WINNEMUCCA - From the Midwest to the West. From Los Angles riots to the quiet of Humboldt County. From the banks of the mighty Missouri River to the little Humboldt River. From Council Bluffs, Iowa, orphanages to the Winnemucca Walmart, Albert Bell, 74, is now home.
When Bell was little his father, a painter, developed lead poisoning from the lead in the paint he was using and contracted colic, a debilitating disease. That made it difficult for him to do much for his children and when Bell was about 5 years old he and his two youngest siblings were placed in orphanages.
He ended up with Painter's Colic, so he wasn't able to take care of his kids anymore," Bell said.
The day before he turned 16 he asked orphanage administrators for and received a farm placement that enabled him to get out of the orphanage.
"I was working for a dollar a day with room and board," he said. After a short time the owner more or less turned the dairy over to Bell.
With all the work there was to do on the farm there was little time for extracurricular activities in high school, but he did find time to be a member of the glee club, which may have enabled him to graduate.
"If it wasn't for the points I got for glee club I would have come up about four points short of graduation," he said. "It saved me, so I got my diploma."
Later he hired on at another dairy with more cows and doubled his wages. He eventually spent eight years in the Iowa and Texas Army National Guard units, but in the beginning with the Iowa guard social workers discovered he was about to spend two months in basic training and they said no. Bell said if he had been given the opportunity to go to basic training at that time he would have joined the regular Army.
During this time he had gotten married and that relationship produced two children. Shortly afterward they moved to Texas and later to Lancaster, Calif.
"When I turned 21 that's when I was no longer a ward of the state and I was free to go. I wanted away from that state," Bell said, and he took off. Although he did return for a while to try his hand at farming, but decided it just wasn't for him.
In Lancaster he took the first steps in what would turn out to be a career in roofing, beginning as a yard man for a roofing company with one crew running hot asphalt and another shingles.
It wasn't long before his organizational and mechanical skills were recognized and he was promoted to taking care of the hot asphalt on the job.
"It was an automatic pot, but it had caught on fire so many times that it had burned up the automatic!" he said.
It was a dangerous and dirty job, but Bell managed it well even figuring out how to eliminate the dangerous flash fires that had happened so often, allowing better production for the men on the roof. For the second time in his young life he doubled his wages with one move.
Over the next 30 years he worked for different roofing companies in California, Oregon, Idaho and the Southwestern states.
His favorite parts of roofing became running a crew and organizing jobs along with training personnel. Over the years the quickly installed tile roofs and hot roofing became his favorites. "I've got battle scars all over (from hot roofing)," he said.
But roofing wasn't all there was to Bell during those 30 years; at one point he became a test driver for U.S. Rubber Co. (now Michelin Group) outside of Lancaster. They tested new cars and tires at the same time.
"Our main job was testing tires," he said. "We'd do 500 miles a night. One night I was out there and one of my rear tires blew and we were doing 80 miles an hour." An investigation showed that he had handled the car properly and probably kept it from rolling, for which he received a commendation from the company.
About 15 years ago he came to Winnemucca to visit his son-in-law who had moved here for a job, and while here Bell put in an application at Winners Hotel & Casino.
Interviewed by Dave Ross, he was hired almost immediately to drive the shuttle and take on the duties of a security guard.
Things began to slow a little for him when he had a heart attack in 2002. Afterward he stayed on at Winners part-time. Later circumstances led him to Walmart, where he has worked off and on for the last 3½ years. He said he likes Winnemucca and intends to stay.
"I like it because it don't take long to get in the car and go wherever you want to go," Bell said.
He remembers well the traffic problems he encountered when he was living in San Bernardino, Calif., and working in Los Angeles, Calif., during the time of the Watts riots. San Bernardino traffic was murder, he said, and Los Angeles was dangerous.
He and a buddy were shingling a roof in Los Angeles when he heard a thud, but looking around he saw nothing until a little later he ran across a small hole in the roof. They had been hearing shots, but nothing so close by as to cause them concern because a lot of shots were being made into the air.
"That bullet came down and it sunk in the roof," Bell said. "It would have hit me if I had been in that spot!"
Bell said that he enjoys working at Walmart, with greeting the customers as a standout time; however, his job has changed a little recently and as with other greeters he no longer stands at the door and greets people, but is using his organizational skills to zone various areas of the store.
"The first place I hit is front end clearance," he said. He is also partly responsible for toy clearance, men's clothing and several other areas of the store that require his attention the most, except the feminine clothing area. "I don't go into the women's. I'm embarrassed," he said. "Of course, as soon as you get through you can go right back around and they're all in disarray!
"I'm proud of the fact I'm a Winnemuccan! The people are always friendly," Bell said.
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