What have you done since graduation?

In the Public sector; I’ve been a Justice of the Peace, a cop, a Nationally Registered Emergency Technician, EMS Director Owasso, Building Inspector, Zoning Officer, Laison to the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission, and Aide to the City Manager. Worked through the transition from Central Ambulance to EMSA.

In the Private sector; insurance/legal investigator, skip tracer for local attorneys, and a medical claims adjuster. I have done various stints as; bartender, mason’s brick cutter, and scaffold builder. I’ve run an asphalt spreader, worked lead tongs on a deep drilling rig in the Texas Panhandle. After the "bust" I worked security for the closed rig. Did some landscaping in south Tulsa which helped me work on the grounds for the Shrine at St. Therese in Collinsville. (If you get a chance you should visit the Church…that I also was privileged to work on…and the grounds) I drove an eighteen wheeler cross country; L.A. to New York City, Canada to Mexico. I’ve operated dump trucks, fork lifts, bobcats, and tractors. A stint in Commercial real estate management.

Interlaced between these gigs; I spent a magic summer in the bottom of Copper Canyon (much larger than the Grand Canyon) in the State of Chihuahua Mexico. I stayed in a virtual ghost town that was once a silver mining town, surrounded by pines and gentle waterfalls. A better summer than my 1968 summer in Haight Ashbury, where I slipped down to the artist colonies on the coast…but that’s anther story. I slept in an ancient Kiva atop Puye Mesa, NM. I camped near the Trinity Site at White Sands…to be chased out by the M.P.s. A similar story in Artillery Range south of Albuquerque where I was staying in old caves looking for old gold remnants. I crossed an old railroad trestle from Matamoras to Brownsville…fifty feet above the Rio Grande, teeming with mud sharks, carrying untaxed tequila …in an old jeep. Rock hounded in the Malipais of Central NM and slept in an ice cave of volcanic basalt. Crossed the border at Columbus, NM…came back across much faster. Jumped by pot growers in the Kiamichi mountains…snowed in the next year. I had the privilege of seeing Jill Loveless dance at a Tweed concert.

In between…I was able to get an A.S. Political Science, a B.A. Catholic Theology, but health problems dropped me midway through my Masters in Systematic Theology.

I still walk and talk with the buffalo. I have an excursion planned for this winter to Santa Fe.

Jack Ashby -- (6/23/2010)

Joyce & Butch Cribbet

Newspaper Museum In Collinsville
1110 W. Main, Collinsville, OK

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By Ted Wright -- last update 6/23/2010
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