, which I figured out was $54 a week. I was making money, but I have to admit, dad was furnishing the feed for the horses.

I was married in 1933, and we have two daughters and eight grandchildren.

We came to Idaho in the late 30's. I went to work for the state of Idaho at BuhI. I would say my hardest job was sanding the Banberry Grade between BuhI and Hagerman. The road was long, steep, and crooked, and we didn't have a dozer so we had to shovel the sand on and off.

At that time, the Castleford road and the Clover road were state maintained. In the summer time, we would hook an old pull grader on behind the truck to pull dirt up to the edge of the road.

At that time, our jobs were in politics and if it changed, you were out of a job. I worked four years and had to quit to let the other bunch take over.

In January 1947, I went back to work out of Twin Falls. In the meantime they got the job out of politics and I worked until I retired in 1973, which made me 30 years working for the state.

In the winter of 1948-1949, snow drifted North, Southeast, and West roads. The roads were covered with snow. We couldn't handle it with our little trucks. They sent a rotary down from Shoshone, and we tried to open a road east of Twin Falls. The drifts were so hard, the rotary wouldn't eat into it. All it wanted to do was walk over the top of them, so the next morning they sent over a truck with a larger V-plow on it and they finally broke through the drifts.

We got our first tractor loader in 1950. That was really something. We used to hook it on behind the truck and pull it out to where we were going to work that day. Before that we tried to rig up an elevator and put one end in the gravel or dirt and the other end up over the truck bed, and pull material up this slide with a scraper we had. It was mounted on wheels with wooden spokes and hard rubber tires. I have still got those wheels and tires today.

After the horse mowers they put a sickle bar on the side of a car and tractor. I haven't forgot the scythes - we used to call them father time. You would have to stand and swing them to cut weeds at intersections and various other places.

We didn't have to worry much about traffic. They were driving pretty slow and some of them would stop in the middle of the road and want to talk. If that was today someone would have run into them.

The thing I liked the most is you didn't do the same thing everyday, because there would be something else come up that you had to go do."

Published 06-21-19