I was working alone one time on a job requiring quite large wire.  Here came a husky young fellow the shop had sent out to help me.

I had the conduit run and was ready to pull in the wire.  When we measured the wire, instead of using a string to measure, I counted up the lengths of pipe.  We went back to the shop and cut the wire.

We returned to the job and proceeded to pull in the wire.  The husky young guy was on the pulling end and I was on the pushing end.

Actually the man feeding the wire in (the pushing end) has to do it just right.  He can make the job easy or impossible.

It is necessary to leave a certain length of wire at each end, outside the conduit, to land the wire.  When there was just enough wire to land it on the feeding end, I hollered to the young guy; “That’s all you can have.”

He said; “The wire is just barely to the edge of the pipe.”

I couldn’t believe it!  I went to the pulling end and sure enough, the wire was ten feet short.  I had miscounted the lengths of pipe by one pipe.  We pulled the wire back out.  With that size and length of wire, it was a pretty spendy mistake.

It was the end of the day.  All night I worried about telling the boss in the morning.  Should I tell the truth and take the heat?  It was my mistake.  I drove to work the next morning with a heavy heart.  I was met at the door by the estimator and the first words out of his mouth was; “Cut the wire too short, huh?”  (How did he know?)

I admitted I had miscounted the sticks of pipe.  He told me to; “Put the lengths of wire on the shelf and cut new ones.  We can always use it somewhere else.”  (Whew!)

Later on I found out that the tall husky apprentice was the boss’s son.

Lesson learned – it’s always better to be out front with everything.

I usually tried to work alone.  It was easier than working with someone I had to teach as I worked.  This meant I had to do some jobs, which were usually designed to be done by more than one person, alone.  One of the more difficult jobs to do alone was to pull wire through conduit.  In the process I developed certain tools that were specifically designed to allow me to work a two man job by myself.

One job I remember required me to lay two inch steel conduit in a ditch.  I prepared the job by laying out the conduit alongside the ditch.  Then I went into the ditch and assembled the pipe as I went along, pulling the material from the top of the ditch.

With rigid conduit you have to thread the couplings and pipe carefully.  If they are not lined up perfectly you will get easily cross-threaded.  The weight of a ten foot piece of 2” rigid pipe is significant.  It can be quite awkward getting it lined up to thread together when you are alone.  It was a long hard day!

Later on I was complaining (telling a story) to a painter friend of mine about the hard work I had done.  I said; “I would take the pipe off the bank, thread it together and I was quite well along in the run when I checked the job.  I found the pipes were on the bank and I was lying in the ditch.”

He replied; “Adrian, I told you not to let the job get you down.”

I heard a story about a plumbing contractor, pipe, and employee motivation.

After his men had screwed together a number of lengths of pipe, he would turn on the water and they would have to screw the pipes together before the water got to them.

Today, most plumbing and electrical pipe is made of PVC or plastic and they are glued together.  Sewer pipes snap together with a rubber ring.  Seldom do we use threaded pipe anymore.  Plastic pipe is lighter, easier to bend and does not rust.  There is no known life of plastic pipe.

But the old stories are fun to remember.

In the electrical trade it has been necessary to travel long distances.  When we moved from Havre, Montana to the Spokane, Washington area it required several trips of 500 to 600 miles, one way, each time, depending on which route we took.

I worked on several jobs in Pullman, Washington, driving the 100 mile trip twice a day, each day, all week.

There were times that I worked in Seattle, coming home on weekends.

Some of us car pooled to St. Mary’s, Idaho for several months.

All of the shops I worked for supplied us a vehicle that we could use to take ourselves, our tools and any material we needed to the job.

When we moved from Montana we used a bob-tailed 1-1/2 ton Chevy to pull our mobile homes.  For a number of years I used it, or loaned it out to others, to move mobile homes around.  My teen-age sons thought it was great fun to drive it to and from High School.  Several times when my work car broke down, I would use it to drive to and from work.

Driving at freeway speeds, it would take on a strange pitching action when it went over a bump.  This was due to the short wheel base.  One day when I took it to work, I arrived at work and could not find my lunch box.

I realized I had set it down on the back of the truck and it probably got pitched alongside the freeway.  Boy!  Was that a long day at work without something to eat.  I searched carefully to see if I could see it along the road as I went home.  Never saw a sign of it.

I often wonder if someone living alongside the freeway found a lunch box in their back yard.  Sometimes our best learned lessons are from negative experiences.