[RKDinOKC]

When in my teens by best friend's Dad had a construction company and also ran cattle. He would take his son and myself out to some property out in the country with dozer, tractor with loader and drag box, and big fork lift. He would leave us all day on a Saturday with instructions to dig a pond and put in roads. We had a blast. For us it was like a big sand box. Pushing over trees and piling them up, digging out ponds, and filling, packing, and grading in roads. His Dad made arrangements to run his cattle on the unimproved land and in payment had us put in roads and ponds.

We only had trouble once. We were trying to put the road thru where an underground stream crossed the road. We got the dozer stuck and had to embarrassingly wait for his Dad to come help us pull it out so we could use both the tractor and the forklift while someone was on the dozer. The next weekend we got to play with a big backhoe to dig it out and bury a culvert.

One time his trailer was down and he had us drive a tractor from the shop to a work site 20 miles way across the metro. It took ALL DAY! Was a good thing his Dad followed in the car, we ended up taking turns on the tractor. It was so bouncy it would wear you out.