LeTourneau scrapers built at Kaiser's Livermore gravel plant, head for Cuba. Ca 1927

As a teen and twenty-something, Howard Peterson honed his welding and fabrication skills building scrapers for his brother-in-law, RG LeTourneau. In 1926, LeTourneau's machines caught the eye of construction mogul, Henry J. Kaiser who ordered three for his Philbrook Dam contract up near Paradise, CA. Once they'd proven their worth, Kaiser bought LeTourneau's patents, tooling and inventory in February 1927 for $65,000 and began building them at his gravel plant in Livermore. He was also impressed with Howard's welding and fabrication skills and hired him to oversee the new operation. A few months later, Kaiser came to Howard with a proposition. "One day, Mr. Kaiser came and asked me if I wanted to go to Cuba, and I told him, No. I was 21 years old at the time and I didn't know a soul in Cuba. But Mr. Kaiser was very persuasive so I ended up going over there with my friend Jack Salvador, a mechanic I'd met at Philbrook. He paid us each $275 a month plus all our expenses, which was unheard of in those days, especially for a 21-year-old kid."

Howard was charged with teaching Kaiser's men how to use the new LeTourneau scrapers but once he got off the boat, he never saw them again. "Once they found out I could weld and cut and fit and set up, they gave me a translator and put me in charge of all the welders." They had 156 miles of highway to pave with no cement trucks. Instead, they used a giant Koehring paver that moved along the road on enormous tracks. They woud fill small, narrow-gauge railcars with cement and transport them to the paver and then dump the load into a great big drum. It was a huge cast-iron hopper, about 5 ft in diameter with teeth six-inches wide, set clear around it.

One day, it stripped out several teeth in a row and had Harry Eck, the master mechanic, just about crying. He contacted the manufacturer in the States who said they weren't making them anymore and it would take at least six months to cast a new one and get it to Cuba. Harry Eck and Kaiser conferred together, and then they came to me, since I knew about welding. Well, everybody knows you can't weld cast iron so it seemed like an impossible situation. But I figured that a fellow might try drilling holes pretty close together where the teeth were and threading those holes, then screw three-quarter inch rods in and cut them off at the proper height, and then build it back up with a lot of weld and reshape the new tooth. So I took my idea and presented it to Mr. Kaiser who gave me whatever I needed to get the job done. They were out of business without that paver and they were ready to try anything. So I worked three days and three nights without much sleep. I got so tired the last night that I'd fall asleep and my helper would have to kick me to wake me up. At the end of those three days, you could hardly tell the new teeth from the other ones. They put the gear back in, and I held my breath when they started it up. But it worked. And that made me with Kaiser. He wanted me to stay another couple months after that, but I told him there wasn't enough money in the islands to keep me there. So I went home. And that machine was still pouring concrete when I left Cuba."

Giant cement hopper on Cuban hwy job - circa 1927