Keep the Change

Chapter 7

Shotguns are an integral feature of southern culture, useful implements for game-bird hunts equals so in deer stands. The one in question was a 16-gauge Mossberg fitted with a three-shot limiter, suggesting upland game bird service, likely quail and pheasants, maybe doves, too. Donny’s grandfather had given him the Mossberg on his twelfth birthday. Its scratched wooden stock served as a reminder of happy days walking hedge lines seeking birds. The old man’s dream was realized one chilly November morning when his gangly grandson returned to the car where the old man waited, Donny’s game vest heavy with birds.

The concussive blast and nearly simultaneous scream originated in a downtown Florence, Alabama park, one separated by fewer than five blocks from its police headquarters. The shooting’s origins, although complex, were significantly underwritten by a fresh wave of neuroexcitatory chemicals ‘infecting’ their Alabama users.

Karla’s selection of Donny as a high school beau was largely rooted in common family backgrounds, little favored the tryst, discounting hormonally-drive features. Their short, passionate love affair quickly yielded an unplanned pregnancy. Five months past high school graduation Karla delivered a healthy baby boy at Florence’s Eliza Coffee Hospital. Pressured by two sets of parents, Donny and Karla professed marriage vows before a Lauderdale magistrate. The troubled marriage shortly floundered.

One Saturday evening, Karla presented at an aunt’s house, carrying her baby boy and facial features characteristic of a pummeling.

Karla’s aunt, no stranger to abuse herself insisted Karla and the baby stay there and outlined a relocation plan consistent with an immediate separation ahead of a divorce.

Donny’s child visitation rights were scheduled for alternate Saturdays and were limited to four-hour supervised visits with his baby in the aunt’s living room, times Karla completed the week’s grocery shopping and caught up on errands. Karla fortunately found employment with TVA’s National Fertilizer Development Center, its NFDC. While only a lower-level clerical post, the job provided her with a sense of self-worth and also gave her an opportunity to plan more independent living accommodations.

Rushing home from NFDC to care for a toddler meant date-type opportunities were limited to fifty-minute lunch meet-ups. She had previously spent time with Gregg her co-worker, generally just splitting a fast-food sandwich and a bag of chips while parked in Gregg’s car beside Florence’s fountain park.

Following the break-up Donny worked at a local golf course, mostly mowing fairways and grooming greens, depending on a turf-tired Farmall-A tractor. Club patrons came to like the friendly young man riding the Farmall, frequently complimenting him regarding the club's well-maintained greens, sometimes even gifting him with unused beers or partially consumed bottles of whiskey. Out-of-town patrons donated partial six-packs of Budweiser, half-full bottles of Jack Daniels bourbon and occasionally marijuana-containing baggies.

Sometimes rushed to purchase beer or whiskey, ahead of a golf outing, club patrons increasingly relied upon ‘Farmall Donny’ to supply them with virtually any of these products and whatever leftover weed he might have on hand.

This side business generated compensation beyond the modest sums Donny earned performing golf course maintenance. Donny had bragged to friends and acquaintances that visiting celebrities had been quite generous in terms of their purchases, grossly overestimating costs of either liquor or weed, paying him using one-hundred-dollar bills. Perhaps anticipating more visits, it wasn’t unusual for a well-known rock musician or even one of their managers to decline change, laughing their way through a common expression.

‘We’ll be back, keep the change.’

The club pro counseled Donny twice about what he termed nonclub business before dismissing him, leaving the former golf course maintainer in the unenviable role of selling street drugs. Prior to leaving home that Wednesday, Donny watched a ‘Price is Right’ television episode, neglecting to eat breakfast or even drink coffee, choosing instead to inhale a tarry substance embedded on a canning jar lid, vaporizing the black clump using a disposable lighter.

As inhaled cocaine transited from his lungs to his bloodstream and shortly crossed Donny’s blood-brain barrier, he formulated a confrontation with Karla about her recent ‘dating.’ Two weeks earlier one of his street contacts had made Donny very angry with news that ‘Your old lady is having lunch with some dude every Wednesday at the fountain park.’

Donny’s behavior took an even more dangerous course when he left that morning conceal the Mossberg his grandfather had given him beneath a long coat. His plan, if you could call it that was to ‘Put the fear of God in those two’ whatever that meant to him

Gregg’s maternal grandfather had loaned his grandson seventeen hundred dollars to purchase a nifty-looking two-year-old white-on- red two door Cutlass. Sprawled across the Olds’ bench seat, Gregg and Karla were enjoying a split hamburger, getting ready to retrieve glovebox-door-suspended Coca Colas, when Donnie rolled up in an easily recognizable noisy pickup, parking the truck beside Karla’s door where he initiated a verbal ‘wife beating,’ an attempt to embarrass his ex-wife. ‘Hey, how do you like the way she pees the bed when you two do the wild thing.’

Gregg’s response adapted a frequently used expression attributable to southern males. ‘Hey Mister, watch your mouth or I’ll teach you some manners.’

