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Dixie2012 Dixie2012 is offline

Group Moderator

About Me

  • About Dixie2012
    Country of Residency
    USA
    State of Residency
    LA
    County of Residency
    Ouachita
    City of Residency
    West Monroe
    Occupation
    Truck Driver
    Biography
    Dixie2012 AKA T. C. joined DIY in 2012 and was promoted to moderator in 2015. He lives in northeast Louisiana where he has resided all of his life. Raised in the country on a small farm of cotton and various farm animals. He loves dogs of almost all breeds.

    He grew up where getting his hands dirty was just as normal as getting out of bed. He got paid for his first job in the 1960s before he was 10 years old—picking up sticks & pine cones at his grandmother's country home for a quarter before the yard man came to mow.

    In the mid-1970s he began working for local hay farmers to get himself through welding training at the local trade school. He quickly became the “go to guy” for those farmers to call when they needed their hay out of the field. They depended on him to put together a group of guys & make sure they were there to get the job done & make sure it was done right. At 16 years old, this became his first “management” position.

    After 11 months in trade school, he went to work welding at a large ship manufacturing supply company building ladders for ships & running an automatic welder.

    He went back to trade school for a period of months & took auto mechanics, although he had been working on family vehicles since his mid teens. He overhauled his first car engine when he was 16.

    In his early years, he was young, full of energy & had his hand in many things. He worked in a fiberglass boat factory & was a prison guard for a couple of years. Worked for a pest control company & dabbled in construction in the late 70s. In 1982, he got into live radio part-time as a DJ.

    In 1978 he worked as a firefighter until 1990. This opened many doors. Working two days per week left a lot of time for an eager young man to take on part-time jobs including, attending EMT school & working on an ambulance for eight years, owning a small sales & service fire protection equipment business, auxiliary deputy sheriff and DJ/assist mgr of a hotel lounge. In 1993, leaning on his experience as a driver at the fire dept, he took a job as a local truck driver for 11 years. In 2005, he started his own small trucking outfit for a couple of years. After that, he continued a career in driving/trucking that has spanned some 30+ years in various capacities.

    T.C. owned & operated a part-time/weekend mobile DJ business with his wife for 17 years from 2002 – 2019.

    His favorite projects have been in the construction field, having built two of his own shops from the ground up, and finishing out to completion two other framed-up buildings.

    In March 2016, he and his wife experienced the great flood of that year, which caused them to gut and remodel their flooded home. Once it was gutted, and while holding down a full-time trucking job, he acted as a general contractor, hired every subcontractor, and supervised the reconstruction of his home. With some decorating advice from his wife and daughter, the remodel was completed in the fall of 2016. In 2017, they sold the home & moved from the flood zone. Once the home was on the market, the first person to look at it bought it, despite the many other homes for sale in the area after the flood. It was very satisfying to him that he planned and managed the reconstruction of a gutted home and how well it turned out. While stressful to say the least, involving interviewing, hiring, then firing/replacing some contractors, the outcome was more than satisfying.

    He loves to work on and oversee his properties, which consist of a 5-acre home place near the lake, a 20-acre, a 40-acre & a 60-acre tract. He enjoys being on his tractor after a week of sitting in a truck seat for 2000 – 3000 miles. Taking the four-wheelers for a tour of his properties.

    While there are no major projects in his immediate plans, he enjoys piddling with anything that comes up which needs attention. Fabricating with mainly metal, some wood & tinkering with gasoline vehicles and engines.

    You may hear him say regularly that two things he won't do are “the two Ps”.... painting or plumbing. Everything else is fair game. He'll try his hand at most anything else at least once.

    His first computer was a Commodore 128 in 1985. He got his first Windows-based OS computer in the mid-'90s and taught himself to perform general repairs on both computers & software applications, eventually upgrading and rebuilding computers until the mid-2000s when technology outran his self-taught abilities.

    While he never likes to refer to himself as a “professional” in any capacity, his professional knowledge includes:

    * Trucking/transportation – with over 30 years of experience

    * Fire Fighting – with 12 years of experience and over 250 actual hours of training through LSU

    * Emergency Medical - With 8 years of experience - Especially in trauma & cardiac, which is his favorite. He scored highest in his EMT class in childbirth and did his class report on respiratory care. He was widely categorized as probably the top person to do CPR with at the local hospital.

    General knowledge is in:

    * Construction – Mainly framing with a special interest in electrical

    * Old school Auto Mechanics (Gasoline vehicles Pre 2000)

    * Law – Mainly general law enforcement (including incarceration/prison)

    * DJ / Disc Jockey industry – including Live Radio, Club & Mobile

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  • Last Activity: Today 07:18 PM
  • Join Date: 09-16-12