RICHARD DYER (intro): This history of Columbia Community College is being conducted by Richard L. Dyer, history instructor at Columbia College. This interview is with Mac Frost, welding instructor emeritus.

DYER: It is again my pleasure to introduce McKinley Frost—Mac Frost—instructor emeritus at Columbia College. 

Mac, can you tell when you first came to Tuolumne County?

FROST: Yes, I came to Tuolumne County in December of 1963. 

DYER: And where were you working then?

FROST: I was working with a port of California division in Forestry.  And I came to Sonora at that time. 

DYER: And you’ve been doing similar work at your previous place of employment before coming here?

FROST: Na, this was a complete career change for me.  And it is one that, of course, I welcomed because I was in the city and I wanted to get into a rural area—the foothills—to raise my children and to find, hopefully, a better life.

DYER: And where were you coming from?

FROST: Sacramento. 

DYER: So your background was not in welding and heavy equipment at all?

FROST: Oh, yes.  Yes.  My background was in construction.  I worked in heavy construction for a number of years before coming to Tuolumne County so I had had experience in welding mechanics and earth-moving equipment. 

DYER: Alright, now, some of us weren’t what they used to call the “plank-holders”—the first ones that were hired in 1968.  I know I came the next year.  When did you receive an offer for employment at the college? 

FROST: I came to work for the college in 1969 as a part-time employee—that was my first assignment.  The college had a small office down on Washington Street and I was contacted and asked is I wanted to teach a fir-science class part-time—which I accepted.  The campus was not completed at that time, and it was quite an experience for me, because I had a classroom assigned to me at the high school. All of the equipment was at Eagle Cottage.  So I would get off of work and I would run to Eagle Cottage, get my projector, screw, or what I needed, run back to the high school teach my class and try to get everything back out to Eagle Cottage so they could use it the next day.

DYER: And Eagle Cottage was in Columbia, so you were working up the hill, and so you had come all the way down the hill and go to Columbia to get back to the high school to teach a class.

FROST: Yes.

DYER: But you were teaching though the fire science courses first then?

FROST: Yes. And it was quite interesting because where the student parking lot is now…

DYER: Here on the campus?

FROST: On campus.  I use that for my lab.  The class I was teaching was a wild land fire-control class and I wanted to show the students how it’s really done.  So we used some Manzanita that was there on the site—using the parking lot as a lab—and we had a little V-8 and cut some fire line and did some very interestingly exciting things. 

DYER: Were you involved, then, in some of the early earth moving projects as they prepared the campus?

FROST: No I was not.  No.  I was out here quite a few times with Bob Deil to visit the sites when the parking lots and this building over here were being built.  But I was not in any actual earth moving. 

DYER:   So you were teaching in fire technology, I guess it was, and fire science. 

FROST: That’s correct.

DYER: Were you teaching any welding?

FROST: No. I was teaching no welding.

DYER: what was out inventory of heavy equipment like at that time?

FROST: It was very very minimal (laughing).

DYER: …a screwdriver or something.

FROST: the district had to old factories; I think that they probably picked up the surplus.  I think that only reason they had them on campus was for fire protection, and as my back ground, I used that in my labs for fire science class.

DYER: and of course there was no fire station as we have now. 

FROST: No. there was none of that.

DYER: Where did we get our fire protection, was it from the volunteers in Columbia, or…

FROST: I think, now, I’m not sure, but I’m quite sure that it was probably the California Division of Forestry and…

DYER: That’s in Sonora, then?

FROST: And Columbia.

DYER: Did you teach any course off the campus during your career…at other places rather than the traditional classroom here. 

FROST: Yes I did. 

DYER: While you were teaching in all your years.

FROST: All my years, oh yes.  I was a relief welding instructor at the MCR Consolation Center one summer.  I also taught at a heavier course at Sierra Conservation Center in their education department.  I also taught a course at Vallecito for the job corps in heavy equipment. 

DYER: Oh, yeah, they had a facility over there. That’s right. So actually you’ve taught at quite a few different places and quite a few different courses as with all of us I suppose. 

FROST: Yes.  And I’ve also taught, of course this was 1974-1985 I taught the techniques of teaching course for UC Berkeley.

DYER: Was that here on the campus?