Ahead of the gunshot, Gregg reset the Cutlass’ ignition from its accessory position to off, simultaneously swinging his door open and was in the process of placing his left foot on the ground. As Gregg attempted to stand Donny shot him in the back, leaving nearly fifty metal pellets embedded in flesh or doting the Cutlass’ interior. Accounts are unclear whether Donny just meant to point to gun or if he actually meant to fire it. Regardless, the blast reverberated across Florence, Alabama’s core.

Surprisingly, no pellets struck Karla, possibly because her seat had been extended. In Gregg’s case, however, several pellets lodged in his shirt and undershirt and even in his shorts’ elastic waistband, none of these creating injuries.

But other pellets lodged in skin, fascia or lower back muscles, Latinnamed erector spinae and multifidus among them. But still other pellets tore past both garments and tissues to shatter his spine, reaching as far as slender neuronal fibers, ones activating lower limb muscles and controlling Gregg’s anal sphincter.

While other terms might apply, Gregg’s injuries were best described as ‘life-threatening.’ If rapid response could prevent paralysis, the Fountain Park might have been a favored place to be shot. The retort of the shotgun registered at a nearby police station, allowing police officers and ambulance-equipped paramedics to be on scene within minutes. Given the extent of his injuries Gregg was medically evacuated via helicopter to Birmingham’s UAB medical center.

A police sergeant, someone who had attended church services with Gregg’s family, phoned the Reynold Metals switchboard, asking to speak to his father. Pulled from a melt line, his father listened as the sergeant provided a bare-bone description. ‘Something terrible happened at the Court street park, Gregg has been shot and at this time is being life-flighted to UAB.’

Over the ensuing hours, days and weeks Gregg’s family increasingly appreciated the difference between ‘knowing more’ and ‘doing more.’ While the UAB neurology service was remarkable for its knowledge and concern Gregg’s injuries were obviously far-reaching. The immediate sense of relief that their brother and son hadn’t perished was replaced by a sense of dread surrounding his paralytic outcome.

When apprehended hours later driving his truck toward the municipal golf course Donny offered no resistance but asked a puzzling question. ‘Did I really shoot Gregg,’ causing officers to question Donny’s state-of-mind.

For both Gregg and his family, the consistency of bedside and waiting room meetings with surgical, medical and nursing staffs constituted a new reality. Perhaps the most consistently used phrase his family heard was both well-worn and discouraging ‘We’ll have to wait-and-see. ’ While surgical techniques could not reattach tens of thousands of interrelated motor neurons, Gregg endured gurney trips to the OR’s cold confines for a series of vascular reconstructions. Perhaps a bit of a surprise, the neurosurgeon elected to leave most of the BB-sized metal fragments in place, fearing disturbing them would mobilize lead (Pb).

Further surgical and physiatry-initiated (physical medicine and rehabilitation) references to American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA) ratings enlightened caregivers but did little to buoy the family’s hopes.

By the third week of his UAB hospital stay Gregg could stand and support himself, more support on the left than on the right but had not successfully ambulated. As Gregg’s spirits sank, the nursing staff tried something new, they arranged for a very functional, cliffdiving victim to visit Gregg at Spain. His visitor, also permanently confined to a wheelchair, outlined how he had become successfully employed, had married and how much he enjoyed playing adaptive sports.

Gregg just listened, reviewing features of a life he had not anticipated.

Barb’s Cut & Curl

Chapter 8

Newlywed Kirk’s sprinkled a relatively modest stock of wedding presents across their newly-commissioned Julian avenue home, the move there requiring fewer than three hours. Nick’s moved items were limited to a hand-me-down couch and a frame bed. Lacking a dining room set, the newlywed Kirk’s substituted an ironing board and two aluminum lawn chairs for a more formal dining room table.

A recent graduate of Sheffield’s beauty and barber academy, Barb planned to repurpose an attached garage as Barb’s Cut & Curl. If Nick possessed reservations regarding losing work bench space, he withheld comment, reasoning his buddy Jimmy and he could build an outside shed that could accommodate him, plus serve as an outdoor fish-cleaning station.

Opportunities for fish-cleaning or catching would be delayed until he transformed the frame house’s garage into a more-airy version of Barb’s Cut & Curl. Hence, the following Saturday Nick and fishing buddy, Jimmy Myron, began adapting the garage space. Plans included substituting a sliding-glass aluminum-framed door for a quickly ‘demo-ed’ overhead garage door frame. Barb was insistent that the switch would ‘lighten up the place.’

By noon on that remodeling Saturday, Julian avenue neighbors began to visualize the outlines of an emerging beauty shop. Past the sliding door – garage door substitution, key steps included installing a drain line for two shampoo rinse sinks whose outflows would merge with those emanating from a washer-dryer combination that Jimmy had relocated from the former garage to an adjoining half-bath utility space. Jimmy and Nick concurred that the previous owners’ decision to plumb the washer within the garage would aid its adaptation as a beauty shop.

Barb rewarded Nick and his nuclear plant coworker with a pair of shaved ham-on-rye at lunch that Saturday, sandwiches and fresh mint ice tea fortifying their resolve to install two deep shampoo sinks and complete the sewer line tie-in. Actually, by four thirty that afternoon the space looked more like a beauty shop and less like a garage

Possessing misgivings regarding utility room space limitations, Barb devised a hamper-less alternative in the form of two identifiable ‘ditty bags,’ one for Nick’s soiled work clothes (labeled as BF – Brown’s Ferry) and the second dedicated for family laundry (FAM).

