The more people you work with, the more chance you have of discovering interesting things about them.

In the Union, I often worked with “Travelers.”  When they traveled to the jobs I was working on, there were a lot of differences displayed.  There were different personalities, different habits, different ways of getting the work done, and different terms for tools and material.

One of the men I remember had a sarcastic sense of humor.  As a consequence, he kept us laughing all the time.  For instance, there was a time when the conversation turned to people that were always “hard up.”  Some employers “never had any money.”  Or, “they never made any money” on a job.

What they really meant was that they didn’t make “as much profit as they intended” on a job.  If an employer had bid a job to make $10,000 profit and wound up only making $9,900 profit, he would say that he had lost $100 on that job.

Our humorist put it in perspective when he told us; “I lost a lot of money last week.  The price of grain went sky high, and I didn’t have a grain.”

One of the shops I worked for also sold and installed appliances.  There was a new apprentice that was working with me.  We were to deliver a washer and a dryer and carry them up a long flight of stairs to an apartment.

As I drove us to the job, I was pleased that I was the one driving as my apprentice had already had a few too many that morning.  We were supplied with a two wheeled dolly to move the appliances up the stairs.  With one of us on the top at the dolly handle, and one of us on the bottom assisting in the lifting we should have had no problem.

The dryer wasn’t bad.  It was light.  However an automatic washer is a heavy machine.

I ended up carrying the dolly, the washer, and the apprentice up that long flight of stairs.  My back ached for many days.

When I told this to the boss later on, I found out the apprentice was my cousin.  We had grown up in different states and, at the time of the appliance move, I hadn’t seen him in many years and didn’t recognize him.

I never saw him again.

In my many years of working with different people, on different crews, in town and out, I found a high proportion of men that enjoyed working out of town.  They liked the idea of not having to be home every night and away from the observation of their wives.  And, likewise, there were many women – waitresses, clerks, etc. – who recognized that quality about them.

One café we used to go to eat in was located in central Montana.  It had some young wmen working as waitresses.  At that time Marty Robbins had a popular hit on the radio called “Devil Woman.”  Every time I walked into that café, whether with a group of men or alone, one particular waitress would drop coins in the juke box and play that tune.

I never learned her name.  I can’t tell you what she looked like.  But she scared me.  I was very cautious around women like that, knowing how men and women acted.  The tune always reminds me of that circumstance.  It was a danger that many ignored.

Another danger that is part of our work environment is the danger of enclosed spaces.  I have talked about pole climbing, ladder work, flying, and electrical shock.  Underground work is also a dangerous area for electricians.  The news will sometimes carry a story about a worker in a ditch that gets buried by “slough off.”  There is also a very real danger associated with working under buildings in crawl spaces.

One job I was given was to do some electrical work in an existing store.  It was an older building, at the time unoccupied, with very little space between the floor and the earth.  When the building was constructed a crawlway had been left along each side and across the front of foundation in the front of the store.  I was sent to the job by myself.

For access to places in the middle of the floor, I had to crawl between the floor joists.  To actually access the crawl area, you had to use a trap door back by the ally.  I was doing some installations at the front of the store.  To get the wiring to that spot, you had to drill a hole down through the floor and run wiring under the store, either alongside or across the floor joists to the back of the store where the service panel was located.

I would crawl from one end of the building to the other, working over my head, as I ran the wiring from one end to the other.  Some places I couldn’t crawl through.  I had to wriggle through.  I was working alone and crawling around under that floor when I started to think about my situation.

I started to wonder what I would do if an earthquake occurred while I was underneath that floor and all alone on the job.  Right there I nearly psyched myself out.

Lesson learned.  Always have an emergency escape plan and always have someone near in case of an emergency.

During the years when I was in the Union, it seemed like it was constant contention.  Growing up on the farm, I never knew what a Union was.  While I was working for my first contractor a representative of the Union came around and told me I should be in the Union.  Some years later I found him to be a pretty good guy.

The problem lay in the fact that to join the Union required two current members of the Union to recommend you.  Another hindrance was the requirement of an initiation fee, which I didn’t have.  The latter instance proved to be a moot point since none of the local members wanted to recommend me.  I believe they felt that they didn’t want any more members.

The solution for me at the time was to pay a monthly fee as a work permit.  We left it that way and I kept working.  Then I was sent to work in another area of the state on a Government job program.

I could never agree with some of the work tactics that Union men used on a job.  There was a pervasive practice of working as slow as you could to make the job last.  They referred to the practice as “job security.”  I felt that since the Union was not paying my wages – the boss was.  I decided it was my responsibility to work as hard as I could and do as good a job as I knew how.

So it was, one day on the job as we were traveling from site to site, I had not been issued a vehicle by the contractor and I was using my personal car.  The inevitable happened and I was notified that I must meet the local executive board on the charges that I was transporting company tools in my personal vehicle.

It was true.  I had been taking a short 4 foot ladder from site to site in my vehicle.  I was a little worried that when I had started working on the project and they had asked for my card number, I had showed them the latest receipt for my work permit.  Since it was a different local they didn’t seem to notice the difference between my work permit and a Union card.  I approached my foreman.  He said to talk to the business agent in my home town.  So I did.

It turned out that he was the man that had first approached me about joining the Union.  He said; “Thirteen year apprenticeship is long enough.  Have you got $50.00?”  I did, so he made out a temporary card for me and I went back to the other Union board and met with them.

Boy was I nervous!  They might take me into the back room and give me fifty lashes, or chop off my finger.  As it turned out, they just assessed a fine on me.  I paid the fine and went back to work.  When I told the foreman what happened he apologized.  He said he should have given me a pickup to drive.  They gave me a pick up and the foreman gave me a set of tools to compensate for the fine.  Included in the tools was a small set of socket wrenches.  They proved to be very convenient.  I use that set to this day.

Twenty years later I left the Union.  But that’s another story.