boraxalumni.com

(photo: courtesy of Joyce Smith) Tedine Long: Jack, how many years were you in Boron? When you left, did you feel like you had left a world that was just yours?  The rest of the world must have looked so foreign to you!

Jack Collins: It was boys fantasy life, until you got into high school.  There were very few girls at Gephart.  We had NONE in our 8th grade class, just four boys!  I started school at Gephart when it was a one room one teacher affair. Corporal punishment was the rule and a noise infraction got a ruler on the back of your knuckles, a curse word got ones mouth washed out with soap. You could be tied to your desk, have your mouth taped shut, or spanked with a long pointer. I did love school!
 
My first step-dad Con Collins died in 1937 and I left boron for several years, and didn't get back to the desert  until 1941.  By then Gephart School had moved to the hill between the Borax mines and the town of Boron.
 
My mother married my second step-dad Robert B. Blum. He was the mine civil engineer and he planned and started the sewer farm. I lived at the mines until 1944 when I was sent to live with my maiden aunts, (school teachers) in Los Angeles for a year. In 1945 I returned to Boron.  I graduated from Antelope Valley Joint Union High School in 1947 and never came back to live there again.

 

It is with deep regret that I announce that Lois H. Dosta, wife of Raymond C. Dosta,  passed away on August 24th at the age of 84 in Marblehead,  Massachusetts.  Ray and Lois lived in Newport Beach, California. 
 
Lois was born in California and graduated from Hoover High in Glendale and attended USC.  She met Ray on Balboa Island in 1942 and they were married for almost 60 years.  Ray passed away on August 22, 2005.  At the time of his retirement he served as Treasurer for U.S. Borax and had worked for the Company 35 years.  Both Lois and Ray enjoyed sailing, racing and cruising along the Pacific Coast. 
 
A private memorial service was held at sea. 

Betty, great stories! Lloyd Fusby, who was manager of Boron in the 50's, had a plane that could have been the one in the picture. The man, 2nd from right looks like Ward Smith, US Geological Survey head of "Project ZIP", which was a hush-hush military project to evaluate borate deposits world-wide. The guy on the extreme right looks like me. I was with the project in charge of evaluating the ore reserves of the "Kramer" deposit and lived upstairs in the Baker Mine office.

I must really be getting old.  In the Wilmington strike in 1963 or 4, I was sent to Boron to fill in for a missing plant accountant.   During that stay I worked for and became acquainted with Walt and Betty Diffley.   I truly liked that man and was fortunate to get to work for him later in Los Angeles in the Purchasing Department.  He was a man of kindness, scruples and inherent honesty.   Betty was a perfect wife and mother and always gracious, kind and thoughtful.   There are those in life that one will never forget and I knew a lot of them in the Borax Company.

The year I worked at the Company store.

The country was at war and cigarettes were almost impossible to get. That is Lucky Strikes, Camels, Chesterfields, and Cools. The green ink on the Lucky Strikes had gone to war and the only brands one could buy Raleigh, Old Gold, and Pall Mall and some others I can't remember.  Everyone smoked and one day as I was cleaning up in the basement I found a carton of Lucky Strikes! (perhaps a payment to someone) anyway I took them home to mother and she looked the other way when I smoked them.

In the evening I often went up to the lab to chat with the night crew of chemists. It was about this time George Swain came to work at the mines. George was an eclectic genius.  He was an excellent pianist, a competent Chemist and Physicist.  Visit the 20 Mule Team Museum in Boron and see a display showing a collection of things that belonged to George Swain.