Memories of the Greyhound Track.

 

Memories of the Greyhound track, on the occasion of the tracks razing. 

In the late 1980’s My father worked the parking lot security there. He would patrol the parking lot to keep people from breaking into the cars parked in the lot. He also escorted people out that had worn money to their cars. His girlfriend was a cashier there. My father was retired, and did the security for extra money. He and I both worked kennel security. He worked the day shift, and I worked the overnight shift. That consisted of sitting in your own vehicle and checking the area around and inside the kennel It was an easy job. The hardest part was staying awake.

 

One night I came on at 8pm instead of 11pm, and was paid for the 3 hours by the mid shift guy cause he had something to do. I ended up there until 1pm the next day. I worked a double plus the three. I went home tired, and found a note on the door that said everyone was at Yuma Regional Medical Center, with my sister having my nephew. I went up there to see what was going on. I got there just in time for his birth. That was February 23, 1987.

 

Sometime in the spring of 1985, my father and I were paid to help drive two trucks, and trailers full of greyhound dogs from Yuma to North Sioux City South Dakota. We were transporting around 20 hounds total. We fed and watered them before we left, and fed and watered them three times more on the road. I almost turned the truck over in some mean cross wind on I-70 in western Kansas about 3am. We got a motel, and slept until about noon, ate some KFC and got back on the road. We ran into a tornado off of I-80 JEO Omaha. We finally made it to South Dakota about sundown.

 

We off loaded the dogs, spent the night and was on our way the next morning. The owner of the dogs gave us about 5 gas cards. We went over to Des Moines to see my uncle, visited with him a while, and then we went back to Yuma. I started driving out of Des Moines, at about sundown. Got down on the Kansas Turnpike near Emporia, about 2 in the morning. I fell asleep, and drifted over in a construction zone. Next thing I know there are water barrels and delineators flying everywhere. The old man was asleep in the passenger seat. The old man woke up momentarily, and I told him to go back to sleep. I got down to Ok City, and got gas, and the old man started driving, about 5am. I woke up, and we were in Alamogordo New Mexico, via, Amarillo, Clovis, Portales and Ruidoso.  The truck, a 1978 Ford F-350 with kennels on the back started to use oil somewhere near Amarillo. So we tarted to buy oil by the case on his credit cards, because the motor in the truck was going out. The trailer receiver failed in Alamagordo, and we had to have it fixed. The old man drove down to Las Cruces. I took over there, and as the day waned, we motored WB on I-10. The old man says wake him up when we get to Deming New Mexico and he will drive some more. It was 120 miles to Lordsburg new Mexico, 60 miles past Deming. He woke up later and asked when we got to Deming and I told him we were hitting Lordsburg. I had been driving too fast and he was upset. I wanted to get home; I was tired of sleeping sitting up in the front seat of the truck. We had been on the road 8 days, and slept in a bed twice. I was done; I wanted to be home. The old man drove the last turn from Lordsburg to Yuma, about 400 miles. We got in about 3 in the morning. We went through about 9 cases of oil trying to keep that truck running. The dog owner had the engine rebuilt after we got back to Yuma.