Buoyed by plumbing successes, Nick and Jimmy turned their attention to electrical issues, installing two ground fault circuit interrupters, ones nearby shampoo sinks suggested but left the actual tie-ins to the attention of a co-worker electrician who had agreed to forego his Monday night commitment in favor of their hook-ups.

Tired from a busy week and productive remodeling, Nick and Barb slept well that Saturday night although Barb fretted over a city inspector’s visit prior to a zoning meeting. The zoning board’s single question arose from a female member who inquired when Barb anticipated accepting her first clients. Their north Florence neighbors viewed the Kirk’s as industrious newlyweds, Mr. Kirk employed by TVA while Barb was active in the beauty field.

Alarm clocks were largely unneeded in north Florence given morning sounds, mostly noisy car starts. Employment at one of several local industries or at the Brown’s Ferry nuclear plant meant employed residents had mostly departed by seven thirty, some much earlier. Past the morning school bus routine, north Florence was quiet until a comparable parade punctuated its afternoons.

Nick and Barb’s schedules were complementary, his work spread across ‘four-tens.’ Given her patrons’ Sunday church or far less frequent Saturday night Tennessee club forays, the pace of Barb’s intensified as the week ensued. Barb’s Cut & Curl was a hit, so much so that unscheduled ladies stopped by to enjoy its vibe. But by mid-afternoon on Saturdays, Barb drew a shade across its doorwindow arrangement, announcing pause in Cut & Curl activities.

Following a Saturday dinner on-the-town, maybe a catfish place or one featuring barbeque ribs, Barb turned her attention to Nick’s ‘work’ laundry, spreading soiled contents from his BF-ditty bag across the utility room floor. Following the wash cycle, winters meant clanging dryer noises but summers witnessed Barb hanging Nick’s work clothes upside down across a backyard clothes line beside a newly-erected storage shed – fish cleaning station.

Nick was a travelling man, repeat trips to one destination, an ‘under construction’ nuclear power plant. Possibly to minimize gasoline purchases but as much to share company he and Jimmy Myron rode together, typically facing a rising sun during morning commutes and a setting version of the same orb on the drive home.

Nick labored and Barb cut & colored. During the marriage’s year three Nick and Barb welcomed baby girl Nicki who was joined two years later by younger sister Terri, infants who played only steps removed from their mother’s labors. For the most part, neither Barb nor her patrons knew much about the specifics of their husbands’ work, preferring instead to announce a place, e.g., TVA, Reynolds or NFDC, as opposed to a specific job function.

Nick and Jimmy’s Brown’s Ferry orientation included watching instructional films, ones explaining complicated matters such as

‘reactor criticality’ or even mishap-oriented films originating with the Navy’s Office of Nuclear Reactors. During a particularly boring film outlining employee rights and responsibilities, Nick dozed, his elbow sliding from a student desk surface, creating a few giggles before the class monitor told Nick he needed to stand.

Nick and Jimmy had been hired as laborers, believing that their work would complement insulators performing critical reactor insulation steps. Brown’s Ferry new-hires were generally high school graduates skilled in another industrial setting, often military veterans. All of them were required to fulfill attendance and performance requirements relative to nuclear power training. The orientation instructor announced that further training would include what he termed ‘break-out’ sessions for new-hire insulators and electricians, as he put it, laborer attendees could ‘sit tight.’

Nick and Jimmy remained, listening as a newly-introduced speaker explained how asbestos materials crew members, when applying or removing asbestos materials, would be assigned ‘tandem’ lockers, meaning dual lockers on each end of a tunnel-like shower. As he noted, one set of lockers would collect street clothes and personal effects such as billfolds or watches ahead of a dry underwear-only walk across the shower. The second locker would be supplied with ‘work-only’ coveralls, a respirator and additional safety gear such as safety glasses and steel-toed boots. At end of shift workers would abandon their work-only items before taking a soap-andwater shower.

While the speaker emphasized ‘asbestos’ elements, he discussed other risks. Even during the pre-construction phase workers would exit the plant through a radiation-detecting portal while wearing radiation-detecting dosimeter badges.

A question arose from a trainee. ‘Do those badges also record our asbestos exposures?’

Suppressing a grin, lead instructor rather responded. ‘No, we don’t detect airborne asbestos that way but periodically you may be assigned battery-operated air pump that will suck in fibers before we take them back to the lab.

Barb’s preoccupation with Saturday morning hair style client made Saturday mornings good times for Nick to indulge in hobbies. Weather permitting, he and Jimmy sought the solace of the Wilson Dam’s outflows, fishing there for a few hours. Nick’s commuter pickup, an older Chevrolet, on Saturdays was repurposed as a boat tow-er, pulling an ancient flat bottom boat fitted with an 8-hp Johnson outboard. After launching the ‘John’ boat and parking the truck, they anchored several hundred yards downstream of the dam’s outflow seams, favoring Penn bait casting reel and stiff Eagle Claw rod combos to tempt trophy stripers and catfish.