FROST: I taught that here on the campus, yeah. 

DYER: One of our pride and joys, of course, has to be the heavy equipment building.  It’s hard to believe that you operated long before we had that, or we had a fire station here, but I suppose you operated straight out of the regular classrooms?

FROST: Yes, we did.  There was no classroom of course in building 800 which at that time was the heavy equipment building.  And when I came here at 1970, I was hired as a dual instructor—fire science instructor and also a heavy equipment instructor.  The building that now is the automotive, which was then the heavy equipment building, was not completed.  There was only one bay, which we called “bay number one,” that was operational.  So I had a class of students, and we would go up to our lab in building 800 and we had the one bay in which to work. No tools.  So I brought my own tool from home.  That was lab.  Very little equipment to work on.  We did have a couple of engines and some of the on-campus tractors that we liked to use for lab.  But, basically that was it.  It was very minimal.

DYER: when was the building completed? 

FROST: The building was completed in ’71.

DYER: … I didn’t think of it as being that old.

FROST: ’71 or ’72.

DYER: You were there then by yourself for very few years before a second instructor was hired? 

FROST: Oh, yes.  Yes.

DYER: did you have aids to assist.

FROST: No. I had no aids at that time, so I was working alone.

DYER: Now to do this, you mentioned rounding up your own tools.  You also rounded up a lot of donations from organizations of heavy equipment didn’t you, or was that something that was just done by Bob Diel?

FROST: Oh my goodness, no.  I spent hours and hours and hours in people’s dumpsters and junk piles, if you will. I’d take a pickup and I’d go to Stockton, Modesto and make acquaintances with the people in Caterpillar and some of those places down there so I would get their unusable pumps and what have you, as visual aids, and bring them back here and use them in my classes.  Get as much as I could from surplus and get as much donated as I possibly could.

DYER: Now we had, if I recall, we had Marine Corps equipment that was there.  Now, was that something that was donated by the military or was it something that you got from surplus?

FROST: No, that was excess equipment.  It was all military. After Nam started cooling down, some of the equipment started coming back into this country and we were able to revert considerable heavy equipment—construction, earth moving type of equipment into the program for excess property.  And we kept the excess property for a couple of years and then it became surplus property and became the property of the district.  We also had donated to us by a very large contractor motorbrator so, and in the county…

DYER: We still have that?

FROST: I think maintenance has that now.  And received several donations from Tuolumne County—Tuolumne County Road Department.  So, through a lot of scrounging and donations we were able to come up with (___) to work on for the students.

DYER: You must remember some of the students as you think back through the years.  There must be individuals that stand out in your mind.  Can you reflect on maybe a couple of students to give us maybe an idea of the type of students that you had, and maybe the first females that were a part of your program?

FROST: Well, you know it’s really very rewarding.  It seems anywhere I go in the county I run into former students and four of five, six, ten years ago, and these people are grown now and have their families.  And it’s very rewarding to think that maybe you had some input into where they are now.

DYER: As you did, as we walked out of the cafeteria a few minutes ago.

FROST: Yes. That’s correct.  I had several ladies in the program and in was very very interesting.  They seemed a little intimidated at first, but after a few weeks they were one of the guys so to speak, and…

DYER: They were accepted by the guys?

FROST: Oh, yes.  Very, very accepted.  And they became quite successful.  In fact, they would contact me periodically through their career.  They did quite well.

DYER: Well, now, did they do that as an avocation or were they thinking about doing some work professionally in the field?

FROST: Uh, they did it as an avocation.  They really wanted to get into the field.  I had one or two that were going to challenge the macho image.  So I had a little bit of that, but did it for a short period of time and they said, ‘hey, I like this.  I’m going to do this as a career.’ So it became another dimension for them. 

DYER: Other students that you can remember as specific things that might have occurred that were precious to you as you think back?

FROST: Well, right now I can’t recall any particular incident.  As I reflect back, there were so many very very pleasant incidence and so many fond memories that I just can’t think of any specific one right now. 

DYER: How about specific event that occurred? Thing that may not have been fond memories or so…events that might be life threatening.  I know that there were some incidents out there where people were almost injured.  But things like that might have occurred?

