The Gospel According to Albert Neu

© 2001 Wendy Dager

Next in our series on landscape pioneers

Paul Albright likes a good story, especially when it involves someone who helped make the landscape business what it is today.

“Al Neu started with the Justice Company in 1955 or ’56,” said Paul. “Bailey Justice had decided to bring in a hydroseeder from the Finn Company to test on a job for CalTrans. As Bailey’s foreman, Al tested it, but the landscape architect on the job didn’t like it. Bailey was going to send the machine back to Finn, but Al talked to some landscape architects in Sacramento and found they were willing to employ the technique of hydroseeding, which was a new innovation. Al told Bailey there was still some interest in it, but Bailey said, ‘If you want to do it, buy the machine yourself.’”

After purchasing the hydroseeder, Al started his own business. The A.L. Neu Corporation soon began working on federally-funded interstate highways.

Al Neu on his tractor with 3-month old granddaughter Zoe. Photo courtesy Albert Neu.

“The federal guys liked the hydroseeders, too, so they started specifying hydroseeding all over the country,” said Paul.

When we contacted landscape pioneer Albert “Al” Neu, 73, and told him he would be featured in an article for the Leaf-let, his response, according to Paul Albright, was typical Al.

“I’ve got too many dark things in my past,” Al joked.

Still, those alleged “dark things” didn’t stop him from sharing a few stories about the old days of landscaping, back when he and Bailey Justice were among the first names in the industry, which boomed shortly after the second world war.

Al worked as Northern California superintendent for the Justice Company in the mid 1950s. According to Al, Bailey Justice developed the first erosion-control straw punching roller and winch truck, in conjunction with Dana Bowers, Landscape Architect for the State of Califonia in Sacramento.

“Prior to that,” said Al, “straw was incorporated into the slopes by hand with a round-point shovel.”

Most of the old-time landscapers agree that Justice’s invention helped revolutionize the erosion control industry. Dana Bowers contribution, however, was a little more... colorful.

“Dana was a big, rough-talking, nasty dude,” said Al. “We’d party with Dana and he’d say: ‘I’ll drink your booze and eat your food and make love to your honeys—and shut your job down tomorrow!’”

Even though Al is an amazing storyteller and jokester, he gets serious when he talks about Caltrans specifications—and the job complications that might occur because of them.

“The thing that happens with the state is that they have two confusions—the young (Caltrans employees) think they can get everything out of you; not what’s written in the specs. And the older (Caltrans employees) think they can keep better records than you and that they can interpret the specifications better,” he said. “Legally, the specifications are interpreted not by the guy who wrote them, but by the guy who reads them. When you start reading them to (Caltrans employees) and explaining what they mean in (common industry terms), they turn pale because they know it’s going to be a claim.”

When he owned the A.L. Neu Corporation, Al often disagreed with the way specifications were interpreted by Caltrans officials. Claims became a big part of his reputation.

“If you had an argument out on the highway, you wrote the state a letter saying you’re going to protest it by a claim. A claim is an argument between the state and the contractor,” said Al. “You do your work, and keep track of costs; after the job is done you argue when it was to spec and when it wasn’t. When you’re a little guy—a subcontractor—your only chance is to know the book and keep better records than they do.”

Although he’s no longer in the landscape industry, Al remains passionate in his defense of the “little guy.”

“Anybody who hollers about the Division of Highways giving a bunch of money away to the contractor is crazy, because, yes, there are a lot of specification changes—the more complicated the job, the more change orders,” he said. “You bid according to specs—you don’t bid on what’s going to make the grass grow.”

Regardless of this ideology, Al, who popularized the use of hydroseeding, was indeed responsible for making grass grow—and in some very unusual places. When asked if he could relate one of his most challenging assignments, Al immediately recalled the time he was glad he didn’t have a fear of heights.

“We did a hydroseeding job on the Cherry Canyon Dam up in the Sierras,” he said. “They have a cart that runs up the penstock—which is the big 4-foot pipe that runs from the bottom of the dam and picks up water from above. The cart runs on the penstock to haul material down. They set our hydroseeder on it and we hydroseeded the face of that dam off the penstock.”

Al, of course, was at the helm of the hydroseeder, which he operated along the steep face of the dam.

Now living a less hazardous life with his wife, Joanne, in Union City, California, Al says he’s “officially retired.”

“The wife claims I’m losing my memory, but I know that’s not true, because I remember a lot of things that didn’t even happen,” he joked.

But Paul Albright, who started in the seed business in the ‘60s, remembers a great deal that did happen because of the man who turned the reading of government specifications into an art form.

“Many of the clauses that are in the Caltrans erosion control specifications are there because Al Neu showed up on the job and did stuff no one had thought about doing,” said Paul. “He pushed the envelope, but had a very solid reason for everything he did. He did it straight and above-board, but he’d look for any possible loophole in those specifications to make a bigger profit. If they had a big hole in their specs, then Al would drive a truck through it!”

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