By mid-morning a hot July sun, made even more intense by reflections originating with the broad concrete dam surface warmed surface waters and sent larger fish to lower depths. But by then Nick and Jimmy had netted and strung eight nice sized fish. Recognizing the ‘easy’ feature of spillway fishing had concluded, Jimmy pulled-up anchor while Nick rope-started the Johnson. Back at a rather slick concrete boat ramp, Nick left Jimmy with the boat to retrieve the pickup-trailer combination.

A typical five-minute truck retrieval required nearly fifteen minutes that Saturday before Nick returned with the pickup giving Jimmy plenty of time to rough gut and dress their catch.

Jimmy sought humor. ‘What took you so long, you stop to pee?

Shaking his head, Nick responded. ‘No, but that hike to the truck gets longer and longer.’

Jimmy chuckled. ‘Maybe you and Barb can re-fortify yourselves with some ribs after Barb finishes Lulu’s perm.’

Reaching home by mid-afternoon Nick noted Lulu’s car was still there, providing him with sufficient time to mow the yard using his Snapper riding lawn mower. Showered and wearing a fresh collared shirt and Levi’s, Nick sank into his recliner, dozing by the time the Hee-Haw variety show began.

Barb emerged from the shop with a question . ‘I didn’t see any fish arriving today?’

‘Jimmy took our catch home given I wanted to pilot the Snapper as opposed to cleaning fish. In other news, either the boat ramp is getting longer or I’m getting old.’

Her tone lowered. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘I stopped twice while climbing the ramp ahead of fetching the pickup. Level ground I can handle but that ramp is a killer.’

Road to Emelle Chapter 9

By April 1977 thirty-four years and incomprehensive volumes of water had passed through Wilson dam’s turbines since Betsy’s car ride from Tuskegee. American leadership positions drew strongly from populations of returned WWII veterans who were held in high regard.

While Betsy technically lacked a DD-214 military discharge form, among members of the military aviation community, she required no introduction, her ‘One-Engine Bets’ call sign summarizing her accomplishments. During the post-war years she had rather adapted her aviation skills and attributes to those necessary to lead a regionally-prominent construction firm.

Unfortunately, selected features of her personal life had not been as fortunate. By 1946 her father had suffered a downward clinical course, one in which his pulmonary burden increased, resulting in even more serious damage to his heart. Burt Steiner expired in January 1949, leaving his business holdings to Betsy with provisions support his widow and son, Jim.

While Jim became skilled at operating the crusher and even supervising others, he hadn’t enjoyed similar success in responding to TVA bids, estimating contract-associated costs or attending to the affairs of a multi-state stone, aggregate and concrete supplier.

That was generally what Betsy did. While regional business leaders recognized her lineage as derivative of generations of stone miners, cutters and fitters, male colleagues struggled to accept a female construction firm CEO.

Shortly after she had returned to Florence in December 1944 the Courtland chief pilot had phoned her, indicating he had a pleasant proposition. Taking the call, she acknowledged she wished to discuss some plans with him as well. They set a date for a Courtland visit in early January 1945 when the chief pilot took her on a hangar tour.

‘We’ve trained hundreds of aviation cadets here, primarily using single-engine BT-13A Valiants some but Spearman’s, too. With the war ending the government is surplus-ing planes, some that I have acquired for bid prices. Remembering that you soloed in a Stearman, I purchased the Yellow Peril you soloed in.’

Betsy was overcome by the fact her solo flight had been memorable to him and was touched by his generosity. She quickly centered the conversation on practical matters. ‘When I get back to Florence, I’ll cut a check to compensate you for buying the plane. It goes without saying, I’ll keep up with its hangar fees and inspections.’

Since that January Betsy occasionally flew the Stearman to aviation reunions, fly-ins’ as they were known, supported its annual inspections, upgrading avionics as recommended, While her Spearman may have found a new role, the same couldn’t be said for other surplus-ed items.

Nineteen seventy era drawdowns destined dozens of the Navy’s combat-proven vessels to mothball moorage on the James near Yorktown, Virginia while other ship castoffs lined Beaumont, Texas’ ship channel. Removable items were similarly dispatched, a favorite being lightweight aluminum wardroom seats, ones finding new service in dozens of classrooms and general aviation waiting areas where curious veterans sometimes inverted a lightweight entry and identifying its origin by virtue of a long-expired ship property number.

A 1980 general airport visitor could similarly find and identify a former Navy chair plus other seating arrangements originating in civilian aircraft, the more entries being passenger seats recovered from King Air 200’s, Cessna 300’s and Air Commanders. The reasons for the Navy chair drawdown were fairly obvious but why were intact general aviation aircraft seats being surplus-ed.

Similar to unwanted aircraft seats or event ship chairs, Vietnam veterans found themselves similarly beached. While some returned to finish college or to begin apprenticeship programs, two highlytrained military groups found themselves largely excluded from extending military-acquired skills into comparable civilian roles, those constituted by military aviators or medics (also called corpsmen).

