I went to work for Tyson as a chicken doctor three days before President John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Texas. Dating the time and place with all this historical news lately I, like many other older people, can recall where I was when the shot was fired that killed the President.
Another fieldmen Carl Jones was showing me how he serviced the farmers on his list that day. We had lunch in the Elkins Café at noon. It only cost 50 cents for a big plate of food and ice tea, plus a piece of pie or cake back then.
I was just getting my boots on the ground in the chicken business. This was a very good paying job at the time and had lots of benefits. I made them a deal because I wasn’t absolutely sure I could handle it. I told Bill Martin to give me six months and if he didn’t like how I did, I’d leave and if I didn’t like it, I’d do the same. We shook hands.
One thing I dreaded was all the driving I’d have to do to get around my area. But I became a driver without any thoughts and still think nothing of driving anywhere. When I explained to Bill that my degree was in agronomy not poultry, he said, “If you can get along with farmers, I can teach you all you need to know about chickens in six weeks.”
Three weeks later, they gave me a pair of scissors and turned me loose. There was a lot to learn about house ventilation and the 24-hour lights that were on the birds. Some growers then didn’t even have electricity, gravity feed bins, gravity waterers or hand feeders in their poultry houses. In this case we were all pioneers. Curtains made the sidewall on new houses. Self-supporting metal frames were new to the poultry industry and a few had collapsed, that set a new standard for the weight they could sustain. We had some fans but no one, including the people that sold them, had a good, sure method on how to ventilate birds and propane cost 10 cents a gallon. Natural gas was much cheaper but unless you were close to town or near a pipeline you couldn’t get on line.
After lunch on the day that Kennedy died, we stopped and found a farm wife crying in a chicken house while feeding her birds. Carl and I were both shocked. “Has a family member died?” we asked. “No, they shot President Kennedy today and killed him in Dallas,” she replied.
I could not believe it. Who would shoot the president? No one would do that but a radical right or left. But we were not some banana country where they did that to change policies. After comforting her, we turned on the radio in the truck and listened.
He had been shot and was dead. Lyndon B. Johnson was our new president, sworn in on a plane flying back to D.C. People were worried about the security of our government. In just two hours Dallas police had his killer arrested, Lee Harvey Oswald. No fancy communication or walkie-talkies were used and they had lost a policeman, but he was caught and jailed. Later to be assassinated by Jack Ruby. It was bad times in America. I never knew another theory on Kennedy’s death that suited me – so we only have the official report.
My 32 years at Tyson were much better than the start. May the Good Lord bless and keep America and all of us. Dusty Richards
