The recent flooding in Pagosa Springs reminded me of the time that I worked for the old Bureau of Public Roads, sometimes referred to as the BPR or Bureau of Parallel Ruts.
It was mid-July and we were working on U.S. 82 that took off a couple of miles north of Alamogordo, N.M., and passed through Lincoln National Forest on its way to Artesia, N.M. This is the only highway in New Mexico that has a tunnel on it.
Being short of funds for college, I had taken a year off to work and chose to work for the Bureau of Public Roads. I was sent to Alamogordo, N.M., where I was assigned to the highway repaving project through Lincoln National Forest. My job was to weigh trucks after they were loaded with soil cement from the Pug Mill. The Pug Mill and the weigh shack were located at the opening of a canyon that spread out as a wide alluvial plain. Soil cement is a mixture of sand, cement and water with the cement content only about 3 percent. This mixture was used as a sub-base for the asphalt paving to come later. Although not a pure concrete mixture, the soil cement was a very hard, durable substance that had some strength to it.
The weigh shack was essentially built on a man-made island around a concrete box about 4 feet high by 10 feet wide by 24 feet long that housed the scale equipment.
Surrounding the concrete box was a soil cement island with a ramp leading up to the scale platform and another ramp down from the scale platform. Inside the weigh shack was a scale that indicated the total weight of the truck and the soil cement. My job was to record the truck number and the total weight of the truck and soil cement. By knowing the truck number and its tare weight and subtracting the tare weight from the measured total weight, the actual weight of the soil cement calculated. This weight was recorded and a ticket with the soil cement weight was given to the truck driver.
The truck driver then drove up the canyon to where the soil cement was dumped into a spreader. By knowing the weight of the soil cement, the driver on the spreader had an idea of far he could go to spread the soil cement evenly, in this case 4 inches thick by 10 feet wide. (An interesting sideline concerning the spreader is that the BPR road crew ran out wooden stakes to mark the way for the spreader. Inasmuch as the BPR crew had a large amount of empty beer cans at their camp, it was decided to temporarily use the beer cans as a substitute for the wooden stakes. One day a tourist stopped and wanted to know why all the beer cans were placed along the road. One of the crew told the tourist that because it was the middle of July and really hot, we had to give the spreader operator a beer about every 25 feet or he would quit.)
Inasmuch as the trucks arrived at various intervals, sometimes 30 minutes apart, I had time on my hands with nothing to do. Consequently, out of boredom, and because I had brought some textbooks with me, I decided to take a second look at some of my past course work.
Sometimes I found myself saying, “So that’s what that professor was talking about.” One day as I was deeply engrossed in one of my textbooks, I heard a lot of loud yelling by the truck drivers. At first I just ignored the yelling, but it kept persisting. Finally I opened the weigh shack door.
And, to my horror, I was surrounded by a sea of rushing, ugly brown muddy water filled with all kinds of debris.
I now realized that the truck drivers, who were standing on high ground across from the weigh shack, were trying to warn me of the oncoming water. By now the water was just 6 inches from the top of the scale platform and the island on which I was standing. Of course, in a situation such as this, a person’s first thought is to escape, but where in this case? To try and cross that sea of muddy water to where the truck drivers were would have been tantamount to suicide.
The water was full of barbed wire, old washing machines and dryers, logs, brush, trees, mattresses and old cars. There was no doubt that the canyon and the area at the mouth of the canyon had served as a dump site for the town of Alamogordo for a few years.
As I watched the flood waters pass by, it seemed my best course of action was to stay put because it appeared that the water was cresting at about 6 inches below the top of the island. If it had topped the concrete box housing the scale equipment, it would have filled the box with water and destroyed all of the equipment inside.
So far, I was still high and dry and felt I had made the right decision to remain where I was. However, if the water did raise a significant amount, my alternate plan was to get on the roof of the weigh shack, hoping, of course, that it wouldn’t be washed away.
Finally, after about 30 minutes, the water started to subside. Prior to the flood, the track from the Pug Mill to the weigh shack was a dust bowl. In fact, as the trucks drove up to the weigh shack, the dust flowed like water in front of the wheels it was so thick and powdery. Amazingly, about an hour after flood, the area was dry and again a dust bowl.
Of course, we checked the Pug Mill and the scale and found that neither had been damaged and both were operating as intended. So it was now back to a normal work day and back to the books.
This column may include both fiction and nonfiction, and views expressed do not necessarily represent those of The SUN. Submissions can be sent to editor@pagosasun.com.
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