University of Nebraska college officials and that state’s senator Loran Schmidt accepted risks inherent in creating not only a new college major but a profession as well, that of physician assistant. But Nebraska’s training program accommodated only about thirty physician applicants per year, fewer than a dozen originating from the military. Similarly military-associated aviators hailing from the Southeast, sometimes responded to that region’s career, ‘Fly Delta Jets’ but Delta and all other carriers could absorb fewer than five hundred former military aviators in a single year.

Thus, a mostly male under-forty population, individuals accustomed to either saving lives or piloting military aircraft, accustomed themselves to far fewer adrenaline rushes before looking around for new opportunities. Many affiliated medical personnel, medics and corpsmen mainly, adapted well, finding fresh opportunities in nursing, public health and a dozen other fields.

Aviators, though, were perhaps less successful with retraining opportunities. While serving as an air traffic controller might have appeared to be a useful alternative career, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) training statistics were not encouraging, fewer than half of former military air traffic controllers accepted for study and perhaps only half that reduced number actually graduating in Oklahoma City.

Ironically, the General Services Administration auctions aided smugglers through its aircraft auction process. But smuggling via large aircraft could attract public attention, to say nothing of hefty Avgas invoices. While smaller, air-worthy King Air’s, Cessna’s and Air Commanders didn’t attract much public attention their fuel capacities were inconsistent with flights originating from Cali, Columbia or even isolated Mexican airports. Thus, a clandestine network arose furnishing the know-how needed to add additional fuel storage to relatively small aircraft.

Columbia’s Palmaseca airport is nearly seventy-four degrees south of the equator, meaning a flight from Cali necessitates a lot of fuel. Furthermore, aerial smugglers hardly favored refueling stops at busy airports like New Orleans or Houston, preferring instead to take on fuel at nondescript airports or pre-arranged air strips.

Cali, Colombia and small towns such as Livingston or even Iuka, Mississippi share longitudinal bearings, meaning that a Palmasecaoriginated flight can make its way nearly directly northward, inconspicuously entering US airspace near Mobile before tracing an aerial course above one of America’s oldest mail routes, the Natchez trace. But if that pilot abandoned the ‘Trace’ as it is known to locals, he could use the Tennessee river’s outline to direct a new course toward eastern Tennessee’s two major cities, Chattanooga and Knoxville, both less than a day’s drive from east coast drug hubs such as Richmond or even, Washington, D.C.

Morning radio programming across the midsouth favored twoperson broadcast teams, typically a jokester and a commenter whose skits poked fun at features applicable to southern life, Krispy Kreme donut devotions, trailer park tornado-based mail forwarding systems and occasional Elvis’ sightings. Radio programing that April Tuesday acquired a fresh dimension, one centering on sightings of an Aero-Commander piloted by someone trying to evade a pursuing a Beechcraft King Air. While hardly a Blue Angels air show, the aerial parade attracted attention, particularly given that someone else aboard the lead plane was jettisoning parcels of an obviously unbreakable commodity.

Radio program directors canceled scheduled swap-and-shop shows in favor of allowing their morning hosts to stay live with this continuing story. On-air hosts rather perversely adapted a Biblical phrase, ‘manna-from-the skies,’ labeling the Aero-Commander pilot as yet another ‘Cocaine Cowboy.’

That Tuesday, three pilots traveled near the Natchez trace, a former National Guard F-4 pilot-turned-smuggler, a DEA-employed pilot and a third pilot, one driving the opposite direction at much slower speeds in an outdated although sleek, 1956 Hudson Hornet.

Former WASP pilot Betsy Steiner’s drive plan included a visit to Livingston and nearby Emelle, Alabama, the site of America’s largest landfilled inventory of hazardous waste. She had arisen early, anticipating a four-hour drive to the Emelle facility, one owned by Waste Management or as known to locals, WM.

While she had originally tuned her selection dial to a station staying ‘live’ with the Cocaine Cowboy story, the aviation-based radio schtick surrounding aerial smuggling disgusted her. As she extinguished the car’s radio, she asked herself how someone could turn a useful skill into a criminal pursuit.

Her journey was made longer by slower school buses and trucks sharing narrow highways. A pole truck driver in a high cab glanced at a middle-aged woman driving an old car by what he regarded as a ‘by the numbers’ approach, referencing a recentlyimposed fifty-five per mile speed limit. The woman’s flight jacket suggesting to him that the Hudson’s driver might be a war widow or even a Gold Star mother. The pole truck driver waved.

In late February Betsy Steiner received a telephone call from a Cincinnati sewer official inquiring if Steiner might be interested in bidding on a Queen city project, one requiring five railroad gondola car equivalents of smooth pebbles, needed to feed a rotary kiln incinerator adapted to entomb toxic fly ash while also consuming toxic combustible liquids as a fuel.

While familiar enough with rotary kilns, Betsy wondered how different these pebbles might be as opposed to those Steiner had supplied to dozens of other projects. The project officer explained.

‘We believe these pebbles will increase residence times in the hottest region of the kiln, subjecting solid and liquid wastes to near seventeen-hundred-degree F. temperatures.’

