I have come to a conclusion regarding valuable work.  There are two qualities that are valuable in the electrical trade.  Doing good, safe work makes you a valuable employee.  Doing good, safe work and doing it quickly makes you irreplaceable.  However, since there is an inherent danger to working with electricity sometimes working quickly in one aspect of the job is not always conducive to safety.  Therefore doing poor, unsafe work quickly, takes away an employee’s value.

When you are working for a small shop, yours or another person’s, there is no such thing as steady work.  There are weeks when there is nothing to do.  No calls come in, so you have to go out and hunt for work, and nobody wants or needs you.  The next week you may be running.  Everybody wants you – all at the same time.  This situation can lead to many interesting experiences.

One time I was working on a job way north of Havre, Montana near the Canadian border.  It was one of those times when we were trying to catch up or stay even with all of the calls.  I was hurrying home with just a few tools in the back of the company pick-up.  It was a gravel road and there wasn’t a posted speed limit, but my speed was about “way to fast” miles per hour.

I hit a washboard in the road.  To the un-countrified, a washboard is a ripple in the road.  It’s more than the ripples you will get on some streets at an intersection, where traffic patterns wear a series of rough ridges in pavement or graveled roads.  It is more than driving over a portion of road that makes you and all of your passengers involuntarily go “ddddddrrrrrrrrr.”  This was a washboard that stretched about three feet from crest to crest.

I’m not sure if I grabbed air at all much less how much air I grabbed if I did, but that washboard threw the pick-up all over the road, down a steep bank, and into the ditch.  I managed to stay in control of the pick-up, mostly.  The pick-up stayed wheels down and under power.  But I was still in a hurry, and I didn’t slow down – much, much less stop.

There was a steep bank on the right and a fence on the left.  I continued my way home steadily along that ditch for about ½ of a mile until I came to an approach.  I maneuvered my way out of the ditch and onto the approach and back onto the road.

Yes, I still hurried home but it scared me enough that I slowed down my driving, … somewhat.

When I first started in the electrical trade, I had little regard for the power and danger of electricity.  (I was just a farm boy, remember.)  In fact when someone would come looking for me, one boss would tell people to go into a specific building and look for a shower of sparks.  “You’ll find Adrian in the middle of it.”  Somehow or another, people started calling me Sparky.

I like to find out why and how things work.  It is no different with electricity.  For instance, while working with my brother-in-law (here after known as B.I.L.) we discovered how 3-way and 4-way switches worked, …. by taking them apart and studying the mechanisms. When GFI outlets came out I did the same thing.  However, on my own I was unable to figure out what all the pieces did.

Soon after a GFI salesman came around pushing the use of GFI receptacles.  He offered to teach us how they worked.  Of course I went to the class to learn about GFI receptacles.  It actually turned out to be quite simple.  We already had the principle and the mechanism involved, but they were miniaturized so they could be fit into one receptacle.

I also experimented with interesting phenomena regarding resistance using live wires.  I had wired a home where they used metal lath and plaster and metal ductwork for heating.  And, of course, we used metal boxes at that time since plastic boxes had not yet come into use.  The home was one of the places where we were required to take off our shoes to work in the residence.

As we were trimming out the work I was standing atop a metal floor vent, near a window that had metal casing.  When I touched the window casing I felt a tingle.  I thought to myself: “How could there be current flowing here when there are no electrical outlets or lights nearby?”

I retrieved my voltage tester and discovered that there was current flowing between the metal casing and the heat vent below the window.  I knew the furnace ducting would be grounded so the window sill had to be “charged.”

I went across the room where I had installed a switch by the door.  I took the switch out and discovered that I had inadvertently left a hot wire touching the metal electrical box.  The metal electrical box was touching the metal lath.  The metal lath was touching the metal window frame.  When I touched the metal window frame and then touched the metal ductwork I completed the circuit through my body.

I noticed that the voltage dropped considerably because of all the resistance.  I thought now is the time to experiment with some questions I have wondered about.

(ALERT!  ALERT!  DO NOT ATEMPT THIS!)

Using the voltage tester and the charged metal window frame and the heating vent, I ran the circuit from a finger on one hand, through my arms to a finger on my other hand.  The voltage dropped to 70.  I than ran the circuit the length of one arm (finger to shoulder where I placed the voltage meter).  It still read 70 volts.  Then I ran the circuit the length of one finger.  Still 70 volts.  Then I ran it ¼ inch on one finger.  It still measured 70 volts.

My conclusion was; 1). That is why electricity kills you.  Your body contains so much resistance to the flow that electricity becomes dangerous.  2). There is a reason for all those safety rules.

Never experiment with electricity.

Sometimes they still call me Sparky.

Working in Montana and North Dakota mostly involved working among farms and ranches, especially after the REA (Rural Electrical Association) came in.  One day the boss sent me and an apprentice out to wire a new house that a young family was building.

The apprentice was a school teacher during the school term and worked with us in the summer months.  His name was George.  Knowing that the job would take all day, George asked if he should pack a lunch.  I replied; “Oh, no.  These are farm people.  They will be insulted if you bring your own lunch.  They always feed you.”  (You can probably guess who wasn’t thinking this through.)

We got our material loaded in the pick-up and drove about 30 miles out in the country to the job site.  There the man and his wife and children were sitting in a pick-up waiting for us.  I told George the first thing we better do is put in the service and get the range hooked up.  The second thing would be to get the outlet for the refrigerator going.

By 1:30 in the afternoon we had the range hooked up and I went outside to tell them that they could cook now.  There they were, sitting in the back of the pick-up with their feet hanging over the tail gate, eating a packed lunch.  They didn’t seem to be in any hurry to cook anything.

I later figured out the source of my invalid conclusion about being fed at the job site.  This was my first encounter with city folks moving out into the country and building a home.  I have come to notice that people who grow up in the country and those who grow up in the city have a wide variation in their views, habits and attitudes.

George and I finished wiring up the house in record time and headed for the nearest little town with a café.  It was now about 6 P.M.  We were famished.  I never went anywhere without a lunch after that.  Even if I didn’t eat it, I had it along.

There are a large number of apartment buildings being constructed and filled today.  Today that dynamic is extrapolated to the new view of apartment living.

You learn as you go.