A wide view of me on the construction site where the observatory slab was prepared. Since no concrete company would deliver readymix to this remote site at anything near a sane price, the slab was built the old fashioned way. My friend Ed Benson and I made our own concrete. We trucked in 10 bags of concrete powder, lugged two 55-gallon drums of water to the site in a pickup, then hand-dug six pickup truck loads of sand and gravel from a creekbed located about four miles away. The gasoline-powered cement mixer was a God-send borowed from Sides Water Well Drilling in nearby Medina, Texas.
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| Ed Benson owns one of the ranches next door to the land where my observatory was relocated. He is an enthusiastic amateur astronomer who I met when he took one of my astronomy courses many years ago. His help in moving and building the new observatory site was invaluable. | Ed looks over the completed concrete slab as he ponders why astronomy is such hard work. |
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