Dam workers pulled pranks using cement vibrator

In 1951 Warren Little of Missoula was a 20-year-old college student trying to make money to cover his schooling.

His cousin, Louie Keim, lived in Kalispell and told him about the good money that could be made up at the Hungry Horse Dam site. Little joined a cement crew at the construction site and helped run a big two-man vibrator.

“It was hard work, but good money,” Little, who turns 88 next month, wrote in an email to the Daily Inter Lake. “We worked 7 day weeks ... We had three shifts a day so it was non-stop.

“If you tossed the vibrator near anyone standing in the cement they would sink rapidly,” he recalled. “Naturally we did that in jest on occasion. There was a rumor — never verified — that one foreman, who was extremely disliked by all the workers, ‘disappeared’ one night when they tossed a vibrator near him when he was out in the cement.”

The dam construction site was a dangerous place, Little acknowledged, adding that people were injured on occasion.

“I saw one carpenter fall off some scaffolding and fall on three rebars that were sticking up in the air several feet,” Little said. “We didn’t dare pull him off the rebars that were spaced through his chest and abdomen, so we got under him and cut them off with bolt cutters. He was taken away to the hospital and I believe he survived.”

Little worked with two other University of Montana students, Larry DeMers and Bob Rodgers, of Arlee, both of whom are now deceased, as is Keim.

The after-hours social life was perhaps typical of young college kids.

“We all lived in a very large company dormitory in Hungry Horse,” Little remembered. “We buddied up with some young college guys from Dartmouth and we would party very often in downtown Hungry Horse. There were frequent fights there among the drunks and once a guy had his nose bitten off.

“There were several houses of ill repute there, but we [pursued] the young blonde girls from Minnesota who worked at Glacier Park and would come down to the Blue Moon for dances on the weekends,” Little continued. “We had lots of fun and one night even snuck some of the girls into the dorm, which was for men only. ... Some nights we didn’t get much sleep before having to get up to go to work.”

Contacts he made at the dam got him a job the following summer on the McNary Dam in eastern Oregon.

Little went on to become a lawyer and an FBI agent.

“I’m back now in my home town of Missoula,” he said. “I’ll never forget the great fun we had — so much, that I was ready to settle down and get married the next summer (in 1952). I was 21 and thought I had ‘been there and done that.’”