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For the pleasure of being
able to cruise over great expanses of highways in our air conditioned
cars, someone had to pay with sweat and hard work. That someone was from
the family of the Joneses. This is a brief record of my brother's efforts
to bring these dreams of smooth operating roadways to the public.
Alvin Lee Jones and Dennis
Michael Jones are the great grandson of William Stevens Jones who was an
Indian agent delivering food to the little and big Osage before statehood.
Alvin said, “Mike and I,
together in 1962 worked on what was called GARD, which meant Grand River
Dam Authority. This was at Salina, and Locust Grove. We had the contract
for the fence for the highway. We used to go into eat at Locust Grove.
Fifty cents for eggs, pancakes, hash browns and coffee was a good
breakfast at a great price.
We had probably fifty
people work on the job. They would work for a week and then quit. It was
hot, and hard work. No one wanted to do it, but us. We built fences until
1964 then we went into erosion control. We worked at Lake Keystone
planting grass, trees and mulching seed.In 1966 we built guard rail on
highway 51. There was 20,000 feet of guard rail we built.
1968, Muskogee, Turnpike,
Webber Falls we built 53,000 feet of guard rail on the Muskogee turnpike.
Early 1972 We fenced forty
to fifty miles a year on interstate all over the state.
In 1980 We built box
bridges in Oklahoma and Kansas. We built bridges until late 80's and then
we went back to building guard rails. Trinity Industries told us we were
the biggest buyers of guard rail in 1989.
The years 1981 and 82 we
worked for three or four years on the Wichita, Kansas canal route. There
we planted 10,000 trees and put up light poles. In 1998 we worked at
Antlers, Ok. For a 1.8 million erosion control building bridges there. A
road has about a twenty-year life span, then we start all over again. |
