Back in the middle seventies, a young couple, along with two daughters, left Scotland (her home) for Oklahoma (his home).
That was me, my wife Joyce, and daughters Angela and Ashley. Daughter Aspen was to arrive some years later.
After seven years with the US Navy, I had been recently discharged. We were coming to Oklahoma to farm. That had always been my dream.
Joyce was born and raised in Dundee a large industrial city, the fourth largest city in Scotland. Dundee is where the River Tay empties into the North Sea. Oceangoing ships come and go from Dundee. It is much different from the Oklahoma Panhandle.
We did not know it, but the farming thing was not going to work out.
I worked at a couple of jobs in my hometown. We eventually started our own small business selling and servicing TV’s.
Our first service bench was in our garage, a piece of plywood on a chest-type freezer. I used what little test equipment we could afford with a small loan from the bank.
Eventually we were able to rent a building on the north end of Main Street, and then a larger one further up the street next to the drug store. As time went on, we began selling and servicing Two-Way radios. I had been a communications electronics technician while serving in the Navy and was a graduate of several Navy electronics schools. None of the schools were about servicing TVs. The Navy mission and equipment was much more sophisticated, strategic, and frankly exciting. I often missed that work.
But Two-Way radios were a communications device, and they fit better with my training.
Then we moved our business to the larger town of Liberal just across the state line in Kansas. Liberal was the economic hub for the area. We concentrated on the radio business and became quite successful at it.
One day three gentlemen from out of town stopped at our shop. They said they needed someone to service a certain type of radio. This radio was unlike any I was familiar with. It had no microphone, there were no knobs or buttons, just a black box with a place to connect an antenna cable, power cable and a DB25 computer type connector for connecting to a flow meter.
This was not equipment I had been trained to service. The gentlemen explained this radio was part of a system installed on remote natural gas wells that included the ‘flow meter’ and allowed the well’s gas flow data to be sent by radio to a computer in the gas company’s office. This system added efficiency and replaced the old circular analog paper chart.
These gentlemen needed someone to provide local service for the communications part of the system. They chose us. The gas company’s engineer that they were working for was a young lady who had asked an excellent question; “Who will I call when it doesn’t work?” The young lady did not want to have to call Houston or some other big city when she had a problem. The gentlemen had no answer for her question and that was what brought them to our shop. “Do you think you could take care of this radio” they asked.
Because of that young engineer’s question, our business would turn in a very positive and unforeseen direction.
One of my brothers worked for a natural gas compression company. I told him what the gentlemen had told me. He then explained to me the economic potential of this kind of service. I decided we should get involved. I told the three gentleman I would be happy to work on their radios. Surely, it could not be any more complicated than communicating with ships at sea.
The gentlemen were from a company now known as ABB Totalflow in Bartlesville OK, Microwave Data Systems in Rochester New York, and Curry Communications in Houston. I became their local communications goto guy.
Our geographic location was beneficial. We are geographically located on the edge of the Hugoton Natural Gas Field. The Hugoton Field is the largest natural gas field in North America and the second largest in the world. Consequently, most major producers had field offices nearby. The system the three gentlemen were proposing used cutting-edge technology, and we were privileged to play a part in the installation and service of the equipment.
We initially worked for Anadarko, the company for which the young lady engineer worked. Not long after, we went on to work for most major oil and gas producers in the country. We worked in almost every state west of the Mississippi. I even found myself in Caracas Venezuela one day on a potential project. Fortunately I believe, that one did not work out.
And the rest they say, is history.
The trailer in the picture is loaded with old parts and cabinets of radios like we had sold, installed, and serviced over a wide area of the country for many years. Our company, Wireless Data Communications, was acquired by End 2 End Technologies of St Paul, MN in 2013. They operated part of their business from our location in Liberal KS.
E2E was recently acquired by Ceragon and no longer needs the Liberal office. This is what remains from cleaning out the building.
Steve Benson, who had been the Service Manager for Wireless Data Communication, and then Sr. Wireless Engineer for E2E said as he looked at this last trailer load of old equipment, “This is the end of an era!” And it’s true! With Steve’s knowledge and experience we were able to service many systems others might have replaced. Service became our “middle name.” Over three plus decades, thousands of radios went through our doors destined for remote oil and gas fields, municipalities, electric power generators and transporters across the country. But what we really sold was service. The radio sales were just a by-product of the trust our clients had in us.
We became working partners with the companies I mentioned earlier. We worked with many great folks at Microwave Data Systems, ABB Totalflow, and Curry Communications. We developed lasting friendships with many of the people in the oil and gas companies in the US.
Our small office staff consisted of Belinda Savely and Vickie Thompson, Cheryl Steers, in addition to Steve, myself, and Joyce completing the team. That’s what we were, a very efficient team. Our small company was able to sell more MDS communications equipment than much larger companies in much larger cities. We were proud of our efforts. Our company looked bigger than we were because we provided excellent service. “Have job will travel,” became our motto.
But now it comes down to a trailer load of salvage aluminum, as Steve said, “the end of an era.”
It all started because a young lady engineer asked, “What will I do when it doesn’t work?”
Thus began an exciting journey.