Perhaps tiring of trying to interpret heady, technical language, Betsy proposed an alternative course, asking him to transmit the requirements to Steiner’s fax machine. Betsy had the last word. ‘Steiner will be pleased to help you and I will personally attend your pre-bid conference.’

While the bid specification language was dense, it consumed most of her professional interests, although for a reason beyond selling five railroad cars of pebbles to Cincinnati.

‘Using customary rotary kiln temperatures, we anticipate incorporation of fly ash components (lead, cadmium, chromium, nickel, others) into non-leachable concretes and conversion of fuelcompatible toxic organic compounds at rates exceeding 99.999%, ‘five-sigma’ conversions.’

Betsy’s evolution had progressed far beyond her WASP flying days, focusing primarily on preserving and broadening their familyoriginated construction firm’s interests. If she indulged in it was primarily in the satisfaction that adapted B-26’s provided post-war service across both Korea (1950-53) and Vietnam (1959-75) war eras. Further flying ambitions were confined to a seldom opened ‘emotional drawer,’ infrequent Stearman fly-ins and arranging annual inspections for the ‘Yellow Peril.’

Knowing earlier Steiner’s had brought advanced extraction and cutting techniques to the Tennessee valley while their sons and daughters had built nationally prominent hydroelectric dam projects, Betsy sometimes reflected on the dynamic of their success, most often reaching the conclusion that her ancestors’ reliance on the TVA for bid contract work had served them well.

Structural concrete required use alternatively designated ‘fly-‘ or ‘coal-ash,’ a matrix enhancer produced by a single enterprise, coalfired power plants. Betsy’s recent worry list included concerns that the EPA might access to fly ash. What would Steiner do if that happened, furthermore what would TVA do with million cubic yard quotients of a light, fluffy material capable of contaminating air or water.

Reading and rereading the ‘Cincinnati plan’s’ requirements led her to the remarkable conclusion that Steiner could be paid to consume hazardous fly ash, permanently entombing the ash in structural concrete while also being compensated to incinerate toxic flammable wastes. But this process entirely depended upon the efficiency of a high-temperature cement kiln.

Geography took a seat at the figurative decision-making table, too. TVA’s Kingston and Watts Bar power plants were near enough to Decatur that Betsy reasoned ash from there could be transported diwb I-65, maybe even via rail, to Steiner’s flagship kiln near Decatur, Alabama. But individually-written plans were just that, plans, and Betsy required allies.

Driving past stands of pine trees interrupted by clearings, Betsy reviewed negotiation strategies that might apply to a regional firm like hers and Waste Management (WM), a national leader in all forms of waste disposition. But how willing would they be to share permits or, perhaps even more unlikely, split revenues, Betsy Steiner’s core ‘lived’ in construction contracting, not environmental engineering.

As the tiny community of Emelle came into view, Betsy noted a WM’s large green-and-yellow logo. Clearing the guard house, she traveled a gravel road leading to a metal trailer that served as the landfill’'s office. Two individuals awaited her, site manager Bobby, plus someone named Stuart, WM’s corporate geologist, who had flown in from WM’s Houston headquarters.

Bobby offered her coffee or a cola, Betsy declining both before introducing herself to Stuart, who motioned her toward a conference table where Bobby. Typical of corporate interactions, both sides had actually studied Haz-waste-to-concrete issues more than the ensuing dialogue indicated. Weather small talk preceded a landfilling and incineration discussion

Betsy congratulated Bobby and his geologist colleague regarding permits they had obtained USEPA and Alabama Department of Environmental Management. Stuart shortly produced a landfill map, penciling in Emelle’s fly ash storage areas, noting what he termed ‘trap and wet soak,’ e techniques intended to contain finelydivided fly ash, thereby preventing it from becoming airborne.

Stuart’s ‘airborne’ reference prompted an unintended response Betsy squirmed, making a mental note to phone a Ft. Bragg official. The dialogue turned from ash storage to transportation issues, Bobby noting some several Tuscaloosa-originated local op-eds complaining about ‘Haz-waste’ trucks sharing space on Alabama’s already crowded secondary roads.

Sensing an increasingly negative tone, Betsy directed Stuart and Bobby’s attention toward an Enquirer article describing a successful Cincinnati-based Haz-waste-to-concrete conversion, one promising to meet USEPA standards. While the report was only a news feature, the WM officials appeared impressed. Site manager Bobby concluded the meeting by promising to share notes concerning their meeting with counterpart WM officials in Houston.

Leaving Emelle, Betsy detoured thirty miles west of Livingston, Alabama, shortly joining the Natchez Trace parkway. A thirtyminute delay reaching home wasn’t the issue, instead she sought the solace of a Nashville to New Orleans Indian trial turned mail route more recently made a linear haven for hikers, cyclists and, yes, a former WASP pilot. The Hudson’s car radio remained silent, though.

St. Florian chicken stew Chapter 10

Independence Day, an important southern holiday perhaps differs from other travel-required holidays due to its largely stay-nearhome flavor. While a family might alternatively set up a fish camp on Guntersville lake or venture the Gulf Shores, northern Alabamians often choose spend July 4th in their own back yards. .

