Dam

The dams are just easier to see in the mountains. Every lake in Texas except for Caddo (which is half in Louisiana) is a dam lake. Since you're picking on us evil socialist liberals ;), let me point out that most of those dam lakes in Texas are evil government socialist lakes, paid for, most likely, with tax dollars. Should we take them back?

Uhhh, I think it was a joke, based on the absurdity of the suggestion.
I merely tried to name the flattest places I could remember driving through. I don't have an illustration handy, but you could just pour a two liter coke out on your dining table and try to "dam" it before it hits the floor. :D
I don't remember picking on the evil socialist liberals in general- just mentioned Obama, since his "spreading" philosophy was germane to the joke. You'll know when I pick on them/you in general. ;)

"Should we take them back?"
Sure. Go for it. :rolleyes:
 
I went to the dam, to get some dam water. The dam man told me that I couldn't have any dam water, so I told the dam man he could keep his dam water.
 
Here are a couple of Dam facts for you. Bonneville Dam has Concrete Pill Boxes below it to defend it from Japanese attack during WW 2. Seven Oaks Dam is a very large earth fill dam on the Santa Ana River outside San Bernardino. It is several hundred feet high. It being an earth fill dam has rip rap on the face of it to prevent erosion. The locals downstream thought it would be ugly so they forced the ACOE to paint the rip rap on the face of the dam. I was there when they were doing it. They hired someone from Arizona to mix up paint resembling desert varnish. Now many years and a few earthquakes latter it is a speckled dam. Oh and it cost more than $1,000,000 to paint it.
 
Here's a dam lot of dirt
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The three Shastas...Shasta Dam, Shasta Lake, and Mt. Shasta. Located near Redding, CA about 100 miles south of the Oregon Border. Timber country...
 
There was a local dam and resevoir near the town where I went to high school. The driver's ed teacher used to take the driving students up there to practice parking, etc.

The history teacher's daughter was taking driver's ed, and the instructor had taken them up to the dam. Coming back out the girl was driving, had some kind of mishap (I don't remember what exactly now) and ran off the road. She was still shook up and crying when she got back to school. Someone asked what was wrong.

She said, "I ran off the dam road!"

She took a lot of kidding about that for a loooong time.
 
Speaking of dams. Here is a picture of me during my younger days at the right in this photo during an inspection trip to (TVA) Tennessee Valley Authority's Norris Dam on the Clinch River back in March of 1975. Yep, I was a dam inspector.

Norris Dam was TVA's first dam built back in the 30s. Construction began in 1933 and it was completed in 1936.
Norris Dam

At that time in the 70s there was still fall out shelter supplies inside the dam. There was a line of 5 gallon cans of drinking water sitting on the concrete floor along the tunnel wall inside the dam. These cans had rusted out and there was no water in them by that time in the 70s. There were also cardboard barrels of supplies in the tunnel. Some of the stuff was still in the barrels such as aspirin, some kind of biscuits, hard candy and first aid kits. Most of the stuff had been removed from the barrels probably by workers over the years.

All of these old TVA dams I used to visit were very interesting. They were built to last and the quality of work was a marvel to look at.

I also revised some of the old drawings that were drawn on linen when I worked in the Mechanical Engineering Design Section in Knoxville, TN. Those old drawings were works of art.

Smitty

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