Several years ago (pre-1970), I was working in the Hill County Repair shop located in Havre, Montana.  It was a facility for repairing the county’s machinery.  Since much of their machinery was diesel, it would blacken the ceiling in the shop pretty badly.

The county decision makers decided it was time to clean (paint) the ceiling.  Painting the ceiling required that we pull all the light fixtures down.  The ceiling would be painted and the fixtures cleaned up, then we would re-install the fixtures.  A rolling scaffold was rigged up for me and I would pull down a number of fixtures and go to another job.

The county had hired two out of work boys (brothers) to paint the ceiling and clean the fixtures.  We warned them that the wires were not to be touched.  They were left to do their portion of the job for a few hours, then I would return to re-attach the cleaned fixtures and give the boys more to clean.

One day when I returned to install the fixtures I found the two brothers rolling on the floor and fighting with each other.  We got them separated and asked what happened.

One of them had reached up to move the electrical wires out of the way.  (We had warned them.)  The boy got shocked, jerked his arm back and caught his brother right on the nose with his elbow.  We got everything cleaned up and they went back to work, somewhat mollified.

Just another argument for safety measures.

Another time we were installing metal boxes that were to contain clocks.  These boxes had been manufactured with sharp corners.  As I stood on a make shift platform to install one of the boxes, the platform gave way under me.  On the one hand (literally) it was a good thing that I had already securely fastened the box.  I grabbed for something to catch myself and caught the sharp corner of the box in the palm of my hand.

There was nothing else to grab hold of with the other hand and it hurt too much to holler.  My apprentice, a strong young boy picked me off of that hook like a sack of flour and sat me down on the floor.  I was younger then and healed rapidly so I didn’t lose any work.

Safety measures!  Safety measures!

I mentioned before that for awhile I worked on the missile silo program.  While I was doing so in Montana, I was camped in a little town near Great Falls.  I had a homemade camper on the back of my flatbed pick-up.

For work, the company had given me a company pick-up to use.  Near where I was camped there was a hotel where the guy I was working with was staying.  He was an older man who hailed from Minnesota.  He was a source of many stories of wild experiences.

One day when I was doing the driving we travelled to a site Southeast of Great Falls somewhere.  (That’s as close to an exact location as I can give; not for security reasons, but because it was a lot of years ago.)

We worked hard all day and when we left to go home it was already dark.  We were headed back to the little town where we were staying.  I drove a couple of miles back to a crossroads and turned left.  My partner said to me; “Aren’t you going the wrong way?”

Confidently I replied; “No.  We will just go the next crossroads and make a right.  It will take us directly to where I’m camped.”

We drove silently for awhile.  We came over a rise and there were the lights of Great Falls.  “Oh shucks.  Those lights are Great Falls, I’m going the wrong way!”  (Even then Great Falls was significantly larger than the little town we were in.)

So I whipped into an approach and performed a very quick 2 point turn, and headed back the other way.  By way of an apology I said to him: “I guess I was lost.  You were right.  What’s my name?”

We drove in total silence for about 10 miles until we came over a rise and there were the lights of the little town where I was camped and he had a hotel room.  He slapped me hard on the knee and said; “Auu-dreee-auun!”

Having grown up around Scandinavian neighbors, I was used to having my name pronounced strangely.

It didn’t take long for the story to get around about me getting lost in the countryside.  In fact one day a bunch of us were eating in a café and they gave me (a guy from Montana that lived nearby <within 100 miles>)  a pretty bad time over it.

One of my past employers came from a farm near where I grew up in North Dakota.  Growing up on the farm and working among farmers the first several years of my life, I had heard many interesting farmer stories.  One time while the boss and I were visiting with a number of people with a farming background, I couldn’t resist sharing one of my “farming stories” with them.

One of the farmers near where I had grown up had a calf that he kept inside his barn in a calf pen over the winter.  All farmers know that when you keep animals in the barn over the winter one of the natural consequences is that you have to clean out the barn floor periodically.  In practical terms this means that you must pitch the manure from an individual pen out into the main floor area of the barn.  It’s not a pleasant job.  Then you must follow up with transporting the manure from the barn floor to the manure pile outside.

After cleaning the manure out of the pen and the barn, the farmer would then replace the straw on the floor of the pen with fresh straw.  Over the course of a winter this would happen several times.

Though the job has warmth to it, it is not an inviting occupation to consider or to accomplish.  The farmer decided that, instead of go to all that work during the winter months, he would just add some fresh straw to the calf pen every so often.  When the build-up attained a height that would render the pen railing irrelevant, he would nail on another rail.

By the time spring came the calf was standing with his head up to the ceiling of the barn.  (To be sure, though it was many years ago, I don’t believe the barn was one of those tall red ones that we associate with the word “barn.”)  In the spring when the farmer decided to let the calf out, the calf was too frightened to come down off of his manure mountain.

If the calf had decided to jump down, there was a strong possibility that it would have broken a leg.  The calf was too big for the farmer to pick up.  The farmer had to rig up a winch and winch the calf out of the pen and down to the barn floor.

To a farmer this is a very humorous story.  I was surprised that, with his background, my boss wasn’t laughing.  In fact, he seemed a little pale.  He got very quiet.

I never asked him which farm he had grown up on.

Before you tell a story, it is a good idea to weigh the circumstances and possible consequences.

Oh well.  Hwe was rather difficult to get along with anyway.