St. Florian’s Independence day event featured a southern-style chicken stew and wood-roasted pork shoulder feast, a tradition dating back nearly one hundred years excepting the 1918 world war year. Early generation St. Florian picnic-hosts numbering among German-American families who had hosted similarly pioneering Steiner’s.

Relatively few Shoals area residents reported anywhere to work on Independence Day, leaving local roads north of Florence relatively free of commuter traffic, instead they witnessed a steady stream of vehicles driven to St. Florian in pursuit of roasted pig butt or chicken stew. The event’s popularity necessitated organized parking efforts more typical of rock concerts than community picnics. A human chain formed by local high schoolers funneled arriving vehicles toward the next available grassy parking space, otherwise valeting older or disabled persons back and forth between parking and the cashier-roasting pit area

Almost twelve weeks had passed since Gregg’s traumatic injuries, ones featuring multiple surgeries followed by a lengthy stay at Birmingham’s Spain rehabilitation center, the same facility that had rehabilitated Alabama’s governor, George C. Wallace, following a failed 1972 assassination attempt.

Gregg’s injuries were continually assessed, particularly in light of recent advanced rehabilitative efforts. Fitted with a complicated- appearing trapeze-like pelvic support and a series of electrodes wired to an electronic control module, biomedical engineers huddled around the control module and a linked computer as Gregg clumsily traveled a treadmill-directed path.

At first only his right lower limb, leg, lower leg and foot responded, but in a few minutes Gregg’s left leg responded as well. High-fives, engineer-led chants, nurse hug-squeezes followed. A single comment followed. ‘Go, Boy, Go – You’re-a-walkin, Son!’

Perhaps encouraged by several ‘You’re-a-walkin…’ sessions, Gregg’s father went on the road, so-to-speak. After the ballistics investigators had collected as many shotgun B-B’s as they apparently needed, Gregg’s car had been towed to Florence’s Foote Oldsmobile where its mechanics replaced most of the car’s interior.

Encouraged by a call he placed to a Winamac, Indiana firm, Gregg’s father drove the repaired Cutlass to that rural Indiana community to speak to members of the Braunability firm’s sales staff. Its founder, Ralph Braun, no stranger to muscular disabilities, had pioneered efforts to adapt vehicles, primarily passenger vans, to spinal-cord injured drivers. Northern Indiana adaptive vehicle experts made arrangements for an auto transporter to return Gregg’s Cutlass following the ten days they needed to adapt its control features to those appropriate for a spinal cord-injured patient.

One of the Braunability engineers had placed a call to Spain Rehab, asking them to facsimile forward a clinical summary applicable to Gregg’s injuries and rehab progress. Gregg’s dad flew back to Birmingham to join other family members at Spain Rehab.

Similarly, Gregg intensified efforts on the ‘low trapeze’ walking gadget and also completed a series of driving simulator exercises, meriting a Spain Rehab ‘return-to-driving’ certificate.

Back at home in Muscle Shoals by mid-June, Gregg selected the St. Florian holiday event as an opportunity for his first car trip out of the neighborhood in the Braunability-adapted Cutlass his father had arranged. The twelve-mile drive from Muscle Shoals to St. Florian posed few challenges, although the route generated some misgivings as Gregg drove past Florence’s fountain park.

At St. Florian he had unpacked his wheelchair, planning to roll to the event’s cashier stand but quickly discovered that soggy, rutted pasture was largely incompatible with his chair’s relatively bicyclelike tires., forcing a change of plans. An observant parking lot runner, witnessing Gregg’s struggles, rushed over to push him back to the Cutlass, ahead of a reworked plan, one in which the highschool age volunteer retrieved Gregg’s meat order.

The young guy waved in Gregg’s direction as the Cutlass joined other traffic on St. Florian’s Church road. About two that July 4th afternoon Nick and Barb arrived at St. Florian. While Nick had driven them there, he remained in the truck, fearful of a breathless hike back-and-forth to the roasting pits. Instead, Barb left him seated while she went to retrieve their order,

Two of Nick’s Brown’s Ferry co-workers flanked Barb a few minutes later as she returned with their order, men anxious to catch up with someone they hadn’t talked to since Nick’s disability leave began in February. The ensuing conversational sum-up could be described as ‘fun-all-around’ certainly for Nick who had become largely home-bound.

Breathing shortfalls, one’s first noted at boat ramp, had only worsened over an ensuing two-year period, further restricting Nick’s capacity to work or to climb even one flight of stairs; local fishing expeditions with Jimmy were similarly nixed.

Pulmonary medicine’s choice of the S-O-B description of ‘short-ofbreath’ says a lot about medicine’s droll sense of humor. Nick’s breathing studies stretched from an initial clinic visit scheduled in Decatur, Alabama to further sessions at a Florence internist’s office, both doctors ordering breathing or pulmonary function testing (PFT). Twice during the PFT exercise Nick felt lightheaded while the technician exhorted him to ‘blow hard’ into a stiff cardboard tube connected to measuring equipment. At both clinics Nick handed the truck keys to Barb following the tests, choosing to ride home as a. largely exhausted passenger.

