Storms

One of the contractors who employed me had a contract with the sign company in Great Falls, Montana to maintain a large number of neon signs in Havre, Montana.  At one point we had a real vicious hail storm in Havre.

The day of the hail storm I was driving home into the teeth of the storm.  I pulled over to the side of the road.  I was sure it was going to break out my windshield.  It held.

The windows in our neighbor’s house were broken and the rain blew in damaging their sofa.  The side of our mobile home located toward the storm didn’t have any windows, but it made dents in the aluminum siding.

The storm occurred in August and our garden was demolished, except for the vine plants.  The wind had “rolled up” the vine plants (cukes, squash, and pumpkins) like a rug.  When I unrolled them they had protected themselves.  We had a good crop of vine vegetables a month later in September.

I have heard where hail storms have damaged 100% of cars on a car sales lot; a total loss on the vehicles there.

The hailstorm that month and year required that we go around to most of the signs in town to determine which ones needed repair.  It was nearly every sign in town.

The next day the company in Great Falls sent up a flat bed truck loaded with neon tubing.  Apparently the contract did not allow much down time on these signs.  We worked day and night to replace all that tubing that had been broken.

I learned quite a bit about neon signs on that occasion.

Sometimes in the bright light you could not see if the sign was lighting or not.  I discovered that by running my finger and thumb along a tubing, I could tell if it was working or not.

The work came at a good time as the shop was low on work.  It gave everyone a bit of income.  Later on another electrician and I were talking about the neon tubing being thoroughly broken and he told me what he had heard from another electrician.

This third party individual would go out at night, when work was slow, and throw old fan belts up into the sign tubing, breaking it.  He called it “making work.”

This practice is more widespread and widely used than most would imagine; and it isn’t limited to electrical signage.

But that’s another storm.

Quake Lake

Some time back, while I was living in Montana, there was a large earthquake centered near Yellowstone Park.  The earthquake was so severe that it stopped the flow of the Madison River.  Where the river was dammed up later became known as Quake Lake.

The night the earthquake happened, miles and miles away from the quake center, kitty corner across the state, in a dog kennel about ¼ mile away from our house, the dogs began to howl terribly.

Meanwhile, that night, my wife Becky had gone to bed and I was sitting up late reading.  Our mobile home began to rock back and forth from side to side.  I thought it was some cow rubbing herself on the side of the mobile home.  I got up and opened the front door.  The door opened outward, and the first thing I noticed was the bright full moon.  The second thing I noticed was that the outer edge of the open door bottom was almost touching the ground with each rocking motion.

I heard a sound from our next door neighbor’s house.  It was the wife laughing hysterically.  I called out; “Mildred, what’s the matter?”

She said her husband, a foreman on a lineman crew, was rolling back and forth across the bed, but remained sound asleep.  He didn’t wake up, and didn’t know about the earthquake until morning.

The next morning when I went to work, the fellow I worked with told me that his father who owned a tire shop had been holding a late night meeting with some local business men.  After the quake they closed the meeting.  He went home, got his shot gun, and patrolled the street for some time.  I don’t know who or what he planned to shoot, but it is interesting to see how some people will panic.

One of the neighbors had a house built on a cement slab floor.  The slab had been badly cracked from the upheaval.

Later, a more familiar weather phenomenon for Montana – a hail storm, came through town with high winds.  It did much more damage than the quake.

Crazy People

Crazy is an English word that has come to cover a wide area of meaning.  It may be used as a pejorative, a description, or just to indicate something different, unusual or unexpected.  I have had experience with people who were referred to as crazy but in reality they were just unusual.  Then again, I have had experience with unusual people that acted in a crazy manner.

One job I went to was a complex of six apartments located above a store.  When the second story was converted to apartments, care was not taken to assure that each apartments wiring was satisfactorily separated and individualized from the other apartments.  For instance, some devices in “Apt. A” were on the circuit for “Apt.B”, and vice-versa and etc., etc., etc.  Additionally some of the devices were not working.  The apartments were all occupied by older single women.

One of the women, sometime in the past, had acquired a chair that she later decided she didn’t want.  Each of the ladies spent their time trying to sneak the chair into someone else’s apartment.  Why they didn’t just throw the thing out a window and get rid of it, I’ll never know.  I didn’t understand; it was crazy.

There was an open scuttle hole in the hall between the apartments.  I got my ladder, climbed up, reached into the hole and pulled on a wire.  The lights went off in one apartment and on in another.  Well, that was crazy.

I got a trouble light and crawled up into the attic.  With the light on I could see, scattered all around the open scuttle hole, used feminine products.  How crazy is that.  Leaving the area of the scuttle hole I discovered the wiring had not been properly distributed to the correct meters.  The wiring was not in good working condition and I could not leave the building with the wiring in a dangerous state.  I told myself that many people have to work in non-pristine conditions, and I safed up the wiring before I left.

I also remember another older lady, living alone in a house, where children passing by, to and from school, would throw rocks at her as they passed.  She was quite sane, and she and I used to have interesting conversations, but she would do some strange things.

The first time I came to her house, she answered the door with her hands covered in blood.  No.  No need for CSI.  She had been butchering and dressing out chickens.  That wasn’t crazy.

I recall another lady that lived with her children.  (There were 2 or 3.)  When she would open the door, the odor coming out the door would knock your hat off.

One day one of the other guys was working at her house and I needed to get something out of his pick-up.  I went to the house and knocked on the door.  The electrician came to the door and I asked him about the item in his truck.  He said that he would come out and get it for me.

I said; “Just tell me where it’s at and I’ll get it.”

“No.  I’ll get it for you.”

As we walked to the truck he said; “I had to get outside and get some fresh air.”

I replied that I was glad he got that job, not me.

Waylon said, and my boy David sings it so I know it’s true; “I’ve always been crazy, but it’s kept me from going insane.”