MCPHERSON ? Jerry Showalter and Rick Schlender hope this month’s Oklahoma murder trial of Terry Nichols will close the book on that late summer day in 1994 when they sold ammonium nitrate fertilizer to a man believed to be Terry Nichols.

Showalter and Schlender both work for the Mid-Kansas Co-op fuels plant in McPherson. Showalter testified Monday at Nichols’ Oklahoma state murder trial that he was involved in the sale of 2,000 pounds of the fertilizer on Sept. 30, 1994 — almost seven months before the April 19, 1995, bombing that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

“I feel like I did my job and I’ve been punished ever since for what I do for a living,” Showalter said.

Showalter and Schlender, the fuels office manager, have been active parts of the federal trial of Tim McVeigh, who was put to death for his role in the bombing, and the Nichols trials.

Showalter testified at McVeigh’s federal trial in Denver and Nichols’ preliminary hearing before the actual trial in McAlester, Okla.

Schlender testified in every court proceeding the bombing produced, beginning with a July 1995 grand jury in Oklahoma City and ending Friday, when he testified in McAlester.

Those court proceedings are just part of an ordeal for two men who were having a busy day when a man identifying himself as Mike Havens walked into the fuels office.

“You think you’re smarter than that,” Schlender said. “Then, something like this slips in under you.”

Although neither man positively identified Havens as Nichols, a receipt for the Sept. 30, 1994, purchase was found by FBI agents in Nichols’ Herington home.

“It was an ordinary transaction, nothing more, nothing less,” Showalter said. “Maybe it was a little odd that he paid with cash, but it was a normal thing. Somebody comes in and wants to buy fertilizer.”

For that sale, both men have spent nine years living with a tragedy that their boss, Dave Christiansen, calls “one of those things you remember, like a death in the family.”

“It’s always something that’s going to be in the back of your mind,” Showalter said. “About the time you forget about it, somebody calls you.”