FROST: Yes, there were several incidents.  One that I can recall with reconstruction of the round house which is very interesting and very exciting:  I recall that we were one time we wanted to move a very large stone in place that made the round house, and it was a grind stone.  Well, it came in on a trailer, and I took the marble headed piece of (___), which happened to be a truck-mounted crane, and I was going to place this large stone from the roadway up on the bank.  It was very fortunate that we got the stone in place, and just as the stone settled to the ground, the (__________) and this huge steel block came crashing down at my feet, so that was a very close call to say the least. 

DYER: Mac, I still talk about that when I take people on tour of the sight out there and how we almost buried our favorite heavy-equipment instructor.  And we appreciated all of the work that you did out there because I know that you weren’t involved in the grant.  That you gave your time to help in the grading and the work that took place out there, and it’s been visited by thousands of people, and your name frequently comes up as being a person that was almost buried near the old chief.  How about in the heavy-equipment building? Any problems out there with welding or fires or things like that, that…

FROST: We didn’t have any problems with fires, but part of the heavy equipment curriculum were two welding classes: Hot seaselum welding and arc welding. And low and behold there were no facilities for welding.  So, what I’d do, I’d just take one of the bays, which happened to be number four bay—the smallest of the bays, and nearest the tool room—and I converted that into a welding lab.  I came out one summer and constructed the tables and everything that I needed for a welding lab.  Had a (_____) system installed, and that way we were able to offer the welding courses.  That was before we ever heard of summer projects and stipends and those types of things.  It was time that has to be spent to get the job done. 

DYER: Not in release time and not compensated time and I know…it’s…

FROST: Another very interesting thing that happened there in that particular building is we found that we were becoming cramped for space as far a storing some of the visual aids.  We had no outside storage and we had a storage area inside the building.   So I proposed to administration that we put in a mezzanine—build a mezzanine and it was approved.  And I spent a good portion of one summer welding some steel beams together.  Some high beams and some steel posts together to build a mezzanine for storage, so one side of that building is a mezzanine. This has worked out very well.

DYER: did you leave your name in it?

FROST: I should have…welding my name into one of the beams (laughs). But I didn’t.  Another really interesting thing was the student rack in that building—it didn’t have one.  There was no place to steam the equipment off and grease the mud and what have you. So, Bob Deil and I said, ‘well, we’re going to build this ourselves.’  We had the local (____) come in and asked them if they would donate a couple of steel rails that we could out on the ceilings so the tractor wouldn’t tear the ceiling up.  And when O got those, we brought those in and he and I spent one Saturday pouring a large ceiling slab for the stem rack. 

DYER:   Is that outside the building?

FROST: That’s on the end of the building.

DYER: On the end.

FROST: Yeah. That was just part of the job. Now, did you have other campus projects that you worked on? You mentioned the round-house sight that you and I worked on together, but were there other projects that you worked on in welding or constructing things?

DYER: Well, of course, I was fire chief that first year, and I had my (____) there in the fire department—training firemen, hiring firemen—aided the campus fire department in organization.  So I was pretty busy between two disciplines. Getting both the heavy the equipment of the ground, so to speak, and the fire department.

DYER: Just for the sake of the record, could you sort of run down through a list of those different courses that you taught that you could remember?

FROST: Well, specific courses?

DYER: Mhm.

FROST: We would start, I suppose, with heavy equipment courses.  I taught introduction to heavy equipment, taught electrical systems, taught breaks, taught construction (____), taught diesel engines—repair, diesel engine tune up—taught undercarriage and tracks, taught hydraulics.  In the fire science area taught the wild land fire control, introduction to fire science, fire equipment and systems, fire vehicle maintenance, and probably some that I’d forgotten. 

DYER: It’s incredible when I think of my list and the list of courses that all of us have been asked to teach.  It’s just an incredible load.

FROST: Well, I hadn’t listed all of the welding.  I taught all of the welding. 

DYER: All of the welding...okay…

END OF TAPE

General Information:

Interviewer: Dyer, Richard L.

Interviewee: Frost, McKinley (Mac) (Welding Instructor Emeritus)

Name of Tape: Faculty Interviews in the History of Columbia Junior College (CC_hist_12_0)

When: Early 70s

Transcriber: Ariella (September 2008)

Transcriber’s Note: For the rest of the interview go to tape CC_hist_12_1