One time we were remodeling a hotel in Havre, Montana.  One of the electricians was a Coca-Cola addict.  Every day at coffee break he would buy a half dozen bottles of Coke and hand them out to us.  I think he thought he was doing us a favor.  After about a week of it, I started feeling ill, like my insides were rotting away.  I insisted on going back to a coffee break.

The manager of the hotel was a young fellow and he worked with us much of the time.  He explained to us that many times people would leave bottles of hair spray behind when they checked out.  He insisted that hair spray made excellent bug killer.  He used it in his garden, flower beds and shrubs.  He said you couldn’t buy anything that worked better.

There were a couple of painters working on the job with us.  As soon as we finished work in a room, the painters came in and painted them.  They were also putting up wall paper in the hallway.

One day one of the painters was painting the ceiling in the hallway.  (This was an old fashioned building with high ceilings.)  As he cautiously descended the ladder he stepped directly into an open 5-Gallon paint bucket.  His demeanor changed to what might be adequately described as “extremely agitated.”

He kicked the bucket off of his foot.  The bucket went sailing down the hallway, splashing paint everywhere.  He picked up his brushes and left the job, never to return!  He didn’t even stop to get his pay check.

On a different job we found ourselves working with a paint crew again.  The job was a rush job.  Everyone was working overtime.

One painter was painting away with tears running down his face.  We asked what was wrong.  He said his wife had died the day before, but he had to keep working because of the rush.

Many years later I was doing some work for his nephew in Spokane.  His nephew remembered the occasion.

Painters have problems too.

When I first started wiring, it was on farm houses.  Nobody even knew what a hard hat was.  It was not until I got into government jobs that hard hats were required.  The same goes for steel toed boots.

It seemed the hard hats were very heavy to wear, and in the summer time they were excruciatingly hot.  Eventually I found liners you could wear inside of the hard hat in cold weather.

Most of the early hard hats were made of metal, but eventually they were manufactured from hard plastic.  Some featured smooth tops and some of them had ridges.  I was once told the reason for the ridges were so that electricians could hold wire up with their hard hats.  That was one story I didn’t believe.  In all the years that I worked while using a hard hat, I never once had occasion to hold wire up with my head.  Today you can get hard hats and hard caps, and I have even seen hard protected cowboy hats.  I preferred hard hats with a brim that would also somewhat protect your shoulders from falling material.

It was quite popular to write something on your hat – your name or trade, or a slogan – something humorous.  Some of the guys I worked with were quite artistic, if not completely articulate.

On many jobs, when issued a hat, it was a specific color for a specific trade.  It was not uncommon to have a number designation on your hat, which made it possible to identify the wearer from a distance.

One time the big boss of a large construction company was in the hospital next to a construction job his company was doing.  He demanded a room overlooking the job so he could look down on the job from his office … no … his bed.  He had field glasses to observe his men and report what was going on back to his superintendant.

I remember one job where my hat was just plain gray (or grey – either way it’s the same color).  Someone took a strip of wire markers that said; “Power Power Power and applied it to my hard hat to be humorous.  I was allowed to keep the hat after the job was done.  I still have it; along with a collection of other hats I was given.

I do know of one hard hat that didn’t make it.  One of my friends, who was also my next door neighbor, oversaw the installation of high voltage lines.  He liked his hard hat.  He wore it all the time.  One day my friend was out hunting, wearing his hard hat of course.  When they camped at night the group wanted to make coffee but they had no tin can to boil water.

My friend took the interior webbing and support out of his hard hat (it was one of the metal ones) and used it to boil water over a campfire.  The next week he was on a pole and a gust of wind blew his hard hat off of his head.  Upon landing on the ground the hat broke into a hundred pieces.

I have no idea what that coffee tasted like.  And I don’t know if drinking it had any negative impact on their health.

On the other hand, plastic is not the answer to everything.

Many electrical contractors will have a shop where they do repair work and assembly.  Most electricians do not like shop work.  For one thing it can get monotonous, and secondly, it usually pays less.

Sometimes the shop itself is an afterthought.  They are not very comfortable to work in.  One place where I worked had a shop that wasn’t very nice.  It was very small in size and located in the back corner was a rudimentary restroom.  It had no windows or air movement fan.  It had one stool, one basin, one light and a door.  It was a source of offensive odors that drifted slowly throughout the main shop area.  Sometimes it took hours before it cleared out.

This business had only two men working in the shop.  I was talking to one of the men when the other came walking from the back of the shop, wiping his hands with a paper towel.   The guy I was talking to, interrupted our conversation and said; “Man!  What did you do back there?”

They fellow with the towel answered; “Man!  Can’t you tell?”

One of the greatest blessings is to work out side; hot or cold or in between.

Another place I worked, one of the shop boys always wanted to get out and work in the field with us.  One day we came in to the shop after working in the field.  The shop boy cam up to us and said; “I must have gotten a raise!”

We knew he was probably getting about half as much as we were.  At the time we were getting about $5.00 an hour in the field.

We asked him why he said that.  What did the boss say?

He told us a farmer’s wife had brought in a motor to be repaired.  It was a very simple repair job so he had written on the ticket for the motor job; “1/2 hour.”

The boss came back to look at the motor.  He scratched out the “1/2 hour” and wrote $45.00.

The boy said he must have been given a raise.

It seemed like pretty high overhead.