There’s a new sign in front of The Harrington Law Firm office. Pay special attention to the brick columns holding it up. They have a history all their own.

The columns were built using bricks from the Standard Oil pumping station in Flora that was built around the turn of the last century.

In fact, Rodney Harrington grew up in “The Station Yard,” in one of the little houses the company built for its workers back in the day. In the mid-60s, Rodney’s parents bought the property that included a big old brick pumping station building. They had it torn down to salvage the bricks, some of which were used to build a house on the property.

“Those huge piles of bricks became a source of revenue for my brothers and I,” said Rodney. “We would ‘clean’ the bricks, which was chipping the excess cement and mortar off them using hammers, chisels, picks, and hatchets. May sound like prison work, but we got paid! Dad would pay us a penny for each and every brick we cleaned. A whole cent!”

If Rodney worked really hard and had a good day, and didn’t encounter too many scorpions or snakes, he could clean as many as 300-400 bricks.

“I’ll let you do the math,” Rodney joked. “I remember waiting with great anticipation for Daddy to come home so I could proudly show him my neatly stacked prize of freshly cleaned bricks, and of course to collect my loot.”

Some of those very bricks are included in the columns holding up the new sign on Jefferson Street.

“Each day when I pull in the parking lot and see those columns, they remind me of where I came from, and the lessons our parents taught us boys about the value of hard, honest work,” he said.

The bricks are foundations for the sign, but to Rodney they represent the strong foundations his parents instilled in their children, the same foundations Rodney and his wife Jan have tried to instill in their children.

“I didn’t know it at the time, but I was getting a lot more than one penny for my labors,” said Rodney.

The Harrington Law Firm has offices in Natchitoches, Many and Leesville. They can be reached at 318-352-5900 or at http://www.theharringtonlawfirm.com
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