Word: mueller
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Lloyd Darnell says Mueller moved to Albertville in 1975 because operating costs were too high in California. It makes 500 fire hydrants a day, in an array of colors, and when stacked on pallets for delivery, the bonnets of the hydrants look like the tops of Sno-Kones. Houston orders them light blue with white trim. Indianapolis, Ind., likes them aquamarine...
...annual payroll at Mueller is $14 million, and the money is earned. Tour this plant, and you get a reminder of what hard labor is. There is no easy way to forge a 500-lb. fire hydrant out of molten railroad tracks. It's hot, loud, dirty, physical work. In an eight-hour shift that begins at 7, you get two 10-minute breaks and a 15-minute lunch...
Billy Watson, the man they call Opie because he looks a little like the kid from Mayberry, was drenched with sweat one day in the Mueller lunchroom, where he made himself a sandwich of white bread and vacuum-packed ham he'd brought from home. On the job since he got out of high school 15 years ago, Watson connects the aboveground portion of hydrants to the belowground portion, pushing iron logs around with the help of an overhead crane...
Opie would draw up plans on a napkin in the Mueller lunchroom and hand them to a buddy who knew how to draw blueprints. "We wanted a place big enough so that if my mother or Rhonda's ever needed, they could move in with us," says Opie. The house took five years to plan and nine months to build, but to sit in it with them now, to hear them talk about it, you wouldn't know they moved in 2 1/2 years ago. It looks new, feels new. And they look as though they haven...
...entire family lead a tour of every room, including the unfinished ones on the second floor. They work on it when they can, but Rhonda's in customer services at the First Bank of Boaz, and Opie works a second job, landscaping yards from the time he gets off Mueller until dark. And Sundays, the whole family spends the day at church...