Allan Wilson Cates grew up in the poverty-stricken hills of North Arkansas in the 1940s and 1950s. At age sixteen, he joined the U.S. Army, and after serving two years, he hitchhiked north in search of work. It was 1956, and for the first time in his life, he didnt have to answer to anyone. For the next 40 years, he built airports, dams, and hydroelectric and nuclear power plants from the Atlantic to the Pacific and the Bering Sea. While he started as a nonskilled laborer, hed end up overseeing teams of engineers and retired from the apex of management with the University of Texas System, in Austin, Texas. In this memoir, he looks back at his magnificent career as well as the adventures he enjoyed visiting more than seventy countries. Join a man who worked his way to the topand had a great time doing itand see places youve only dreamed of visitingwith Vagabond Years.