On a summer morning in 1961 I wished I was fishing. Instead, I was beside the old water cooling tower north of Monarch’s cement plant pulling on a thick rubberized suit and bulky headgear.
This was my first day working for the Marley Company, which had contracted to spray a chemical on the redwood louvers and insides of the tower — more like a huge wood box — to protect them from water damage.
Clinkers are the essential binding units in cement. To make clinkers, a mixture of limestone and clay is heated in a kiln at temperatures exceeding 3,000 degrees.
Initially, water was cooled when sprayed above a large pond — called, naturally enough, the spray pond —which is still in use today as a reservoir. For years, U.S. 169 ran along the east side of the plant and yellow lights were installed between the highway and pond. Hot water sprayed in cold weather produced a heavy fog and the yellow lights helped keep motorists safe.
Eventually, the water-cooling tower was built and the sprayers dismantled.
That was a technological step forward, and why I spent several weeks with two others, Dick and Chuck Yockey, spraying the gooey stuff inside of the redwood edifice.
I was about to turn 18. The Yockey boys, somewhat older, were fun-loving and we had a good time even when trapped in our rubber zoot suits.
I didn’t know Dick and Chuck well, but I knew about them and the rest of the Yockey clan. They lived a block east of our house on Mulberry Street.
Many nights during the summer the family would congregate on the front lawn and play Western music — think Bob Wills, Hank Williams, Patsy Cline. Those and other tunes wafted up and down Mulberry when practically everyone spent at least an hour or two each evening sitting outdoors, passing on the latest gossip, the newest recipes and other juicy tidbits picked up since the night before.
I still remember when one of the girls took the lead on her accordion. And another when Chuck gave a super rendition of Leon McAuliffe on the steel guitar.
Dick would warble a tune now and then during breaks at our sweatshop, and Chuck, with his girth testimony to his fondness for malt beverage, always wanted to win a beer.
“Let’s butt bellies for a beer,” he’d say, trying to get me to cough up a quarter for a draw at the Bivouac. I was in pretty good shape then, but knew I was no match.
Despite its discomfort, two things made the job attractive: I earned $2.25 an hour, in 1961 a princely sum for a kid; and it made me all the more ready to head for Pittsburg State.
Several years later the cooling tower was razed.
CHUCK AND Dick are now deceased. Tim Yockey, their brother, also worked at Monarch, and played guitar in the family band. Now 93, Tim is undergoing treatment for cancer.
