I feel the need to avoid anything connected to our entangled political government. Memories of my associations in the construction industry will serve my journalist pursuit. I have enjoyed assembling words most of my adult life.

Recalling a job-site visit in 1971, with an extraordinary General Manager, (I might add a hands on G M). Mrs. Inus Rourke, achieved her position with a foundation dynasty, owned by Mr. Jack McKinney of Nacadocious, Texas, just east of Dallas, Texas. Sought by a gold mining company in South Africa, to solve ventilation problems at one and one half mile depth. Mr. Jack earned his pay, One Million dollars, utilizing two transport buckets cabled to two distant winch motors — when one bucket went up, the other was descending. The 12 foot diameter buckets lay useless on site. The descending bucket literally pushed the other bucket to the surface. (At 1-1/2 mile depth the temperature hovered around 159 degrees.) I suppose these buckets are still in use today.

Mrs Inus earned her position daily. I asked her about the 24” to 12 foot diameter rocks, which her drillers referred to as loggerheads. The loggerheads gave a 12 foot diameter single flight auger the dickens; the smallest 24” rock would jam auger travel, and a man-jack was lowered to split the rock.

These loggerheads rocks lying 65 feet average depth, below the surface on their jobsite in Jacksonville, Florida. When I inquired, where do you think these boulders originated? In her competent manner she replied, “The Adirondack Mountains, located in upper New York.” This roughly 160 mile dome containing over 100 peaks about a mile high, gave a method of transport to the many Pleistocene glaciations (ice age) lasting from 1.806 million years before present time. The last to occur on the North American continent ended 11,700 years ago. There were many glaciations occurring. This huge dome of rock material (named Adirondack Range in 1837) occurred one thousand million years ago. These rocks lay around for 998 million years before becoming a permanent vacation site in the largest city in the continental U. S. (840 Square miles) Jacksonville, Florida.

Tom Rogers

Moultrie