"In the coastal basins there probably always been times of noticable atmospheric pollution, caused by natural wildfires.On the athletic field in our high school early winter 1936 mornings, the pall created by protecting the local citrus crop from frost by means of much burning of old tires and waste oil in smudge pots, combined with fog coined the word smog. I remember, as the burgeoning populations propensity for one man automobile commuting grew exponentially, that while driving down from the mountains into the LA basin, the encountering of this dark wall of smog seemed an incentive to make a U Turn. Control of the chemistry of motor fuels has greatly reduced the eye burning life shortening indoor closeting(bubble wrap) effects and the damage is democratic.... what happened to the cruising top-down convertibles? ...the topless hot-rods?"

About his father's situation this year, Bob explains:

"About 1936 my father began working for the US Army Corps of Engineers, first on the Prado and the San Gabriel Canyon earthfill flood control dams as an oiler, then as a mechanic on the lining of the Los Angeles River, finally on the Playa Del Rey harbor.

"We, his dependents, were relieved to have him working again recovered from his injuries sustained as a chipper for the Bethlehem Steel Company. One Sunday he drove our family to behold one machine that he oiled, The Bucyrus "Monaghan" dragline excavator. Our automobile could be hidden in the scoop. The cab, containing the operator, cable drums and engine seemed the size of a barn. The cab was pivoted and balanced atop a large pontoon equipped with a mechanism that would transfer the machine's weight to 2 similar pontoons, one on each side of the center pontoon, so that the side pontoons could either lift the center pontoon off the ground, and deposit the center pontoon 3-feet forward, or back, or rotate the center pontoon one way or the other.

"What it did to the center pontoon, it also did to the cab and the 200 foot dragline boom. Instead of being wheeled, or moved by caterpillar tracks, this was a walking behemoth which had been used to dig the Panama Canal.

"Once while he was working on the LA River servicing a diesel Caterpillar D8 tractor in the bottom of the river one rainy night, a supervisor drove up and told him to drive the tractor 3 miles upstream to the exit ramp to try to save the tractor, since an unexpected flash flood was coming down the channel. That instruction came too late, because the tractor was soon being drowned by the fast rising water before my father could reach the ramp.

"He stopped the tractor beneath a pipe suspended on cables across the river and standing on the tractor's roof was able to save himself from the flood by climbing to the bank on the pipe.

"Another time my father had come on the midnight shift of a job repairing a D8 Cat, which the previous shift men had jacked up on supporting blocks, and while working under the tractor, the blocking failed, crushing my father's shoulder.

"When my father started working for the Corps, a sales person from Mutual Benefit Insurance Company of Omaha sold accident insurance to the new employees and it was my father's duty to pay for his insurance out of his pay.

"It so happened that this sales person was pocketing the money and my father was obliged to pay his medical bills for this accident out of the family savings. Trust insurance companies no more and build up your savings, became our motto."