A Two-Sided Partnership

Left to right: Cousin Orvill Sullivan, Jr., Uncle Warren Walls, Uncle Austa Reeves, Grandpa (Tom) Walls and Dad (Lloyd Walls.) Photo was taken in 1949. The car is Dad’s 1936 Ford. 

Photo by

  
Margaret Walls  

Written by 
LeRoy Walls 
CEO 

My Dad, Lloyd Walls, tells the following story, which sheds some light, on how one partnership worked.

In 1902 before I was born, Pop, that’s what I called my Dad, moved his young family to Oklahoma. He worked there in the timber for about two years and then returned to Missouri by covered wagon. He and his brothers-in-law cut mine props for mining operations in southern Oklahoma.

George Brown, Mom’s brother, and his brother-in-law, Joe, worked together cutting logs using a jointly owned two-man crosscut saw. One day George and Joe got into such a big argument that they dissolved their partnership. They laid an iron wedge on a stump, put the saw across it and cut it in half with a splitting maul.

Each of them cut timber using just their half of the saw for a while but that soon wore them out. Since this didn’t get the job done, they went to town, bought a new two-man saw and went back to being partners again.

Even working with relatives is sometimes better than cutting wood with half of a two-man saw!

12/31/1999