Madness and Irishmen - the Final Part

I got to Amarillo just in time for the worst sandstorm that I ever saw…I can remember it to this day because I had rented a brand new bright red Mercury Cougar (I used to have a penchant for red cars) and the storm was so bad that I had to pull off the road for over five hours. I had trouble getting the doors open because there was so much sand piled against them. I finally got out to survey the damage the sand and wind had cut the paint job down to the primer and had frosted the windshield (all the windows for that matter) and there was so much sand in the engine compartment that the car couldn’t possibly start. It was one of the weirdest things I ever saw and I have been through major earthquake and several tornadoes. The rental agency brought me a new red car and towed the other one away.

I met Buck for coffee and he laughed his ass off…he said, “Welcome to Amarillo, Texas “the asshole of the planet.” We talked about what was expected in the Highway Department demonstration…we were supposed to follow the road crew and screen for them along the way. They would continuously take samples and if the roadbed material stayed within specifications Buck’s company would buy another five machines. It worked without a flaw and I got the sale. We had a “Good old Boy” who was a small operator from Amarillo watching the whole process very intently. He said that he was very interested and if I would demonstrate on some material that he thought was “unscreenable”, he would also buy a plant. We ran tests for him for three complete days (sunup until well after dark) and screened all the material that he had and we had ran the demo screening plant hard enough to almost burn it up. Well he said that he wasn’t satisfied that the materials were “out of specification” and it would all have to be re-run to be of any value. It was about that time that I figured that this “Good Old Boy” and “snookered” the “Damn Yankee”. He needed just the amount of material we screened for a road contract he had…I required a fifty percent deposit from that point forward if I didn’t know the prospect or if they didn’t come with a reference from someone I knew.

There were many more adventures…deer hunting with Buck, selling three or four screening plants in Knoxville, Tennessee, and setting up a chain of distributors all across Canada. I did all the training and helped with their first sales at each dealership. But, as I found out many times in my later life (both personal and professional) nothing lasts forever. John and I were on a flight back from Calgary, and he said: “Do ye have a good attorney, me lad? You may need one because I lost control of the Company to a fu’n bloody bunch of Bastards back in Ireland”. So it ended sadly, and badly.

What happened next is the next post…