Green may be retiring but he’s not riding off into the sunset just yet

Posted 2/1/17

Being the “go-to” person for the Mineola Nature preserve has put to good use the skills and experience that Buster Green brought with him, including a career with the City of Tyler. The chapter …

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Green may be retiring but he’s not riding off into the sunset just yet

Posted

Being the “go-to” person for the Mineola Nature preserve has put to good use the skills and experience that Buster Green brought with him, including a career with the City of Tyler. The chapter of his life as the tail boss of the nature preserve closed with a retirement reception Tuesday, but Green plans to volunteer at the preserve after he spends some time recuperating.

Green has been plagued with some health problems over the past few years and he is expecting a substantial recovery time for an upcoming surgery. Clad in head-to-toe denim and wearing a broad-brimmed cowboy hat, his presence has seemed larger than life; in reality his time with the city only totals eight years.

It wasn’t as if he really wanted a job when he got this one.  He had retired from the city of Tyler water utility division, maintenance and construction side. “I was having a good time cutting hay and riding horses every afternoon,” he said. But his wife and a former co-worker, Johnny McCoy who had been hired as Mineola’s public works director, saw things differently.

Not many people get to say their work environment includes 3,000 acres of wildland and river bottom with horses, stocked ponds and lots of wildlife being part of his everyday work routine. “It’s been a good ride,” he said of his time with his city. “Of course, when Bo (Former Mayor Bo Whitus) was here, he was really crazy about the preserve.”

The trail boss position was created with Green’s arrival and is still the sole position dedicated to the preserve.  Green has had help from members of the Street Department, and various types of government program workers.

When he arrived the walking trail on the railbed existed, as well as the “people” pavilion. But the horse trails did not and the walking trails have been extended. All told, there are 28 miles of trails “when the weather allows it because it is the Sabine River bottom.”

As the trails were built and he worked on the Derby, it “was just a mud hole.” He said there wasn’t even a parking lot in that area where people were trying to park horse trailers. He recalls Whitus making a deal with someone at the Texas Department of Transportation to get the ground up asphalt when the department redid Highway 69 and that was used to build the parking lot. The Derby allows an all-weather place to park and for riders to deal with horses.

 He said that he and McCoy both asked Whitus a few times about providing hookups for the RV horse trailers. (Now there are 14, as well as men’s and women’s showers.)

“He finally said I thought ya’ll were going to do a living quarters RV park. I said I’m just waiting on the word,” Green said. “So he said `word.’ I put it in,” he said with a chuckle.

“Over the years we’ve built four ponds,” he said, noting that Ozarka had provided the funds for the projects. He said that all work was able to be done “in house. Saved a lot of money by knowing how to do it and just renting the equipment.”

He said that there was a desire to move the old steel truss bridge and, “Bo envisioned it being over the I&GN slew” he said. After a year or two they had rented some equipment to do one of the ponds, and they used the two track hoes to transport the bridge 4 ½ miles to its current location. “Wasn’t real fast, but we got there without it cratering,” he recalled.

Now that bridge is the Dr. John Thomas Bridge and it leads to where the walking trail meets the Sabine River and the canoe launch.

“We’ve done several projects they allowed me to kind of take off and run with. Everybody was happy when I was done, so it’s worked out well.” He said that requires some creativity. “They kind of gave me an idea of what they thought they wanted, let me go and kind of backed me up on most of it.”

“Created a monster now. It’s a lot of maintenance to it that wasn’t here before.” He said they have opened up areas that weren’t there before that have to be mowed. Added to those are old ponds at the wastewater treatment plant that had to be filled in that added several acres to be mowed.

“So really now it’s just trying to maintain it. I do have visions,” he said, and with the help of Alan Haynes, a proponent of the preserve since its inception, he has some other ideas he would like to see come to fruition. There is a $20 million grant they are hoping to be able to obtain.  If that is granted for expansion and improvement, “I’m going to offer to be part of it,” he said.

While the park is highly regarded, Green admits, “There were so many people when I came here, that were still mad at the city of Mineola owning 3,000 acres that was not a necessity to them. They just needed a place to put the sewer plant.” He said of the taxpayers of Mineola “there’s a lot of them that have come around. They realize that it’s really an asset to them. People come and go. Stop and eat, buy gas and shop in Mineola.”

The preserve still doesn’t have a lot of funding. There have been several competitive horse trail rides to raise money to build pens at the Derby. “It’s been a big draw, but it took some doing. And I volunteered my time to try to help Joe Petronella and his wife. Without them, though, a lot of this stuff wouldn’t have happened.”

“It’s made money for the equestrian side of the park, which has been a big help because we’re not taking it out of tax money.” Texas Parks & Wildlife has given several millions of dollars to support the preserve.

Before his last day Green was busy extricating his personal items that he had brought to use at the preserve. He had lived at the Derby much of the time and this past weekend planned to move his fifth wheel home, which is north of Tyler in the University of Texas area.

All in all, Green views his time with the city in horseman’s terms as he summed it up. “It’s been a good ride.”

“Mineola has been wonderful to me. I have no complaints.” It’s easy to imagine that once he has time off and heals from his surgery, he’ll be off cutting hay and enjoying “a good ride” on one of his horses once again.