Brian Bradshaw was born in the mid 1950’s in Waterville, Ohio.

  His parents were 19 when they got married, Brian arrived a year later. It was a difficult pregnancy and there were complications. The delivery was long and difficult but the baby was delivered healthy. The doctor told his mother that it would be dangerous for her to have another child. His parents got a second opinion and the facts were confirmed. “That’s it then,” his father had said. “I had better ask about a vasectomy.” He had the operation so Brian was the only child.

  His father was a structural engineer, he worked for a company in Toledo. The company designed and manufactured steelwork for factories and bridges. His mother was a qualified typist, she was capable of 80 words per minute. She could also take and transcribe shorthand.

  The house where he was born was small. Downstairs there was a kitchen and the main room. Upstairs consisted of two bedrooms and a bathroom containing a toilet, a shower and a washbasin. Brian could remember 3 ceramic ducks of different sizes in flight hanging on one of the downstairs walls. The ducks might have been Mallards but it was a long time ago. There was a back garden which ended at a fence. On the other side of the fence there was a steep slope down to a railway line in a cutting.

  Brian remembered going to a kindergarten near where they lived. The teacher told him that he was moving away. For some reason he was excluded from the lessons. He had to sit by himself in the classroom looking at a book with pictures of Pandas in it for a few days.

  His parents moved to Lawrenceburg, Tennessee when he was 5 years old. His father had taken a new job.

  Brians parents moved into a house out in the countryside. The house was on 4 acres of land, most of it was covered with a deciduous woodland.

  “I’ve had enough of noise and pollution” his father said.

  “I want to see a proper sunset every night”.

  The house was single story but it was a lot bigger than the previous house. It had 3 bedrooms and kitchen diner. There was a bathroom and a medium sized lounge.

  One cold and clear night in the month of November his father told Brian to wrap up warm. They went outside into the back garden. His father pointed upwards. “Behold all the wonders of the night sky. Mankind has used them for millennia for navigation and as a calendar.”

  Brian saw countless points of light. His father named some stars and planets. “That red one is the planet Mars. The red one over there is Betelgeuse. It is a red supergiant star and one of the biggest visible to the naked eye. It is the tenth brightest star in the night sky and, after Rigel it is the second brightest star in the constellation of Orion.”

  Brian got a book titled “Stars at a glance” as a present from his parents that Christmas. After a while he could name some of the stars and constellations.

  The company his father now worked for was another structural steelwork business. They provided the steel framework for factories.

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  As the business was located in a semi-rural area it also had many agricultural customers.

  Steelwork for storage sheds, silos and milking parlours, also gates and railings. There were domestic customers as well, frameworks for house extensions and garages. Also gates and railings made in stainless steel for private properties.

  His mother got some part time work as a typist while Brian was at school. Her hours increased when Brian was old enough to look after himself.

  His parents had moved into the house with very few possessions. There was electric power but no mains water.

  His father rigged up a hand pump to take water from a stream which ran through their land. Brian would sit on a 5-gallon drum pushing and pulling the pump handle back and forward until water came out of the overflow pipe from the storage tank in the roof. The hand pump was replaced by an electric pump after several years.

  Before any water was pumped Brian would have to go outside and look at the stream. This was necessary because there was a dairy farm upstream. If the cows were in the stream there would be dung in the water. “We don’t want that lot in the water tank, thank you very much,” his father would tell him.

  Money was always a big concern for his parents. His father was a handyman, his attitude was “Why should I buy it when I can make it”.

  Beds, chairs, a dining table, a sofa, armchairs and a bookcase. He made the lot at home in the evenings after work.

  Brian would help his father in the workshop, holding a tape or a long ruler while something was being marked out. He supported the end of a sheet of plywood or chipboard while his father sawed it to size.

  An expression his father frequently used while working was “Thinking ahead.” This meant to do something now to save time and effort later.

  There was also outside work around the property, paths, steps and a bridge over the stream were made.

  As Brian got older, he would help mixing concrete, digging holes and foundations. He did not like painting. He hated putting creosote on fenceposts and other exterior woodwork. It was the smell and the mess. He avoided painting anything for the rest of his life if he could avoid it.

  When the weather turned cooler Brian was responsible for lighting the fire in the house. If there were no sticks for kindling, he would make paper sticks from rolled up newspaper pages.

  As Brian got older, he also became responsible for cutting the wood for the fire. A shed was built to store the wood.

  His father would sweep the chimney once a year in the Spring.

  “We don’t want a chimney fire, that would be dangerous.”

  Brian quickly adapted to life out in the country.

  He took up fishing and shooting. This activity put some food on the table. Rabbits and pigeons mainly.

  He went to the local school. His grades were ok but he was no scholar, he was a hands-on type of guy.

  He had summer jobs on farms and in a carpenter’s workshop.

  One day at the carpenters Brian was given the task of roughing out some blanks for wooden bowls. He was about to turn the lathe on when the boss said “Stop”. His eagle eye had spotted a hairline crack in the blank. It could have come apart while being turned.

  Brian was interested in construction but he knew he would not be a structural engineer like his father. He didn’t have the grades. Going to a University was out of the question. Brian had been taught to read by his father from an early age. He read all sorts of books and advertising literature.

  He read about the great dams in America, their construction and purpose. Also, about the dredging and maintenance of the waterways and rivers. One name kept cropping up, the US Army Corps of Engineers.

  Brian became interested and read more about the Corps of Engineers. “Through deeds, not words, we build strong” was their motto. These words stuck in his head.

  He expressed his interest in the Corps of Engineers to his father one night.

  “You never were a scholar, Brian. If that’s what you want, I won’t stand in your way, but I don’t know what your mother will say. Anyway, you will have to wait until next year when you are 17”.

  There was a family discussion and Brian got what he wanted.