A short series of easy rule-outs eliminated radiation-associated illnesses and some curiously- named agricultural diseases from further consideration. The single piece of good news the Kirk’s heard related to combined antigen, sputum and chest x-ray that ruling out tuberculosis.

Both the TVA and Florence physicians agreed Nick should be seen by someone with occupational medicine expertise, nominating a UAB specialist, Dr. Robert Fink Barb and Nick puzzled over the change of expression on Fink’s face when he reviewed Nick’s shady chest films, a similar reaction following his review of Nick’s PFT-results.

Fink asked what at first appeared to be an administrative question. ‘What is meant by – the ‘other duties as assigned’ terminology I see here.’ Nick explained that while categorized as a ‘laborer,’ he occasionally joined insulator-specific asbestos crews.

Fink posed a second question. ‘How about the reference to Tyvek coveralls, are those required for general laborer - construction work?’

Nick explained. ‘The Tyvek suits are provided when I’m cross assigned to pipe lagging projects, ones in which we join asbestosspecific crews.’

Fink posted a final inquiry. ‘Have your work activities ever been evaluated by a certified industrial hygienist, someone trained to address airborne asbestos and other dust-based exposures?’

A weak smile and ‘not sure’ response satisfied Fink that he should seek that information from someone else causing him to request that a medical student shadowing him that day obtain a phone number for a Brown’s Ferry nuclear plant office. Fink closed the appointment by writing a modified supplemental oxygen prescription.

As they exited the exam room Barb spoke. ‘Nick has never smoked, everyone else we know using oxygen in Florence got that way from smoking.’ Fink didn’t contest Barb’s assertion, but only added that patients often found supplemental oxygen mildly helpful but drying as he termed it.

Later that week, in Fink phoned a supervisory industrial hygienist at TVA’s Knoxville headquarters, asking if James N. ‘Nick’ Kirk, a Brown’s Ferry laborer, had been exposed to asbestos or perhaps even fiberglass. The industrial hygienists outlined agency-specific policy and procedures applicable to asbestos-containing materials or ACM, as he referred to them. He was far less clear regarding protective measures for a non-insulator ‘cross-assigned’ construction laborer, indicating he would be back in touch regarding Mr. Kirk’s access to change-out showers and taped coveralls.

A medical resident phoned the Kirk’s indicating Dr. Fink would like to see them later that week, Friday if possible. Barb and Nick arrived in Birmingham that Friday in time for an eleven o’clock appointment. Fink’s schedulers cleared an hour from his schedule to support a more extensive clinic visit. Fink shared a one-word diagnosis with the Kirk’s. A – S – B – E – S – T – O –

S – I -S

Further promising that his a staff would help them with completing permanent disability applications to TVA and the Social Security disability funds.

Somewhat ignoring specifics, Barb tearfully inquired. ‘Isn’t there a surgery or perhaps medicines that could reverse this?’ Admitting there was not a lot he could do, Fink indicated he would like to see Nick in about six months and thanked them for coming.

As promised Dr. Fink provided documentation and medical paperwork that resulted in Nick’s ‘disability’ retirement. Even without the fishing trips Jimmy remained attentive to his friends’ needs, frequently calling or stopping by to visit. Nick’s co-workers asked a custom furniture maker to fabricate a hardwood rocker, presenting the chair and a spin-cast fishing combo to Nick later that summer.

While the rocker became a prized possession, the fishing combo was never wetted. Nick’s driving days were similarly numbered, by fall no longer able to drive, he settled for staying with the car while Barb shopped, never far from an oxygen bottle. By Christmas that year he abandoned trips altogether, finding himself panting and exhausted following even chair-to-commode trips.

While Nicki and Terri, adolescent fourteen-year-olds made the best of things, Barb increasingly closed the shop’s passage way door, ahead of conversations regarding Nick’s condition, most concluding the same way. ‘God bless Nick and you Barb, God bless the girls, too…’

Often exhausted from caring for an invalid husband in a home largely dependent upon the revenues from her beauty shop, the only possible positive development was that she no longer spent Saturday evenings working her way through Nick’s work laundry. The Saturday night preceding Christmas, Nick could no longer ‘catch his breath,’ a more polite S-O-B expression. Resuscitation began in an ambulance and extended to the Eliza Coffee emergency room, both similarly unsuccessful, Nick died about midnight, three days before the Christmas holiday.

The outpouring of love and support for Barb and the girls was exceptional. As the Helton drive preacher commended James ‘Nick’ Kirk, husband and father to eternal rest, Jimmy Myron checked his wristwatch that Saturday morning, confident the spillway’s larger fish were seeking greater depths and that his buddy had reached a similar reward.

Following graveside services, Jimmy drove by Barb’s shop, noting flower sprays-filled deep sinks Nick verified Nick’s John boat was remained behind the storage shed.

Two months following Nick’s death, Barb called Jimmy to see if he needed Nick’s old boat. While appreciative of the offer he admitted his apartment house manager wouldn’t let him to keep a boat there.

Barb proposed something else, ‘Why don’t you keep it here so you can use it when you choose, maybe clean fish out back, too.’

Overcome by her generosity, Jimmy nasally choked through a thanks-a-million.