In my days of being a Union Traveler, I have met quite a variety of people.  I’ll have to tell you about “Overtime Harry.”  We have probably all had the opportunity to work overtime.  I think the best I’ve ever seen at it was Overtime Harry.

Overtime Harry was a plumber.  He was quite savvy at manipulating the powers that be on government jobs.  When we completed a job for the government, we were required to run a test on it.  The test would run continuously for 48 hours and all of the trades on the job had to be there.  If you did your portion of the work correctly there would be nothing to do during the test but wait it out.

Harry was very good at being “short” one part to complete the job just prior to the test start.  The test would be delayed while he acquired the part and installed it.  He and his crew would sit down and wait on the job for the part, sometimes it had to be flown in, and collect their wages for waiting for a missing part.  Then the crew would be there for the 48 hour test.  The requirement was that whoever was on the job at the start of the test had to be there at the end of the test.  Since it was difficult for one man to stay awake the whole time, there could be a couple of guys per trade waiting out the test.  The plumbers had their whole crew; thus the reputation of “Overtime Harry.”

Harry was making pretty good money.  Harry had been mailing his checks (very large checks) back to his wife and he was anxious to fly home and see her.  Finally one weekend the whole crew had the weekend off and Harry was going to go home to see his wife.

Come Monday morning Harry was there nursing a hangover, trying to borrow money from fellow workers so he would have something to eat during that week.  We asked him; “Did your wife take all your money and leave you nothing to live on?”

“I never saw my wife.  I didn’t make it home.”

We asked what happened.  It seems Harry stopped at a bar to cash his check before buying a ticket for home.  Some of his working buddies were in the bar and he started buying drinks for everyone.  (He had an unusually large pay check that week.)

About 3 O’clock in the morning Harry passed out.  All his buddies laid him out in an alley and took his money and left.

I have noticed that the more money some people make, the more dishonest they become.

I didn’t see much of Overtime Harry after that, but I didn’t spend much time worrying about him either.

Working away from home never was an enjoyable way to make a living.  But sometimes you have to do whatever is necessary to keep food on the table.  When I found out how difficult it was, I had a carpenter friend of mine help me build a little camper on a small two wheeled trailer.

It had a bed, a camp stove, and a small cupboard.  I brought food from home each week.  Not having a fridge, somethings didn’t keep well.  One week, about Tuesday, I fried up some potatoes, putting a couple of eggs in the middle of the spuds and sat down to a delicious “home cooked” meal.

I was never so sick in my life.  I have no idea what caused it.  It could have been the eggs, the potatoes, the grease in the pan, or my coffee!  (Many years later we bought a real motor home.  It was self contained with a bathroom, generator, refrigerator, and propane stove.  You could park wherever you wanted! – Truly a home on wheels.  What an improvement.)

One year when the family took a vacation, my wife and children met me in Wyoming.  She had the family car and I drove my old beat up pick-up.  When it came time to go home, she and the children took the car back to Northern Montana and a friend and I drove my pick-up to the job.  It took all night.

I got to the shop just in time to go to work.  The foreman and the crew were already out but he had left me a note.  “We serviced your pick-up over the weekend.  The key is on the hook in the office, go to site “so and so.”

I took the key and went looking for the pick-up.  I walked around the whole building twice.  No pick-up.  I thought that perhaps they had not yet gotten it back from the shop where it was serviced.  However I couldn’t call the foreman because my radio was in the pick-up that had been serviced and was currently lost.

I started around the building a third time, this time taking a slightly different path.  All of a sudden I tripped on something and landed flat on my face in the grass.  I looked at what I had tripped over.  It was a small pipe extending out of the ground about ½”.   I realized if I couldn’t raise my feet more than ½” above the ground, I was more tired than I realized.

When I looked up, there was my pick-up right in front of me.  I had passed it twice.  This had been the third time past this particular point.  So I picked myself up and went to work.  I drank a lot of coffee that day.

That night I didn’t bother eating.  I went straight to bed after I got off work.

One hospital in a small town was a two story building, but only the first floor had been completed.  The hospital controllers wanted to finish the upper floor and I was given the job of wiring it.

When the lower floor was constructed and completed, part of the conduit for the upper floor had been installed, mostly up and down the stairwells, so as to provide wiring access to the lower floor.  However I encountered a problem with the conduit, because some of it was too small for the wiring I had to do.

It was about this time that advancements in wire manufacturing changed the type of insulation used on wiring.  I was able to put more wire in a space than previously, but I still had to stretch the code to the limit to get it all wired.

On this job a brick wall had been built as a decorative statement in the entry area.  When it was completed the building inspector said it was not a good job and that it had to be torn down to the floor and redone.  When it was rebuilt the inspector came again and stated that it was still not good enough and must be torn down and rebuilt yet again.  By this time the bricklayers were getting a little angry.

I only remember something like that happening to electricians one time.  The architect of a project had called for “exposed conduit” wiring.  When the job was completed she didn’t like the look and wanted changes made.

You will always find people in the trades that do rough work, or disrespect the work area or customer.  For instance while working on a job in an Elk’s Lodge building we had to work in an office occupied by a couple of lawyers.  The office was being remodeled, so while we were working in their office they moved out temporarily

A couple of plumbers were doing ceiling work in the office.  Instead of moving the desks out of the way and using ladders, they stood on the desks.  Boy!  Some words flew when the lawyers came back in the office.

I suspect that those plumbers didn’t like lawyers very much.

I do know some lawyers who didn’t like plumbers after that.