You never know the story a traveler may have lived

As I drove into Judy’s parking lot last week for lunch, I said to myself I would emerge from the Highway 26 roadside cafe with a traveler’s story.

After parking next to a SUV with Colorado plates, I walked in and asked who owned that car. A man at the lunch bar looked toward me and claimed the vehicle.

I asked: What are you doing in this part of the country?

“I’m driving home,” he said. “I used to live here.”

There was nice dog and a dog cage in the car. So I thought Bill Weaver was going to tell me hunting stories.

“No, I’m not a hunter,” he said with a broad smile. “I’m here visiting my mother.”

It was about then that Judy’s owner Larry Myrick artfully stepped in.

“I guess I should tell you this man is our local newspaper editor,” he said. “He’s always picking on someone to write about.”

That was when it dawned on me I hadn’t introduced myself. I could have been the FBI or the CIA conducting an investigation.

Bill Weaver was cool about it. As a matter of fact, he perked up. After another taste or two of Myrick’s Frenchman Hills wine, he loosened up and told me a quite interesting career story.

Weaver’s 94-year-old mother Delores still lives – alone – in Ephrata, and she’s doing fine.

“She was planting her garden last week,” he said.

Weaver, who lives in Monument, Colorado on the Palmer Divide, visits Delores often. He enjoys his visits to his teenage stomping grounds.

“I was beating frozen sugar beets out of railroad cars,” he said.

Weaver, who has lived in Moses Lake, Othello and Brewster, joined the U.S. Navy in 1965 and served in Vietnam repairing damaged PBR river boats, commonly referred to as swift boats.

After leaving the military, Weaver applied for employment with the federal government. While waiting to hear back, he went to work in the Basin.

From 1969-72 Weaver was employed by the East Columbia Basin Irrigation District. From 1972-75 he was a Department of Ecology district watermaster in Brewster.

When the feds called in 1975, Weaver was knowledgeable about soils. He was employed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and started a career that took him all over the western U.S.

Weaver wasn’t just an employee. He was a head honcho on many construction projects for which knowledge of soils was critical.

Weaver was the embankment inspector at the earthen Riri Dam in Idaho. He was the general inspector on the project that doubled Chief Joseph Dam north of here. He worked on the Warm Springs, California flood control dam. He was the project engineer in the building of the library at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

Weaver even worked for the Small Business Administration, teaching contractors how to bid “the salient features” of a contract bid.

In 2003 Weaver retired from federal employment and went to work for Peter Kiewit Construction, the seventh-largest construction company in the world. He he was the contract administrator and estimator. Now he is fully retired.

Weaver commented that 98 percent of companies that contract with the federal government are honest people making an honest living. It’s the politicians who we have to watch, he suggested.

Weaver was worked “as the No. 2 guy in the materials lab” on the launch mount facility for the Space Shuttle at Vandenburg AFB in California. The project was nearly complete, and $3.5 billion had been spent when “the gate was locked.”

Weaver wouldn’t divulge her name, but he said the wife of a prominent political figure wanted the launch site in Florida.

There were other interesting phases in Weaver’s career story, really too many to print in a small town weekly. It’s just nice to report that kids raised in the Basin can find a place in the larger world.