The summer after I graduated from Star Valley High School in 1986, I got my first full-time job. Before that, I had only worked for Dad on the ranch or picked up the occasional odd job for neighbors. That summer, I went to work for Clark's Ready Mix.
Both of my older brothers, Kent and Kelly, had worked for Clark's before me. Kelly was the crusher foreman, so he was actually my boss's boss. Kent was the other shift foreman. So, I did not work directly with him.
I had already committed to attend BYU that fall, so I knew this would only be a summer job. It turned out to be one of the most interesting jobs I have ever had.
When I started, Clark's was producing gravel for resurfacing the highway through the Snake River Canyon between Jackson and Star Valley. The crusher was set up on the flats near Dog Creek, where large rocks were scooped from the Snake River and fed through a series of crushers, conveyors, and vibrating screen decks until they became clean 3/4-inch road gravel. Along the way, the plant also separated out sand and "reject," the fine dirt and small rock that wasn't suitable for the road project.
My job title was laborer. I spent most of my shift walking around the crushing plant with a shovel, clearing dirt and rock away from the conveyor belts before it could build up enough to stop them from turning. I also inspected the vibrating screen decks, watching and listening for anything that didn't sound right.
The crusher never really became quiet. It roared constantly. We all wore earplugs, and if you wanted to tell a coworker something, you leaned close and yelled directly into their ear. The air always smelled like dirt, diesel fuel, and hydraulic oil.
I worked the graveyard shift from 1:00 until 9:00 every morning. To make sure I woke up on time, I bought a new alarm clock and tried going to bed around three in the afternoon. That rarely worked. I usually didn't fall asleep until six or seven in the evening, but once I got to work, staying awake was never a problem.
I carpooled every night with our two loader operators, Kevin Chadwick and Gene Heap, whom everyone called "Growly." We met each night at the Maverik in Thayne before driving to the crusher together.
One of my responsibilities was giving each loader operator a fifteen-minute break every few hours. That was how I learned to operate a Caterpillar 980C front-end loader.
Growing up on the ranch, I had already spent plenty of time operating tractors, our loader tractor, the swather, and the baler, so running a loader didn't intimidate me too much. My training was about as simple as it could be.
"Here's the gas and brake. Here's the gear selector. This lever raises, lowers, and tilts the bucket. Keep the feeder full, but don't overload it or you'll stop the conveyor belt."
That was it.
The operator climbed down, and I climbed in.
Within a few days I was comfortably filling in during breaks, learning how to float the bucket smoothly across the ground to scoop gravel without digging into the surface.
Kevin and Growly couldn't have been more different.
Every morning before work, Kevin bought a fresh carton of cigarettes at the Maverik. When it was time for his break, I would climb into his loader and could barely see across the cab because it was so full of cigarette smoke. He never opened the windows. The first thing I always did was open every window and turn on the fan. Just about the time the smoke had finally cleared out, Kevin's break would be over, and he'd climb back into his rolling cloud of smoke.
Growly was the exact opposite.
Even though we worked around one of the dirtiest jobs imaginable, he kept his loader spotless. Several times during every shift, he stopped what he was doing, swept the dust out of the cab, and cleaned every window with Windex. I was never nervous about operating his loader, but I was always a little nervous about getting it dirty.
After about three weeks, the highway project was finished, and we moved the crusher back to its home location, known as Tucker Pit, just outside Jackson.
Everything changed there.
Because nearby residents had complained about the noise, the county only allowed the crusher to operate between 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. Instead of working five eight-hour shifts, we switched to three long days each week, working fourteen hours on Monday and thirteen hours on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The pit was about seventy miles from Star Valley, so instead of commuting every day, I stayed Monday and Tuesday nights with Kelly and his wife, Iris, in their fifth-wheel trailer at Tucker Pit. I always enjoyed staying with them.
Working at Tucker Pit had one unexpected difference from working in the canyon.
Out in the middle of nowhere, if someone needed to answer nature's call, they simply walked behind a pile of gravel. At Tucker Pit, though, the owner's daughter, who was about my age, worked there during the day. It paid to look around the corner before taking care of business. None of us wanted to be caught at the wrong moment.
Near the end of the summer, a powerful thunderstorm rolled through Jackson Hole. One lightning strike seemed especially close to the trailer, but we didn't think much about it.
The next morning, Clint, our shift foreman, started the crusher. Almost immediately, we heard loud popping and grinding coming from one of the screen decks, and we shut everything down.
After tearing the machinery apart, we discovered something none of us had ever seen before. The lightning had actually struck the crusher and welded one of the large drive gears to its shaft.
We couldn't get the gear off.
Eventually we laid a hydraulic press on its side so the shaft would fit inside it. Even then it took an incredible amount of pressure before the welded gear finally broke loose. When it did, the shaft shot across the shop like a missile, flying nearly twenty feet through the air.
Since the crusher was already shut down, Kelly decided it was the perfect opportunity to replace the worn crusher cones.
A crane lifted the massive cone onto the ground while we worked to remove the heavy steel shims that held it in place. The job required one person to hold a long steel punch while another swung a fifteen-pound sledgehammer to drive the shims loose.
Kent was swinging the sledgehammer.
The crane operator was holding the punch.
The shim shifted just enough that Kent's next swing missed the punch completely. Instead, the sledgehammer slammed into the edge of the cone.
Unfortunately, the crane operator's little finger was caught between the hammer and the steel cone.
I still remember both men yelling before blood began running out of the top of the crane operator's glove. They rushed him to the hospital immediately.
That turned out to be my last day at Clark's Ready Mix.
The crusher was down, and I was leaving for BYU the following week anyway, so Kelly told me to turn in my time and consider it my resignation.
Looking back, it was quite a first full-time job. In one summer, I learned to help keep a rock crusher running, operate a Caterpillar 980C loader, work the graveyard shift, and appreciate the different personalities of the people who worked in construction. A few weeks later, I traded all of that for a dorm room, college classes, and a completely different chapter of life.
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