One time I was wiring a house out in the country.  Several of the trades were there.  We went to take a coffee break in the living room area.  We were sitting on the floor with our backs to the wall.

When break time was over we got up to go back to work.  The plumber remained seated on the floor.  One of the guys asked him if he was alright.  He replied “I can’t stand up.”

In those days there were no cell phones.  He was quickly loaded into a car and driven to the hospital as fast as they could go.  We heard the next day he had died before reaching the hospital.  I don’t recall if we ever heard what caused his quick illness and death.  It always seems strange to me that one could die so quickly.

During the time I was working on government work in the wilds of Montana, all of the work crews were provided fans to keep the air moving in the deep recesses where we were working.

One of the welders was careless about his fan, claiming he didn’t need it, even though some of his welding occurred 60 to 70 feet down in the ground.

One morning he didn’t wake up.

Though you don’t want to give up on life, sometimes going quickly seems advantageous compared to a lingering, ailment filled span of months or years.  In any case it is good to remember that we could go at anytime.

It also reminds us that Safety Precautions on the job are there for our protection.  It is not a good idea to ignore them.

Remember, babies and electricity do not mix.

When our oldest son was about two years old he climbed up on the couch.  He pulled a reading lamp into his lap.  Our backs were turned for a moment.  He unscrewed the bulb and was putting his finger in the socket.

Fortunately the switch was off.

Today’s light bulbs do not put out as much heat.  Therefore there is no inherent preventative to detach a hot bulb and put a finger in a light socket.

Other appliances can be dangerous to youngsters too.  Our neighbor’s child picked up the cord to the sewing machine while the mother was sewing, put the cord into his mouth, and bit into it.  The resulting shock injured the child’s mouth so badly, reconstructive surgery was needed later.

The Northern Montana College in Havre, Montana decided to build additional structures, … in the dead of winter.  (Havre, in the dead of winter, gets very cold.)  The building was to be made of block walls.  Block walls have to have a minimum amount of heat in order for the mortar to set correctly.  In order to protect the mortar the project leaders tarped the whole building and ran heaters inside.

It didn’t work.

Later on I was there to install wiring, and noticed that you could scrape the mortar from between the blocks because it had frozen before it set.  Apparently the decision was made to leave it as is, because years later I noticed a large crack in the block wall where the bad mortar had been used.

The auditorium on campus had a large dome for the roof/ceiling.  In order to install lighting fixtures in a straight line we had to drill holes and set the boxes from the top side of the dome (outside).  We were working through the roof to accomplish our purpose.  The top layer of lights was easy to set.  As we worked our way down the sides of the dome it became more difficult to maintain a straight course on the fixtures due to the circular nature of the dome.

We drilled our holes and set our boxes and ran conduit across the top of the domed roof.  Later insulation and roofing materials were layered over our conduit and boxes.  To finish the job inside we used scaffolding in the auditorium to reach the ceiling.

It was then that I noticed that we had missed with one box.  It was one foot out of line.  However from the floor this misalignment could not be seen because of the extreme height.

On that job we had a great deal of underground electrical conduit runs.  The plumbers too had buried piping.  Later on the plumbers were going to connect two plumbing piping systems.  They dug up a pipe, a welder cut a round hole in it, and prepared to tap a second pipe into it.  The welder reached into the hole and pulled out a chunk of rubber.

He had cut into one of the main high voltage lines.

They called us up there in a hurry.  We had the power company shut down the power.  We pulled out the wire, patched the hole, patched the damaged insulation and got the power back on before night.

It was an expensive mistake, but the welder lived to see another day.

And as for expensive mistakes……

On another job, one contractor had us use large wire with the wrong type of insulation for the purpose for which that particular run was intended.  The electrical inspector caught the error and we had to pull all that large expensive wire out, and pull in the correct wire.

The incorrect wire was of the type that is normally used for welder leads.

I wound up making a good set of jumper cables out of a portion of it.

Our neighbor Paul could sleep through earthquakes (I told that story) and make coffee in a hard hat (I told that one too).  He could also be a “dog whisperer.”  Well, maybe not exactly a whisperer.

At one point Paul was injured on the job and wasn’t able to work for awhile.  He and his family were about to lose their mobile home.  Another of his friends paid off the mobile home and he moved it and his family out onto our property until he could get a settlement from Labor and Industries.

Before his injury, when deer season had opened one year, he went hunting in an area where he had formerly lived.  While he was gone I noticed plenty of deer in our area.  During that same period we had a bad storm that blew down many high voltage lines.  Paul’s company called his crew out without him.  The crew was paid double-time for the entire weekend as they worked to get power back up.

When Paul returned I asked him if he had gotten a deer.  He said that he had not even seen a single deer where he had been.

I used to razz him about how expensive his wild meat was.

Before we met Paul and his family they had lived in the mountain country around Flathead Lake.  One winter day he was sitting in a bar, visiting with another patron.  Paul told this fellow that he wasn’t afraid of dogs.  The fellow patron, a neighbor of Paul’s, said he had a dog that wouldn’t let Paul get to the house.

They made a bet.  Paul told him; “I’ll come over this afternoon and don’t call the dog off.”

Paul went home and got a coat made from a bear skin, and rode over to the neighbors on his horse.  He got off of the horse to open the gate about 300 yards from the house.  Immediately he heard the dog running his way from the house and barking.  Paul calmly closed the gate and turned to face the oncoming dog, which by now was pretty close.

Paul hunkered the coat over his head, dropped on all fours and began crawling toward the dog, raising his arms menacingly.  The dog skidded to a stop giving out a yip, and headed back to the house as fast as he could go.

The dog never came out from under the porch the whole time Paul visited with his neighbor.  He never told me how much the bet was, but he sure did win.