Retired healthcare exec relives days on Mississippi pipeline
By Lou McCreary, for the Williamson Herald
news@williamsonherald.com
Joined by Franklin resident Bob Crosby, several other “Mid Valley Boys” returned to Greenville, Miss., recently for a reunion, visiting local “hot spots” and touring the Mid Valley Pipeline Company “tank farm” at Mayersville.
Crosby and his friends worked for Mid Valley during the summers of 1958-1959, when they were high school seniors and first-year college students. Mid Valley, with headquarters in Longview, operates pipelines running from Texas to Ohio and an oil storage facility at Mayersville, Miss.
Two of the crew originally hailed from Longview, Texas, attorney Lou McCreary, who lives in Austin, Texas and Dr. Jerry Lackey, retired professor at Stephen F. Austin University, who lives in Nacogdoches, Texas.
McCreary and Lackey had not been to Greenville since the summer of 1959. A retired healthcare executive, Crosby, formerly of Shreveport, met his wife, Judy, in Greenville and had returned to Greenville many times to visit his wife’s parents, the late Dr. and Mrs. Bob Cunningham.
The “Mid Valley Boys” included Glynn Griffing, quarterback for the Ole Miss football team which played the University of Texas in the 1962 Cotton Bowl and other young men from Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. The boys lived at the old Azar Motel on Highway 82 in Greenville, working eight- to 10-hour days in a row, with four days off. The work ethic learned by the “Mid Valley Boys” during those hot summer days served them well in later life.
Crosby is a graduate of Northwestern State University-Louisiana, and enjoyed a highly successful career in the healthcare field. Lackey earned a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and taught psychology at SFASU for many years. McCreary graduated from the University of Texas School of Law and has practiced law in Austin since 1964.
“The pay was great; we made enough money in a summer to pay for an entire year of college,” Crosby said of those years. “Greenville was also great but the work was hard. Our boss was a World War II veteran who had spent time in a German concentration camp. He was a tough customer. When he sent me to the tool shed for a ‘skyhook,’ he told me to run, not walk. I knew then that we were going to earn every dollar we made.”
After cutting right-of-way from Longview to the Louisiana State line, the boys were transferred to the Mississippi Delta, where the boys’ main job was cleaning sludge out of oil tanks, after which the tanks were “floated” with water piped from the Mississippi River, winched over to a temporary site and sat down. New pads were built; the tanks were re-floated and positioned on new pads.
Robert and Searcy Cunningham, Crosby’s brother- and sister-in-law, who live in the old Cunningham home in Greenville, hosted the men for Robert’s special cheeseburgers and Searcy’s famous broiled pineapple dessert while in Greenville. The visit also included supper at Doe’s Place, which has since become famous. “Little Doe,” grandson of the original owner, personally cooks the steaks. When told that this was McCreary and Lackey’s first visit to the restaurant since 1959, Doe said, “ Next time, try to get back a little bit sooner!”
Of course, the reunion included a mandatory pilgrimage to the Mayersville tank farm, about 50 miles south of Greenville, where the “boys” re-lived every minute of those long-ago days. As they talked, laughed and re-floated the tanks once again in their memories, the heat and hard work of those days were quickly forgotten. The only thing that seemed to matter at the end of the day was the life-long bond of friendship which was forged in the Mississippi Delta.
Posted on: 7/30/2009
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