230 THE BUS Many times I served as the company’s “social coordinator.” In the summer of 1973, we had about 80 people (employees and spouses) go to a Cincinnati Reds Baseball game. I chartered two buses with the city to pick us up at our parking lot. In those days a chartered bus really meant a “beer” bus. We had four garbage cans iced down with mostly beer and some pop. Definitely no bottled water! Who bought bottled water in the 1970s? Unfortunately, after 15 minutes which stretched out to 30 minutes, no buses! As it turned out, the city forgot to schedule them. But eventually the buses came and we made it to the game. With our “adult” beverages being ice cold, I don’t think anyone minded the inconvenience too much. Having had so much fun the previous year, we decided to go to the Reds baseball game again. The beer was on ice and the buses arrived on time! Smooth sailing. Right? Not quite. When we were almost to the stadium, a semi-truck cut off one of the buses. To avoid the collision, the bus driver slammed on the brakes and then the brakes locked up. As fate would have it, we were stranded again, this time on the interstate. Remember our buses, which we affectionately called our “beer” buses? Fortunately, everyone was in good spirits and didn’t mind the inconvenience – except for one thing. Stranded and no restrooms! Fortunately, the transportation gods were smiling upon us. As luck would have it, on this stretch of the road, there was a hillside that had plenty of large bushes. Needless to say, those bushes got well-watered before the other bus came back to pick us up. — Charles “Chuck” Duersch DENISE WYCKOFF In January, 1975, I interviewed with Dixie Kurtz in cost accounting and she hired me. I started the next day. At the time, I was 23-years old and Dixie Kurtz took me under her wing and taught me so much; not just about the job but about life and people. We did the job back then with pencils, calculators, and key punch machines. Dixie took great pride in balancing the books and inventory. She won the respect of all her employees and encouraged us to perform at our best. We worked long hours for more than a year and Ken Tobergte, Maxine Vaughn, Dottie Arnett, Dixie and myself were a close group. We spent more time with each other than with our families. Between Cost Accounting and Accounting, I put about 12 years into Data Processing. My first manager was Andy Fraizer. We called him “Dandy Andy,” and that he was. When Andy retired, William Budd became the manager. I worked directly with Libby Biegert and Cindy Curl who worked in Production Control. In Cost Accounting, we balanced the inventory with Production Control. That information went back to Sam True as the manager and when Sam retired Mel Dalton took the position. There were several couples who met and married during their time of employment with Western States. Mike and I were one of those couples. CHAPTER 15