It was also the year Robert Lauer started his decades-long career in the Webster County Roads Department.

After spending the next 57 years — more than 70 percent of his life — working for the county’s roads department, Lauer punched his time card for the final time on Feb. 2. Most recently, he was a Class B equipment operator at the county’s Lehigh Shed.

“It’s gone by awful fast,” he told The Messenger.

Lauer grew up on a farm in the south-central Webster County township of Palm Grove, graduating from Callender High School. An old friend came over to dinner one night and asked Lauer if he’d be interested in a job with the county. The friend worked out of the Burnside Shed and someone he worked with was preparing to retire.

“He was leaving to go home and he says, ‘Well if you’re interested, be up at the bridge yard Monday morning,'” Lauer recalled.

And on Monday morning, that’s exactly where he was.

“I was there for about a year and a half building bridges in the bridge yard,” Lauer said. Then he had the chance to transfer to the Burnside Shed, where he stayed for a few years before transferring to the Lehigh Shed to operate heavy machinery and the backhoe.

For the next half century, Lauer spent much of his time running the backhoe with county crews, repairing and replacing drain tile or cleaning ditches around the eastern half of the county.

“You have to have good help because a lot of times it’s not a clean job, dirt work,” he said.

It’s not very common these days to hear about someone who’s spent 57 years with the same employer.

“I liked the work and people knew that it wouldn’t be a poor job,” Lauer said. “I like to do good work.”

He recalled a conversation he had with one of his early foremans.

“He told me if you do good work, people will remember, they’ll know who you are,” Lauer said. “There’s plenty of work out there.”

In nearly six decades of working with heavy machinery, technology and conveniences have advanced — like the addition of air conditioning in the cab of the backhoe.

“I’ve never used the air conditioner,” Lauer said. “Because I think if I’m inside the machine and the people that are out there helping me don’t have it, why should I be cool when they’re outside doing the work? If he’s gotta sweat, I’m gonna sweat.”

Over the years, Lauer worked with other equipment, like snow plows and maintainer-graders.

In January 1973, Lauer and another county employee, Everett Higby, were clearing snow drifts near Duncombe when their truck came to “a sudden and unexpected halt.”

According to a Messenger article at the time, “the V-shaped blade on their four-wheel-drive truck snagged on the uneven road surface and came to an abrupt stop, throwing both men forward and into the windshield.”

It was a Sunday morning after a heavy snowfall and the county roads crews were opening up the gravel roads around the county so the school buses could pick up their students on Monday.

“I broke the steering wheel with my nose,” Lauer joked. “We went to the hospital and they stuck cotton in my nose. My foreman says, ‘We gotta go because we’re going to take you back to the shed and put you in the maintainer because we’ve got to open up the roads.'”

Over the years, Webster County and its board of supervisors became more than just a boss to Lauer — they became family. When Lauer’s son, Patrick, was born premature in January 1969, Lauer said someone from the hospital took him to the board of supervisors to ask what they were going to do to make sure Lauer would pay the bill for the 63-day hospital stay.

“It scared me,” Lauer said.

Supervisor Leonard Hansch, Lauer recalled, looked at him and asked him how long he planned to work for the county.

“I said ‘Well, I can’t answer you, but it’s a good job, I get plenty of work out there and I enjoy it,'” Lauer said. “He says, ‘You go home and take care of your family.'”

Lauer’s not exactly sure what Hansch did, but the hospital bill was paid off.

“I never heard another word,” he said.