Lucky Pickering
Lucky (Wayne) Pickering lived and worked in Payson, Utah. I met Lucky when his son Gary, my classmate at the University of Utah, brought me down to Payson for a visit to his parents and home town. Lucky owned and ran a cabinet shop a block or two from his home. His cabinets were finely made and architects who put jobs out for bid always hoped that he would get the job because they knew his work was first class.
In the competition for jobs and the shortage of good help in a small town, Lucky often relied on his natural bent for invention. He made machines that helped him single handedly do the work of three men. He made trailers that could bring a load of lumber to a feeder that would put wood into machines that would trim and edge it in a fraction of the time hand work would require.
His rather restricted space required a machine to maneuver in tight spaces and tow the trailers. He contrived a machine with one large wheel that could literally turn on a dime. The one wheel was chain driven by an engine above it. The wheel and engine were mounted on a circular platform that rotated in an outer square platform on which the driver stood.
The "tractor" was steered by a circular ring which had another ring below it that the driver held and pulled up to accelerate or let down to decelerate. The outer corners of the square platform had pivoting casters which were connected to each other by a bicycle chain that caused them to always turn together in the same direction, following the direction of the main steering/drive wheel.
The secondary ring that controlled the throttle was in fact a safety device. If one turned too quickly when moving too fast one was thrown from the vehicle. We (Gary & I) discovered this and would drive the machine toward a gigantic pile of sawdust, turn at the last moment and be thrown off into the soft woody mess.
The one wheeled wonder.
Lucky's inventiveness served him well. He spent any free time he had making sculpture and learned how to cast works in bronze. He set up a forge and a casting facility, spending hours in the evenings making masters, molds and castings.
One day he fired up his melting furnace to do some casting later that evening. He went home for lunch but lunch was interrupted by the fire signal and being a volunteer fireman, he rose to attend to the emergency. When he went to the signal list to find the location of the fire he saw that the fire was close to home and then realized that it was at his own shop. The bronze melting furnace was a bit too close to the shavings and saw dust and the shop was a total loss.
Not one to be bowed by adversity, getting older and loathe to rebuild, he found a job on the Federal Highway maintenance system installing signs and snow markers. He drove a truck that delivered and placed reflector posts at 200 foot intervals along Arizona's desert highways. He would drive the truck and stop at the required intervals so that his "crew" could jump down and drive a marker along the highway's shoulder.
One of the problems that his employers faced was a shortage of "crew". They were often young guys who hated the job and quit or merely disappeared as they would be called up for the Vietnam war. His bosses told Lucky he'd have to do all the work himself and only occasionally have a single helper. He immediately went into the company's shop and began cutting steel and welding.
He put together a contraption that was mounted on the rear shoulder-side corner of the truck. He'd load it with stakes in a belt system and when he stopped at a location he'd pull a lever and a stake would be positioned and driven into the shoulder with a mechanical hammer.
Lucky was not one to complain but his employers were enjoying the economic results of his invention: a smaller work force and improved productivity. One day Lucky was surprised to find that his pay check was doubled. He asked about it and was told that one of his assistants told their supervisor that Lucky was thinking of leaving and he was the only one who could keep his post placer working.
Lucky died some time ago and his son Gary just recently. Gary is another story. This has only scratched the surface in the story of Lucky's life.
© 2013 Ron Williams