The Dam Builders (first in a series)

Editors Note: This is the first in a series of interviews with men who actually worked on building Pensacola Dam in 1938-1940. They were conducted this past winter.
Cleo H. Collins will quickly tell you that really isn't his name...people call him Ted and his co-workers on the dam construction in the 18 months he worked there called him "Peanuts."
"Everybody had a nickname, mine was Peanuts because I weighed only 150 pounds soaking wet," Ted says. Now age 86, he is retired from military service and lives in the Oklahoma Veterans Center in Claremore.
He lived in Cleora and went down to the dam site in 1939 and was hired, starting at 40 cents an hour as a common laborer. He remembers his take home pay exactly--$15.84 per week with one cent going to Social Security. He drove to work in his Model A Ford via the Ketchum-Disney Ferry when he started.
Soon he moved his wife, two brothers and his four-month-old son to "Tent City," located in Disney about two blocks north of the Dam Hotel. Rent was $6 per week. Baths were taken in the lake which was beginning to fill. Ted had an unusual commute to work--he swam to work each day from Disney to Langley.
Disney on Saturday nights was a wild ride, says Ted. "Everything you can imagine went on there, it was like a frontier old west town."
"Everytime I had a chance to make another nickel an hour, I took it," he recalls, eventually working up to using a jackhammer to take off limestone on the wall next to the power house. He recalls it was a 94 pound jackhammer. And he hung on a rope sling carving his way down the cliff, making 75 cents an hour.
After construction was completed he worked as an oiler in the powerhouse at $1.00 an hour. One day a young college grad was following him around noting his work routine and shortly thereafter, Ted was fired and replaced by the youngster.
The superintendent told him he was going to Alabama to work on another project and wanted Ted to come down and work for him, but since Ted's old Model A wouldn't make the trip, he went to Joplin and bought a fine new car on credit.
The superintendent never called. The car went back to the bank. Ted then worked on timber clearing after GRDA purchased land up to 755 elevation.
In 1944 he was drafted into the Army and served in the Philippines in advance of MacArthur's return.
Today he is as fit as a fiddle and looks no more than 65. He credits this to hard work during his youth.
Next Week: W.N. Bill Holway.