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.

It was in the 1960s and I was working on a government job in Montana.  There were many separate trades working on the same job at the same time.  All of us had our own tool box to carry the tools we needed for the job.

The Carpenters had their saws, levels, squares – all of different sizes and configurations – and hammers of all sorts.  The Plumbers would have drills, threaders, vices, pipe wrenches, welding apparatus, etc.  The Electricians would have drills, hammers, screwdrivers, levels, etc.  And of course the sizes and shapes of the tools determined the size of your tool box.  The tool boxes sometimes became quite large.

One day a few of the men took all the tools out of one of the guys’ tool box and screwed it to the floor, then put all the tools back in.  When the apprentice, a strapping young man, came to get the tool box, he ripped the handle off.

On this job we had to carry our tools up a short ladder, through a trapdoor, and into a small room.  One day we were all – Carpenters, Plumbers, Sheet metal Workers, and I – taking lunch in this small room with our tool boxes when the Johnson Controls man showed up.

The Johnson Controls man took care of the temperature and air controls.  For his controls work he needed a small tubing bender, a tubing cutter/reamer, a couple of screwdrivers and a few small wrenches.

We were all sitting around with all our large work equipment and large tool boxes, when the Johnson Controls guy came in carrying a small tool box about 8 inches cubed.  We all burst out laughing at the sight of that little tool box.

He looked at us and said; “I have always heard it said, the smarter the man the smaller the tool box.”

Now days, everyone has battery operated power tools which eliminate a need for so many tools; but I don’t think we will ever catch up to the Johnson Controls man.