Horses, cars, trucks, and helicopters

  52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 6 (Feb 5-11)
Prompt: Earning a Living
#52ancestors

From the time people graduated from foot power to horsepower, my ancestors have been involved with transportation.  I've written about Robert Golightley and his blacksmith shop in the past. He had several other jobs besides being a blacksmith including working at the Winfield Ice & Cold Storage Company (Kansas) in the Engine Room. The entire family seems to have a knack for mechanical equipment. 

As we moved from horses to horseless carriages, family members changed careers.  My Grandfather, Johnnie, owned a gravel pit and hauled gravel to build the new roads that were needed. My father's first transportation related job at age 15 was working on a road crew.  His dad, Johnnie, was hauling gravel when their boss told my dad to deliver a load of gravel. Johnnie wasn't happy about it when he found out, but that was just the start of my dad driving the gravel trucks.  It was a few weeks later that he had his first accident.  He rolled the dump truck on a curve and was lucky to come out of it without a scratch. 

Both Johnnie and my dad, Leeland, were mechanics, too.  Several times they worked together on big equipment usually for Mr. Troutman in Kansas. They were also "shade tree mechanics" in that they worked on cars in the yard under a shade tree. I can't tell you how many times my dad worked on someone's car after he got off work. Often it was for someone at the church, neighbor, or a friend of a friend who couldn't afford to get their vehicle fixed. My siblings and I were all pressed into service holding a flashlight while Dad worked on an engine after dark. 

In the late 1960s, Leeland went to work for Southern Airways working on helicopters in Mineral Wells. The army base, Fort Wolters, was a training facility for helicopter pilots on their way to Vietnam. Along with my Father-In-Law, John Evans, and many other men in Mineral Wells, they kept the helicopters running while the army pilots learned to fly. 

From my Great-Grandfather to my Dad, our family carved out a living with horses, cars, trucks, and helicopters.