Larry Barber:  

Who knew we'd live this long. As of 1/9/2024 I turned 77. In 64 I graduated at age 17. How did that happen? Both my parents worked and so I started kindergarten at Theodore Roosevelt elementary in Paramount Ca at age 3 1/2. Mandatory age of 5 had not become law yet, probably did because of guys like me. Trust me I was no genius. Ana M. Glazier school in Norwalk held me back in the second grade twice to catch up physically. NPR in the early 70's did a documentary titled " Class of 64' The class that went to War". Like most all the guys I was drafted and went to Ft. Ord August 1966. In my Company barracks were at least 8 guys I knew from Norwalk. So, It was like old home week. We supported each other and got through basic training. Everybody went to Advanced Infantry training except 3 guys. Me and 2 others, they went to cook school and I was sent to Ft, Hood for Tank gunnery training and sent on to Germany to be assigned to a NATO unit on the Czechoslovakian frontier. Upon coming home from Germany in Sept 68 I dated a girl from Norwalk High who had wrote to me every week since I had left. We had gone to the La Mirada drive in on a blind date and saw "The Dirty Dozen" a few days before I left. Unfortunately we broke up in 1969. I still had 2 years left on my Army hitch. I was called back in 1971 and stationed at Ft. Irwin for a few months teaching National Guardsmen tank operations.During that time I became a bottle maker at Kerr Glass Co. in Santa Ana 69-71 completing a 1000 hr apprenticeship in 9 months a company record that in 1988 was still standing. In 1971 I'm married now with a son. In order to try and find a better life then we moved to Fullerton Ca. in 1972 to apply my talents in the Injection Molding trade that was flourishing in the area and we lived off Malvern Ave in an area called Sunny Hills. Very peaceful and laid back. It had great schools and my son was now 6 yrs old and starting the second grade. 1977 comes along and what happens? Prop 13 and they are going to bus my young child to the some inner city school. I couldn't handle that. I got a job at Southern Cal Edison's Coal fire steam generating station outside Laughlin Nevada. In 1985 a main return pipe of superheated steam separated at a point next to the control room at shift change and killed 9 coworkers and critically injured 11 more. That was a dark time. Many men refused to work there after that. Daytime temperatures during the summer were 125 plus. It could be brutal. I would loose 8-10 pounds during a 12 hour shift even after drinking gallons of water. I wore many hats over the almost 20 years I worked there. We worked a schedule that regularly required 5 month periods of 12 hr shifts with no days off allowed during annual maintenance. The plant supplied 30% of the required electrical load for Orange County. Consequently very little contact with the outside world beyond our little town of Bullhead city on the Colorado River our main playground. Everybody had a fast boat and one for fishing and man the fishing was great in those days. 50lb Stripe Bass in the river and a limit of Rainbow Trout in the lake every outing like clock work. All that was ruined in 83" when Lake Meade was allowed to overflow into Lake Mohave because of record rains that overflowed all the western impoundments that year. That let in giant stripe bass who took 3 years to eat all the trout and large mouth bass. Lake Mohave was wrecked for fishing for several years til the giant stripe bass literally starved themselves out. To keep our sanity over the years with the long shifts many of the powerplant guys would bring our boats hooked up to work and meet the family at some cove on the river or lake after work during the summer months, sleep on the beach and go back into work on 12 hour days. Even working those crazy shifts you could feel like your on vacation because we all now lived where most people went on vacation. All the guys were from Whittier, Lakewood, Bellflower, Downey we all had similar pasts. Back then there was only 1 stop sign and zero traffic signals in Bullhead City 17 of the 20 years I lived there. The joke was the only time you touched the brakes on your vehicle was the Edison parking lot and your driveway. You have all been to Laughlin and Bullhead I am sure and find that difficult to imagine, but its true. I lived at Cabin Site Cove with my son John right on Lake Mohave for almost 10 years. It was a two story structure with beautiful views of the Lake and mountains surrounded by pine trees the original owner brought from Israel because of their heat tolerance, I never had to set an alarm clock to get up for work. The hundreds of quail that nested in our oasis every night winter and summer woke you up at 5am 7 days a week. I never got tired of it. Arizona had not been invaded by the out of state retirement bomb yet. We had it all to ourselves. So I never traveled much outside Arizona during that 20 year period except to California once or twice a year. I immersed myself in the western culture, Arizona history and lore and explored the backroads and remote areas of the state. I still wear a cowboy hat. Its a an unbelievably beautiful place. Almost 20 years in with the power plant the environmental impact of a coal fire power plant is now well documented and many of us are becoming uneasy in our roles. Guys started taking early retirement and other positions elsewhere. At age 47 I hire on with Cargill they are building a greenfield Steel Mill in Kingman AZ. After all the hats I wore at the Mohave Generating Station my job experiences translated well in the Steel industry. After 2 years of construction we cast the first heat 6/22/95. Watching a furnace empty itself of a hundred tons of molten metal the viscosity of water every hour is a sight to behold. The science is amazing. The men that do that work are some of the most competent on this planet. I was proud to work beside them. My son John followed me into the Steel Industry and manages one of the roll mills at Midlothian Texas huge steel mill. The next 17 years in steel with my hav...Expand for more