Edgar A Browning, served in the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy Seabees Reserve, then 29 years as a retired sergeant homicide detective, then after retirement was a business owner and an author of several roadbuilding books and Shovel Magazine. (If that doesn't make you instantly feel some respect, go away)

Browning's earliest childhood recollection was walking with his family in August 1955, to the National Guard Armory for drinking water because his home town was ravaged by a devastating flood due to heavy rainfall from the remnants of Hurricane Diane.

see http://www.hope1842.com/millriverwoonsocket.html for the amazing amount of work on berms and concrete walls to prevent a reoccurrence 

The water treatment plant was compromised by the floodwaters.

"I was not quite three years old and it was a two-mile trek. Large glass jugs were being filled for residents from military water buffaloes. We walked to the banks of the river by the South Main Street Bridge," Browning told CEG in 2015. "The rushing water was overtopping the double stone arch structure built in the 1800s. It would be one of the few bridges remaining when the flood water subsided."

In the years that followed, the destroyed bridges were being rebuilt and a massive flood control project completed under the auspices of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. There was plenty of scenery for a budding sidewalk superintendent. The experience cemented Mr. Browning's future endeavors.

Thus began Mr. Browning's lifelong fascination and devotion to the heavy iron of his youth and his father's youth. But he wouldn't return to that hobby until decades later, after he had put dozens of murderers and rapists in prison. Browning dedicated his early life to the U.S. Army followed by a 29-year-career in police work.

Mr. Browning would eventually publish many books, including "Road Building Construction Equipment at Work," focusing on New England, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maine, Virginia, Pennsylvania and in Ohio, as well as magazines and websites that he poured himself into after retirement.

he just died last year in 2020. Damn. He was a regular at the Old Construction and Mining Equipment Convention and Show

I wish I could have talked with him about steam shovels, road construction, and all this cool stuff

https://www.ebay.com/itm/ROAD-BUILDING-HEAVY-EQUIPMENT-CONSTRUCTION-EDGAR-BROWNING-BOOKS/233871139282?hash=item3673ce61d2:g:MREAAOSw-WpgDbvk

https://www.constructionequipmentguide.com/construction-historian-edgar-a-browning-dies-at-age-68/50727